Slobodan Milosevic's Montenegro Speech
9/20/00

Editorial note: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic spoke on Wednesday at the closing campaign rally of the Socialist People’s Party (SNP) of Montenegro in Berane. You can read a campaign speech by his principal opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, by clicking here.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic spoke on Wednesday at the closing campaign rally of the Socialist People’s Party (SNP) of Montenegro in Berane, in the northeast of this Yugoslav republic.

Addressing the about 100,000 people from the area and from other parts of Montenegro who have in countless ways before this shown their wish to preserve the common Yugoslav state of Serbia and Montenegro, Milosevic said-"Ladies and gentlemen of Berane and the Lim river valley, people of Montenegro, "This place in which we are now and this part of the world where we have always lived is perhaps the most beautiful part of Europe, or the most important part of Europe, because this part of the world has been fought over in wars by the biggest and strongest European states through history.

"In the last decade of the 20^th century, we see that this state and these nations are the subject of great attention and the target not only of European powers, but of non-European powers as well, even of the biggest among them. As if mankind at this turbulent time at the turn of the century had no other concern than how to organise the state which is home to two small European nations, two small Balkan nations, two old Slavic nations - Serbs and Montenegrins.

"And it is again up to us - and here I mean the Serbs and Montenegrins - for an umpteenth time in our long and hard lives, to be again both wise and brave in the best interests of our survival, and in a common state, if possible.

"Of course, the most important thing is to protect the people, for the people to survive all historical traps. This holds true equally for the Serbs and the Montenegrins. It holds good for them no less than for all nations of the world, but for the Serbs and Montenegrins it is important also that they should live together, if possible, because their coexistence increases their chance of a stable life, of their resisting outside pressure more easily as nations and as a state, of surviving despite the historical truth that they have for centuries been the target of those who are hundreds and thousands times stronger and more important than themselves.

"Since the emergence of Slavic nations, they have been evincing an aspiration to live together. This wish has been granted to many Slavic nations, but we are today facing the bitter truth that all Slavic states have disintegrated by the will of the powerful alliance of western powers, but thanks also to the historical responsibility of the Slavic nations themselves, who could not apparantly withstand the strong outside pressure or have perhaps underestimated its force.

"Only one community of Slavic nations has survived - Yugoslavia. Life in it is not easy. It is exposed to special brutal economic, media, military, psychological, political pressure. Whether or not it will bear up, and for how long, will depend decisively on the Serbian and Montenegrin people.

"If they wish to live together, nobody in the world can separate them. If one of these two nations gives in, their common state will be no more. There are no two ways about it.

"Everything has been used to destroy the country of the Serbian and Montenegrin people - sanctions, armed war, media war, blackmail and bribery of politicians, intellectuals, businessmen, teachers, even youths and children.

"The blackmailers have not had a hard job of it. They are big, rich and powerful. To them, to blackmail a politician, deliberately placed in a position of becoming a thief, is an easy, tested and proven method of achieving doglike loyalty.

"Bribery is perhaps even easier in a country exhausted by a decade of sanctions, wars, a huge influx of people, refugees. In such a country it is easily possible in all milieux to find candidates who will enter for a handful of hard currency into all kinds of compacts with the bearers of the bounty. They will even enter into a compact with themselves. They will persuade even themselves that changes in their opinions and behaviour were not bought and paid for, but were arrived at in cold deliberation. This practice has already been seen, but unfortunately it has a tendency to be forgotten. Never have traitors considered themselves traitors. They have invariably believed that cooperation with would-be occupiers or actual occupiers was the expression of a rational, wise, so to speak visionary comprehension of the interests of a small and poor nation in the face of violence coming from somebody bigger, stronger and more powerful.

"Neither Turkish, nor Austro-Hungarian, nor fascist, nor yet Nazi lackeys have ever considered themselves traitors, but wise men, who knew that the interest of the people is to survive, even by kissing the hem of the garments of a foreign power, instead of grappling and fighting against somebody much stronger than themselves.

"The fact that Serbs and Montenegrins have thousands of times bettered in battle those stronger than themselves, thanks to their weapons and their wisdom, has been no lesson to future traitors.

"All times have their cowards and their poltroons, who paint themselves to the people and even to themselves as the new politicians, as wise statesmen different from the fools and idealists who would make a giant out of their small and puny nation.

"Unfortunately, this is how it is now, too. What good is it that Serbs and Montenegrins have been giants thousands of times through history. These same giants are once again faced with a menagerie of rabbits, rats and even hyenas, who would turn the giant people into a lap-dog for the amusement of the foreign master in his idle hour.

"Over the past decade, Serbia has been exposed to all weapons in the arsenals of the modern big and developed world in an effort to intimidate, humiliate and occupy it.

"Serbia has an endless experience of lies, blackmail, cruise missiles, sanctions, spies used against it. The rest of the world has the same experience, too. Serbia has fought the Sodome and Gomorrah of the new age for all the people that are yet to come.

"The would-be conquerors of Yugoslavia have used a different tactic against Montenegro. First of all, they have resorted to bribery - with money, small money at first and then, if that should prove insufficient, big money, too.

"For the first time in its history, Montenegro is not defending its freedom and independence at arms. For the first time it is defending them with honour alone, with what Montenegrins have always insisted was their chief, their dominant characteristic.

"Montenegro is therefore sitting an exam of history, before all Montenegrins that have ever lived - from Ulcinj, via Skadar and Mojkovac, to Kolasin, from Berane to Niksic, from Pljevlja to Kotor.

"Will it renounce its freedom and independence, its historical being, life in the same state with the Serbs, for a promise of high living standards?

"The Montenegrin people have been told - either you shall live as paupers in your ridiculous freedom epic, or you shall have higher living standards. And you can put your myths of freedom, independence and bravery in the Cetinje Museum, supposedly to be shown at a later date, together with the flint-gun and the folk costumes, to visiting American entertainers and English old maids when they come to bathe free of charge on the beaches of Sveti Stefan, or as guests of a Podgorica Dodik.

"This choice is false, however. Living standards and freedom are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are mutually dependent. Only a free nation can hope to prosper and develop. Conversely, slavery has never allowed anybody to spread their wings. Slavery is always slavery, even if the slave-owners owned also the greatest technological and scientific advances, and the slaves were the descendants of a proud and brave nation.

"Mankind is threatened by a new colonialism. Europe is the target of this colonialism. Its points of resistance are scattered all over and have not all given voice yet. One of the most important of them is here, in Yugoslavia, in the historic nature of the Serbian and Montenegrin people, in their need to live together, in a big, rational and emotional desire of all people living in Yugoslavia, different in their national and religious characteristics though they be, to live together as a single Yugoslav nation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, people of the Lim valley and Montenegro,

"I want you to think carefully where and how you will live. I wish you to make your decision in your best interests. I see your interest as lying in a free and independent country together with Serbia, together with all those who live in Yugoslavia today.

"It is up to you to decide whether this life or another is in your best interests. In any case, I wish you luck."