{"id":14670,"date":"2020-10-24T10:28:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T08:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.p-portal.net\/?p=14670"},"modified":"2021-07-15T10:46:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T08:46:50","slug":"cicvara-from-lika-and-fish-stew-from-vojvodina-underscored-by-sadness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/cicvara-from-lika-and-fish-stew-from-vojvodina-underscored-by-sadness","title":{"rendered":"Cicvara from Lika and Fish Stew from Vojvodina, Underscored by Sadness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The songs of all ethnic communities which are constantly forced to move and live in uncertainty are, as a rule, filled with melancholy for a bygone life and lost mother country. This creates a culture of longing and remembrance that desperately try to save from oblivion \u201cthe life before\u201d, which is in those memories always much better than the life after, even when it was difficult. The frontier people in Croatia, mostly Serbs, inhabiting areas of the former Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina<\/em>), are used to this \u201csuffering and hope\u201d, as the title of a certain book says. A part of the identity of these people is the memory of both: home, family, daily hard work, joys and sorrows on the one hand and leaving that home and the traumatic journey into the unknown on the other. In the words of Serbian writer Milovan<\/strong> Danojli\u0107<\/strong>: \u201cWe repeat the destiny of our ancestors and follow their paths with no choice in the matter, almost unconsciously \u2013 migrations are one of the cornerstones of our existence in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n

“People who arrived fleeing from evil”<\/strong><\/h5>\n

One of these many Serbian migrations was the great migration from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to Vojvodina after the Second World War. The colonists brought with them not only their necessities, but also their beliefs and way of life, which constituted not only their micro-culture, but also their guiding principles and the meaning of their existence. They were recognizable by their characteristic speech, specific objects and local customs, which are ingrained in their identity in the new Vojvodina landscape to this day. Of course, they also brought with them their songs, somewhat rough from years of unstable life, always on the border and sad from losses of every kind, which seem to be inscribed in the fate of every Serbian community. To quote again Danojli\u0107 on the endless Serbian migrations: \u201cThese are people who arrived fleeing from evil, who are prepared for the worst and are still in a spasm of worry, and this spasm remains even after they settle and found a home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHateful enemies\u201d \u2013 the best hosts<\/strong><\/h5>\n

These first 436 families of colonists who arrived in the village of \u010conoplja in Vojvodina, as well as those who came to neighbouring places in late autumn of 1945 and moved into abandoned German or Hungarian houses (often several families to one house), met a new, different world, circumstances and customs. As their descendants tell us today, these newcomers in need, wet from the rain, were welcomed and given shelter by a kind Hungarian man, which must have been exceedingly strange to them, as they had never met these foreign people in their old country. The principal of the school in the neighbouring village \u2013 its former pupils tell us \u2013 was German, which meant a different kind of discipline and approach to knowledge and learning. Moreover, the official terminology of the time named Germans as \u201chateful enemies\u201d, but according to the descendants of the first colonists today, in reality these remaining Germans in \u010conoplja and nearby villages were the main helpers to former frontiersmen in settling in and starting a new life. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs children in our new homes in Vojvodina, every evening we used to listen about the hard battles with the Germans in Croatia and Bosnia in the Second World War, and the next day some other Germans from the villages we came to would teach our people about the work around the house and in the fields,\u201d the elderly inhabitants of \u010conoplja tell us today. As they tell us, there were no more Dalmatian or Kordun hearths about which the old and the young gathered, with polenta, sour cabbage and cicvara. Instead, they found ceramic stoves and wood stoves and completely different dishes and customs surrounding them. \u201cOur women went to the local German and Hungarian women for instructions in cooking, knitting and pickling tomatoes for the winter. It would be very wrong to say the natives didn\u2019t help us then,\u201d inhabitants of \u010conoplja say today.<\/p>\n

A clash of different worlds<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In the neighbouring village of Prigrevica, where Germans, Hungarians and Bunjevci also lived, the settlers were amazed to find some fifty or sixty pianos, rich libraries and completely strange furniture. \u201cIt was a cultural shock for our parents,\u201d they say today. It was a clash between the settlers and the natives. The contacts among young people were also complex: German and Hungarian girls, dressed impeccably, would come to parties and dances accompanied by their mothers and aunts, while the newcomers would come in the company of each other. \u201cBut when that last German community was leaving \u010conoplja in the early 1950s, the whole village cried and we all went to the station to see them off,\u201d our hosts tell us. Regardless of the fact that there were still many fresh graves in those difficult times, alongside hatred and despair there were still in places warmth and love.<\/p>\n

In any case, the colonists had to adapt, but they could not turn into Ba\u010dvani, into Lale, even if they wanted to. \u201cWe were all the same to them, although we know that there is a big difference between upper and lower Kordun, for example, and Bukovica, not to mention Lika, Dalmatia and Serbs from \u017dumberak,\u201d \u010conoplja people say. What is most important is the fact that the old country could not be torn from the heart, and it remains that way with many colonists today. They say that the natives of Vojvodina and the settlers are easily recognized even by the way they walk: people who arrived from hilly areas walk firmly, in large steps, and for them twelve kilometres on foot over a mountain is a common distance, while Lale walk casually and slowly, and the few kilometres to their farmstead are covered in a horse carriage. The settlers yell and talk sparsely, work quickly and sing sad and hard songs about the old country; the natives talk in a long and leisurely manner, work slowly since there is always time and sigh softly in songs about the old carriage, accompanied by the high notes of the violin. This is the complex and enduring puzzle of the multicultural life in Vojvodina.<\/p>\n

In this clash of cultures and customs, the colonists in Vojvodina had to preserve something of their own or die out. Naturally, today the situation with the third generation of colonists is different due to assimilation and emigration, but very visible traces of the culture from the old country are still there and are painstakingly kept alive, regardless of the new times, today\u2019s civilization of forgetting and the tomorrow which is always uncertain.<\/p>\n

Partisan culture and culture for the people<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Since the first wave of colonization from Croatia to Vojvodina included families who were victims in the Second World War and the fighters of the People\u2019s Liberation Movement, they brought, along with traditional customs, a kind of \u201cpartisan culture\u201d, which primarily manifested in the remembrance of the dead and in naming localities after people\u2019s heroes from the fight against the occupiers. Therefore today in many colonist villages in western Vojvodina, in spite of today\u2019s widespread trend of renaming streets and squares on all sides, we still find streets bearing the names of people\u2019s tribunes, heroes and benefactors from Croatia: Marko Ore\u0161kovi\u0107<\/strong>, Rade Kon\u010dar<\/strong>, Matija Gubec<\/strong>, \u0110oko Jovani\u0107<\/strong>, Strossmayer<\/strong>, Milo\u0161 Kljaji\u0107<\/strong>, Nikola Tesla, seven secretaries of SKOJ<\/strong>…<\/p>\n