A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Second Editor's Letter

Dear Readers,

The world of Serbica Americana is a captivating place — the more you know about it, the more interesting it gets. Never has it been so vital to understand how issues in the Old or New Country impact our lives and business. (...and never has information and dialogue about both Old and New been so easily accessible.)

As you already know, only Serbica Americana links the events around the world and brings you all you need to know, plus other stories which are just too good to miss -- thus aspiring to contribute to this dialogue.

Serbian interest in the history of the Diaspora, the search for its puzzles and the will of God in it, reveals a faith in the future, in God’s providential presence and labor throughout history.

The life of the Serbian community in the USA unfolds on the field of dramatic history which is interwoven with God’s providence. A great number of Serbs who find themselves for longer or shorter periods of time spread out throughout the world – often departing after difficult deliberation – remain connected to the land of their birth or ancestry, living a 'double consciousness'...

Departing into the Diaspora could be compared to leaving to a “monastery,” as a type of alienation followed by deprivation, fasting, prayer… (forms of a struggle or podvig that balances a person's aspirations against his inclinations.) It appears that the lone institution which can today sustain the continuation and connection of Serbs throughout the world is the Serbian Orthodox Church, more than anything else because of the quality which we call togetherness ("sabornost"). This in itself brings an enormous responsibility. It is our deepest conviction that the Church plays this uniting role among the Serbian people thanks to her eschatological dimension and ability to accept history on account of her children.

You are invited to once again join the many curious readers of Serbica Americana around the world who rely on the in-depth analysis and insightful commentary that only Serbica Americana delivers.

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SA

 

People Directory

Nick D. Petrovich

Nick D. Petrovich - former Serbian Unity Congress President. Formerly VP Finance of Monsanto Chemical Company's Mexico subsidiary, Managing Director for Latin America for American Standard Company, President and founder of Intercapital S.A., and BRP S.A.a management consulting firm, and former V.P of Board of Trustees University of the Americas. Currently board member of Achieve Global, and Challenger Corp., Mexico.

Nick was born in Uzice, Serbia. In 1950 he immigrated to US where he lived for twelve years. In 1962 he moved to Mexico.

Nick is married and has three children, Alex, Olga and Ana.

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Publishing

My Brother's Keeper

by Fr. Radovan Bigovic

Rare are the books of Orthodox Christian authors that deal with the subject of politics in a comprehensive way. It is taken for granted that politics has to do with the secularized (legal) protection of human rights (a reproduction of the philosophy of the Enlightenment), within the political system of so-called "representative democracy", which is limited mostly to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations. Most Christians look at politics and democracy as unrelated with their experience of the Church herself, which abides both in history and in the Kingdom, the eschaton. Today, the commercialization of politics—its submission to the laws of publicity and the brainwashing of the masses—has literally abolished the "representative" parliamentary system. So, why bother with politics when every citizen of so-called developed societies has a direct everyday experience of the rapid decline and alienation of the fundamental aspects of modernity?

In the Orthodox milieu, Christos Yannaras has highlighted the conception of the social and political event that is borne by the Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, which entails a personalistic (assumes an infinite value of the human person as opposed to Western utilitarian individualism) and relational approach. Fr Radovan Bigovic follows this approach. In this book, the reader will find a faithful engagement with the liturgical and patristic traditions, with contemporary thinkers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all in conversation with political science and philosophy. As an excellent Orthodox theologian and a proponent of dialogue, rooted in the catholic (holistic) being of the Orthodox Church and of his Serbian people, Fr Radovan offers a methodology that encompasses the above-mentioned concerns and quests.