Mausoleum of Struggle and Victory, Čačak, Serbia
Designed by Bogdan Bogdanović, 1980
The story of the Čačak Spomenik touches on one of Yugoslavia’s painful conflicts.
It commemorates over 4,600 partisan soldiers and citizens killed during the struggle for the liberation of the town of Čačak. Many of them, not by the hands of Nazi forces but by their national brothers and former alias- the Chetniks.
Although in the beginning, the Chetniks joined forces with the communist Partisans and fought shoulder to shoulder with them against the Nazis in the struggle to liberate and form the Republic of Užice (with the town of Čačak in its borders). They later took back and embraced a strategic approach of collaborating with the occupying forces. This collaboration grew gradually to the point where Chetniks took sides with the Germans in attacking the Partisans, eventually leading to the re-occupation of the Republic of Užice, Čačak included.
When Bogdanović was selected to design the monument, he submitted draft plans for his Mausoleum. It was planned to have three megarons lined up on a pathway leading from the exact direction of sunrise on the Winter Solstice to the direction of the sunset on the Summer Solstice.
The sketches show that Bogdanović’s initial intention was to have about a dozen monster heads decorating the monument; however, as the construction progressed, he ordered more and more monster heads to be curved out of the black stone until eventually the entire Spomenik was covered with about 620 black monster heads.
The Spomenik is full of symbolism; visiting it feels like entering a world of ancient myth that draws inspiration from places like Stonehenge. I traveled through the empty Spomen-park for a while, absorbing the spirit of the place, trying to disregard the neglect and graffiti. The clicking of my camera’s shutter was the only thing interfering with the sounds of birds from the hill above the Spomenik.
I was so focussed on shooting and composing this mystic monument that I didn’t notice the silhouette walking away from me between the trees. Only a distant cough drew my attention. My eyes searched the park to see who it was, and then I noticed him- a thin old man wearing a jacket and a flat cup walking slowly away from me with his hands behind his back.
As my camera stopped clicking, he stopped and turned back, gazing at me for a few seconds before he turned again and disappeared into the trees.
That evening I thought about this old man, how old he was when the town of Čačak was liberated, what does this mausoleum mean for him, and what was thinking about the foreign photographer who bothered him that day, disturbing the silent with his camera’s clicks.
More information about the Spomenik can be found here:
https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/cacak