Introduction: „So today Vučić and his Dikovics tell fairy tales about the partisans in 1918, while forgetting those of 1945. They talk about victories that did not happen, and remain silent about the defeats that the Chetniks staged. They build monuments to defeats, they forget heroes. They nurture the weeds of fascism, while putting out the fires of anti-fascism. In a country where history is written according to the measure of power – freedom becomes fiction. Because when you throw the partisans out of the classrooms, and put the Chetniks in the school books – then everything is permitted.”
Imagine a general of the Serbian army telling you that the partisans are breaking through the Thessaloniki Front. Yes, yes – in 1918. Almost three decades before these partisans actually existed. No, this is not a skit from the TV show „Top List of Surrealists“, but a statement by former Chief of Staff Ljubiša Diković, delivered on Victory Day, May 9th, 2024.
And nobody laughed.
Because when you live in a country where history is written as its ordered and erased as needed, laughter is a luxury. Serbia no longer revises history – it centrifuges, cuts and abuses it. With support from the inside, but also with malicious help from the outside. And we all know the name of that help: Russia.
How far does this madness go?
According to this logic, the „Liberation of Belgrade“ becomes the date when the Chetniks allegedly liberated the city with the help of some kind of „Russian army“, not the Red Army, which was made up of Ukrainians and other peoples. The day of victory over fascism became the day of equalizing executioners and victims. Operation Halliard – which lasted three months and involved the evacuation of Allied pilots – is treated as the entire Second World War. The Chetniks, who in those years collaborated with the occupiers and fought civil wars with the partisans, today are presented as liberators.
Documents? Massacres? Allied reports? It doesn’t matter. Emotion is important. And the emotion is: „Our people helped the Americans, so we were on the right side.“ On whose side? The one that signed pacts with the Nazis, persecuted communists and slaughtered civilians?
Ljubiša Diković is no exception. He is a symptom.
A symptom of a country where NOB monuments are overgrown with weeds, while the spotlight is cast on WW1 monuments. Where the monument to Ljuba Čupić – the man who laughed at death – today represents a provocation, while new schools and squares are being named after Draža Mihailović. Where Sutjeska is a mockery and Ravna Gora is a shrine.
In that world, where „reconciliation“ is a euphemism for capitulation to fascism, nothing is illogical anymore. Because logic has become the regime’s enemy.
And how is all this going? With the silence and blessing from Russia.
This is not just a domestic, home-grown production of the Serbian world, no. Russian producers are signed in the closing credits.
Pay attention:
- Every 9th of May, the Russian embassy in Belgrade organizes the event called „Immortal Regiment” – a Russian export tool for historical revisionism. It started as a commemoration, it’s ending as an ideological parade.
- Sputnik Serbia and RT Balkans systematically equate partisans and Chetniks in their articles, glorify Draža, exalt Nedić and reduce anti-fascism to a „communist deception”.
- Maria Zakharova, the chief spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated two years ago:
„Serbia and Russia have a common historical mission – the fight against the falsification of history.“
Translated: together we will write a new history, adapted to Putin and Vučić. Without Tito, without partisans. Only the Chetniks, Halliard and some imaginary Belgrade in 1918, in which Gagarin marches and Saint Sava salutes. Dystopia as such.
And the RS has a role in that scheme – as a parastatal hologram of history
In Republika Srpska today, January 9th is celebrated as „Republic Day“. Although that is the day the ethnic cleansing began. At the same time, May 25th is being forgotten – the day when the partisans broke the landing on Drvar in 1944 and saved Tito and the National Liberation Movement.
In schools, they don’t teach about partisans, but about the „Serbian army“ from the dream wars and the „two liberation movements“. The media promote the thesis that the Chetniks were „wrongly declared as collaborators“. And then in Belgrade, Vučić, with the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church, lays wreaths at the cemetery of Serbian victims of World War I – but he does not go to Tjentište. Because what good would it do to remind people that the communists led the fight while the Serbian Orthodox Church was on the other side?
Why do the partisans bother Serbia?
Because they remind them. Because they testify and point to the sides in World War II.
They remind us that Serbia was silent in 1941, collaborated and established camps for Jews and Roma. They remind us that the first uprisings were started by anti-fascists, not „Serbian hosts”. They remind us that Draža’s Chetniks slaughtered civilians, not Hitler’s and Wehrmacht soldiers.
And that is why they should be forgotten. Or even worse – classified as the same as Chetniks. So we have a „reconciliation of two anti-fascist movements”, where one liberated Jasenovac, and the other committed massacres – in Pljevlja, Foča and Goražde.
In such an environment, freedom is temporary, and fascism only awaits further affirmation.
Tonino Picula and „stinking garbage from the EU“
One Tonino Picula gets involved in all this. The European representative who, imagine the scandal, called for a minute of silence for the victims of the tragedy in Novi Sad. And then he said the obvious: Serbia will not join the EU until it imposes sanctions on Russia.
Sanctions against Russia? Serbia does not allow that!
Vučić immediately labeled him as a „Croatian errand boy“ and a „rude man“. Vulin added: „Ustasha trash“. Vučićević called him „stinking garbage“. And all this just because he said that Serbia cannot be in the Brussels salon and the Moscow excavator at the same time.
But that’s not Picula’s problem. He is just a litmus test. The problem is that the entire regime – from Pink TV to the Patriarchy – has become a black hole in which historical truth disappears. And the problem is, perhaps even bigger, that even the so-called Serbian opposition does not see the problem. If they could, they would be a bigger Vučić than Vučić himself.
The Thessaloniki Front, from the very beginning
So today Vučić and his Dikovics tell fairy tales about the partisans in 1918, while forgettingthose of 1945. They talk about victories that did not happen, and remain silent about the defeats that the Chetniks staged.
They build monuments to defeats, they forget heroes.
They nurture the weeds of fascism, while putting out the fires of anti-fascism.
In a country where history is written according to the measure of power – freedom becomes fiction.
Because when you throw the partisans out of the classrooms, and put the Chetniks in the school books – then everything is permitted.
In conclusion: Those who do not know the truth will repeat the crime
My dears, this is not an article about the past. This is a warning for the future. If we allow history to turn into a fairy tale, the fairy tale will end with a bloody chapter.
If we forget that fascism lost in 1945, we will have a new 1941.
And as long as partisans are undesirable and Chetniks are considered as role models, we become a society that does not fight against the truth, but buries it.
And when the truth is buried – you know what grows from that soil.
Fascism. Again. Only in color and with the blessing of the SOC, Moscow and the Beograd.
Dragan Bursać. Professor of philosophy, columnist and journalist (BiH).
The articles published in the “Opinions” column reflect the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the position of the Center
