{"id":21154,"date":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/?p=21154"},"modified":"2026-04-29T13:18:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T13:18:44","slug":"not-a-fairy-tale-but-third-chapter-second-story-pacifism-as-intuition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/2026\/04\/not-a-fairy-tale-but-third-chapter-second-story-pacifism-as-intuition\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Fairy Tale But… Third Chapter, Second Story: Pacifism as Intuition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Pacifism as Intuition”<\/strong>
-Second Story of the April Monthly Chapter-
Written by Na\u0111a Bobi\u010di\u0107
Voiceover by Marija Drndi\u0107<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no one to hear the peace demands. Only a handful of people attended the gathering “Call for Reason and Peace.” An older woman from Kotor reminded them how in 1940, women had also organized a similar pacifist gathering in Kotor, distributing olive branches and calling for peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we imagine a parallel image separated by half a century, 1940 and 1991, of an older woman preserving and passing down memories through the decades, it might resemble a movie scene. The question arises as to why, both times, the anti-war appeals of the activists were carried away by the wind. First, the socialist society had forgotten the interwar anti-war actions of women. Today, it seems as though the memory of the peace actions from the nineties will also be lost. Women at the Square of Arms calling for peace, what an irony…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, both times, some women organized actions in the square, addressing the community and articulating an alternative to war. Historical facts are not only the destruction of war and photographs of soldiers in full combat gear, but also their counterweight: peace activists standing “steadfast” in the chaos of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What motivated them to take to the streets in the first place, to attempt the impossible? I asked Ervina Dabi\u017einovi\u0107 from Anima:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because we were against conflicts (in plural) and against war. The situation was highly confusing. You had no information. But we were definitely against military plans. It was completely clear to us when people headed to the border with Croatia that there would be a war and that it was something Montenegro absolutely shouldn’t do. I mean, not just Montenegro, it was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia back then…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every one of us was aware that these were our neighbors and our relatives. It was right nearby. Those people came to us as relatives, as friends, and as people bringing their products to sell here. So, a completely normal stance was that there shouldn’t be any shooting. That there shouldn’t be any destruction […] We truly articulated resistance to the war, to the killing. That was perhaps clearer to us than anything else.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year and a half later, similar scenes were repeated. On June 11, 1992, a public protest was held at the Square of Arms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are standing in front of a banner ‘Against killing, destruction, material and cultural misery’. Only about a dozen people are present. It’s raining. I am crying. I will never forget that there were so few people in Kotor against the war in Bosnia and that the time spent standing passed quickly. We dispersed, lonely in our silence” (from the notes of Ljupka Kova\u010devi\u0107).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are pacifist aspirations doomed to fail, to be heard only by a minority, are they in vain? Is war inevitable? Was the majority really unable to organize to massively pressure state structures and prevent the impending catastrophe? Countless difficult questions arise about personal responsibility for consenting to the sacrifice of others as long as it doesn’t concern us directly, about the destructiveness of the collective paranoia that everyone else is an enemy, even though until yesterday they were our neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ervina Dabi\u017einovi\u0107 from Anima provides a brief sketch of what hostility towards the ‘other’ looked like in everyday life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was appalled when women would go out and give cigarettes and cakes to the army. To me, that was completely insane. In the hospital where I worked, it happened that Catholic nuns, who worked with us as nurses, were attacked. Caritas provided huge resources for the people, and one of those nuns would bring milk for all our children. The situation was boiling from the inside. Suddenly, you see people crossing over to the other side. They refuse to say hello to you. It was terrible.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she further explains, in such a context, organizing within the Circle (Krug<\/em>) emerged as an “impulse from within ourselves,” not as a grand political story. Somewhat later, women from this circle, some of whom were psychologists by profession, began working with individuals with refugee status \u2013 with children, and with former prisoners from war camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The framework of work they developed was closely tied to ideas about nonviolent communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps that’s exactly the “catch”? Pacifism is, in fact, what comes to us intuitively and logically \u2013 because what is the point of war, for whose interest, except solely for the enrichment of a privileged minority? Why the fear and distrust towards close people, when the alternative is a life in freedom and solidarity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the stories of pacifists were mandatory reading, if history lessons began with images of the women from Kotor handing out branches of peace, and if empathy was taught instead of grand national myths \u2013 perhaps peace and prosperity would stop seeming like a utopia, and perhaps war would stop being a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Pacifism as Intuition” -Second Story of the April Monthly Chapter- Written by Na\u0111a Bobi\u010di\u0107 Voiceover by Marija Drndi\u0107 There was no one to hear the peace demands. Only a handful of people attended the gathering “Call for Reason and Peace.” An older woman from Kotor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[4,208],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21156,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21154\/revisions\/21156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krokodil.rs\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}