29.10.2014
The book about Aleksandar Rankovic at the Belgrade Book Fair
The book tells about the affair that changed the course of history of socialist Yugoslavia. It revolved around Aleksandar Rankovic, the first man of Yugoslav and Serbian security agencies and the organizational secretary of the Communist Party. Based on previously unknown archive build from the Military Security Agency, the book problematizes the “Brijuni affair”, bringing new data against the accusations of that time. The book is enriched with numerous photographs from a personal photo-album of the Rankovic family, available to the public for the first time.
Scientific associate at the Institute of Contemporary History Bojan Dimitrijevic said that the book is a result of many years of work and that it was “rather brave” to publish a book about this topic in the course of marking the centenary of the beginning of the Great War and with numerous books about this topic.
- It has been a great honor for me, as a historian, to gain access to new data, unpublished in the Rankovic case. Reading of this book offers the public a new view of everything that took part then, and the chance to make new interpretations on the basis of relevant archive materials. If the book doesn’t completely rehabilitate Rankovic, I believe that it will help perceive the entire event with more depth – Dimitrijevic said.
Analyst at the Military Security Agency Irena Popovic Grigorov stressed that the Brijuni Plenary is the protagonist of the book about Rankovic, because this event brought about the breakup of Yugoslavia.- We have told a familiar story in a new way and tried to answer the questions – why and who needed the bugging affair, whether Rankovic actually bugged Tito and why he had never told his own version of the event. We also wanted to know what the opinion of military security agencies was about that and why no one defended Aleksandar Rankovic. I certainly warmly recommend this book for the upcoming cold days – the author said.
Former MSA Director retired General Svetko Kovac stressed that the authors’ wish was to say what the others hadn’t said.
- “The Rankovic case” cannot be summarized because this work is rich in information, previously known and unknown. The main focus of the book is certainly on the bugging, which we placed in a special frame. We interpreted the submitted documents, and gave our opinion in the 10th chapter – that Rankovic did not bug Tito, and that he never wanted to be Tito’s successor. The bugging affair had been previously planned. We researched how it came to be that Rankovic, who had spent his life in security agencies, was caught off guard, and we believed that this was the case because he had been blindly loyal to Tito, hoping that he would never succumb to such rumors – General Kovac said.
The visitors were also greeted by Director of Media Center Odbrana Colonel Stevica S. Karapandzin, who stressed that the first edition of the book “The Rankovic case” is almost sold out and that this book has attracted large attention from readers.
On the fourth day of the Book Fair, two publications of Media Center Odbrana will be presented – “Missile systems in defence of small countries” by General Miodrag Gordic and Ivan Petrovic and “Informational logistics systems” by retired General Danko Jovanovic.
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