“Tito forbade us to go to Kosovo with tanks”

Josip Broz Tito, Photo: Archive Hello

A Serbian oil tanker in the Soviet Army

Milan Runić, a former professor and dean of the Zrenjanin Faculty of Technology, although 93 years old, remembers and perfectly conveys some of the most important events in the history of this area.

He was a high school student when the Hungarian occupation forces entered Novi Sad. They broke into the courtyard of their house, were saved from death by their father, who spoke Hungarian and was a reservist in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I.

At that time, 17-year-old Runić left Novi Sad and went to Kruševac with his mother. The partisans killed dozens of German soldiers during an action. In retaliation, the Germans randomly arrested him and took him to shoot. Runić, a high school student, fled to the village and joined the partisan movement.

In the Red Army by the Russian

Somewhere near Zajecar, he met with units of the Red Army. He was a good student and knew Russian, his aunts were married to white Russians, that led him to join them.

“The boss asked me if I knew trigonometry, so I was in the seventh grade of high school, he said I know, how could I not know. He says we need tanker trucks, it was a tank division, he says, you could be a shooter of a tank T34 “. they are in the process of doing that, in an hour, ”says Runić.

The first battle in which he took part took place between Čačak and Kraljevo, the Germans tried to cut off the front of the Russians. He did very well in the tank. The driver, he says, was an Uzbek, the commander of the tank who died in Avala, and took command, was Russian. The crew also included Kyrgyz, and he soon received the rank of officer, as a tank commander.

Russian saved my life

The memories of one of the few living witnesses to World War II are still fresh. Especially the most beautiful, the memories of Russian soldiers.

“I never had the same relationship with the people as with the Russians. There were some Natasha sergeants in logistics, each unit had the logistics, if they hit the tank, they dragged it to repair it. That Natasha asked the battalion commander to be having lunch. in “And he was ashamed of the Russians. I was there once or twice, and couldn’t do it anymore. I went from battle to battle, I didn’t have time to do anything else, “recalls a Soviet tanker from Novi Sad.

He adds that the relationship with the Russians and their mutuals was much better than between the people in our units, and he was with the partisans for two months, but he also met them along the way. A Russian saved his life during the battles for the liberation of Belgrade.

“I got out of the tank, and a German fired a machine gun from the second floor. He threw himself, threw himself on me so as not to hit me. He was a sergeant, from another tank. He asked me who I was, who my mother was, who does he say I am? they killed, he thought they had beaten me, “Runic tells us.

Across the Old Sava Bridge just past Zaric

Our interlocutor participated directly in one of the most important parts of the operation to liberate the capital, in the action of saving the Old Sava Bridge.

“It was the only bridge we were able to cross the Sava. My tank was the first, there were miners in front of us. That man, Zaric, helped clear the bridge, he came by boat. I talked to him for a while, until we crossed over.”

If the Soviets had gone to Kosovo then it would have been different

In the second part of his “Book of Memories”, which will be published soon, our interlocutor deals especially with Kosovo and Metohija because, as he himself says, today’s events in the southern province of Serbia are related exactly to what it happened at the end of World War II.

“We were supposed to go to Kosovo, my unit, but Tito forbade it, I wrote it in a book. My main lieutenant told me: Runic, we cannot go to Kosovo. We were not allowed to enter Croatia either. He ordered, as he did. Those who were in front of Srem demanded that we cross the front with tanks, that I do it, with three tanks, but that I return. “

He was demobilized from a Soviet Army unit in 1946 and, as he says, moved into ours. After that, he was in Kosovo. He says that even then he was a witness to the events that affected the current situation in southern Zelje, about which little is still said.

“There, the Shiptar who were supposed to lead Srem fought. Not enough is said about the fact that they joined the Italians and the Germans en masse.”

Goli otok also survived

Due to his political views, he ended up on Goli Otok. After several months of harassment, an officer from Vojvodina, Udba, informed him that he would be transferred above Novi Vindolski, where trees were being felled for the sawmill’s needs. That job saved him.

Upon his return in 1951, he suffered the consequences of the label of a naked islander, devoted himself to science and years later received the well-deserved position of dean.

Through judicial rehabilitation, the state has somehow repaired the damage done to its reputation. However, Russia remembers its heroes, it has decorated Milan Runic up to five times. He received the first veteran’s medal on March 20, 1995, when the Embassy of the Russian Federation celebrated 50 years of victory in the Great Patriotic War.

He regrets that after the war he never met his comrades from Russia and the former Soviet republics with whom he fought for life in freedom.

“I was closest to a senior lieutenant, he gave him an address in Moscow to look for him. That’s what I did in 1969, I took students to Russia, but it was too late, a war partner from Moscow died a year earlier, still” I saw your daughter, “said the only Serbian oil tanker, a member of the Soviet army, at the end of the interview for Sputnik.