Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

The Holy Assembly of Bishops vehemently protested the “desecration of
the prince-bishop’s relics.” 33 Eventually, in spite of the Church’s resistance,
the old chapel was brought down in 1972, after the Serbian Orthodox
Church lost a long legal battle. Also in 1972, the League of Communists of
Serbia fought back by saying in an analysis that the Serbian Orthodox
Church, “through the current campaign over Njegosˇ’s mausoleum at Lovćen,
again is showing political ambitions and tendencies aimed at opposing
the politics of decentralization and national emancipation in our country.” 34
The newly built mausoleum was the pride of the Federated Socialist Republic
of Montenegro. Visitors could access the mausoleum from a mountain road
through a 120-meter-long tunnel and 372 stairs. The main hall was 11
meters high, with a 65-by-37-meter plateau from which visitors could see
the magnificent Bay of Kotor in the distance. The mausoleum occupied the
entire peak of the mountain, which had been leveled to create room for this
monumental structure. The new symbol attracted tourists and excursions
and promoted a sense of the distinct Montenegrin national identity as well
as Yugoslav socialism and brotherhood and unity.
50 balkan idols
Commemorations and Renewal
Surveys of religiosity in 1960, 1965, and 1968 carried out by the Institute
of Social Sciences in Belgrade showed that the greatest number of those
who declared themselves to be religious, despite the general trends of decline
of religiosity, were Catholics and Muslims. 35 A 1966 survey of 2,528 students
at the universities of Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo found that “Catholicism
had maintained itself to a much higher extent than Orthodoxy.” 36 Polls conducted
in the 1970s and early 1980s showed similar trends. 37 The sociologist
Srdjan Vrcan concluded that “the Serbian Orthodox Church, due to [a] convergence
of social, political, and cultural changes with secularizing consequences,
seems to be the least resistant to erosion of religious affiliation.” 38
Vrcan’s research, completed in 1985–86, showed that
62.3 percent of all respondents, having identified themselves as Roman
Catholics, declared themselves to be personally religious and 31.4 percent
were not religious. At the same time 43 percent of all respondents who
identified themselves as Moslems declared themselves religious, and 45.3
percent as nonreligious. Only 26.2 percent of all respondents, having identified
themselves as Orthodox believers by religious affiliation, considered
themselves religious, and 64 percent not so. 39
In a 1970 homily, Patriarch Germanus lamented: “Our own statistics
show that only an insignificant part of Orthodox population welcomes the
priest to their homes, read religious publications, and actively participate in
church’s life.” 40 However, the church historian Milan Kasˇanin, in a Septem-