The exhibition of ''The Holy Archangel Michael's Prevlaka'' in the
club of Yugoslav Army in Herceg Novi was organized by the Regional Museum
Herceg Novi, treasury of the Serbian Priestly Czar's Laura, the Yugoslav
Army's Club and it lasted from 16th November until 31st
December 2000. 
It
wasn't quite accidentally that just here in Herceg Novi, in the bay
of Boka Kotorska and just in the period of the persecution of the Christ's
church in the current Montenegro was organized such a manifestation,
with the participation of such organizers and with the presence of all
those events that followed it – publications and lectures. Just six-seven
months ago such an event would be impossible to organize either in the
Capital of Herzeg's land or somewhere else in Montenegro. One year ago
it was inconceivable to publish such a book or any other book at all
by one of the cultural institutions in Herceg Novi. We are sure that
that time is slowly passing away and that the right things are coming
slowly but securely on their place in the ancient Dracevica, despite
the current reminiscences of the time of emperor Diocletianus. The diocese
of Crna Gora and Primorje, the Council for the Restoration of the Sanctuary
of Prevlaka, and the Philosophy Faculty from Belgrade together with
the Center for Archeological Researches from Podgorica organized and
began archeological researches on the peninsula of Miholjska Prevlaka
in 1997. The researches began thanks to the financial support of the
diocese and numerous benefactors, thus from the very beginning this
project was not given any financial support by the government, which
was in disharmony with the significance of this archeological locality
(it is the monument of the first category which was the first seat of
the Orthodox Christian diocese of Zeta ) and which was in the complete
disharmony with the significance of this place for the entire history
of Montenegro, from its very beginning. Therefore the researches are
still going on until nowadays without secure financial support. The
real reasons for such behaviour we shall not mention here but every
comparison with the restoration of the cathedral of St. Tripun in Kotor
(whose significance and justification cannot be questioned) and the
governmental financial support to it is completely deliberate.
After
the exhibition "The Holy Archangel Michael’s Prevlaka" which was not
the first time to be organized in the country (Before Herceg Novi it
had been held in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Trebinje) nothing will be the
same in the cultural sphere of Herceg Novi and Boka anymore. If the
number of visitors was measure of someone’s success, than nothing more
successful had ever happened in Herceg Novi. If the aim was to show
how to establish the cooperation of various cultural institutions without
some prejudices and limitations than it was achieved, too.
If the purpose was that to show with your own example how easy and simple
could the publishing of a book be, with the very little money and the
enormous effort (with regard that there is something to be published),
it was achieved in a very good manner. If a success was to be measured
with the difficulties of the governmental media which has not mentioned
the exhibition at all - than it was the best and the most secure sign
that the organizers had been on the right way. This was the fact, which
definitely should be noted for the times when those days will be called
past.
By
this exhibition and especially by the series of lectures which followed
that, it was published urbi et orbi, and was demonstrated that the most
possible and the single way for the future Boka, Montenegro and the
whole Serbian nation is in gathering of strength, in gathering of cultural,
intellectual, material and every other potential. They should not gather
around any so called "Centre" but there where it is possible at that
very moment. That’s why the questions of a kind: Why "Prevlaka" in Herceg
Novi?, are superfluous. We shall be completely open saying that "The
Holy Archangel Michael’s Prevlaka" is clearly directed versus all traditional
and imposed "walls" between Serbian people in Boka and elsewhere.
It
is also directed versus all those persons who looks at the world through
their own personality and importance, or through their own minor interests
and the most important - versus all forgers of the history of Montenegro
who put it in the framework of Doclean and the Red-Croatian provenience.
The church fair around The Holy Place of Prevlaka is the road sign for
some people and challenge for others.
For a very long period of time Herceg Novi has been pompously proclaimed
for "the town of writers", or "the town of painters" and there has been
creating and cherishing (next to some other honorable exceptions) one
very inferior suburban (in the worst sense of such a word) cultural
conscience and intellectual taste. To the town whose urban tradition
is at least five centuries longer than that of some other "Capitals"
or "Centers" has been imposed a certain cultural framework. It has been
imposed some cultural chains brought from some other places in "the
modest luggage" of creators of the cultural politics of this town and
the region from 1944 until nowadays. Above all it has been undergoing
in the town which was always in touch with the whole world, which was
not walked around by any significant historical, cultural or political
stream in the old Europe and which equally participated in everything
with its own identity. Therefore it was the cultural framework for another
people with different needs and to the certain degree different traditions
and at last the framework for another time – the past. This framework
had to be stuffed with everything except with the proper traditional
values of Herceg Novi and Boka. It was the framework that does not make
any difference between the permanent and the temporary things. The motives
were only in the sphere of culture at the first sight and could be justified
only partially by qualifications of the former state and its general
politics in culture. The real motives were par excellence political
and par excellence regional. Without the intention of searching for
those who were responsible for that kind of activities, we only express
our attitude that such a framework could not have been imposed by accidence
or elementally. That framework was deliberately made and it had particular
aims. The enormous cultural differences between the new governmental
center and Boka had to be "ironed", and Boka had to be given a role
of the cultural province. It is not good anyway for a province to be
in advantage comparing with the Center, so the easier way was to degrade
Boka in the cultural and every other sense. The second aim was simply
national. All cultural contents which drew their origin in the tradition
of Boka were those of Serbian provenance - Serbian Orthodox Christian
(in the first place), or Serbian Roman Catholic. In the project of a
new state – Montenegro without Serbs, Montenegro without the Christian
Church, and at last Montenegro without itself- every remembrance of
the vast majority of its inhabitants and their tradition is not desirable.
That is why for a long period of time in Herceg Novi and Boka could
not have been seen anything else but a bad copy of something utterly
strange in this region and represented disposable good which has not
left any significant trace or influence. Panem et circenses! The exhibition
of "The Holy Archangel Michael’s Prevlaka could not be put in that existing
framework, it breaks that framework, and shows that culture is not only
hanging some pictures on a wall. The grade of their "progressiveness"
or "enlightenment" is not to follow blindly side roads of yesterday’s
states and nations and acceptance of their subculture, projected according
to their needs. Such an activity appeared from their searching of their
non-existing identity. That is the real reason why this exhibition and
all accompanying events for the most powerful governmental media have
not happened at all, which was Orwell's recipe naturally. I suppose
that therefore Prevlaka itself does not exist for the most significant
cultural institutions.
We
do not want to endanger someone’s right to hang on the wall whatever
and whenever he wants, we do not also question the artistic value of
such manifestations or works, but we do not allow that such things be
the only "regulated" and "suitable". We do not question other communities'
right to expose their csar's lauras, castles of their kings and emperors
and their tradition, to put their flags on their memorials or to represent
the culture of other nations as their own. But we do question their
right to put Boka and the Serbian tradition of Boka and its culture
as well as the tradition of the ancient Zeta and Travunija in their
narrow chauvinistic horizons, in their "obligatory symmetries", their
private transactions, atavisms, dreams and falsehoods.
The Holy Archangel Michael’s Prevlaka testifies about very significant
segment of the real identity of Boka and Montenegro. It breaks the imposed
provincial stereotype, whose creators in their ignorance and inferiority
cannot do or do not know to do anything else but to imitate. But somewhere
in their subconsciousness, these promoters of the newest of many global
systems of power are well aware of their essential inferiority. They
are also aware of the worthless of the things they are trying to impose
us as the model and that is why their systematic, I would say panicky,
acting is trying to "strangle" every autochthonous cultural potential
and institution of Boka and that is the reason for the enormous media
propaganda with the personal aims. If that was not so, everything "regressive"
would easily disappear and lose its precedence in the race with "the
modern" and "the progressive". But it was not a real competition, it
was nothing more but Pavelic and Stedimlija's ideology, just a little
bit more rearranged if compared with 1941.
After
the exhibition of "The Holy Archangel Michael's Prevlaka", whatever
happens later in the future in the governmental, political, or cultural
field, will not be possible anymore by sheer violence and persecution
or by primitivism raised up to governmental level to "extinct" cultural
institutions, to "strangle" free publishing and to impose the "suitable"
behaviour in the Capital of Dukedom of Saint Sava (Ducatus Sancti Sabbae,
for those who prefer Latin) as it was done until around middle of 2000.
Every eventual try of return on the old patterns could be possible only
with the unbearable quantity of violence on the public scene. The gathering
around Prevlaka's sanctuary of inhabitants of Herceg Novi is becoming
a factor which should be counted on those the most evil and the most
violent individuals.
It is up to Boka now, just like always in its long history to accept
and to transform all imported tendencies and their carriers by its genuine,
autochthonous cultural values and the tradition of tolerance in the
widest sense. In every fair-play game Boka is an inviolable favourite.
It succeeded to absorb Saracens and the bitter Albanians, so it can
absorb a lot more if it has to. Orders what Boka has to do or speak;
how to express its national and cultural identity, its apostolic christian's
tradition (tradition of both laws) - cannot be issued either by foreign
countries - yesterday's entities, created in the blood of their murdered
brothers and by the murder of God itself and by denial of their own
tradition, history and state. Boka cannot find anything in common with
those values that begin with the Bosnian forest parliament in 1943 or
possible with some marginal political congresses all over the Great
Germany between two World Wars. Boka goes together only with its own
tradition, with the tradition of the old Herzegovina and the old Zeta.
Boka goes together only with the Petrovics' Montenegro, with Montenegro
of The Saint Peter of Cetinje - with the only genuine and the only possible
Montenegro. That kind of Montenegro is the genuine successor of the
medieval tradition of the Serbian seashore – such Montenegro would consider
the reconstruction of the Prevlaka's sanctuary as the task of the great
national importance and the foundation stone or the root of its own
identity. If the Saint Sava, as it was said by one of the inspired speakers,
had not planted his scepter in the ground of the early-Christian martyr’s
grave and said: "This is the place of the eternal life, and the place
where running water is. Dig here!" and if he had not established the
throne of the diocese of Zeta on that place, there would not have existed
the monastery like Cetinje monastery, or the exodus of Serbs from Kosovo
on the foot of rocky Lovcen, or the constitutional idea of the reconstruction
of Dusan's empire, there would not have existed the Obilics' of Grahovo,
Vucji do or Mojkovac – there would not have existed any kind of Montenegro
at all.
The real identity – the genuine one, the permanent and indisputable
one, could be built only on the real and authentic tradition, without
cheating or forgery. This exhibition proves it in the best manner. Another
tradition and another identity should have their founding in something
more concrete and tangible, in something that exists by itself among
the people and in geography, in something transmitted by the Serbian
national instrument – gusle. It should have something concrete like
Prevlaka, that could not have been destroyed by earthly forces or countries,
despite the fact that each of them had their own army force and police,
and each of them thought about itself as eternal and untouchable power
from the perspective of a single individual in the "human anthill".
This exhibition is a great challenge to modern forgers of the history
of Boka and Montenegro to present material proofs on which they have
based the ideology of Doclean Red Croatia, just as it is challenge to
all, until recent period, held back zealous workers who were disabled
to express the long concealed truth
