Who is against the symbol of anti-fascism

Everything was ready for Tito's funeral. On May 8, 1980, I was assigned the task of being on duty at the SIV (today the Palace of Serbia) in case a representative of one of the numerous foreign delegations that arrived in Belgrade came by. I dragged an armchair from one of the salons and sat in the hall near the ceremonial entrance.

There were also several high-ranking officers and security officials, protocol representatives, staff in charge of the building, waiters... No one spoke a word, the silence in the huge room was eerie. We watched the broadcast of the funeral on a large television set up for us in the hall. Two days before that, I was a member of the honor guard of writers in the Federal Assembly.

photo: photo service of the office of the President of the Republic, Museum of Yugoslavia

The last time I saw Tito alive was in September 1979 in Havana. The uninitiated wanted to introduce me, but he waved, said he knew me, in his ever-kind way, thanked me for working there. Of course I didn't know that I was saying goodbye to him, but he seemed tired and decrepit, he came to that gathering despite the doctor's recommendations.

I was among those who knew for days that his death was imminent. At the SSIP - the Federal Secretariat for Foreign Affairs - we huddled around three in the afternoon in front of the machine that would receive unvarnished bulletins about his state of health, they were edited for the public.

209 delegations from 128 countries arrived at the funeral, among them four kings, five princes, 33 presidents of states and 21 prime ministers. It was the largest gathering of leading world statesmen that had ever met. This speaks of Tito's importance on a global scale, but also the importance of the country that identified with him.

Few people think about the fact that statesmen arrived in their planes, it was necessary to regulate the airspace, determine the sequence of landings, take care of the pilots and flight attendants of those planes. Along with the kings, presidents and other important guests, some ministers, heads of cabinet, secretaries, adjutants, advisers, personal doctors, security, butlers, wardrobes arrived. I haven't come across any information on how many there might have been in total, but including foreign television crews and journalists, it must have been several thousand. For all of them, it was necessary to find suitable accommodation, transport, provide food, solve health problems, think about small things such as ironing clothes, all possible small services, whims, fulfilling special wishes of guests. An organizational and logistical nightmare.

Many statesmen took the opportunity to meet on the sidelines of the funeral ceremonies, away from the public, for example Helmut Schmidt, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and Erich Honecker, leader of the East German Democratic Republic. For ten such meetings, lounges in certain villas, security and personnel for serving coffee, tea, drinks, sandwiches, and cookies had to be organized. I would say that for every participant of important events there are at least a dozen people who remain forever in the shadows.

photo: photo service of the office of the President of the Republic, Museum of Yugoslavia

THE ROLE OF THE PROTOCOL

I previously organized some guest performances of the National Theater with more than a hundred participants, so I know that it was very difficult, almost crazy. In connection with foreign visits, our protocol solved all problems in a flash, there was not a single incident.

On such occasions, the otherwise somewhat despised protocol becomes the driving force behind all levers of events, governments, security, the military, medical services, caterers must listen to it. Having attended the first session of the CSCE, the forerunner of the OSCE, in Helsinki in 1975, the meeting of the leaders of the communist and workers' parties in East Berlin in 1976, and the non-aligned summit in Havana in 1979, I knew how much protocol can make political work difficult, how much trouble our delegation had with those services, and from their point of view, of course, they with us.

photo: photo service of the office of the President of the Republic, Museum of Yugoslavia

COLONEL MARCO AGBABA

Some names of those in charge of Tito's funeral are known. The head of the organization was Colonel-General Bruno Vuletić, the commander of the solemn procession was Colonel-General Miloš Stanimirović, but here I highlight the name of the man who was always with Tito, even after his death twice - his chauffeur, Colonel Marko Agbaba. When the Blue Train with the coffin in which Tito was dead arrived from Ljubljana to Belgrade, he drove the hearse from the railway station to the Federal Assembly, and in the funeral procession the field car - campanola - fiat-flag 1107 which pulled the carriage of the mountain gun B 1 on which there was a coffin from the Federal Assembly to the House of Flowers in Dedinje.

Tito, who was an excellent driver - worked in 1910/1911. as a test driver at the "Daimler-Benz" factory in Mannheim where he subscribed to a socialist newspaper - he was happy to talk with Agbaba about cars and their maintenance. His bodyguards did not allow him to drive alone in Belgrade, he personally only drove in Brioni, but I know of at least one case when he took advantage of the inattention of the staff in the yard of a villa in Užička street, "stole" a Mercedes in which the key was left, and drove away to the Topčider railway station, sat down in an inn, ordered a beer, then realized that he had no wallet and no money. He was honored by the railway workers.

On trips with foreign delegations around the country at breakfast, sometimes at dinner, Agbaba also sat with us - translators, doctors, adjutants - that's how I got to know him personally. I have often noticed the poverty of our Google before, there is not a single word about Agbaba, I don't know what he did after Tito's death, he could hardly be alive, I wonder when he died.

CODE "X+4"

Many false news appeared regarding the place of Tito's burial, among other things that he was not buried in the House of Flowers at all. I refer to Joška Broz, his grandson, who was with his grandfather's body all the time from the hospital in Ljubljana to the House of Flowers.

photo: wikimedia commons

As for the debate about why the tomb is in that particular place on Dedinje, it is known that it was the wish of Tito himself. Of course, he knew how old he was and that he was sick, and when discussions began among his closest associates about the event under the code "X+4", which meant "the fourth day after Tito's death", he intervened in the debate. There were ideas to build a mausoleum and embalm his body like Lenin's or Mao Zedong's. He energetically refused, he wanted a "normal burial" and said: "I would most like to be buried among my fighters on Sutjeska, but if you think you need me dead in Belgrade, then in my House of Flowers."

A lot of arbitrary and even intentionally false news was written and published about Tito's illness and death. I refer to Professor Predrag Lalević's book "With Tito around the World". The anesthesiologist, Dr. Lalević, has been with Tito on every trip for the past 16 years, and was always ready to provide his services, and when he was in the country, his duty was to keep Tito alive, if ever needed, until the medical council decided on treatment. Until the last illness in 1979/80. there was nothing dramatic. For some time, Lalević resisted writing about the course of his last illness and the death of his most important patient, saying that it was a "doctor's secret", but he relented because of so much nonsense that appeared in public.

Lalević confirms that on February 26, Tito had to be connected to an artificial respiration machine, that he was put in an artificial coma, connected to an IV and that he was not conscious for 68 days. On the fourth of May, his heart stopped.

Lalevic: "Finally at 15:5 p.m. the EKG showed a straight line, a sign that the heart stopped working. Next to the bed, we spent another fifteen minutes in complete silence, then I looked at Professor Bretzel, pointing to the devices that were still beeping to show that they were working. He nodded as a sign for me to turn them off. I turned off the ventilator, the EKG, the monitor, the pacemaker and the electronic pump for administering drugs into the vein”.

There were stories that Tito died even earlier, that it was kept secret, on the other hand, that they tortured him unnecessarily by keeping him alive for political reasons, not for medical reasons. For my part, I can confirm that this is how every patient is treated today. My aunt Olga Šomlo, a doctor, was ill for a long time and in a moment of lucidity, she said to me: "I don't know why they are keeping me alive, we used to help patients to die more easily."

ŠAPIĆ AND SEŠELJ

Thinking about Tito's grave, also about his illness and death, unnecessarily became relevant after the statement of Aleksandar Šapić that his remains should be transferred to Kumrovec. I guess he said that as a private person, because as the chairman of the temporary authority that governs Belgrade, no one authorized him to do so, as far as is known, not even the Serbian Progressive Party of which he is vice president, at least not publicly until the moment I write this text.

At one time, on May 4, 1991, Vojislav Šešelj appeared on Dedinje with a hawthorn stake to pierce the heart of the "vampire" Tito, and later he said that he only performed a symbolic act because it was clear to him that he could not pierce a granite grave with a hawthorn stake .

Tito's tomb is a symbol, and a symbol of the anti-fascist struggle in which Serbs participated the most. The equation is simple: whoever is against anti-fascism is either a fascist or very close to that ideology.

I have not been able to establish whether it is true how Franjo Tuđman handled the idea of ​​proposing to transfer Tito's remains to Kumrovec and bury them in front of his birthplace. I do not rule out that it would be welcome for him to receive some anti-fascist symbols in order to reconcile with the Ustasha symbols that have afflicted Croatia since he came to power.

I don't think it's out of place to retell a joke here, according to which Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević are sitting in a corner on the edge of some international conference and arguing very loudly about something. The ambassador of Israel approaches them and asks what it is about, and they tell him that they are discussing whether Tito's grave should remain in Belgrade or be moved to Kumrovec:

"If you can't agree, I have a proposal," says the Israeli. "We would be happy to receive Tito's casket and provide him with a worthy place."

"Just don't!" shouted the presidents of Serbia and Croatia in unison.

"And why?"

"Well, one of you has already been resurrected!"

FORENOWN OF THE DEATH OF SFRJ

Sitting on May 8, 1980 without much to do in the building from which Yugoslavia was ruled, I had time to think. As a translator on various occasions, I got to know her well. On the first floor there was an apartment intended for Tito, but he almost never used it. He preferred to devote himself to important work in his study in the villa in Užička street. Dvor na Dedinja and the halls of this palace were for him a representative character. However, on the fourth floor was the cabinet of the president of the Yugoslav government, at that time the dictionary of the Federal Executive Council, the levers of the executive power were located there, practically it was ruled from there.

I wondered what was going through Tito's head when he became aware that he was dying. Not that he will die one day, but now. He was undoubtedly a very brave man. He was the only commander-in-chief who in the Second World War also commanded the department when he had to leave Užice in 1941, the only one who was wounded in battle in June 1943. Other European resistance leaders were far from the battlefield, General De Gaulle led the French resistance movement from London.

In the last years of his life, Tito cried out more and more often: "Guard the unity of the brotherhood as the apple of your eye." I was tired of it then. I later realized that he sensed that his life's work, self-governing and non-aligned Yugoslavia, was threatened with destruction. The Constitution from 1974, which Kardelj pushed through, instead of calming the appetites of people and nationalities for their own states, only inflamed them even more.

Where did I get the right to analyze what was bothering Tito? I was by Tito's side when statesmen from German-speaking countries came to visit or when he visited those countries, about thirty times for a few days over the course of 19 years. It's really not much. But I, only half jokingly, once said that a translator sees his client spiritually and intellectually in his underwear, and Günther Grass encouraged me to write about it: "There are many translators, but you are the only literate person who found himself in such a role ".

What were the officers, policemen, waiters, cleaners, surely all the people loyal to Tito, chosen because they were faithful to his idea, thinking next to me? I would always like to know what other people think, in novels I can attribute whatever I want to my characters, but this was real life. A life in which an important epoch was just ending for our country, probably for the region, in a way for the whole world, because the last great man of the Second World War was being buried.

What does the era that started with Russia's attack on Ukraine promise, or rather, what does it threaten?

THE SURVIVAL OF THE MEMORY OF TITA

I repeat, thinking about Tito's burial place was encouraged by Aleksandar Šapić with his ingeniously unoriginal idea to expel one of the symbols of resistance to fascism from Belgrade.

During Tito's funeral, probably no one could have guessed that such ideas would appear a decade after the event that I was following on the small screen in SIV. Millions of people, not only all over Yugoslavia but all over the world, watched on television how Yugoslavia and world statesmen said goodbye to Tito.

Seselj and Šapić say they are Orthodox believers. The Serbian Orthodox Church pays attention to the cemetery and graves, according to the interpretation of the British-Scandinavian Eparchy, whose position I quote because it is simple and acceptable for everyday language: "Graves are kept in a decent and orderly condition."

Šešelj and Šapić are citizens of Serbia. In Serbia, the law protects cemeteries and graves, and there are judgments of the Court of Appeal about this.

It would be significant if Patriarch Porphyry and the Holy Synod of Bishops communicated their position on the exhumation of Tito's remains.

Perhaps Tito's grave will indeed be desecrated. In today's progressive Serbia, I can imagine every possible stupidity, every surprise, every evil. Maybe they will erect a monument to someone else at that place, who deserves to be remembered by the citizens of Serbia according to some other criteria. And maybe a new residential and administrative block will be built under the direction of Belgrade on the water. The view from Dedinje in the direction of the city and its rivers is fantastic. All the same, I am convinced that even if there are no signs, pilgrimages will continue where the House of Flowers is located today, that the memory of Josip Broz, better known as Tito, will live on.