Written by: Boban Batrićević
A certain Brdža, a councilman of Andrija Mandić in the Capital City, whose official bio lists only a high school diploma and a B-category driver’s license, and whom, out of respect for the brand Clio, we won’t mention by name, recently wowed everyone with his grasp of history during a local parliament session. What kind of local government body spends its time debating history? Maybe the best metaphor here is the mayor’s wife’s Dior slipper, expensive, but utterly useless (we’re talking about the footwear, of course).
Anyway, Brdža, in the style of some fervent mountain folk, flaunted an impressive knowledge of World War II history, or as IN4S (where, I’m sure, besides my horoscope, you’ll also find this column) would call it, "povesnice." He claims the July 13th Uprising was led by the Chetniks, even though the Chetnik movement in Montenegro hadn’t even been formed yet. He got this idea from Jakov Kusovac, who supposedly organized it in Cetinje! As if there were no other organizers. Then he goes on to list as heroes all sorts of notorious and vile Chetnik figures: from the cowardly villain who cried at his trial, Draža Mihailović, to the butcher Pavle Đurišić, the liar Blagoje Jovović, the soldier-killer and sadist Jakov Jovović, and Đorđije Lašić, who spent most of the war bedridden after being wounded by Partisans. For these poor souls, who carry the blood of so many civilians, especially women and children, an average SS Einsatzgruppe in Ukraine, Brdža demands streets and monuments. He even wants a museum for Blagoje Jovović, so that he doesn’t have to go to Serbia to pay respects to the Chetniks.
Well, Brdža, you’ve made a Copernican shift compared to your party, because you won’t go to Serbia! Maybe it’s not the happiest reason, but it’s the first step toward salvation, catharsis, liberation from Chetnik illusions, call it what you will, that have darkly gripped Serbia for decades. Not going there today is a real blessing, because Serbia today is like a corrupted time machine; stepping inside feels like entering a parallel Third Reich.
The next step is definitely for Brdža, instead of listening to clerical whitewashing of history and undergoing live revisionist lobotomy, to visit the State Archives of Montenegro and check the available World War II documents. This institution is now run by Democrats close to the Serbian Church, so document objectivity is guaranteed; it’s certainly not some Comintern-Ustasha, or worse, Komita-Green, Italian-bastard fabrication and scheme. There, he’ll find plenty of documents testifying to Chetnik crimes committed by every one of his imagined heroes, except one: Blagoje. Blagoje Jovović, a simple farmer, was an unknown member of the Chetnik movement. Alongside the bloodthirsty and mass war criminal Jakov Jovović, who openly collaborated with the Nazis, he fled to Argentina.
Only after the breakup of Yugoslavia did Blagoje return to Montenegro. Then he met with the main druid of historical fantasy and myth-making, you know who I mean, the guy who linked Duklja to Vezirov Bridge and welcomed Arkan to a monastery. I don’t know what they were smoking, but after their meeting, both publicly hallucinated that Blagoje had assassinated Ante Pavelić (not the dentist) in Borges’s homeland! If Netflix had existed then, the old wizard could have sold that story for a series in no time.
Back to Brdža and his rehabilitation process: after leaving the Archives, we suggest he embark on therapy by reading Serbian historiography. Start with Bojan Dimitrijević, who stated that Serbian historians have no record of Blagoje’s assassination of Pavelić. Or Dubravka Stojanović, who calls it a fabrication. That would be healing for both Brdža and Montenegro.
Seen in that light, Blagoje Jovović should get a museum called, say, "The Museum of Illusions", exhibiting all Chetnik lies, from Draža Mihailović’s false reports to the Western Allies claiming he fought the Nazis, which temporarily earned him the title "Europe’s first guerrilla" (what about the Poles and Czechs, Brdža? Surely they had their guerrilla groups, the Czechs even assassinated the third-highest-ranking Nazi, unlike Čiča, who licked the occupiers’ boots), to Gojko Perović’s repeated manipulations trying to legitimize the Chetniks.
That museum would do more for Montenegro’s education system than anything since 1945.
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