[Владимир Петровић]

Statement of the Advisory Bodies of the Crown on the state and state protocol’s relation to the Royal Family Karadjordjevic

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Our allies in the global cataclysm called it the Great War for Civilization! We Serbs considered it the war for the liberation and unification of the Serbs and other South Slavs. We did not provoke it, we did not strive for it, but we as a people and as a nation responded to the attack as we should and as we had to!

All countries and peoples who had the fate to be absorbed by the winds of war, willingly or unwillingly, have marked the memory of those long-ago events, distant in time but close by the consequences which we still bear and live. In Serbia, an attempt has been made to pay due attention and recognition to the memory of the victims. We can agree or not whether enough has been done, but the attempt is not debatable, and we believe neither is the desire of the descendants to prove modern thrift on the gratitude to the ancestors, nor the intention that their heroism is not invested in their own political and ethical pragmatism.

However, with great regret we note that the state, at the highest and high levels, did not miss a chance to demonstrate commitment to the poor tradition of Titoist heritage, which involves concealing the role and significance of King Peter I and Regent, later King Alexander. To talk about the Battles of Cer and Kolubara, without mentioning the great and democratic ruler of Serbia, to whom the Serbian warriors gave and maintained their oath, and ignoring the Supreme Commander of that heroic army, is simply rude! It should be reminded that in the first defensive phase of the Battle of Kolubara, the arrival of the old King Peter on the battlefield, at the front line, had a crucial importance for raising, at that point, the weakened moral of the army.

To act in an offensive manner towards their great-grandson and grandson, to humiliate him protocolary and to deny his right to lay wreath during a ceremony, cannot be justified by the needs of the protocol. The protocol that dictates rudeness is not a protocol, it is thin and transparent mist hiding the disrespect of the very ceremony, its meaning and content. This same protocol recognized only the descendants of the Voivodas, who apparently, according to the latest interpretation of history by the authorities, were self-organized, without the head of state and Supreme Commander. That this was no coincidence, showed the example of the exhibition held at the Royal Palace on November 11, the Armistice Day. The exhibition, titled “Karadjordjevic Dynasty in the Great War” had a fantastic attendance, the cultural elite and the entire diplomatic corps came to see it, and not a single representative of the state.

This is not done in the country that values itself, nor in people who respect themselves!

Statement signed by:

Dragomir Acović

Dušan Babac

Dušan T. Bataković

Branko Terzić

Matija Bećković

Dušan Kovačević

Miroslav Gašić

Pavle Nikolić

Slobodan Perović

Dragoljub Kavran

Čedomir Antić

Milan Parivodić

Đorđe Đurišić

Vladan Živulović

Predrag Marković

Kosta Čavoški

Vladimir M. Gajić

Milorad Savićević