"Dusan T.Batakovic. The Kosovo Chronicles " - читать интересную книгу автораCroatia, where the entire Serbian population rose against large-scale terror
wrought by the Ustashas (the authorities of fascist Croatia). Cunningly manipulating the indigent Serbian hilly population who, void of developed state and political traditions, cherished a devotion to the cult of "mother Russia" and patriarchal egalitarianism, the communists managed - by calling on the authority of Moscow - to win over many of them who had fallen in numerous Chetnik formations after the capitulation of Italy. The communists won the bloody civil war, in which ethnic and religious divisions were the chief instigators of massacres, owing to crucial aid from the Soviet troops which, in agreement with Tito, crossed over to Yugoslav territory in the fall of 1944, and helped bring the communists to power and defeat the Yugoslav army in the homeland - the Chetnik movement of Draza Mihailovic. The first to be punished then was Serbia: its bourgeoisie and peasants were exterminated in the "second stage of the revolution", i.e. in the "squaring of accounts with the class enemy" -without trial and by summary procedure, while its youth - conscripted into partisan units, was decimated at the Sremski Front when it was forced to continually storm the well-fortified German positions without sufficient weaponry and military training. With the destruction of its potential classes for resistance - the bourgeoisie, the wealthy peasant layer and the town youth - Serbia's back was broken: most of its bourgeoisie and intelligentsia were abroad (officers, politicians and diplomats), while those who remained in the country were permanently marginated. The raison d'etre of the communist Yugoslavia was a carefully set balance of power among the peoples and minorities of Yugoslavia over a potential threat from Serbian predominance. ethnic affirmation of the ethnic Albanian minority could not be understood if viewed otherwise. The numerous Serbs in the party, army and police of Tito's regime were carefully selected by the criterion of blind obedience and complete devotion to the leader, and by their readiness to fully subject Serbian interests to the interests of the CPY. Most of them, through a negative selection of cadres, were recruited from patriarchal Serbian milieus in Croatia, Herzegovina and Montenegro or lower classes in Serbia, as lacking commitment to the national and state traditions of Serbia. Their major task during the entire period of Tito's reign was to fight against "Serbian nationalism and chauvinism" which, considering the Serbs were the predominant nation, constituted the gravest threat to the regime. These Serbs thus mercilessly destroyed everything even resembling the traditions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Serbia. They were forerunners in the persecution of dignitaries and the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Under such circumstances, the communist authorities in Yugoslavia were able to deal with the ethnic question in keeping with their designs without fearing for their rule. The predominance of Serbs in the military units of the new authorities demanded, for the sake of precaution, that the question of the status of Kosovo and Metohia be brought up prudently, as the party there - due to stubborn ethnic-Albanian resistance - had no other followers but Serbs and Montenegrins (i.e. Serbs who accepted the CPY's ideological precept on the existence of a separate Montenegrin nation). The decision that Kosovo and |
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