ANNIVERSARY OF KING ALEXANDER THE FIRST’S DEATH COMMEMORATED

Oplenac, 9 October 2003 – The Holy Liturgy in the Church of Saint George in Oplenac commemorated today the 69th anniversary of King Alexander I’s assassination. The Liturgy was celebrated by His Grace Jovan , Bishop of Sumadija, with the clergy of Sumadija Bishopric and “Oplenac” church choir.

On behalf of TRH Crown Prince Alexander II, Crown Princess Katherine and Princes Petar, Philip and Alexander, the commemoration was attended by the members of the advisory bodies of the Crown who laid a wreath and paid their respect to the late King.

On 9 October 1934 in Marseilles, at the beginning of his official visit to the friendly France, the King of Yugoslavia Alexander I Karadjordjevic was viciously murdered. Together with him, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Barthou was killed in the assassination. The assassins were Croatian “ustashi” and Bulgarian “VMRO” extremists, under patronage of fascist Italy, with cooperation of authoritarian Hungary. King Alexander, the warrant of peace in the Balkans and successful creator of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’s European future, fell as the first victim of fascism, defending free community of European nations. The assassination of King Alexander ended the era of peace in Europe between the two World Wars and announced the ominous advance of fascism and Nazism.

His death revoked, louder than any words, the accusations from both far left and far right that his personal regime, introduced on 6 January 1929 to protect the country’s unity, was a “monarcho-fascist dictatorship”. Even more groundless were the accusations that by establishing “banovinas” (regions), he nullified historical traditions of Montenegro, his ancestral land. On the contrary, by establishing Zetska Banovina, he renewed Montenegro, following the ideas of his mother’s father King Nikola, within the borders envisioned by the last Montenegrin King.

King Alexander was the ruler with great reputation in Europe and the world, truly mourned in all capitals of democratic countries, and in Yugoslavia his death was taken at first with disbelief, and later with enormous sadness. The remains of the great King were spontaneously farewelled by hundreds of thousands of people, kneeling all the way from Split to Belgrade next to the railroad, with full awareness of his statesman’s greatness and the great loss for the country.

King Alexander was not only the Great Unifier who created the joint state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, but also the great creator of the security system in the Balkans – the architect of Small Antanta of 1921, defence alliance of the new democratic states (the Kingdom of SHS, Romania and Czechoslovakia) against revisionist efforts of those countries that were defeated in the WW 1, the creator of the Balkan Pact of 1934 (alliance of Yugoslavia, Romania, Turkey and Greece) which aimed at establishing a lasting peace and good relationships between the neighbours in the region. Above all, King Alexander was a reliable barrier to the upcoming menace of fascism. The grand work of King Alexander as a statesman laid foundations to the future regional cooperation, which was carried out only in the present times, in much more favourable international conditions and in the way that was envisaged by this great statesman more than seventy years ago.

His political enemies who reproached him for his authoritative reign were not the friends of democracy, but the ones who were trying to destroy the state whose personification he was, and in which the Serbs used to live under the same roof. The King saw his personal regime as temporary measure, necessary to preserve the country’s unity, for which lives of over million Serbs were laid, and to protect the state from the dangers from abroad.

On top of it, King Alexander was the great supporter of the country’s modernization, initiating ambitious economic projects with the aim to reduce the existing social differences and neutralize the growing conflicts among Yugoslavia’s nations. The concept of “people’s unity” and “Yugoslav nation” came out of the need to avoid what happened to us twice after his death – sinking into bloody ethnic clashes with innumerable victims. Misunderstood in his time, facing overwhelming temptations of internal conflicts and outside threats that were impossible to remove, King Alexander built in his life into the project that was, through Yugoslavia, the fastest way for the Serbs and other south Slav people to join European family of developed and sovereign countries.