State emblems

The underpants on the stick also have deep symbolic meanings, but the flag and anthem are the symbols of every country that holds its own. In this regard, this Yugoslavia is somewhere between (underpants and posture). All this despite - or precisely because of - the deadly seriousness with which, every now and then, the solution to the fateful question of those insignia of state existence is approached.

The finals of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic basketball tournament should not be overlooked by any future researcher in this regard. Clever - and blissfully uninformed - Americans stamped a huge number of Yugoslav tricolors with five points on that occasion, so even the old American Chetniks cheered for the "blue ones" with a red star on the forehead and chest. The more lucid, politically correct part of them waved the Yugoslav tricolor without the pentacle (it looks the same as the Dutch flag, only turned upside down). And, also, with variations on the theme, with the double-headed eagle of Karađorđević or Obrenović, with "eyes" or without them, with a canopy and/or double crown... Or, perhaps due to the still insufficiently studied, spontaneous inter-dynastic reconciliation, only the "church" tricolor with cross and four "C". All in all, nine different flags were waved for Divac and his friends. On that occasion, fortunately, we did not win, otherwise it would have been a miracle if the anthem had been sung.

Last year, in Sydney, the same story with the flags. Plus the anthem: half of the audience sang "Od Topole, od Topole..." at "Hey Slaveni" over the loudspeaker, and the rest of the audience, including about a billion television viewers, wondered what was happening. Nothing, old story, Serbian business.

The late Miodrag Bulatović described the pentacle from the flag of the "second" Yugoslavia as a "trampled frog". On this occasion, we will ignore the insult (out of ignorance) that this description caused to the pentagram as a Pythagorean figure of perfection, or to Heineken, whose trademark it is, not to mention other uses of the pentagram. Then there are the newly composed interpreters Serbia took to discover its Masonic-Satanic meaning in history, and beyond. After that, the bazaar dragged and smeared that frog on mouths, tribunes and publications, until the alpinists of the Serbian Renewal Movement (that's Vuk Drašković's party) took it down from the Old Palace building in 1997. But before that, we received from Slobodan Milošević the coat of arms of the "third" Yugoslavia, heraldically described as a double-headed eagle in flight with a shield on which there are four fields, two of which have crosses with "eyelets", and two have "lions in passage".

Now, by chance, it turns out that these Montenegrin lions are really "passing through". So we are left with glasses. Which, again, were not glasses, but not four "Cs", but a heraldic misunderstanding about the Byzantine royal "B". The West, of course, got its fingers in there, but inadvertently: European heraldry does not know about letters in coats of arms, so it "saw" them as a tool for sparking. Afterwards, the Serbs saw that picture and remade (completely different) letters from it. Their explanations, history and especially "history" could be measured by libraries, if those libraries had at least one reader for every ten writers and hundred interpreters.

The detective approach - the question of what is not in everything that is there - points to a more than murky origin of the double-headed eagle and crown as state symbols of Serbia/Yugoslavia. In short, the eagle (as well as the four "Bs") was "taken over" from Byzantium, and the royal/imperial crown for the holy dynasty of Nemanjić was obtained as needed from - the Roman Pope. That is why the dignified silence of the Serbian Orthodox Church about the political affairs of Saint Sava or, say, the Hungarian vassal Lazar Hrebeljanović and his descendants is more than significant.

In that Yugoslavia that had a pentacle on the flag - after all, imported from Russia, as well as blue-white-red flag - occasionally there was a discussion about the ceremonial song or the national anthem. The contests remained unsettled until the end, and "Hey Slavs"/"Poland Has Not Fallen" from the first half of the 19th century, the Pan-Slavic-Sokol anthem between the two world wars, is still sung today. He stands up and, at least in stadiums, whistles. That anthem, the booing, should somehow be preserved: even a skeptical interpretation of mass (fan) trends says that the booing will last longer than any anthem. Glory to the gods! The only - well, let's say democratic - solution can only be a national referendum. But, instead of the question "Are you in favor of an independent and independent and yet such and such a future in an alliance, community, brotherhood and independent chairs...", the list would be much longer. Simple, top ten: numbers on a piece of paper, and everyone should write the name of the anthem. Well, let it be "Djurdjevdan", or "Kalashnikov", or "Eclipse", "The Nizam's Farewell", "The International", "Vostani Serbie", "March on the Drina", "Ljepa vaja"... Even "God's Justice" (by the way, the anthem of Republika Srpska), although our kingdom - divine and earthly - is thin, short, nonexistent.

The worst thing would be if these new, democratic authorities of Serbia and, let's assume, to some extent, of Yugoslavia too, by some decree or law forts anthem. Poland will definitely fail then.