TRADITION
is not
nourishing
past,
but
permanent
Tradition in Montenegro
is cultivated with special care, and probably
nowhere else cherishes and preserves as well
as in these areas.
When
we say this, we must bear in mind that in recent time
there is
more
and more rapid
change
in attitude towards tradition.
Recently,
when specific conditions in which the traditions grown
disappear,
at the time of rapid transition to a modern lifestyle and behaviour,
and adaption to the new environment, comes to the abandonment of
tradition and traditional ethnic norms, which leads to alienation and
moral declining.
In
such conditions the young people remain uninformed about
their
background and their ancestors, and so, looking at the past from the
present perspective, consciously or not - create a wrong picture about
it.
As
a consequence, there are
more and more examples
that many, especially
young ones, try
to be as far as possible away from the "old" to bypass
and "forget"
their humble peasant origins -
which often makes them funny.
Just
to remember how thoroughly
we study the history of other nations-and we
will
see how little we know about ourselves, and saying "If
you don't who you are,
you
don't know what you
are" will become even more
logical.
This
work therefore aims to
partly
fill this gap,
of
course
within
margins of the topics
that treats, and
as much
as it is
possible with this approach.
As an ingenious man
said,
nothing
begins from us -
us
neither
...
Respecting,
thought that the tradition
is not
fostering obsolete, but
what's
lasting and worth, I tried to obtain and present basic information
about Lješev Stup
and clan Popivoda, singling out what I thought
should be remembered.
Taking
facts from oblivion, I wanted
to
younger, who are territorial and more
or
less distant from the old homeland, tell some facts and traditions of
their Native village and the development of family lineage, life and
movement of their ancestors in recent times, their temper and mentality
and the environment in which they lived for centuries.
I've
invested a lot of effort in finding the source material, to
present
more
data based on archival documents and literature, but, despite such
efforts, a good part of my narratives had to be based on folk
tradition, which in earlier times was the only "textbook"
of
history.
Since 1967, I started
recording
memories
of
our old cousins late
Milovan
Lazarev (1897-1972),
late
Jagoš Gorčinov (1896-1982), Vuko
Lukin (1889), Krsto
Lukin (1891), Nikola
Radojev (1897)
and a few Popivoda
born after the year1900.
They knew a lot about the past, and all the
traditions that are listed here -
came from them.
The clan Kuzman, which binds us centuries fellowship, I wrote
a little bit, but I am aware that this is not enough.
The
reason is that they started
relocating more
than
two hundred years ago, so
in this century in the village lived only two or three families, so
thorough exploration of their past
would
require more time and effort.
Because
of that
I had, although
against
my
will, to leave
that to
someone else to do.
I'm
sorry that here
you will not find information about our mothers and sisters who
have
the merit for everything good and
honoured, and who
endured tremendous efforts.
But
it would
overload us with data
that
are not always sufficiently checked, or would have been incomplete,
so
it
would be wrong against those who would
not
be mentioned.
I
want to emphasize that
for
the
cousins who survived the 1941-1945
war I did not give biographical and other information, except when
their name linked to specific events on which
we talk.
I thought
that for this, however,
we
require
some time distance.
The exception is somewhat Krsto Gorčinov, because the entire advanced activities in the village - especially until 1941.
was inextricably linked to his revolutionary activities, and it had
great influence on everything
that occurred in
the village later.
This work has no other pretensions than to members of the clan Popivoda,
and others who are interested in it, offer the possibility to find in one place
some information about this Katunian village and
its inhabitants, data so far have been scattered, and as tradition
would permanently fallen into oblivion.
Cetinje
17.
July 1984th
AUTHOR
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