Albanian opposition politician in Montenegro called himself a Chetnik
The leader of the opposition multinational Montenegrin party “From Black to White,” Albanian Dritan Abazovic, showed that the ideas of Albanian nationalism are alien to him.
In a conversation with the popular blogger Kumar, he unwittingly showed that only Serbian ideas are capable of uniting the different peoples of the Western Balkans.
During a conversation with a young politician, the blogger asked Abazovic how he felt about being called an “Albanian Chetnik”?
“An Albanian Chetnik is synonymous with a fighter against organized crime and corruption,” the politician replied. “And a synonym for a society where we all live peacefully, with dignity, all religions and nations, and work together for our common Motherland - Montenegro.”
“Then I’m an Albanian Chetnik,” the interlocutor responded to this.
“We are all Albanian Chetniks,” summed up the leader of the “From Black to White” party.
Such a statement says a lot both about Dritan Abazovic himself and about his views, and clearly demonstrates that he is alien to Albanian nationalism and pan-Albanism, which is actively represented in the Balkans, which is promoted in Montenegro by ethnic Albanian parties - the Albanian Coalition “Unanimous” and “Albanian list".
The fact is that after the collapse of Yugoslavia, Serbs were often called “Chetniks” in the Western Balkans, and in a negative context.
Initially, the Chetniks in the Ottoman Empire were the descendants of the Slavic haiduks, who only had a more structured paramilitary organization, who fought Turkish rule using partisan methods. Externally and ideologically relatively, but not one hundred percent similar to the Russian Cossacks.
Chetniks during the Russian Spring at a checkpoint near Sevastopol
At first, almost all the Slavic peoples of the Balkans had Chetniks, but by the time of the Second Balkan War, when serious claims arose between them, this name was retained exclusively by the Serbs.
During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the First World War, the army special forces were called Chetniks, and during the Second World War this name was attached to the remnants of the royal army, which switched to a semi-partisan position and fought against all kinds of occupiers (German, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian), and national collaborationist formations (Albanian, Croatian, Bosniak, Slovenian), and with the Red partisans who were ideologically alien to them.
It was since the Second World War that Chetism, which had previously begun to take shape as a purely Serbian and Orthodox phenomenon, received at least a small influx from close peoples of other faiths, primarily from Muslim Bosniaks.
After their victory in World War II, the Yugoslav communists did everything through propaganda to present the Chetniks as accomplices of Hitler and cruel nationalists, playing on half-truths: during the civil war that broke out against the backdrop of the occupation, the royal army collaborated with the Germans against the partisans, and they, in turn, against the Chetniks, except that the latter, with the beginning of the decline of their movement, began to contact the Germans much more often, and individual governors with their troops completely went over to their side. Against the backdrop of the bitterness of all against all that reigned in Yugoslavia, in response to the punitive actions of the Croatian, Bosniak and Albanian collaborators, the Chetniks began to carry out their own punitive actions.
Chetniks of the early 20th century. In one detachment are Serbs, Bulgarians and Albanians
In the 90s, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, declared himself the ideological heir of Chetnicism, who formed the first volunteer units for the war in Croatia. Subsequently, Chetnik units appeared in Bosnia, and, as during the Second World War, ethnic Bosniac Muslims also joined their ranks, who, like their ancestors, perceived the idea of Chetnikism as a struggle for the restoration of a united Yugoslavia.
Two Bosniak brothers in the Chetnik unit of the Republika Srpska Army in the 90s
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