Only Unity Saves the Serbs

Only Unity Saves the Serbs (Serbian: Само слога Србина спасава, romanized: Samo sloga Srbina spasava,^[a] commonly abbreviated as СССС) is a popular motto and slogan in Serbia and among Serbs, often used as a rallying call during times of national crisis and against foreign domination. The phrase is an interpretation of what is taken to be four Cyrillic letters for "S" (written С) on the Serbian cross. Popular mythology attributes the motto to Saint Sava, the founder and first Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, however, the true author is Jovan Dragašević, a Serbian military officer and writer.^[1]

The motto represents the "idea of betrayal", one of the main themes in the Kosovo Myth – the antithesis of Miloš Obilić's heroism embodied in the figure of Vuk Branković, who legend holds fled the battlefield, the moral of the story being that discord and betrayal among the Serbs had doomed the nation to fall into the hands of the Ottomans.^[2]

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).