Jović Srđan: Razgovor s Adžijom

Srđan Jović: Conversation with Adžija

Dr. Srđan Jović's book "Conversation with Adžija", which also has significant documentary value, will certainly arouse great interest among readers. In the first part of the book, entitled "The Trace of Adžija's War Diary" (1941-1945), Srđan Jović (otherwise the author of the well-known featurette "Storm over the Krajina", published in thirteen installments in the magazine "Hrvatska ljevica" in 1996 and 1997) brings the most interesting parts of the diary of Nikola Adžija, the older brother of Božidar Adžija (who was shot in Zagreb in 1941 together with Otokar Keršovani, Augusto Cesarec and other prominent left-wing intellectuals). Nikola Adžija, a prominent citizen of Drniš, recorded daily what was happening in that small town and its surroundings, and occasionally what was happening in the Šibenik and Knin areas, as well as in Lika and Bania, during "that war". At the same time, he whipped Germans and Italians, Ustasha and Chetniks, war profiteers and looters equally harshly, and he did not hide the mistakes of the partisans either. He recorded how he found out about his brother's death and how he experienced the terrible news, and what Božidar Adžija said to his wife Lidija before the shooting... In the second part of the book, entitled "E moj barba Nina", the author turns to his (deceased) barba Nina (Nikoli Adžija) and tells him - using articles from the media from that time - what is happening in their Drniš (and beyond) in the "new war", in the time since 1991. until 1995, leaving it up to the readers to make comparisons and draw their own conclusions. At the end of the book, "instead of a conclusion", there is a contribution by Stipe Šuvar (published in "Hrvatska ljevica" in 1995), which contains a list of all rural settlements in Croatia where only Serbs lived in 1991, then those where they were more than 90 percent, then those where they were the majority population, as well as a list of urban settlements with a Serb majority and a list of larger cities where Serbs had a significant share of the total population in 1991 population. In his foreword, Pero Kvesić, among others, points out: "Some say that history is a teacher of life, others that - unfortunately - it has not yet taught anyone anything. Both of them are right. If we expect history to teach us what could happen to us, it can, but expecting that knowledge to prevent people from repeating old mistakes in a new way turned out to be illusory. In any case, history still helps us to interpret what happened to us, so that we can move on. necessary material, in order to have something to refine on the way to knowledge..."