Colourful report translated from Monitor (Podgorica) of a meeting in Niksic in defence of the Serb language

The place and time: the Nikšić cinema last weekend. The public: several hundred greybeards. Instead of a film show, teachers of the Serb language from the Nikšić high school sit in contemplation at a table covered with a blue cloth. This is the latest episode of the serial: ‘Defence of the name of the Serb language’. The plot is well known: Montenegrins, Croats, Austro-Hungarians, Muslims, Diocleans, and Italians led by the late Mussolini, are once again attacking Serb holy things.

‘They think they can deter us by switching off the heating. See how the heater is fanning cold air.’ An elderly lady, having discovered a Montenegrin plot, points in a Sherlock Holmes manner to a largish heater while waiting for the meeting to start. The cold in the cinema auditorium, well known to the people of Nikšić who over the past decades came to view cinematic creations, is in fact mildly diminished by the candlelight flickering everywhere. Lit by it, the framed canvases of St Sava, Njegoš and Vuk, serious and lifelike, look on.

‘The Serb language and national urgency have called this meeting’ - a poetically inspired Vaelin Matović, president of the Action Group of Nikšić Teachers, greets those assembled before announcing the speakers. The latter include professors from the universities of Novi Sad, Belgrade, and (as they insist) Prishtina. They have been brought in as reinforcements, since the teachers’ strike, the students’ angry letters to the minister of education Slobodan Backović, and Amfilohije Radović’s linguistic expertise, have all proved fruitless. The curricular subject called ‘Mother Tongue and Literature’ remains appended with a bracket that, in addition to Serb, includes also Montenegrin, Bosniak and Croat.

The new strategy: to formulate, with the help of colleagues from the fraternal Serb lands, a Declaration Defending the Serb Language - which no one is attacking. It is also necessary to decide on additional defence measures against the Serbs’ many enemies. Although at the start of their rebellion on behalf of the Serb language they had insisted that their motives were not political but purely ‘scientific’, the Declaration ultimately adopted refers also to other ‘endangered holy things’: the Serb church, Serb culture and the Serb nation.

Dragoljub Petrović, a professor at the university of Novi Sad, worked hard to prove that one is dealing with an occupation of all that is Serb. Having cited the incontrovertible scientific truth that the Montenegrin language ‘does not exist’, since ‘its foundations are phantasmic’, he proceeded to explain to his audience the background of the attempt to ‘change the name of the Serb language to Montenegrin’. After a dramatic pause, his gaze fixed at the ceiling, he exclaimed: ‘The architects of the world’s destiny will not miss the opportunity to reduce the Serbs to an insignificant factor on some future map of the Balkans. Western strategists have found their best allies for the total destruction and enslavement of Montenegro among the Montenegrin political, intellectual and moral dregs. This is only a sign of further fragmentation of the Serb [national] body!.’

Tremendous applause. An elderly man with a cap embroidered with four Cs, in his excitement that the plot has been finally uncovered and scientifically proved, and that he is not the only one who knows about it, jumps up from his chair shouting: ‘Bravo!’. Another ‘Bravo!’ echoes through the room after it becomes clear that Petrović too knows about the ‘green transversal which Austria established long ago as part of its advance towards Salonica, and which the Muslims later reversed in order to invade Europe.’

The next speaker, a linguist from Novi Sad who calls himself Jovan Delić, is also aware what is being planned for ‘the Serb land’ of Montenegro: ‘The meaning of the change of language is to turn Montenegrins into Diocleans ... i.e. to make Montenegrins into Ustashe ... to change them gradually and confessionally into something quite different.’ The linguist is sure that language affects also one’s religion. As he stands proudly on the podium unmasking all those who harbour hostile intentions against the Serbs - and why - the members of the Resolution Drafting Commission look at each other, make notes, and smile nodding their heads.

‘What is to be done? Delić lowers his voice and, lifting an eyebrow, comes up with a plan: ‘It is necessary to form a movement for the salvation of the Serb language and the Serb Orthodox Church in Montenegro, and for preservation of the common state.’ He goes on to specify it in detail: ‘We must form mobile and qualified teams, made up of historians, linguists, and people who know the culture and tradition of their land and people. These teams must urgently visit every hamlet in Montenegro.’

The linguist from Novi Sad found a suitable place in the struggle for Serb holy things also for the Serb bishops: ‘Our bishops must unsheath the sword of their word and reach for the mighty weapon of St Peter of Cetinje - for damnation and curses, for public anathemas.’

Another scientific speaker, Mihailo Šćepanović, operative officer for the struggle outside Montenegro, issued a threat against the Montenegrin government: ‘A special section on the Serb language will be published in Srpska Zora [Serb Dawn], conveying the views of the Belgrade [Montenegrin] emigration. No one will prevent us from defending Serbdom.’ ‘No one’, replied voices from the auditorium in support.

The participants in the meeting contributed not only to a better understanding of world politics, linguistics, and Serb human rights - some of them also made an invaluable contribution to the history of Fascism and Nazism. Đorđe Janković of the University of Belgrade was unable to attend, but he nevertheless sent his speech, according to which: ‘We must overcome the sterile Western culture, since we are superior. One superiority of the Serbs lies in the Cyrillic script and the Serb language.’

‘The nation must be more important to us than the state’, Bogoljub Š ijakovi

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