Slobodan Selenic On The Critical Edition

In the last several issues of the Belgrade daily ``Politika'' I read extensive expositions of the authors of the critical edition of the so-called Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, but I am afraid I still do not understand why and in whose name this is being done. Respected academicians Vasilije Krestic, Kosta Mihajlovic and Ivan Maksimovic (who as far as I know were very active in compiling the so-called Memorandum) are now working on the critical edition of the text which other members of the Academy have never had a chance to read, and let alone approve or adopt. Therefore, I must ask why is the critical edition of the commission draft of a SANU document being done before all members of this institution have been given an opportunity to express their opinion about it or even verify it.

In 1991, indeed, on the request of academics Ljubisa Rakic and Predrag Palavestra, one group of academics was elected to compile a draft of the new Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. However, their work was suddenly and without an official explanation aborted. At the sessions where the draft was discussed, a number of academicians presented very serious, often radical, and, in my opinion, extremely important and accurate, mostly critical objections to the so-called Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, I cannot answer the question how it is possible that none of them was invited to cooperate on the critical edition of the so-called Memorandum, but only those, the majority of whom revised its first version, that the academicianss never verified.

This is my opinion: if the critical or any other edition of the so-called Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences was compiled, then it should have encompassed all stands which the Academy members have with regard to its basic theses. However, I am positive that the stands of numerous academics will not coincide with those supported by three respected authors in their expositions in the Belgrade daily ``Politika.''