Written by: Darko Šuković
The values symbolized by July 13 have only once before been held in such contempt, back in 1942. Today, they are nearly forgotten. To understand how the legacy of the partisans came to be so thoroughly trampled, we must engage in deep, honest reflection. One cause, and consequence, stands out clearly: no one has betrayed the ideals of July 13, or of Montenegro itself, as gravely and shamefully as the children, and especially the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of the partisans.
There are exceptions, like my neighbor Milika, fiercely loyal to both Montenegro and the partisan movement. When I mention the fall of the partisan legacy, he nods, eyes brimming with tears. There’s no enemy bunker left to charge shirtless, but if there were, he’d be the first to go.
That’s how defeated the partisans and the spirit of July 13 feel in the Montenegro of August 30. Even Milun Zogović would feel a flicker of shame today. But it’s too late. The very ideals his comrades fought and died for, thanks in part to his legacy, have, eighty years later, fallen into the hands of Pavle Đurišić’s ideological heirs.
How did this seismic shift happen? How did the partisans’ superhuman courage and sacrifice come to be dismissed as nothing more than “leftist excesses” or summary justice? As if Neretva and Sutjeska never happened. As if Ljubo Čupić, Sava Kovačević, Joke Baletić, and Jaglika Adžić never existed. As if the partisans were merely executioners, tools of revolutionary terror.
How did real heroes come to be cast aside and replaced with fabricated ones? This very outlet has published evidence-based, documented truths about Pavle Đurišić, Bajo Stanišić, Blažo Đukanović, and Đorđije Lašić. And yet, the machinery of lies we face is relentless. It’s been running nonstop for centuries, not an exaggeration. Centuries. It manufactures an alternate reality through brazen falsification. Calling it “unscientific revisionism” is far too mild.
Instead of Grahovac and Vučji Do, Skadar and Mojkovac, Neretva and Sutjeska, the poorly educated and culturally neglected public is fed tales of imaginary heroes and fictional battles, cut from the same mythical cloth as the Battle of Kosovo.
Take, for example, the supposed speech by Major Gavrilović on October 7, 1915, where he allegedly told his men, “The High Command has erased our regiment from its rolls.” Over the past forty years, it has become a near-sacred source of inspiration. Why “supposed,” and why only recently? Because the speech mysteriously surfaced more than half a century later, right at the peak of Serbian nationalist fervor in the 1980s. Around the same time The Book About Milutin and Golubnjača emerged. Allegedly recorded by a sergeant, the speech somehow survived two world wars and the entire First Yugoslavia, only to reappear exactly when it was most politically useful, to stoke the flames that would ultimately destroy the Second.
Major Dragutin Gavrilović, who led young recruits to their deaths defending Belgrade, died in that same city thirty years later, on July 19, 1945.
Now ask yourself: When was the last time you heard a quote whose authenticity wasn’t in question? Something like: “As long as you hear the shots from our rifles at Ljubo’s grave, the Germans will not pass.” That was the final message sent to the Supreme Command by the Second Company, Third Battalion, of the Fourth Montenegrin Proletarian Brigade. Vladan Vlajko Đuranović, a national hero, wrote it. He was 19 at the time, already serving as a political commissar. He died the following year in Bari from combat wounds. Barely twenty years old.
Yes, he was Veselin’s brother, Draško’s uncle, the same Veselin and Draško whose names are now routinely dragged through the mud in public discourse. That’s where we are today in terms of memory and respect in Montenegro. And yes, that’s part of the answer we’re searching for.
When I mention the “Belgrade factory of lies”, a phrase coined by Gavro Vuković, that’s exactly what I mean. Volumes could be written on the subject. For now, look into the origins of the “Old Herzegovina” narrative and the long-running effort to deny its historical and organic place within Montenegro. Look at how Serbian historians have tried to redraw the borders of Travunia and Podgorje to support that claim. It may sound like paranoia or conspiracy. But that’s precisely why the propaganda campaign aimed at dismantling modern Montenegro and its identity is so effective. It works.
That’s how you shape public opinion to accept the sight of national flags flying over a stage where, on the very night that the July 13 Award and Statehood Day are being degraded, Andrija Mandić and Bećir Vuković are giving speeches. Where people sing “Šano dušo, šano mori” and “Žabi do koljena, mišu do ramena”, a grotesque tribute is performed over the bones of those who built the foundations of Montenegro. That’s how you prepare the ground for a version of July 13 palatable to someone like Veljo Stanišić, the man whom the pitiful Bećir Vuković nearly elevates to Nietzschean heights. A Montenegro “reconciled” under terms dictated by those who claim the war was a “civil conflict,” in which, eighty years after their shameful defeat, the Chetniks finally triumphed over the partisans.
There was no “civil war”, Mr. Mandić, not while there was a foreign occupying force. What happened was a fight for liberation against the Italians, the Germans, the fascists, and the Nazis. And the partisans led that fight. On the ground, they won. Period.
Two political-military groups collaborated with the occupiers. That’s where the similarities end. One sought to absorb occupied Montenegro into a Greater Serbia, cleansed of other ethnicities. The other hoped, with Italian support, to rebuild an independent Montenegro. Pavle Đurišić’s Chetniks committed horrific war crimes. Krsto Popović’s “nationalists” did not. Their goal was the survival of the Montenegrin people. The painful decision made by this legendary commander of the 1919 Christmas Uprising, a man who embodied military honor and courage, to collaborate with the occupiers in hopes of restoring Montenegro says everything about the devastation and humiliation the country endured after the tragedy of 1918.
Some might say today’s independent Montenegro is the realization of Krsto Popović’s dream. Others might argue it’s drifting ever closer to Pavle Đurišić’s vision. But one thing is clear: what the partisans fought for has either been defeated or is barely holding on.
How did we get here? That’s the question that demands real answers. Was it simply the collapse of an ideology, clearing the way for nationalism, religion, and Serbian ethnocentrism to take hold? Or has something changed so profoundly in the past 75 years that those living in Montenegro today no longer deserve to be called Montenegrins? That a people who once inspired larger, stronger nations have become a docile herd, blind to the threats to their freedom and dignity?
Maybe someone figured us out. Found the flaw. Found a way to make the grandson of a priest, Maca’s victim, march in a religious procession led by the same church that canonized the butcher who killed his grandfather. Maybe someone figured out how to twist the massacre in Velika, where virtually the entire population supported the partisans and not the Chetniks, into an act of Serbian martyrdom. A grotesque, clerical-nationalist pageant danced over the graves of the innocent. Maybe someone found a way to exploit the tragedy in Doli to serve a church that glorifies the same Chetniks who helped the “Prinz Eugen” Division slaughter civilians in Piva and Velika.
What is it in today’s Montenegrin identity that allows the worst among us to rise, while the best remain paralyzed? The answer to that question will define our future. And if that future belongs to the likes of Bećir Vuković and Veljo Stanišić, instead of someone like Miloš Karadaglić, then maybe we truly don’t deserve one.
Maybe we won’t even have one very soon.
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