An essay in universal history



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6. THE YUGOSLAV WAY

By the end of the 1940s all the states of Eastern Europe – including East Germany but excluding Greece – had been transformed into totalitarian states on the Soviet model. All, together with their official Orthodox churches, became slaves of the Georgian dictator with the exception of Tito’s Yugoslavia and the Serbian Orthodox Church.


“Soviet links with the new Communist States,” writes Martin Gilbert, “were maintained by the presence of large numbers of Soviet troops, and were strengthened by formal agreements. On February 4 [1948], during the signature of a Soviet-Roumanian Treaty, Molotov – who had concluded his semi-eponymous treaty with Ribbentrop nine years earlier – spoke of how important the new treaty was ‘at a time when the new war-mongers in the imperialist camp are patching together military-political blocs directed against the Soviet Union’. Considerable stress was laid on the threat to the Soviet Union of American military might, assisted by various ‘lackeys of imperialism’, of whom Britain was usually portrayed as the second – and sometimes even as the principal – villain.
“The Soviet treaties with her neighbours were quickly extended – Hungary signed on February 18 and Bulgaria on March 18. Poland was already signed up. On April 6 non-Communist Finland signed a treaty with the Soviet Union promising to repel any direct aggression on Finland by Germany or any State allied to Germany. One wartime ally and associate of the Soviet Union had begun, however, to resist the pressures from Moscow: President Tito of Yugoslavia. His partisan forces had been as instrumental as the Soviet Army – if not more so – in driving the Germans from his country. Tito courageously broke with Stalin and sought to maintain his own form of Communism.”89
Tito had been a nagging problem for Stalin since 1945. Judt explains: “The Yugoslav efforts to acquire parts of Austrian Carinthia and the Istrian city of Trieste were an embarrassment to Stalin in his dealings with the Western allies, and an impediment to the domestic progress of the Italian Communists especially. Tito’s initial support for the Greek Communists was similarly embarrassing, since Greece fell unambiguously into the Western ‘sphere’. Yugoslav ambitions to created and lead a Balkan Federation incorporating Albania and Bulgaria ran afoul of Stalin’s preference fo maintaining his own direct control over each country in his sphere of influence. And the unabashedly revolutionary domestic politics of the Yugoslav Party - which held power without the constraint of alliances with ‘friendly’ parties and was thus far more radical and ruthless than other East European Communists – risked putting in the shade the Soviet model. In matters of revolution, Tito was becoming more Catholic than the Soviet pope.”90
Gilbert continues: “On March 27 Stalin sent Tito a letter, signed by himself and Molotov, warning of the dangers of the breach. At the heart of it was the sentence: ‘We think Trotsky’s political career is sufficiently instructive.’ But Tito would not allow himself or his country to be browbeaten. At a meeting of the Cominform in Budapest in June, which Yugoslavia declined to attend, the senior Soviet representative told the other Eastern European and Western Communist delegates: ‘ We possess information that Tito is an imperialist spy.’
“On June 28, reflecting the exchange of letters between Tito and Stalin, the Cominform pubished a resolution calling on the people of Yugoslavia either to force their government to support the Soviet Union, or to form a new government that would do so. Vladimir Dedjer, who had fought at Tito’s side throughout the war, and whose wife Olga, herself a partisan, had been killed in action against the Germans, later recalled how the Cominform resolution was received in Belgrade:
“’The great majority, which had not been conversant with the letters, simply could not believe their eyes. There were people who cried from despair in the streets that morning. But was the first reaction. After the first pain came a wave of indignation, and pride. The whole country united as one man. Feelings rose high. Men in the street were proud of their country. The air was charged with feeling as before, during the greatest events in the modern history of Yugoslavia.
“’From many parts of Yugoslavia cables reported: “People feel as they did on March 27, when Yugoslavia broke the Axis yoke and challenged Hitler.”’”91
Yugoslavia’s leaving the Stalinist bloc, and her supposed adoption of a “third way” between East and West, Communism and Capitalism, was important as demonstrating that Stalin was not all-powerful, even in Eastern Europe. However, it must not be thought that Yugoslav Communism was essentially different from the Stalinist variety – Tito was not about to betray his long-held convictions and Muscovite training. And we see this especially in relation to the Serbian Orthodox Church…
*
The Serbian King Peter remained in exile in England after the war, trying to help the resistance to Communism in his homeland from outside. For some years this struggle was led from within the country by the leading Church hierarchs.
As Bishop Akakije (Stankevi

) of Uteshiteljevo writes: “During the Second World War and until 1946, since the German Nazis had imprisoned the Serbian Patriarch Gabriel (Do

i

) and later put him into the Dachau concentration camp because of his anti-Nazi statements, the administration of the Serbian Church was taken over by Metropolitan Joseph (Tsviji



) of Skopje, who was parted from his diocese after the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia. Together with the Patriarch they imprisoned Bishop Nikolai of Ži

a, who was the most respected and best loved Serbian bishop among the people, and whose opinion was considered important among the bishops, priests, monks and people. In that period, a number of Serbian hierarchs did not understand the real meaning of the evil of communism that was spreading fast throughout Serbia. Such a soft and inadequate attitude on the part of the Serbian Church towards communism is astonishing when we know that the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad had been in Sremski Karlovtsy even before the beginning of the war, for more than twenty years, and throughout that period it had been warning everyone, explaining the diabolical nature of the communist and sergianist hell… through which their country, Russia, had passed and from which they had been forced to flee for that reason. Also, those frightening warnings began to come true at the very beginning and during the war through all those monstrous evil deeds against the Serbian people, kingdom and Church that were committed by the communist bands in Serbia.


“At that time, the justified position existed that it was not necessary to waste strength and men by confronting the large power of Nazi Germany and her allies (let us remember that at that time there was an order that for every German soldier killed 100 Serbs be killed)…, but that we should turn ourselves exclusively to the internal problem of communism, which was coming over Serbia like a dark shadow. Inspired by this idea, at the beginning of the war, the prime minister of the Serbian government in occupied Serbia, General Milan Nedi

, requested from the Synod of the Serbian Church to condemn in the name of the Church the communists and the leader of the liberation movement, the so-called Chetniks, Colonel Dragoliub Mikhailovi

, who together with the communists started the guerilla struggle against the German occupation army. The Synod replied to this appeal of General Nedi

: ‘The Church is above parties, Dragoliub Mikhailovi

, Ljoti

and the communists.’ By the way, the unnatural companionship mentioned above was broken very soon because Mikhailovi



’s national forces soon became completely at odds with the army organized by the communist party of Yugoslavia led by Joseph Broz Tito. Colonel, later General Mikhailovi

continued to fight the Germans, but on a much smaller scale, and he forced the communists to leave the territory of Bosnia, and because of that General Nedi

was unofficially helping him.92
“Such a soft position was not only a result of a misunderstanding of the evil, God-fighting nature of communism, but in some places it was open sympathy with those forces, even communist bands, who were fighting against the Germans. The result of those positions was a very strong anti-German feeling, and contrary to that, great sympathy for the English side among many of the Serb hierarchs. How different was the position of the Russian Patriarch Tikhon towards the communists from the flexible position of the Serbian hierarchs. He was completely trapped by the Bolshevik revolution in 1918, but anathematized the communists and all those who cooperate with them.
“Most of the official church statements during the war were vague. For that reason in 1942 the Serbian patriot and politician Dmitrij Ljoti

wrote in his article ‘Neither Hot nor Cold’: “We heard the message of our paternal hierarchs gathered in the Synod and around it. They call on the people to have peace, love and unanimity… They simply called the citizens to peace and unity and love, taking good care how to gain peace, unanimity and love. And to make that position even more visible, they cared very much not to use a single word to explain who are those people in our country who disturb peace, unanimity and love, who kill the priests and other peaceful citizens and insult the Church….


“’… The communists, on account of Red Moscow, want sabotage, disorder, rebellion, which leads to national destruction. General Nedi

doesn’t want any of these three because if we avoid them then the Serbian people will live. Even those who were lucky enough to run away to London send us messages to preserve peace, and that people should keep away from sabotage and rebellion.


“’Church representatives pass over all this and speak about peace, love and unanimity, not saying a single word about which course is better: that of General Nedi

, or that of the communists. If the message were necessary, it would have been necessary to tell that, too, to the people. If they didn’t want to say that, it would have been more glorious and wiser to keep silent.


“’If our hierarchs could not choose which of these two courses is better, how could they find a way to move themselves from their God-saving dioceses and hide here in Belgrade? Why didn’t they wait for the communists there?’
“By the end of 1944 Soviet troops started to come into Serbia, and in October, 1944 they entered Belgrade together with the Yugoslav communist army. Many of the national forces and the clergy who were aware of the hell awaiting them in Serbia under these rulers, left Serbia together with the defeated Germans, and retreated towards Slovenia. Bishop Nikolai Velimirovi

was the only one to understand how tragic the situation was, so in Slovenia he gave his blessing to the gathering of all the national anti-communist forces who were grouped there and were retreating before Tito’s troops and the Red Army. Several hundred thousand Serb

etniks, the Ljoti

volunteers, the Nedi

national guard, Slovenian nationalists loyal to the kingdom of Yugoslavia and some Russian White Guards were ready to stand together against oncoming communism. Even General Vlasov with his 400,000 soldiers headed towards Slovenia, as the only ray of hope, the last chance for the communists to be driven away from the borders of Yugoslavia, as they had been in neighbouring Greece. Unfortunately, the allies had the most important role. General Vlasov was stopped by the ‘Allies’ and handed over together with his army to be killed by the Soviets, while the national forces in Slovenia were cheated by the Americans and English, deprived of their arms, and handed over to Tito’s partisans, who in a short period of time and in the most monstrous ways tortured, killed and burned bodies and put into mass graves several hundred thousand men. Just in one day, the partisans killed 62 Serbian priests from Montenegro, who found themselves in Slovenia with the leftovers of Djurishi

’s Montenegrin national forces, which had already been reduced to one tenth of their former number by the partisans and Croatian Ustaše while they were passing through Bosnia. A small number of nationalists succeeded in fleeing through Italy and so the killing by the communists did not affect them. In this way, again with the help of the ‘Allies’, Tito’s assumption of power was guaranteed. Bishop Nikolai stayed firm in the United States, where he continued his fight for the liberation of the Serbian Church and State from the communists.93


“Some sources report that Metropolitan Joseph [Tsvijovi

] and the bishops who stayed in the country (Nectarije Krul, Jovan Ili

, Arsenije Bradvarevi

, Emilian Piperkovi

) openheartedly greeted the Soviet troops and Yugoslav partisan troops. In October, 1944 Metropolitan Joseph delivered a message to the people in which he called the liberation of Belgrade and Serbia the ‘dawning’. On November 12, 1944 in the Saborna church in Belgrade a pannikhida was held for all those killed in the struggle for the liberation of Belgrade. The service was celebrated by Metropolitan Joseph… The priesthood of Belgrade was collecting donations for wounded Soviets and partisans. In the Nativity Epistle of the Holy Synod, they spoke with delight about the new situation arising from the expulsion of the enemies from the country (the occupiers and the liberation of the country)…
“The next big deviation from the pre-war position was the relationship of the Serbian Orthodox Church towards the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate, with which the Serbian Church got in touch immediately after Soviet troops entered Serbia. A delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate headed by Bishop Sergius of Kirovgrad came to Belgrade in 1944.
“In March 1945 Metropolitan Joseph accompanied by Bishop Jovan of Niš and Bishop Emilian of Timo

ki travelled, at the request of the authorities, to Moscow, where they attended the false Council and the Soviet theatrical enthronement of the new patriarch, Alexis I.


“Tito’s communists, taking over power with the help of America, England and the Soviet Union, at the very beginning showed their openly anti-Christian character. Very fierce anti-Church laws were enforced, and an agrarian reform was made whereby the Church was deprived, right from the beginning, of 70,000 hectares of land, 1,180 church buildings, a printing plant and a pension fund for the clergy. State donations to the Church were stopped, the catechism was thrown out of the schools, the authorities created big problems for the theological schools, the Church had to deliver all the registration books to the State registration offices, etc., etc.
“Right from the beginning, persecutions and killings of clergy began. 94 The first martyr was Metropolitan Joanikije [Lipovac] of Montenegro, who was tortured by Tito’s communists for several months in prison. Partisan Major Kova

evi


brought him a chalice filled with the fresh blood of murdered Chetniks (that’s how he explained it), and he made the metropolitan commune in that blood. The metropolitan stayed firm, and was killed and burned in Arandzelovats during the night between the 8th and 9th of September, 1945. In this period of the consolidation of their revolutionary authority, the communists were helped by the ‘Allies’, English and Soviet. In 1944 and 1945 there were shootings without trial of all those priests who, as they believed, were unable to adapt to collaboration with the communists. According to incomplete information, the communists in those years killed 98 Serbian priests.95
“After all these events, and finally losing trust in the Allies, who at the end, on the orders of Tito, even bombed a lot of Serbian cities and turned them into ruins, Metropolitan Joseph finally took an openly anti-communist position. He started to criticise the actions of the comnmunist authorities in public, but his acts did not influence other bishops to take the same position towards the new godless authorities.
“Since he took such a fearless position towards the communists, Metropolitan Joseph found himself in a very difficult position and he was under a number of pressures. Several times the new authorities organized ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ with red flags, banners and shouts of ‘Down with Joseph!’ During one such anti-religious event, when a large number of demonstraters stopped in front of the patriarchal building, and started to shout the well-known words, ‘Down with Joseph! Down with Joseph!’ the metropolitan came out onto the balcony and in the strong voice with which he usually spoke to thousands of the faithful, shouted as if he did not understand: ‘Down with Joseph? Which Joseph? Broz or Stalin?’96
“Just after the end of the war, he rejected the request of the federal minister of internal affairs, Vlade Ze

ovi


, to send a message to the clergy that they should not commemorate the king’s name in the Divine services. In rejecting this, he said: ‘The king’s name will be commemorated until the state organization is decided.’ Having seen the firm position of Metropolitan Joseph, the communists changed their threats and tactics. In 1946 he began to receive official delegations from the authorities, bringing him messages that ‘Tito is regretting that he didn’t have the honour of meeting the representative of the Serbian Church, and he is expressing his sincere wish to do this as soon as possible’. The same year Metropolitan Joseph delivered a speech in the patriarchal chapel in which he said: ‘Such a shame and disaster the Serbian people have not undergone since the Turks. Let everyone know that many have broken their teeth attacking the Church. So will the communist beast. Endure, Serb, and don’t be afraid.’ The Soviet Patriarch Alexis I, during his visit to Bulgaria (in June, 1946) expressed the wish to visit the Serbian Church. That message he sent through Bishop Irinaeus Čili

who was in Bulgaria attending the celebration of the 1000-year anniversary of the repose of St. John of Rila the Wonderworker. Metropolitan Joseph did not reply to Patriarch Alexis. After the war, while sending one of his priests to a parish in a village, he gave him a cross and asked him: ‘Do you remember how the Spartan mother saw off her son to the battle, giving him the spear? I give you the cross of Christ, and am sending you to the terrible war with the godless. Here, my son, is the cross and the vow with it or on it.’


“Metropolitan Joseph began to criticise the MP’s subordination to the communists. For example, in a conversation with the American ambassador Harold Schantz he declared that the MP was an extended arm of the Kremlin, which was trying to Bolshevize the Serbian Orthodox Church. {However,} he still did not completely understand the deep meaning of handing over the freedom of the Church to the militant godfighters, which is sergianism; he didn’t in the name of the Serbian Church stop giving the Soviet church communion in prayer and sacraments as well as other support for it.97
“The political orientation of the Serbian bishops at that time, from a strictly Orthodox point of view, was not equal to the seriousness of the historical situation in which Serbia and the Serbian Church found themselves. They didn’t attach enough importance to the political system in Serbia, such as the Orthodox autocracy-monarchy, but the tendency was towards modern political options, to the democratic organization of the State, which, as is well-known, is, together with communism, just one of the sides of the Judaeo-Masonic coin… In the early-mentioned discussion of Metropolitan Joseph with the American ambassador he made the contradictory declaration that Stalin had taken over the position of Tsar Nicholas II. According to him, it [communism] was the same type of rule – authoritarian and undemocratic - as tsarism was. He claimed that he was against every type of totalitarian regime, both right and left. Metropolitan Joseph, like all other Serbian bishops, was actually in favour of the system of the liberal democratic kingdom that was enforced in the kingdom of Yugoslavia before the war.
“In the Church and among the people everybody wanted Patriarch Gabriel to return to Yugoslavia, who had been released from German imprisonment [in Dachau] at the end of the war, and still did not come back. Since Metropolitan Joseph rejected many of their requests, the communists had the idea of inviting Patriarch Gabriel, who was temporarily in Italy, to come back to the country, to which, after a time, he agreed.98 He adopted a more modest position than Joseph. He considered that, with the help of ‘diplomacy’, more coordination with the authorities and keeping away from conflicts, he would save the Serbian Church from total disaster, so he started to declare loyalty to the authorities, although he often criticised their representatives, even Tito himself, concerning their actions against the Church, always declaring he was against the actions, but not the authorities themselves. He managed to avoid enforcing many requests of the communists, likewise the recognition of the communist clergy association, the foundation of the so-called Macedonian Church, as well as the condemnation and defrocking of the hierarchs abroad whose removal was requested by the authorities.
“But he did take part in the Pan-Slavic Congress in Belgrade in 1946 in which he declared gratitude to ‘Mother Russia’ for preserving the unity of the Slavs, repeating the words that Metropolitan Joseph had said at the liberation of Belgrade. On the same occasion he welcomed Tito and Stalin, whom he named ‘the Great’.
“In the year 1948, at the request of the authorities, he attended, in the name of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the false council hosted by the MP in Moscow, even though before that he had for a long time tried not to do so. Still, he did not fulfil many requests of the MP and the communists by which they tried to subordinate the Serbian Church to the MP.
“When Patriarch Gabriel came back to Serbia in 1946, Metropolitan Joseph naturally became his closest associate in ruling the Serbian Orthodox Church. Regardless of the fact that he still openly criticised the communist authorities, he participated, together with Patriarch Gabriel, in all public events and in the MP council of 1948.
“After the repose of Patriarch Gabriel [in 1950], it was clear to all the faithful that the only natural heir should be Metropolitan Joseph. But of course, the godless authorities who were fighting with the Church all the time would not allow Metropolitan Joseph to be elected as Serbian patriarch. Before the election of the patriarch… the UDBA [Yugoslav secret police] arrested Metropolitan Joseph in Belgrade, beat him up, and forced him into a monastery in Bosnia, where they imprisoned him in order to stop his influence on the hierarchs. He was arrested several times, and was banned from living in Belgrade, so he found shelter sometimes in the monastery of Ži

a, and sometimes in Ljubostinja. Each time he was arrested and banned from Belgrade, he was heavily beaten. In 1953 he was already very ill, so he was allowed to go back to Belgrade, to the monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, but without the freedom to go anywhere else. As a political prisoner, abandoned by his brother hierarchs, he reposed there on July 3, 1957.”99




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