Uncivil Society: Weapons seized from the opposition during the municipal elections in Bujanovac, December 6, 1936. Source: Archiv Jugoslavije

449 Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945

John Paul Newman

The article traces a line of continuity in Serbian nationalizing links between the mass violence of 1912- 1918 and 1941-1945 through an examina- tendencies from the palace coup in Belgrade 1903 through tion of Serbian integral nationalism and its opponents. In this article the term Serbian to the defeat of Serbian nationalist forces in the Yugoslav integral nationalism refers to the strain of Serbian nationalism that called for the inte- Civil War of 1941-1945. Due attention is paid to opponents gration of all Serb-populated lands into one national whole, generally without regard of of these forces, in Austria-Hungary, and later amongst existing political circumstances or the ethnic composition of the lands in question. This Croats. The article uses Alan Kramer’s concept of a ‘dynamic impulse was present throughout our period, it clashed with rival nationalisms and created of destruction’ to show how rivalries between these forces what Alan Kramer was termed a ‘dynamic of destruction’, wherein violence and the de- repeatedly created the conditions for mass violence in the struction of non-national culture was ‘both a by-product of combat and the consequence South Slav lands. of a deliberate policy’.2 Integral nationalists in Serbia frequently directed their efforts towards Kosovo and Macedonia, which were divided between vilayets (provinces) of the Ottoman Empire until 1912 and whose eth- nic composition was mixed. Introduction This article will argue that the support- The lives of both interwar Yugoslavia (1918- ers of this kind of nationalism strongly influ- 1941) and its socialist successor (1945-1991) enced the programme of the Yugoslav Army began and ended in periods of mass, intereth- in the Fatherland (the Chetniks), pushing its nic violence. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, leaders towards a policy of ethnic cleansing of and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) 1 was formed in non-Serbs as a means of creating an integral 1918 after a long period of total war, starting Serbian state on the territory they held. It with the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and then will be shown that the Chetniks’ ideology and intensifying during 1914-1918. The state’s their role in mass violence was determined in occupation and dismemberment by the Axis large part by supporters of the Serbian na- in 1941 was followed by a Yugoslav civil war tional project dating back to 1903. Links will from 1941-1945. And the break-up of the so- also be drawn between the opponents of this cialist state during 1991-1995 was attended project: most notably Austria-Hungary, its by inter-ethnic violence and wars in Slovenia, supporters in the Croat lands during the First Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnia). World War, and the Croatian fascist move- Why this propensity? Why should Yugoslavia have been, in both its royalist 1 From 1918-1929 the official name of the state was the Kingdom of Serbs, and socialist iterations, framed by periods Croats, and Slovenes, thereafter it became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. of mass violence? This article will focus on For the sake of brevity it will be referred to throughout this article as Yugoslavia. the first half of the twentieth century, from 2 Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First 1903 to 1945. It will highlight the important World War (Oxford 2007) 1.

Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - 124e jaargang, nummer 4, p. 448-463 450 John Paul Newman ment, the Ustashe, during the Second World replaced by Petar Karađorđević, heir of the ri- War. Like the Chetniks, the Ustashe were val Serbian dynasty, who returned from exile perpetrators of mass violence during the civil in Geneva to take the throne. Serbia became war in Yugoslavia during 1941-1945. Anti- a constitutional monarchy, and the Serbian Yugoslav Croats in exile formed the Ustasha People’s Radical Party formed the first post- Croatian Revolutionary Organization move- coup government. The party would come to ment at the beginning of the 1930s, osten- dominate the country’s political scene until sibly as a response to the promulgation of the outbreak of the First World War.4 the royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia the year A popular perception of Serbia from before. The Ustashe partly was comprised 1903 until 1914 is of a ‘golden age’ of func- ex-Habsburg officers of Croat descent and tioning parliamentary democracy and con- former Frankists, the latter a pro-Habsburg stitutional rule. King Petar is often seen as political faction strongly opposed to Serbian an instinctively liberal king whose authority nationalism. This article will show that many was curtailed by the constitution of 1903, the of the founders of the Ustashe had also been People’s Radical Party is cast as the midwife associated with Austria-Hungary’s violent of a modern and democratic political system. attempts to ‘denationalize’ Serbia during the Contrary to this perception, recent research First World War. has shown that the period from the coup un- til the outbreak of the First World War was characterized not only by democratic consol- 1903: The ‘Golden Age’ Begins idation and institution-building but also by In 1903 a group of army officers deposed aggressive expansionism and hawkish foreign the Serbian King Aleksandar Obrenović, an policy.5 For many in Serbia their kingdom event that significantly altered Serbia’s tra- in 1903 was surrounded by ‘unredeemed’ jectory in the twentieth century. Aleksandar lands: to the south, the medieval Serbian had been on the throne in Serbia since 1889; lands of Kosovo and Macedonia, still part during his reign many had become hostile of the Ottoman Empire; to the west, Bosnia, to his autocratic style and many more were with its large Serb population. The national- scandalized by his marriage to Draga Mašin, ists’ dream was to integrate these lands into a widow and a woman ‘with a past’. Officers Serbia proper, so that the Serbs there could in the Serbian Army felt that Aleksandar, share in the golden age of political freedom as Supreme Commander of the Army, had and modernization. Nationalists particularly brought their institution into disrepute. From cherished the ‘southern regions’ of Kosovo 1902 onwards they conspired against him, and Macedonia, the sites of great importance and in May (O.S.) the following year they car- to Serbia’s historical and religious heritage. ried out a coup, breaking into the royal palace National awakeners of the nineteenth cen- and murdering both Aleksandar and Queen tury had repeatedly emphasized the impor- Draga.3 The coup was a bloody affair, both tance of these lands, the so-called ‘classical Aleksandar and Draga were thrown out of a south’ of Serbia. palace window, after which conspirators on the ground below maimed their corpses with sabres. It caused outrage in diplomatic circles War in the ‘Classical South’ across Europe and had a number of impor- There was, then, a will to redeem ‘Serbian’ tant consequences in Serbia. Aleksandar was lands; there was also a way. For years groups of Christian bandits had operated in the 3 For an account of the coup and its consequences: Wayne Vucinich, Serbia Ottoman Balkans. Known to the Ottomans between East and West: The Events of 1903-1908 (Stanford 1954). as komitadji, they referred to themselves as 4 Neither the king nor the Radicals had been involved in the coup. 5 Two important monographs that make this point are Olga Popović- četnici, a name derived from the Balkan word Obradović Parlementarizam u Srbiji 1903-1914 (Belgrade 2008, 2nd edition), četa, meaning troop or (military) unit. In and Dubravka Stojanović, Srbija i demokratija:1903-1914: istorijska studija 1902 Serbian nationalists had organized a o “zlatnom dobu srpske demokratije” (Belgrade 2003). See also, Olga Popović-Obradović, ‘The Roots of Anti-Modern Political Culture in Serbia’, četnik ‘executive committee’ with branches in Bosnia Report, 55-56 (January-July 2007), available at http://www.bosnia. various towns across Serbia whose aim was to org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=3183&reportid=173 [acces- sed 21 December 2010]. co-ordinate and strengthen the national cha- 6 6 Vucnich, Serbia Between East and West, 131.132. racter of banditry in the Ottoman Balkans. Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 451

Democracy Rides in to Serbia on a White Horse: King Petar Karađorđević at his coronation in 1904. Source: Archiv Jugoslavije

The private initiative was appealing to some corporation into the Serbian state. This young Serbs – both from within Serbia and meant supporting and promoting the work from Habsburg and Ottoman territories – of četnici who fought against the Ottomans who were eager to assist in the important ‘na- (and against rival Balkan guerrilla groups: tional work’ of the četnik committee.7 Initially especially those from Bulgaria) and dissemi- unsupportive of the ‘hot heads’ in the south, nating Serbian nationalist propaganda (in by 1905 the Serbian government was lending churches and schools, for example) so as to official support – both moral and material strengthen the basis of Serbian national life – to the četnici.8 Expediency sometimes dic- in Kosovo and Macedonia. It is here that we tated that official Serbia distance itself from see the peculiar Janus-face of the Kingdom the četnici, nevertheless they shared the com- of Serbia from 1903-1914: both progressive mittee’s interest in turning desultory acts of and modernizing and aggressively expansion- banditry into more concerted anti-imperial ist and willing to wield violence. On the one guerrilla action. This was the significance hand, the Belgrade government and its sup- of the 1903 coup: it brought the četnici into porters were building schools and churches, closer alignment with official Serbian policy; even theatres – to promote Serbian claims in irredentism in the south had the support of the government. 7 ‘Četnička akcija’, in Narodna Enciklopedija Srba, Slovenaca, i Hrvata, 4 vols The aim of Serbian policy in the Ottoman (Zagreb: 1925-1929) vol. I, 427. Balkans was both to weaken the empire’s 8 Aleksa Jovanović ‘Četnički pokret u Južnoj Srbiji pod Turcima’, in: Aleksa Jovanović ed., Spomenica dvadesetpetogodišnjice oslobođenje južne Srbije grip there and to ‘Serbianize’ or ‘national- (Skopje 1937) 286. See also Vladimir Ilić, ‘Učešće srpskih komita u kuma- ize’ the regions as part of their eventual in- novskoj operaciji 1912. godine’, Vojno-istorijski glasnik 43/1 (1992) 198-199. 452 John Paul Newman Kosovo and Macedonia, on the other hand but it was primarily a consequence of a de- they were funding and training paramilitary liberate policy. The Carnegie Endowment četnici to terrorize non-Serbs and destroy Report on the Balkan wars notes tellingly non-Serb culture and heritage. It is no co- that Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek authori- incidence that this period marked the be- ties did little to prevent atrocities against ginning of the work of the Circle of Serbian the Muslim population during and after Sisters, founded in Belgrade in 1903. The the First Balkan War.10 The victory of the Circle of Serbian Sisters was a nationalist Balkan Alliance meant the destruction and humanitarian society whose activities were theft of property and systematic mass killing focussed primarily on the unredeemed lands of the Muslim population.11The scale of the of Kosovo and Macedonia. Their humanitar- violence and the fact that Balkan authorities ian work appears to be at odds with the vio- did little or nothing towards its prevention lence of the četnici; in fact it was the merely strongly suggests complicity. On the role of the other side of the Serbian nationalizing the četnici, one Serbian soldier, interviewed mission in the south. Nor is it a co-incidence by Leon Trotsky, claimed these irregulars that a number of četnici were or became had committed most of the war’s atrocities. schoolteachers, journalists, and parliamen- The četnici were ‘worse than you could pos- tary deputies. They were ‘national workers’: sibly imagine. Among them there were intel- their portfolios were large and multifaceted. lectuals, men of ideas, nationalist zealots, but These nationalizing policies were hardly these were isolated individuals. The rest were a Serbian speciality: as Mark Biondich has just thugs, robbers, who had joined the army shown, all Balkan states had in common ‘a for the sake of loot.’12 commitment to the nationalist project, the Soon after the First Balkan War, in homogenization of their societies, and the December 1913, a national theatre opened ideology of irredenta’.9 The ‘dynamic of de- in Skopje; a seemingly incongruous event in a struction’ in the Ottoman Balkans was con- region recovering from war; it was in fact en- tested as much between Serbia, Greece, and tirely in line with Serbia’s nationalizing pro- Bulgaria as it was between those states and gramme in the south. The first performance the Ottoman Empire. There was certainly at the new theatre was a re-enactment of the much violence against the Muslim popula- crowning of medieval Serbian king Dušan tion, but there was also much intercommunal the Mighty, whose fourteenth century king- violence between the Orthodox Christian dom had been based in Skopje.13 Serbian populations of the Balkans. In the period integral nationalists wanted to show that 1903-1914 the dynamic reached a peak dur- the medieval history of these regions corre- ing the two Balkan wars 1912-1913, whose sponded to the present reality. origins lie in both the relative weakness of the The dynamic of destruction is evident Ottoman Empire in relation to the combined once again during the Second Balkan War, strength of the states of the Balkan Alliance which began when Bulgaria attacked its for- (Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece) mer Balkan allies over competing claims to and nationalist rivalries between those territories won from the Ottomans in 1912. Balkan states. Serbia’s role in the victory over Bulgaria The ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the meant yet more territorial aggrandizement. Balkans in the wake of the Ottoman defeat Essentially, the victory meant the realisa- in 1912 was a result of this dynamic; it was tion of Serbia’s maximalist programme in partially a spontaneous by-product of war, the south. Since the beginning of the First Balkan War Serbia’s territory had almost doubled in size and now included most of 9 Mark Biondich, The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence since 1878 (Oxford 2011). Kosovo and Macedonia. In the short interbel- 10 The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect: lum between the end of the Second Balkan With a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Day Conflict by War and the beginning of the First World George F. Keenan (Washington DC 1993) 71-78. 11 Ibidem. War nationalization/Serbianization ac- 12 Leon Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912-1913 (London 2008) 161-162. celerated. Non-Serbian schools, churches, 13 Zoran T. Jovanović, ‘Narodno pozorište u Skoplju 1913-1941’, in: Vladimir Cvetanović ed., Književnost Stare i Južne Srbije do Drugog svetskog rata and cultural institutions were destroyed or (Belgrade 1997). closed, non-Serbian language newspapers Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 453 were suppressed, and the Slavic Christian Princip and the ‘Young Bosnia’ movement inhabitants - whichever nationality they was the most sensational (and successful) of professed - were declared ‘Serbian’. Official these attempts.18 Serbia decreed that the regions and their For many years the question of official population be assimilated into Serbia proper. Serbian involvement in the Sarajevo assas- And an officially supported settlement pro- sination preoccupied historians of the First gramme began in the south, as colonists from World War and its origins. It now seems cer- Serbia and Montenegro moved into ‘newly- tain that no such involvement existed. Clearly liberated’ (and newly-vacated) territories.14 integral nationalists in Serbia supported the putative incorporation of Serb-populated Habsburg South Slav lands into an enlarged Austria-Hungary and Serbia 1903-1914 Serbia; clearly this idea was supported in This new direction in Serbia’s foreign policy, principle by the Serbian government. But the culminating in the Balkan wars, was a con- idea that the First World War started as the cern for Austria-Hungary. The Monarchy’s ‘Third Balkan War’ of Serbian national liber- Serb population had grown significantly ation is fanciful; it implies that Serbia could following the occupation of Bosnia in 1878; confront Austria-Hungary in Bosnia just as modern, national, and democratic Serbia was it had confronted the Ottoman Empire in the an attractive alternative to imperial rule for Balkans.19 On this matter there is a visible dif- some Serbs in Austria-Hungary. Moreover, ference between Serbia’s various unredeemed whilst Aleksandar Obrenović had been ame- lands during 1903-1914: the links between nable to Austria-Hungary and its regional in- official Serbia and thečetnici are far more pro- terests, Petar Karađorđević and the Radicals nounced in the south than they are in Bosnia. were ‘Russophiles’ who soon drew the coun- Moreover, at the time of the Sarajevo attentat try closer to the Monarchy’s imperial rival. the Serbian army was exhausted from fight- Antagonisms between Austria-Hungary and ing two wars, the energies of the Serbian state Serbia flared up repeatedly: the two fought were absorbed in the ‘nationalization’ process a tariff war between 1906-1911 (known as in the south, and the Radical government the ‘Pig War’); the annexation of Bosnia in was in the middle of a closely-fought elec- 1908 inflamed nationalist circles in Serbia tion campaign. In the context of the Austro- and Bosnia (although it also prompted offi- Hungarian declaration of war these points cial Serbia to focus its efforts on the more at- hardly matter: the Monarchy had reason to tainable irredenta in the south); and in 1909 want Serbia’s golden age to end. Serbia’s suc- members of the Croat-Serb Coalition in the cesses in the Balkan Wars begged the ques- Croatian Sabor (Assembly) were accused of tion of an eventual expansion into Bosnia. spying for Serbia in two sensational trials Even if such an expansion was not supported (the ‘Zagreb High Treason Trial’ and the in practice by official Serbia in 1914, national- ‘Friedjung Trial’).15 The Balkan Wars then ist groups in Serbia and revolutionary South raised the stakes significantly. Serbia’s spec- Slav Youth in the Habsburg lands were ready tacular military successes and her territorial and willing to force the issue. The assassina- aggrandizement in the south persuaded yet tion of Franz Ferdinand was the casus belli more Habsburg South Slavs (not exclusively

Serbs) that Serbia could liberate them from 14 See Milovan Obradović, ‘Agrarni odnosi na Kosovu 1918-1941’, imperial rule. A number of them crossed Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis, 1/4 (1978) 442. the border in order to volunteer to fight for 15 See Vladimir Čorović, Odnosi između Srbije i Austro-Ugarske u XX veku (Belgrade 1936). 16 Serbia. 16 Amongst them were the Croatian author Miroslav Krleža and Bosnian Serbia’s successes also inspired revolu- Serb schoolboy Gavrilo Princip, the future assassin of Franz Ferdinand. Both were rejected by the Serbian army. tionary South Slav youth in the monarchy to 17 The term is Robin Okey’s. See Taming Balkan Nationalism: The Habsburg seek ‘an unofficial reckoning’ with Austria- Civilizing Mission in Bosnia 1878-1914 (Oxford 2007) 192-216. Hungary.17 From the beginning of the First 18 On revolutionary youth, see: Mirjana Gross, ‘Nacionalne ideje studentske omladine u Hrvatskoj uoči svjetskog rata’, Historijski zbornik xxi-xxii Balkan War onwards South Slav youth in (1969); and Josip Horvat, Pobuna omladine 1911-1914 (Zagreb 2006). the Monarchy attempted a series of attentats On the Sarajevo attentat, see: Vladimir Dedijer, Sarajevo 1914 2 vols. (Belgrade 1978). on Habsburg functionaries and officials. The 19 Joachim Remak, 1914 – ‘The Third Balkan War: Origins Reconsidered’, The assassination of Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Journal of Modern History 43/3 (September 1971). 454 John Paul Newman of the Habsburg-Serbian war, but Austria- first day of the war 200 people were arrested Hungary’s underlying aim was to confront in the town of Split alone.23 These initial in- and defeat an ascendant enemy. ternments developed into a more sophisti- cated system of camps as the war went on. Austria-Hungary pursued a programme of War and Mass Violence 1914-1918 ‘denationalization’ that concentrated on the The outbreak of war between Austria- Serbian population, but which also targeted Hungary and Serbia, then, was the result pro-Yugoslav South Slavs. According to one both of the Serb and South Slav questions estimate, 3323 people from Bosnia were in- within the borders of the Monarchy and the terned during the war at the Arad camp in risk of the Kingdom of Serbia staking a claim Hungary, of whom 553 did not survive.24 on Habsburg territories such as Bosnia. Municipal, military, and judiciary authori- Whatever the European or global impli- ties were purged of Serbian or pro-Yugoslav cations of the First World War, Austria- elements.25 The largest trial of Serbs took Hungary’s war aims in Serbia appear to have place in Banja Luka from N ovember 1915 been relatively modest: to curtail the nationa- until April 1916, when 156 Serbian intellec- list and expansionist currents in Serbia which tuals and political and ecclesiastical leaders had been dominant from 1903 onwards.20 were accused of spying for Serbia. Sixteen To a certain extent the Habsburg fear about of the accused were sentenced to death and Serbian expansion in the Monarchy’s South eight-six to hard labour.26 In occupied Serbia Slav lands became a self-fulfilling prophecy. itself, violence committed by the Austro- Once attacked, the Serbian government had Hungarian army was related in part to fears little to lose by openly stating that they were that četnici had secreted themselves amongst at war for the ‘liberation and unification’ the civilian population. Swiss criminologist from Habsburg rule of all South Slavs.21 Rudolph Archibald Reiss, who gathered in- Austria-Hungary’s South Slav problem formation on Austro-Hungarian atrocities was thus consolidated: the long-held desire against Serbs during September, October, to suppress pro-Serbian and pro-Yugoslav and November 1914, saw a design in this vio- sentiment within its borders was now cou- lence. According to Reiss, the extent of vio- pled with the opportunity for a showdown lence – which included hangings, burning of with Serbia itself. Violence and oppression property, and pillage – meant that it was ‘im- were a function of this consolidated goal. At possible to look upon the atrocities that have the beginning of the war, Austria-Hungary been committed as the acts of a few apaches’; suppressed those who were actually or po- the violence was in fact ‘systematic’.27 tentially sympathetic to the Serbian cause. We must reject the idea of a pathologi- Authorities arrested and interned pro-Yu- cal hatred of Serbia on the part of Austria- goslav intellectuals such as Oskar Tartaglia, Hungary as the root cause of violence during Ante Tresić-Pavičić, and the Bosnian author 1914-1918, or the idea that violence was sim- (and future Nobel-laureate) Ivo Andrić.22 ply a form of collective punishment on Serbia Niko Bartulović, a Croat from Dalmatia for killing Franz Ferdinand. This element amongst those interned, claimed that on the was certainly present: spontaneous anti-Serb demonstrations – even pogroms – took place in towns across Croatia and Bosnia in the 20 See Jonathan Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg days after the attentat.28 However, the dura- Serbia, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2009) 62-63. tion and extent of the violence, its co-ordina- 21 See Milorad Ekmečić, Ratni ciljevi Srbije 1914 (Belgrade 1973) 80-112. 22 See: Ivo Tartaglia, Veleizdajnik (Zagreb/Split 1928); and Ivo Andrić ‘Prvi tion, and its official sanction confirm its- in dan u splitskoj tamnici: pre deset godina’, Vardar (1924). tent: Austria-Hungary wanted to take Serbia 23 Niko Bartulović, Od revolucionarne omladine do Orjune (Split 1925) 51. 24 Pero Slijepčević, ‘Bosna i Hercegovina u svetskom ratu’, in: Pero back to its pre-1903, pre-coup self. The oc- Slijepčević ed., Napor Bosne i Hercegovine za oslobođenje i ujedinjenje cupation authorities even raised a monument (Sarajevo 1929) 226. to Aleksandar Obrenović and Draga Mašin 25 Vladimir Čorović, Crna knjiga patnje Srba Bosne i Hercegovine za vreme svetskog rata 1914-1918 (Belgrade 1989; originally 1920) 139. in Belgrade during the war, a reminder of a 26 Slijepčević, Napor Bosne i Hercegovine, 236. more acceptable period of Habsburg-Serb 27 R.A. Reiss, Report Upon the Atrocities Committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First Invasion of Serbia (London 1916) 144. relations. 28 See: Andrej Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War 1914-1918 (London 2007) 11-23. Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 455 ranged the ‘Banja Luka Trials ‘ of 1916-1917 Croat Support for War against Serbia: The with the aim of decapitating the Serbian na- Frankists tional elite in Bosnia. Johann Salis-Sewis, There is another important dimension to the the Croat general and governor of occupied violence of 1914-1918: the Habsburg-Serb Serbia, shared his views. Salis-Sewis also had war was to an extent also an inter-ethnic a radical solution to the Serbian problem: the conflict between Habsburg South Slavs and incorporation of Serbia into the Monarchy Serbia. This dimension was significant for and the continued suppression of Serbian the future South Slav state. We have seen national life. As he vividly put it, ‘it is better that Austria-Hungary was greatly concerned, that an enemy is in my room where I hold a before and during the war, with South Slavs pistol than outside my door with a pistol in who supported Serbia against the Monarchy. his hand.’31 In fact, there were also many South Slavs who For their part, it seems that the Frankists were loyal to the Habsburgs. No group was hoped that something definite would come louder in its support of Austria-Hungary’s from their links with ruling Habsburg cir- war and in its attacks on Serbia and Serbs cles and their proximity to the Habsburg than the Croatian Pure Party of Right – military. Frankist leaders had previously known as the ‘Frankists – a Croatian natio- raised the idea of a ‘Military Commissariat’ nalist opposition faction in the Sabor whose of Habsburg generals taking control in the anti-Serbianism sat well with Habsburg war Croat lands. In the middle of 1918, as the war aims in Serbia.29 It was the Frankists’ hope reached a critical stage for Austria-Hungary, that their loyalty to the Habsburgs would be police in Zagreb found documents in which rewarded in the post-war period with a re- leading Frankists called for a suspension of organization of the Monarchy which raised the Sabor and the introduction of military South Slavs (that is to say, Croats) to the rule in Croatia.32 The Frankists hoped that same level as Hungarians and Germans, thus an Austro-Hungarian general would be able replacing ‘dualism’ with ‘trialism’.30 To this to prevent ‘Serbian sabotage’ in the region; end, they shared the Habsburgs’ desire to they also preferred the idea of pro-Habsburg reverse nationalist trends amongst the Serbs. military rule to the Croat-Serb Coalition’s ci- The Frankists were in opposition in the vilian assembly. The plan for a military com- Sabor during the war, divided internally and missariat was not realized – and was probably defeated in the 1913 elections by the Croat- never likely to be realized – nevertheless, it Serb Coalition. They were a minority voice, demonstrates the close relationship between but their loyalty to the Habsburgs meant the Frankists and Habsburg military circles they were close to ruling circles. They were a before and during the war. Habsburg elite and their support of Austria- Austria-Hungary’s defeat in 1918 was Hungary’s war meant they were favoured by also the defeat of the Frankists and their another of the Monarchy’s elites: Habsburg supporters in the Habsburg officer corps. army officers of Croat descent. Like the For many Frankists, the Allied and Serbian Frankists, many such officers did not see a victory confirmed their worst fears: a super- contradiction in fighting for both Habsburg charged Serbian nationalism had defeated and Croat interests during the war: the com- Austria-Hungary and now dominated the mon enemy was Serbian nationalism and other South Slav nationalities in Yugoslavia. the reward was increased autonomy within In fact, their defeat was two-fold: not only the Monarchy (it must be remembered that until a very late stage in the war most people 29 Damir Agičić, ‘Civil Croatia on the Eve of the First World War (The Echo in and out of Austria-Hungary expected the of the Assassination and Ultimatum)’, Povijesni prilozi Institut suvremenu povijest 14 (1995) 305. Monarchy to survive in some form or other). 30 For a useful English-language account of the Frankists during 1914-1918, Examples of higher-ranking soldiers who see Stjepan Matković, ‘Members of the Party of Right and the Idea of supported the Monarchy abound: perhaps the Croat State during the First World War’, Review of Croatian History 4 (2008). most notable was Stjepan Sarkotić, military 31 Petar Opačić, ‘Politika genocida austrougarske protiv Srba u prvom svet- governor general of Bosnia and Dalmatia for skom ratu’, Vojnoistorijski glasnik 1/4 (1994) 66-67. 32 I am in debt to Stjepan Matković for information on this episode. See most of the war. Sarkotić was a supporter of also: Matković, ‘Members of the Party of Right and the Idea of the Croat the ‘trialist’ solution, and it was he who ar- State during the First World War’, 32-33. 456 John Paul Newman had the Franksts been intimately connected part from those of the pre-war Kingdom to the defunct empire – a fatal association in of Serbia. In addition to this, the pre-war Serb-dominated Yugoslavia – they were also Serbian army and gendarmerie supplied the eclipsed in interwar Croatia’s politics by the model (and usually the personnel) for the mass popularity of Stjepan Radić’s peasant Yugoslav army and gendarmerie. From these party. Frankist support was restricted to a facts many historians of the interwar king- certain section of the Zagreb bourgeoisie or dom have argued that Serbs considered the else scattered in emigration, where former new state merely an enlarged Serbia in which officers such as Stjepan Sarkotić organized the non-Serb lands were their spoils of war.33 small groups of anti-Yugoslav émigrés and In fact, most Serbs were not willing to have exiles. their national identity subsumed within a We cannot, however, dismiss the Yugoslav identity and did not consider lands Frankists on account of their small size such as Croatia, Slovenia, and Dalmatia part and marginality in the 1920s. In the 1930s, of an ‘enlarged Serbia’. This is not to say that a significant number of Frankists and ex- these lands were spared from exploitation Habsburg officers graduated to the Ustasha and suppression by the Belgrade regime af- Croatian Revolutionary Organization (The ter 1918.34 However, full-scale assimilation, Ustashe), the paramilitary-terrorist group or Serbianization, after 1918 was restricted which, whilst in government in the Nazi- to those areas that Serbian integral national­ backed Independent State of Croatia (NDH, ists had coveted before the war: Macedonia, 1941-1945), was responsible for the genocide Kosovo, and the formerly Habsburg regions of Jews, Serbs, and Roma. The transforma- of ‘Serbian’ Bosnia. The Serbian national tion occurred after the promulgation of project of 1903-1914 recommenced after King Aleksandar’s dictatorship in 1929. The 1918, but it was no longer inhibited by the founders of the Ustashe, leading Frankists existence of great empires. A look at the his- Ante Pavelić and Gustav Perčec (the latter tory of these regions in the 1920s shows the a former Habsburg officer), decided that the continuities between pre-war and post-war dictatorship called for a more radical kind of Serbian integral nationalism. The Yugoslav resistance. Pavelić and Perčec recruited like- government did not acknowledge the separate minded Croats (including a number of ex- character or status of the ‘southern regions’: Habsburg officers) to their cause: the violent Macedonia was ‘South Serbia’ and Kosovo overthrow of Yugoslavia and the realization was ‘Old Serbia’, or, once again, the ‘classical of Croatian autonomy. Ustasha ideology and south’. The government categorized all Slavs tactics were not entirely sui generis, howev- living there as Serbs, and official policy called er: to a great extent they were rooted in the for their ‘assimilation’. Only Serbian schools, Frankist movement and its programme of in- churches, and cultural organizations were al- tegral nationalism. lowed to operate in the region; the Bulgarian language was removed from public and offi- cial spheres. After 1918: (Serbian) Civilization and its Once again, development and moderni- Discontents zation were largely inseparable from nation- If the Frankists were the great losers of the alization and Serbianization. The classical First World War, Serbian integral natio- south – along with Vojvodina in the north nalists were the winners. The creation of of Yugoslavia – was central to the post-1918 Yugoslavia in 1918 owed much to the Allied programme of land reform and internal colo- victory and Serbia’s role in that victory. That nization. Veterans of the Serbian army and debt was evident in the set-up of the new sta- their families were often the beneficiaries of te: the political, constitutional, and economic this programme; they received plots of land frameworks of Yugoslavia derived in large throughout Macedonia and Kosovo. The government was open about the national- 33 See, for example: Sabrina Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building izing aims of these policies: they hoped to and Legitimation, 1918-2005 (Indiana 2006) 37-39. create (Serbian) ethnic homogeneity in areas 34 The classic work on the formation of Yugoslavia after 1918 and the vio- depopulated by war; they also hoped to raise lence which attended it is Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, and Politics (Ithaca 1984). the ‘national consciousness’ of areas that were Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 457

The Architect of Great Serbia: Radical Party leader and wartime prime minister Nikola Pašić (right), with the diplomat Jovan Jovanović ‘Pižon. Source: Archiv Jugoslavije

considered integrally Serbian (Macedonia the level of culture in the regions. As one and Kosovo) – or at least Yugoslav proponent of colonization as nationalization (Vojvodina).35 For former soldiers and četnici put it at a lecture in Mitrovica, colonists from who became colonists, moving to the south ‘more cultured parts’ could show southern- was akin to taking part in a (Serbian) civi- ers that ‘love towards progress and work is a lizing mission. Representative of this trend greater ideal than the traditional and nasty was Stevan Simić, a četnik since before the practice of bloody revenge’, i.e., modernity war, a former student of noted Serbian ge- and modernization were ideals to strive for in ographer Jovan Cvijić, and a schoolteacher the still underdeveloped classical south.36 It and journalist in post-war Macedonia. He was an ideal also held by the Circle of Serbian wrote extensively and critically on the po- Sisters, whose members were once again ac- litical corruption and anti-Serbian banditry tive in the region after a wartime hiatus. Just in the classical south in the 1920s. Indeed, as before the war, the humanitarian and char- a number of journals appeared whose aim itable work of the women focussed in large was to promote the region’s Serbian charac- part on Kosovo and Macedonia; because ter and the important work of the colonists; those were the poorest regions of Yugoslavia, their titles suggest their nationalist content: but also because the work of nationalization Southern View, South Serbia, Serbian Kosovo. needed to continue here. The contributors to these journals, men like In the north, too, colonization was linked Simić, highlighted the need for a systematic to nationalization, although of a different and sustained programme of colonization in the south to go hand in hand with the build- 35 Milivoje Erić, Agrarna reforma u Jugoslaviji 1918-1941 (Sarajevo 1958) 296- ing of schools, hospitals, and other modern 297. infrastructure, and more generally to raise 36 Srpsko Kosovo, 15 July 1921. 458 John Paul Newman sort. In Vojvodina – formerly a Habsburg gion. Rudolf Archibald Reiss estimated that region – the need for modernization was less by 1923 as many as 300 Serbs (excluding urgent than in the south, but the presence of soldiers and gendarmes) had been killed in a large population of ethnic Hungarians and guerrilla attacks in Macedonia and Kosovo.39 Germans meant there was a need to reinforce The creation of Yugoslavia in 1918 was not the ‘national element’ here. As one national a tabula rasa for Serbian integral nationalism; worker put it in a publication of 1931, ‘Bačka neither were Yugoslav and Serbian national and Banat [districts in Vojvodina] are the projects co-extensive in the interwar period. least national of all our regions – even less The colonization and land reform policies so than South Serbia, since there the popu- and the support for them from former sol- lation is three-fifths Slav, here is it just two- diers and četnici in the south show that the fifths.’ The aim of nationalization in these programme of Serbian integral nationalism parts was to create a majority population of of 1903-1914 was revived after 1918. In fact, ‘Yugoslavs’.37 Note the author’s terminology, the programme accelerated after the end of ‘Yugoslavs’, not ‘Serbs’; unlike the southern the war, since it was no longer encumbered by regions, Vojvodina was considered a Yugoslav great empires and could be carried out within rather than a Serbian territory. It is not ac- the borders of a sovereign state. The relation- cidental, in this respect, that many colonists ship between the Serbian and Yugoslav na- in the north were ‘Yugoslav volunteers’, i.e., tion-building projects in the 1920s was not Habsburg South Slavs who had fought in the one of identity, as the differences between Serbian army during the war. The intellectu- policies in the south and in Vojvodina dem- als and national workers amongst the volun- onstrate, it was rather a relationship of com- teers considered themselves first and fore- patibility; in the first decade after the forma- most Yugoslavs (rather than Serbs, Croats, tion of Yugoslavia, this compatibility held. or Slovenes); many of them received parcels of land in Vojvodina. In a memorandum is- sued publicly to the government in 1923 the The Failures of Yugoslavia and the Harde- Volunteer Union, a veterans’ organization, ning of Serbian Nationalism called upon the government to settle former Given these favourable conditions, it is per- volunteers in Vojvodina to keep ‘separatists’ haps surprising that the nationalizing project and ‘anational elements’ in check.38 of the interwar period was unsuccessful. The Violence attended this nationalizing pro- lack of security in Kosovo and Macedonia ject, as it had before the war. This was espe- led to many colonists moving away from the cially true in Macedonia and Kosovo, where regions; many more were discouraged from the Yugoslav authorities met significant re- moving south in the first place. The regions sistance from Albanian ‘Kaçak’ guerrillas remained the least developed in Yugoslavia and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary throughout the interwar period. This pro- Organization (VMRO). Settlers were both blem was actually exacerbated by the official perpetrators and victims of violence here policy of land reform, since it favoured former during the interwar period. On the one soldiers and četnici who were either not quali- hand, former četnici established paramili- fied to till the land, or else were not provided tary groups such as the ‘Association Against with the appropriate equipment to do so by Bulgarian Bandits’ – based in Štip – osten- the government. The concerns voiced in nati- sibly for self-defence, its members often ter- onalist journals from Kosovo and Macedonia rorized the non-Serb population. On the became increasingly impatient with the lack other hand, Kaçaks and the VMRO killed, of progress made towards nationalizing the kidnapped, and terrorized civilian settlers regions. The contributors to these journals, and the Serbian population with the aim of many of them former četnici, complained that discouraging further settlement in the re- colonization and land reform programmes were ‘unsystematic’, that corruption was rife 37 Vladan Jojkić, Nacionalizacija Bačke i Banata: etno-politička studija (Novi – especially in politics, and that a national Sad 1931) 5. culture in the south was conspicuous only 38 Memorandum Savez dobrovoljaca (Belgrade 1923) 15. 39 See his report in full: Reiss, The Comitadji Question in Southern Serbia in its absence. Adam Pribićević, a prominent (London 1924). journalist and settler (and brother of the lea- Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 459 der of the Independent Democratic Party noted, Serbs, like other South Slavs, were not Svetozar Pribićević), wrote of the extreme willing to relinquish their national identity in hardships that colonists faced in the south in Yugoslavia. The authority of the king and the his memoirs From a Gentleman to a Peasant. Karađorđević dynasty muted opposition to Pribićević’s book catalogued the failures of the dictatorship in Serbia; with Aleksandar the Serbian civilizing mission in the south: gone, Serbian criticism of Yugoslavia became constant danger of Kaçak raids, the unsys- louder. After 1934, the relationship between tematic approach to settlement taken by the Yugoslavia and Serbia seemed to be less and government, the corruption of civil servants less one of compatibility. Failures in the south and politicians.40 Those shortcomings were and divisions within Serbian politics gave also reflected in the most successful novel many Serbian nationalists cause for reflec- about the ‘Serbian South’ in the interwar tion: they wondered what had happened to period: Anđeljko Krstić’s Trajan (1932). The the unity and the sense of purpose the Serbs novel’s protagonist grows up in the Ottoman had in the pre-war kingdom from 1903-1914 Balkans and goes to war with the Serbian (and it was this backward gaze that contrib- army for the ‘liberation and unification’ of the uted greatly to the subsequent image of this southern regions. After 1918 he returns to period as a ‘golden age’). Preoccupied with find his home just as benighted in Yugoslavia the notion that Serbs were not united in as it had been under the Ottomans. He even- Yugoslavia, a group of Serbian intellectuals tually succumbs to the hardships of life in the formed the Serbian Cultural Club in 1937: post-war ‘classical south’, dying of tuberculo- a ‘non-political’ and ‘non-party’ organization sis. The author ofTrajan had captured the whose aim was to promote Serbian values sense of failure and disappointment that, for and interests in Yugoslavia.41 The club and its many Serbian nationalists, marked the re- supporters saw themselves as the true heirs cent history of the classical south. of the Serbian nation since 1903. As the edi- It was not the case, however, that the clas- tor of the Club’s journal, Dragiša Vasić – a sical south was merely a black mark on an veteran of the First World War – put it, ‘For otherwise good report: Yugoslavia’s failures once a Serbian voice should be heard [the were not restricted to the ‘Serbian’ regions club’s journal was called The Serbian Voice], of Kosovo and Macedonia. Throughout the free from all foreign theories and party bi- 1920s the country’s politics had been in ases, so that a strong Serbdom can permeate a state of permanent crisis. In 1929 King Yugoslavia with its esprit de corps and stand Aleksandar suspended parliament indefinite- as a testament for future generations.’42 The ly and promulgated a personal dictatorship Serbian Cultural Club, true to its roots, that lasted until his death in 1934. Concerned was also Janus-faced: non-political but con- by the lack of progress the country had made sistently in opposition to the Yugoslav re- in its first ten years, Aleksandar hoped to gime, its members professed loyalty to both integrate Yugoslavia ‘from above’ by forc- Yugoslavia and Serbia but increasingly placed ing a supranational identity on his subjects one in opposition to the other. And whilst that would replace existing ‘tribal’ (that is: ostensibly modern and progressive, its mem- national) identities. Despite the best efforts bers sought extreme solutions. The two sides of the king and his supporters, the period of are present in Vaso Čubrilović’s notorious royal dictatorship was also a failure: South memorandum to the Serbian government Slavs were not unified by Aleksandar’s ‘top- in 1937, having to do with ‘The Explusion of down’ Yugoslavism, they were pushed farther Arnauts [Albanians]’. Čubrilović advised that apart. The dictatorship ended abruptly when ‘[T]he only way and means to cope with them Aleksandar was assassinated in October [Albanians] is the brute force of an organized 1934 (by Croatian and Macedonian extrem- ists, see below), but it had been failing for some time before that. 40 See: Adam Pribićević, Od Gospodina do Seljaka (Zagreb 1996). 41 For a recent English-language piece on the club’s activities see: Dejan If Aleksandar had looked closely at the Djokić, ‘National Mobilization in the 1930s: The Emergence of the “Serb passions that drove the Serbian national question” in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’, in: Dejan Djokić and James Ker- project in Macedonia and Kosovo, he might Lindsay eds., New Perspectives on Yugoslavia: Key Issues and Controversies (London 2011). have understood the task he faced. As already 42 Srpski Glas, 16 November 1939. 460 John Paul Newman

The Soldier and his Ideologue: Dragaljub ‘Draža’ Mihailovic (centre) and Dragiša Vasić (far right) at the Chetnik congress in Ba, Serbia, January 1944. Source: Archiv Jugoslavije

state’. He went on to suggest various legal harassments to which the Albanians could Mass Violence during 1941-1945 and its be subjected, ‘fines, imprisonments, the ruth- Aftermath less application of all police dispositions’, fail- Was the violence of 1941-1945 a reprisal of ing these, ‘[T]here remains one more means, 1914-1918? Not exactly, but there are some which Serbia employed with great practical important associations. The Ustasha pro- effect after 1878, that is by burning down gramme, for example, owed much to the atti- Albanian villages and city quarters.’ 43 The tudes and ideas of conservative supporters of Yugoslav government did not adopt any of Austria-Hungary before 1918: the Frankists Čubrilović’s suggestions, the country’s lead- and ex-Habsburg officers. The Ustashe often ers were not willing to resort to mass violence claimed it was the violence and suppression in times of peace. Čubrilović’s memorandum of the Alexandrine dictatorship of the 1930s is indicative of a hardening of the Serbian which, in turn, drove them to violence and national programme in the 1930s. It was terrorism. In fact, their programme was as this hardened programme that the Yugoslav much anti-Serb as it was anti-Yugoslav. Like Army in the Homeland (the Chetniks) put the Habsburgs before them, the Ustashe into effect during 1941-1945. sought to solve the ‘Serbian problem’ on the territory they controlled. National Socialism inspired Ustasha genocide against Balkan Jews and Roma, but the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War was entirely of their

43 Cited from: Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven 2000) 23- own design. There were structural similari- 24. ties to the Habsburg programme of Serbian Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 461 ‘denationalization’ during the First World in nationally-mixed areas, factors which con- War (camps, suppression of cultural life); but tributed to a) the use of mass violence by the the Ustasha programme was far more radical Ustashe and the Chetniks to create ethni- and therefore far more violent. The complete cally homogenous areas, and b) their lack of removal of Serbs from the Independent State success in Yugoslavia. The socialist Partisans of Croatia appears to have been the goal of were the only truly Yugoslav resistance force Ustasha policy during 1941-1945, although during 1941-1945, and they drew the sup- conversion to Catholicism, either forced of port of many non-Communists throughout voluntary, was also sanctioned. In both the the country. This fact has led one eminent First and the Second World War, this vision historian of the civil war in Yugoslavia to ask of an enlarged Croatia cleansed of Serbs and whether, by 1945 ‘for many, Yugoslavia was Serbian nationalism was the preserve of a mi- again, perhaps, not a bad idea, and one that nority: the Frankists, then the Ustashe. Both was certainly better than the alternatives ex- groups owed their influence to external po- perienced during that period?’ 45 Perhaps, or wers rather than popular support. perhaps the Partisans were merely the best of The Yugoslav Army in the Homeland – a bad bunch, the only combatant in the civil the Chetniks – was to a certain extent the war whose violence was contextual rather heir of the Serbian nationalist project that than programmatic. began in 1903. The ideology and intentions If the Partisans supported a return to of this group are harder to place than those Yugoslavia against the nationalist projects of of the Ustashe. Unlike the Ustashe, the the Ustashe and the Chetniks, their design Chetniks did not have control of a state; they for the new state was truly revolutionary. left far less of a paper trail of directives and Unlike the centralized interwar kingdom, orders for historians to follow. Dragoljub the second Yugoslavia was a federation of so- ‘Draže’ Mihailović, the nominal leader of the cialist republics. Macedonia was no longer an Chetniks, did not have complete control over integral part of Serbia, but a republic in its his forces and, initially at least, he wanted to own right, as was Bosnia: separate from both keep them out of politics in order to focus Croatia and Serbia. Kosovo was more prob- on military matters. He was unsuccessful lematic. The socialists incorporated Kosovo in this respect, and the politically inexperi- into Serbia, but not on the same terms as in enced Mihailović allowed Chetnik ideology the interwar kingdom: it was made an ‘auton- to become defined by leading members of omous region’ within the Serbian socialist re- the Serbian Cultural Club such as Dragiša public. We can see, then, the important ways Vasić and Stevan Moljević. Just as they had in which the socialists rejected the politics of during the interwar period, these intellectu- the interwar period. Yugoslavia was reborn, als mulled over the proper relations between but as a very different entity. Much was made Serbia and Yugoslavia; once again they de- by Serbian nationalists in the 1980s about cided in favour of the former. The Chetnik the socialists’ reluctance to allow Serbian programme closely resembled the Serbian and Montenegrin colonists from the inter- maximalist programme of the past; it was war period to return to Kosovo after 1945 true to the spirit of Serbian nationalism after (they had been expelled during 1941-1945). 1903.44 The genocide against non-Serbs com- In fact, the colonization programme, as we mitted by the Chetniks during the Second have seen, was already in retreat at the end World War was inspired by the pre-war at- of the 1920s, the number of settlers remain- tempts to Serbianize and nationalize areas ing in 1941 was small, and by 1945 many of such as Kosovo and Macedonia. Now the them did not want to return to the southern programme was shifted to Serb-populated regions at all.46 The inability of Serbian in- areas of Bosnia. The Chetniks had almost no support out- 44 See: Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: The Chetniks side of Serb populated lands, and the Ustashe, (Stanford 1975) 166-167. See also the discussion of ‘Chetnik ideology’ in: Tomislav Dulić, Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia and eventually, lacked support anywhere, with Herzegovina, 1941-1942 (Uppsala 2005) 109-114. the possible exceptions of larger Croatian cit- 45 Stevan K. Pavlowitch, ‘Sabrina P. Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State Building and Legitimation 1918-2005’, book review, in: Journal of Southern ies such as Zagreb and Karlovac. Both were Europe and the Balkans 10/1 (April 2008) 129. narrowly nationalist movements operating 46 See: Tim Judah, Kosovo: A Short History (London 1998) 317-318. 462 John Paul Newman

Ustasha Violence: Mass shooting of Serbs by Ustashas in Bosanka Dubica 1941. Source: Archiv Jugoslavije

tegral nationalists to Serbianize Macedonia However, its short existence began and en- and Kosovo during the interwar period and ded in extreme violence, and it was stalked the desire of the socialists to curb the kind of throughout the interwar period by Serbian Serbian nationalism which had been so dam- and Croatian integral nationalisms. Serbian aging from 1903-1945 contributed to the integral nationalists were for a short time in decision to separate the regions from Serbia. accord with Yugoslav state-builders, but in This separation incubated autonomous senti- 1930s they were increasingly separated from ment from 1945 onwards and contributed to the Belgrade regime. One historian has des- their eventually breaking away from Serbia cribed the contortions and accommodations and Yugoslavia in the last decade of the twen- of the high politics of interwar Yugoslavia as tieth century. In the case of Kosovo, violence a quest for the ‘elusive compromise’ between in the region at the end of the twentieth cen- all parties that would make the state viable.47 tury shows that for many Serbs, the nation- Rather than trying to follow these twists and alist attitudes prevalent during 1903-1945 turns, we could look instead at the continuity were still relevant. of Serbian integral nationalism from 1903- 1945 as a way of understanding the short- comings of the state and the causes of mass Conclusion violence in the Balkans. We could also look Interwar Yugoslavia cannot be described at its opponents amongst the South Slavs, the as a peaceable kingdom, but it did not ex- Frankists and their successors, the Ustashe. perience mass violence during 1918-1941. They were the ghosts at the Yugoslav ban- quet, a trace of Austro-Hungarian policies

47 Dejan Djokić, Elusive Compromise: A History of Interwar Yugoslavia in the Balkans, insignificant and ineffectual (London 2007). without external backing. When this bac- Serbian Integral Nationalism, its Opponents, and Mass Violence in the Balkans 1903-1945 463 king came during the Second World War, the revived plan for denationalizing Serbia was more radical and violent than it had been during the First World War. The success of the Partisans was at the same time, of course, the failure of the Chetniks and the Ustashe, but it was also the failure of programmes of integral nationalism whose roots lay far dee- per in the region’s history.

John Paul Newman is Lecturer in Modern European History at the National University of Ireland, May- nooth. He is researching the social and cultural history of Yugoslavia and the Balkan region, and is preparing a monograph about the wartime generation in Yugosla- via, provisionally titled Embattled Kingdom: the South Slav Wartime Generation and the Breaking of Yugoslavia 1918-1945.