War

I can't tell you how disgusted I am from the idea of war. My father was an army officer and I had a war in my house from my birth on. I saw my father always in uniform. We lived in a little town near Italian border who had two military basis. Eventhough I was born 20 years after the world war two, I still had an impresion that we are still at war. Socialism state spoke bad things about our neighbor states - like they are rotten capitalistic states. All our schools had names on war heros, of course from the whole Yugoslavia. After Yugoslavia dissolved (in the year 1991), we kept Slovenians heros and dumped these ones who were not from Slovenia. We just chaned the names. In the year 1991 when Slovenia was born as a state (after going away from our mother state Yugoslavia), we changed our himn, we changed our coat of arms, we changed our flag and we changed words with which we call people - from "Tovarish" to "Mister".When I was young... when I look it now, we had lots of military ceremonials - like accepting schollars into Pionirs (we got a cap and a red scarf), which was very much like in Russia or even like in Hitlerjugend.

Every a while we had these celebrations, where we celebrated the end of war, where we were listening to coirs who sang the songs from war and listening to boring speeches from people who were on the right side of the war. Also these was changed after 1991. All words with Yugoslavia were deleted. Yugoslavia actually became a forbidden word.

After 1991 every republic which was before in Yugoslavia formed his own country with her own himn, money, flag and everything what they considered a state. In socialism Tito was very afraid about nationalism, because he knew that this provoked wars on Balkans before. So, he kept national leaders away from the country. He thought that he can produce one nation - Yugoslav nation, but he was wrong. This was not America. Our nations would never melt in one Yugoslav big nation. We didn't act out adolescent period in nations. Our nations were still not formed, so we needed to affirmed ourself, to act out our agression as a nation - what was nationalism.

As soon as Tito died, all over from Yugoslavia nationalistic movements were born, which was in practice hate toward the other one nation.

So... Serb hated Albanians in Kosovo (And vice versa). Croat hated Serbs in Croatia (and vice -versa)... This was hatred which was tradicional on these places and which were burning from the times immemorials.  It was also in socialism, just they didn't say it alloud. After Tito died, there was no other bariere for nationalistic leaders.

These were patterns... My grandfather, who was orthodox and lived in Hercegovina region, on the border with Monte Negro told me lots of times: "You should never marry a Muslim". Why? Because in the second world war there was a cave, where muslim people threw serbian people in the cave. He escaped that because he was warned to hide himslef.

And if not... there is a legend of "Kraljevič Marko", who was fighting against Turks (=Muslims) on Kosovo... this legend my grandfather was singing and playing on "gusle" wherever we visited him. As you have to know... Serbs are celebrating the battle on Kosovo which they lost...