Dva meseca u jugoslovenskom Sibiru

U knjizi "Dva meseca u jugoslovenskom Sibiru", Dragisa Vasic, jedan od najznacajnijih srpskih intelektualaca, donosi potresno svedocanstvo sa granice Kraljevine SHS i Albanije, gde je 1920. godine, po kazni vlasti, poslat na dvomesecnu vojnu vezbu usred gusenja albanske pobune. Kao urednik nezavisnog dnevnog lista "Progres", Vasic je zbog svojih ostrih politickih komentara i kritika rezima izazvao paznju cenzure i postao nepozeljan. Zatvaranjem lista i njegovim mobilisanjem, drzava pokusava da ga ucutka, ali bez uspeha. Po povratku iz tog "jugoslovenskog Sibira", kako sam ironicno naziva zabacenu, korupcijom i nasiljem razaranu pogranicnu oblast, Vasic objavljuje seriju zapazanja i politickih komentara u listu "Republika", a već 1921. objedinjuje ih u ovoj snaznoj, dokumentarno-literarnoj knjizi. Revoltiran odnosom Kraljevine SHS prema ovom pogranicnom podrucju (slanje najgorih cinovnika koji su sirokogrudo saradjivali sa albanskim pobunjenicima "kacacima"), kroz gorke slike svakodnevice vojnika, korumpiranih cinovnika i bescasca drzavnog aparata, autor otkriva tamnu stranu posleratne stvarnosti. Njegovo pero je britko, a patriotizam bez ostatka: posvecen narodu, pravdi i zrtvama, Vasic ne stedi ni rezim ni samog sebe u potrazi za istinom.

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A searing witness account from one of Serbia's foremost intellectuals. In 1920, after his sharp political editorials in the independent daily Progres drew the ire of the authorities, Dragiša Vasić was "disciplined" with a two-month posting to the lawless borderland between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Albania-amid the suppression of the Albanian uprising. He would later call it his "Yugoslav Siberia." What he found there was not order but a bleak mosaic of conscripts' hardship, predatory officials, routine violence, and a state apparatus willing to look away.

Back from the frontier, Vasić published his reports in Republika and, in 1921, gathered them into this documentary-literary book. The prose is lean and exact, patriotic without illusions: loyal to people rather than to power, merciless toward corruption, and unsparing even of the author himself. Through bitter, unforgettable scenes-soldiers in mud, bribed administrators, the uneasy traffic with kačak insurgents-Vasić uncovers the dark underside of the postwar order and asks what justice, truth, and responsibility might still mean at the edges of a young state.