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YUGOSLAV PEOPLES’ ARMY AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES – A CONTRIBUTION TO THE INVESTIGATION
Davor MARIJAN
Sažetak
Yugoslav Peoples’ Army (Jugoslavenska narodna armija - JNA) was armed part of Communist Party (Savez komunista Jugoslavije - SKJ), and as such it shared common values and ideology. For them religion represented a residual habit incompatible with Marxist ideology.
Still, because of the international relations communist permitted work and activities of religious communities and congregations but with certain limitations. Consequently the authorities and JNA considered all the religious congregations as kind of internal enemy. JNA
had to encounter various religion communities because army’s garrisons were placed in many settlements throughout all Yugoslavia, and each settlement had at least one religious community. Similarly, the principle of recruitment in Yugoslav Army was such that many of
the recruits were believers, and some of them also clerics. Such recruits, who were professionally connected with some religious congregation (students of religious schools and other
ecclesiastical officials), the Communist Party and Army named “clerics”, and their (hostile) activities was called “clericalism”. Some parts of the army structure were not permitted for these “clerics”, especially offices that were considered as important for the armed forces. Moreover, JNA treated priests and students of religious schools, who came to serve their obligatory military service, as permanent and real threat. Consequently, control over religious
matters in JNA was conferred to the security officials from Security directorate of the Federal secretariat for national defense. During the 1980s there was an official policy to distance professional soldiers and regular recruits from the religious communities and “their hostile
activities”. By the end of 1981 JNA even organized a special operative plan Partner that had to diminish danger of religion in the structures of the communist authorities and within JNA personnel. During 1982 and 1983 military security agencies were the most successful because of the increased surveillance of the entire JNA personnel, especially in the northwest Croatia in the district of the 32nd division of JNA land forces. The chief achievement
was establishment of a firm network of spies among highest ranked officers of JNA. Namely, it was considered that it would be the most perilous if some officers of JNA were believers, and this was also thought for their families, since in such case they would be treated as traitors and enemies. Although the number of such cases was quite small, the existence of this espionage network reveals that spying was rather common among professional personnel of JNA. Yet it is quite obvious that religious communities could not endanger JNA, nor they represented any kind of a real problem for a normal work of the Army. But despite of this fact, army’s officials continued to emphasize this potential danger, and enormous sums of money were spent to prevent it. Thus, such policy clearly witnesses all the absurd of security agencies within totalitarian regimes. After 1983 surveillance of religious communities slowly was decreasing, and by the end of 1980s it became a marginal topic for the security officials in
JNA. In January 1991 this “struggle” against religion officially was abandoned by a decree of the Presidency of Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in which was stated that soldiers were permitted to practice their religions in their own time, and out of garrisons.
Ključne riječi
Yugoslavia; religious co mmunities; “internal enemy”; Yugoslav Peoples’ Army (JNA); north-west Croatia; 32nd division; 32nd corps
Hrčak ID:
151870
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.12.2015.
Posjeta: 2.246 *