“Glas javnosti”, 20 September 2002

MATIJA BECKOVIC’S SPEECH

at the unveiling of the monument to King Aleksandar I in Lapovo, 16 October 2002

King Aleksandar I Karadjordjevic, the son of the King and the grandson of the Prince, the great grandson of the Supreme Leader Karadjordje, the most important Serbian ruler in the XX century, was murdered 68 years ago.

Born in Cetinje, left without his mother before he was two, educated in the Pages’ Corps of the Russian Emperor in Sanct Petersburg, waged three wars, walked through Albania, and during his life hardly ever took off his uniform.

He became the supreme commander of Serbian army just as he was twenty, and he won its most glorious victories. He looked upon history as poetry, and as Rebecca West wrote “he had a poetic idea that only the greatest men in history did”. He himself wrote and translated poems, he loved music, he knew about painting. He was an unyielding faithful, unselfish donor, tireless endower who renewed almost all our institutions of culture. As the great grandson of Karadjordje he finished mausoleum in Oplenac, as the descendant of Njegos he renewed the Chapel on the Lovcen, as a knight he erected the Monument to the Unknown Hero at the Avala, as a warrior he erected the Victor at Kalemegdan, as a faithful he reconstructed many temples, as a comrade in arms he put monuments and built soldiers’ cemeteries all over the world and his country. As a ruler he purchased the manuscript of “Mountain Wreath”, dedicated to the ashes of the Father of Serbia, that was found in the Imperial Library in Vienna, all paid from his appanage.

Once when he was visiting a monastery, he asked the brethren what he could do for the monastery or what wish he could fulfill to them, and the brother superior replied: “Majesty, you have fulfilled all our wishes at Kumanovo!”

His father King Petar I Liberator translated John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty” while he was in exile. The future King Aleksandar translated Maxim Gorky’s “Poem about falcon” when he was a cadet. So both of them announced freedom to their people. In his youth he wrote patriotic poems taking example by Milan Rakic.

It was recorded that he was proposed to become a member of Serbian Royal Academy. He replied to the offer in these words: ”I would have a very bad opinion on the Academy that would have me as a poet, for its member”. The Austro-Hungarian corporal who was chased away from Cer And Suvobor with his head bleeding, did not think for a moment to refuse such offer when he was, several decades later, proclaimed by acclamation to be the academician of all our academies.

In the year when Yugoslavia was born, the October Revolution broke out. The Emperor of Russia, who was supposed to be its support and its protector, was murdered with his entire family. Instead of Russia that disappeared in blood and humiliation, the Soviet Union emerged. At the first reception for foreign diplomats organized the young soviet republic, the Royal ambassador Mr. Miroslav Spalajkovic told Lenin :”You are a murderer and a degenerate of Slovene race. I spit in your face!”. The whole world recognized the Soviet Union, but not King Aleksandar. He kept the Imperial ambassador in Belgrade and took thousands of refugees from Russia. Among them were some of the greatest Orthodox spiritual leaders and intellectuals. Throughout the country Cossacks’ regiments were being established, in good faith that they will soon go to Russia. The sanctuary he provided for to the Russian refugees and resistance to tyranny was the reason he was soon and easily targeted by Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini.

The last bells he had heard were the bells of Savina monastery, where he spent the last night in the fatherland. He was waited for in Marseilles and killed together with the French Minister of foreign affairs Lois Bartoux, in front of the eyes of million of the French who came to see the great King, glorious warrior and ally. The knightly King Aleksandar was the first victim of fascism on the road to peace.

The hand that had murdered him soon started to slaughter and throw into pits his people at random, to turn on the gas chambers in Auszwitz and Jasenovac, to dress the whole world in mourning.

At the moment when the reign of his son, King Petar II, first spat in Hitler’s face, French people, as it was recorded, went to the place where he had been murdered carrying flowers and candles.

He was buried in Oplenac, not by the side of Karadjordje and King Petar whose dreams he had fulfilled, but in the crypt, by the side of his mother, whom he had longed for the most.

In the eve of the bicentenary of the First Serbian Insurrection under the Supreme Leader Karadjordje, voices can be heard that Serbian Orthodox Church will beatify King Aleksandar, just as Russian Church has done with the Emperor and the Imperial Family. And for the same reason the Russians did. Because of his unwavering faith and Christian attitude in the face of death, which he met with his eyes open.

And why not mention at this place how the Imperial Russians thought of King Aleksandar Karadjordjvic as of the heir to the throne after the execution of their Imperial Family.

If he could have had one thought in his dying moment, it was that the Serbs would never forget how he ended his life, why, where and by whom he was murdered. And that there is no menace from which his people would not defend him, the people who, while mourning him, took off bells from babies’ cradles and rams’ necks.

To our shame he still hasn’t got his justice. It is remembered how he dismissed the Parliament and banned political parties, and it was never forgiven to him by those who promoted dictatorship of proletariat and instituted one party system. He is reproached for establishing Yugoslavia, although he was the first to gather and liberate his people, but perhaps even greater mistake it would be if renew it, despite everything, after all the tragedies and shame.

For half a century his name and the name of the Royal Family was proscribed, and mentioning them was almost a crime. The only monument to King Aleksandar and King Petar that was out of reach of the murderers’ hands was the one in Champs Elysees in Paris, at King Aleksandar’s Square. Recently I have heard a story from a man in Trebinje, how Mira Radjenova, a woman from the village of Simiovo near Bileca, right after the WWII, once sang alone, shepherding sheep: ”Oh, King, the sea is free, come and visit the Palaces in Belgrade!”. She was sentenced for two years in prison, but the one who had reported her and the one who had sentenced her couldn’t have possibly thought that her name and her song would be mentioned after so many decades, here at the unveiling of the monument to King Aleksandar, with his grandson Crown Prince Aleksandar present, who answered the invitation from the song instead of his father.

The most logical answer to the question why the monument to King Aleksandar in Lapovo is unveiled today is the one that the monument used to be here and it is being renewed because it had been demolished. That would have been true for so many towns, but not for Lapovo where this monument is not being renewed, but erected for the first time, on behalf of all those destroyed monuments in many towns that were never renewed. The hand that destroyed them is just a version of the same one that had killed the King, and that has not been removed under the throat of his people yet. That is why the erecting of the monument to King Aleksandar in Lapovo has many significances not only for this town and its citizens. Without justice for King Aleksandar there will be no justice for his people. That is why this act surpasses this day and this place and the work of the sculptors, brothers Radovic and Brothers Jeremic foundry, and why it is about our place in history, about our pride and our honor and place among the peoples.