To arms, everyone!, a Partisan propaganda poster – Public Domain
“Small nations and states will seek their place under the sun, while the great powers will demand that they renounce their moral wealth—above all, their struggle for justice and truth. All of this will be supported by historians harnessed to the chariot of daily politics, receiving greater or lesser sinecures from the purses of the powerful. Critical historiography will face great trials; it will have to wage a difficult battle against historical revisionism.”
—Vladimir Dedijer, 1989
The revisionist currents dominating the cultural struggle across the former Yugoslavia are relentless in their portrayal of the Yugoslav Partisans as a one-party army of alienated fanatics. However, the anti-fascist Partisan resistance—which embodied our deepest traditions of liberty, especially across the Drina where its defiance of the genocidal NDH secured the very biological survival of the Serbs in those regions—was far more infused with the spirit of popular epic poetry than with the narrow phrasing of communist dogma, as attested by both historical and cultural evidence.
One of the first insurgents from Krajina (Western Bosnia), Osman Karabegović, once said that the tricolor under which he fought was a symbol of oppressed Serbdom, while the red star atop it stood for the brotherhood of nations. Such a banner could never have inspired the most successful anti-Nazi guerrilla movement in Europe had its message not resonated on an almost archetypal level within the collective consciousness of the peasants of Grmeč, Kozara, Ozren, and Majevica—those to whom it was most directly addressed.
When Yugoslavia, on March 27, enthusiastically said no to the looming plague of tyranny, the Serbian Orthodox episcopate rose with the people as one—just as it had during the struggle against the Concordat. Among the first to do so was Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, who is today increasingly accused of fascism. Patriarch Gavrilo’s speech, in which he blessed the uprising against Hitler’s tyranny and Mussolini, the murderer of King Alexander, was described by Ivan Meštrović as more devastating than all the weapons of the German army. In that collective consciousness, the Church served as the source of a sacred ideal, one that the great Serbian friend Tomáš Masaryk once captured in the phrase: Christ, not Caesar, is the meaning of our history and our democracy.
Critics of the coup, who accuse Winston Churchill of waging war “to the last Serb” by invoking Tsar Lazar’s Kosovo choice over the radio, tend to forget that three years later, Churchill entrusted his own son, Randolph, to Tito. Parachuted into the Bosnian highlands, Randolph was captured during the Drvar raid—but the Partisans freed him before his identity was uncovered.
Children of the Cloth
On the other hand, the teachings of Vasa Pelagić—a socialist in clerical robes and the most freethinking Serbian national activist—left a deep and lasting impression on generations of parish priests in Krajina, many of whom had studied at the Banja Luka seminary. His ideas struck like lightning and echoed through future generations: among these Pelagić disciples was the priest from Čitluk, Ilija Kecmanović, a leader of the people and father of Dr. Vojislav Kecmanović–Đedo, a follower of Masaryk’s liberalism and the first wartime president of ZAVNOBiH (State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), who joined the Partisans in liberated Tuzla in 1943.
There was also Father Simo Stojanović, whose son became arguably the most celebrated folk hero—the legendary doctor Mladen.
A priest’s son from the Krajina town of Ključ, Nikola Mačkić was a progressive theologian who, as a catechist at the Bijeljina Gymnasium, fought ignorance and backwardness side by side with Đedo. He was a sympathizer of Jovanović’s left-wing Peasant Party. His pursuit of doctoral studies was cut short by the rise of the Ustaša terror, from which he sought refuge in Kragujevac—only to face the tragic events of October 1941.
When the Nazis came knocking on his classroom door, he calmly instructed his students to alter the Roman numeral VI (six) on their caps into IV (four), allowing them to avoid being taken as hostages. Even as his executioners offered him a chance to save himself—citing his NDH-issued documents and fluency in German—he steadfastly refused, declaring with pride that he was a Serb, not a Croat from Bosnia. In the end, he was executed, locked in an embrace with his students.
Archpriest Jevstatije, Father Vlado, and Milan Smiljanić of Zlatibor
The wartime notes of Vojislav Kecmanović rank among the most intimate and vividly rendered diary entries from the Partisan epic. This son of an old priestly line of popular tribunes, though enduring the hardships of guerrilla warfare in his later years, was continually guided by reflections on the role of faith and the Church in the life of the people and in the historical destiny of the Serbs west of the Drina—whose clergy, unlike other clerical structures, had for centuries formed a unified, democratically oriented organism with the people.
That is why the most distinguished clergy members in the People’s Liberation Struggle were themselves heroes of the Balkan and Great Wars, and even freedom fighters during the Turkish period—figures such as Archpriest Jevstatije Karamatijević of Nova Varoš and Milan Smiljanić of Zlatibor.
The Path and Work of Archpriest Karamatijević
The life and work of Archpriest Jevstatije Karamatijević—religious advisor (a military chaplain assigned to each unit of the Yugoslav Partisans, whom Tito once described as “worth more than five commissars”) of the Third Sandžak Proletarian Brigade—and Father Vlado Zečević, a seasoned early fighter from uprising-era Valjevo, holding the rank of colonel and serving as advisor to the Supreme Headquarters (later becoming the first Minister of Internal Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Serbia)—both of whom would later serve as delegates to AVNOJ—disprove the main revisionist myth that authentic Serbian representatives outside the Communist Party were illegitimate or absent from the political bodies of the Partisan movement.
Zečević initially fought with Chetnik detachments during the liberation of Krupanj and Šabac, but, disillusioned by their abandonment of active resistance and growing collaboration with the occupiers, he defected to the Partisans with a unit of around five hundred fighters. In Rome, alongside Vladimir Dedijer, he informed the Allied public of Ustaša atrocities—atrocities whose victims in Livno had been buried by Karamatijević, who himself lost daughters Kaja, Nataša, and Zora, his wife Jefimija, brothers Vlajko and Milorad, and two grandsons in the chaos of war. As the Partisans advanced through Serbian lands, Karamatijević would baptize children during lulls in the fighting.
Proclamation of the Assembly of Orthodox Priests
On November 15, 1942, in the church of the village of Srpska Jasenica, within the liberated territory of the Bihać Republic, a major Assembly of Orthodox Priests was held. Among the participants were Father Blažo Marković, the religious advisor of the First Proletarian Brigade, along with Zečević and Karamatijević, who conducted the liturgy prior to the session. The Assembly adopted an Epistle that denounced collaborationist forces and called upon the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the faithful, and all patriots to unite in uncompromising resistance against the occupiers. Among other things, the Epistle states:
“Throughout all centuries of enslavement, the Serbian people have never endured such atrocities, such burning and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Serbian souls, as they have suffered in the past sixteen months of Yugoslavia’s occupation at the hands of the so-called ‘New Europe’—the fascists. Therefore, no bishop, priest, or Serb has any justification for cooperating with the occupiers. The collaboration of a portion of the episcopate and clergy with the fascists thus far is tantamount to a vile crime and a betrayal of their people, and the people erase them from the rolls of their sons, equating them with the criminal occupiers. We likewise reject the White Guard émigré and self-proclaimed Metropolitan Germogen, Pavelić’s ‘head’ of the so-called Orthodox Church of Croatia, who is a disgrace and humiliation for Orthodoxy. This position of our Assembly alone is in keeping with the tradition of the Church of Saint Sava. The conduct of His Holiness Patriarch Gavrilo to this point is in full accord with the traditions and ideals of the Saint Sava Church, and for this reason, the clergy and the people may rightly continue to look to him as the legitimate head of the Serbian Church.”
This rhetoric of holy war unto the destruction of Nazism is simply incomparable with the calculating tone of the ulema resolutions in Sarajevo, Prijedor, Banja Luka, and elsewhere, which are now being deceitfully passed off as acts of resistance against the Ustaša regime—a façade that was already unmasked in 1980 by Derviš Sušić in his anti-barbarus Parergon.
The Srem Men in the Tavna Monastery
Monasteries in remote areas, with their spacious quarters, served as ideal locations for Partisan headquarters and field hospitals—such as the nunneries in eastern Bosnia at Tavna and Lovnica, or the brotherhood of Čokešina near Loznica. As a result, they were often targeted by punitive expeditions. The Chetniks of Radivoje Kerović, who were cooperating with the Croatian-Muslim SS “Handžar” Division and took part in arson and massacres of their own people in Serbian Partisan villages across northeastern Bosnia (where Kecmanović’s wife Ana also perished), nearly desecrated the Tavna Monastery when, on Pentecost in 1944, they delivered a formal invitation to their superior—Standartenführer Desiderius Hampel—for a ceremonial celebration.
Throughout the war, the Tavna Monastery functioned as a hospital for the wounded and as a vital crossroads for Srem Partisans advancing into Bosnia in 1942 and 1943. This historical connection lives on in the region’s folk heritage through the marching song Kad su Sremci krenuli (“When the Srem Men Set Out”), composed by Father Sava Suvić.
Historian Jovan Bojović, in his doctoral dissertation, emphasized that by the late 1930s, a strong SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia) movement was thriving at the Cetinje Seminary, drawing in nearly two-thirds of the students. In 1939, a three-day strike broke out due to frequent searches for Marxist literature.
Memorial to Fallen Priests
The Memorial to Orthodox Priests – Victims of Fascist Terror and Fallen Fighters in the People’s Liberation War, 1941–1945, compiled in 1960 by a committee of clergy led by Archpriest Milan Smiljanić and published by the Association of Orthodox Priests’ Societies, directly refutes another foundational myth of domestic revisionism: that socialist historiography and state narratives had censored or silenced the suffering of the Serbian clergy.
In this extensive martyrology, alongside the comprehensive account of the suffering endured by priests, seminarians, and monastics at the hands of the Ustaše, Honvéds, and Ballists, the fratricidal terror inflicted by those who cloaked their actions in a thin veil of piety—namely the Serbian collaborationist forces—is also laid bare.
The priest and well-known cooperative organizer Andreja Božić, imprisoned in Kragujevac in 1942, was mocked with biting cynicism by a Ljotić-affiliated policeman, Marisav Petrović, who jeered: “What do you say now, Father Andro, when your life is in my hands?”
To this, Božić replied: “If my life is in your hands, Marisav, then I no longer need it.”
He was executed the next day.
This recalls the stance of Dr. Sava Đukanović, assistant professor at the Belgrade Faculty of Theology, who, following the collapse of the July Uprising, organized resistance in his native region of Montenegro. Before his execution, he told the Đurđević loyalists: “I do not recognize a court under occupation.”
The parish priest of Ivanjica and pre-war opposition leader, Dragoljub Milutinović, took command of the local insurgent units in his area. When Chetnik commanders began legalizing their units under Nedić’s government in order to wage war against the communists, his friend Ivan Ribnikar persuaded him to continue resisting the occupiers alongside the Partisans. Tito and Lola Ribar were present at the meeting. Milutinović was officially recognized as the commander of the Javor Partisan Detachment. In January 1942, the infamous Boža Javorac slit his throat and flayed the skin from his back.
Vladimir Bukilić, a seminary graduate whose ordination was interrupted by the war, earned the nickname “Father Mićo” after a character from The Mountain Wreath. He became commander of the Second South Moravian Brigade and died in a charge on a machine-gun nest in the spring of 1944 near Pasjača. He was posthumously declared a national hero.
Parish priest Živojin Atanasković (Father Dina) was killed on November 17, 1941, in a clash with German forces and Ljotić’s men, while manning a machine gun with the Kosmaj detachment.
Hieromonk Timotej Petrović of the Orašac detachment was killed after returning from Kadinjača, in battle against the Chetniks.
Father Momčilo Nešić of Kosovska Mitrovica chanted prayers while being savagely tortured by the Gestapo.
Archpriest Mirčeta Golović from Nikšić fell at Sutjeska.
Because of their sympathies for the National Liberation Struggle, their condemnation of collaboration, or refusal to submit to their commanders, Chetniks slit the throats or executed the following: Father Borivoje Gavrilović of Vranić parish; priests Milisav Perišić and Nebojša Popović of the Eparchy of Žiča; Fathers Aleksandar Marković and Jeremija Isaković of the Eparchy of Šumadija; Živorad Marković of the Šabac-Valjevo Eparchy; Studenica monk Matej Damnjanović; and Ilija Buđin and Josif Bragin of the Eparchy of Braničevo. Father Damjan Damjanović was killed by Ljotić’s men for denouncing their treachery to the people.
The Forgotten Gorazd Pavlik
On May 4, 1961, the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized the Hieromartyr Gorazd Pavlik. A former Catholic priest, Pavlik joined the reformist movement for a national church based on the Cyril and Methodius and Hussite traditions following the formation of Czechoslovakia—reflecting the justified bitterness most Czechs felt toward the Roman Catholic hierarchy, long seen as a reactionary tool of Habsburg absolutism. When this Czech Church was united with the Serbian Orthodox Church through synods held in Olomouc and Sremski Karlovci, Pavlik was tonsured at the Krušedol Monastery and soon after, in 1921, was solemnly consecrated in Belgrade as bishop of the Czech and Moravian lands.
In May 1942, after Czech commandos assassinated Reinhard Heydrich—the Protector of Moravia and the third-ranking Nazi after Hitler and Himmler—they sought refuge in the crypt of the Prague Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. There, they held out against SS attacks until they ultimately took their own lives to avoid capture.
The Nazis launched a horrifying reprisal campaign against Czech civilians, which included a plan for the total eradication of Orthodoxy in the Czech lands. All Orthodox churches were shut down and desecrated overnight. Among the first to suffer was Bishop Gorazd, who, before a summary court, took full responsibility for aiding the parachutists—thus earning his place among the national saints, alongside the martyred figures of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague.
The Meaning of Anti-Communism Today
It was precisely the Serbian Partisans—who formed the backbone of the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Movement—who, true to Karabegović’s symbolism, extended a Christian hand to anyone willing to take up a sincere fight against the occupiers, even in the midst of fratricidal conflict instigated by the enemy. The most prominent Serbian national thinkers of the late 20th century, such as Milorad Ekmečić—and especially Dobrica Ćosić and Mihailo Marković—harbored no doubt about the patriotic and civilizational achievements of the Partisan struggle. Yet today, those very accomplishments are being contested by vehement anti-communists who, from positions entirely unrelated to legitimate criticism of postwar government policies, claim that the Partisans somehow weren’t Serbian enough to be considered a true national army.
Even if these honorable clerics had no one beside them but their faith and self-sacrifice—without Vladimir Dedijer, Meša Selimović, Skender Kulenović, or Milovan Đilas—they would still be more authentically Serbian than the collaborators who, while Jastrebarsko was being liberated, were busy signing agreements of legalization with the Ustaša regime and retreating with its remnants toward Bleiburg under the insignias of the Kroatische Kampfgemeinschaften (Croatian Combat Units).
In this sense, the culture of remembrance upheld by official Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, through the cult of Red Army victory in the Great Patriotic War, could serve as a healthy model for Serbian society as a whole. It is hardly news that from Pétain to Ljotić and Nedić, quislings have always been the loudest self-proclaimed patriots—but as long as their glorifiers continue to bellow toothless sophisms à la Brecht, while intellectuals remain silent for the sake of a crust of bread, we shall, as the saying goes, remain stuck in 1941. At least not as a nation that aspires to a dignified relationship with undeniable historical truths, instead of a schizophrenic, self-denying identity crisis where the past is uncertain and the future forgotten.
