Battling over the Balkans: Historiographical Questions and Controversies 9633863252, 9789633863251

Citation preview

over the

BALKANS

non ra volorumquas etusapitiis raeritiatur autatium volorenim non culli-

quate qui te naturib usandeliquae nobit eosam et et quibus, custis corepta vevenectur, tese derest volut que con nus, cum rehendi gnimus ius am qui dolo que numenih illat. ccupta comnimus. Axim Nequis non nus des serfernatis estisquia conse ditiis qui il entur as nonem doluptatur, utetus, untestiberum dolupta teceatem. Nam, tem everumetur magnist ut eossim ut volo occusandis dolorestione aceatib usdantusa at molor sin parundae sendaepre accat. Hit dem lacil mendendi tem incienim quas core suntur miligni dolum, omnihit ibusant, quo inctat. Ucillabo. Ut officidi rehent, simus, iligendeliam nonsendeni odiaspidel ium eum fugit, optat invendi tenet quistiunt, si invendem volori nihit alis nimus sum eum faceariat dolupta tessed quodit volumen dantiur repe consero reruntio vitatio ipsuntor alictur, quatist volore pernam earumenda dipsam, sume non reped est, conetur magnihi llique mo volorem facium rero blabor rest, ut offic tectecate nit modit labor restrun dictur sum ellit estem core cum que volorem aut

ISBN 978-963-386-302-2

90000 >

Central European University Press

cover design by sebastian stachowsk i

Budapest – New York

Sales and information: [email protected] Website: http://www.ceupress.com

9 789633 863022

BALKANS

ipiendu cipsam fugias non cor aligend aectota temqui veligen duciet perferc iani-

over the

lit am faciasped molores rerit, sit essunt, cus adi dolectus aut quo eiumenet

E d i t e d b y John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

H

istoriographical Questions and ControversiesFerit eosseque coriam unt,

BATTLING

BATTLING

BATTLING over the

BALKANS Historiographical Questions and Controversies E d it e d b y

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

BATTLING over the

BALKANS

Battling over 00 book.indb 1

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:16

Battling over 00 book.indb 2

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

BATTLING over the

BALKANS Historiographical Questions and Controversies Edited by

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Central European University Press Budapest–New York

Battling over 00 book.indb 3

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

© 2020 John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi Published in 2020 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com 224 West 57th Street, New York NY 10019, USA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-386-325-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-326-8 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lampe, John R., editor. | Iordachi, Constantin, editor. Title: Battling over the Balkans : historiographical questions and controversies / Edited by John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi. Description: Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2019. Identifiers: LCCN 2019011495 (print) | LCCN 2019011868 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633863268 | ISBN 9789633863251 Subjects: LCSH: Balkan Peninsula—History—19th century—Historiography. | Balkan Peninsula—History—20th century—Historiography. | Balkan Peninsula—Historiography. Classification: LCC DR34 (ebook) | LCC DR34 .B38 2019 (print) | DDC 949.6/04072—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011495

Battling over 00 book.indb 4

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

To the memory of Vangelis Kechriotis, and his remarkable passion for, and knowledge of, the history of the Balkans

Battling over 00 book.indb 5

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Battling over 00 book.indb 6

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Table of Contents

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi: “Beyond Stereotypes: Recent Trends in the Historiography on the Balkans”

1

Chapter 1

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building Vangelis Kechriotis and Roumiana Preshlenova Roumiana Preshlenova: “Bulgarian Debates on the Ottoman Political Legacy”

27

Nadya Danova, The Ottoman Time in the Bulgarian National Discourse in the 19th and 20th Centuries

35

Roumen Daskalov, “Problematizing the Revival”

43

Aleksandǔr Vezenkov, “Not So Apparent Truths: The ‘Bulgarian Revival’ as a Separate Era”

47

Iliya Todev, “The Exarchate—The Real Establishment of the Modern Bulgarian Statehood?”

52

Iliya Todev, “Marin Drinov’s View on the Bulgarian National Revival”

52

Battling over 00 book.indb 7

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

viii

Table of Contents Vangelis Kechriotis, “Greek Historiography and the Role of the Orthodox Church”

56

Elli Skopetea, The Twilight of the East: Images from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire

65

Sia Anagnostopoulou, “The Young Turk Revolution: The New ‘Ottoman’ Framework of Authority: 1908–1914”

70

Paraskevas Konortas, Ottoman Views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Berats for the Prelates of the Great Church 17th–Early 20th Centuries

78

Eleni Gara, “Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire in Early Modern Times: Historiographical Approaches”

85

Andreas Lyberatos, Economy, Politics and National Ideology: The Shaping of National Parties in Philippoupolis (Plovdiv) of the 19th Century

90

Chapter 2

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia Vjeran Pavlaković and Vladan Jovanović Vjeran Pavlaković, Recent Croatian Historiography on the Interwar Period

97

Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević, “Economic Circumstances on Croatian Territory between the Two World Wars” 106 Ivo Goldstein, Croatia 1918–2008 (I)

111

Aleksandar Jakir, “Several Aspects in the Formation of National Identity in Dalmatia between the Two World Wars” 117 Vladan Jovanović, Recent Serbian Historiography on the Interwar Period

121

Ivana Dobrivojević, Governmental Repression during King Alexander’s Dictatorship, 1929–1935 130 Zoran Janjetović, “The Influence of the Serbian Factor on the Position of National Minorities in Yugoslavia during the Interwar Period” 137 Sofija Božić, “Serbs in Croatia, Hegemonists, or the Oppressed? The Case of Osijek Serbs (1918–1924)” 145

Battling over 00 book.indb 8

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Table of Contents

ix

Chapter 3

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias James Frusetta and Stefan Sotiris Papaioannou James Frusetta and Stefan Sotiris Papaioannou, Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias in Southeastern European Historiography

151

Paramilitaries versus Armies: Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia Tasos Kostopoulos, War and Ethnic Cleansing: The Forgotten Side of a De164 cade-Long National Campaign, 1912–1922 Dmitar Tasić, War After the War: The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Kosovo and Metohia and in Macedonia, 1918–1920 167 Vladan Jovanović, The Yugoslav State and Southern Serbia, 1918–1929. Macedonia, Sanjak, Kosovo, and Metohija in the Kingdom of SCS 170 Veselin Yanchev, Army, Public Order and Internal Security: The Bulgarian Experience 1878–1912 180 Fascism in the Interwar Balkans Mario Jareb, The Ustasha-Homeguard Movement

183

Ivo Goldstein, Croatia 1918–2008 (II)

189

Nikolai Poppetrov, Fascism in Bulgaria: Development and Activities

193

Constantin Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the “Archangel Michael” in Inter-war Romania 197 Chapter 4

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture Roumiana Preshlenova and John R. Lampe Roumiana Preshlenova and John R. Lampe, The Retreat from Economic History

211

Accommodating the Interwar European Economic Order and Influence Ivan M. Becić, Financial Policy in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slo217 venes 1919–1923 Roumen Avramov, Bulgaria’s Twentieth Century Economy

Battling over 00 book.indb 9

222

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Table of Contents

x

Dimitar Dimitrov, Do You Know Who We Are? Or Three Bulgarian Transitions Toward Europe 226 Goran Nikolić, The Course of the Dinar and Foreign Exchange Policy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941 230 Roumiana Preshlenova and John R. Lampe, European Cultural Influences in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria

236

Comparing European Cultural Influences in Belgrade and Sofia Ranka Gašić, Belgrade on the Way Toward Europe: British and German 242 Cultural Influences on the Belgrade Elite, 1918–1941 Miroslav Jovanović, The Russian Emigration in the Balkans, 1920–1940

247

Milcho Lalkov, “Germany in the Bulgarian History 1878–1939. Problems and Trends of an Uneven Presence” 254 Chapter 5

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II Constantin Iordachi and James Frusetta Constantin Iordachi and James Frusetta, The Holocaust and the Treatment of Minorities in Wartime Balkans 261 The Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania

276

Lya Benjamin, “The Doctrinarian Foundations of Antonescu’s Antisemitism” 291 The Bulgarian Debate over “Who Saved the Jews?” Yosif Ilel, The Jews in Bulgaria between the Holocaust and the Rescue

296

Mikhail Gruev, Between the Five-Pointed Star and the Crescent: The Bulgarian Muslims and the Political Regime (1944–1959) 300 Artan Puto, “Plans for the Emigration of Jews in Albania”

304

Valentina Duka, Contemporary Questions of the History of Albanians

308

List of Contributors

313

Index

317

Battling over 00 book.indb 10

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes: Recent Trends in the Historiography on the Balkans John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Leon Trotsky’s initial reports in the collection of his war correspondence repeat-

edly republished as The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913 appear in its first chapter under the subtitle of “the Balkan Question.”1 Yet in these dispatches from 1908 forward, Trotsky identified one Balkan question that immediately gave rise to a second: First, how to realize the aspirations for national independence from territories still ethnically mixed under otherwise restrictive Ottoman or Habsburg rule? Second, how to prevent the wider international intervention that their conflicting national claims were already inviting? Trotsky feared that the autocratic regime of tsarist Russia, supported by the Habsburg monarchy, would take the lead, jointly intervening to stop ethnic conflict and simply replacing the Ottoman framework with Russo-Austrian domination.To counter such interventions, Trotsky proposed that the region’s revolutionary socialists seize power in the independent Balkan states as well as the Habsburg and Ottoman lands. These new leaders would then be free to create a single multinational federation. Such a federation would also eliminate the dilemma of drawing new national borders. For instance, he noted that the fed-

*

 The editors would like to thank Monika Nagy and Rahel Katalin Turai, coordinators at Pasts, Inc, Center for Historical Studies, for assisting us in copy-editing and preparing the manuscript toward publication; Adrian Brisku, who selected the sample materials on Albanian historiography and wrote the biographical presentation of the Albanian authors; and Filip Lyapov, Theodoros Pelekanidis, and Stefan Guviza, who helped us edit the Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian and Croatian sections of the manuscript, respectively. 1  War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912–13, 5th ed. (New York: Pathfinder, 2001), 29–55.

Battling over 00 book.indb 1

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

2

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

eration would include the Serbs, widely scattered beyond their existing Serbia, within a single state. More realistically, or so it seemed at the time, the Carnegie Endowment’s Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 looked to coordinated international intervention as a solution for solving local conflicts. Peace treaties fairly mediated and subsequently monitored would prevent further violence and determine the new post-Ottoman borders, also serving the powers’ overriding priority of stability in “the danger zone of Europe,” as one American journalist called the Balkans in 1914. Surely, the violations committed during the two Balkan Wars against the others’ soldiers and civilians by each side, and in service of what the Report called “the megalomania of the national ideal,” made the idea of leaving postwar borders and other matters in local hands appear dangerous. Carnegie’s Balkan Commission consisted of American, British, French, German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian members. (The Balkan Contact Group of the 1990s included the same set of representatives, save for a member from Italy replacing the one from vanished Austria-Hungary.) In 1913 they all agreed with the Report’s introductory proposition. They judged the international community well qualified to guide the region’s retreat from armed conflict and attendant abuses because “today the Great Powers are manifestly unwilling to go to war with each other,” which of course they soon were.2 Yugoslavia’s wars of dissolution followed the collapse in 1991 of just the sort of Communist Federation forecast by Trotsky as the solution to conflicting national aspirations. The ensuing warfare, the first in Europe since 1945, revived comparable demands for international intervention. Scholars and journalists have since crowded in to examine both the national sides and Euro-American interventions. The warfare itself killed more civilians than combatants, while “ethnic cleansing” forced the migration of still larger numbers across new but long disputed “national borders.” After Slovenia’s briefly resisted succession, Milošević’s Serbia led the way into often paramilitary violence, soon answered in disputed measure by Tudjman’s Croatia before spilling over into the bloodier Bosnian conflict. Mainly because of the killing and cleansing of Bosnian Muslims, Western intervention followed. The action came first from the European Community and the United Nations, then from NATO as led by the United States.  NATO’s combination of military and diplomatic intervention stopped the fighting in Bosnia, then reversed Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and finally helped to prevent more violence in Macedonia. However, international protectorates were left in place in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. Both have maintained the peace settlements but failed so far, even with the tenuous declaration of independence by Kosovo in 2008, to vindicate the political and economic

2

 The quotation is from d’Estourelles de Constant, “Introduction” to the Inquiry, 17, republished by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1993 as The Other Balkan Wars, 1–9.

Battling over 00 book.indb 2

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes

3

promise of these interventions. Meanwhile, Greece entered the European Community in 1981, followed by Slovenia in 2004, and Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, while Croatia joined in 2013, as well. After a setback in 2011, Serbia’s chances are also advancing, after a tentative agreement with Kosovo, as are the candidacies of Montenegro and Macedonia. Despite misgivings from the 2008– 2009 financial crisis, the magnetic attraction of European integration is still at work as the most realistic alternative to further violence and renewed intervention across the “Western Balkans,” as Yugoslavia’s successor states—without Slovenia but together with Albania—are now referred to. Yet, the conflict over questions of national identity and the controversies over international intervention raised by the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution remain to restrict our understanding of the region’s history and to encourage pejorative “Balkan” distinctions. These questions and controversies tempt us to turn back to the long precommunist period for a pattern of path dependency, either under the Western assumption of endemic ethnic conflict requiring intervention or under the regional assumption of hegemonic foreign intervention.3 Either stereotype sets the modern Balkans permanently apart as an anomaly from the rest of the continent. Controversy does indeed continue to flow from these assumptions, typically from efforts to single out particular regional victims or external offenders. In an attempt to help overcome the stereotypes that still pervade Balkan history, this volume proposes to concentrate on a set of specific but controversial questions from the precommunist period, questions that better identify the principal controversies with which the region’s history and historiography must contend. These are in fact questions to which the younger scholars of the region are now contributing with publications in their own languages. The chapters that follow, draw on this new regional scholarship to explore five contested issues: (1) the pre-1914 Ottoman and Eastern Christian Orthodox legacies; (2) the post1918 struggles for state-building; (3) the range of European economic and cultural influence across the interwar period, as opposed to diplomatic or political intervention; (4) the role of violence and paramilitary forces in challenging the interwar political regimes in the region; and (5) the fate of ethnic minorities into and after World War II.

 The Western assumption in its boldest form appears in George F. Kennan, “Introduction,” The Other Balkan Wars, 11, 13. He speaks of “the undue prominence among the Balkan peoples of these particular qualities [...] aggressive nationalism [...] that (in the Balkan wars) drew on deeper traits of character inherited, presumably, from a distant tribal past [...] to see the political-military opponent [...] as a fearful and implacable enemy to be rendered harmless only by total and unsparing destruction. And so it remains today.” At the other end, for an exposition assigning responsibility for past and recent depredations primarily to foreign intervention, see Andre Gerolymatos, The Balkan Wars—Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

3

Battling over 00 book.indb 3

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

4

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Before turning to these issues, this introduction addresses the state of the debate on two more general questions underlying these specific controversies: national identity and Great Power intervention. Anglo-American publications continues to concentrate on these issues and therefore accounts for the majority of studies cited here. However, we should also acknowledge the broader inquiry into Balkan history, national identity and foreign influence included, now being led by continental scholarship from Paris to Budapest.4 The most prolific centers are the Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung in Regensburg and Europe and the Balkans International Network in Bologna. In both single author and edited volumes, regional scholars have become a major presence in this expanded range of external publications. Their contributions already blur the pre-1989 distinctions that ignored or even dismissed much regional scholarship. Our subsequent chapters will present overviews of new work from the region on five of the related controversies arising from identity or intervention and provide illustrative translations from the local languages. Although our coverage is not comprehensive, the large bodies of scholarship we were able to examine still cover enough of the region to reflect the value of its own scholarship in the ongoing controversies. 

NATIONAL QUESTIONS AND THE TRANSNATIONAL CHALLENGE The national questions in the Balkans are the beneficiary of a broader interdisciplinary approach that has seen Western anthropologists and sociologists join historians primarily from the region in addressing ethnic distinction and convergence from a long-term perspective. This approach favors the new transnational emphasis on identifying common patterns and influences, rather than drawing distinctions in the fashion of traditional comparative history. Two works ranging across the construction of various national ideas and identities, memories, and monuments have been edited by Maria Todorova, Balkan Identities, Nation and Memory (2004) and by Diana Mishkova, We, The People, Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe (2009) to consist of essays primarily written by regional scholars who, like their Western colleagues in these volumes, avoid the stereotypings of victims and villains. So do the essays, primarily from regional scholars, assembled by Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits in The Ambiguous Nation, Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century (2013). John R. Lampe and Mark Mazower (eds.), Ideologies and National Identities, The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe (2004), provides analysis and translations of some primary sources on the model

4

 In addition, following the path opened by Maria Todorova in Imagining the Balkans, new works examine critically pejorative connotations of concepts of historical regions. See Mishkova, Beyond Balkanism 2019.

Battling over 00 book.indb 4

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes

5

pioneered in the collection edited by Peter Sugar, entitled Eastern European Nationalism in the 20th Century (1996). Two collections on the earlier history of the Balkans come from Marco Dogo and Guido Franzinetti, Disrupting and Reshaping, Early Stages of Nation-Building in the Balkans (2002) and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Wim van Meurs, suggestively titled Ottomans into Europeans (2010). Both join local and foreign scholars to revisit, with fresh eyes, the process of building modern legal and political institutions in the region, in the process of transition to the post-Ottoman order. More recently, the tangled common history of the Balkans has become the focus of a new transnational research project, coordinated by Roumen Daskalov and joined by a  team of local historians; the four volumes focus on languages and identities (Daskalov and Marinov 2013), disputed legacies (Daskalov, Vezenkov, 2015), and on cultural (self-)representations (Daskalov, Mishkova, Marinov, Vezenkov 2017). Taken together, these new publications provide a much needed transnational perspective on the various Balkan national ideas from comparable canons to their dissemination as identities across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not surprisingly, much of the recent scholarship on the Balkans has focused on the creation, history, and demise of Yugoslavia. Valuable, sometimes judgmental comparisons of the constituent national identities that the former Yugoslavia sought to combine have come from the various works dealing with its formation after both world wars. In general, the history and legacy of ethno­na­ tio­nal conflicts have received more attention than linkages and connections. The classic treatment of the Serbian and Croatian national ideas as they emerged in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on their incompatibility in the twentieth century, remains Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia, Origins, History, Politics (1984). Banac dwells on the disadvantages faced especially by Croatian representatives in their dealings with a Serbian side largely determining the shape of the first Yugoslavia. Following the same doubting direction, in Constructing Yugoslavia (2010), Vesna Drapac presents a case for Croatian confinement in a Serbian-dominated state after 1918, thanks primarily to British intervention. She deploys the language and literature of the transnational approach but primarily to support the argument for a decisive Great Power role in the fate of the region’s national interests. On the other hand, Dejan Djokić in Illusive Compromise (2007) discounts the incompatibility of Serbian and Croatian national interests by tracing the repeated efforts of their representatives to find common ground throughout the interwar years. Yet, Djokić’s account neglects the institutional leverage, and its abuse under the Royal Dictatorship of 1929–35, which privileged the Serbian side. Points of cultural connection as well as disconnection among the half dozen ethnic groups challenged by post-1918 and post-1945 prospects of a single Yugoslav identity have been identified in Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation (1998). The book focuses on the history of the Yugoslav idea from its promising origins in the 1920s to the demise of its communist reincarnation after World War II. Wachtel argues that this supra-

Battling over 00 book.indb 5

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

6

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

national idea could not survive the increasingly nationalist responses to the problems of post-Tito Yugoslavia in the 1980s, paving the way to the dissolution of the federal state. Based on a mixture of Western and regional scholars, a volume edited by Dejan Djokić and James Ker-Lindsay and titled New Perspectives on Yugoslavia (2011) addresses a range of ethnic, national, and transnational conflicts across the history of the two Yugoslavias. Turning away from this now fading focus on the former Yugoslavia, a larger number of recent works deal with the history and national ideas or experience of the successor states. Arguably, the very concentration on a single state or people might encourage the detailing of national distinction and discourage a wider perspective. Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Serbia: The History of an Idea (2002) provides something of an exception. Pavlowitch still laments the lost Yugoslavia as “the most politically imaginative idea to come out of Eastern Europe” (2002: 229). But his account starts with the medieval Serbian state and explores the near century of statehood before World War I, both barriers to accommodating the loss of that separate identity in the two Yugoslavias. The long continuity of a separate Serbian identification either with church or state is also emphasized in Sima Ćirković, The Serbs (2004). His credentials as Serbia’s leading medieval historian lend weight to an account of the early centuries surrounding the Kosovo battle of 1389, which readers may wish to compare with the more Albaniancentered treatment in Noel Malcolm, Kosovo, A Short History (1998). A series of balanced essays on the state and perspectives of research on Albanian history has been provided by Oliver Jens Schmidt and Eva Anna Franz, Albanische Geschichte, Stand und Perspektive der Forschung (2009). Little sympathy for the former Yugoslavia or for previous ties with the other South Slavs is expressed in Branka Magaš, Croatia Through History. The Making of a European State (2007). Most of her lengthy volume deals with the period before the two Yugoslavias. As the subtitle suggests, the author emphasizes the formative role for Croatia of a set of connections to the west or the north, rather than the southeast. Aleksandar Jakir has detailed a belated connection for interwar Dalmatia to Croatian national consciousness in Dalmatien zwischen den Weltkriegen (1999). The important part played by Croatia’s Serb minority, as opposed to Serbia itself, has been explored with more detachment in Nicholas J. Miller, Nation & State, Serbian Politics in Croatia Before the First World War (1997), while the role of the leading Croatian political figure into the interwar period has been tackled in Mark Biondich, Stjepan Radić, the Croat Peasant Party and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904–1928 (2000). Writing with comparable detachment from a moral narrative, Elizabeth Roberts spells out Montenegro’s long-standing experience and consciousness as a separate entity, if ill-defined as a national idea, in Realm of the Black Mountain, A History of Montenegro (2007). The controversial Serbia connection then and now is explored in Katrin Boeckh, Serbien/Montenegro, Geschichte und Gegenwart (2009). Less detachment from a Bosnian moral narrative in which the Bosnian Muslim identity is seen to be central and the Serb

Battling over 00 book.indb 6

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes

7

element malign is found in Marko Attila Hoare, The History of Bosnia from the Middle Ages to the Present (2007). Unlike the previous works, however, Hoare concentrates with instructive detail on the twentieth century and on the territory’s experience with the Yugoslav Communist Party and its forerunners. Partisans’ promise in 1945 for a multiethnic Bosnia ready to ignore ethnic distinctions is celebrated after the warfare and war crimes grounded in those distinctions.  Other recent scholarship stepping away from these extended national histories has largely focused on the southern Balkans. It has paid much less attention to territorial borders and often comes from other disciplines than history. One exception is Richard Crampton’s Bulgaria (2008). Its fully extended national history from Ottoman times forward to the recent years nonetheless concludes with a chapter on “The Minority and Demographic Questions” from 1878 to the present. A recent Bulgarian review of the volume does not address its balanced recognition of minorities and associated problems, objecting instead to its political and economic judgment of the precommunist state as a “general failure.”5 Another historian’s account by Andrew Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians (2008) is however limited, despite its usefulness for political and diplomatic history, by its presumption of a single Macedonian ethnic identity across the full Vardar, Pirin, and Aegean areas from ancient times forward. Its challenge to the Greek roots of the pre-Slav population nonetheless reflects current scholarship from Skopje. A more detached review of the recent century may be found in Stefan Troebst, Das makedonische Jahrhundert (2007). Otherwise, a mixture of anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have addressed the famed Macedonian question in usefully transnational fashion. Rather than singling out one side to celebrate or condemn, whether Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, or ethnic Macedonian, these works emphasize the mixed or largely local nature of local identities, especially before World War I. Two studies by anthropologists, locally based by their discipline’s emphasis on field research, suggest that national identities emerged only as imposed by external authorities after World War I. Such was the case for the South Slav population of Aegean Macedonia in Anastasia N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood (1997) and the Vlachs of Kruševo in Keith Brown, The Past in Question, Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation (2003). Brown’s more cautious approach, informed by a broader range of sources but less field research than Karakasidou’s, has not produced the storm of controversy and denial that her work elicited from historians in Greece, sufficient after her initial journal article in 1993 to derail the book’s planned publication until another press bought it out four years later.6 Two edited volumes, one by a soci-

 Martin Ivanov, review in The Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (2008): 574–5.  In response to Karakasidou’s “Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity on Greek Macedonia,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 11, no. 1 (1993): 1–28, Nikolaus Zkhariadis, Basil C. Gounaris, and Constantine G. Hadzidimitriou contributed a brace of crit-

5 6

Battling over 00 book.indb 7

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

8

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

ologist and one by an anthropologist, bring together scholars from a mixture of disciplines to look behind the national narratives into the complexity of Macedonian and Albanian identities. They are Viktor Roudometov (ed.), The Macedonian Question: Culture, Historiography and Politics (2000) and Stephanie SchwanderSievers and Bernd J. Fisher (eds.), Albanian Identities, Myth and History (2002). Finally, two historians, one originally from the region, have focused on the respective Bulgarian experiences with Greeks and Muslims, whether Turkish or Bulgarian. Theodora Dragostinova, Between Two Motherlands, Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900–1949 (2011) explores the challenges to Bulgaria’s Greeks from the conflicts with Greece from the Balkan Wars into two world wars, compounded by the Greek influx following the defeat of the Greek communists in the post-1945 civil war. Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (2004) concentrates on the post-1945 communist period and the anti-Turkish “nationalization” campaigns from the 1970s forward that followed the regime’s initial framework for affirmative action. But there was a general reaction among Bulgarian historians when she moved beyond telling details about material culture ( fez, veil, names) to argue that “anxieties about Muslim male political and sexual power drove 20th-century campaigns.” 7 Such social anxieties are said to have combined with imported European nationalism separating the Bulgarian majority from the Turks and Pomaks who constitute the largest Muslim minority in the Balkans. As pointed out by Maria Todorova, this post-colonial approach neglects the domestic politics of secular nationalism and the evidence compiled by Bulgarian and other Balkan historians of socioeconomic dynamics separate from any Ottoman cultural framework.8 This muted critical response may be contrasted with the above-mentioned reaction by a  number of Greek historians to Karakasidou’s argument. Her anthropological approach emphasizes the continued overlapping of ethnic identities in northern Greece in the face of “nationalization” campaigns dating from the interwar period forward. Debates on national questions have figured prominently in the field of Romanian studies, as well. Most of these debates have focused on the interwar period. In the first postcommunist years, interwar Greater Romania was idealized as a golden age of capitalist economic development, cultural effervescence, and national con-

ical review essays to Balkan Studies 27, no. 2 (1993): 301–51. Their common methodological complaint was her claim for credibility from field research and oral interviews. Forthrightly publishing Karakasidou’s lengthy response in their nest issue, Balkan Studies 28, no. 1 (1994): 113–46, the editors also noted that they considered the debate now closed. The journal did not review the subsequent book.  7  Neuburger, The Orient Within, 114–5. 8  Maria Todorova, Review of Neuburger’s book, Slavic Review 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 427–8.

Battling over 00 book.indb 8

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes

9

solidation. Soon, however, this uncritical view gave way to a more balanced interpretation, which examines the struggles of nation- and state-building, the dilemmas of collective identity, and the harsh ideological competition that characterized this period. A comprehensive treatment of the major interwar debate over national identity between Europeanists, peasantists, and nationalist “autochthonists” can be found in the first major Western study on Romania published after 1989, Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947 (pp. 292–34). A noteworthy debate among Romanian historians followed from the publication  of Irina Livezeanu’s Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (1995; Romanian ed. 1998), which gave birth to an implicit debate that was compared, mutatis mutandis, with the Fisher controversy in Germany (over Wilhemian Germany’s war aims). The book explores the Romanian authorities’ efforts at political, economic, and cultural integration and assimilation of newly acquired provinces of Transylvania, the Banat, Bukovina, and Bessarabia. Focusing mostly on educational policies, Livezeanu exposes the Liberal Party’s strategy of forging a new national elite through an unprecedented expansion of the educational system, meant to fuel the Romanian state’s need for cadre at the local level in the newly annexed provinces. Livezeanu points out this policy’s achievements but also its limitations, describing both the reaction of ethnic minorities against this policy of cultural homogenization, and the disappointment of the new Romanian postwar generation with the slow pace of nationalizing the state, which eventually gave rise to the fascist Iron Guard. In Paradoxul Român, conceived as an implicit counterargument to Livezeanu’s thesis, historian Sorin Alexandrescu aims at recasting her findings, and thus rescuing the canonic interpretation of interwar history by pointing out the lack of any other realistic alternative to national consolidation; yet Alexandrescu also notes that, when Livezeanu gives concrete examples, she is “unfortunately right.” It has been suggested that the critical assessment of the history of interwar Greater Romania was part of a larger process of demythicization of Romania’s modern history. Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (2001; original Romanian ed. 1997) has been central to this endeavor. Boia underscores the uses and abuses of history in modern Romania, exposing the “mythological temptation,” amply present in historiography and politics. He also points out to the role played by history writing as an instrument of mass mobilization in the modern period, as the rise of mass politics has led to the conscious construction of all-encompassing historical mythologies, as integral elements of the process of nation-building. Against this background, Boia attempted to provide a lucid deconstruction of the Romanian historical “mythology” in the modern period. The book has been central to Romanian historiography’s efforts to overcome the politicization of history prevalent during the communist period; no wonder it has been under close critical scrutiny, becoming the preferred target of a large ad hoc coalition made up of traditionalist, conservative, or overtly nation-

Battling over 00 book.indb 9

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

10

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

alist historians.9 The most representative book of this trend is Ioan-Aurel Pop, Istoria, adevărul şi miturile (History, the truth and the myths) (2002). Pop conceived his work as a direct answer to and would-be refutation of Boia’s History and Myth—presented as a “merciless critique of two centuries of historiographical thought” and a “remarkable provocation,” which “shocked public opinion.” Pop’s own account attempts to reassert the trust in previous Romanian historians’ objectivity and to defend their canonic view of Romanians’ history. Responding to criticism, Boia acknowledged that the recent Romanian historiography is marked by a confrontation between “demythologizers” and “upholders of national mythology.”10 Yet, he pointed out that he himself did not actually employ the concept of “demythologizing.” In describing his own approach, Boia contended that “I have not declared war on myths,”11 but intended to highlight that “history cannot be isolated from society, from ideologies and politics.”12 Although Boia’s History and Myth does not have exact counterparts in the neighboring historiographies, polemics over the role played by national myths in modern historiography, accompanied by calls for the demythtification of postcommunist historical writing, have occurred in other Balkan countries as well. As was the case with the reception of Boia’s book, these polemics often transcended the narrow circle of professional historians and turned into stormy debates joined by politicians, journalists, and the general public. A recent relevant example is the media and public outcry over a 2007 conference of local and foreign historians intended to critically reexamine the history and memory of the massacre of the Bulgarian population by Ottoman troops at Battak in 1876. This meeting was stigmatized by nationalist-minded Bulgarian politicians and media as an anti-Bulgarian attempt to falsify and thus denigrate Bulgaria’s modern history. It was followed by a campaign to “rehabilitate” the event by promoting the canonization of the Battak victims by the Bulgarian Orthodox Chuch as saints and martyrs.13 Overall, it might be argued that such historiographic polemics are unavoidable and ultimately useful “stages” in the postcommunist process of historiographical reformulation.Yet, the degeneration of intellectual debates into virulet media exchanges testifies to the strong connection between history and national identity as well as the precarious position of historians in the public sphere. No wonder, therefore, debates over ethnicity, national character, and national identity have remained at the forefront of postcommunist historiographical investigations, being subject to new critical accounts. The issue of the ethnic majority’s national identity and how it was treated domestically during the  For Boia’s response to his critics, see “Three Years on: An Introduction to the Second Romanian Edition,” in Boia, History and Myth, 2001, 1–27. 10  Boia, History and Myth, 2001, 4. 11  Ibid., 3. 12  Ibid., 1–2. 13  See http://today.actualno.com/news_341548.html 9

Battling over 00 book.indb 10

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:17

Beyond Stereotypes

11

interwar period has been addressed for Romania and Bulgaria as well as Hungary in a work by Balázs Trencsényi, The Politics of “National Character” (2012). Build on the pioneering set of country-based essays in Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery (eds.), National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (1995), the book focuses on the three-cornered debate between Western modernizers, peasant-centered nativists, and conservative nationalists. Also closely related to the region’s frame of reference, especially for Romania, are recent studies of the interwar relation of eugenics to racism and nationalism in Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., Blood and Homeland (2007) and Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (2002). Given the wider Western origins of what was regarded as the science of eugenics in the interwar period, Chapter 5 will return to these themes and their relation to wider European trends.

GREAT POWER INTERVENTION IN WAR AND PEACE The questions and controversies over Great Power intervention began of course with the Berlin Congress of 1878 and the subsequent treaty that offered international recognition within newly defined borders to the Balkan states of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. At the same time, Russian intervention was restrained in Bulgaria and Ottoman rule over the southern Balkans was maintained, but with the loss of Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. Long standing attention from diplomatic history to the Russian and Austro-Hungarian roles has given way in recent years to a few broader inquiries into Balkan relations with all of the European powers. The same limited attention has been accorded the powers’ political-military part in World War I and the subsequent Paris Peace Treaties and their great impact on the region. World War II has been by far the primary focus of recent scholarship, the conflict in dismembered Yugoslavia in particular. Critical study of the pre-1914 Russian experience in Bulgaria and Serbia began with the seminal study of Charles Jelavich, while F.R. Bridge initiated a  more sympathetic treatment of Austria-Hungary’s Balkan relations, which Christopher Clark’s wider study of the last prewar decade now supplements.14 Clark concentrates his criticism on Serbian provocation and Russian encouragement, in contrast to the balance drawn between Austrian and Serbian respon14

 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia, 1876–1886 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958); F. R. Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866–1914 (London: Routledge, 1972); and Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). See also Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Battling over 00 book.indb 11

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

12

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

sibility for the 1914 crisis by Samuel L. Williamson, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (1991). For the otherwise neglected subject of Ottoman relations with the Great Powers, the chapters in Marian Kent (ed.), The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire (1994) focus on the interplay between the respective foreign policies primarily over the still Ottoman southern Balkans in the pre-1914 period. Inside the independent Balkan states, a more troubled and distant set of relations between Britain and Serbia than those described above by Drapac may be seen in Slobodan G. Markovich, British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans, 1903–1906 (2000). These years span Britain’s formal break in diplomatic relations with Serbia following the assassination of King Aleksandar Obrenović. As the British King Edward famously remarked about monarchs at the time, “we are something of a fraternity.” The one full inquiry into pre-1914 European cultural intervention is Robin Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, The Habsburg ‘Civilizing Mission’ in Bosnia, 1878–1914 (2007). Its subtitle accurately conveys a presumption of Austro-Hungarian cultural superiority that downplays the mixture of occupation and accommodation that is also acknowledged. Okey pays more attention to the reconciling and educational projects of the period 1893–1903, under the reformist governor Benjamin Kallay, than to the ethnic divisions and a harder Habsburg policy that followed the territory’s annexation in 1908. An admiring set of studies from both countries on the full range of Serbian relations with France and France’s role as a model for Serbia culturally as well as politically has now appeared, appropriately in French, from Dušan Bataković, ed. La France et la Serbie. Une alliance atypique, 1870–1940 (2010). A recent collection edited by Hannes Grandits, Nathalie Clayer, and Robert Pichler and titled Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans: The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building (2011) aims at providing a more nuanced and methodologically-minded account of the process of modernization and state-building in the late Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman Balkans. In order to transcend the prevailing normative views of the process of modernization as Europeanization and the traditional fixation on political elites and top-down policies of change at the expense of bottom-up processes, the volume shifts the emphasis toward the complex interplay among various actors (the Great Powers, state reformers, various ethnoreligious communities). The authors explore these divergent motivations, interdependence, and multiple interactions. Last but not least, Bulgarian historians have recently revisited the question of the Great Powers’ involvement in the Balkans and the origins of the Great War, with a focus on Austria-Hungary and Great Britain.15

15

 See Markov, Golyamata, 2016; Aleksandrov, Diplomatsiyata sreshtu svobodata, 2017; Preshlenova, Avstro-Ungaria i Balkanite 1878–1912, 2017; and Petrov, Bulgaria v balkanskata politika, 2018.

Battling over 00 book.indb 12

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

13

European involvement and intervention in the region took giant steps forward during World War I, as it would again in World War II. The two Balkan Wars of 1912–13 mobilized German financial support for Bulgaria after its defeat by Serbia with the assistance of Romania, both backed by France, and divided Greece between supporters of the Anglo-French Entente and the Central Powers. Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars, 1912–13 (2000) adds fresh domestic detail on Bulgarian dealings with newfound German support, while Katrin Boeckh, Von den Balkan Kriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg (1996) carries the broader diplomatic history forward into World War I. In the absence of expected Russian support, this dependence included the obligation to accept a territorial concession to Greece because of combined Franco-German pressure, a last Great Power accommodation across the two alliance systems before World War I. As for the war years of 1914–18 themselves, the considerable scholarship, domestic and foreign, on the Greek and Bulgarian sides of the Salonika Front may be judged from relevant sections of the broader surveys by Thanos Veremis, The Greek Military in Politics: From Independence to Democracy (1997), John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis, Modern Greece, A History since 1821 (2010), and Richard Crampton’s Bulgaria. A History (2008). Controversy continues over the British and French roles in the “Great Schism” between Venizelos and the King on the Greek side. There is little debate over the initial military advantages and later economic burdens to Bulgaria from its alliance with the Central Powers. The final Bulgarian retreat from the Salonika Front is examined in Richard C. Hall, Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole (2010). Romania’s wartime connections with France were better than those with Russia or while under occupation in 1918 by Germany, as stated in Glenn E. Torrey, Romania and World War I: A Collection of Studies (1998). Austro-Hungarian intervention in occupied Serbia and its sizeable South Slav territories has been relatively neglected until recently. Jonathan E. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (2009) complements the seminal study from Belgrade by Andrej Mitrović, Serbia’s Great War, 1914–1918 (2007).16 While acknowledging that the essentially Austrian occupiers prevented widespread famine, Gumz presents an even harder view than Mitrović of police methods combined with cultural control. But he points it back toward the “bureaucratic absolutism” of the eighteenth century rather than forward to the fascist occupations of World War II. Mitrović does not hesitate to link German plans for a wider imperial presence, reaching from the

16

  This is an updated version of Mitrović’s original 1984 volume in Serbian, Srbija u prvom svetkom ratu. His broader study of German and Austro-Hungarian plans for the region has now been republished in Serbia, Prodor na Balkan: Srbija u planovima Austro-Ugarske I Nemačke, 1908–1918 [Penetrating the Balkans: Serbia in the planning of Austria-Hungary and Germany, 1908–1918] (Belgrade: Zavod za Udjbenike, 2011).

Battling over 00 book.indb 13

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

14

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Balkans to the Middle East, to later Nazi ambitions. He also spells out the most brutal of the foreign interventions in wartime Serbia and the one that provoked a widespread resistance movement, the Bulgarian occupation of its southern half. In the Habsburg territories from Bosnia to Croatia, Dalmatia and Slovenia, both its initial complexity and a spreading resentment of wartime demands for the Habsburg military effort appear in the studies assembled in Mark Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary (2000). Only in Slovenia was Austrian-based cultural domination imposed as in Serbia, as detailed by Janko Pleterski in “The South Slav Question” (pp. 135–45), with fateful encouragement for a postwar Yugoslav alternative.17 Offering fateful encouragement for the predominant Serbian role in the shaping of the initial Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was French diplomatic intervention from World War I forward into the 1920s. Grounded in France’s wartime military alliance with Serbia and a postwar concern to secure the postwar state’s Western lands from revived Austro-Hungarian claims or German influence, the evidence for consistent French support for central control from Belgrade is presented in an article in the aforementioned volume on the Franco-Serbian alliance. Its Serbian author accepts the conflation of Serbian with Yugoslav interests as a legitimate and also strategic necessity, specifically challenging a Croatian scholar’s argument that France’s post-1918 Serbian preference helped to make the new state an unworkable betrayal of the multiethnic Yugoslavism that had attracted French support before the war and Croatian support during the war.18 Leaving less room for any fresh contribution are the decades of earlier scholarship on the postwar territorial settlements and population transfers. They ranged from the creation of a Yugoslav state and the enlargement of Romania to the reduction of Bulgaria, with an influx of refugees, and the retreat of Greece from Anatolia, accompanied by the largest refugee influx. Both local and Western publication have long concentrated on the role of international intervention here, at the Paris peace conference, and afterward. So does Nicola Guy: in The Birth of Albania (2012), he addresses the previously neglected Albanian case. The same prolonged attention has been paid to the Anglo-American role in the aftermath of World War II, if not for the war years themselves. Access to their respective archives since the 1970s has fed a major outpouring of local and Western studies of postwar Greece. Post-1989 access to Soviet archives has gen For new perspectives on Slovenian history, see Štih, Simoniti, Vodopivec, A Slovene History, 2008; and Luthar, The Land Between, 2013. 18  See Gordana Krivokapić-Jović, “Les Français sur la Question Yougoslave: Entre la Protection d’Intérêt Serbe et la ‘question Croate’ (1918–1920),” in Dušan T. Bataković (ed.), La Serbie et la France, 379–98; and Miro Kovač, Fransuska I hrvatsko pitanje, 1914–1929 [France and the Croatian question, 1914–1929] (Zagreb: Dom I  Svijet 2005). 17

Battling over 00 book.indb 14

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

15

erated publication supplementing the long-standing Cold War Western interest in the communist coming to power in Bulgaria and Romania.19 For the period 1941–45, recent work in English and German has helped to address the varied internal relationships between collaboration, occupation, and resistance posed by external Nazi domination, with Italian support until 1943, British opposition, and by 1944 advancing Soviet forces. In his Inside Hitler’s Greece (1993), Mark Mazower takes us from the chaos of the joint German-Italian regime in the first years to divided resistance movements, whose collaboration British assistance failed to achieve. The larger, communist-led EAM-ELAS then faced the reverse in 1944 beginning with a post-Italian German offensive and ending with the British decision to oppose their efforts to seize power after the Germans had departed. The evolution of the debate over British intervention, advancing from an initial assumption of it being decisive in the communist defeat, is traced in John O. Iatrides and Linda Wrigley, eds., Greece at the Crossroads, The Civil War and its Legacy (1995). Bernd J. Fischer, Albania at War, 1939–1945 (1999) and Reginald Hibbert, Albania’s National Liberation Struggle: The Bitter Victory (1991), detail the minimal British and absent Soviet influence in Albania. Instead, the much resented Italian occupation and the resistance groups it had spawned had the effect of making the German takeover in late 1943 initially welcomed and its offering of arms to the resistance to fight Serb or Montenegrin Communists acceptable. This fateful collaboration left them discredited and opened the way for the small communist resistance to seize power in 1944. The German-led subjugation and subdivision of Yugoslavia in 1941 generated more controversy than anywhere else in the region. The German role in a newly created Independent State of Croatia including Bosnia and in occupied Serbia is one major point of contention. The other is the British division of its support to two bitterly opposed resistance movements, the Chetniks and the Partisans. Drawing the two issues together has been the initial argument of Yugoslav communist scholarship for a predominant German role in controlling Croatia as well as Serbia and in co-opting the Chetnik movement against the Partisans. British support understandably switched from the former to the latter by 1943. Croatian and Serbian resistance to this view, confined to emigre publications before 1989, have been more concerned with the abuses of the other side or the Partisans than their own exoneration from collaboration. Charges of potential Partisan collaboration with the Germans also emerged from the German archives beginning with the American research of Walter R. Roberts, Tito, Mihailović and the Allies, 1941– 1945 (1973). A recent set of studies primarily from regional scholars that empha-

19

 See Vesselin Dimitrov, Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in Bulgaria, 1944–1948 (London: Palgrave, 2008); and Alfred J. Rieber, “The Crack in the Plaster: Crisis in Romania and the Origins of the Cold War,” Journal of Modern History 76, no. 1 (2004): 62–106.

Battling over 00 book.indb 15

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

16

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

sizes Chetnik collaboration is Sabrina Ramet (ed.), Serbia and the Serbs in World War II (2011).  Three recent volumes address this set of controversies from the ample evidence of British and German archives and the mixture of memoir and documentary evidence available from several sides in the former Yugoslavia. Exploring at length the range of collaboration with the German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupiers, including the areas of independent activity by the Nedić regime  in Serbia and the Independent State of Croatia, is Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (2001). Drawing on a full page list of interviews with participants as well as the diplomatic record, Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Hitler’s New Disorder (2008) wends his way through the contradictory set of relations between the Mihailović command and the assorted Chetnik detachments outside of Serbia, the Chetnik and Partisan relations with the British missions, and Croatian relations with the Germans and Italians. Turning to the Nedić regime in Serbia, he discounts the autonomous initiatives asserted in the above-mentioned Ramet volume on Serbia. They appear here to have been less certain or coordinated with the Chetniks and more subordinate to the German direction. Further divisions in both authority and policy are seen to extend into both the British and German frameworks. The far greater coherence of Partisan command and control emerges as a significant advantage over the Chetniks in dealing with the British representatives and, in the limited inquiries in the event of a British landing in Yugoslavia, with the Germans. A comparable Chetnik disadvantage, heightened by the initial British inability to provide the Chetnik forces with arms or other supplies, is demonstrated in Simon Trew, Britain, Mihailović and the Chetniks, 1941–42 (1998). Both the British and Mihailović were eager in these early years of the war to exaggerate his command and control over the disconnected Chetnik units in Bosnia and Montenegro. Those units spent more effort on killing or abusing non-Serbs than on fighting the Germans. Trew joins the other two works in emphasizing the limits that British and German and Italian intervention faced once the initial set of occupation regimes was in place. At the same time, they do not exonerate any of the domestic sides, the Partisans included, from the war crimes that contributed to the million lives lost there during World War II. Romania’s wartime anti-Semitic policy and record is covered in much detail by the new scholarship. In response to a revisionist trend of rehabilitating General Ion Antonescu that originated in late 1980s and continued in the postcommunist period, a number of historians have explored the rise of anti-Semitism and the extermination of Romanian Jews during Antonescu’s regime.20 This led to

20

 See mainly, Randolph L. Braham, Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Michael Shafir, “Marshal Antonescu’s Postcommunist Rehabilitation,

Battling over 00 book.indb 16

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

17

a larger historiographical but also public debate about Romania’s relations with Nazi Germany.21 This work includes the relationship between the Nazi Final Solution and the extermination of Romanian Jews during World War II.22 The debate came to an end in 2005 with the publication of the Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Holocaust. The Report concluded unequivocally that the campaign of deportation and extermination of the Romanian Jews conducted by Ion Antonescu’s government was an integral part of the Holocaust during World War II.23 Also avoiding any exoneration of Romanian authorities as simply following Nazi directives or guidelines in their treatment of Roma as well as Jews in Bessarabia during the war is Vladimir Solonari, Purifying the Nation (2010). In contrast, the scholarship that came in the past decade from the domestic sides in the former Yugoslavia remains tempted by exoneration or condemnation. Numerous works simply avoid the war years. Straddling 1941–44 are the interwar and postwar studies in Mile Bjelajac (ed.), Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije, vidjenje srpskog faktora (2007), and one that stops as the war starts, Mario Jareb, Ustaško-domobranski pokret (2006) covers the 1930s and ends in 1941 as the war and the Ustaše regime begin. Statisticians from Belgrade and Zagreb, as represented in Chapter 6,

Cui bono?,” in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era (Boulder, CO: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies Graduate Center/City University of New York and Social Science Monographs, 1997), 349–410; and Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–44 (New Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 21  On Romanian wartime relations with Nazi Germany, the USSR and the Western powers, Sebastien Balta, Rumänien und die Grossmächte in der Ära Antonescu (2005) provides details from newly accessible archives. Rich archival evidence on the German-Romanian relations, with a focus on the Jewish question is provided by Ottmar Traşcă and Dennis Deletant (eds.), Al III-lea Reich şi Holocaustul din România. 1940–1944. Documente din arhivele germane [The Third Reich and the Holocaust in Romania, 1940–1944. Documents from the German archives] (Bucharest 2007). The immediate prewar years have been recently addressed in Rebecca Hynes, Romanian Policy toward Germany, 1936–1940 (2000). 22  See I.C. Butnaru, Holocaustul uitat: consideraţiuni istorice, politice şi sociale cu privire la antisemitismul romanesc (Tel Aviv: I.C. Butnaru, 1985); English ed.: The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); Carol Iancu, Shoah in timpul regimului Antonescu (1940–1944) (Iaşi: Polirom 2001); Lya Benjamin, Prigoană şi rezistenţă in istoria evreilor din Romania, 1940–1944 (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); Jean Ancel, Contribuţii la istoria României. Problema evreiască, 1933–1944, 3 vols. (Bucharest: Hassefer, 2001); Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi (eds.), România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice şi comparative (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004). 23  Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihai E. Ionescu (eds.), Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (Iaşi: Polirom, 2005).

Battling over 00 book.indb 17

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

18

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

have been, by and large, able to converge on the number and distribution of war dead, reducing the overall total from 1.7 to one million and confirming the Serb plurality as well as heavy losses on all sides.24 A recent collection of essays on wartime Croatia is Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), The Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945 (2007), published in Croatian in 2009 as Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 1941–1945. A chapter by Mark Biondich adds useful new detail on the relationship between the Vatican and the Catholic Church under the Ustaše regime. But Croatian authors subordinate much of the regime’s domestic as well as foreign policy to German direction, while introducing the Croatian Serbs’ Chetnik abuses as the prelude and not as a reaction to the Ustaša’s own antiSerb campaign of ethnic cleansing. Neither approach stands up well against a study by Rory Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation (2013). Yeomans details the regime’s “Revolution of Blood” as immediately launched—on its own ideological initiative—against Serbs and Jews in 1941, and against Roma in 1942, and relaunched with renewed vigor in 1944. German policies in the region, their frustrations in Croatia but also their predominance in Serbia, remain better judged in Croatian publications by Fikreta Jelić-Butić and in German by Holm Sundhaussen on Croatia, and by Walter Manoschek on Serbia.25 Overall, the recent scholarship on the Balkans reflects informed yet often country- or ethnic-specific contention on national or Great Power issues. In order to add to the existing literature in English and thus enlarge the scope of current historiographic debates, our volume turns to other controversial issues that are much less served by publications outside the local languages. Selections translated from Bulgarian and Greek address the Ottoman and Orthodox legacies to the nation-states that followed.  Serbian and Croatian translations reflect contrasting approaches to the struggle over building a common state in the interwar Yugoslav Kingdom, a struggle for representative government under the rule of a modern constitution that in 1929 was the region’s first to give way to a royal dictatorship. The range of selections on paramilitary movements and violence, the centerpiece for pejorative Western stereotypes of the region, includes recent Bulgarian, Greek, Croatian, and Serbian scholarship. Again focusing on the interwar period, a narrower range of translations consider the question of European economic and cultural influence in victorious Yugoslavia and defeated Bul Vladimir Cvetković, “Stradanje civila u logoru Jasenovac,” Tokovi istorije, 4 (Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2007): 153–66; and Vladimir Žerjavić, “O stradanjima u drugom svetskom ratu,” Dialog povjesničara-istoričara, 5 (Zagreb, 2001): 568–72. 25  Fikreta Jelić-Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatske, 1941–1945 [The Ustaše and the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945] (Zagreb: Školska kniga, 1977); Holm Sundhaussen, Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kroatiens im nationalsozialistischen Grossraum, 1941– 1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983); Walter Manoschek, “Serbien ist Judenfrei”: Militärische Besatzungspolitk und Judenvernichtung in Serbien, 1941–42 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1993). 24

Battling over 00 book.indb 18

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

19

garia, as opposed to the diplomatic or political intervention that peaked in early years after World War I. While French or British influence predominated in economics until giving way to German trade leverage in the late 1930s, there was a cultural competition, primarily in the capital cities, among British, German, French, and Russian currents. Finally, selections from Bulgarian, Albanian and Romanian scholarship confront the hard experiences of Jews and other minorities, Nazi depredations aside, during and after World War II. For each of these five chapters, our joint authors provide a  broader overview of the range of domestic scholarship. They also reflect on the challenges facing domestically based historians in addressing the transnational issues raised by a wider range of Western disciplines for European history in general.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Achim, Viorel, and Constantin Iordachi, eds. România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului Perspective istorice şi comparative [Romania and the Trans-Dnister region. The question of the Holocaust. Historical and comparative perspectives] Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004. Aleksandrov, Emil. Diplomatsiyata sreshtu svobodata: Bulgaria i Velikobritania 1909– 1915 [Diplomacy against liberty: Bulgaria and Great Britain 1909-1915]. Veliko Turnovo: Faber, 2017. Ancel, Jean. Contribuţii la istoria României. Problema evreiască, 1933–1944 [Contributions to the history of Romania. The Jewish question, 1933–1944], 3 vols. Bucharest: Hassefer, 2001. Balta, Sebastien. Rumänien und die Grossmächte in der Ära Antonescu. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005. Banac, Ivo, and Katherine Verdery, eds. National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995. Banac, Ivo. The National Question in Yugoslavia, Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. Bataković, Dušan, ed. La Serbie et La France. Une alliance atypique: Relations politiques, economiques et culturelles 1870–1940. Belgrade: Académie serbe des sciences et des arts, Institut des études balkaniques, 2010. Bjelajac, Mile, ed. Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije, vidjenje srpskog faktora [To write the history of Yugoslavia, in view of the Serbian factor]. Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2007. Benjamin, Lya. Prigoană şi rezistenţă in istoria evreilor din Romania, 1940–1944. Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001. Biondich, Mark. Stjepan Radić, the Croat Peasant Party and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904–1928. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Boeckh, Katrin . Serbien/Montenegro, Geschichte und Gegenwart. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Puster, 2009. —. Von den Balkan Kriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1996. Boia, Lucian. Istoria şi mit în conştiinţa românească. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997. English ed.: History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Budapest: CEU Press, 2001.

Battling over 00 book.indb 19

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

20

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Braham, Randolph L. Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Bridge, F.R. From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866– 1914. Routledge, 1972. Brown, Keith. The Past in Question, Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Brunnbauer, Ulf, and Hannes Grundits, eds. The Ambiguous Nation, Case Sudies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013. Bucur, Maria. Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. Butnaru, I. C. Holocaustul uitat: consideraţiuni istorice, politice şi sociale cu privire la antisemitismul romanesc. Tel Aviv: I.C. Butnaru, 1985. English ed.: The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Ćirković, Sima. The Serbs. London: Blackwell, 2004. Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. Cornwall, Mark, ed. The Last Years of Austria-Hungary. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000. Crampton, Richard J. Bulgaria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Cvetković, Vladimir. “Stradanje civila u logoru Jasenovac” [Civilian victims in the Jasenovac camp], Tokovi istorije 4 (Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2007): 153–66. d’Estournelles Constant, and Paul-Henri-Benjamin Baluet. “Introduction.” In The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect, with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict by George F. Kennan. 1–19. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993. Daskalov, Roumen, Tchavdar Marinov, eds. Entangled History of the Balkans. Vol. 1: National Ideologies and Language Policies. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Daskalov, Roumen, Diana Mishkova, eds. Entangled History of the Balkans. Vol. 2: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Daskalov, Roumen, Alexander Vezenkov, eds. Entangled History of the Balkans. Vol. 3: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Daskalov, Roumen, Diana Mishkova, Tchavdar Marinov, Alexander Vezenkov, eds. Entangled History of the Balkans. Vol. 4: Concepts, Approaches, and (Self-)Representations. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Deletant, Dennis. Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–44. Hampshire, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Dimitrov, Vesselin. Stalin’s Cold War: Soviet Foreign Policy, Democracy and Communism in Bulgaria, 1944–1948. London: Palgrave, 2008. Djokić, Dejan, and James Ker-Lindsay, eds. New Perspectives on Yugoslavia: Key Issues and Controversies. New York: Routledge, 2011. Djokić, Dejan. Illusive Compromise. A History of Interwar Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Dogo, Marco, and Guido Franzinetti, eds. Disrupting and Reshaping, Early Stages of Nation-Building in the Balkans. Ravenna: A. Longo, 2002. Dragostinova, Theodora. Between Two Motherlands, Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900–1949. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Drapac, Vesna. Constructing Yugoslavia, A Transnational History. New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2010. Fischer, Bernd J. Albania at War, 1939–1945. London: Hurst, 1999.

Battling over 00 book.indb 20

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

21

Friling, Tuvia, Radu Ioanid, and Mihai E. Ionescu, eds. Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Iaşi: Polirom, 2005. Gerolymatos, Andre. The Balkan Wars—Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Gounaris, Basil C. “Defining Ethnic Identity in Hellenic Macedonia: Remarks on Anastasia Karakasidou, ‘Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia.’” Balkan Studies 34, no. 2 (1993): 309–14. Grandits, Hannes, Nathalie Clayer, and Robert Pichler, eds. Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans: The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Gumz, Jonathan E. The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914– 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Guy, Nicola. The Birth of Albania. Ethnic Nationalism, the Great Powers of World War I and the Emergence of Albanian Independence, 1914–1921. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. Hall, Richard C. Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010. —. The Balkan Wars, 1912–13, Prelude to the First World War. London: Routledge, 2000. Hatzidimitriou, Constantine G. “Distorting History: Concerning a  Recent Article on Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia.” Balkan Studies, 34 (1993): 315–51. Haynes, Rebecca. Romanian Policy toward Germany, 1936–1940. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Hibbert, Reginald. Albania’s National Liberation Struggle: The Bitter Victory. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991. Hitchins, Keith. Rumania, 1866–1947. London: Clarendon Press, 1994. Hoare, Marko Attila. The History of Bosnia from the Middle Ages to the Present. London: SAQI, 2007. Iancu, Carol. Shoah în România. Evreii în timpul regimului Antonescu, 1940–1944: documente diplomatice franceze inedite. [The Shoah in Romania. The Jews during the Antonescu regime, 1940–1944: Unpublished French Diplomatic Documents]. Iaşi: Polirom 2001. Iatrides, John O., and Linda Wrigley, eds. Greece at the Crossroads. The Civil War and its Legacy. College Station, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. Ivanov, Martin. Review of Richard Crampton’s Bulgaria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. The Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (2008): 574–5. Jakir, Aleksandar. Dalmatien zwischen den Weltkriegen, agrarischen und urbane Lebenswelt und das Scheitern der jugoslawischen Integration. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999. Jareb, Mario. Ustaško-domobranski pokret [The Ustaše home-guard movement]. Zagreb: Školska kniga, 2006. Jelavich, Barbara. Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Jelavich, Charles. Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia, 1876–1886. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958.

Battling over 00 book.indb 21

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

22

John R. Lampe and Constantin Iordachi

Jelić-Butić, Fikreta. Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatske, 1941–1945 [The Ustaše and the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945]. Zagreb: Školska kniga, 1977. Karakasidou, Anastasia N. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870–1990. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. —. “National Ideologies, Histories, and Popular Consciousness: A Response to Three Critics.” Balkan Studies 28, no. 1 (1994): 113–46. —. “Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity on Greek Macedonia.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 11, no. 1 (1993): 1–28. Kennan, George F. “Introduction.” In The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect, with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict by George F. Kennan, 3–16. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993. Kent, Marian, ed. The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire. London: Frank Cass, 1994. Koliopolis, John S., and Thanos M. Veremis. Modern Greece, A History Since 1821. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Kovač, Miro. Fransuska I hrvatsko pitanje, 1914–1929 [France and the Croatian Question, 1914–1929]. Zagreb: Dom I Svijet, 2005. Krivokapić-Jović, Gordana. “Les Français sur la Question Yugoslave: Entre la Protection d’Intérèt Serbe et la ‘question Croate’ (1918–1920).” In La Serbie et La France. Une alliance atypique: Relations politiques, economiques et culturelles 1870–1940, edited by Dušan T. Bataković, 379–98. Belgrade: Académie serbe des sciences et des arts, Institut des études balkaniques, 2010. Lampe, John, and Mark Mazower, eds. Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe. Budapest: CEU Press, 2004. Livizeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, Regionalism, Nation-Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Romanian ed.: Cultură și naționalism în România Mare, 1918–1930. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1998. Luthar, Oto. ed. The Land Between: A History of Slovenia. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013, 2nd rev. ed. Magaš, Branka. Croatia through History: The Making of a European State. London: SAQI, 2007. Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A Short History. New York: New York University Press, 1998, Manoschek, Walter. “Serbien ist Judenfrei”: Militärische Besatzungspolitk und Judenvernichtung in Serbien, 1941–42. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1993. Markov, Georgi. Golyamata voyna i bulgarskiyat mech nad Balkanskiya vuzel 1914–1919 [The Great War and the Bulgarian sword over the Balkan knot 1914–1919]. Vol. 1: Zaplitaneto [The Entanglement]. Vol. 2: Razsichaneto [The cutting]. Sofia: Zahariy Stoyanov, 2016. Markovich, Slobodan G. British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans, 1903–1906. Paris: Dialogue Association, 2000. Mazower, Mark. Inside Hitler’s Greece, The Experience of Occupation, 1941–1944. Yale: Yale University Press, 1993. Miller, Nicholas J. Nation & State, Serbian Politics in Croatia before the First World War. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. Mishkova, Diana, ed. We, The People, Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe. Budapest: CEU Press, 2009. Mishkova, Diana. Beyond Balkanism. The scholarly politics of region making. London, New York: Routledge, 2019.

Battling over 00 book.indb 22

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Beyond Stereotypes

23

Mitrović, Andrej. Prodor na Balkan: Srbija u planovima Austro-Ugarske i Nemačke, 1908–1918 [Penetrating the Balkans: Serbia in the Planning of Austria-Hungary and Germany, 1908–1918]. Belgrade: Zavod za Udjbenike, 2011. 1st ed.: Belgrade: Nolit, 1981. —. Serbia’s Great War, 1914–1918. London: Hurst, 2007. Original ed.: Srbija U Prvom Svetskom Ratu. Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1984. Neuburger, Mary. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Okey, Robin. Taming Balkan Nationalism, The Habsburg ‘Civilizing Mission, in Bosnia, 1878–1914. London: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Hitler’s New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945. New York: New York University Press, 2008. —. Serbia: The History of an Idea. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Petranović, Branko. Srbija u drugom svetskom ratu, 1939–1945 [Serbia in the Second World War, 1939–1945]. Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački I novinski centar, 1992. Pleterski, Janko. “The South Slav Question.” In The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Mark Cornwall, 135–45. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002. Pop, Ioan-Aurel. Istoria, adevarul si miturile [History, the Truth and the Myths]. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica, 2002. Preshlenova, Roumiana. Avstro-Ungaria i Balkanite 1878–1912 [Austria-Hungary and the Balkans 1878-1912]. Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Ohridski,” 2017. Ramet, Sabrina P., ed. The Independent State of Croatia. London: Routledge, 2002. Published in Croatian as Sabrina P. Ramet, ed. Nezavisna Država Hrvatska. Zagreb: Alinea, 2009. —. Serbia and the Serbs in World War II. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Rieber, Alfred J. “The Crack in the Plaster: Crisis in Romania and the Origins of the Cold War.” Journal of Modern History 76, no. 1 (2004): 62–106. Roberts, Elizabeth. Realm of the Black Mountain, A History of Montenegro. London: Hurst, 2007. Roberts, Walter R. Tito, Mihailović and the Allies, 1941–1945. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1973. Rossos, Andrew. Macedonia and the Macedonians. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2008. Roudometov, Viktor, ed. The Macedonian Question: Culture, Historiography and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Schmidt, Oliver Jens, and Eva Anna Franz, eds. Albanische Geschichte, Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2009. Schwander-Sievers, Stephanie, and Bernd J. Fisher, eds. Albanian Identities, Myth and History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002. Shafir, Randolph L. “Marshal Antonescu’s Postcommunist Rehabilitation. Cui bono?” In The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era, edited by Randolph L. Braham, 349–410. Boulder, CO: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies Graduate Center/City University of New York and Social Science Monographs, 1997. Solinari, Vladimir. Purifying the Nation, Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania. Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Battling over 00 book.indb 23

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Štih, Peter, Vasko Simoniti, Peter Vodopivec. A Slovene History. Society, Politics, Culture. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, Sistory, 2008. Sugar, Peter, ed. Eastern European Nationalism in the 20th Century. Washington, DC: American University Press, 1996. Sundhaussen, Holm. Wirtschaftsgeschichte Kroatiens im nationalsozialistischen Grossraum, 1941–1945. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983. Todorova, Maria, ed. Balkan Identities, Nation and Memory. London: Hurst, 2004. —. Review of Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Slavic Review 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 427–8. —. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Tomasevich, Jozo. War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Torrey, Glenn E. Romania and World War I: A Collection of Studies. London: Oxford Center for Romanian Studies, 1998. Traşcă, Ottmar, and Dennis Deletant, eds., Al III-lea Reich şi Holocaustul din România. 1940–1944. Documente din arhivele germane [The Third Reich and the Holocaust in Romania, 1940–1944. Documents from the German Archives]. Bucharest 2007. Trencsényi, Balázs. The Politics of “National Character.” A Study of Interwar East European Thought. London: Routledge, 2011. Trew, Simon. Britain, Mihailović and the Chetniks, 1941–42. London: Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 1998. Troebst, Stefan. Das makedonische Jahrhundert, 1893–2001. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007. Turda, Marius, and Paul J. Weindling, eds. Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeastern Europe, 1900–1940. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007. Veremis, Thanos. The Greek Military in Politics: From Independence to Democracy. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997. Wachtel, Andrew Baruch. Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912–13, 5th printing of 1981 ed.: New York: Pathfinder, 2001. Williamson, Samuel L. Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Yeomans, Rory. Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. Zahariadis, Nikolaos. “Politics, Culture and Social Science: A Commentary on Dr. Karakasidou’s ‘Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia.’” Balkan Studies 34, no. 2 (1993): 301–7. Žerjavić, Vladimir, “O stradanjima u drugom svetskom ratu” [Of victims in the Second World War]. Dialog povjesničara-istoričara, 5 (Zagreb, 2001): 568–72.

Battling over 00 book.indb 24

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Chapter 1

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building Roumiana Preshlenova and Vangelis Kechriotis

Battling over 00 book.indb 25

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Battling over 00 book.indb 26

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:18

Bulgarian Debates on the Ottoman Political Legacy Roumiana Preshlenova

A

bout a decade after the fall of communism in Bulgaria, in contrast to other postcommunist countries, foreign observers and insiders pointed out that continuity in Bulgarian historiography was prevailing, although using different expressions. A smooth transition to new themes and approaches, the replacement of ideological terms with “neutral” ones rather than confrontations with ideological conservatism predominated in the period of initial changes.1 A trend

 See, for example, Wolfgang Höpken, “‘Kontinuität im Wandel’: Historiographie in Bulgarien seit der Wende“ in Alojz Ivanišević, Andrea Kappeler, Walter Lukan and Arnold Suppan (eds.), Klio ohne Fesseln? Historiographie im östlichen Europa nach dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus (Vienna: Peter Lang, 2003), 487–98; Ulf Brunnbauer, “Introduction. (Re)Writing History in Southeast Europe,” in Ulf Brunnbauer (ed.), (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism (Münster: LIT Verlag 2004), 9–30; Valeri Stoianov et al. (eds.), Petdeset godini Institut po istoriya pri BAN [Fifty Years Institute of History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences] (Sofia: Gutenberg Publishing House, 1999); Roumiana Preshlenova, “Freiheit als Verantwortung. Zehn Jahre postkommunistischer Historiographie in Bulgarien,” in Alojz Ivanišević, Andrea Kappeler, Walter Lukan and Arnold Suppan (eds.), Klio ohne Fesseln? Historiographie im östlichen Europa nach dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus (Vienna: Peter Lang, 2003), 473–486; Daniela Koleva and Ivan Elenkov, “Did ‘the Change’ Happen? Post-Socialist Historiography in Bulgaria,” in Ulf Brunnbauer (ed.), (Re)Writing History, 94–127; Antoaneta Zapryanova, Blagovest Nyagoulov and Iliyana Marcheva (eds.), Istoricheskata nauka v Bŭlgariia—sŭstoianie i perspektivi [Historical scholarship in Bulgaria—State and perspectives] (Sofia: In-t po istoriya pri BAN, 2006). On the pre-1989 period, see Maria Todorova: “Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria,” American Historical Review 97, no. 4 (October 1992): 1105–17.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 27

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

28

Chapter 1

of secondary importance was the occurrence of many publications from pseudoprofessionals or laymen with the pretension to reveal issues which used to be taboo, such as secrets, mysteries, and sensations. Some of them questioned “official” history and its monopolistic position. These pseudo-historiographical works faced academic neglect and created confusion in public historical debate. Associated with low culture, the so-called chalga additionally contributed to the uncritical overproduction of books instead of provoking the difficult transition to a more dialogical communication within scholarly circles. No doubt, among this period’s significant achievements were the abandonment of Marxist ideology and rhetoric and the disclosure of new archival sources. The latter became a kind of refuge for many active historians from the previous period. Difficult institutional and ideological changes, political baggage, and lower standing left such scholars in this unfavorable position. For others, cooperation with scholars and institutions from the former Iron Curtain countries gradually grew and involved an increasing number of historians. Numerous NGOs and several private universities appeared in addition to or alternative to former academic institutions. International and national research projects with external financing drew attention to new issues and new approaches. Postmodern critics of traditional historiography in Western Europe and the United States gave another impetus for self-reflection and reevaluation. In this context, dissatisfaction was not only a question of generations. Initially, attention was paid to thematic issues “suppressed” or neglected during the previous period. Ethnic minorities and the image of others were among the pioneering research projects for departing from more conservative scholarship.2 In this context the International Center for Minority Studies

2

 The new trend has been introduced and later methodologically elaborated by Maria Todorova, “Self Image and Ethnic Stereotypes in Bulgaria,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 8 (1992): 139–64; and Maria Todorova, “Is ‘the Other’ a useful cross-cultural concept? Some thoughts on its implementation to the Balkan region,” Internationale Schulbuchforschung 21 (1999): 163–71. It became the issue of several monographs such as Ljuben Bumbalov (Red. sci.), Bulgari in Italia e Italiani in Bulgaria (Sofia: Demaks 1997); Kina Vachkova, Ianko Bŭchvarov and Racho Ivanov Chavdarov (ed.), Chekhi v Bŭlgaria i bŭlgari v Chekhia [Czechs in Bulgaria and Bulgarians in Bohemia] (Shumen: Universitetsko izdarelstvo Episkop Konstantin Preslavski 1998); Nadya Danova, Vesela Dimova and Maria Kalitsin (eds.), Predstavata za “Drugiia” na Balkanite [The Image of “The Other” in the Balkans] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 1995); Kostadin Dinchev, Kristina Popova and Elena Tacheva (eds.), Balkanite—nie sred drugite i te sred nas [The Balkans—We among the others and they among us] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 1998); Harald Heppner and Roumiana Preshlenova (eds.), Die Bulgaren und Europa von der Nationalen Wiedergeburt bis zur Gegenwart (Sofia: Akademieverlag Prof. Marin Drinov, 1999); Nikolai Aretov (ed.), Da mislim Drugoto—obrazi, stereotipi, krizi XVIII-XX vek [To think “the other”— Images, stereotypes, crises, 18th–20th century] (Sofia: Kralitsa Mab, 2001); Aleksandŭr

Battling over 00 book.indb 28

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

29

and Intercultural Relations (IMIR) should be especially emphasized. Founded in 1992 in Sofia as a  private, nonpolitical, nonprofit, and nongovernmental organization,3 it hosted more than thirty-five research projects and published nearly sixty books4 whose scope reached beyond national borders. Some academic publications from the mainstream also addressed related issues and in particular the Ottoman heritage—the impact of the Ottoman conquest on Bulgarian settlements, internal and external minorities, the European context of the Bulgarian nineteenth century,5 a reevaluation of the role of Russia in the counFol (ed.), Bŭlgari i evrei [Bulgarians and Jews], 1–2 (Sofia: Tangra TanNakRa, 2000); Garo Hairabedian (ed.), Bŭlgari i armentsi—zaedno prez vekovete [Bulgarians and Armenians together during the centuries] (Sofia: Tangra TanNakRa, 2001). 3  In cooperation with the Center for the Study of Islam and Christian.Muslim Relations (CSIC), Birmingham, UK and the Center for Research in Ethnic Relations (CRER), Warwick, UK. 4  Among the numerous publications of the center, some relevant to this issue should be mentioned: Antonina Zhelyazkova (ed.), Sŭdbata na myusyulmanskite obshtnosti na Balkanite (Sofia: IMIR, 1997). English edition: The Fate of Muslim Communities in the Balkans (Sofia: IMIR, 1998); Rossitsa Gradeva and Svetlana Ivanova (eds.), Myu­ syul­manskata kultura po bŭlgarskite zemi: izsledvaniya [Muslim culture in the Bulgarian lands] (Sofia: IMIR, 1998); Antonina Zhelyazkova (ed.), Mezhdu adaptatsiiata i nostalgiiata. Bŭlgarskite turtsi v Turtsiya (Sofia: IMIR, 1998, English ed.: Between Adaptation and Nostalgia: The Bulgarian Turks in Turkey (Sofia: IMIR, 1999); Galina Lozanova and Lyubomir Mikov (eds.), Islyam i kultura: izsledvaniya [Islam and culture: Studies] (Sofia: IMIR, 1999); Miumiun Isov, Naĭ-razlichniyat sŭsed: Obrazŭt na osmantsite (turtsite) i Osmanskata imperiya (Turtsiia) v bŭlgarskite uchebnitsi po istoriya prez vtorata polovina na XX vek [The most different neighbor: the image of the Ottomans (Turks) and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) in the Bulgarian history textbooks in the second part of the 20th century] (Sofia: IMIR, 2005); Mila Maeva, Bŭlgarskite turtsi-preselnitsi v Republika Turtsia (Kultura i identichnost) [The Bulgarian Turks emmigrants to the Republic of Turkey. Culture and identity] (Sofia: IMIR, 2006). 5  Maria Todorova, “Bulgarian Historical Writings on the Ottoman Empire,” New Perspectives on Turkey 12 (Spring 1995); Tsvetana Georgieva: Prostranstvo i prostranstva na bŭlgarite XV-XVII vek [Space and Spaces of the Bulgarians in the 15th–17th Centuries] (Sofia: LIK, 1999); Dimitŭr Raĭkov: Istoricheskata sŭdba na makedonskite bŭlgari [The historical fate of the Makedonian Bulgarians] (Sofia: Makedonski nauchen institut, 1997); Veselin Iliev: Zabravenite bŭlgari kraĭ Volga [The forgotten Bulgarians along the Volga river] (Sofia: BiSHiM Ilich Tsvetkov, 1997); Valeri Stoyanov, Turskoto naselenie v Bŭlgaria mezhdu polyusite na etnichesktata politika [The Turkish population in Bulgaria between the poles of ethnic politics] (Sofia: LIK, 1998); Blagovest Nyagulov: Banatskite Bŭlgari. Istoriyata na edna maltsinstvena obshtnost vŭv vremeto na natsionalnite dŭrzhavi [The Banat Bulgarians. History minority in the time of national states] (Sofia: Paradigma, 1999); Maria Yaneva (ed.), Besarabskite bŭlgari v Moldova: Opit za portret [The Bessarabian Bulgarians in Moldova: An attempt at a portrait] (Sofia: Association AKSES, 2001); Anna Krŭsteva (ed.), Obshtnosti i identichnosti v Bŭlgaria [Communities and identities in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Petekston, 1998); Nikolaǐ Aretov, Bŭlgarskoto vŭzrazhdane i Evropa [The Bulgarian revival and Europe] (Sofia: Kralitsa MAB, 1995), et cetera.

Battling over 00 book.indb 29

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

30

Chapter 1

try’s liberation from the Ottoman Empire, and many others. Nevertheless, new approaches have developed that regard history not only from a narrow political and national perspective. They connected to international discourse and broke with much of traditional historical writing. These initial changes prepared the further development of historical scholarship beyond the institutional decentralization and thematic diversification of studies in the next decade. This affected inevitably the period of nation-building. Along with conventional historical narratives, a few recent publications question issues of the Bulgarian modern history and the legitimacy of basic terms in the “master narrative.” They are neither peripheral nor marginal. Just the opposite, they address core questions in the process of nation-building: the Ottoman time and the Bulgarian Revival. Since the nineteenth century, the period of the Ottoman rule has been designated in Bulgarian historiography, in history textbooks, and in the press as “Turkish yoke” or “Turkish slavery.”6 This continuing tradition reaffirmed many negative perceptions and explanations of social developments after the fourteenth century. Since 1989 numerous attempts have been made to replace this victimization, but only in imprecise terms, by employing confusing expressions like “Ottoman presence” or “Ottoman domination.” A debate developed over the question: How to name the period from the subordination of the last Bulgarian king to the sultan in 1396 to the reestablishment of the Bulgarian state in 1878. The latter date is unanimously called the Liberation. On the surface, it was provoked by an article of the French historian B. Lory on mythmaking in the Bulgarian historiography in the Bulgarian journal Istorichesko bŭdeshte (Historical Future).7 For some the issue is far from being purely linguistic or a problem of contextualization. They perceive it as drawing a  dividing line between the core of the Bulgarian nation and the present Turkish minority as a legacy of the Ottoman Empire. In particular the reproduction of terms from the era of the struggle for national liberation, especially in historical textbooks, was contested. Excerpts from an article on Nadya Danova offer a perceptive overview of the

6

 A study of liquidation of slavery on the territory of the Principality of Bulgaria after the Liberation in juridical context reveals how specifically and narrow the content of this term is. It is an outline of the consistent efforts of Bulgarian society and its state not to permit the resumption of this practice and to buy back the Bulgarians sold into slavery at the end of the nineteenth century. See Valeri Kolev, “Kraiat na ‘turskoto robstvo’ sled Osvobozhdenieto” [The end of the “Turkish Slavery” after the liberation], Istorichesko bŭdeshte, nos. 1–2 (2007): 105–10. 7  Bernard Lory, “Razsuzhdeniya vurhu istoricheskiya mit ‘Pet veka ni klaha’” [Thoughts over the historical myth “they have been slaughtering us for five centuries”] Istorichesko bŭdeshte 1 (1997): 92–98.

Battling over 00 book.indb 30

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

31

problem “Ottoman time.” An academic solution is the use of the neutral terms “Ottoman period, “Ottoman rule” or “Ottoman oppression.” 8 A pertinent debate over the Bulgarian Revival (Bŭlgarsko Vŭzrazhdane) and on its content is a further example for coping with the Ottoman past in the Bulgarian historiography. In contrast to the previously mentioned one, it remained more or less structured within the academic scholarship. The discussion arose after the publication of a critical overview of the extensive literature on the topic by Roumen Daskalov in 2002.9 In this detailed historiographical survey, Daskalov reveals how views on the Revival changed, and how they were instrumentalized in time depending on the state of knowledge, ideological background, context, and political power. He explores the emergence of the term and its specific content, the formulation, the use, and misuse of the three core issues of the Revival—national and spiritual (cultural), political, and socioeconomic. Daskalov questions the attachment to Bulgarian historical trends and events of peculiarities from European epochs and currents (Renaissance, Enlightenment, Humanism, Romanticism, Reformation, modernization) as analogous to Bulgarian processes and phenomena. He points out the inapplicability of some approaches and refutes the claims to compose a monolithic image of the Bulgarian Revival as a combination of several diachronic European processes, accelerated and “condensed” in Bulgaria by foreign influences. Part of the discussion was organized by the “Historical Club” (hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia), an informal body that intended to revive scholarly critical debate over the production of historical knowledge and to defend the right to an open dialogue among different readings of the past. The main results are published in a volume, which provides space for different approaches to revise Bulgarian history in the seventeeth–nineteenth centuries. Daskalov represents a kind of “soft revisionism” of the Revival both in his aforementioned book and in his contribution to the volume. The latter is his response to the “harder revisionist” view of Alexandŭr Vezenkov. Accepting most of Daskalov’s theses, Vezenkov rejects the very use of the mental construction “Bulgarian Revival.” In his view, it embodies the artificial combination of territorially and/or chronologically heterogeneous processes and phenomena as a kind of exclusion from the Bulgarian narrative of analogous ones in the Ottoman society. Vezenkov spurns further the attempts to generalize the revival as a  common Balkan occurrence, seeing significant problems with such interpretations. He  See, for example, Maria Todorova, Balkanskoto semeĭstvo: Istoricheska demografiia na bŭlgarskoto obshtestvo prez osmanskiya period (Sofia: Amicitia, 2002). First ed. 1992, English ed.: Maria Todorova, Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern. Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006). 9  Roumen Daskalov, Kak se misli Bŭlgarskoto Vŭzrazhdane [How do we think of the Bulgarian revival] (Sofia: LIK, 2002). English ed.: The Making of a Nation in the Balkans. Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004). 8

Battling over 00 book.indb 31

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

32

Chapter 1

points out that Balkan historiographies in the countries that reestablished their statehood earlier (Greece, Serbia, Romania) do not use the term “revival” in contrast to the ones that acquired their independence from the Ottoman Empire after the Tanzimat—Bulgaria, Albania, and Macedonia. He appeals for a  narrower understanding of the Revival as a process of the emergence of national consciousness and organization. He advocates treatment of these processes in the context of the Ottoman Empire in the era of the Tanzimat, and favors abandoning the thesis that everything Turkish is an anachronism and doomed to failure, and everything attributed to the (Bulgarian) Revival is modern and progressive. This corresponds with the inclusion of Ottomanism as a policy of Ottoman authorities at the time of the Tanzimat to create a sense of common belonging for all subjects of the empire.10 Daskalov approves most of these critical additions to the specific contrasting, generalization, deconstruction and construction, moving in and out of processes and phenomena in the Bulgarian historiography. He points out that there are multiple views of that epoch: an imperial one (centered around the Tanzimat) and other, national ones that reconstruct “their” history. He stresses further that the term “revival” and related ones are neutral and technical terms and reflect the processes of nation-building under foreign rule for many historiographies. For him, the total deconstruction of the Bulgarian Revival goes too far. Rather, Daskalov proposes to confront the different constructs—national and imperial—and to relativize them. In any case he sees the positive effect of the discussion in the demonstrated groundlessness of the thesis about a “Balkan Revival.” For him the fact that the Tanzimat is a kind of matrix for the Bulgarian Revival is not a basis on which to replace the latter by the former—this would be an unjustified shift in the point of view. The acknowledgment of the importance of the Tanzimat as a common imperial phenomenon and the comparative approach to other nations’ developments, as Daskalov has rightly asserted, would allow a “decentralized” notion of the Bulgarian Revival. Representing the mainstream in historiography, Iliya Todev agrees with the necessity of revision of the revival concept but in other forms. He evaluates Daskalov’s book as a  unique publication in Bulgarian historiography and declares a positive disposition to many of the author’s achievements. At the same time, Todev is very critical to both the representation of this crucial epoch in national history as mythmaking by Daskalov and especially to Vesenkov’s attempts at the 10

 Alexandŭr Vezenkov, “Ochevidno samo na prŭv pogled: ’Bŭlgarskoto vŭzrazhdane’ kato otdelna epoha” [Not so apparent truths: The Bulgarian revival as a separate era], in Diana Mishkova (ed.), Balkanskiyat XIX vek. Drugi prochiti [The Balkan 19th century. Other readings] (Sofia: RIVA, 2006), 82–127. See also Alexandŭr Vezenkov, “Otomanismŭt kato politika na identichnostta prez epohata na Tanzimata” [Ottomanism as a policy of identity in the age of the Tanzimat], Istorichesko bŭdeshte, 1–2 (2007): 61–92.

Battling over 00 book.indb 32

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

33

deconstruction of the concept. He rather insists on a reevaluation of the epoch in two aspects. First, Todev appeals for a better balance between the two main currents in the movement for national liberation, the revolutionary and the so-called evolutionary. The new balance should be achieved neither by neglecting national revolutionary heroes who were “over-celebrated” before 1989 nor by their profanation. The extreme negative interpretation of their role is labeling them “rabies of evil,” from the viewpoint of Christianity, as they preached violence, hate, murder, and committed them or terrorists from the viewpoint of the Ottoman Empire. Unacceptable for him are also speculations about the freemasonry of Bulgarian revolutionaries.11 On the contrary, Todev desires a new balance by a higher appreciation for the evolutionary current, which includes the development of modern education and the struggle for an independent church. In his view the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 as the institution representing the Bulgarians before the Ottoman authorities and the Great Powers was the most important political recognition of the nation.12 This was the proper liberation, which made possible the April uprising in 1876, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, and the following reestablishment of the Bulgarian state at the Berlin Congress in 1878. Another major line of revision in the concept of the revival Todev implies is to acknowledge a decisive role of political ideas and intellectual movements over economic development and to shift the end of the revival period to 1912.13 The longer chronological extent of the epoch is generally formulated and not new. It is  Iliya Todev, “V tŭrsene na novi izmereniia: posttotalitarni problemi v ikonografiiata na bŭlgarskite national-revoliutsioneri” [In search of new dimensions: Post-totalitarian problems in iconography of the Bulgarian national revolutionaries], Istoricheski pregled 3–4 (2006): 215–29. On the mechanisms of heroization see Maria N. Todorova: Zhiviyat arhiv na Vasil Levski i sŭzdavaneto na edin natsionalen geroĭ [The living archive of Vasil Levski and the making of Bulgaria’s national hero] (Sofia: Paradigma, 2009); English version: Maria N. Todorova, Bones of Contention: The Living Archive of Vasil Levski and the Making of Bulgaria’s National Hero (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008). 12  Iliya Todev, “Ekzarkhiyata—fakticheskoto nachalo na modernata bŭlgarska dŭr­zhav­ nost?” [The Exarchate—The real establishment of the modern Bulgarian statehood?] in Ginyo Ganev, Georgi Bakalov and Iliya Todev (eds.), Dŭrzhava & tsŭrkva, tsŭrkva & dŭrzhava v bŭlgarskata istoriya [State & Church, Church & state in Bulgarian history] (Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Okhridski”, 2006), 235–46. See also, Iliya Todev, Dr. Stoian Chomakov (1819–1893). Zhivot, delo, potomtsi [Dr. Stoyan Chomakov (1819–1893). His life, work, descendants] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 2003). 13  Iliya Todev, “Vŭzgledut na Marin Drinov za Bŭlgarskoto natsionalno vŭzrazhdane” [Marin Drinov’s view on the Bulgarian national revival], in Iliya Todev, Mihail Stanchev, Roumiana Radkova and Sergei Strashniuk (eds.), Sbornik po sluchai 170– godishninata ot rozhdenieto na prof. Marin Drinov (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov 2009). 11

Battling over 00 book.indb 33

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

34

Chapter 1

not surprising within the statements that the revival ended in a different time for the different parts of the state according to their year of liberation or accession. For the Principality of Bulgaria, it ended in 1878, for Eastern Rumelia in 1885, in 1912 for Pirin Macedonia, and in 1940 for South Dobrudza. More radical is his claim that for the birth of the national idea, priority should be given to intellectual efforts and achievements over economic ones. 

Battling over 00 book.indb 34

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

Nadya Danova, Osmanskoto vreme v bŭlgarskiya natsionalen diskurs prez XIX i XX vek [The Ottoman Time in the Bulgarian National Discourse in the 19th and 20th Centuries]. In Sledva (Sofia: New Bulgarian University, 2009), 31–42. Nadya Danova is emeritus professor at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and doctor honoris causa of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She belongs to the generation that carried out the most difficult part of the transitions after 1989. Without rejecting historical positivism, Danova faced several new issues and new approaches to older ones. She published a monograph on Konstantin Fotinov: Konstantin Gergiev Fotinov v kulturnoto i ideino-politicheskoto raz­vitie na Balkanite prez XIX vek [Konstantin Gergiev Fotinov in the cultural and ideologicalpolitical development of the Balkans during the 19th century] Sofia: Academiya, 1994; numerous articles on education in the nineteenth century; and edited a book on the image of others in the Balkans: “L’idee des‚ nôtres’ et des‚ autres’ dans les milieux de la diaspora bulgare au XIXe siècle,” Études Balkaniques 47/4 (2011): 57–75. Her book on Ivan Dobrovski v perspektivata na bulgarskiya XIX vek [Ivan Dobrovski in the Perspective of the Bulgarian 19th Century] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo “Valentin Trayanov,” 2008) is a panorama of the Bulgarian intelligentsia during the nineteenth century. Currently she is working on the role of protestantism in the Bulgarian Revival and on utopia in the Balkans. In the following excerpt, Danova analyzes religious and historical texts to retrace the usage of terms and images of the Ottoman time from the end of the Bulgarian medieval state to the present. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the appraisal of Islam and its bearers were no longer just an element in the strategy of the Orthodox Church to preserve its flock and its power in the Ottoman Empire. In 1762 Hieromonk Paisiǐ concluded his Slavo-Bulgarian History in which the evaluations of the Ottomans and of the Ottoman state are among the components in the system serving the process of formation of Bulgarian national identity. Paisiǐ’s History very clearly shows the conscious effort of the elite to close the community’s ranks around the age-old values, construing an own narrative of the community’s past, its own mythology, which should legitimize it not only in the eyes of the others but also in its own eyes.1 It is exactly this book that contains an assessment of the Ottoman period which is to enter permanently Bulgarian texts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to Paisiǐ’s History, the Turks are invaders, oppressors, who are blamed for the destruction of the achievements of the glo-

 On the role of Paisiǐ of Hilandar for the construing of the Bulgarian national narrative see N. Aretov, Natsionalna mitologiya i natsionalna literatura [National mythology and national literature] (Sofia: Kralitsa Mab, 2006), 101–23.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 35

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

36

Chapter 1

rious Bulgarian medieval state, in which, in his view, among other things, book printing was also developed. The expressions used to describe the events, in this case, are: Turks had “enslaved” and “conquered Bulgaria,” “since those times and to this day they have kept the Bulgarian land in slavery and oppression,” Bulgarians are under the domination of the Agarenes.2 The elements of the historical myth clearly stand out: the ethnogenesis, the glorious past in the Middle Ages, and the memory of the significant traumas.3 […] Paisiǐ is the first author to define the Ottoman rule as “yoke” and “slavery,” and it is he who introduced it permanently in Bulgarian history books. In order to strengthen the traumatic effect in the violence narrative Paisiǐ appended to his text a list of neo-martyrs who had perished for the faith. Paisiǐ also launched another thesis, which has turned into a  firmly established truism in Bulgarian national discourse—that the Turkish slavery was harsher on Bulgarians than on the other Balkan peoples, because they lived closer to the capital city. This argument also explained the cultural lag as compared to the rest of the Balkan peoples. Paisiǐ was in fact the legitimator in new Bulgarian historiography in creating the impression that Greeks had played a more sinister role in Bulgarian history than Turks [...]. This is why Paisiǐ introduced the term “Greek slavery” and thus introduced the stereotype of “the double slavery of Bulgarians”—spiritual and political, as the reason for their being backward. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, “A History in Brief of the Bulgarian Slavic People” by Hieroschimonk Spiridon considerably enriched the traumatic components in the national discourse on the period of Ottoman domination.4 […] Spiridon introduced the motif of the “second devastation of Bulgaria” at the time of Selim II who had massacred the Bulgarian political and ecclesiastical elite. According to Spiridon, it was Constantinople’s5 Patriarch who had advised the sultan to destroy the leadership of the Bulgarians if he wanted to prevent the damage to his realm that the Greek one [the Byzantine Empire] had once suffered. Then Selim set off for Turnovo putting to the sword all high-standing Bulgarians who refused to convert to “the Turkish faith.” Their wealth was plundered and taken to Constantinople on a hundred ships. All Bulgaria was affected

 Translator’s note: A pejorative name for Muslims in Christian works of the time, referring to their presumable Biblical ancestress Hagar, the slave woman of Abraham. 3  Paisiǐ Hilendarski, Istoriya slavyanobŭlgarska. Pŭrvi Sofroniev prepis ot 1765 [A Slavo-Bulgarian history. First Copy of Sophroniĭ of 1765]. Edited and introduction by Bozhidar Raĭkov (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1972), 88–9, 90–1. 4  On the role of the hieroskhimonk in construing the national narrative, see N. Aretov, National Mythology and National Literature, 123–33. 5  Translator’s note: Bulgarian and other Slavic historiographies usually speak of Tsarigrad, that is the town of tsars/Caesars, instead of Constantinople. This is also the case in this article. 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 36

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

37

by this and many churches were laid waste. Thus Spiridon inserted a new adversary into the narrative, the demonized Constantinople Patriarch. In 1844 Paisiǐ’s History, complemented by Spiridon’s story about the “Second Devastation of Bulgaria,” was published by the teacher Hristaki Pavlovich under the title Tsarstvenik [The Book of Tsars]6 and was to be used in Bulgarian schools until the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, during the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century the perception of the Ottoman invasion and the subsequent centuries as a catastrophe followed by a dark period of “slavery and tyranny” took shape in Bulgarian national discourse by emphasizing the thesis of the “double Greek and Turkish slavery.” In this way, Ottoman rule is represented as the main perpetrator of Bulgarians’ ill fortunes in the past and the present. This becomes a cornerstone in the creation of the imagined matrix of nation-victim and nation-hero, on which Bulgarians’ autostereotype would be based in the subsequent decades. After the promulgation of the Hatt-i Şerif of 1856, views on the Ottoman Empire became even more diverse.7 Changes in the economic life in the Empire after the Crimean War led to the emergence of a large group of Bulgarian merchants and craftsmen who worked within the Ottoman state. The Reforms allowed the number of Bulgarians included in the governmental institutions to grow. The new conditions strengthened the influence of the champions of preserving the Ottoman state and of peaceful development for Bulgarians in it.8 Numerous texts describe the situation of Bulgarians in the Empire in most optimistic terms. Readiness to cohabit with Turks included both çorbacis9 and

6

 Tsarstvenik ili Istoriya bolgarskaia [The Book of Tsars or history of Bulgarians] (Buda: Kr. Sveuchilishta Peshtanskoga, 1844). 7  On the various views of Greek nineteenth-century authors on the Tanzimat era, see / Pesmazoglou, Stefanos, Europe—Tourkia. Antaklaseis kai diathloseis. E strategike ton keimenon [Europe—Turkey. Reflections and refractions. The strategy of the text] (Athens: Themelio, 1993), vol. 2, 396. 8  For a contemporary reading of the available data about the development of the Bulgarian community within the Ottoman Empire done by some economic and social historians, see M. Ivanov, Kakvo bi stanalo, ako [...] Konstruirane na hipotezata ‘razvitie bez Osvobozhdenie’ [What would have happened if [...] Construing the hypothesis ‘development without liberation’]. Diana Mishkova (ed.), Balkanskiyat XIX vek. Drugi prochiti [The Balkan 19th century. Other readings] (Sofia: Riva, 2006), 182–201. 9  Translator’s note: Çorbaci — a generic name for the most affluent group of Bulgarian society in the Ottoman period, large-scale merchants, land-owners, tax-farmers, and others, who were also members of village, town, church, school, and other boards. They were largely trusted by the Ottoman government and at the same time, participants in some of the national campaigns such as for an autocephalous church or in the revolutionary struggles. Their nature—as a group, “progressive” or “reactionary,” had been the object of a long debate in Bulgarian historiography, even before the establishment of the communist regime in 1944.

Battling over 00 book.indb 37

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

38

Chapter 1

a considerable part of the trade estate. Such ideas were defended by Stoyan Chomakov,10 Marko Balabanov,11 Gavril Krustevich, and others. These leanings are most distinctly expressed in Bulgarian periodicals published in Constantinople, the Tsarigradski vestnik [Tsarigrad gazette], Bulgaria and Chitalishte [Reading Room] being the most representative in this respect.12 An eloquent example of this viewpoint, which witnessed the readiness for cohabitation within the framework of the common state was also the Letostruy [The Course of Years] journal published in Vienna in the 1870s. Speaking about the Ottoman invasion the expression it employs is: “Turks crossed into Europe.”13 And I dare say, it is not just a matter of phraseology adapted to the requirements of Ottoman censorship but a matter of sincere conviction, which crop up also in the private correspondence of people of the time. This position was often related to the belief that if the Ottoman state was to be overthrown as a result of a war, Russia would have the excuse to establish itself in the Balkans and create an even less desired order. On the other side stood the champions of revolutionary actions, including Georgi Rakovski, Liuben Karavelov, and Vassil Levski. Rakovski admitted that the reforms of Mahmud II had had a positive effect on the Bulgarians and had entailed a relative improvement in their situation. However, he was convinced that Ottomans were unable to change, that the reforms had only cosmetic nature and would not substantially change the situation of the enslaved Bulgarians. […] To this part of the political spectrum belonged also Karavelov and Botev who saw the salvation only in the elimination of the Ottoman state by force. According to Karavelov, the slavery brought on to the Balkans by the Ottomans was nothing new for the Bulgarians, since Bulgarian bolyars14 in the Byzantine tradition were in possession of slaves.15 Botev gave very negative appraisal not only of the Ottoman centuries but also of the Bulgarian Middle Ages, seen as

 Iliya Todev, D-r Stoian Chomakov (1819–1893). Zhivot, delo, potomtsi [Dr. Stoian Chomakov (1819–1893). His life, deed and descendants]. Vol. 1 (Sofia: Аkademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 2003). 11  N. Danova, Marko Balabanov i grŭtskiyat kulturen i ideǐno-politicheski zhivot prez XIX vek [Marko Balabanov and the Greek cultural, ideological and political life in the 19th century]. Istoricheski pregled 3, (1986): 58–71. 12  On this position see Istoriya na Bulgariya. T. 6. Bŭlgarsko Vŭzrazhdane 1856–1878 [History of Bulgaria. Vol. 6. The Bulgarian revival 1856–1878] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bŭlgarskata akademiya na naukite, 1987), 191–93. 13  Letostruǐ ili kŭshtniǐ kalendar za prosta godina [The course of years or home calendar for an ordinary year], Anno III, 1871, 3. 14  Translator’s note: nobility. 15  L. Karavelov, Sŭbrani sŭchineniya [Collected works]. vol. 6 (Sofia: Izd-vo Bŭlgarski pisatel, 1966), 156; Vol. 8 (Sofia: Izd-vo Bŭlgarski pisatel, 1967), 350, 528–29. 10

Battling over 00 book.indb 38

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

39

a period of despotism and religious fanaticism, and was convinced that the glorious era for the Bulgarians was to come in the future.16 This image of the Ottoman state as an empire of slavery and violence was further reinforced by a number of works produced by Bulgarian authors in Romania such as Vassil Drumev and Vassil Popovich, which spoke of “slavery and tyranny.” During this period, a chronicle attributed to Metodi Draginov and to the seventeenth century, was published in authoritative historical editions. The chronicle narrates the violent conversion of the Rhodope Bulgarians to Islam, blaming the Plovdiv Metropolitan Gavril. Produced to nourish anti-Greek feelings, during the nineteenth century and even to this day, this fabrication has functioned as a text fuelling anti-Turkish sentiments.17 […] During the nineteenth century, Bulgarian schools also undertook the construction of Bulgarians’ national identity, with textbooks naturally bearing the mark of ethnocentrism. [...] In history textbooks, the period of Ottoman rule is described as a most dramatic period in Bulgarian history; this period is blamed for a number of weaknesses in Bulgarians’ character. The Czech historian Constantin Jireček, who in 1876 published his History of Bulgarians, played a special role in building up the perception of the Ottoman period.18 Jireček characterized the Ottoman invasion as a “catastrophe” and the Ottoman period as “the most tragic and the darkest one in Bulgarian history” during which the majority of settlements were destroyed and ravaged, while their inhabitants fled to the mountains. As a matter of fact, as remarked by Gunnar Hering, “[t]he verdict of Jireček may serve as a guide for the bulk of the works by Balkan authors writing on the Ottoman period.”19 With its emergence, the young state was confronted with two tasks: to demonstrate its legitimacy and secession from the Ottoman Empire and, at the same time, to find ways to incorporate the territories to which it aspired. These conditions naturally predetermined the adoption of Jireček’s theses about the Ottoman period by the representatives of the political system, of the elites, who disseminated their ideology through the schools and the university, by means of

 Hristo Botev, Sŭchineniia [Works]. vol. 2, edited by Stefka Tarinska and Nikolaǐ Zhechev (Sofia: Bŭlgarski pisatel, 1986), 13–18, 94–97, 227. 17  Zakhariev, St. Geografsko-istoriko-statistichesko opisanie na Tatar-Pazardzhishkata kaaza [Geographic, historic and statistic description of the Kaza of Tatar Pazardzhik]. 2nd phototype edition (Sofia: oF, 1973), 66–69. On the various opinions on the Metodi Draginov case, see N. Aretov, National Mythology and National Literature, 256–59, 519. 18  K. Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prague: F. Tempsky, 1876), 448, also 356, 505. 19  G. Hering, “Die Osmanenzeit im Selbstverständnis der Völker Südosteuropas,” in Hans Georg Majer, (ed.), Die Staaten Südosteuropas und die Osmanen (Südosteuropa Handbuch vol. 19) (Munich: Selbstverlag der Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft 1989). 360. 16

Battling over 00 book.indb 39

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

40

Chapter 1

the propaganda and the programs of the various parties, through mass media, through the monuments, the Pantheon, the feasts, the rituals and through indoctrination in the army. This can be seen in scholarly publication as well as in the educational works. Yet, one may say that there seems to have emerged a lack of unity in the assessment of some themes of the past. Among these are the events of April 1876 which are part of the identificational fixation in Bulgarian history. […] Zahari Stoianov reveals the ordinary Turk as a good-hearted, honest, sincere, and fair man who abided by the rules of friendship. Ferocious and cruel were those who defended the government from the rebels. This same Zahari Stoyanov did not hesitate to denounce the atrocities committed by Bulgarians.20 The memoirs of some educated Bulgarians also refer to this period in which Turks were also presented as upright, good-willed, as people showing solidarity and compassion.21 […] After the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 […], the History textbooks were based mainly on the works of nineteenth-century authors and especially of Jireček, and this naturally entailed the reproduction of evaluations and views from the previous period into textbooks. Authors of textbooks were teachers, public figures, and outstanding intellectuals. The Ottoman rule was labeled “Turkish slavery” with an accent on the catastrophic consequences of the Ottoman conquest. Turks were described as “destroyers,” “oppressors,” and “enslavers,” but occasionally there are also references to upright Turks, such as those who had aided Bulgarians in their struggles against the Constantinople Patriarchate. The Uprising of April 1876 is described usually in chapters under the title The Uprising and the Massacre of 1876, and is characterized as a rebellion against the “hard times.”22 There is an identification of the Turks with the Ottoman state, thus transferring all negative features of the alien rule onto contemporary Turks. […] The history textbooks of the 1920s–1950s continued to reproduce the negative stereotypes about our neighbors. In them, Turks show up as our enemies and barbarians, while in times when our relations were not bad, they are simply absent from the narrative. […] A major goal of the educational texts after 1944 had become the cultivation of fidelity to the new [communist] regime and the introduction of the new ide-

20

 N. Aretov, National Mythology and National Literature, 412–36.  D. Marinov, Spomeni iz moya zhivot ili moyata biografiya [Memoirs of my life or my biography] (Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2004). 22  M. Radeva, “Uchebnitsite po bŭlgarska istoriya (1878–1900) i vŭzpitavaneto na natsionalni chuvstva i natsionalno sŭznanie” [Textbooks in Bulgarian history (1878–1900) and the teaching of national feelings and national consciousness], Godishnik na Sofiǐskiya Universitet “Sv Kliment Okhridski,” Istoricheski Fakultet, vol. 75, 1982 (Sofia, 1986), 117–8; B. Panajotova, L’image de soi et de l’autrre. Les bulgares et ses voisins dans les manuels d’histoire nationale (1878–1944) (Québec: Les Presses de l’Universite Laval, 2005), 99, 120–5, 139–53. 21

Battling over 00 book.indb 40

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

41

ology among the children. The past of the Bulgarian people is no longer a source of national pride but only a proof supporting the principle of the irreconcilability in the class struggle. […] Thus the theme about the “double slavery” under Ottoman rule took new dimensions. The narrative about the Turkish political and the Greek spiritual slavery followed the nineteenth-century stereotype but at this moment appeared the image of the bloodsucker çorbaci who, like the Turks, robbed the defenseless Bulgarian peasants. At the same time, despite the ideologization and the clichés during the decades following World War II, Bulgarian historical scholarship had made serious advances in research on the fifteenth–nineteenth-century period, which allowed a far more nuanced appraisal of what had happened during these centuries. Of major importance were the studies of Bulgarian Ottomanists who, thanks to the use of new sources, have revealed a new picture of economic life in towns. A thesis about the relative preservation of the settlement and communication systems, of some economic and social institutions, partly balanced the conclusions about the catastrophic consequences of the Ottoman invasion. Gradually historians opened up to the possibilities for modernization of the Ottoman state, of its economy, administration and political life, which had been entirely denied previously. […] Unfortunately, during the years of 1984–89, when the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria decided to make use of the nationalistic card, Bulgarian Turks were forced to abandon their Muslim names and some historians undertook the “scholarly” task of persuading our Turkish compatriots that they were the descendants of Bulgarians converted to Islam rather than of Turks. […] The violence of the Ottoman authorities was brought back into the debate as if only to justify violence against contemporary Bulgarian Turks. […] A number of studies in the field of social history contributed to better knowledge about the social status and the institutions of Bulgarians under Ottoman rule, and about the Ottoman institutions in Bulgarian lands. Considerable attention was paid to town and urban life, as well as to demographic and cultural problems. The conclusions of these studies serve as evidence for historians in their efforts to discard the notion of “Turkish slavery” introduced by Paisiǐ as incorrect and not corresponding to the realities of the fifteenth–nineteenth centuries.23 […] Unfortunately, Bulgarian historians who were trying to pursue this balanced and realistic thesis, faced problems, which became particularly serious when nationalism with a strong admixture of Orthodox Christianity was adopted by the Bulgarian Socialist Party. […] Even today the term “Turkish slavery” continues to be present in some texts which simply follow the terminology introduced by Paisiǐ and reasserted by the

23

 On the achievements in the field see S. Dimitrov, “Ottoman Studies in Bulgaria after the Second World War,” Études balkaniques, I (2000): 29–58.

Battling over 00 book.indb 41

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

42

Chapter 1

ideologues of the national-liberation movement in the nineteenth century. The debate around the historical memory of Batak [a massacre of Bulgarians during the April 1876 uprising], which has recently taken place in Bulgaria has again revealed the potentialities for the instrumentalization of historical memory for political or personal ends.24 At more or less the same time historians in Greece were confronted with the task of opposing the ideological use of history in a debate about history textbooks.25 At the same time, some historians continue to fight against the term “Turkish slavery,” which unfortunately has not dropped out of the discourse of politicians, nor out of the media, and generally, out of the multiple means of manipulation of public opinion in Bulgaria. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

24

 On the Batak issues and its representations see Martina Baleva, Ulf Brunnbauer (eds.), Batak kato myasto na pametta / Batak – ein bulgarischer Erinnerungsort (Sofia: IztokZapad, 2007). 25  The Greek colleagues’ view on the Batak problem is of great importance for us since these two cases focus again and again our attention on the problem of the responsibilities of historians in the Balkans. Andreas Lyberatos, “Ē sphagḗ tou Baták kai oi hrḗseis tēs istorías” [The Batak massacre and the use of history], in A. Matthaiou, Str. Bournazos and P. Polemi (eds.), Stēn Trochiá tou Phílippou Ēlioú. Ideologikés chrḗseis kai emmonés stēn istoría kai tēn politikḗ [Following Phillip Eliou. Ideological uses and stubbornness in history and politics] (Athens: Polis, 2008), 37–51.

Battling over 00 book.indb 42

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

Roumen Daskalov, “Problematizatsiya na Vŭzrazhdaneto” [Problematizing the Revival], in Diana Mishkova (ed.), Balkanskiyat XIX vek: drugi prochiti [The Balkan Nineteenth Century: Other Readings] (Sofia: Riva, 2006), 159–63. Roumen Daskalov is professor of history at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia and former visiting professor at the CEU in Budapest. After his education at the Sofia University “St Kliment Okhridski,” he received postdoctoral fellowships in Germany, Italy, and the United States. He authored several monographs and articles on the Bulgarian political, social, and cultural history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as: Zashto sme takiva: V tŭrsene na bŭlgarskata kulturna identichnost [Why are We Such: In Search of the Bulgarian Cultural Identity] (co-author Ivan Elenkov) (Sofia: Prosveta, 1994); Mezhdu Iztoka i Zapada: Bŭlgarski kulturni dilemi [Between East and West: Bulgarian Cultural Dilemmas] (Sofia: LIK, 1998); Bŭlgarskoto obshtestvo 1878–1939 [The Bulgarian Society 1878–1939], vol. 1–2 (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2005). Daskalov has also actively participated in debates over historiography in Bulgaria. See his Kak se misli Bŭlgarskoto Vŭzrazhdane [How Do We Think the Bulgarian Revival] (Sofia: LIK, 2002). English ed.: The Making of a Nation in the Balkans. Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004); and “Za ‘alternativnata istoriya,’ ako ima takava” [On ‘Alternative History,’ If There Is such a Thing], Sotsiologicheski problem, 1–2 (2008): 390–3l. The problematizing of the Bulgarian Revival as such, that is its conception as a specifically Bulgarian period, separate and strictly delimited from the previous one, comes up as the main theme [of the discussion]. Hence, the debate proceeded with the Balkan context, that is, the histories and the historiographies of the neighboring Balkan peoples, and with the empire-wide one, explicitly, the Turkish national historiography. The challenge thrown down by Alexandŭr Vezenkov may be phrased in different ways. In a deliberately blunt and aggressive formulation, as it would be interpreted by many Bulgarian historians, in the following way—he “rejects” Bulgarian Revival (to also understand the institutionalized research on it). It would be closer to his idea, however, that it concerns the legitimacy of the notion of a specifically Bulgarian Revival era, isolated from what was taking place in the surrounding milieu, cleansed from the Ottoman element in the very Bulgarian lands. Perceived that way, the thesis has its justifications, as put forward by Vezenkov (with certain systematization). First, it is the over-projection (i.e., exaggeration) of the Revival processes, as well as the amalgamation of heterogeneous events, phenomena, and processes within one general picture and a unified “Revival” narrative, and based on the national boundaries. For example, it is representing the economic processes as formation of a “common national market,” the revolts and other armed actions as progressively expanding “revolutionary

Battling over 00 book.indb 43

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

44

Chapter 1

movement.” Second, it is interpreting the Bulgarian Revival as processes of a distinct kind (such as economic enrichment and modernization) and initiatives coming directly from the Ottoman government: inclusion of a Bulgarian secular elite in church affairs as a result of the codification of the millet system and also the integration of the Bulgarian elite in local administration, and construction of public utilities in the settlements. Third, it is ignoring processes which are part of Ottoman development and politics, such as centralization and rationalization of government, re-organization of judicial and of the taxation system, improvement of communications, encouragement of primary and higher education, and other reforms, and in this context, the distorted representation of Bulgarian church boards as local administrative government. Fourth, it is declaring (due to inertia and emotion) of everything “Turkish” to be anachronistic and destined to die out, and of everything Bulgarian and related to the Revival to be new, modern, and dynamic. […] The question is what follows from this. Here comes my disagreement with Vezenkov’s not seeing sufficient grounds to speak of an era of “Bulgarian Revival.” In my opinion, the problem is not whether there is anything specifically Bulgarian in such a period, which from an imperial point of view is the Tanzimat era, that is, the era of reforms, while Bulgarians participated in some of the processes, but not necessarily as their “driving force”. It is rather, whether this era had any significance for the Bulgarians. It is exactly the importance of this part of the ninenteeth century for Bulgarians that justified its delineation as a distinct period and the emphasis on it. This is the era of national identification and formation as well as of attempts at liberation and also of secularization and modernization for Bulgarians, too. That this happened not just to Bulgarians but also to other nations within the Ottoman Empire is of peripheral interest to Bulgarian historiography, which is largely focused on the value of “Bulgarian-ness.” Neither would any national historiography adopt the imperial point of view, which concentrated on the Tanzimat with its protagonists, their conceptions, and fallacies. Whether this is good or bad is not a matter of academic appropriateness but one of fundamental values and point of view—which perspective (Bulgarian or other) we want to adopt in order to view historical processes. National historiographies, every one of them, construes its “own” national society as its object [of study] (be it ‘in projection’), and give preference to “its” rather than to a foreign position. They trace retrospectively the history of their society, which has achieved statehood. This is also the case with Bulgarian historiography. The constructs “national Revival” in particular are quite popular in foreign historiographies, too, and especially among East European peoples who had been under alien imperial rule. Although they have as a source the Romanticism of the movements for national identification reflected also in the very term “Revival” (“Awakening” and others of the kind), they are being used in the respective historiographies with a valueless and technical meaning of formation of nations from peoples under alien rule. As such they are per-

Battling over 00 book.indb 44

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

45

fectly legitimate constructs of historical cognition especially when the original Romanticism is overcome. Bearing this in mind, the Bulgarian Revival as a construct may be approached critically (as I have tried to do in my own work): exaggerations, deformations, as well as aspects that have been overlooked so far would be paid due critical attention; also, the ideological use (with which I specifically deal). However, I do not see what we would gain if we are to fully deconstruct the Bulgarian Revival. It would be much better if we confront the various constructs, national and imperial, and then relate them to one another. This makes the national disturbances only part of the picture from an imperial point of view; in this case, they accelerate as an unintended consequence of the reforms. As a whole, it seems to me that questions such as how much specifically Bulgarian the Revival is and whether there is any specific Bulgarian Revival, are unnecessarily dogmatic. […] In my view, the significance in the challenge of Vezenkov lies elsewhere […], and it is in the appeal for the Balkan and the imperial contexts to be taken into account. At this stage, our debate became comparative and particularly fruitful. We discussed some Balkan “cases.” It turned out that only the Albanian and partly the Macedonian national historiographies operate with the notion of their “own” (respectively Albanian, Macedonian) National Revival, which is constructed similarly to the Bulgarian one. The Macedonian case proved to be particularly interesting. What it shares with the Bulgarian is the synchronic, up to a certain point (1878), history and the influences of Bulgarian historiography. The peculiarities, on the other hand, are due to the longer Ottoman rule in Macedonia until the Balkan Wars (hence the “inconvenience” with a rather continuous and late “Revival”), to the influence of the Serbian historiography, and, finally, to the attempt to build an independent national historical conception of a separate and purely Macedonian development opposed to the Bulgarian version. The discussion of the Greek case (and of Greek historiography) revealed the lack of an instructive term for Revival or, in any case, its marginality to the term for Enlightenment. Also, as far as we are informed, much more is spoken about Enlightenment in the Serbian case (and in the Romanian). In its turn Turkish historiography refers to the reform era of the Tanzimat, naturally investing it with other than national connotations. Namely, it focuses on the attempts at reforming the empire from “above” with a view to centralization, modernization, education, and others. This latter historiography also shows some idealization of the period in the sense of representing it as a selfless and humane program of Ottomanism (which unfortunately had not been understood and had only partially been implemented) when replaced by the Islamism of the time of Abdulhamid II, which more recently has enjoyed a certain rehabilitation. Thus, the debate over the Balkan cases demonstrates the irrelevance of the term “Balkan Revival.” The use of the concept “Revival” remains confined to just a few cases, which have in common relatively late liberation, having experi-

Battling over 00 book.indb 45

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

46

Chapter 1

enced the Tanzimat (from 1839 until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78), that is the period of modernizing reforms within and together with the Ottoman Empire. Conversely, peoples who had achieved their freedom earlier and had started on the way to independent development, do not speak of their national revivals. In other words, the imperial context of the Tanzimat has emerged as a focal prerequisite for the various national revivals in the Balkans, as has been noted by many contemporaries. The significance of the Tanzimat for the national revivals in question is rooted in the series of reforms, which granted the subject peoples certain rights and opportunities to develop their education, to identify themselves ecclesiastically (in proto-states), and to undertake the political representation of their interests before the Sublime Porte. Also taking place were processes of economic enrichment, especially of social strata engaged in crafts and trade, which supplied their national activists with economic means—as a kind of “pre-requisite” for the revival. (We should not forget to note here that Bulgarians improved their situation especially after the early secession of Greeks from the Empire and the compromising of those [Greeks] who remained inside [the Empire].) To what extent the reforms had been efficacious or had stayed on paper may be a bone of contention but it should be noted that it is exactly their “half-way” nature that gave the subjected peoples better chances for national identification since their really successful enforcement would have led to the successful centralization of the Empire and homogenizing of all [its subjects] into something of the kind of “Ottoman nation.” This is because the reforms aimed in the first place at the consolidation of the Empire and their failure only accelerated its demise. But let us repeat again that the fact that the Tanzimat appears as a  so-to-say matrix for the Bulgarian Revival does not give us grounds to replace the one with the other, as this would have meant changing the point of view and a replacement of the interests, which have stimulated the two phenomena reflected also in their study. […] The acknowledgment of the importance of the Tanzimat as an empirewide phenomenon as well as the comparison with the tracks of the other Balkan peoples, however, allows us to see the Bulgarian Revival in another light—“decentred” and taken out of its usual “self-sufficiency” (as is the view of one of the historians who create the construct in question). Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

Battling over 00 book.indb 46

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:19

AleksandŬr Vezenkov, “Ochevidno samo na prǔv pogled: ‘Bǔlgarskoto vǔz­ razh­dane’ kato otdelna epoha” [Not So Apparent Truths: The ‘Bulgarian Revival’ as a Separate Era]. In Diana Mishkova (ed.), Balkanskyat XIX vek: drugi prochiti [The Balkan Nineteenth Century: Other Readings] (Sofia: Riva, 2006), 82–127. Alexandŭr Vezenkov started his academic career after 1989. He studied history at the Sofia University “St Kliment Okhridski”, at CEU (Budapest), and at Centre d’Histoire du Domaine Turc, EHESS, Paris. In addition to issues of national identity and the Balkan contexts of Bulgarian history, his scholarly publications examine the communist regimes in Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe. His publications include the monograph, Vlastovite strukturi na Bŭlgarskata komunisticheska partiia 1944–1989 [The Power Structures of the Bulgarian Communist Party 1944–1989] (Sofia: CIELA, 2008) and 9 septemvri 1944 []9 September 1944] (Sofia> CIELA, 2014), part of the book series on “Uncompleted past” of the Institute for the Recent Past (Institut za blizkoto minalo). He also co-edited vols. 3 and 4 of Entangled Histories of the Balkans (Leiden: Brill, 2015, 2017). In spite of differing opinions about the beginning and even the end of the Revival period, Bulgarian historiography does not question its nature as a new and distinct era. This is what “specialists in the period” think, this is also institutionally sanctioned, and is therefore also adopted by most of the Ottomanists in Bulgaria who do not even undertake its study.1 Many foreign authors also take this definition for granted.2 Despite the general politicization of Bulgarian history, the Revival has always been regarded as “the most Bulgarian time.” It is most revealing in this respect that even nonspecialists know about the Revival as a distinct era—anyone who has done the obligatory level of general education has a relatively precise idea about what had happened “during the Revival”. […] Artificial amalgamation of (territorially and/or chronologically) disparate phenomena and processes within one entity. The creation of the perception of the Revival could not have taken place without the amalgamation of the most heterogeneous events, phenomena, and processes within one general picture or a unified narrative. This is typical for the national historiographies. Very indicative in this respect is the representation of the “armed struggles” where events 1

 Indeed there are in Bulgaria also Ottoman studies on the nineteenth century, but they are only an insignificant trend. There is a huge contrast when we compare, on the one hand, with Ottoman studies in general where during the last several decades nineteenth century has become a major field of study, and with the huge historiography of the Bulgarian Revival, on the other. 2  Especially when they attempt at providing a general overview of Bulgarian history. See, for example, Richard Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 46 ff.

Battling over 00 book.indb 47

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

48

Chapter 1

that had taken place at different locations and for completely different reasons are arranged in a sequence as if in a causal connection. Attempts at achieving political independence are interspersed with peasant revolts against arbitrary taxation, inept reforms or problems around landed property: Velcho’s conspiracy, the Nish Uprising, the Braila Revolts (all in line), the Vidin Uprising.3 If only at least two of them were somehow connected! At the same time uprisings in only few villages are described as if the entire nation had risen up, and the only debatable question, which remains today is whether this also includes the Ottomans’ Bulgarian representatives, the çorbacis (this follows a nearly fifty-year-long discussion focused on the participation of the “bourgeoisie”). Since the history of the Revival is, to a large extent, seen as the sum total of biographies of important personalities, in the same way the activities of the Revivalists are also presented in connection to each other, as if they were part of one unified and homogeneous movement. […] Territorially the boundaries of this entity are certainly national. It is being claimed that the Revival processes encompassed “all Bulgarian lands.”4 This is equally asserted for cultural activities and of political struggles. […] In the final analysis, works titled Bulgarian Revival [Bǔlgarsko vǔz­razh­dane] go so far as to attempt at offering an overall picture of the nineteenth, sometimes also eighteenth, century while general works on the history of Bulgaria present this stretch of time as a distinct period, situated between the “Ottoman time” (the “Turkish yoke,” or the euphemistic “Bulgarian lands during the fifteenth– seventeeth century,” “late Middle Ages,” and others), and the establishment of the new Bulgarian state. This periodization is also present in all sorts of other publications—not only those regarding religious and national struggles but also those on economic, local, or regional history. In general histories, the chapter on  Nikolai Genchev, Bǔlgarsko vǔzrazhdane. Zapiski i belezhki po nova bǔlgarska istoriya za studentite ot SU Kliment Okhridski [Bulgarian revival. Notes on modern Bulgarian history for the students at Kliment Okhridski Sofia University] (Sofia: Sofiǐski universitet Kliment Okhridski, 1988), 210–27. Neither the logic of the narrative, nor the language strike with any precision or elegance: “the savage hordes of the Arnauts,” “the Turkish masters who knew no mercy” (219). The expression of some of the older and respected authors does not differ significantly from this. Thus, M. Arnaudov (Bǔlgarsko vǔzrazhdane [Bulgarian revival], Sofia: Ministerstvo na narodnoto prosveshtenie, 1944) writes about the “dumb indifference, the corrupt customs and blind chauvinism of the ruling tribe” (34), and about the “dumb monastic nest of the Greeks” (145.). The problem is not just with the means of expression. It is not acceptable to explain political, social, and cultural processes with “savagery” or “dumbness”; certainly not in scholarship. 4  Iliya Todev, “Edinstvoto na bǔlgarskite vǔzrozhdenski protsesi v Mizia, Trakia i Makedonia” [The unity of Bulgarian revival processes in Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia], in Natsionalnoosvoboditelnoto dvizhenie na makedonskite i trakiiskite bǔlgari, 1878–1944 [National-liberation movement of Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarians], Vol. 1 (Sofia: MNI, 1994), 13–36. 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 48

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

49

the Revival is always considerably longer than the one on the “fifteenth–seventeeth century.” Thus the narrative on the Revival not only fills in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ousting everything Ottoman from them but also overshadows the Ottoman period in general. This tendency is not restricted to the formal periodization alone—the perception of the Revival as a distinct era is decisive for our understanding (or rather, misunderstanding) of the Bulgarian but also of the Ottoman nineteenth century. The expression “during the Revival” and the definition of something as belonging to the “Revival” conceals significant deformations. Consequently, the perception of the Revival as a separate period leads to the uncritical use of the definition “Revival” for anything that relates to and originates from the nineteenth century. […] Is there anything that may be called “Balkan Revival”? That the concept of the distinct “Revival era” is indeed deeply embedded in Bulgarian historiography is manifested also by the fact that Bulgarian historians writing on Balkan history mechanically project it onto the neighboring countries. They speak first about “Balkan Revival,” and since they make comparisons with and try to identify the influences of the more developed neighbors, they refer in the first place to the Greeks and to some extent the Serbs. These histories do not conform to any distinct “Revival era.” Earlier authors have usually done this underscoring Bulgarians’ lagging behind, without any attempt at a more general conceptualization. […] In the same way, the “academic” History of Albania begins with a projection of the concept of our own national history on that of the unsuspecting neighbors: “With the Albanian people, as with the rest of the peoples in the Balkans, 19th century marked a new era, that of the Revival.” To the contrary, most foreign publications on the general history of the Balkans do not distinguish any specific Revival era (e.g., see Barbara Jelavich,5 where the “Yugoslavian” perspective has been decisive instead). Others write about Bulgarian and Albanian Revival but do not use the term in a general allBalkan perspective (L.S. Stavrianos, G. Castellan).6 Еven those who do so, are forced to fill in the topic mainly with the Bulgarian and the Albanian cases (Edgar Hösch).7 Besides, one should not forget that these “national revivals”

5

 Barbara B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 6  Leften Stavros Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Rinchart & Co., 1958), 364–80, 496–512; Georges Castellan, Histoire des Balkans, XIVe-XXe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1991). Yet, even G. Castellan pays tribute to this distinction by limiting the “Ottoman period” to the end of the eighteenth century while everything in the nineteenth century is the “era of the nationalisms.” 7  Edgar Hösch, Geschichte der Balkanländer. Von der Frühzeit bis zur Gegenwart. 2. Aufl. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1993). Hösch, too, discusses first the Bulgarian (152–53), and then the Albanian Revival, while the chapter on the National Revival as a Cultural Era begins with the stipulation: “As the designation for an era the term ‘National

Battling over 00 book.indb 49

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

50

Chapter 1

should supposedly appear in the Habsburg as well as in the Ottoman Empire. To construct any “Balkan context,” for that time, in which Croats would be juxtaposed against the other “Balkan” peoples, is a very confusing anachronism.8 When discussing the “own lands” still under Ottoman rule, more traditional works in Greek, Serbian, and Romanian historiography frame them within the periodization of their respective national state. As far as the history of these territories has been studied also by Bulgarian historiography, the comparison among them reveals time and again the degree to which the concept of the Revival period is part of the traditions of some [historiographical] schools but has no parallel in the others. It is clear that the publications follow the tracks of national historiography notwithstanding the fact that it is a matter of territories, which at that time were outside the national state in the Ottoman Empire. […] If we are to arrange things chronologically, we shall see clearly that it is the historiographies of states, which have acquired their independence after the Tanzimat, that is, Bulgarian, Albanian, in some cases also Macedonian, which deal with the concept of a Revival period. For those who had achieved their statehood earlier, there is no such an era. For them the new era came either with the uprising that led to the emergence of the state (1804, for Serbia, 1821, for Greece), or, in the Romanian case, with the end of the Phanariot rule (i.e., also in 1821). On the other hand, Turkish historiography and specifically Ottoman studies also see a new era in the nineteenth century. Of course, it is not called Revival, but this is the era of the reforms, the Tanzimat. This should lead us to look deeper into the connections between the “era of the Revival” and the “era of the Reforms.” […] The representation of the period between the 1820s and the 1870s (not to speak of the eighteenth century!) and all that took place at that time as “Bulgarian Revival,” should not be reproduced mechanically. In the first place, we must go back to a very narrow understanding of the “Revival” as a process of the nation’s self-identification and self-organization. It is not so important whether the term “Revival” would be preserved regarding this period, whether the term

Revival’ is with only limited use (of limited benefit) for the history of the Balkan peoples,” in the Bulgarian edition the expression ‘nur von beschränkter Brauchbarkeit’ (Sofia: Lik, 1998, 198) is rendered incorrectly as “is with limited use among the Balkan peoples” which in itself is also not true. 8  This is how Roumiana Bozhilova tries to ‘contextualize’ Croat National Revival (Roumiana Bozhilova, Istoriya na hǔrvatia [History of Croatia] Sofia: Abagar, 1998, 141): “The process of the national revival of the Croat people demonstrates different features from the rest of the peoples inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula.” The English version of the book of Roumen Daskalov, on the other hand, is entitled The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004). Instead of “in the Balkans,” I would say “in the Ottoman Empire,” although the book fails to present either of the two contexts.

Battling over 00 book.indb 50

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

51

“national Revival” would be adopted (as it is in the Czech, Croat, but also in the Albanian historiography), or whether its use will be restricted in favor of some purely technical name (as it is being done more recently in Slovak historiography). Two different agendas follow from this. The first is to examine these very processes of national Revival in the context of the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat era. And second, to study all the rest—economy, modernization, villages, and towns, without directly and incessantly connecting them to the expression “Revival.” The “Revival house” and the “Revival çarşı”9 as well as the misleading phrase “during the Revival” should disappear from academic works. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

 Translator’s note: shopping district.

9

Battling over 00 book.indb 51

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

Iliya Todev: “Ekzarkhiyata—fakticheskoto nachalo na modernata bŭlgarska dŭrzhavnost?” [The Exarchate—the real establishment of the modern Bulgarian statehood?]. In Ginyo Ganev, Georgi Bakalov, and Iliya Todev (eds.), Dŭrzhava & tsŭrkva, tsŭrkva & dŭrzhava v bŭlgarskata istoriya [State & Church, Church & State in Bulgarian History] (Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Okhridski,” 2006), 235–46. Iliya Todev is a professor at the Institute for Historical Research of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. After his education at the Sofia University “St Kliment Okhridski” and PhD studies at the Institute for Historical Research, he received fellowships in the USSR, the UK, and France. He used to teach at the New Bulgarian University, Sofia (1992–93) and the Slavic University, Sofia (1996–99). Author of several monographs on the Bulgarian Revival and its characters. Born in Batak, Iliya Todev explicitly refers to the scandal Batak in his last book. See Iliya Todev, Batak 1876– mit ili istoriya? Aktualni tekstove po Bŭlgarsko vŭzrazhdane [Batak 1876— myth or history? Texts on the Bulgarian revival] (Sofia: Kama, 2010). The Exarchate is not only an institutional attribute of the Bulgarian nation. Apart from being almost automatically able to take the Bulgarians to the sacred state of their own, the Exarchate itself has some important features of a state; it has super functions which allow us to talk of statehood before the appearance of the state. […] Therefore, to a certain extent the Exarchate, apart from being a church organization, also has the three components which build the state institutionally—territory, nation, and power. The Church Movement itself, whose greatest achievement is the Exarchate, is religious only in its form, but in its essence it is political. This is obviously not only stated above but also in the fact that the clergy was led by the really dauntless pastor Ilarion Makariopolski, who was their symbol. The real actions that lead to the success achieved in solving the Church Question1 are a work of the laity led by Dr. Stoyan Chomakov, the first professional politician of modern Bulgaria; Gavril Krŭstevich, a  remarkable man of law and theologian; and Petko Slaveǐkov, brilliant journalist and socially active person. Hence, unlike the mediaeval Bulgarian churches, which were entirely a function of the state and shared its fate, the Exarchate is not only established in the absence of the modern Bulgarian state, but it is also an almost unconditional premise of the state. Therefore, when San Stefano Bulgaria is cruelly truncated,

1

 Last about the Church Question see in Istoriya na bŭlgarite [History of the Bulgarians], vol. 2 (Sofia: Znanie - Trud, 2004).

Battling over 00 book.indb 52

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

53

the Exarchate survives and not only preserves its perimeter, but expands it by incorporating the dioceses of Macedonia and South Thrace, litigious according to the Firman.2 Translated by Sashka Georgieva

2

 According to some scholars, after the Liberation in 1878 and especially after the proclamation of independence in 1908, the Exarchate, as its jurisdiction is not already restricted within the Turkish boundaries, becomes to a certain extent a subject of the international law—a fact which might be interpreted as an increase of the elements of statehood in its nature. Here is, for example, what the known man of law, professor G. P. Genov, says in his introduction to Ilia Sekulov, Bŭlgarskata ekzarkhiya ot gledishteto na mezhdunarodnoto pravo [The Bulgarian Exarchate from the point of view of the international law] (Sofia, 1934), 3: “Of course, the international personality of the Exarchate cannot be compared with that of the Roman Church, which has the right of active and passive legation and the right to conclude international agreements (concordats) with other countries for protection of the Canonical Church and its congregates in the religion sphere within the boundaries of those countries. And yet the Exarchate too had acquired its international personality.” I. Sekulov himself (The Bulgarian Exarchate from the Point of View of the International Law, 9.) thinks that as all that is due to the Firman, this act is “a typical case of factual legislation and administration of international character”; the same author (The Bulgarian Exarchate from the Point of View of the International Law, 7–8.) though defines the Exarchate after the Liberation as “outof-state society” similar to the international economical, scientific, spiritual, class, or professional organizations.

Battling over 00 book.indb 53

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

Iliya Todev: “Vŭzgledut na Marin Drinov za Bŭlgarskoto natsionalno vŭz­ razh­dane” [Marin Drinov’s view on the Bulgarian National Revival]. In Iliya Todev, Mikhail Stanchev, Roumiana Radkova, Sergeĭ Strashniuk (eds.), Sbornik po sluchaǐ 170–godishninata ot rozhdenieto na prof. Marin Drinov [Corpus dedicated to the 170th anniversary of prof. Marin Drinov] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo “Prof. M. Drinov” 2009), 139–42. The term “National Revival” should be perceived as conventional, and the resulting set of objects of the material culture should be apprehended as the Bulgarian transition from the Middle Ages to Modern times, from tradition to modernity, from feudalism to capitalism. If things are seen like that, different chronological frames should be sought—the early eighteenth century (nascence of bourgeois relations, which are an agent of the transition) until 1878 (when in broad lines it finishes). Also a stipulation has to be made that the term “National Revival” assumes conditional sense; that in its contents replicas of past states are vivid, but not the most important; and that ultimately it is not so much about a revival of something old but more about the nascence of something new. But even if the supremacy of matter over spirit is acknowledged, the knowledge of the historical facts shows that in many cases the social ideas are not a function, but an argument of social and economical processes. This is quite true regarding the national idea of the Bulgarian Revival. First we find explicit national idea among the Bulgarian Catholics in the eighteenth century, when it is impossible to talk about any Bulgarian bourgeois element, and it is only natural to explain it with the preserved memory of the one-time independent Bulgarian state and with the perspective of catholic reconquista on the Balkans. Paisiǐs’s national idea, which stands for pragmatic Greek-phobia and reticent alliance with Serbs and Russians, does not need basic determination either; it is a natural reaction to the pro-priest (pseudo) universalism and more specifically to the panHellenism of Eugenius Bulgaris and to the Illyrism based in Sremski Karlovci.1 The results achieved by the Bulgarian National Revival and mainly by the national church and national state are hard to be explained with the social-economical parameters of the Bulgarian renaissance society. However, they became possible because the Bulgarian territories were a very strong card in the Eastern Question; if this card was in capable and patriotic hands, it could be used to achieve miracles—miracles just like the Exarchate and the Principality, that is, personalities and ideas in the Bulgarian case had primordiality. Not that the economic development, which was definitely advancing toward the bourgeois stage, was of no importance, but the nascence and successes of Bulgarian national idea should be explained rather with superstructural possibilities than with basic needs.

1

 Istoriya na bŭlgarite [History of the Bulgarians], 2 (Sofia: Znanie 2004), 403–5.

Battling over 00 book.indb 54

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

55

The Revival cannot be thought of without a struggle for a national state, which can be achieved not only by peaceful revolution as was the Church Question, but by armed struggle as well. Revolutionary activities turned out to be a  continuation of the fight for independent church but with different means.2 In other words, the Revival could not confine to the Bulgarian erzatz state of 1870, it had to continue to the appearance of the real state of 1878. Even though there were considerable parts of Bulgarian lands and population left out of the Exarchate and out of the Principality, there has to be a period called Pre-Revival (or Late Revival, if we follow M. Aranaudov’s terminology), which should include the time up to the First Balkan War, when the chance of successful end of what Paisius had started, was nearly 100 percent. Thus, 1912 will give us a well differentiated and rounded—both arithmetically and logically—superstructural set of a century and a half (starting from 1762, when “Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya” was finished) and will allow us to preserve the strong positive radiating of its name. Translated by Sashka Georgieva

 Drinov is a staunch supporter of enlightenment and of nonviolent methods of social progress. However, after the April Uprising he seems to be inclined to assume that armed struggle might be a more risky but shorter way to achieving the goal—Marin Drinov, Sŭchineniya [Writings], vol. 3 (Sofia, 1915), 55.

2

Battling over 00 book.indb 55

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

Greek Historiography and the Role of the Orthodox Church Vangelis Kechriotis

D

uring the last twenty years, a number of studies regarding different aspects of the late Ottoman period and its repercussions for the Greek Orthodox populations appeared in Greek scholarship. The major issue related to the Ottoman legacy is based on the notion of “Turkish yoke” or “Turkish domination” (Tourkokratia), as it appears in all Balkan historiographies. Three related topics have been addressed—the Patriarchate, the existence of “clandestine schools,” and in general issues of education, and finally relations between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the Sultan. The Patriarchate of Constantinople played a major role in the fate of Greek Orthodox—Paraskevas Konortas, Othōmanikés theōrḗseis gia to Oikoumenikó Patriarcheío: Verátia gia tous prokathēménous tēs Megálēs Ekklēsías 17os–archés 20ou ai [Ottoman Views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Berats for the Prelates of the Great Church 17th–early 20th c.] (Athens: Alexandria, 1998) has focused on the policies of the Patriarchate and the way the latter was perceived by the Ottoman authorities. Drawing on several berats (documents of protection provided to the Patriarchs or the local Metropolitans by the Ottoman Sultans), Konortas illustrated the ways that the Ottoman state valued the role of the clergy and wished to control it. What is more relevant for our purposes is the transformation in the nature of the Patriarchate and its radical hellenization following the emergence of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 until the first decade of the twentieth century. There is a related debate regarding the relation between the ecumenical character of the Patriarchate and national ideology. In his seminal essay, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans,” Paschalis Kitromilides has suggested that Orthodoxy and nationalism were incompatible and it would be unimaginable to accuse the Patriarchate for nation-

Battling over 00 book.indb 56

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

57

alist activity since this institution was the first to suffer the consequences of the rise of nationalism. Especially, a Patriarch such as Joakim III (he held the position in 1878–74 and 1901–12), who advocated the enhancement of an “Orthodox Commonwealth,” strongly opposed the efforts of the Hellenic state to take control over education in the Ottoman territories. Moreover, it has been argued that according to a  larger conceptual framework, inspired by Benedict Anderson’s analysis and introduced to the study of the Balkans, the rapid transformation witnessed in the region can be described as the decline of the “imagined community” of religion and its gradual replacement by the “imagined community” of the nation.1 Critical reconsiderations of the bipolar ecumenicity-nationalism have been recently provided by Paraskevas Matalas and Dimitris Stamatopoulos.2 According to the former the term “ecumenicity” has been abused in order to describe what essentially was a  different version of nationalism. According to the latter, we should approach ecumenicity, bearing in mind the specific circumstances and individuals who were involved in the debate, as its content is extremely flexible and is invested with meanings, which fluctuate over time. Another important issue is the role of the church in the preparation for the “national uprising.” This is an issue that has tormented academic circles for years. Despite the participation of many individual clergymen to the revolutionary action and the martyrdom of a few, due to their position as leaders of the local Orthodox communities, many historians do not doubt that the Patriarch of Constantinople and others among the high-ranking clergy, being themselves part and parcel of the Ottoman administrative apparatus, did whatever possible to avert any revolutionary activity.3 Eventually, the Patriarch was put to death by the Ottomans as a punishment on the grounds that he had not been successful in his efforts. This allowed nationalist historiography to depict him as a martyr. Very recently, the proceedings of the first conference on the Greek Revolution of  Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkan,” in Martin Blinkhorn and Thanos Veremis (eds.), Modern Greece: Nationalism & Nationality (Athens: SAGE-ELIAMEP, 1990), 23–67. 2  Paraskevas Matalas, Éthnos kai Orthodoxía [Nation and orthodoxy] (Herakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2002); and Dimitris Stamatopoulos, Metarrýthmisē kai ekkosmíkeusē. Pros mia anasýnthesē tēs istorías tou Oikoumenikoú Patriarcheíou ton 19o aiṓna [Reformation and secularization, towards a reappraisal of the history of the ecumenical patriarchate] (Athens: Alexandria publications, 2003). 3  The challenging of the role of the church in the Greek revolution has been introduced by Marxist historians such as Giannis Kordatos, Istoría tēs Neṓterēs Elládas [History of Modern Greece] (Athens: 20os Aionas, 1957) and Giannis Skaribas, To 21 kai ē alḗtheia [1821 and the truth] (Athens: Ekdoseis Kaktos, 1975). For recent accounts see Christina Koulouri, Mýthoi kai sýmvola mias ethnikḗs epeteíou [Myths and symbols of a national anniversary] (Komotini, 1997); and Vassilis Kremmydas, “Ē ekklēsía sto 21: mýthoi kai ideologḗmata” [The Church in 1821: Myths and ideological perceptions], Ta Nea (March 22, 2005), 6–7. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 57

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

58

Chapter 1

1821 bringing together Greek and Turkish scholars was published under the title Elliniki Epanastasi tou 1821. Ena evropaiko gegonos, edited by Petros Pizanias (Athens: Kedros, 2009) (English ed.: The Greek Revolution of 1821. A European Event, Istanbul: Issis, 2011). The role of the church, this time at the grass-roots level, is reflected in the debate on education. The legend of the “clandestine school” has been a very persistent one. Greek nationalist historiography has promoted the view that the Ottoman state had banished any educational activity among the Christians. Therefore, monks and clergyman in villages and small towns took upon themselves to teach the enslaved population reading and writing. The powerful image of a monk teaching schoolboys under the light of a candle had become very popular in Greece. Nikolaos Gyzis (1842–1900), one of the most famous Greek painters, chose this theme in 1888 for one of his most famous paintings. As Alkis Angelou, the first Greek historian who studied systematically the issue, has pointed out, there has been no documentation regarding the existence of clandestine schools.4 Only after the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821 do such references emerge. Presumably, the first mention belongs to Stephanos Kanellos, a scholar and a member of the circle of Adamantios Korais (1748–1833), who was the most well-known supporter of the Enlightenment among the Greeks of that era. For those scholars, Europe had inherited Greek classical culture, and therefore, it was necessary that the nation is reconnected with its ancient heritage. Moreover, they would have to prove why there was such cultural stagnation among the Greek Orthodox population despite a relative regeneration among the elite in certain urban centers of the Ottoman Empire. Korais described this phenomenon as a “moral revolution,” which proved that Greece deserved to be free and part of the “civilized” world.5 The final issue concerns the reevaluation of the life of the non-Muslims under Ottoman rule and their relations with Muslims. In recent decades, triggered by similar developments internationally, Greek historians started to use more and more European and especially Ottoman sources, apart from sources in Greek. The majority though, still, could not read Turkish. What is important is the shift in attitude. Ottoman rule is no longer considered only as a brutal, foreign rule that had brought suffering and darkness to its Christian subjects, who had always envisaged their national liberation. The majority of studies focusing on the late Ottoman period, describe the conditions of Tanzimat that led to economic affluence and cultural achievements.6 There is, though, a young generation of scholars  Alkis Aggelou, To kryfó scholeió, to chronikó enós mýthou [The secret school: The trajectory of a myth] (Athens: Estia, 1997), 13–18, and passim. 5  On Korais see Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996). 6  Gerasimos Augoustinos, The Greeks of Asia Minor (Kent: Kent State University, 1992); Haris Exertzoglou, Ethnikḗ tautótēta stēn Kōnstantinoúpolē ton 19o ai., O Ellēnikós 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 58

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

59

who are accomplished Ottomanists and focus on earlier periods as well. Antonis Anastassopoulos, Elias Kolovos, and Marinos Sarygiannis following the tradition established by Elisabeth Zachariadou at the University of Crete have organized a series of conferences, known as Halcyon Days, whose minutes have appeared in the university publication series.7 These historians have systematically used Ottoman sources to depict the life of Christian populations under Ottoman rule, not under the paradigm of “Turkish yoke” but as a part of a complex Ottoman reality.8 Moreover, with respect to the Ottoman studies in Greece, Evangelia Philologikós Sýllogos Kōnstantinoupóleōs, 1861–1912 [National identity in Istanbul, in 19th century the Greek Philological Society of Istanbul, 1861–1912] (Athens: Nefeli Publications, 1996); Sia Anagnostopoulou, Mikrá Asía 19os ai-1919 Oi Ellēnorthódoxes koinótētes. Apó to Millét tōn Rōmiṓn sto Ellēnikó Éthnos [Asia Minor, 19th Century–1919. The Greek Orthodox Communities from Rum Millet to Greek Nation] (Athens: Ellinika Grammata, 1998); Efi Kanner, Phtṓcheia kai philanthrōpía stēn orthódoxē koinótēta tēs Kōnstantinoúpolēs 1753–1912 [Poverty and charity in the Orthodox community of Constantinople 1753–1912] (Athens: Katarti, 2004). 7  Antonis Anastassopoulos (ed.), Provincial Elites in the Ottoman Empire. Halcyon Days in Crete V. A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 10–12 January 2003 (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2005); Antonis Anastassopoulos and Elias Kolovos (eds.), Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760–1850: Conflict, Transformation, Adaptation. Proceedings of an International Conference held in Rethymno, Greece, 13–14 December 2003 (Rethymno: University of Crete—Department of History and Archaeology, 2007); Antonis Anastassopoulos (ed.), The Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman Rule: Crete, 1645–1840, Halcyon Days in Crete VI. A Symposium Held in Rethymno, January 13–15, 2006 (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2008). This group has also published the Festschrift in honor of Professor John C. Alexandropoulos, entitled The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and the Greek Lands: Toward a Social and Economic History, edited by Elias Kolovos, Phokion Kotzageorgis, Sophia Laiou, and Marinos Sariyyannis (Istanbul: The ISIS Press, 2007), and Kostas Lappas, Antonis Anastassopoulos and Elias Kolovos (eds.), Mnḗmē Pēnelópēs Státhē: Melétes Istorías kai Philologías [Memory of Pinelopi Stathi: Studies of history and philology], Centre for the Study of the Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens, Institute of Mediterranean Studies (Herakleio: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2010). 8  Indicative of this new approach are the following studies: Eleni Gara, “In Search of Communities in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Sources: The Case of the Kara Ferye District,” Turcica 30 (1998): 135–62; Sofia Laiou, Ē Sámos katá tēn othōmanikḗ período Ptychés tou koinōnikoú kai oikonomikoú víou, 16os-18os ai [Samos during the Ottoman period: Aspects of the social and economic life, 16th–18th Centuries] (Salonica: University Studio Press, 2002); Marinos Sariyannis, Ē apólausē stēn othōmanikḗ Kōnstantinoúpolē [Pleasure in Ottoman Istanbul] (Athens: Periplous, 2003); Antonis Anastassopoulos, ‘‘Building Alliances: A Christian Merchant in Eighteenth-Century Karaferye,” Oriente Moderno 25, no. 1 (2006): 65–75; Elias Kolovos, “Insularity and Society in the Ottoman Context: The Case of the Aegean Island of Andros (Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries),” Turcica 39 (2007): 49–122; and the monograph in Greek Ē nēsiōtikḗ koinōnía tēs Ándrou sto othōmanikó plaísio [The insular society of Andros in the Ottoman context] (Andriaka Chronika series, Kairios Vivliothiki, 2006).

Battling over 00 book.indb 59

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

60

Chapter 1

Balta was the first, already in the 1980s, to systematically study Ottoman archives and prepare annotated editions of Ottoman reports.9 These results of historiographical challenges are described in the account by Eleni Gara, written as an introduction to the Greek translation of Molly Greene’s, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). This kind of scholarship, though, is also pertinent to historians who study the late Ottoman Balkans. Another young scholar at the University of Crete, Andreas Lyberatos, has recently published his dissertation entitled Oikonomía, politikḗ kai ethnikḗ ideología Ē diamórphōsē tōn ethnikṓn kommátōn stē Philippoúpolē tou 19ou aiṓna [Economy, Politics and National Ideology: The Shaping of National Parties in Philippoupolis (Plovdiv) of the 19th c.] (Herakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2009). Building upon the above-mentioned literature on the shift from a religious to a national identity but also with a new multiperspectivity as he draws on both Greek and Bulgarian sources in his work, he aims at demonstrating the deep economic, social, and political transformations that determine the content of the emerging national discourse. Along similar lines, but based exclusively on Greek sources is the recently published study by Spyros Karavas, “Makárioi oi katéchontes tēn gēn” Gaioktētikoí schediasmoí pros apallotríōsē syneidḗseōn stē Makedonía 1880– 1909 [Happy Are Those Who Own the Land: Land-Owning Planning for the Confiscation of Consciousness in Macedonia 1880–1909] (Athens: Vivliorama, 2010). The author uses mainly governmental reports to demonstrate how geopolitics and land ownership was invested with national meaning and was utilized as a way of promoting irredentist visions. Finally, some reference should be made to studies related more closely to the Greek experience of the political turmoil culminating with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The late Elli Skopetea published a seminal study under the title Ē Dýsē tēs Anatolḗs: Eikónes apó to télos tēs Othōmanikḗs Autokratorías [The Twilight of the East: Images from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire] (Athens: Gnosi, 1992). Through literature, diplomatic correspondence and the press, she traced the stereotypes, which imbue Western discourses on the East and also the Eastern discourse on the West. Her work sheds light on perceptions that surrounded the “Eastern Question,” the fate of the Ottoman Empire, and eventually contributed to its dissolution. In a national historiography, which until then was

9

 See, for instance, Ē Thásos stis othōmanikés apographés tou 16ou kai 17ou aiṓna [Thasos in the Ottoman censuses of 16th and 17th centuries] (Kavala: Thasiaki Enosi Kavalas, 2001); Ē Karystía sta othōmaniká archeía [Karystia in the Ottoman Archives] (Athens: Eteria Evoikon Spoudon, 2004); Ē othōmanikḗ apographḗ tēs Síphnou to 1670 [The Ottoman census of Sifnos in 1670] (Athens: Syndesmos Sifnaikon Meleton, 2005); Ē othōmanikḗ apographḗ tōn Kythḗrōn, 1715 [The Ottoman census of Cythera, 1715] (Athens: Institouto Neoellinikon Spoudon, 2009).

Battling over 00 book.indb 60

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

61

dominated by the total vilification of the Young Turks,10 she elaborates on their aims in a significantly different way. A few years later, in 1997, Sia Anagnostopoulou published her book on Mikrá Asía 19os ai-1919 Oi Ellēnorthódoxes koinótētes. Apó to Millét tōn Rōmiṓn sto Ellēnikó Éthnos [Asia Minor, 19th c.–1919. The Greek Orthodox Communities from Rum Millet to Greek Nation] (Athens: Ellinika Grammata, 1998). She addresses the issue of whether the real aims of the Young Turks were to abolish the privileges of the religious authorities in secular issues, such as education, or to abolish completely the liberties of the non-Muslim communities. Her answer favoring the former over the latter creates a reversal of the dominant perception in Greek historiography. Parallel to these developments in the Greek academia, there has been another important initiative, which also involved professional historians. In 1998, the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE), an NGO, based in Thessaloniki, launched the Joint History Project (JHP) aimed mainly at promoting the writing and teaching of a common history for all Southeast European countries. The project, through a series of workshops, set up a large network of history teachers in Southeast Europe, and eventually had appeal to a broader audience. This endeavor led to the publication of four volumes from the workshops focusing on (1) the Ottoman Empire, (2) Nations and States in Southeast Europe, (3) the Balkan Wars, and (4) World War II. Overall, there is a recent shift in the mental map internationally. The Balkans have been persistently described as Southeast Europe, in other words a region of Europe that should be “de-balkanized.” As Christina Koulouri, the leading figure of the Joint History Project has pointed out, “regional cooperation has been perceived as the symbolic reversal of Balkanization.”11 The burden of negative stereotypes attributed to the history of the region made the prospect of “European integration” more attractive. What is the role of Ottoman legacy in this respect, though? No matter how banal it might look, at least with respect to the Balkans, one should not lose sight of Maria Todorova’s famous dictum that “The Balkans are the Ottoman legacy.”12 Here is a paradox. On the one hand, whether viewed from the perspective of comparative history or of transnational history, a revision of perceptions regarding the Ottoman legacy in the Balkans rationalizes our attachment to the past and contributes to challenging long “From Trauma to Reflection: Greek Historiography and the Young Turks’ ‘Bizarre’ Revolution,” in Christina Koulouri (ed.), Clio in the Balkans (Thessaloniki: CDRSEE, 2002), 91–108. 11  Christina Koulouri, “The Joint History Project Books: An Alternative to National History?” in Oliver Rathkolb (ed.), How to (Re)Write European History? History and Text Book Projects in Retrospect (Innsbruck-Vienna: Studienverlag, 2010), 131–50. 12  Maria Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” in Carl L. Brown (ed.), Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 45–78. 10

Battling over 00 book.indb 61

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

62

Chapter 1

standing stereotypes. For one thing, the very fact that this period was not experienced in the same way by different populations and regions in the Balkans allows for diverse views to connect with each other. This is how one can benefit from multiperspectivity. There is yet another question relevant to the role of Ottoman legacy. Should it be perceived as part of the European historical legacy, the same approach would lead to a European integration for other territories, which geographically do not fit the predominant paradigm on Europe, first and foremost, Turkey. Should “de-balkanization.” however, be accompanied by “de-Ottomanization,” then the danger of a Eurocentric a-historical approach is apparent. In the excerpt included below, Ellie Skopetea discusses the last eventful decades that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. This is a study largely inspired by the debate triggered by Edward Said’s Orientalism. Despite the fact that she takes a critical distance from that debate, the author employs this same conceptual framework in discussing how knowledge about the other is organized through the broader categories of Orient and the West. She uses Western, mainly British and French accounts and focuses on the perception of the Ottoman East by the European West, and then the other way round. The last chapter focuses on the Young Turk Revolution, which she calls a  “bizarre revolution” and its repercussions to the fate of the entire Ottoman society. It is the first time in Greek historiography that this event is not adressed from the point of view of the impact it had exclusively on the Greek Orthodox population but in itself and through the mixture of surprise, genuine hope, and concerns it incited among European diplomats and the public opinion abroad. The author’s treatment of the Turkist ideology of the Young Turks is innovative as well. Instead of echoing older views about a well-organized plot against the non-Turkish populations, Skopetea dwells on the paradox of the effort to use modern nation-state concepts and terminology in order to attract the loyalty of communities in a premodern context. Moreover, apart from nationalism, the role of the military and secular ideals in this process of profound transformation is discussed. Sia Anagnostopoulou offers a  comprehensive picture of the demographic, social, and political developments that took place in the long nineteenth century in Asia Minor/Anatolia. This is a study inspired by the Annales tradition of narrating all aspects of life in a certain region. What is crucial is that while she describes the trajectory of the Greek Orthodox populations in particular, she locates all relevant developments within the broader context of transformations in the Ottoman society of the period. In this respect, she extensively discusses the impact of the Tanzimat reforms on the restructuring of the Greek Orthodox community hierachies, namely their impact on the role both of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the local elites in the provinces. In the last chapters of the book, she offers insightful accounts of the emergence of Turkism, which is related to the Young Turk Movement and the events that led to the collapse of the Empire as well as the impact the latter had on the fate of the Greek Orthodox communities. Contrary to the mainstream Greek historiography though, Anagnostopoulou deals with

Battling over 00 book.indb 62

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

63

Greek and Turkish nationalism as phenomena interrelated to each other, in a process that leads to the formation of nation-states. This approach revises the longheld view that the Young Turks had aimed at the annihilation of the non-Muslim populations from the start. Moreover, the author offers an analytical framework that introduces the reader to the responses of the Young Turk revolution by the diverse ruling elements and the internal conflicts among the Greek Orthodox. This constitutes a significant contribution to Ottoman studies as well, as it revises the depicition of the Turkish population as a monolithic entity that unanimously opposed the reform agenda of the new regime. Paraskevas Konortas discusses the perception of the Patriarchate by the Ottoman authorities as this emerges from decrees (firmans and berats) that are granted to the Greek Orthodox prelates by the Sultans as well as local dignitaries. It is the first study of this institution that not only takes advantage of the literature in all Balkan languages, but also uses documentation both in Greek and in Ottoman Turkish. In Greek historiography the role of the “Great Church” as a repository of cultural values and the gatekeeper of Greek nation’s continuity had been taken for granted until recently. Konortas’s study, echoing earlier less systematic efforts, takes on a clearly innovative approach and demonstrates two crucial elements that revise our understanding of this institution’s role. First, the Ottoman rulers gave particular importance to religion as an identity marker in a society organized to a great extent according to Islamic rules. Thus, the church hierarchy was integrated and reinforced as a mechanism contributing not only to the consolidation of a certain autonomy that the Greek Orthodox population enjoyed but as part and parcel of the Ottoman administration, as well. Second, far from preparing the genos for its eventual struggle for liberation and independence, the “Great Church” was rather hostile to any movement that would challenge its own political and symbolic authority over the hearts and minds of the faithful as well as the legitimacy of Ottoman rule in general. This constitutes a contribution to both Ottoman and Balkan studies as it revises the perception by many Balkan historiographies, the Turkish one first and foremost, of this institution as an agent of Greek nationalism. In her introduction to the Greek translation of Molly Greene’s book, Eleni Gara offers an overview of recent developments in Balkan historiographies with respect to the perception of the Ottoman past. In Greece, as elsewhere in the Balkans, this era, known as Tourkokratia (rule of the Turks) has been depicted as dark ages that followed the demise of Byzantine rule by the Ottomans. The general understanding in Greek historiogaphy until quite recently is that there was no significant development during these four centuries. Therefore, it was not worthy of being studied exactly because it represented an era of slavery and stagnation. An exception to that refers to the study of the Greek elites during the last century of Ottoman rule, which have been systematically studied during the last half-century, to the extent that they represent an era of flourishing of Greek culture as well as of the commerce-oriented communities mostly outside

Battling over 00 book.indb 63

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

64

Chapter 1

the Ottoman Empire. With the exceptions of a few Greek scholars abroad, the economic and social study of Ottoman society as such has only been undertaken during the last twenty years. Apart from the baseless argument of constant stagnation, the other misconception challenged by the author relates to the way Muslim populations were treated within this context. If the Christian populations can be described as conquered, the Muslims cannot be described as conquerors as, apart from a narrow elite, they also fell under the category of reaya, which refers to a member of the tax-paying lower class of Ottoman society, even if less than the non-Muslim raya. Moreover, an important distinction should be made between Muslims in the Balkan, clearly a minority, and therefore less influential as opposed to Muslims in the Middle East, constituting the overwhelming majority. Andreas Lyberatos discusses the social and economic preconditions in the emergence of Bulgarian nationalism using as a case study the multiethnic town of Plovdiv (Filibe) Philipoupolis. An important merit of his work is that he breaks away from nationalist historiography—either Greek or Bulgarian—that describes the ensuing conflicts through the lens of a primordial struggle between mutually exclusive and romanticized nationalisms. Instead, he traces the particular circumstances that, within a few decades in the post-Tanzimat era from the 1860s to the 1880s, led to the emergence of opposing camps in the town. The leadership in these camps included local economic elites with their specific networks either in the rural hinterland or the Ottoman administration, as well as intellectuals who would spearhead the cultural claims of the respective movements. The use of Bulgarian in church services, the promotion of Bulgarian education, eventually the establishment of a Bulgarian community demonstrate a pattern that will be followed in many other cases in Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace. Inspired by the Annales tradition with a sensitivity to the social and economic context of cultural developments as well as being critical of “culturalism,” Lyberatos objects to the oversimplified and even orientalist view about the inherent character of interethnic violence in the Balkans and, employing a vast array of archival materia, in different languages, invites the reader to a journey through the lives of people, many of whom have been lost for national historiographies, but who play, at the microlevel, a crucial role in articulating and promoting broader national claims.

Battling over 00 book.indb 64

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

Elli Skopetea, Ē Dýsē tēs Anatolḗs: Eikónes apó to télos tēs Othōmanikḗs Autok­ra­torías [The Twilight of the East: Images from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire] (Athens: Gnosi, 1992), 166–73. Elli Skopetea’s career as a historian, despite being cut short by her untimely death in 2002 at the age of fifty-one, was highly influential for historiography of the Balkans in Greece and beyond. Skopetea completed her studies in history and philology in Thessaloniki and Belgrade, and then taught at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In her three monographs published between 1988 and 1997, Skopetea critically examined the construction of modern Greek nationhood and Greek nationalist expansionism in the first several decades of the Greek state’s independence, situating them within their post-Ottoman context rather than simply against it. Her studies highlighted Greek nationalists’ dilemma in their struggle to become accepted as fully “European” by modern Western governments and societies while simultaneously laying claim to the heritage and even territory of a wider post-Byzantine “Eastern” civilization. In The Twilight of the East, she traces the stereotypes which imbue Western discourses on the East and also the Eastern discourse on the West. Her work sheds light on perceptions that surrounded the “Eastern Question,” the fate of the Ottoman Empire, and eventually contributed to its dissolution. In a national historiography, which until then was dominated by the total vilification of the Young Turks, she elaborates on their aims in a significantly different way. In no way was the Turkish Committee a revolutionary party in the sense of consciously expressing a society willing or mature enough to rebel: it was bound by its very organization, a  peculiar combination of models borrowed equally from the Masonic organization1 and the organization of the Bulgarian committees.2 This was a viable type of organization but with an ex ante nebulous relationship with the society in which it aspired to intervene, as well as with the government which it refused to undertake. It was also bound by the fact that it constituted an improvised and fragile bridge between the wildly disparate revolutionary bodies: the Turkish

1

 The name “Union and Progress” occurs more than once, from the late 19th century (1888–1889), as the name of a Masonic Lodge, see Ρaul Fesch, Joseph Denais and René Lay, Bibliographie de la Franc-maçonnerie et des sociétés secrètes : imprimés et manuscrits langue française et langue latine (Brussells: Georges A. Deny, 1976), entries No. 2145, 3027 (L’Union et progress, Constantini); entries 2096, 2890, 2948, 2949, 3027, 4425 to 4428 (Les Vrais Amis de l’Union et du Progrès réunis, Brussels, 1905–1906); entry 4417 (L’Union et Progrès, Ο.·. Pacy-sur-Eure, 1906). “Union” and “Progress” alone occur much more often. 2  Cf. Charles Buxton, Turkey in Revolution (London: F.T. Unwin, 1907), 48, 169.

Battling over 00 book.indb 65

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

66

Chapter 1

army and the intellectual, mostly exiled Young Turks, on the Turkish side,3 and the “rest,” those belonging as a  general rule to the Empire’s multinational bourgeois layers, that is, the chief agents, even before the Revolution, of Western influence, which they “brought,” each one from a different starting point and on the way to a different destination. It was precisely they who, through their occasional interdependence, precluded the “bourgeois revolution” from taking place in the Empire; and the irony is that their fleeting, and for a while so convincing, consensus owed a lot to the Macedonian question in general, and to Western involvement in it in particular. Let us recall that whenever Western observers sought out the causes and pretexts of the Young Turk Revolution, they often liked to underestimate the importance of “internal” factors and to insist on two external ones that were directly linked to the specter of European intervention: an “explosive” factor—the Anglo-Russian meeting at Reval4—and a “slow-burning” one—the mixture of shame and jealousy born of the obligatory consorting, in Macedonia, between the unpaid for months and wholly insecure officers of the Ottoman army and the well-fed and comfortable members of the Gendarmerie.5 It was a well-meaning expression of Western conceit, which could be taken seriously were it based on an attempt to selflessly interpret the Macedonian question, for the Young Turk conspiracy held firm in Macedonia, a fact that became evident in July 1908 and then in April 1909. The fear of intervention, incorporated by Reval, and the reality of intervention, incorporated by the Gendarmerie, certainly played their part. The Young Turks had to show that the reform of the Empire could be carried out by themselves, independently of intervention and independently of the Macedonian question. The concept of Macedonia had to be convincing. The idea that

3

 “Psychological centaurs” is the term Sir Mark Sykes used to describe progressive Turks (The Caliph’s Last Heritage, London: Macmillan and Co., 1915, 494–95), referring to the strange combination of French and German influence on intellectuals and army officers, respectively. Also R. Pinon, L’Europe et la Jeune Turquie: Les aspects nouveaux de la Question d’Orient (Paris: Libraire Academique, 1911), 97. Akçura (Editor’s note: Yusuf Akçura, 1876–1935, was one of the most important ideologues of Turkish nationalism) accepts this combination as a need which removes the divide between the “material” and the “intellectual” side of culture: “If we wish to be students of Blériot and Zeppelin, we are forced at the same time to be students of Kant and Comte”: see Georgeon (Editor’s note: François Georgeon, Aux origines du nationalisme turc: Yusuf Akçura, 1876–1935, Paris: ADPF, 1980, 64). It should be noted that during the first phase of general optimism, the “progressiveness” of Turkish military officers was recorded as yet another example of the “uniqueness” of the Revolution of 1908: Christian Rakowski, “Problems of the Turkish Revolution,” The International III (December 1908): 172. 4  Editor’s note: In June 1908, the Russian Tsar and the King of Britain met at Reval, in the Baltic Sea. Among other things, they discussed a proposal for the resolution of the “Macedonian Question,” based on foreign control, which would allow the Sultan only a formal suzerainty. 5  “The Story of the Young Turks”, Blackwood’s Magazine CLXXXV (Jan. 1909), 4; Pinon, L’Europe et la Jeune Turquie, 59.

Battling over 00 book.indb 66

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

67

the salvation of the Empire would come from its sickest part was too attractive not to inspire the revolutionaries and their followers.6 Out of the many nations that first supported the Revolution, in the end only one faithful one—the Turkish one—remained, since its initial objective—whatever that may have been—had been lost. The Turkish army prevailed, according to the laws of history, as Turkish nationalism also prevailed, which, albeit younger than the other Balkan nationalisms (except for Albania’s), clarified from the outset, unlike them, the distinction between the Western model and Western intervention. However, it should be pointed out that, from an Ottoman perspective, Western intervention could be nothing more than the possible threat of intervention on the part not necessarily of a Great Power, but of any Balkan minor state. From a Turkish perspective, Western intervention could be summarized in the perpetuation of an unfavorable, from the point of view of the Turks, division of labor, on a national basis, with the Greeks and, to a certain extent, the Armenians in a privileged position at the moment that the “contemporary” phase of Ottoman life was beginning. This model-intervention distinction was utilized in due course in a liminal way under Kemal Atatürk: with “Japanese” precision on the level of ideology, with “Balkan” slovenliness on the level of action, and with “Turanian” cruelty on the level of a synthesis of both. But in 1908, while things remained fluid and hopeful, all one could do was to worry about emerging trends. The “Turkish” content of the Revolution was alternately pointed out as something potentially dangerous or considered as a given, as, for example, during the frequent exercises of finding correspondences between the heroes of the Revolution of 1908 and the heroes of historical “precedents”: the French or the English Revolution, as the case may be.7 Nobody prevented the Greeks of the Empire—even the Greeks of Greece—to see in the revolution the big opportunity for Hellenism8 or, conversely, for armed Ottoman “institutions,” like the Komitaji of Macedonia or the brigands of Asia Minor to surrender their weapons—even for just

 Cf. Camille Fidel, “L’organisation de la victoire Jeune-Turque. Le Comité ‘Union et progrès’,” Questions diplomatiques et coloniales XXVII (Jan–Jun. 1909): 791. 7  For example, Abdülhamid = Louis XVI, R. Pinon, L’Europe et la Jeune Turquie, 75; Abdülhamid = Charles Stuart and Şeyhülislam = the Archbishop of Canterbury : “The Death Throes of a Despotism,” The Review of Reviews XXXIX (May 1909): 414–16 ; Mahmud Şevket Paşa = Oliver Cromwell: Francis McCullagh, The Fall of Abd-ul-Hamid, London [1910], 551; Ahmed Riza = Mirabeau: Frederic Harrison, “The Turkish Reform,” The Positivist Review CXCIV/17 (1.2.1909): 43; Sabahaddin = Gladstone: “The Future of Turkey: M. Santos Semo” (Interviews on Topics of the Month), The Review of Reviews XXXVIII (Oct. 1908): 319. For ironic equations see Andrew Ryan, The last of the Dragomans (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951) 43–4; and Lamb to Ryan, private letter, Thessaloniki 27.3.1911 (FΟ 195/2359): “our Glorious, if apparently anaemic Revolution.” 8  See C. Svolopoulos, “Eleuthère Vénizèlos et les dilemmas de la politique extérieure de la Grèce lors de la crise de 1908,” Balkan Studies 25, no. 2 (1984): 485–9. 6

Battling over 00 book.indb 67

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:20

68

Chapter 1

three months.9 The sense of a nightmare drawing to an end overshadowed every other thought and the heart-felt optimism of the Young Turks had a disarming infectiousness to it because it was itself disarming: when the new government opened the prisons, in some cases all prisoners, both political and penal, were released, as if crime in general has been eliminated.10 How long this general optimism lasted cannot be determined. It never even arrived at certain far-flung corners of the Empire,11 but of course it did not evaporate at once or for everyone. However, the first clear signs of Western displeasure appeared very soon, when it became obvious that the question of the revolution could not be limited to external emblems and symbols of Western freedom, that is, when, immediately following the revolution, a wave of strikes shook the Empire’s urban centers. Ottoman society suddenly showed signs of an irksome autonomy and appeared to have been transformed into a society like any other. It was a genuine surprise. The English consul general in Smyrna, for example, seeing the disagreeable events of the distant metropolis being repeated—and feeling that it was natural for him to have greater bargaining power in the East than his own society would ever allow—did not know where to turn: to the familiar Ottoman authorities that no longer existed; to the new revolutionary government that could not understand what it was all about; or to his own government.12 All at once, the “atrocities,” the oppression, those who were—by tradition—the slaughterers and those who were—by tradition—the slaughtered were forgotten; all those countless stimuli for Western sensibilities which, however, allowed business to go on as usual, indeed sometimes, as pretexts for extortion, facilitated it. It was revealed that within the Ottoman Empire lay social forces which not only did not partake of

9

 The resurgence of the brigands began cautiously in November: Barnham to Lowther, Smyrna 113/5.11.1908 (FΟ 195/2300). 10  “I wonder whether they believe that they will never need prisons again?”: a handwritten comment by G. Lowther on the No. 80/11.8.1908 (FΟ 195/2300) confidential report by Barnham, then in Smyrna, where the prison was not simply emptied, but immediately proceeded to be demolished. 11  See, for example, Gertrude Bell, Amurath to Amurath (Cambridge: Cambridge Library Collection, 1911), 3 onward. On the complicated impact on the Albanians, see Basil Kondis, Greece and Albania 1908–1914 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1976), 36 onward. 12  See the section about the strike on the Aidinio railway line, Heathcote to G. Lowther, Smyrna, confid. 97/14.9.1908 (FΟ 195/2300). What he says about the behavior of the Committee is typical: “Their almost passionate desire to avoid bloodshed and act in accordance with the constitution, though doubtless commendable in its intention, seems to have blinded them in regard to the practical aspect of the issues they have been called upon to resolve.” This strike is the main topic of the Consul General’s reports, since it first breaks out in late August to its end, which is made known in report No. 106/7.10.1908, which concludes: “The settlement can be considered a complete victory for the company, which was resolute from the outset, not on issues regarding money or work hours, but on the absolute discipline and obedience of its people.” For more strikes, see No. 89/18.9.1908.

Battling over 00 book.indb 68

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

69

the “eastern stagnation,” but also laid claim to the bare necessities, partaking, most convincingly, of a genuine “Western” dynamism. Regardless of whether the social problem could not have the pure, Western form, being, in the final analysis, dependent on the Empire’s relationship with the Powers—there was also talk, as one might expect, of “foreign instigators,” Italian and Greek nationals13—it could not be rejected as nonexistent. Western models were the last thing on the minds of the strikers when they were being pushed to their limits and from those limits to their effortless, crushing defeat. The strikes ended quickly—it was a transitory phase of the revolution, which never recurred on such a scale.14 Of course, the fear of a strike did not go away, nor did a certain sensitivity toward other disconcerting phenomena, but by then the threat had been reduced. For example, Harry Lamb, on the occasion of a Bulgarian assembly in Meleniko, is perplexed at the “appearance on the horizon of internal politics of an Agrarian Issue, so early on in the life of the Constitutional Regime.”15 He also documents with reservation what he believes could be the meaning of a gathering of syndicate representatives in Thessaloniki protesting the antistrike law: “the birth of a Workers’ Party in Turkey.”16 On the broad scale of the Empire, however, social relations remained as turbid and tangled up with national relations as before. There were, therefore, “new forces” which, de facto, had a stake in the revolution—but who cared about identifying them? The old ones were more than enough. This obvious paradox served as expectations not only of the Powers, but also of the small Balkan states. Bulgaria’s behavior is of interest at this juncture. Bulgarian nationalism and social unrest in the Ottoman Empire were not unrelated phenomena. On the contrary, the move toward founding a national state, on the one hand, and the move to modernize economic relations, on the other, belonged to the same historical process, albeit to different moments along its course. In addition, to all appearances, one did not prevent the other. This was precisely what was disproved when, on occasion of the Ottoman railway strike, Bulgarian nationalism was mobilized as a  strikebreaking machine, thus taking a  decisive step toward the putsch-like declaration of Bulgaria’s independence. Of course, the example is extreme, but it illustrates a real, not imaginary balance of power, within the framework of which the Empire’s “social problem” tended to become boxed in by most unpredictable sides, while its incessant contest with the “national problem” obviously contributed to the weakening of both. Translated by Mary Kitroeff

 Cf. Barnham’s telegram to Lowther, Smyrna 3.10.1908.  Harry Lamb to Lowther, Thessaloniki, 11/6.2.1909 (FΟ 195/2328). 15  Harry Lamb to Lowther, Thessaloniki, 20/22.2.1909 (FΟ 195/ 2328). See also 67/26.5.1909 (FΟ 195/2329). 16  Harry Lamb to Lowther, 78/22.6.1909 (FΟ 195/2329). The “Jewish printer” he mentions among the speakers is, obviously, Avraam Benaroya. See also 134/24.10.1909. 13 14

Battling over 00 book.indb 69

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

Sia Anagnostopoulou, “Ē Neotourkikḗ epanástasē: To néo othōmanikó plaísio exousías 1908–1914” [The Young Turk Revolution: The new ‘Ottoman’ framework of authority: 1908–1914]. In Mikrá Asía 19os ai-1919 Oi Ellēnorthódoxes koinótētes. Apó to Millét tōn Rōmiṓn sto Ellēnikó Éthnos Μικρά Ασία 19os αι.-1919 Οι Ελληνορθόδοξες κοινότητες. Από το Μιλλέτ των Ρωμιών στο Ελληνικό Έθνος [Asia Minor, the Greek-Orthodox Communities. From Rum Millet to the Greek Nation] (Athens: Ellinika Grammata, 1998), 453–9. Sia Anagnostopoulou received her doctoral training at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and is an associate professor of history at the Panteion University in Athens. In 2015–6, she served as Alternate Minister for European Affairs and then Alternate Minister of Education, Research, and Religious Affairs in Greek governments led by the leftist SYRIZA party. Anagnostopoulou’s scholarly publications have focused not only on the role of Ottoman Greek communities during the last century of the Empire’s existence, but also on Turkish society. She has made significant use of Turkish-language sources in her research and has stressed the importance of shifts in the wider Ottoman social context in explaining the changing outlook of Ottoman Greeks. In addressing the era of Young Turk ascendancy (1908–14) in her book Mikrá Asía 19os ai-1919 Oi Ellēnorthódoxes koinótētes. Apó to Millét tōn Rōmiṓn sto Ellēnikó Éthnos [Asia Minor, 19th c.–1919. The Greek Orthodox Communities from Rum Millet to Greek Nation], Anagnostopoulou confronts the issue of whether the real aims of the Young Turks were to abolish the privileges of the religious authorities in secular issues, such as education, or to abolish completely the liberties of the non-Muslim communities. Her answer favoring the former over the latter creates a reversal of the dominant perception in Greek historiography. THE REVOLUTION OF THE YOUNG TURKS THE NEW “OTTOMAN” POWER FRAMEWORK: 1908–1914 The Revolution of the Young Turks (1908) was a consequence of the Tanzimat reform era and especially the Young Ottomans movement, that is to say, it was a product of the political and economic developments of the previous periods1; at the same time, it was the preeminent event through which all the dynamics toward overthrowing the traditional system of rule were finally released and made specific. In this respect, the Revolution was a breakthrough in Ottoman history and, in a sense, it constituted the point of contact and the point of rupture between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish State, which would emerge a few

1

 David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908 (London: Totowa, NJ: Cass, 1977), 97–8.

Battling over 00 book.indb 70

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

71

years later (1923). The Revolution itself, the discourse of its protagonists and their intentions, as they were expressed through the Revolution, signaled from the outset the overthrow of the traditional Ottoman system of rule, regardless of whether this overthrow was expressed through the radicalization and the resignification of the traditional Ottoman institutional framework. The two essential reasons, at least as far as this study is concerned, for which we consider the era of the Revolution of the Young Turks as the beginning of an era of huge importance and unforeseeable dimensions, are (1) the gradual emergence of a modernizing radicalism, that is, the gradual establishment of the perception that modernization can only exist through Western civilization; and (2) the restructuring of the social base from above, but by virtue of an “alliance” between the state elites with certain elites of the “social periphery,” the main—declared—objective of which was to replace the milli communities with an “Ottoman” (?) secular nation. If the importance of the first reason is obvious on an ideological, political, and economic level, since it creates the conditions for the prevalence of a secular ideology—Turkism—which will allow the survival of a secular state that has been legitimized by the nation—but which nation, the “Turkish” one?—and by the scientific and technological civilization of the West, as well as the creation of a bourgeois “national” class, the second reason is even more significant: the process of homogenizing society through the resignification of the traditional institutional framework with the consent, at least initially, of the elite of the milli communities, did not ultimately lead to the shaping of a homogenized political society, but to the homogenization and politicization of the milli communities themselves. Through this entire process, we can see how the declared intentions of both state and milli elites were self-annulled and how each of these elites was led through the same political discourse, to legitimize a notion of rights competitive with the rights of the other, and indeed in such a way that each milli community acquired national rights with historical continuity in time. For most scholars, the significance of the Revolution of 1908 lies not so much in its subversive character as in its objectives, which focus on the salvation of the Empire through the restoration of the Constitution of 1876.2 However, the Revolution takes on a subversive character retroactively, since the salvation of the Empire is gradually identified with its Turkification, that is, with the “politicization of the mass of the Turkish people,”3 and, therefore, with the validation of political authority by the existence of the Turkish nation.

 See, indicatively, F. Ahmad, The Young Turks. The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 15–6. 3  Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montréal: McGill University Press, 1964), 327–9. According to Berkes, “with the revolution of 1908 [...] the Turkish mass reacted politically and not religiously […]. It was the first time a (political) organisation was establishing organisations in different towns.” 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 71

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

72

Chapter 1

Despite the fact that the “politicization of the mass of the Turkish people” proved a difficult task, the Young Turks managed to lead the Turks to a political nationalism,4 in the sense that they created the political framework for the expression of Turkish nationalism.5 But the first declared objective of the Young Turks, as mentioned above, was the salvation of the Empire, which, in the case of the Young Turks, was equivalent to the salvation of the motherland. Besides, it is common knowledge that the first manifesto of the Committee of Union and Progress was entitled “The Motherland in Danger,”6 a title which was indicative of the effort to apply the conditions and principles of the French Revolution to Ottoman reality. By invoking the patriotism of the Ottomans—“Ottoman patriots” was the form of address used in all the manifestos of the Committee of Union and Progress—the Young Turks carried out the revolution in the name of the nation, believing they embodied the “hidden” or “repressed”—by the monarchy’s authoritarianism7—collective will, which was none other than the restoration of the Constitution and political equality among all Ottomans: “The country is not an estate, the Sultan is not the owner of the estate and we are not his slaves. We respect and honor the Ottoman dynasty. But the Sultan should also show respect to the nation […] and must prove this respect.”8

 At any rate, during the first phase of the Young Turks government, three main ideological currents coexisted and clashed and complemented each other. These currents began to take shape during the Tanzimat and Abdul Hamid era and continued throughout the Young Turk period. They are, namely, Ottomanism, Islamism and Turkism. But despite the fact that as a cultural current Turkism already existed in the nineteenth century, since numerous periodicals—among them Ikdam and Malumat— had undertaken, as early as the reign of Abdühamid, to disseminate ideas in support of Turkism, as a political current it appears only after the Revolution of the Young Turks. See Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908, 82–3. See also Η. Ν. Orkun, Türkçülügün Tarihi [The History of Turkism] (Istanbul: Kömen yayınları, 1944), 50–60. 5  From among the studies on Turkish nationalism, its origins and stages of development, we mention indicatively: Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908, N. Berkes, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization [A Collection of Essays by Ziya Gökalp], (London: Praeger, 1959); F. Georgeon, Aux origines du nationalisme turc, Paris 1980; Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey; Ε. Zurcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926. (Leiden: Brill, 1984); G. Arnakis, “Turkanism; an Aspect of Turkish Nationalism,” Balkan Studies, 1 (1960): 21–32; Anonyme, “Les doctrines et programmes des partis politiques Ottomans,” Revue du Monde Musulman, 22 (1913): 151–220; Κ. Karpat, “The Memoirs of Batzaria: The Young Turks and Nationalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 276–98. 6  A Birinci, “İttihad ve Terakki’nin Ilk Risâlesi ‘Vatan Tehlikede’” [The First Manifesto of Union and Progress “The Motherland in Danger”], Tarih ve Toplum, 9 , no. 54 (June 1988): 9–15. 7  O. Cengiz Aktar, L’occidentalisation de la Turquie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), 56. 8  The entire text of “Vatan Tehlikede” was published by Birinci, İttihad ve Terakki’nin Ilk Risâlesi ‘Vatan Tehlikede,’” 13. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 72

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

73

The Constitution and Parliament, therefore, were the principal means for the salvation of the motherland. The parliamentary democracy promised by the Young Turks and the equality among all Ottoman subjects proclaimed by the Constitution of 1908 required the final overthrow of the traditional millet system and its replacement by the sole body authorized to legitimize political power: a parliament elected by the majority of Ottomans, without distinctions based on religion or language. In this context, the Sultan, up until then the undisputed political leader of the din ü devlet (religious state) by virtue of his capacity as the leader of the sacred ummah (religious community) as well as the “infidels,” and the fact that it was through him that their existence and “otherness” was recognized, was gradually replaced by Parliament, to the point, indeed, of “reigning without ruling.”9 The homogenization of Ottoman society through political and secular principles, and the establishment of a secular state, which had been legitimized by the Ottoman community were the main features of the Revolution that marked the break with the traditional regime. But what could these political principles be and who would introduce them in such a way as to allow the creation of political mechanisms, which would then set up a homogenous political society? Would it be possible to neutralize all the centrifugal dynamics that emerged during the previous century within the context of “Ottoman” society? Would the will and the ideology of the state elites coincide with that of the milli elites in order for the “Ottoman” nation to come into existence? Despite the fact that the Revolution had been received with great enthusiasm by the milli elites, the structure and makeup of Ottoman society, and, at first the insinuated and later open, discourse of the elites all proved that the homogenization of Ottoman society was not only doomed to failure, but also led to rifts that were expressed no longer through milli mechanisms but through politico-national mechanisms. FROM THE SOCIETY OF THE MILLET TO THE SOCIETY OF POLITICO-NATIONAL ENTITIES Very soon after the Revolution, the Young Turks made it clear that the only effective “message” in regard to the modernization of society and its homogenization was Turkism. In this respect, power, according to the Young Turks, belonged to the “nation”; only this nation was Ottoman because it was Turkish: “To whom would they wish us to relinquish power? Not to the Turks, the founders of this Empire, but to all the peoples who today make up the Ottoman nation, with their different religions, languages. […] If we take into account the general climate that is currently prevailing, the dangers inherent in the implementation of such a system [i.e., equality] are no secret,” Damad Ferid

9

 Ahmad, The Young Turks, 61.

Battling over 00 book.indb 73

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

74

Chapter 1

Pasha10 stated in a memorandum on the occasion of the discussion on the revision of the Constitution of 1876. At about the same time, Niyazi Bey, the military commander in Macedonia, was succinct: “This Empire belongs to us; as long as a single Turk is alive we will not allow anyone else other than the Turks to have a say.”11 In the end, “the attempt to fundamentally reorganize Ottoman society has given its place to a nationalist activism whose mission it is to save the Empire, but, from that point onward, through a new, nationalist ideology.”12 However, the sole element that allowed the effective political activation of Turkism among the Muslims, and an element upon which it is possible to construct the “national” homogenization of the Muslims and their distinction from non-Muslims, was, once again, religion, as the salient feature of national Turkish conscience: “We are aware of the fact that, according to the clauses of the Constitution, equality between Muslims and giaours has been decreed, however, we all feel that this is an unachievable ideal. The Sharia, our entire historical past and the feelings of hundreds of thousands of Muslims constitute an insurmountable obstacle to the institution of true equality.”13 Bringing back the distinction between Muslims and giaours (a term that had been officially abolished by the Tanzimat reform), shows that, first, the concept of equality was being undermined by the very discourse of the Young Turks, while a  second reading reveals the secularization of the institutions by which society is organized was, once again, carried out through religion. On a  level of political practice and political organization, that meant the new form of government established by the Young Turks was representative not of society as a political whole, but of society as a total of milli communities. Thus, while the institutional distinction of the millet was abolished, deputies were not elected by a unified political body but by each community separately. Accordingly, it was not political parties with a homogenous national base that were represented in Parliament, but rather “national” parties. But what were the mechanisms by

 ΑΜΑΕ [Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères de la France], “Turquie,” vol. 7 (1910), General Consulate of France in Thessaloniki, February 16, 1910. 11  Jean-Paul Garnier, La fin de l’Empire ottoman du Sultan Rouge à Mustafa Kemal (Paris: Plon, 1973), 96. 12  Aktar, L’occidentalisation de la Turquie, 57. 13  These words, attributed to Talat Pasha, were part of the speech he gave in August 1910 at a secret meeting of the Committee of Thessaloniki. It is cited by Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London; New York: Oxford University Press. 1965), 218. In any case, the position of the Union and Progress party, as officially expressed at the meeting in Thessaloniki in 1910, confirms Talat’s view: “the reinforcement of the Empire requires the prevalence of the Muslim element. Non-Muslim ethnicities will only have a limited place in the country’s administration,” ΑΜΑΕ, “Turquie,” vol. 7 (November 17, 1910), ref. No. 167. 10

Battling over 00 book.indb 74

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

75

which these “national” parties were formed, especially in light of the abolition of the millets, and, more important, who introduced the ideology of these parties? The institutional abolition of the millets, which was carried out through the abolition of the jurisdiction of the religious leaders, meant, in effect, invalidating the “Ottomanism” of non-Muslim communities which had been granted by Ottoman rule. However, as we shall see in more detail below, maintaining all these milli mechanisms, which gave rise to the political body of non-Muslims, from which, in turn, non-Muslim deputies were elected, led to the politicization of the institutional framework of the former millet, and thus to its “nationalization.” Only this framework no longer automatically legitimized “Ottomanism” on the whole; on the contrary, it nullified it, at least from a certain point onward. In any event, during the first period of the Young Turks’ government, and certainly before the Balkan wars, we could say, in brief and schematically, that with the establishment of the new form of government and the secularization of institutions, that is, the abolition of all the powers of the religious leaders, a system was introduced by which the organizational institutions of the milli societies were secularized and politicized. The difference being that the command to secularize was not given by Ottoman power to the religious leaders, but by each milli entity to its elected representatives, who were bound to politicize and secularize the entity they represented according to the principles of the state. Through the evolution of the millet of the Romioi, and the mechanisms by which it was politicized and “nationalized,” we will try to observe the developmental stages of the politics of the Young Turks. What is certain is that neither did Turkish nationalism constitute initially the main feature of the politics of the Young Turks, nor did Greek nationalism constitute the main feature of the politics of the Greek deputies. On the contrary, we can see the grounds for the mutual fuelling of all nationalisms, which developed during this period and we can especially see the mechanisms for their legitimization. THE MILLET OF THE GREEK ORTHODOX (RUM) IN THE NEW POLITICAL CONTEXT: FIRST REACTIONS AND FIRST REVERSALS The Revolution of the Young Turks did not meet with the same reception by the Greek Orthodox as a whole. The sometimes wild enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the coast was in sharp contrast to the indifferent and apathetic stance of the inhabitants of Cappadocia, many of whom were not even aware of the change. But the greatest contrast in the way the Revolution was viewed can be seen among the leadership of the millet. The open and undisguised hostility shown by the Patriarchate at the overthrow of the traditional regime is a far cry from the enthusiasm with which the majority of the Greek Orthodox ruling class saluted the Revolution. If the Revolution allowed the Greek Orthodox to hope for whatever each of them considered best for the “nation,” even if no one could categorically define what he expected from the Revolution, the Ecumenical Patriarch had no illusions

Battling over 00 book.indb 75

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

76

Chapter 1

about what the Revolution meant to his authority: the privileges of Fener (Phanari) were not compatible with the constitutional regime, since the preservation of the privileged regime is directly dependent on the preservation of the authoritarian regime.14 Moreover, his authority could now legally be laid claim to by laymen. Indeed, “a few days after the restoration of the Constitution in 1908, on the occasion of his visit to the Grand Vizier Said Pasha ostensibly to congratulate him,” Patriarch Joakim III did not hesitate “to express his regret for the fact that the government considered it its duty to restore the work of Midhat Pasha [meaning the Constitution of 1876], and in fact using such bold language, that he astonished everyone and was frowned upon even by the Greeks.”15 This harsh and implacable stance of the Patriarch toward the new regime caused the outbreak of polemics and confrontations within the context of the millet, confrontations that brought the Patriarch up against the laymen, who were now openly and legitimately calling into question the former’s role. With the exception of a small section of the Greek Orthodox, which remained faithful to the Patriarch and the idea of Ottomanism, the greatest part of the Greek Orthodox, more out of a belief that the parliamentary system and the Constitution favored “national” aspirations16 as well as the secularization of the millet, and thus the setting aside of the Patriarch for their own benefit, rather than out of any fondness for the Young Turks, appear as the most fervent supporters, at least initially, of the latter and, consequently, as the most fanatical opponents of the Patriarchate. In fact, on the pretext of defending the new form of government, the Greek Orthodox organized events and demonstrations against the Patriarch, actions that were observed not only among the Greek Orthodox, but also among the Armenians. However, unlike the Armenians, who savagely attacked their Patriarch, the Greek Orthodox finally did not dare to challenge in such a way the man who constituted the symbol of their religion.17 Of course, this did not mean that the dissension was softened, especially while  Vicomte de la Jonquieres, Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, vol. II, cited by L.P. Alaux and R. Puaux, Le déclin de l’hellénisme (Paris: Payot & Cie 1916), 40. 15  The reasons offered by the Patriarchate for its opposition towards the new regime were repeatedly presented in articles published in Ekklesiastike Aletheia and specifically: “The Change in the Form of Government” and “The All-Seeing Eye of Justice,” 31 (August 7, 1908); “On Our Matters,” 36 (September 12, 1908), an article which included a scathing criticism of the two months following the Revolution; “On Our Matters,” 37 (September 17, 1908), et cetera. 16  The fact that the Constitution is incompatible with Islam allows non-Muslims to hope that they are the ones who will define the state’s new identity. See Karpat, “The Memoirs of Batzaria: The Young Turks and Nationalism,” 292–4. 17  On July 16, 1908, a crowd of Armenians made their way to Kontoskali, where the Patriarchate was situated and, after vilifying Patriarch Malachias Ormanian, they ousted him from the patriarchal throne. The demonstration of the Greek Orthodox against their own Patriarch was to take place three days later, on July 19, 1908, however, despite the tense climate caused by the Armenian demonstration, no one dared take responsibility for the final organizing needed in order for the demonstration to take place. See Athanasios 14

Battling over 00 book.indb 76

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

77

the Press,18 sharing the opinions of the laymen, fuelled the tension. In the face of this situation that risked degenerating into an internecine conflict and causing the intervention of the political authority, the Patriarchate was forced into a tactical retreat: it declared its subordination and loyalty to the new government and ceded its “executive” power to the laymen. Therefore, from 1908 onward, the laymen undertook the political homogenization of the Greek Orthodox and their representation within the framework of political power. The Press and a political society, the Society of Constantinople,19 were the vehicles through which their new political identity would be set up and disseminated among all Greek Orthodox. Translated by Mary Kitroeff

Souliotis-Nikolaidis, Organosis Konstantinoupoleos; [Constantinople Organization], Introduction by Thanos Veremis, Katerina Boura, (eds.) (Athens: Dodoni, 1984), 11. 18  The newspapers Neologo—published in Cosntantinople since 1866, and owned by Voutyras—and Constantine Spanoudis’s Proodos, and the periodicals Tachydromos, Amaltheia, and Smyrna’s Neon Asty all openly declared themselves against the Patriarchate. Indeed, the two latter were especially severe with the Patriach, a severity that reached its peak in the issues of July 15 and 18, 1908 for Neon Asty, and July 19 and 29, for Amaltheia. 19  The Society of Constantinople was established shortly before the Revolution of the Young Turks by Souliotis and its initial aim was to reinforce the Greek Orthodox in the face of Slavic propaganda. Its field of action extended to Macedonia and Thrace, which is why it constituted a continuation of the organization known as the Society of Thessaloniki. During the first years of its operation, the Society of Thessaloniki did not appear to have a particular policy for Asia Minor. Its founder, Souliotis-Nikolaidis, believed in the peaceful coexistence between Greeks and Turks following the removal of the Slavic danger and, just like his close friend Ion Dragoumis, he believed that the Young Turk regime still opened new, yet uncharted horizons for the Greek aim: the “Hellenization of the Empire.” Meanwhile, the “Society” took on the political education of the “Greeks of Turkey,” while its policy toward the Young Turks was essentially a waiting game: “In this difficult struggle our nation has undertaken, we must be very careful. […] We shall not be first in showing mistrust towards the Young Turks. [...] Between the Young Turks and the Old Turks we will prefer the former and from among the Young Turks we will prefer the less chauvinistic” (Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis, The Society [...], ibid., 73). Nevertheless, the policy and the ideology of the “Society” is constantly evolving and should be viewed in relation to the policy of the Young Turks, the Greek state, and the Great Powers. For more on the Society, its ideology and action see Souliotis-Nikolaidis, ibid; Αntonios Hamoudopoulos, E Neotera Filiki Etaireia [The new Filiki Eteria] (Athens: Tsailas 1946); Apostolos Alexandris, Politikai anamneseis [Political Memories] (Patras: Fragkouli and Varzani 1940); Ion Dragoumis, Osoi zontanoi [Whoever still alive], (Athens: Pelekanos 1926); Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis, Semeiomatarion [Notebook] (Athens: Publishing House, 1971). On the activity of the Society and its program between 1908 and 1912, see also ΙΑΥΕ [Historical Archives of the Greek Foreign Ministry], 38/Β.

Battling over 00 book.indb 77

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

Paraskevas Konortas, Othōmanikés theōrḗseis gia to Oikoumenikó Patriarcheío: Verátia gia tous prokathēménous tēs Megálēs Ekklēsías 17os–archés 20ou ai [Ottoman Views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Berats for the Prelates of the Great Church 17th–Early 20th Centuries] (Athens: Alexandria, 1998), 39–46. Paraskevas Konortas completed his doctoral studies in history at the I— Sorbonne University, and is an associate professor of Ottoman History in the Faculty of History and Archeology at the University of Athens. His work, based on Greek, Ottoman, and Bulgarian sources, focuses on the role of Christian Orthodox populations and religious institutions in the Ottoman Empire. In his book Othōmanikés theōrḗseis gia to Oikoumenikó Patriarcheío: Verátia gia tous prokathēménous tēs Megálēs Ekklēsías 17os– archés 20ou ai [Ottoman Views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Berats for the Prelates of the Great Church 17th–early 20th c.], Konortas discusses the perception of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople by the Ottoman authorities as this emerges from decrees (firmans and berats) that were granted to the Greek Orthodox prelates by the Sultans as well as local dignitaries. By exploring how integral the Patriarchate was to the overall framework of Ottoman administration, his study revises the perception by many Balkan historiographies—first and foremost by the Turkish one—of the Patriarchate as an agent of Greek nationalism. The Ecumenical Patriarchate, the “Great Church” of Orthodoxy, is a very important factor in understanding the history of all the orthodox peoples of the Balkans, and especially the Greeks, under Ottoman domination. The Orthodox Church was the sole institution of medieval politics and social reality that was able to pass almost unscathed into the new political order of things, which was created after the Fall of Constantinople. Moreover, by maintaining its hierarchical structure, it was able in time to acquire a wide rationae materiae and geographical jurisdiction. Precisely for this reason, the church, and especially the Supreme Orthodox Clergy, and of course the monasteries were proclaimed institutions necessary for the preservation of the collective identity of Orthodox populations that had come under Ottoman rule: more than any other factor, the Prelates and the monasteries were able to hand down the values of the past necessary for the cohesion of Orthodox society, “order,” tradition and, of course, the Orthodox faith. The Ecumenical Patriarchate played a major role, particularly in the continuation of Hellenism in its ecumenical dimension. The Patriarchs and their entourage were the keepers of Orthodoxy and Romiosyne, that is, the Byzantine tradition: the official language of the patriarchate was Greek and the law that the members of the Supreme Clergy implemented as jurisdictional organs was Byzantine-Roman law. Lastly, the Patriarchate had its headquarters in Constantinople, the old capital of the Eastern Roman Orthodox Empire, a city which, for

Battling over 00 book.indb 78

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

79

precisely this reason, had been the irrefutable center of Hellenism for centuries, even for several decades after the founding of the Hellenic State. Even politically and economically powerful Orthodox Christians, who, at times and usually relying on Ottoman power, laid claim to the leadership of the Orthodox community, were obliged, in order to legitimize themselves in the eyes of their fellow Orthodox, to acquire control or at least the consent of the church hierarchy. The constant presence of the Orthodox Clergy in Orthodox and, in particular, Greek society of the Ottoman era was of course due to a large extent to the functions it carried out and which were expanded significantly after the Byzantine Emperors were swept from the scene. However, an equally important factor in the Prelates’ increased jurisdiction and prestige was Ottoman power. Mehmed II and his heirs maintained the church’s institutions and hierarchical structure for their own reasons of domestic and foreign policy, following a  centuries-old tradition first introduced—in terms of the Islamic world—by the Arabs as early as the seventh century, continued by other Muslim political powers and espoused by the Seljuks (twelfth–thirteenth centuries) and their heirs, the Turkish emirs of Asia Minor. Both Ottoman power and the Orthodox Church leaders had discovered a modus vivendi long before the Fall. This coexistence became closer once the Patriarchs and the Sultans were based in the same city and remained so for 470 years (1453–1923). The phenomenon cannot be explained only in terms of political necessity dictated by conquest: the interests of the leaderships of both sides—despite the existence at the time of crises between them—determined to a large degree, both the long duration of this coexistence, as well as the mutual concessions necessary for its effectuation. The Orthodox Church—and especially the Ecumenical Patriarchate—and its relations with Ottoman rule, have been studied by numerous theologians, legal scholars, and historians. For many years, this research was based preeminently on sources originating in the Orthodox milieu (Greek and Slav) or in European archives and European travelers. The studies that arose from this research have offered much to the discipline of history. However, the lack of knowledge of the Ottoman language and, consequently, the inability to access Ottoman sources deprived researchers of the possibility to explore one of the two factors that jointly shaped the relationship between the Patriarchate and the Sublime Porte, and indeed the one that, at least during the two first centuries after the Fall, determined the main terms of the church-state relationship. It is apparent that, in order to study the history of the Great Church during the Ottoman era in depth, one must go through the wealth of data provided by Ottoman documents. These documents are the only ones that can contribute to an in-depth understanding of Ottoman law and order, that is, the context within which all manner of relations between the Great Church and Ottoman administration emerged, developed, and evolved. Finally, they contain important information on the Ottoman view of these relations in practice.

Battling over 00 book.indb 79

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

80

Chapter 1

Following this perspective, over the past thirty years, a series of studies that relied on (but not exclusively)—Ottoman sources expressed new opinions on the above subject. These studies, listed here in chronological order, were carried out by J[osef]. Κabrda (1969), M[ihai]. Maxim (1981), Β[enjamin]. Βraude (1982), Η[alil]. Ιnalcık (1982 and 1991), the undersigned (1985–97), R[admilla]. Tričković (1990) and Ε[lizabeth]. Zachariadou (1996),1 and showed that, in order to understand the 1

 See mainly, Kabrda, Église [Le système fiscal de l’Église orthodoxe dans l’Empire ottoman, Brno: Universita J.E. Purkyně, 1969]; Mihai Maxim, “Les relations des pays roumains avec l’Archevêché d’Ohrid à la lumière de documents turcs inédits,” Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, 19/4 (1981): 653–71; B. Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. I (New York, London: Homes & Meier, 1982), 69–88; Inalcik, “Ottoman Archival Materials on Millets” in B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds.), 437–9; Inalcik, “The Status of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Under the Ottomans,” Turcica, 21/23 (1991), 412–21; P. Konortas, Les rapports juridiques et politiques entre le Patriarcat Orthodoxe de Constantinople et l’Administration ottomane de 1453 à 1600 (d’après les documents grecs et ottomans), unpublished PhD dissertation, Paris I—Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris 1985; Konortas, “Les rapports juridiques entre le Patriarcat orthodoxe de Constantinople et l’Empire ottoman (1453–1600): problèmes d’approche,” Questions et débats sur l’Europe centrale et orientale, 4 (1985): 149–88; Konortas, “I othomaniki krisi tou IST’ aiona kai to Oikoumeniko Patriarcheio,” Ta Istorika, 2/3 (1985): 149–88; Konortas, “Les contributions Patriarchikè Zetèia et Basilikon Charatzion: contribution à l’histoire économique du Patriarcat Oecuménique aux XVe et XVIe siècles,” Centre des Recherches Néo-helléniques/Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (éd.), Actes du IIe colloque international d’histoire. Économies méditerranéennes, équilibres et intercommunications (XIIIe-XVe siècles), III (Athènes 1986), 217–55; Konortas, “I exelixi ton ekklisiastikon veration kai to pronomiakon Zitima. I periptosi tou nothou veratiou tou Mitropoliti Larisis Leontiou” [The development of the church veration and the Pronomia Subject. The case of the Larissa’s bishop Leontios fake veration] Ta Istorika, 5/9 (1988), 259–86; Konortas, “Considérations ottomanes au sujet du statut du Patriarcat orthodoxe de Constantinople. Quelques hypothèses,” Comité National Grec des Études du Sud-Est Européen/Centre d’Études du Sud-Est Européen (éd.), Communications grecques présentées au IVe Congrès International des Études du Sud-Est Européen (Athènes 1990), 213–26; Konortas, “Syntomo schediasma mias syngrafis tis istorias tou Oikoumenikou Patriarcheiou apo tin Alosi os tis arches tou 20οu aiona me aformi ti meleti tou Gunnar Hering Oikoumeniko Patriarcheio kai evropaiki politiki” [Short note on the writing of the history of Ecumenical Patriarchat from the Fall of Constantinople to the beginnings of the 20th century on the occasion of Gunnar Hering’s study The Ecumenical Patriarchat and European Policy], Synchrona Themata, 18/56 (1995): 75–86; Konortas, “From tâ’ife to millet: Ottoman terms for the Ottoman Greek-Orthodox community,” D. Gondicas, Ch. Issawi (eds.), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998), 169–79; Tričković, “Srpska crkva sredinom XVII veka,” [The Serbian Church in the middle of the 17th Century], Glas CCCXX Srpske Akademije Nauka i Umetnosti, Odelenije Istorijskih Nauka, 2 (1980): 61–164; Zachariadou,

Battling over 00 book.indb 80

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

81

historical phenomena, which are related to the church, it is necessary to know about the Ottoman political order of things and, in particular, Ottoman institutions. Thus, it was asserted that, from 1453 to the late sixteenth century, the Patriarchate gradually became part of the Ottoman administrative mechanism and Ottoman law and order, its system of government attuned to Ottoman institutions and much removed from the concept of the church held by Byzantine-Roman law, the Sacred Canons and a centuries-old, established tradition. In practice the political coexistence of the Patriarchs and the Sultans favored the political partnership between the Ottoman Administration and the church hierarchy in administrative and economic issues. Based on Byzantine tradition, but also helped by the powerful—up until the second half of the sixteenth century—Ottoman central rule, the Great Church was able to reconstitute itself after the fall of Byzantium and not only to establish itself in the Ottoman state as an economic, social, and political factor, and an ideological manipulator of Orthodox populations, but also to play a significant role in the international political arena.2 The object of the following study is the exploration of the position of the Ottoman political leadership vis-à-vis the Patriarchate, beginning in the seventeenth century and ending with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. This was a period of almost three centuries, during which major economic, social, and political developments radically reshaped the structures and institutions of Ottoman society. First, the decline of the State’s central administration, due to both external and internal factors, had already begun in the late sixteenth century, became felt during the seventeenth century, and took on major dimensions during the eighteenth and into the early nineteenth century. This decline also had sig-

Deka tourkika engrafa gia ti Megali Ekklisia (1483–1567) (Athènes 1996). These were preceded by the publication of Ottoman documents that concerned the Patriarchate: see, indicatively, Arabatzoglou, Fotieios [Photian] [Fotieios Vivliothiki, Ι–ΙΙ, Konstantinoupoli 1933–35], Refik, Istanbul I, II, II, IV, [I] Refik A., On altıncı asırda İstanbul hayatı (1553–1591), Istanbul 1935, [II] Refik A, Hicrî on birinci asırda İstanbul hayatı (1000– 1100), Istanbul, 1931, [III] Refik A., Hicrî on ikinci asırda İstanbul hayatı (1100–1200), (Istanbul, 1931), [IV] Refik A., Hicrî on üçüncü asırda İstanbul hayatı (1200–1255) (Istanbul: Devlet, 1932); Hidiroglou, “Soultanika veratia” [Sultan veratia], Epetiris Kentrou Epistimonikon Erevnon, 7 (1973): 119–250; Hidiroglou, “To anekdoton fermanion pronomion tou Soultanou Abd al-Mecid pros ton Patriarchin Germanon tou etous 1853 kai ai pros tin Kypron pronomiakai parachoriseis tou 19οu aionos” [The unpublished fermanion pronomion (privilege) of Sultan Abd al-Mecid to Patriach Germanos in 1853 and the concessions of the 19th century], Kyrpiakai Spoudai (Lefkosia), XXXVI (1972): 59–82; New Ottoman documents were published in 1996: Zachariadou, Documents, 157 ff. and Salakides, Sultansurkunden des Athos-Klosters Vatopedi aus der Zeit Bayezid II. aund Selim I (Thessalonique: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1995), 31 ff. 2  On this last issue, see, indicatively, Gunnar Hering, Oikoumeniko Patriarcheio kai Europaiki politiki (1620–1638) [The Ecumenical Patriarchate and European Policy] (Athens: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation [MIET], 1992).

Battling over 00 book.indb 81

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

82

Chapter 1

nificant economic and social repercussions, causing successive monetary crises, which often led to violent reactions on the part of certain portions of the population, as well as of the affected members of the ruling class. The cornerstone of the Ottoman military and administrative mechanism—the timar system—disintegrated, while new institutions emerged that favored the State’s gradual alienation from a  large part of its income. Finally, the wars that took place against increasingly powerful neighbors (the Hapsburgs, Russia, Iran) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and which, in most cases, ended in the Ottoman Empire’s defeat, exhausted the State’s finances, while the loss of important territories deprived it of further sources of income. All of the above favored the political and economic penetration of the European factor into the Ottoman State and the incorporation of the Ottoman economy, as a “peripheral” one, into the European economy.3 The need to reshape the structures of the Ottoman State and society had grown imperative. The Reforms (Tanzimat), which officially began in 1839, were preceded by the reform efforts of Sultans Selim III (1789–1807) and Mahmud II (1808–39). The State, which was reconstituted during the Tanzimat, had as its model to a large extent the organization and structure of European countries, and its institutions were adapted accordingly, especially through the creation of a strong central government. Moreover, it was the first time in an Islamic state that equality before the law was ensured for all of the Sultan’s subjects, whether Muslim or nonMuslim. However, the Empire’s economic dependence on foreign capital and the weaknesses inherent in the full implementation of the Reforms led to overlending and economic collapse. The Ottoman State ended up becoming a semicolony of the European Powers. The economic, social and political reforms that took place, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Balkans and the Middle East, led to the spread of nationalist ideology to a large part of the elites of all the peoples of the region. The result was the emergence of nationalist movements—the last one chronologically was the Turkish one—and irredentist aspirations on the part of neighboring states. The multiethnic Ottoman State no longer expressed the new realities and thus collapsed in 1923.4

 On the mechanisms which caused the decline of the Empire’s central administration, see, among others, Hali Inalcık, “The Ottoman Decline and its Effects upon the Reaya,” in Hali Inalcık, The Ottoman Empire: Conquest, Organization and Economy (London: Variorum Reprints, 1978), 338–354; Robert Mantran, “Politique, économie et monnaie dans l’Empire ottoman au XIIIe siecle,” in O. Okyar, H. Inalcik (eds), Türkiye’nin sosyal ve ekonomik tarihi (1071–1920) [Turkish social and economic History (1071– 1920)] (Ankara: Hacettepe Ünv. Yay., 1980), 123–125]; Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Ottoman Empire and the Capitalist World-Economy: Some Questions for Research,” in O. Okyar, Hali Inalcik (eds), op.cit., 117–122. 4  See, indicatively, Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New; the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Stanford 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 82

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

83

Together with the above developments, and in conjunction with them, major changes came about in the social make-up, the economic status, and the ideological orientation of the Empire’s Orthodox community. The seventeenth century had already seen the emergence of the class of the Phanariots which, through its connections with Ottoman rule acquired great power during the eighteenth century and up until the Greek Revolution. At the same time, international circumstances and the inherent dynamics that developed in certain regions led, also during the eighteenth century, to the creation of what Τ[rajan]. Stojanovich termed the “conquering Balkan Orthodox merchant,” as well as to the economic development of the island and coastal communities of Greece. The enlightenment and the French Revolution offered new values that better expressed the rising economic and social strata, while shortly afterward, national liberation movements in Serbia and Greece led to the formation of Orthodox Christian states in the Balkans. Nationalist ideology, prevalent in broad strata of the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans, came up against the multiethnic Ottoman state and the “a-ethnic” ecumenical Orthodox Church. As for the Orthodox, and especially the Greeks, who remained subjects of the Sultan, the leadership of their religious community would be handed over, beginning in about 1830, to the “Neo-Phanariots” of the so-called rising middle class, who were also tied to the multiethnic Ottoman state of the Tanzimat: Constantinople’s Greek-speaking milieu continued to hold the power to the interior of the Orthodox community, which was now also reinforced constitutionally, especially after the Hatti Humayun (1856). This situation would soon be called into question when, as early as the mid-nineteenth century, growing Bulgarian nationalism would demand first the ecclesiastical emancipation on the part of the Patriarchate of all those it considered “Bulgarians,” and then the forming of the Bulgarian national State: the Great Church lost a very large part of its Slavspeaking flock, while the war of 1877–78 and later the Balkan Wars gave new impetus to nationalist ideology, swaying increasingly broader social strata.5 J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976–1977), 84 ff.; Roderic Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Bacque-Grammont-Dumont, Économies et sociétés dans l’Empire ottoman (fin du XVIIIe-début du XIXe siècle) (Paris: CNRS, 1983); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 107 ff.) l N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, McGill University Press, 1964), 96 ff.; Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); Kemal Karpat, An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State: From Social Estates to Classes. From Millets to Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). 5  On the above issues, see indicatively and only for a global and concise view, the papers by Alexandri, “Oi Ellines stin ypiresia tis Othomanikis Aftokratorias 1850–1922” [Greeks in the service of the Ottoman Empire 1850–1922], Deltion tis Istorikis kai Ethnologikis Etaireias tis Ellados, 23 (1980): 365–404; Clogg, “The Greek Millet in

Battling over 00 book.indb 83

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

84

Chapter 1

These radical changes, which took place in Ottoman society, Ottoman institutions in general, and within the Orthodox community itself, that is, the flock of the Ecumenical Patriarch, could not but affect the views the Ottoman Administration had on the Great Church, the relationship between the two institutions, and the status of the Supreme Orthodox Clergy in Ottoman law and order. It is precisely these transformations, continuances, and breakthroughs in the way in which the Ottoman political leadership viewed the Ecumenical Patriarchate that this study will attempt to pinpoint and explain. The sources used are mainly the berats, which were granted by the Ottoman Administration to the Patriarchs, to the other members of the Supreme Orthodox Clergy, and to the Patriarchs and Prelates of the Empire’s other Christian Communities, which were recognized by the State (Armenians and, later, Roman Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Protestants, members of the Bulgarian Exarchate, et al.). The berats were necessary in order to legitimize these clerics before the Ottoman authorities, as well as any third party. These documents were also very important because—especially vis-à-vis the Ecumenical Patriarchate—they constituted, up until 1862, the only source for understanding the Ottoman position regarding the famous question of “privileges.” Even after that year, after which the so-called National Regulations, a kind of Constitution of the Empire’s Orthodox community, were implemented in their entirety, the berats never lost their importance. Moreover, they were the only texts that determined in a comprehensive way the competencies, which the Ottoman political leadership allowed the members of the Supreme Orthodox Clergy. In other words, the berats defined, according to Ottoman law and order, the framework of the relations between the Ottoman Administration and the Patriarchate. Translated by Mary Kitroeff

the Ottoman Empire,” in Benjamin Braude (ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1 (New York–Londres: Holmes & Meier 1982), 185–208; Trajan Stojanovich, “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” Journal of Economic History, 20 (1960): 234–313.

Battling over 00 book.indb 84

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

Eleni Gara, “Christianoí kai mousoulmánoi stēn Othōmanikḗ Autokratoría tōn prṓi­mōn neóterōn chrónōn: istoriographikés prosengíseis” [Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire in Early Modern Times: Historiographical Approaches]. In Molly Greene, Krḗtē, énas koinós kósmos: Christianoí kai mousoulmánoi stē Mesógeio tōn prṓimōn neotérōn chrónōn (Athens: Ekdoseis tou Eikostou Protou, 2005), 17–23 [Greek translation of A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000]. Eleni Gara completed her doctoral training at the University of Vienna, and is an assistant professor of Ottoman and Balkan History in the Faculty of Social Anthropology and History at the University of the Aegean. Her work has used Ottoman sources to examine the social and economic history of Ottoman Christians and Muslims and their interrelations during the early modern era. Her scholarship, as exemplified below in her introduction to a book on a related subject by Molly Greene, calls into question the traditional notions that Ottoman rule was simply tyrannical and that ChristianMuslim relations were simply antagonistic.

Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire in Early Modern Times: Historiographical Approaches BALKAN HISTORIOGRAPHIES

The Schema Of The “Turkish Yoke” Since national claims in the Balkans were expressed to a large extent through conflict between Christians and Muslims, it is not surprising that the relationship between the two communities is a subject of intense interest to the national historiographies of the Balkan states. With the exception of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Albania, countries with a large Muslim population, Balkan national historiographies interpreted the relations between Christians and Muslims solely in terms of submission to and oppression by foreign rule; the metaphor “Turkish yoke” is the most typical expression of this approach. The yoke metaphor was used in the national historiographies of all the states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire, also in that of Turkey. But while in Arab countries it was in this light that relations between Ottoman rule and native Muslim populations were interpreted, in the Balkans the “Turkish yoke” emerged as the preeminent interpretative schema, not only regarding the relations between subjects and rulers, but also Christian-Muslim relations in general. According to this schema, the main points of which had already taken shape by the late nineteenth century, the—Christian—Balkan nations lived in a state of insecurity and fear, under the domination of a foreign, hated dynast that had subjugated them,

Battling over 00 book.indb 85

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

86

Chapter 1

cut them off from European developments, imposed restrictions and humiliations, and led to their degradation on a demographic, material, and cultural level. A central place in the “Turkish yoke” schema is held by the perception of each nation’s (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc.) antagonism against Ottoman rule, which had deprived it of political independence (or the possibility of it). In other words, Ottoman rule is not negatively assessed because it’s considered oppressive, tyrannical, and corrupt, but mainly because it is foreign, and indeed in a dual way, since the dynasts belong to another race and espouse another religion. This interpretative approach presupposes the basic assumption that each of these nations preexisted Ottoman conquest; in the case of the Balkans, useful points of reference were the medieval kingdoms (including the later Byzantine Empire). But now it is clear that the nation as a modern political community did not appear in the Balkans, or the rest of Europe, before the late eighteenth century. An approach, therefore, which focuses on national antagonism can be of no analytical value, at least during the era preceding the emergence of individual nationalisms. Yet even approaches that incorporate criticism in the national narrative and reject the univocal identification of the Balkan Christians of the Ottoman era with modern nations come up against serious methodological problems when they adopt the viewpoint of the conflict. The main problem is that they tend to project into the distant past a particular concept of “familiar” and “foreign” power (that stems mostly from the experience of national states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), which considers self-evident issues that actually need to be researched. These are issues, such as the ways in which premodern empires are legitimized; the role of religion, language, and ethnic origin in the “appropriation” of the ruler by his/her subjects and the limits of this appropriation; what is perceived as freedom and justice, and what as tyranny and injustice (concepts, in other words), that are formed in very different ways from one era to the next or from one society to the next. There is no self-evident answer to whether Ottoman societies perceived the rule of the Sultan as familiar or foreign, as having legal grounds or not, as benevolent or tyrannical. All these issues are among the objectives of this research, not only in relation to Christians and the Balkans, but also in relation to Muslims and the rest of the Empire’s provinces. An interpretative approach that focuses on the antagonism between Christians and Muslims may have analytical value in a particular time and place, but this needs to be established through evidence, not presupposed axiomatically. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 1980S AND 1990S The accession of the Balkan states to different politico-military coalitions after World War II brought, among other things, different ideological projects to the individual national historiographies, which dominated until the collapse of the communist regimes. Contrary to Greece, where the older paradigm continued to

Battling over 00 book.indb 86

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

87

prevail up until the 1970s, in countries with communist regimes it was interpretative approaches that combined the schema of the “Turkish yoke” with historical materialism that prevailed. The Ottoman Empire came to be perceived as a feudal state, and at the epicenter of the research emerged structures, which ensured the domination of the ruling class, as well as social conflicts. But the existence of the nation was never cast into doubt. Thus, with the historians of the time viewing the ruling class as consisting of “Turks” and “Greeks,” social conflicts took on a national hue. In other words, this new viewpoint reproduced the preexisting national narratives. On the other hand, individual political priorities resulted in different aspects of the issue, depending on the country, finding their way at the epicenter of historiographical output. In Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, Islamization grew into the central issue. But while in Bulgaria historical research, especially during the 1980s, was called upon to offer scholarly grounds for the policy of Bulgarization of the Muslim minority (a policy which attempted to legitimize through showing the Bulgarian origins of the Muslims), in Bosnia and Herzegovina the stakes were different. Here, research on Islamization came to support the national narrative of the Bosnian Muslims within the context of postwar Yugoslavism, emphasizing their native origins (unlike the Serb national narrative that treats Muslims as Turks, and thus foreigners) and the right to a Bosnian national space. In brief, the schema of the “Turkish yoke,” albeit variants of it, continued to constitute the interpretative paradigm for the relations between Christians and Muslims in the Balkan communist countries. The collapse of the communist regimes and the subsequent release from postwar ideological schemata gave Balkan historians much greater access to the findings of international research, leading to their gradual distancing from older paradigms. This development greatly affected Bulgarian historiography. On the contrary, in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia, national conflicts during the 1990s resulted in the creation of new national narratives centering on the antagonism between Christians and Muslims and drawing arguments from the Ottoman past. New life was breathed into the research on the relations between Christians and Muslims by the systematic study of sources, especially Ottoman archives, by—usually non-Balkan—historians, who were not bound by national demands. A series of empirical studies, particularly from the 1980s onward, sharply criticized—and continue to do so—the paradigm of the “Turkish yoke.” This criticism has to do chiefly with the living conditions of the Christian populations and their relations with the Ottoman state, which, in fact, are the weakest points of the schema, and has led to a revision of the bleak picture of Ottoman tyranny. Today, even in works that otherwise form part of the corpus of national historiographies, the picture of intimidation and slavery has been replaced by a different presentation, which also mentions the positive—or at least neutral—aspects of Ottoman rule, even though an altogether negative assessment of the Ottoman

Battling over 00 book.indb 87

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

88

Chapter 1

era is usually adopted. On the whole, the release of Balkan historians, especially Greeks and Bulgarians, from the projects of individual national ideologies has led to the marginalization of the schema of the “Turkish yoke” in research and university teaching, even though it continues to prevail in academia. Recently, another schema has been put forward by Greek historiography, which draws its inspiration from the experience of European colonial empires and distinguishes between the conquerors and the conquered1 (Asdrachas 2003). This proposal is of great interest, but it runs up against a basic methodological obstacle. In order for such an approach to be of analytical value, the event of the conquest is not enough. The social class that results from it must be founded on the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered, which must be expressed on an institutional as well as on a symbolic level. In the Ottoman Balkans, no such distinction exists. There was no ruling—or at least socially dominant—group of “conquerors,” not even during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the era of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. The emphasis placed on the notion of the conquest may be relevant for regions held by the Venetians, where the rulers granted particular privileges to the inhabitants of Venetian origin, distinguishing systematically between Venetians and non-Venetians, but it is irrelevant for Ottoman regions. Ottoman social class was based on two fundamental distinctions: between Muslims and non-Muslims on the one hand, and taxpayers (rayas) and non-taxpayers on the other. These distinctions were expressed both institutionally and symbolically, and were articulated through a series of restrictions and prohibitions that aimed at ensuring the social precedence of the Muslims and of the Muslim ruling class. Moving to the class of the non-taxpayers, the dream of every ambitious raya, was practically impossible for those of another religion, while it met with numerous obstacles and strong reaction in the case of Muslims. On the contrary, accession to the group of Muslims was a  possibility offered to all the Balkan subjects of the Sultan, regardless of whether they belonged to populations that had been conquered or not, and indeed there were many who profited from it. In this sense the Muslims of the Balkans cannot be perceived as “conquerors,” all the more since they were often first or second generation Islamized or heterodox populations that were persecuted by the Ottoman state. But neither the Christians (orthodox or of other denominations), nor the Jews, most of whom had emigrated to Ottoman territories from Spain and other Christian countries, can be seen as “conquered.” How problematic and unfeasible this approach is becomes clearer when we leave the area of the, mostly Christian, Balkans and

1

 Editor’s note: Spyros I. Asdrachas (ed.), Ellenike oikonomike istoria, ie-ith aionas [Greek Economic History, XV-XIX c], 2 vols (Athens: Politistiko Idryma Omilou Peiraios, 2003).

Battling over 00 book.indb 88

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:21

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

89

turn to the Eastern and Arab provinces with their solid Muslim majorities. Here, the distinction that identifies the conquerors with the Muslims and the conquered with the Christians and the Jews loses all meaning. Even so, the populations of Asia Minor, the Middle East, and North Africa all experienced Ottoman conquest, often with greater intensity than the Balkans. In actuality, the interpretative schema of “the conquerors and the conquered” could have much greater analytical worth in the case of Algeria—and perhaps, to a certain extent, of other Arab provinces—rather than the Balkans, since there the local Muslims were precluded from holding military and administrative posts, and a social class was imposed, which was based on the—institutional and symbolic—distinction between Turkish-speaking Ottomans, who identified with the representatives of authority, and Arab-speaking natives (Shuval 2000).2 Translated by Mary Kitroeff

 Editor’s note: Tal Shuval, “The Ottoman Algerian Elite and its Ideology,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 3 (2000): 323–44.

2

Battling over 00 book.indb 89

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

90

Chapter 1

Andreas Lyberatos, Oikonomía, politikḗ kai ethnikḗ ideología Ē diamórphōsē tōn ethnikṓn kommátōn stē Philippoúpolē tou 19ou aiṓna [Economy, Politics and National Ideology: The Shaping of National Parties in Philippoupolis (Plovdiv) of the 19th Century] (Herakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2009), xiv–xxi. Andreas Lyberatos completed his doctoral study in history at the University of Crete and is currently an assistant professor in the Faculty of Political Science and History at the Panteion University in Athens. Lyberatos studies Greek history insofar as it forms part of the wider context of Balkan social and economic history, working in particular to bring Bulgarian and Greek historiographies into closer communication with each other. He has focused mostly on late Ottoman and post-Ottoman urban populations that came to differentiate themselves internally as Greek and Bulgarian, and has authored publications in the Greek, English, and Bulgarian languages. In the following excerpt from his book Oikonomía, Politikḗ kai Ethnikḗ Ideología, Lyberatos argues for the need of historians in Greece to understand Balkan nationalisms (in this case Bulgarian and Greek) as shaping each other during their emergence and as being shaped by local social and economic developments. The equivocations and contradictions that are released and expressed in a clear manner in a times of crisis and conflict, such as the ones that occurred at Philippoupolis in the late 1850s, constitute aspects of a wider, complex, and contradictory process of ideological and political transition, which Ottoman society and, in this case, the Orthodox Christian populations of the empire, underwent during the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76). This transition from millet to nation—a crucial aspect of which was, for the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Balkans, the Bulgarian Question—that is, from a predominately religious to a predominately national determination and self-determination of the empire’s subjects, or— according to the terminology of a widespread, though producing varying results when applied, theoretical approach—from a religious to a national “imagined community,”1 has, since the 1990s, lain and continues to lie at the center of historiographic interest in Greece. Major studies that came to light in the context of this discourse2 have contributed, despite the differences among them, to call

1 2

 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso Books, 1983).  See among others Paschalis Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans,” in Μartin Blinkhorn & Thanos Veremis (eds.), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality (Athens: Sage ELIAMEP 1990), 23–66; Sia Anagnostopoulou, Mikrá Asía 19os ai-1919 Oi Ellēnorthódoxes koinótētes. Apó to Millét tōn Rōmiṓn sto Ellēnikó Éthnos [Asia Minor, 19th Century–1919. The Greek Orthodox Communities from Rum Millet to Greek Nation] (Athens: Ellinika Grammata, 1998); Paraskevas Konortas, Othōmanikés theōrḗseis gia to Oikoumenikó Patriarcheío 17os–archés 20ou ai. [Ottoman Views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

Battling over 00 book.indb 90

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

91

in question the metaphysical perceptions of the nation as a timeless, collective subject of history upon which Greek as well as the other Balkan histories3 were founded, and, bringing about a methodological reversal, showcased the nation and nation-building processes as a legitimate topic and a productive field for theoretical discussion and historical and empirical study. Moreover, by turning the focus on the particular realities, the institutions and the ideology of the empire’s Greek Orthodox Christians, and by problematizing their ideological identification and political orientation toward the young Kingdom of Greece, they underscored the need for a more thorough study of Ottoman—and, together with it, Balkan— society and the Ottoman political framework, thus contributing to the broadening of the horizons of Modern Greek historiography and creating the groundwork for a new, fruitful communication with the historiographies of the other nation-states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire. Despite the invaluable achievements, the theoretical renewal, and the major contributions that show the complex path of transition from millet to nation, explore the contradictions and adventures of national ideology, or unravel Constantinople’s labyrinthine central political field, there are important gaps still to be filled. Especially in relation to the split of the Orthodox millet and the Bulgarian Question, the nature of the sources, which have so far been used and the deficient communication with the abundant Bulgarian bibliography on the subject limit our knowledge mainly to events on Constantinople’s central political scene or to the way in which the emergence of the Bulgarian Question as a facet of the Eastern Question led to readjustments in Greek nationalism. What went on before the “official” emergence of the Bulgarian Question (i.e., before the Crimean War 1853–56) or what went on in the central and eastern provinces of the Balkans and how developments in the central political field are intertwined with, determine and are determined by events in these provinces has still to be researched—in 17th–Early 20th Centuries] (Athens: Alexandreia 1998); Paraskevas Konortas, “Apó ta millét sta éthnē: diamórphōsē syllogikṓn tautotḗtōn stē Thrákē (19οs-archés 20οu aiṓna)” [From the millet to nations: the shaping of collective identities in Thrace (19th–Early 20th Centuries)], in Thrákē, Istorikés kai geōgraphikés prosengíseis [Thrace. Historical and geographical approaches] (Athens: N.H.R.F., 2000), 169–95; Paraskevas Matalas, Ethnos kai Orthodoxia. Oi peripeteies mias schesis. Apo to “elladiko” sto voulgariko schisma [Nation and Orthodoxy. The Adventures of a Relationship. From the “Helladic” to the Bulgarian schism] (Herakleion, Kretan University Press 2002); Dimitris Stamatopoulos, Metarrythmisi kai Ekkosmikefsi. Pros mia Anasynthesi tis Istorias tou Oikoumenikou Patriarcheiou ton 19 o aiona [Reform and Secularization. Towards a ReComposition of the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 19th century] (Athens: Alexandreia, 2003). 3  Elli Skopetea, “Valkanikes ethnikes istories” [Balkan National Histories], Ethos-kratos-ethnikismos [Nation-State-Nationalism], Symposium (January 21–22, 1994), Association for Neohellenic Culture and General Education Studies (founded by the Moraitis School), 305–17.

Battling over 00 book.indb 91

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

92

Chapter 1

terms of Modern Greek historiography—by specialized local studies. Moreover, despite the contributions and the hypotheses that have been made, there is still a significant gap in the study of the social terms and conditions leading to the domination of the conflicting Balkan nationalist ideologies. The development and conflict between Greek and Bulgarian nationalisms takes place in a context of deep and dynamic economic, social, and political transformations, which do not function merely as conditions for the creation and dissemination of national ideologies, but have a defining impact on the content itself, in the outcome and the contradictions of the emerging national discourses. Here again we see the need for the study to focus on a local level. We believe that focusing on local societies and the methodology of microhistory can bring to the fore the wealth, the contradictions, and the complexity of the nationalizing processes in the Ottoman Balkans of the nineteenth century, thus contributing to the monitoring and specialization of the general theoretical schemata on nationalism. As a part of this wider field of discussion, the present study on the formation of national parties in nineteenth century Philippoupolis aspires to help fill some of these gaps and to expand the fruitful discourse4 above. The Tanzimat reform’s intercommunal conflict in Philippoupolis and the split of its Orthodox community is not simply one of the many episodes of the Bulgarian Question and the clash between Bulgarian and Greek nationalism in the Ottoman Balkans. It is the first and most heated conflict at this point in time between the two (and in general between Balkan) nationalisms on a local level. In Philippoupolis, on the occasion of the founding of the town’s Bulgarian secondary school (1850), the first open and public contraposition between the two nationalist discourses took place. In the developed commercial and cottage industry center of Northern Thrace and its developing hinterland, significant and newly-occurred economic and social processes are unfolding at the same time as the forging of new social alliances and the development of new forms of political struggle and mobilization. During the course of the Bulgarian Question, having extremely close ties to the capital, Philippoupolis was one of the cities/barometers of the contraposition and one of the thorny issues of the failed negotiations toward resolving the Question. With all its peculiarities and codependencies that ought to be investigated, the case of this first local nationalist conflict constitutes a field of observation and study, which contains and gives free expression for the first time to elements of the broader contraposition between the two nationalisms, which would go on to become more heated over the following decades, taking over in succession new territories of the Ottoman Balkans. This singular “warlike” heritage requires us, in every approach that places at the center of its discourse the exploration of the ideological and political transfor-

4

 An initial version of this study constituted my doctoral thesis, which I defended at the University of Crete, Department of History and Archaeology, in December 2005.

Battling over 00 book.indb 92

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

The Ottoman Balkans and Nation-Building

93

mations and makes the “nationally acting” subject its purpose rather than its analytical tool, to show particular attention and vigilance in regard to two main points. The first is, alongside the use of new sources, the need also arises for the scrutiny of and a new approach, in a spirit of “methodical doubt,” to the sources that have already been used, interpreted, and often misinterpreted through the prism of the historiography that has inherited the conflict. The second relates to a critical stance toward the terminology and conceptualization used by nationalist historiography and the consequent clarification of the way in which terms and concepts are summoned up in the new approach. Moving on to the questions of terminology and sources of this study, it is necessary for a comment to be made regarding the methodological limitations of a study whose aim is not merely to show the inadequacies and contradictions of nationalist historiography, but also to contribute to the comprehension of the economic, social, and political terms and conditions for the production and domination of the new national collective representations. Considerable methodological restrictions inevitably accompany any exploration of ideological phenomena that concern people who lived, acted, and died in a distant era. Lacking the privileges of “participatory observation,” we can enter a dialogue only with the written testimonials that have been handed down to us by official or unofficial agents of literacy of that time. The ordinary Philippoupolis guildsman or the Bulgarian farmer of the Philippoupolian hinterland can only talk through their “objective” place in these testimonials. Even the fragmentary written testimonials of the protagonists themselves of the intercommunal conflict or the information provided by third parties are often not enough to paint a complete picture of the ideological processes of which they are agents. Frequently, the rational interpretations of their actions and behaviors come up against inaccessible limits, beyond which there can be only conjecture. Many points carry, as indeed they should, when faced with easy interpretations, an accompanying question mark. However, these methodological difficulties and restrictions should not discourage us from posing similar questions to our sources. And if, what’s more, our sources are often tacit or sparing when it comes to the field of subjectivity, they are, at the same time, very rich when it comes to the changing socioeconomic and political framework within which national accession takes on a special meaning and political function. Pinpointing the methodological difficulties above is directly linked to the problem of the terms that are summed up in order to declare the collective subjects (e.g., Hellene, Greek, Bulgarian, etc.), as well as the relative modifiers (Hellenic, Greek, Bulgarian, and so on).5 One way of overcoming these problems is to use the terminology of the era to study and, even more appropriately, seek out

5

  The problems are created by the covering up of the operational-regulatory character that such terms take on within the context of a nationalist contraposition and of the historiography that has inherited this [tradition], as well as their emergence as “descriptive” terms.

Battling over 00 book.indb 93

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

94

Chapter 1

and promote the terminology used by the subjects themselves to define themselves and their surrounding world. Despite the methodological differences we have listed (silent sources, unequal access to the written word and, ultimately, the “definition,” etc.), as a rule in this study we follow this principle (often providing the necessary explanations), yet we are fully aware of the dynamic, relational—and, in the end, relative—character of these “definitions.” The semantic content of such terms is not something fixed but depends mostly on the particular context within which they are used, and follows the changes of this context. For example, to define oneself as a Bulgarian in late eighteenth century Philippoupolis did not carry the same significance or have the same political and social consequences as a similar declaration/stance would have in the late 1850s. Names that declare one as a collective subject are the object of constant, conflictive, and contradictory resignification processes. Indeed, exploring the context of these processes is a central issue of this study. Being aware of these resignification processes and putting them forward as a problem, we choose to maintain these “unstable” and resignified terms rather than to introduce new definitions and thus indirectly express an opinion on what collective subjects “actually were.” Translated by Mary Kitroeff

Battling over 00 book.indb 94

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Chapter 2

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia Vjeran Pavlaković and Vladan Jovanović

Battling over 00 book.indb 95

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Battling over 00 book.indb 96

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Recent Croatian Historiography on the Interwar Period Vjeran Pavlaković

In the last decade, historical debates on the first Yugoslav state (the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and after 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) do not provoke the kind of polemics among Croatian historians and the broader public to the degree more recent events, namely World War II and the Croatian War for Independence (Domovinski rat), tend to do in both academic circles and the media. In 2008, on the ninetieth anniversary of the unification of Serbia with Slovenia, Croatia, and the other South Slavic regions of the former Habsburg Empire, students at the University of Rijeka almost unanimously had no comment, either positive or negative, when asked to reflect on the first Yugoslavia, other than a more generalized association of any kind of Yugoslavia as bad for Croats. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of King Aleksandar Karađorđević’s assassination one year later, the Croatian press did not feature a single article on the event (carried out partly by the Croatian Ustaša organization) or the commemoration held in Serbia.1 The media, which gives considerable space to historians and publicists writing on historical topics and engages in vitriolic historical debates, has little to say on the interwar period. Although the Croatian Institute of History has a project dedicated to Interwar Croatia (“The Position of Croatia 1918–1941”), the majority of monographs, journal articles, and conferences are likewise dominated by themes other than the doomed South Slavic state.

 In analyzing practically the entire Croatian print media during the week prior and after October 9, 2009, the only mention of the anniversary was an article in the right-wing weekly Hrvatski list, which published a translated article by a French historian about the assassination of the “bloodthirsty king.” Hrvatski list (Zadar), (October 8, 2009), 40–4.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 97

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

98

Chapter 2

One obvious reason is that the wars of the 1940s and 1990s remain within the realm of communicative memory, and interpretations of both are deeply enmeshed in actual politics and international relations. Another reason, which differentiates Croatian approaches to the interwar period from recent Serbian historiography, is that there exists more or less a consensus in Croatia about royal Yugoslavia. And the consensus is that the first Yugoslavia, and more broadly any Yugoslav state, was bad. Postcommunist publications on the political issues of the interwar period, the economic situation, church-state relations, and identity politics often located the source of problems in the very notion of a unified South Slavic state, rather than taking into account the myriad of domestic and international factors, which contributed to Yugoslavia’s ultimate failure. The statebuilding (državotvorno) ideology of the ruling HDZ party in the 1990s and the ongoing fetishization of the state in Croatian political discourse influenced the negative perception of any political unit other than the nation-state, regardless of the complex history of Southeastern Europe in the twentieth century. This a priori rejection of Yugoslavia permeated scholarly publications, which generally focused on the negative impact of the unified state on Croatian lands rather than any broader analyses of interwar Yugoslavia as a whole. Certainly, the Yugoslav experiment from 1918 to 1941 deserves to be viewed critically, but rather than suggesting the deep-rooted problems of royal Yugoslavia should somehow be whitewashed, this period deserves further historical evaluation that is not simply another explanation of how Croatian aspirations for an independent state were crushed. The most recent scholarship in Croatia, however, tends to favor the latter approach. Political histories (including broad overviews of the twentieth century) dominate the historiographical production in the last decade, with little reference to methodological innovations in comparative history, cultural history, or postmodernist critiques more prevalent in Western scholarship. The doyen of Croatian historiography, Mirjana Gross, outlined many of the new developments in historiography in a comprehensive essay published in 2006, but few of the innovations have been adopted by historians working in the 1920s and 1930s.2 Stjepan Matković, in his review of Serbian and Croatian publications on King Aleksandar’s dictatorship, likewise notes that Croatian historiography remains fixated on the political debates around the “Croatian question,” and that more nuanced studies of the period will be undertaken by future historians.3

 Mirjana Gross, “O historiografiji posljednih trideset godina” [On the Historiography of the Past Thirty Years], Časopis za suvremenu povijest 38, no. 2 (2006): 583–609. 3  Stjepan Matković, “Šestosiječanska diktatura u dijelu suvremene historiografije” [The 6th January Dictatorship in the Works of Contemporary Historiography], in Tomislav Jonjić and Zlatko Matijević (eds.), Hrvatska između slobode i jugoslavenstva [Croatia between freedom and Yugoslavism] (Zagreb: Naklada Trpimir, 2009), 220. 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 98

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

99

Hrvatska između slobode i jugoslavenstva, an edited volume based on a conference held in January 2009 on the eightieth anniversary of the royal dictatorship, exemplifies many of the trends in Croatian interwar historiography. With a  few exceptions, the volume focuses on analyzing the various political aspects of Croatia’s position in the first Yugoslavia. The very title indicates that for the contributors the diametric opposite of freedom was Yugoslavism, and not surprisingly the authors seek to highlight all of the negative consequences for Croatia after the hasty unification process in December 1918. Chronologically the book does not stop at the collapse of the first Yugoslav state, but includes chapters on Bleiburg and the post-World War II repression of Croats as a logical continuation of Yugoslav, and not communist, ideology. Moreover, the fact that the veterans’ organization HVIDRa copublished the volume is indicative of how Croatia’s Yugoslav past is perceived through the lens of the Homeland War. Ivan Pandža, the president of HVIDRa, noted in the introduction that “Glavnjača and Srijemska Mitrovica [notorious interwar prisons for the regime’s political opponents] were, and remain, key symbols for realizing the Yugoslav national and state idea.”4 While many contributions provide insights into the maneuverings of Croatia’s political elite following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, others have simplified interwar Yugoslavia as merely part of the Greater Serbian project5 or are revisionist texts seeking to justify the Ustaša movement written by politicians and not historians.6 Although several books on Vladko Maček, the president of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) after the assassination of Stjepan Radić, were published in the last decade,7 they tend to be more oriented toward the general reading public than the dense monographs written in the 1970s and 1980s by historians such as Ljubo Boban, Bogdan Krizman, and Fikreta Jelić-Butić, which continue to  Ivan Pandža, “U povodu osamdesete obljetnice šestosiječanjske diktature” [On the 80th Anniversary of the 6th January Dictatorship], in Jonjić and Matijević (eds.), Hrvatska, 6. 5  Ljubomir Antić’s chapter summarizes parts of his monograph Velikosrpski nacionalni programi, ishodišta i posljedice [The Greater Serbian National Programs, Causes and Consequences] (Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 2007). 6  Ivan Gabelica, one of the founders of the far-right party Hrvatska čista stranka prava (Croatian Pure Party of Rights, HČSP), argues that “during the entire period of its existence, the Croatian people were against the Yugoslav state,” attacks both Maček and Radić for not really supporting an independent Croatia, and concludes that Ante Pavelić was the only politician who truly fought for Croatian interests. Ivan Gabelica, “Pravno-politički kontekst nastanka Banovine Hrvatske” in Jonjić and Matijević (eds.), Hrvatska, 225–47. 7  Andrej Maček and Nino Škrabe, Maček izbliza [Maček: A  View from Up Close] (Zagreb: Disput, 1999); Zvonimir Berković, Vladko Maček: tri razgovora [Vladko Maček: Three Conversations] (Zagreb: EPH, 2009); Ivo Perić, Vladko Maček: politički portret [Vladko Maček: A Political Portrait] (Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 2003). 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 99

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

100

Chapter 2

be heavily cited in the most recent studies.8 The communist era historiography on the interwar era has not been subject to such thorough revisionism as other time periods, notably World War II, because the communists likewise sought to delegitimize royal Yugoslavia; the earlier critique of hegemony by the Serbian bourgeoisie was replaced by the hegemony of Greater Serbia ideologues in studies written after 1990. Furthermore, the best recent volume on Radić remains Mark Biondich’s book published in Canada.9 There is a potential for considerably more research into the political relations of this period, either between the HSS and other opposition parties across Yugoslavia, or the dynamic of the partnership with the Independent Democratic Party (SDS), which represented Croatia’s Serbs. The latter coalition (HSS and SDS) was an example of democratic cooperation between Croats and Serbs under the harsh conditions of the royal dictatorship, which tends to be overlooked due to the overwhelming emphasis on the periods of Croat-Serb violence in the 1940s and 1990s. The role of the Yugoslav Communist Party during the interwar period, overemphasized during communist Yugoslavia, has almost completely been ignored in recent scholarship, except in memoirs, books documenting communist war crimes, or sensationalist biographies of Tito sold at kiosks. Although the main debates within Croatian historiography on the interwar era are not so perceptible in recently published monographs and articles, two overviews of the twentieth century provide the most explicit examples of antipodal interpretations of Croatia’s experience in the first Yugoslavia. Ivo Goldstein’s chapter on the economy after World War I in his book Hrvatska 1918– 2008 and Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević’s contribution to Ivo Perić’s multiauthor series on Croatian history reveal how the same statistics can be used to reach radically different conclusions.10 Goldstein describes how Croatian industry took advan For example, see Ljubo Boban, Maček i politika Hrvatske seljačke stranke [Maček and the Policy of the Croatian Peasant Party] (Zagreb: Liber, 1974); Bogdan Krizman, Hrvatska u Prvom svjetskom ratu: hrvatsko-srpski politički odnosi [Croatia in the First World War: Serbo-Croat Political Relations] (Zagreb: Globus, 1989); Fikreta JelićButić, Hrvatska seljačka stranka [Croatian Peasant Party] (Zagreb: Globus, 1983); and the earlier book by Ferdo Čulinović, Jugoslavija između dva rata [Yugoslavia in the Interwar Period] (Zagreb: Izdavački zavod JAZU, 1961). 9  Mark Biondich, Stjepan Radić: The Croat Peasant Party and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904–1928 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). The most recent overviews published in Croatia on Radić and the HSS include Ivo Perić, Stjepan Radić: 1871–1928 (Zagreb: Dom i svijet, 2003); Hrvoje Matković, Povijest Hrvatske seljačke stranke [A History of the Croatian Peasant Party] (Zagreb: Naklada Pavičić, 1999); and Bosiljka Janjatović, Stjepan Radić: progoni, zatvori, suđenja, ubojstvo: 1889–1928 [Stjepan Radić: Persecutions, Prisons, Trials, Murder: 1889–1928] (Zagreb: Dom i svijet, 2003). 10  Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatska, 1918–2008 (Croatia, 1918–2008) (Zagreb: EPH, 2008); Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević, “Gospodarske prilike na hrvatskom prostoru izmedju dva rata” 8

Battling over 00 book.indb 100

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

101

tage of its favorable position in the new Yugoslav state to expand in the immediate postwar years, although this growth did not last more than a decade due to changing international conditions, the global economic crisis, and Yugoslav economic policies. He also sketches the ongoing urbanization process in Croatian cities and towns, and some of the cultural trends that accompanied this modernization. Kolar-Dimitrijević, however, writing on the same time period emphasizes that all of the initial advantages of all the sectors of the Croatian economy were derailed by the deliberate anti-Croat policies of the Serbian dominated state. This chapter follows the broader theme of the sections of the book dealing with the interwar period, which characterizes the first Yugoslavia as a thinly veiled attempt at establishing a Greater Serbia at the expense of all of the other nationalities in the country. While there is little doubt that Serb-Croat struggles and the national question had catastrophic consequences for the Yugoslav state, the more nuanced (but no less critical) approach offered in Goldstein’s text is a welcome departure from the predominant victimization narrative in Croatian interwar historiography. Centers of Croatian national identity, such as the Catholic Church, and the repressive nature of the Yugoslav regime (and the subsequent reaction to the repression), have been well-researched by scholars based at the Croatian Institute for History. Zlatko Matijević has published numerous articles and chapters on the relationship between the Catholic Church in Croatia, the Yugoslav state, and the ideology of Yugoslavism.11 Jure Krišto has likewise explored the interwar history of the Catholic Church, focusing on organizations such as Catholic Action and the Križari (Crusaders).12 One of the last, and most cited, books published by historian Bosiljka Janjatović was Politički teror u Hrvatskoj 1918–1935, which detailed the brutal methods used by the Yugoslav regime before and after King Aleksandar’s dictatorship. Ivan J. Bošković’s monograph on the Yugoslav nationalist organization ORJUNA chronicles the ideological and paramilitary origins of individuals who subsequently joined Dalmatian Četnik units in World War II, which further illustrates how the Yugoslav regime resorted to violence in its efforts of quashing Croatian national sentiment.13 The attention paid to

[The Economic Circumstances on the Territory of Croatia between the World Wars] in Ivo Perić (ed.), Povijest Hrvata od 1918 do danas [A History of Croats from 1918 until Present Day] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2007). 11  Zlatko Matijević, Lučnoše ili herostrati: prilozi poznavanju crkveno-nacionalnu povijesti Hrvata početkom XX. stoljeća [Prometheus or Herostratus: Contributions to the Church and National History of Croats in the Early 20th Century] (Zagreb: Erasmus naklada, 2007). 12  Jure Krišto, Hrvatski katolički pokret, 1903–1945 [The Croatian Catholic Movement, 1903–1945] (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2004). 13  Ivan J. Bošković, Orjuna: ideologija i književnost [Orjuna: Their Ideology and Literature] (Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, 2006).

Battling over 00 book.indb 101

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

102

Chapter 2

the Yugoslav regime’s repressive apparatus (described in texts as “terror,” “terrorism,” “exploitation,” “brutal dictatorship”) in recent Croatian historiography has influenced reappraisals of the origins of the Ustaša movement, most notably in Mario Jareb’s monograph published in 2006.14 While historical studies on the Ustaše movement freed from the political constraints of the communist period are important for understanding the reasons for the radicalization of Croatian nationalists, casting the Ustaše as the logical reaction to the regime’s “terrorist methods” and downplaying the influence of fascist and Nazi ideology threatens to rehabilitate this movement and play into the hands of contemporary rightwing extremists. Various texts published by Ivo Goldstein15 (including a chapter in his recent book on the twentieth century), the semiautobiographical and historical award-winning book by his father Slavko Goldstein16 (1941: godina koja se vraća), and a recent volume edited by Sabrina P. Ramet17 bringing together a broad spectrum of scholars highlights the ideological foundations of the intolerant and brutal Ustaša dictatorship. As mentioned above, considerable attention has been paid to World War II and the period immediately following the war, which has produced serious historical monographs, memoirs, and books geared toward the broader public, but these publications are beyond the scope of this overview. The topic of identity has received attention in several recently published books, shedding light on group and regional identities, which were ignored by communist historians. Zlatko Hasanbegović’s impressively researched volume traces Muslim identity in Zagreb, taking it through World War II and providing insights into how Muslims in the wartime Independent State of Croatia (with its strong Catholic identity) were drawn into an alliance with the Ustaša dictatorship.18 Ivo Goldstein’s book Židovi u Zagrebu (2004) provides a glimpse into the social, cultural, and political life of Zagreb’s Jewish community, and the rise of anti-Semitism in the late 1930s that culminates with the destruction of most of Croatia’s Jews during World War II (covered in Goldstein’s book published

14

 Mario Jareb, Ustaško-domobranski pokret: od nastanka do travnja 1941 [The Ustaša-Domobran Movement: From Its Conception until April 1941] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2006). 15  Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatska, 1918–2008 [Croatia, 1918–2008] (Zagreb: EPH, 2008); and his contribution to Ognjen Kraus (ed.), Antisemitizam, Holokaust, antifašizam [Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Antifascism] (Zagreb: Židovska općina Zagreb, 1996). 16  Slavko Goldstein, 1941: godina koja se vraća [1941: The Year That Keeps Returning] (Zagreb: Novi liber, 2007). 17  Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Nezavisna Država Hrvatska [The Independent State of Croatia] (Zagreb: Alinea, 2009). 18  Zlatko Hasanbegović, Muslimani u Zagrebu, 1878–1945: doba utemljenja [The Muslims in Zagreb, 1878–1945: The Time of Establishment] (Zagreb: Medžilis Islamske zajednice Zagreb, 2007).

Battling over 00 book.indb 102

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

103

three years earlier, Holokaust u Zagrebu).19 Articles by Aleksandar Jakir20 (on national identity) and Mario Jareb21 (about the destruction of Venetian symbols), and the monograph Jadranska straža by Norka Mladinić Machiedo22 (about an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the Adriatic coast), contribute to the understanding of how Dalmatia struggled with the competing forces of Croatian, Italian, Yugoslav, and even autochthonous Dalmatian identity. An excerpt from Jokir’s article is translated below. Yet these texts merely scratch the surface of the complex struggles during the interwar period, not just for political freedom, but over cultural politics in the service of constructing national identities, as outlined in Andrew Wachtel’s book published in the 1990s.23 Chapters by Marko Samardžija, Mato Artuković, and Jure Krišto in the book Hrvatska između slobode i jugoslavenstva stand out for addressing how Croatian intellectuals and Catholic organizations resisted King Aleksandar’s linguistic and cultural policies, although a broader comparative framework across royal Yugoslavia is lacking.24 Andrea Feldman’s contribution to a volume on women’s cultural history breaks the mold and examines how cultural organizations were a forum for expressing not only gender identities but also national identities, or, in the case of the interwar period, Yugoslav (supra)national ideology.

19

 Ivo Goldstein, Holokaust u Zagrebu [The Holocaust in Zagreb] (Zagreb: Novi liber, 2001); and Židovi u Zagrebu [The Jews in Zagreb] (Zagreb: Novi liber, 2004). 20  Aleksandar Jakir, “O nekim aspektima procesa oblikavanja nacionalnih identiteta na primjeru Dalmcije” [On Some Aspects of the Process of National Identity Formation on the Example of Dalmatia], in Tihomir Cipek and Josip Vrandečić (eds.), Nacija i nacionalizam u hrvatskoj povjesnoj tradiciji [Nation and Nationalism in the Croatian Historical Tradition] (Zagreb: Alinea, 2007). This chapter is based on Jakir’s monograph on the same subject published in Germany, Dalmatien zwischen den Weltkriegen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999). 21  Mario Jareb, “Trogirski incident od 1. prosinca 1932. i mletački lav svetog Marka kao simbol ‘talijanstva’ istočne obale Jadrana” [The Trogir Incident of December 1st, 1932 and the Venetian Lion of Saint Mark as the Symbol of “Italianness” of the East Coast of the Adriatic], Časopis za suvremenu povijest 39, no. 2 (2007). 22  Norka Mladinić Machiedo, Jadranska straža, 1922–1941 [The Adriatic Guard, 1922– 1941] (Zagreb: Dom i svijet, 2005). 23  Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 24  Marko Samardžija, “Hrvatska pravopisna problematika od ujedinjenja do Banovine Hrvatske (1918–1939)” [Croatian Language Problematics from the Unification to the Banovina of Croatia (1918–1939)], 55–70; Mato Artuković, “Stanje jezika u službenim školskim dokumentima u Kraljstvu/Kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca/Kraljevini Jugoslaviji” [The Language Question in Official School Documents of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes/Kingdom of Yugoslavia], 71–88; Jure Krišto, “Katolička crkvena hijerahija i društva tijekom diktature kralja Aleksandra I. Karađorđevića” [Catholic Church Hierarchy and Societies during the Dictatorship of King Alexander I Karađorđević], in Jonjić and Matijević (eds.), Hrvatska, 145–166.

Battling over 00 book.indb 103

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

104

Chapter 2

Research on the culture of memory has likewise been overlooked in recent Croatian historiography. However, a series of conferences and edited books (led by Tihomir Cipek and his Bosnian and Serbian colleagues) has explored the issue of memory politics during four critical breaking points identified by the scholars participating in the project: 1918, 1941, 1945, and 1991. These four years represent significant breaks in the twentieth century on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, and the participants (from Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia) have explored various aspects of collective and cultural memory of these dates from an interdisciplinary approach. The first volume, Kultura sjećanja: 1918, provides a number of case studies of the interwar period that could provoke future innovative research into how the past was remembered (or forgotten) in the first Yugoslavia.25 Moreover, several of the book’s chapters delve into educational policy during communist Yugoslavia and in the postcommunist and post-Yugoslav period, specifically about how textbooks have changed in their presentation of the events of 1918. This project is a welcome addition not only because of the subject material covered, but because it brings together scholars from across the region at a time when national histories are being written as if they had no influence from neighboring countries. Although it seems that the interwar period in Croatia has been covered extensively by the country’s historians, it is relatively neglected in comparison to other periods and remains immune to more ambitious scholarly investigations, which would move beyond reaffirming the seemingly sacred conclusion that the first Yugoslavia was universally detrimental to the Croatian economy, society, culture, and politics. It is not surprising that Croatian historians continue to disagree with their Serbian colleagues over interpretations of the interwar period, but the important thing is that a dialogue is maintained and the literature is available for scholars across borders. For example, the ongoing debate about the number of Austro-Hungarian officers in the royal Yugoslav Army was revived in a recent article by Hrvoje Čapo, challenging some of the claims by Mile Bjelajac, whose work has consistently emphasized the positive and integrative policies of the Serbian military leadership toward the former Austro-Hungarian cadres in Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.26

 Tihomir Cipek and Olivera Milosavljević (eds.), Kultura sjećanja–1918: povijesni lomovi i stvaranje prošlosti [A Culture of Memory—1918: Historical Breaking Points and the Making of Past] (Zagreb: Disput, 2007). 26  See Hrvoje Čapo, “Broj primljenih časnika bivše austrougarske vojske u vojsku Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca” [The Number of Accepted Officers of the Former Austro-Hungarian Army into the Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes], Časopis za suvremenu povijest 40, no. 3 (2008); Mile Bjelajac, Vojska Kraljevine SHS/Jugoslavije [The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes/Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju, 1994). See also the analysis of recent Serbian and Croatian interwar historiography in Matković, “Problem šestosiječanske diktature” [The Problem of the 6th January Dictatorship], in Jonjić and Matijević, (eds.), Hrvatska, 197–220. 25

Battling over 00 book.indb 104

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

105

Beyond the obvious political issues confronting Croatian integration into the new Yugoslav state after World War I, major economic and social challenges also emerged. The most obvious economic challenge was the integration of a war-torn Serbian economy with the undamaged former Habsburg territories of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Vojvodina, plus the Ottoman territories of Kosovo and Vardar Macedonia acquired in 1912, lost in 1915 and required by Serbia in 1918. The excerpts from Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević and Ivo Goldstein, respectively, senior economic and political historians from Zagreb, consider the interwar experience of a Croatian economy adjusting to this new framework and to the loss of the Austro-Hungarian customs union and currency. Both acknowledge the continued predominance of an agricultural economy and population but they turn to the fate of banking and industry. Here they disagree, at least in part. KolarDimitrijević finds only disadvantages for Croatia in the new framework, while Goldstein sees some advantages, particularly for Zagreb, at least until the Great Depression of the 1930s. The excerpt from Aleksandar Jakir calls attention to the experience of Dalmatia with Yugoslavism. In 1928 was a social ideology that promised modernization not only to Dalmatia’s Serbs but also to its Croats. Their initially weak sense of Croatian national identity then emerged in the 1920s in response to the centralizing pressure of Serb-dominated civic and youth organizations.

Battling over 00 book.indb 105

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević, “Gospodarske prilike na hrvatskom prostoru izmedju dva rata” [Economic Circumstances on Croatian Territory between the Two World Wars]. In Ivo Peric (ed.), Povijest Hrvata od 1918 do danas [History of the Croats from 1918 until the Present] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2007), 103–5, 108. Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević is a  distinguished economic historian who has written extensively about the working class and the economic history of the interwar period. During socialist Yugoslavia, she worked at Franjo Tudjman’s Institute for the History of the Worker’s Movement (today the Croatian Institute for History). In the 1980s, she was the first editor of the journal Povjesni prilozi [Historical Contributions] and taught in the History Department at the University of Zagreb until her retirement in 2003. She continued to teach history for the Croatian Studies program, and wrote four history textbooks for elementary and high school students. Her publications include Radni slojevi Zagreba od 1918 do 1931 [The Working Classes of Zagreb from 1918 until 1931] (1973), Položaj radničke klase u Sremu od 1918–1941 [The Position of the Working Class of Syrmia from 1918–1941] (1982), and Iz gospodarske povijesti Siska [From the Economic History of Sisak] (2005). During the interwar period, Croatia was primarily an agricultural country. The majority of its population was rural and lived off the land, even though the peasantry engaged in seasonal labor in the lumber industry, the manufacturing of bricks and cement, and in construction work. With a population of 3,427,268 in 1921 and 3,788,571 in 1931, Croatia, with respect to the number of available jobs, was overpopulated. Passive and mountainous regions had the highest population growth, so temporary work in other parts of Europe or permanent emigration to non-European countries was the only means for survival in conditions where various government regulations hampered or inadequately directed economic development. The perception by Greater Serbian forces that Yugoslavia was the national state of Serbs prevented economic competitiveness among the peoples of that country, consequently relegating the inhabitants of Croatia to a subordinate position. The unification of South Slavic lands on December 1, 1918 resulted in economic gains for Serbia. Owing to the preserved and relatively undamaged economic potential of Croatia and Slovenia, as well as war reparations from Germany, Serbia was able to quickly rebuild and develop its economy, at the same time weakening the Croatian economy through various regulations and laws in order to become the leading economic force. This policy went so far, that workers in Croatia were [encouraged] to organize more freely than in Serbia; this was advantageous for Serbian industrials who hoped that higher wages in Croatia, acquired through strikes, would weaken the competitiveness of Croatian

Battling over 00 book.indb 106

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

107

industry.1 Initially, however, it benefited Serbia that capital from the defeated European countries, in the grips of high inflation, flowed into Zagreb’s private banks directly and through the Zagreb Stock Exchange for Goods and Commodities, since a wealthy bourgeois Zagreb meant that a significant portion of the accumulated funds would eventually spill over into Belgrade. Zagreb’s renowned banks built palatial structures to symbolize the security in investment. That also allowed for the construction of residential blocks during the mandate of Vjekoslav Heinzel, Zagreb’s mayor from 1920 to 1928. As an architect and a longtime president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, Heinzel envisioned Zagreb, due to its position and international connections, as an economic metropolis not only of Croatia but of the entire new state. However, opposite tendencies from the east, where the center of power was located, were stronger. Thus, by 1922 the Zagreb Stock Exchange was prohibited from trading foreign currencies and allowed to engage only in commodities trading, while all transactions had to go through Belgrade. The Law on Administrative Districts (1922), dividing the country into new oblasts, was implemented simultaneously with the Tax Decree on War Assets, which Croatia was forced to pay retroactively and meant that previously invested capital had to be pulled out in order to cover the newly imposed obligations of the state. Further restrictions followed shortly. The former unrestricted establishment of joint-stock companies, which made Croatia so appealing to investors, was limited by permits issued only by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Belgrade. Croatian businessmen protested in vain despite the support of their institutions, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Industrialists, and the Zagreb Stock Exchange. The reports and minutes of meetings of Zagreb’s Chamber of Commerce, prepared by the chamber’s secretaries Peroslav Paskijević Čikara and Adolf Cuvaj, superbly illustrate the difficult conditions and hardships faced by the Croatian economy in the new Yugoslav state. All kinds of efforts were made to minimize Croatia’s economic role as well as to take away its leadership in all economic fields. This can clearly be seen in the Reports of the Chamber of Crafts and Trades after 1932, as well as from the minutes of the joint meetings of all economic regulatory boards in the country, which were organized thematically and published facts about the conditions in the various economic sectors. Nothing changed even after the appointment of renowned Zagreb industrialist Vladimir Arko to the head of the Chamber of Commerce in 1924. Even though he was a supporter of Belgrade’s Radical Party and Yugoslav unitarism, he could not ignore the conditions of Croatia’s nonagricultural economy (being part of that sector himself), so his reports provide valuable insights into that period. The shipping industry likewise faced economic problems, especially since this sector was unfamiliar to the government in Belgrade. However, the shipping industry was assisted by the Chamber  Ivan Božićević, Sjećanja (Zagreb, 1981), 25.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 107

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

108

Chapter 2

of Trades and Industry in Split, which had ties to twenty-two associations in Dalmatia as well as with Senj’s Chamber of Commerce. The latter association, like some kind of relic from the past, was barely able to survive the first half of the interwar period, since it had to compete with businesses on the Croatian littoral that threatened its extinction. This is an example of the bad and uneconomic politics of the government in Belgrade, which did not take into account the uniqueness, needs, and level of economic development of specific regions of the first Yugoslav state. BANKING The banking industry is key to the economic development of a country. Croatian banks had a long tradition, and since Croatia escaped devastation during World War I its banks became the carriers of the extraordinary economic development of the country during the first postwar years. Capital arrived through share capital [dionički kapital] as well as through direct investment into the industrial sector. Several banks played an important role in this process. The First Croatian Savings Bank, Inc., headquartered in Zagreb and with branches throughout Croatia (and until 1932 in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well), merged with several other banks in Zagreb and in the provinces, to become not only the most powerful financial institution in Croatia and Yugoslavia but in all of Southeastern Europe. It was connected with the entire world. The bank’s collapse in the fall of 1932 was a critical moment for the development of the Croatian economy. The original savings bank after 1932 no longer financed factories or production in all of Yugoslavia, but rather limited its activities again to the territory of Croatia, reducing its operations as much as possible. Seeking protection in paying its debts, in 1932 it became insolvent, with limited operations and rights, while the big credit opportunities were monopolized by the State Mortgage Bank and the National Bank. The Yugoslav Bank, Inc. (prior to 1920 the Croatian State Bank, Inc., based in Osijek), the Yugoslav United Bank, the Serbian Bank, Inc., and several other financial institutes made it through the big global economic crisis fairly successfully, but the vast majority of local savings banks were forced to close. State licensed banks, such as the National Bank, Inc. in Belgrade, which was also a bank of issue, regulated the credit of financial institutions as early as 1924, while the State Mortgage Bank, the Licensed Agricultural Bank, the Licensed Postal Bank, and the Trades Bank coordinated their activities with the regime, acting harshly and inappropriately toward the Croatian economic sector within the Yugoslav framework. The government also destroyed the power of the Zagreb Stock Exchange for Goods and Commodities, founded in 1919. After a magnificent start, the Stock Exchange was repressed for many years, up until the eve of World War II when it recovered due to increasing business with Germany.

Battling over 00 book.indb 108

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

109

INDUSTRY At the time of the Yugoslav state’s formation, Croatian industries, which ranked fifth during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, were suddenly in the top position. Through the Association of Industrialists of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia (established in 1904), as well as the Chamber of Commerce and Trades, those industries were willing to help the new country’s war-ravaged regions with advice and capital, hoping they would secure long-term markets in the new territories of Yugoslavia. Since the core of Belgrade’s economic policy was based on the industrialization of the country, the experience of Croatian industrialists, particularly the families of Aleksander and Arko, was eagerly accepted. However, very quickly it became clear that Serbia wanted to squeeze out Croatia from its leading position. Croatia’s explosives industry (Titanit from Karlovac), in addition to chain and nail factories from Čakovec and Koprivnica, were moved to Serbian territory, which was followed by the decision that factories near the Drava River would no longer be subsidized or given credit because of the proximity to the unstable Hungarian border. Following that decision, implemented by Inspector Milorad Savić from the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the cities of Čakovec, Varaždin, Koprivnica, Virovitica, Našice, and Osijek began to fall behind in the process of industrialization. Their factories survived only because of the extraordinary low wages of the workers and the great skill of their owners and stockholders who used their established connections [with businesses] in the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in order to obtain investment funds and patents. Eventually the regime’s customs and foreign exchange policies destroyed even these connections, while the monetary and export policies prevented the export of Croatian products because they were too expensive for the Central European market. In addition to these measures, the equalizing customs policy from 1925 was not favorable to Croatian industry, because production was directed at making goods for which raw materials (cotton, silk, etc.) had to be imported. According to all indicators, Croatian industry in 1922 was stronger than immediately prior to World War II; in other words, during the interwar period it stagnated significantly even though after World War I it carried the weight of supplying the eastern regions of the new country. Data from the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Belgrade show that on the territory of Croatia (without Istria) 432 factories were established after the war, valued at 1,093,242,000 dinars, which employed 34,619 workers and had an industrial capacity of 37,351 horsepower. From 1929 to 1938, on the same territory, only 300 new factories were established with a capital of 524,054,000 dinars and an industrial capacity of only 19,564 horsepower. Moreover, a significant number of these factories did not survive their first year of operation, and the insecurity of the industrial sector was supported by statistics from the social insurance agencies, which indicated that each worker changed jobs four to six times a year. The unemployed had nowhere to

Battling over 00 book.indb 109

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

110

Chapter 2

work, and because of the stagnation of the agricultural and industrial sectors, the demographic trends in Croatia encouraged a greater number of strikes, resulting in high social tensions. In 1938, 1,242 factories operated on the territory of Croatia (29.18% of the total number of factories in the country). A great number of these companies did only seasonal work with unstable sales, and were generally oriented toward local production (brickyards, mills, and sawmills). During that period there were only a few large factories, and even fewer that produced goods for export. Because of the low domestic buying power, not a single factory at that time worked at its full capacity, which can be seen in the reports sent to the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of the Army and Navy from 1933 to 1940 from the administrations of factories in Croatia. The greatest number of factories were related to the food processing and agricultural industry (431 or 34.71%), followed by the timber industry (203 or 16.34%), and thermoelectric stations (162 or 13.04%). The textile industry had 121 factories, or 9.74% of all facilities, while the chemical industry had 79 (6.36%, as did the metalworking industry) and the cement and mining industries had 40 (3.22%). Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 110

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatska 1918–2008 [Croatia 1918–2008] (Zagreb: EPH 2008), 79–83. Ivo Goldstein is professor in the Department of History at the University of Zagreb, and served as Croatian ambassador to France from 2013 to 2017. His work has varied from medieval to modern history and includes fifteen books as author or editor, such as: Croatia: A History (1999); Holokaust u Zagrebu [The Holocaust in Zagreb] (2001); Židovi u Zagrebu 1918–1941 [Jews in Zagreb 1918–1941] (2005); and Hrvatska 1918–2008 [Croatia 1918–2008] (2008). Goldstein has also been also active in the restoration of Zagreb’s Synagogue, which was destroyed during World War II. The new Yugoslav state community integrated regions with incredibly varied socioeconomic characteristics, which were formed when they were all parts of different countries. In Austro-Hungary, the most industrialized regions were the Czech lands, followed by Austria and Hungary, while the Croat lands, Slovenia, Vojvodina, and especially Bosnia-Herzegovina were the most undeveloped parts of the monarchy. However, these were the most industrialized areas of the new state. In the undeveloped parts of the former Kingdom of Serbia (for the most part everywhere outside of Belgrade), the first signs of civic habits began to emerge among the small middle-class population, but nevertheless this remained a far cry from life in more developed foreign urban environments. Ottoman rule in Kosovo and Metohija, Macedonia, and the Sandžak left permanent traces of backwardness on social relations, lifestyle and work habits, the economy, commerce, and health care. The agricultural systems were likewise different; for example, in Croatia, Slavonia, and Vojvodina, there remained a tradition of large farms. In contrast, from the beginning of the nineteenth century Serbia was a land of small agricultural parcels. In Dalmatia the agricultural relations could be characterized as colonial, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo and Metohija the čivčija system still regulated agricultural activity.1 In Međimurje, Hungarian laws, which differed significantly from Croatian laws (especially regarding private rights), remained in effect for a long time. For example, until 1918 in

 Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918–1988 [History of Yugoslavia 1918–1988] (Belgrade: Nolit, 1988), 32; Franko Mirošević, “Položaj dalmatinskih težaka i njihova borba za zemlju (1919–1929)” [The Position of Dalmatian Farmers and Their Struggle for Land (1918–1929)], Radovi ZHP 20 (1987). Čivčija = a serf in the Ottoman Empire that worked on land owned by someone else; a landless person. See Vladimir Anić and Ivo Goldstein, Rječnik stranih riječi [A Dictionary of Foreign Words] (Zagreb: Novi Liber, 2004), 249.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 111

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:22

112

Chapter 2

Međimurje civic marriages were obligatory, as opposed to church marriages in Croatia.2 In addition to these kinds of civilizational and social differences, there were considerable differences in the economic sphere; for example, investment capital in the industrial sector per capita in 1918 in the various parts of Yugoslavia was, if Croatia had an index of 100, 170 in Slovenia, 110 in Vojvodina, 97 in Serbia, and 68 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Montenegro’s index was a mere 12, while Macedonia’s and Kosovo’s was not even 3!3 Croatian society and economy adapted to the challenges of modernization very slowly: in 1880, in Croatia and Slavonia 83 percent of the population worked in agriculture. Forty years later, when Croatia was a part of Yugoslavia, 75.3 percent of the population was involved in the agricultural sector. Thus, in nearly half a  century, that figure dropped only 8 percent. During that period, industry and other economic sectors developed, but only a small amount considering the sharp demographic increase in those years, as well as in the period from 1921 to 1940, when the population of Croatia increased by 651,652, or 18.9 percent.4 The monarchy, with a population of 59 million, was a stable and wealthy market for Croatian agricultural products, back then the dominant branch of the Croatian economy. Owing to the widespread railway system, transportation of these products was relatively fast and inexpensive. The collapse of Austria-Hungary for the most part severed the very important ties, which the Croatian economy had with Central Europe, in particular with Vienna and Budapest, as well as Prague.5 The break with the Austro-Hungarian market especially damaged wine production, since there was little demand for those products in the eastern regions of the Kingdom of SCS. For example, from 1913 until the end of the 1920s, in only fifteen years, wine production on the island of Korčula fell over 78 percent, in other words, to one fifth of the prewar production (from 194,000 hectoliters in 1913 to only 41,800 hl in 1927, although by 1929 this figure increased to 112,300 hl).6 However, in the first few years after  Vladimir Kalšan, Međimurska povijest [History of Međimurje] (Čakovec: Self-published, 2006), 281–82. During the interwar period, that law created a divorce and marriage tourism mecca out of Čakovec, since both could be done much faster and easier in Međimurje. 3  Ivan Božić, Sima Ćirković, Milorad Ekmečić, and Vladimir Dedijer, Istorija Jugoslavije [History of Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1973), 424. 4  Zdenka Šimončić-Bobetko, “Gospodarstvene prilike u sjevernoj Hrvatskoj u godinama posilje prvog svjetskog rata” [Economic Conditions in Northern Croatia in the Years After World War One], Časopis za suvremenu povijest, 3 (1990), 21–37. 5  Igor Karaman, Industrijalizacija građanske Hrvatske (1800–1941) [The Industrialization of Bourgeois Croatia (1800–1941)] (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1991), 180. 6  Marija Benić Penava, Gospodarske prilike na dubrovačkom području između dva svjetska rata [The Economic Conditions in the Area of Dubrovnik Between the World Wars], unpublished MA thesis (Zagreb, 2006), 36. 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 112

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

113

World War I when food shortages were widespread in a number of European countries, the Croatian agricultural sector, undamaged by the war, had an open door to export its products. However, this competitive advantage phase lasted only until the mid-1920s.7 Unification brought some positive elements to the Croatian economy, since Croatian industry was after all significantly stronger than that in the underdeveloped eastern regions of the new Yugoslav state. Consequently, many economic sectors in Croatia, such as the lumber and wood-processing industry, gained a stable internal market.8 The handicrafts and commercial sectors experienced a steady increase in the use of motors and machines, which was encouraged by the process of electrification across the country; for example, the electrical grid reached Split in 1920. Zagreb became a commercial and banking hub, and Croatia, as well as Yugoslavia as a whole, became known as a country with favorable development potential and profitable investments with the possibility of rapid accumulation. That also favored the influx of foreign capital, more so in Croatia than in other parts of Yugoslavia. The most rapid development of the Croatian economy took place between 1920 and 1923, after which this rise gradually subsided, even though up until 1926 economic conditions were good. Until 1930 the conditions remained tolerable, but after that point the economic crisis arrived. Zagreb, as well as much of Croatia, experienced a dramatic transformation in only a few years after World War I. During the period of Austro-Hungarian rule, this was an area that functioned as an agricultural appendage to an empire; the industrial centers were located far away (primarily in the Czech lands and Hungary) and produced enough to obviate the industrialization of Croatia. After the war, Croatia and Zagreb, cut off from their previous suppliers, were in a position to become suppliers in an entirely new political and economic space, with an agricultural potential that was considerably greater than Croatia’s needs, as well as an industrial potential that depended on Croatia and Zagreb to function as organizational, financial, and entrepreneurial centers. Zagreb’s, and more broadly Croatia’s, enterprises had the traditions and experiences in financial transactions to secure themselves a key position in the financial life of the Yugoslav mon-

 Vladimir Stipetić, “Gospodarstvo Hrvatske 1919–1940” [Croatian Economy 1919– 1940], Rad HAZU 495 (2003): 223–4. 8  For a brief overview of the economic development of Croatia and Zagreb, see Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević, Radni slojevi Zagreba od 1918. do 1931 [The Working Classes of Zagreb from 1918 until 1931] (Zagreb: Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske, 1973), 10–12; Ivan Kampuš and Igor Karaman, Tisućljetni Zagreb: od davnih naselja do suvremenog velegrada [The Thousand-Year Zagreb: From the Ancient Settlements to the Modern Metropolis] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1994), 255; Aleksandar Jakir, Dalmatien zwischen den Weltkriegen [Dalmatia between the World Wars] (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 281–94. 7

Battling over 00 book.indb 113

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

114

Chapter 2

archy. Domestic competition was practically nonexistent, since the economy of Serbia (the largest economic unit in the new state) was devastated by the war, and even before the conflict it was significantly falling behind contemporary economic developments. In 1931 there were almost 200 financial organizations, including 75 banks and 38 insurance companies. By means of Zagreb’s banking administration they were able to integrate into the Yugoslav economy and into influential international financial circles; 50 percent of Yugoslavia’s banking capital was located in Croatia and Slavonia.9 However, the developmental reach of the banking sector was ultimately limited by the development potential of the economy it serviced. The banks did not have the strength for large investments in the industrial and maritime sectors (on the littoral), a majority of which those attempts ended in failure, especially during the world economic crisis. Municipal savings banks, already established at the turn of the century in Koprivnica, Zagreb, and Karlovac, were founded in Osijek and Split immediately after the war. They were significant in resolving numerous communal problems, contributing to the founding of commercial and manufacturing firms. For example, in Zagreb, the City Savings Bank financed the construction of the trolley system in the mid-1930s. Factories built in the 1920s became the backbone of growth in many Croatian towns and their environments. In Slavonski Brod (at the time known as Brod na Savi), for example, the Factory of Wagons and Bridges (today “Đuro Đaković”) opened in 1921 and employed 1,500 workers until the end of the decade. In 1921 the town had a population of 12,309, while ten years later it had 17,473 citizens (an increase of 42%), growth that was to a great extent due to the presence of the factory. The textile industry in Varaždin, a town with 16,000 people, employed just under 3,000 workers (the biggest employer being Textile Industries, Inc.).10 During the interwar period, about 730 new industrial companies were established in Croatia, while 250 began operating in Bosnia-Herzegovina.11 This was

 Kampuš and Karaman, Tisućljetni Zagreb [The Thousand-Year Zagreb] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1994) 260–2; Zdenka Šimončić-Bobetko, Industrija Hrvatske 1918. do 1941 [Croatian Industry from 1918 until 1941] (Zagreb: AGM, 2004), 59. 10  Hrvatska privreda, nos. 8–9 (Zagreb, 1937). 11  Zdenka Šimončić-Bobetko, “Osnovne karakteristike industrijskog razvitka na području Hrvatske u međuratnom razdoblju (1918–1941)” [The Basic Characteristics of Industrial Development in Croatia in the Interwar Period (1918–1941)], Acta historico-oeconomica Iugoslaviae 1 (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1974), 71; Šimončić-Bobetko, Industrija Hrvatske, 29, 50; Kemal Hrelja, “Razvoj industrije BiH do Drugog svetskog rata” [Development of Industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina until the Second World War], Acta historico-oeconomica Iugoslaviae 1 (1974): 32. 9

Battling over 00 book.indb 114

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

115

more than in any other Yugoslav region; in Serbia and Vojvodina a total of 818 factories were established. State politics were partially responsible for this growth. Already in 1920 the government allowed the duty-free import of complete industrial installations, machines, and other factory components and materials, or in other words, all of those things not produced domestically, or not produced in sufficient quantities (the Serbian industrial sector benefited from additional privileges). A high import tax was placed on domestically-produced commodities, as well as those that had the potential to be produced in the country. Because of this, many factories unable to meet international standards, such as those producing agricultural equipment or weapons, were nevertheless able to make considerable profits on the domestic market.12 Conditions for the development of the agricultural sector were likewise favorable, particularly since after the October Revolution all of Europe lost its most reliable and largest supplier of agricultural products, Czarist Russia. Thus Yugoslavia (along with Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria) suddenly became the supplier of agricultural products for many European countries. Prices rose rapidly: in 1923/24, the price of a kilogram of wheat was 3.55 dinars, while one year later it was 4.17 dinars, an increase of 17.5 percent. Everyone profited—peasants (admittedly only those who were strong enough to sell their products on the market), middlemen involved in export, and even the state, through profits from high taxes and tariffs. The excess money was reinvested into the industrial sector, small businesses, and other economic branches. In that way Croatia, once on the periphery of a powerful Empire, became the center of a peripheral European state. However, that growth began to slow by around 1925, so that by 1930 the trends had reversed. One of the key factors in this economic downturn was the agricultural developments in the United States: after World War I, U.S. factories shifted from military production to producing tractors and other agricultural equipment. Wheat production between 1922 and 1925 in the United States and Australia increased by 34 percent, in Canada by as much as 35 percent, and in Argentina by 25 percent. The increase in production meant a drop in costs, so already by 1926 wheat from the Americas became competitive on the European market. European countries, including Yugoslavia, were unable to reduce costs during that same time period. In 1926 the price of wheat fell to 2.81 dinars per kilogram with signs of further decreases; four years later, at the beginning of the economic crisis, the price fell to half of its previous level, only 1.41 dinars.13 It was clear that the favorable economic conditions in Croatia in the 1920s were

 Bilandžić, Hrvatska moderna povijest [Croatian Modern History] (Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 1999), 93. 13  Bilandžić, Hrvatska moderna povijest, 94–5; Stipetić, “Gospodarstvo Hrvatske 1919– 1940,” 224–5. 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 115

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

116

Chapter 2

only temporary. They lasted until the early 1930s, until the great economic crisis and the increasing interventionist politics into the economy directed from Belgrade. […] Even though in the interwar period Zagreb and Croatia remained underdeveloped relative to the majority of Western and Central European cities and countries, they were nonetheless ahead of the rest of Southeastern and Eastern Europe. Mostly Zagreb, but other urban centers as well, developed in a similar manner to cities in other parts of Europe: Radio Zagreb went on air, regular flights between Zagreb and Belgrade were established, and the wealthy urban class with refined tastes expanded, prompting an increase in artistic production, which to some degree followed postwar European avantgarde trends. After 1918 the University of Zagreb likewise expanded and grew, since the possibilities for studying in former Austro-Hungarian academic centers were limited. The Medical Faculty opened in 1918, and in the following years a number of institutes (Anatomy, Physiology, etc.) and clinics (surgery, midwifery, and gynecology) were founded. A year later the Business and Veterinary Academies, precursors to the Economics and Veterinary colleges, began operating, followed by the Technical Academy, which later developed into the Technical College. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 116

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

117

Aleksandar Jakir, “O nekim aspektima oblikovanja nacionalnih identiteta na primjeru Dalmacije između dva rata” [Several Aspects in the Formation of National Identity in Dalmatia between the Two World Wars]. In Tihomir Cipek and Josip Vrandečić, (eds.), Nacija i nacionalizam u hrvatskoj povijesnoj tradiciji [Nation and Nationalism in the Croatian Historical Tradition] (Zagreb: Alinea, 2007), 134–9. Aleksandar Jakir completed his PhD in Germany at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and worked at several German institutions before receiving an appointment at the University of Split, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of History. He has worked on issues of interwar Dalmatia, social history, and theories of nationalism. He is the author of Dalmatien zwischen den Weltkriegen (1999); coeditor of Europas Tragik. Ex-Jugoslawien zwischen Hoffnung und Resignation (2003); and author of numerous journal articles published in Germany and Croatia. If we are going to accept the definition of nationalism as a  means for mobilizing and homogenizing the members of a group of people who believe they are connected by ethnicity, language, or culture, with an emphasis on the alleged common ancestry of all the members of a specific nation, then it is clear that the intellectual carriers and implementers of the idea of national integration had an important role in that mobilization process. As a historical phenomenon, which appears at critical moments of failing and collapsing traditional loyalties during the transition and transformation from a feudal society and its norms into an individualized, capitalist society that rests on different foundations, nationalism offers a new interpretation of social relations and a new cohesion for individuals in an atomized and anonymous modern society. In this process of forming new collective identities on a national basis it seems that a crucial component is the communicative interaction of the advocates of new national and collective identities with the relevant social classes and forces whose national beliefs are often tied to their social interests. From the start, Yugoslavism as a  means of national integration could not play the role that its followers intended. Namely, in the nineteenth century it became clear that South Slavism, which was a continuation of the Illyrian movement, was exclusively a Croatian ideology of national integration, and Yugoslavism in the Croatian political arena thus became a form of Yugoslav Croatianism. Because of this, in the territories of the South Slavic peoples, Yugoslavism played a  totally different role, and every attempt at evoking an alleged common South Slavic identity in the Austro-Hungarian Empire or in the Kingdom of Serbia was ultimately pointless. This is confirmed by the example of Dalmatia, where in addition to Yugoslavism, processes of national integration among Dalmatian Serbs already

Battling over 00 book.indb 117

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

118

Chapter 2

created a feeling of belonging to the Serbian nation: the Orthodox population of Dalmatia and the Serbian press, which was mostly read by more educated members of Dalmatian Serbs (such as Srpski list and subsequently Srpski glas in Zadar or Srpski magazine in Dubrovnik) indicate that Dalmatian Serbs were not included in the Croatian communicative space. The Serbian literary cooperative and cultural organization Srbobran played crucial roles in the formation of national consciousness, which could not be Yugoslav. Of particular interest is the Yugoslavism of the Nationalist Youth, which was swept up by the notion of “unification” after the Balkan Wars (1912–13). In 1914 Oskar Tartaglia edited the newspaper Unification, which called for the creation of a Yugoslav state and was quickly banned by the Austrian authorities, much like Zastava (Flag), Yugoslavia (published in Prague), and Narodno jedinstvo (National Unity, published in Split). Admittedly, this Yugoslavism was a project of a few young rebels, which at the moment of Austro-Hungary’s imminent collapse was supported by intellectuals and literary figures such as Ante Tresića Pavičić, Ilija Despot, and Danko Anđelinović, but did not enjoy the backing of any notable political or social figure. It is therefore not surprising that this type of Yugoslavism collapsed in late 1918 when a Yugoslav state was actually created in which the interests of Belgrade’s ruling circles were explicitly felt. The Yugoslav state could no longer count on widespread support in Croatian regions, since in the eyes of most Croats royal Yugoslavia under the Karađorđević dynasty completely compromised itself, hiding the creation of a Greater Serbia. Even though we can conclude that the Slavic population with a Catholic faith in Dalmatia, just as in other Croatian regions, gradually formed Croatian national identity, while the Orthodox population adopted a Serbian national consciousness, the question remains why did Yugoslavism at the end of World War I become a so-called magic formula, which at one moment seemed capable of unifying all the political options? Based on the press and other sources from that period, one gets the sense that the intellectual circles advocating Yugoslavism expected this nebulous ideology to resolve all of the pressing issues in Dalmatian society. The advocates of Yugoslavism were frustrated at Dalmatia’s peripheral socioeconomic and political status, as well as the marginalization of the South Slavic peoples in AustroHungary, so Yugoslavism as an oppositional platform in the final months of the Dual monarchy’s existence seemed to offer the best political option after its expected collapse. Furthermore, Yugoslavism represented not only a new nationalism or supranational ideology, but rather a social ideology that could enable an all-encompassing modernization of society. Thus, it is not surprising that this magical formula for modernization could not function, which is easy to see when considering the social and economic structure of Dalmatian society, in addition to the feelings of disappointment following the failure of Dalmatia’s rapid development and industrialization. There were considerable expectations that the difficult economic situation facing the majority of Dalmatia’s inhabitants would be

Battling over 00 book.indb 118

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

119

resolved within the new Yugoslav state. However, an analysis of the press at the time reveals the dissatisfaction at the pace and scope of industrialization. There was a similar reaction toward the failure of agricultural reforms and the generally difficult economic conditions characterizing the dominant consciousness of Dalmatian villages, whose stagnancy affected the slow rhythm of modernization. The Yugoslav idea was quickly abandoned by the aforementioned intellectuals who had initially supported it. A typical example is that of Ivo Tartaglia, the mayor of Split and later ban of the Littoral Banovina (Primorska banovina), who had enthusiastically welcomed the creation of the Yugoslav state and the arrival of Serbian soldiers in Split. In 1932 he resigned as ban and signed a petition for the release of HSS [Hrvatska seljačka stranka, Croatian Peasant Party] leader Vladko Maček from prison. Tartaglia, and many others who expressed support for a centralized state in the 1920s, advocated a (con)federal solution to the Croatian national question after the obvious failure of integral Yugoslavism and a unitary state. By the early 1930s, Tartaglia, like many other former advocates of Yugoslav unification, had definitely given up on the Yugoslav option. As mentioned earlier, research on the activities of Yugoslav nationalist organizations in Dalmatia such as Jadranska straža [Adriatic sentinel], Jugoslavenska matica [Yugoslav matrix], Orjuna, or Jugoslavenski sokol [Yugoslav falcon] indicates that the great majority of the Dalmatian population never accepted Yugoslav ideology. The fact that the Adriatic Sentinel, which also expressed a pro-Yugoslav position, represented the largest civil organization in interwar Yugoslavia (in 1939 it allegedly numbered 180,000 members) confirms the hypothesis that there was a greater fear of Italian imperialism than there was support for Yugoslavism. Most of Dalmatia’s elite replaced Yugoslavism as an ideology of national integration with Croatian national consciousness, as did the majority of the peasantry. The basis of the victory of the Radić brothers’ Peasant Party in Dalmatia was not only its social program, but also its resistance to integral Yugoslavism. There is no doubt that the political repression carried out by the Ka­ra­đor­ đe­vić regime sped up the process by which Croats rejected Yugoslav integration. Between 1918 and 1928—in other words, before the imposition of the January 6 royal dictatorship in 1929—King Aleksandar’s regime carried out twenty-four death sentences, encouraged and organized 600 political murders, and had 30,000 individuals arrested. Not only did this repression fail to crush the opposition to the regime, it actually contributed to the growth in popularity of the HSS in Dalmatia along with the rest of Croatia, while the assassination of Stjepan Radić and the subsequent royal dictatorship finally led to the majority of Croats unifying around the political program of the HSS. The HSS under Maček received about 80 percent of the vote in the 1935 and 1938 elections, which indicates an achieved consensus among Croats in Dalmatia. From the mid-1930s, the Croatian Peasant Party, which represented “Croatian politics” and advocated “Croatian consciousness,” convincingly dominated the political scene at the local level. From 1936 on, the HSS had a majority in district councils throughout Dalmatia.

Battling over 00 book.indb 119

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

120

Chapter 2

Commenting the local election results of May 16, 1936, when the HSS won majorities in fifty-six Dalmatian districts compared to six won by the regime’s Yugoslav Radical Union (JRZ—Jugoslavenska radikalna zajednica), the JRZ paper Država (State) angrily and a bit disappointedly concluded that Dalmatia “has become exclusively the domain of pro-Radić [HSS] forces,” and called on all “national elements” in Dalmatia to unite against the “separatists” so that Dalmatia can once again be a stronghold of “national and state unity of Serbs and Croats.” Nevertheless, the Croatian Peasant Party continued to strengthen its position as the dominant political organization in Dalmatia, and the processes of Croatian national integration led to the acceptance of Croatian identity among the vast majority of the Catholic population during the interwar period. I believe that the Sporazum and the creation of the Banovina Hrvatska in 1939, a tentative solution in an atmosphere of imminent war, can be interpreted as the symbolic end to the process of accepting Croatian consciousness among all layers of the Croatian nation during the interwar period. Furthermore, it can be seen as steps toward the establishment of an independent state, which bolsters the argument that every attempt at creating a Yugoslav identity in Dalmatia and Croatia was a complete failure. As a conclusion, we return to the reasons for the failure of the Yugoslav idea. An analysis of Dalmatian society reveals that the Yugoslav idea was not supported by a single relevant social group. Confessional differences, an already existent sense of individual national identity, and different political and legal traditions did not allow for the development of some kind of Yugoslav nation. Accordingly, Yugoslavism was unable to transform or transcend Croatian or Serbian identity in Dalmatia. A  common cultural heritage and the experience of Croatia within monarchist Yugoslavia stabilized the sense of solidarity and strengthened the identity of Croats in Dalmatia. This, along with the activities of the HSS, characterized the feelings of Croatian identity. The results of research on the process of political integration of the Croatian people in Dalmatia supports the theory that the 1920s represented the crucial phase in the acceptance of modern national identity among all layers of society, which meant that in Dalmatia even the great majority of Dalmatian workers considered themselves Croats in the modern national sense. The political and social activities of the Radić brothers’ Croatian Peasant Party (such as the cultural and educational organization Peasant Unity [Seljačka sloga], cooperatives, programs to eliminate illiteracy, etc.) ingrained the feeling of belonging to the Croatian nation. The conditions in Dalmatia, which was a “passive region” and lagged behind in all modernization parameters, proves that Yugoslavism could never become the principal determinant of either Croat or Serb national consciousness, especially because the political realities following the creation of a unitary state clearly showed that the hopes of a blossoming in all segments of society were totally illusionary. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 120

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

Recent Serbian Historiography on the Interwar Period Vladan Jovanović

R

ecent Serbian historiography of Yugoslavia between the two world wars has focused on features that inhibited the effectiveness of the state. Prominent disadvantages were cultural differences with latent ethnic conflict, ideological barriers to integration, an unfavorable agrarian structure, and poor communications. Although interwar Yugoslavia was at least in part the embodiment of an idea, aspiring to modernization and cultural advance, its legitimacy was usually dismissed in Communist historiography.1 In fact, there were many signs of persistent political crisis such as the national mistrust, fear of federalization, and the suppression of national/cultural individuality, which inevitably led to neglecting the common Yugoslav interest and the institutions, as Ivana Dobrivojević has suggested in her book.2 The communist regime’s promotion of a  common Yugoslav identity was also focused on its own political legitimacy, while denying any such common identity for interwar Yugoslavia. Its historians did not hesitate to present the Yugoslav monarchy as first a “Greater-Serbian bourgeois hegemony,” or a “Versailles fantasy,” and after that a “prison for the people,” or a “monarcho-fascist

 Branko Petranović, “Modernizacija u uslovima nacionalno nestabilnog društva (jugoslovensko i srpsko iskustvo)” [Modernization in the Conditions of a Nationally Volatile Society] in Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XX veka [Serbia in the Modernizing Processes of the 20th Century] (Belgrade: INIS, 1994), 17, 23. 2  Ivana Dobrivojević, Državna represija u doba diktature kralja Aleksandra 1929–1935 [State Repression during the Dictatorship of King Alexander 1929–1935] (Belgrade: ISI, 2006), 343–44. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 121

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

122

Chapter 2

dictatorship.”3 A turning-point came in the early 1980s when Serbian scholars started to explore Yugoslav interwar history in greater depth. Until then the subject had been a political taboo. The most controversial topic was the unification in 1918. Both external and internal influences on the establishment of Yugoslavia attracted a variety of authors, not only historians. Further controversies arose from the post-1929 “national unification,” proclaimed by King Aleksandar. Some described the creation of Yugoslavia as an instrument of Serbian hegemony, while others called it a geopolitical confluence of interests.4 In the late 1980s Belgrade historian Branko Petranović tried to overcome the particularism beginning to appear in various Yugoslav republics.5 His colleagues from the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade Univesity (Andrej Mitrović, Đorđe Stanković, and others) as well as his students (Ljubodrag Dimić, Mira Radojević, Gordana Krivokapić-Jović, Mile Bjelajac, etc.) have continued researching the neglected interwar period. Their findings, published mostly during the 1980s and the 1990s, expressed Yugoslav aspirations, downplaying the so-called Serbian factor.6 Along with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the nationalistic pretensions of its last torchbearer in Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, revived the idea of monarchy as an alternative to this regime. A noted Serbian sociologist Todor Kuljić spoke of the “memorialization of monarchy.” This rehabilitation was not exclusively Serbian, but a common Balkan phenomenon. The reconversion to precommunist values in national history might also be seen as a part of a wider rebirth of conservativism, but it was most probably a reaction against the prescribed communist image of the past. On the other hand, this new admiration confronted an antidynastic opposition. The Serbian dynastic chronology lacked deep roots, charisma, and an aristocratic class. Instead, there was only the image of wartime honor. Liberation or charisma was usually attained on the battlefield. Otherwise, the Serbian monarchies could not command basic bureaucratic stability. After the October Revolution in Russia threatened the destruction of all European monarchies, the Yugoslav monarchy seemed more distinctive as an anticommunist “cordon sanitaire” than as a basis for Yugoslavism.7

 Ljubodrag Dimić, Istorija srpske državnosti 3, Srbija u Jugoslaviji [A History of Serbian Statehood, vol. 3, Serbia in Yugoslavia] (Novi Sad: Platoneum, 2001), 140–41. 4  Mile Bjelajac, “Predgovor” [Preface], in Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije: viđenje srpskog faktora [Writing a History of Yugoslavia: The Perspective of the Serbian Factor] (Belgrade: INIS, 2007), 5–6. 5  Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918–1988 [The History of Yugoslavia 1918– 1988) vol. I (Belgrade: Nolit, 1988), vi, xiii. 6  Bjelajac, “Predgovor,” 6. 7  Todor Kuljić, “Monumentalizacija srpske monarhije: o suvremenim debatama oko restauracije monarhije u Srbiji” [Monumentalizing the Serbian Monarchy: On the Contemporary Debates Surrounding the Restauration of Monarchy in Serbia] Časopis za suvremenu povijest 37, no. 2 (December 2005): 355–69. In late 1980s former communist 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 122

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

123

At the present time, Serbian historiography still pays attention to interwar Yugoslavia and some new volumes have been published. The other former Yugoslav historiographies have in fact neglected the period between the two world wars. Recent Croatian historiography, as noted by Vjeran Pavlaković, regards interwar history as already properly explored and consequently needing no additional work. Another possible reason for such disinterest may be the location of relevant primary sources. Most of the material regarding the Yugoslav Kingdom is found predominantly in Archives of Yugoslavia. During the 1990s, wartime made them unavailable for most of the scholars outside of Serbia, who hesitated to visit Belgrade. HEALING THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC SCARS OF THE 1990S Considering that the Serbo-Croatian controversy was a central issue of interwar history, Serbian historians have concentrated on this core issue since the 1980s. But, as they began to deal with the national question, the dissolution of Yugoslavia caused another reversal in Serbian historiography. A group of self-described “nationalists,” ideologically close to Slobodan Milošević and financially assisted by his regime, poured out nationalistic literature for their “homogenization mission.” The history of interwar Yugoslavia was reevaluated by the regime’s poets, journalists, and a small group of professional historians.8 Picking “applicable” themes, they tried to emphasize a Serbia suffering between the two world wars. They denied the significance of the Yugoslav state and its ethnically connected populations. Even history textbooks were accommodated to the new political reality. For the most part, Serbian historiography survived but with a few scars.9 Surprisingly, there was no visible interference in the historiography or its infrastructure under the Milošević regime. As Predrag Marković and Nataša Milićević point out, “The best academic historians applied escapist strategies and avoided not only ‘sensitive’ topics, but ‘problematic’ periods as well. Both their silence and the multitude of glorifying propaganda books have damaged the gen-

functionaries suddenly became advocates of monarchy, perhaps displaying a Dinaric “conversion proclivity” as described by geo/ethnographer Jovan Cvijić in the early 20th century. Anticommunism became a frame of new ordered memory and forgetting, nothwithstanding that renewed Serbian capitalism may have needed a more attractive historical background, as Kuljić assumed. 8  The most influential historians of that sort were assembled within the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU). The Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy resisted the temptation. 9  One of the most ambitious, but also controversial evaluations of Serbian historiography was published recently by Holm Sundhaussen, Istorija Srbije od 19. do 21. veka [A History of Serbia from the 19th to the 21st century] (Belgrade: Clio, 2009).

Battling over 00 book.indb 123

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

124

Chapter 2

eral prestige of the profession. A growing distrust of ‘official’ history as a regimepraising academic discipline has created a void in historical consciousness.”10 Still, unqualified political appointees in administrative positions within historical institutes indirectly weighed down the research cadre and its output. International scholarly cooperation was neglected in favor of efforts to find officially “eligible” partners.11 Despite these working conditions, individuals kept their private connections with colleagues abroad, leaving the door open for new historiographic trends. Such an atmosphere was a prelude to more independent scholarship after the fall of the Milošević regime in October 2000. Even before then, the Milošević regime was not forcing “patriotic themes” on institutes through the 1990s, because it did not seem to care that much about their influence. His ruling party had its own historians and academicians who appeared in the mass media, in contrast to the narrow academic circles served by institutes. Many antiregime historians were left to vegetate there. Some succeded in launching original projects, like Latinka Perović who published volumes on modernization processes in Serbia. After Milošević’s downfall, most of the scholarly community was, as with Serbian society, waiting for a change that was slower than expected in coming. Serbian “transition historiography” looks something like a warped amalgam of instant experts in new methodologies and others stuck in traditionally based, positivist history. They differ in foreign language skills, imagination, and international connections. In contrast to proponents of traditional history, many innovatively-minded scholars tend to uncritically accept any new approach coming from the West. Neither group seems able to dominate. As Marković and Milićević argued in the overview mentioned above, “the most elegant syntheses of Serbian history were written by veterans,” though in English.12 The others were written by younger historians with an ambition to summarize Serbian history emulating as much as possible a Western approach.13 But, a strong and per-

 Predrag J. Marković and Nataša Milićević, “Srpska istoriografija u vreme tranzicije: borba za legitimitet” [Serbian Historiography in the Age of Transition: The Struggle for Legitimacy], Istorija 20. veka 1, 146. 11  Heads of such institutions were often ready to spurn at common sense, hurrying to fulfill bizzare “orders,” as in the last few months of the Milošević regime, when scientific cooperation with Iraqi institutions was suggested from above. 12  Sima Ćirković, The Serbs (London: Blackwell, 2004). Also mentioned was a British historian of Serbian origin: Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Serbia: The History Behind the Name (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2002); Marković and Milićević, “Srpska istoriografija u vreme tranzicije,” 160. 13  Dušan Bataković, Milan St. Protić and Nikola Samardžić, Nova istorija srpskog naroda [A New History of the Serbian People] (Belgrade, Lausanne: Naš dom, 2000); Ljubodrag Dimić, Srbi i Jugoslavija [Serbs and Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 1998); Čedomir Antić, Kratka istorija Srbije [A Short History of Serbia] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2004). 10

Battling over 00 book.indb 124

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

125

suasive synthesis on the Yugoslav state’s performance between the two world wars is still missing. There have been only limited efforts to harmonize narrowly framed subjects, mostly based on primary sources.14 THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC POTENTIAL: (ALMOST) NEW THEMES IN (MOSTLY) NEW HANDS Two Serbian institutes cover recent or contemporary national history, including the period after the creation of Yugoslavia (1918).15 This chronological orientation was accepted by all academic institutions, including faculty departments. Most of the Serbian historians dealing with precommunist Yugoslavia are younger and consequently their books are predominantly adopted from MA or PhD theses. Lately, both the departments for the history of Yugoslavia and contemporary history at Belgrade University’s Faculty of Philosophy openly encourage new approaches and topics, which have resulted in several valuable books. Moreover, both departments recognize such thematic engagement as a high priority for Serbian historiography. Some historians persist in their longstanding lines of research, while others who had been working on the labor movement successfully turned to a broader social context. It is interesting to note, that only three scholars in Serbia have dealt with the major social group in the twentieth century, the peasantry.16 Otherwise, one volume has examined student everyday life,17 and other valuable books have appeared on disabled persons in interwar Yugoslavia,18 state educational

 One of the most comprehensive attempts was made by Ljubodrag Dimić who noted the destructiveness of “forgetting strategy” imposed on ethnic conflicts in the 1930s for the sake of an abstract future: Istorija srpske državnosti, 141–42. 15  Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije (Institute for the Recent History of Serbia), and Institut za savremenu istoriju (Institute for Contemporary History). 16  Momčilo Isić dedicated several monographs to the interwar Serbian village, and educational system as well: Momčilo Isić, Socijalna i agrarna struktura Srbije u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji [Social and Agrarian Structure of Serbia in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: INIS, 1999), Isić, Seljaštvo u Srbiji 1918–1941 [Pesantry in Serbia 1918-1941], vol. 1 (Belgrade: INIS, 2000); Isić, Osnovno školstvo u Srbiji 1918–1941 [Elementary Education in Serbia 1918–1941], vols. 1–2 (Belgrade: INIS, 2005). 17  Momčilo Mitrović, Domovi i menze studenata Beogradskog univerziteta 1938–1998 [Student Dormitories and Cafeterias of the University of Belgrade 1938–1988] (Belgrade: INIS, 2002). 18  Ljubomir Petrović, Nevidljivi geto. Invalidi u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918–1941 [The Invisible Ghetto. The Disabled in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1918–1941] (Belgrade: ISI, 2007). 14

Battling over 00 book.indb 125

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

126

Chapter 2

policy in the Vojvodina,19 the Yugoslav-French relationship after World War I,20 and Yugoslav overseas emigration policy during the interwar period.21 In spite of such thematic diversity, there are two dominant topics in recent Serbian historiography on the interwar period, the institutional/governmental apparatus of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (including political elites), and the ethnic conflicts, between Serbs and Croats. These two closely related subjects were obviously attractive to post-1990s Serbian historiography. In searching for the roots of the recent wars, many historians devoted attention to the first Yugoslav state. The national minorities question was often highlighted. Since traditional political history had recoiled from social history, Serbian historiography was open to new issues regarding social developments, especially the modernization process in the twentieth century. This was assisted by three leading historical journals (Tokovi istorije, Istorija 20. veka, and Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju).22 All of them try to make social history a preferred subject, encouraging at the same time an interdisciplinary approach. Some topics considered have been civil society, elites, gender issues, and everyday life. We could say that the humanistic understanding of history was another feature of Serbian postcommunist historiography.23 On the other hand, some of the themes were “old fashioned” but pursued with a modern interpretation, like the studies on the peasantry and the working class. Some previous experts in labor history also became specialists in economic history. It is also noteworthy that younger scholars such as Goran Nikolić are increasingly addressing economic issues.24 Nikolić traces  Biljana Šimunović-Bešlin, Prosvetna politika u Dunavskoj banovini, 1929–1941 [Educational Policies in the Danube Banovina, 1929–1941] (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, Ods.za is, 2007). 20  Stanislav Sretenović, Francuska i Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, 1918–1929 [France and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 1918–1929] (Belgrade: ISI, 2008). 21  Aleksandar R. Miletić, Journey under Surveillance. The Overseas Emigration Policy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Global Context, 1918–1929 (Belgrade: INIS, 2009). This book is a modified MA paper conducted at the Central European University in Budapest. 22  More in: Milan Vesović, “Petnaest godina časopisa Istorija 20. veka 1983–1997” [Fifteen Years of the Journal Istorija 20. veka] Istorija 20. veka 2 (1997); Vladan Jovanović, Currents of History-Bibliography 1993–2003 (Belgrade: INIS, 2003). 23  Privatni život kod Srba u 20. veku [Private Life of Serbs in the 20th Century], edited by Milan Ristović (Belgrade: Clio, 2007). This interdisciplinary project rounded up a huge number of mostly younger Serbian historians, ethnologists, sociologists, et cetera. 24  Goran Nikolić, Kurs dinara i devizna politike Kraljevine Jugoslavije, 1918–1941 [The Course of the Dinar and Foreign Exchange Policy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2001); Vesna Aleksić, Banka i moć. Socijalno-finansijska istorija Opšteg jugoslovenskog bankarskog društva AD 1928–1945 [A Socio-Financial History of the General Yugoslav Banking Society, JSC 1928–1945] 19

Battling over 00 book.indb 126

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

127

the transition of the pre-1914 Serbian dinar into the interior Yugoslav currency, and the struggle to maintain its rate of exchange. Along with social history, Serbian scholars began to study the history of historiography as well, directing their interest toward post-1945 Yugoslavia.25 The national minorities issue was perhaps the most favored subject from abroad. A major part of international funding went to research projects dealing with Yugoslav minorities, but also the region’s mental mapping of mutual perception, self-representation, various stereotypes, et cetera.26 The first comprehensive synthesis on all Yugoslav national minorities from 1918 to 1941 was carried out by Zoran Janjetović.27 He reconsidered some neglected statistics on non-Slavic minorities, and addressed methods of the minorities’ political and social incorporation. His approach kept in mind their polyglot inheritance of two large empires—the Ottoman and the Habsburg. In the same manner, Branko Bešlin examined Germans in the Vojvodina.28 Among the “forgotten” minorities in interwar Yugoslavia, and following a Western trend, the Jewish community and its experience with anti-Semitism was explored by two authors, from the same institution.29 The Serbs as a national minority inside interwar Yugoslavia has also been a favored theme in recent Serbian historiography. According to

(Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2002); Ivan M. Becić, Finansijska politika Kraljevine SHS 1918–1923 [The Financial Policy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 1918–1923] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture 2003); Vladimir Lj. Cvetković, Ekonomski odnosi Jugoslavije i Francuske 1918–1941 [The Economic Relations between Yugoslavia and France, 1918-1941] (Belgrade: INIS, 2006). 25  Predrag J. Marković and Nataša Milićević, “Srpska istoriografija u vreme tranzicije: borba za legitimitet” [Serbian Historiography in the Age of Transition: The Struggle for Legitimacy], Istorija 20. veka 1, 146–7. 26  In Marković and Milićević`s overview there are three books mentioned: Olivera Milosavljević, U tradiciji nacionalizma, ili stereotipi srpskih intelektualaca XX veka o “nama” i “drugima” [On the Tradition of Nationalism, or the Stereotypes of Serbian 20th Century Intellectuals about “Us” and “Others”] (Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava, 2002); Milan Ristović, Black Peter and Balkan Brigands. The Balkans and Serbia in German Satirical Journals 1903–1918 (Belgrade: UDI, 2003); Predrag J. Marković, Ethnic Stereotypes: Ubiquitous, Local, or Migrating Phenomena? The Serbian-Albanian Case (Bonn: Michael Zikic Stiftung, 2003). 27  Zoran Janjetović, Deca careva, pastorčad kraljeva. Nacionalne manjine u Jugoslaviji 1918–1941 [Children of Emperors, Stepchildren of Kings: National Minorities in Yugoslavia, 1918-1941] (Belgrade: INIS, 2005). 28  Branko Bešlin: Vesnik tragedije. Nemačka štampa u Vojvodini 1933–1941 [A Herald of Tragedy: German Press in Vojvodina 1933–1941] (Novi Sad-Sremski Karlovci: Iz­da­ vač­ka agencija Platoneum-Izdavačka knjižarnica Zorana Stojanovića, 2001). 29  Nebojša Popović, Jevreji u Srbiji 1918–1941 [Jews in Serbia 1918-1941] (Belgrade: ISI, 1997); Milan Koljanin, Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918– 1941 [Jews and Antisemitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1918–1941] (Belgrade: ISI, 2009).

Battling over 00 book.indb 127

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

128

Chapter 2

Sofija Božić, whose interpretation represents a defensive view, the Serb ethnic space in Croatia was not considered as a priority in a poor country burdened with internal and external problems.30 Biography as a historiographical genre was successfully revived by Radmila Radić in her instructive portrait of a Serbian Patriarch,31 and also by Mira Radojević in a reexamination of an eminent Serbian politician, Gavrilo Dožić.32 Military historian Mile Bjelajac provided a lengthy biographic study of the most important Yugoslav generals and admirals who were active between the world wars.33 Gordana Krivokapić-Jović has reconstructed the civilian ruling elites in the Radical Party during the first decade after World War I.34 Exploring its makeup, she expands her inquiry to the wider aspects of political struggles that were under way. Two further works concentrated on conflict in Kosovo and Macedonia, whose societies were gripped by turmoil during the 1920s.35 The use of propaganda under controversial Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović was treated by a young scholar Bojan Simić.36

 Sofija Božić, Srbi u Hrvatskoj 1918–1929 [Serbs in Croatia 1918–1929] (Belgrade: INIS, 2008). 31  Radmila Radić, Život u vremenima. Gavrilo Dožić, 1881–1950 [Living in Time. Gavrilo Dožić, 1881–1950] (Belgrade: INIS, 2006). 32  Mira Radojević, Naučnik i politika. Politička biografija Božidara V. Markovića, 1874– 1946 [Scientist and Politics. A Political Biography of Božidar V. Marković, 1874– 1946] (Belgrade: Filozofski fakultet, 2007). 33  Mile S. Bjelajac, Generali i admirali Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1918–1941. Studija o vojnoj eliti i biografski leksikon [Generals and Admirals of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941. A Study of the Military Elite and a Biographical Lexicon] (Belgrade: INIS, 2004); Mile Bjelajac, General Dragiša Pandurović. Život i svedočenja [General Dragiša Pandurović. Life and Testimony] (Belgrade: INIS, 2007). 34  Gordana Krivokapić-Jović, Oklop bez viteza. O socijalnim osnovama i organizacionoj strukturi Narodne radikalne stranke u Kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, 1918–1929 [An Armour without a Knight. The Social Bases and Organizational Structure of the People’s Radical Party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, 1918–1929] (Belgrade: INIS, 2002). 35  Dmitar Tasić, Rat posle rata: vojska Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca na Kosovu i Metohiji i u Makedoniji 1918–1920 [War After the War: The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Kosovo and Metohia and in Macedonia, 1918–1920] (Belgrade: Utopija & Institut za Strategijska Istraživanja, 2008); Vladan Jovanović, Jugoslovenska država i Južna Srbija 1918–1929. Makedonija, Sandžak, Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini SHS [Yugoslav State and Southern Serbia, 1918–1929. Macedonia, Sanjak, Kosovo, and Metohia in the Kingdom of SCS] (Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2002). 36  Bojan Simić, Propaganda Milana Stojadinovića [The Propaganda of Milan Stojadinović] (Belgrade: INIS, 2007). 30

Battling over 00 book.indb 128

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

129

CONCLUSION Contemporary Serbian historiography still displays features that keep it selfcontained and separated from international trends stressing cultural memory and intellectual history. According to one recent Belgrade critique, it remains largely dedicated to “an endless accumulation of facts,” a persisting, traditional positivism. Some historians from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts have helped to encourage this traditional approach, perhaps more justifiable in its independence from international approaches given its concentration on Serbian domestic and diplomatic history. During the 1990s much of this school favored topics on interwar Yugoslavia only to question its viability.37  Despite some interest in the Serbian monarchy as a vehicle for successful “state-building,” greater attention was paid to criticizing the Yugoslav idea and calling attention to the damage that the creation of the interwar state had done to Serbia. The Miloševiċ regime was of course busy promoting this notion and welcoming such publication. Then after 2000, scholarship from Belgrade University’s Faculty of Philosophy assumed a dominant role in stepping away from this trend and its positivist approach. A number of younger scholars were now able to publish even their MA theses as books. Free from political pressure on the one hand, they nonetheless faced the temptation of exaggerated conclusions based on limited, if promising research. And in some cases, they also remained tempted by the compromising need for an uncompromising national commitment.  In the last few years, however, more Serbian historians are becoming involved in international projects promoting a comparative approach, extending their chronological and geographic boundaries. Instead of isolated images of the Serbian or Yugoslav Kingdoms, the wider Balkans are instructively seen as a region facing common challenges (migration, minorities, national questions, authoritarian regimes vs. state-building and constitutions, cultural traditions vs. European modernization, and of course the Ottoman and Habsburg legacies). Now adjusting to this wider framework for inquiry, the Serbian scholarly community is also beginning to rethink the national past without the restrictions or frustrations of recent decades.

37

 In fact, Milošević was abusing the term “Yugoslavia” during his reign, which culminated in 1992 when he created SRJ. Serbia and Montenegro, the members of this “phantom state” were presented to the Serbian public as the sole founders of the Yugoslav Kingdom in 1918, neglecting the role of Croats and Slovenes.

Battling over 00 book.indb 129

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

130

Chapter 2

Ivana Dobrivojević, Državna represija u doba diktature kralja Aleksandra 1929– 1935 [Governmental Repression during the King Alexander’s Dictatorship, 1929–1935] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2006), 193–8. Ivana Dobrivojević is a research fellow at Institut za savremenu istoriju (Institute of Contemporary History) in Belgrade. Her fields of interest include the history of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, state repression, urbanization, modernization, and the life of ordinary people in socialism. The state authorities stubbornly insisted there was no doubt that individual police agents and administrators occasionally had violated the law, but it was “important to have in mind that the gendarmes work under difficult conditions, day and night, guarding our borders and in a constant battle with internal violators of security, peace, and order. They work with the greatest effort, in the rain and cold and all kinds of bad weather, and instead of thanking them as a whole, they are treated as an anathema and individual mistakes are being generalized, but that cannot be allowed.”1 It also happened that the gendarmes, most often recruited from the ranks of the uneducated peasantry, overstepped their authority from the belief that their position as gendarmes allowed them to simply take power into their own hands, without regard to, or perhaps unaware of, their legal authority.2 The independent actions of individual members of the gendarmerie provoked fierce protests and a storm of displeasure, especially in Croatia, since the gendarmes, faced with the sprouting Ustaša movement and in fear of their own lives, at times treated the entire Croatian nation as “pro-Ustaša, separatist, and even worse.” Thus, many parliamentary deputies emphasized that one of the main tasks, especially in those areas inhabited by a majority of Croats, was for “the gendarmes to act professionally,” as well as installing gendarmes “with moral qualifications and intelligence in carrying out their duties in order to reach out to the tribal sensitivities of the people” in the Savska and Primorska ­banovinas.3 Particular consideration was required in dealing with religious issues. Even though the gendarmes were not only permitted, but actually ordered to enter anywhere, including churches, if there were reports that weapons were being hidden and to seize them “in the most energetic and strict manner possible,” they

 Speeches of the Minister of Internal Affairs Živojin Lazić, 27th regular parliamentary session, March 6, 1934, Shorthand notes of the Yugoslav Parliament (Belgrade: 1934), 486, and the Senator Uroš Desnica: 20th regular session of the Senate, March 29, 1934, Shorthand notes of the Yugoslav Senate (Belgrade: 1934), 179. 2  See also: speech of the Deputy Uroš Trbojević, 27th regular parliamentary session, March 6, 1934, SNYP (Belgrade: 1934), 498. 3  Speech of the Deputy Stjepan Bačić, 27th Regular Parliamentary Session, 490. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 130

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

131

sometimes acted with excessive zeal.4 In Žervenac, near Derventa [modern day Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed.], gendarmes waited outside the door of a church until the end of mass, and ready with bayonets, searched the churchgoers when they emerged, causing “a panic, crowd, screams, and crying among the women and children.”5 The state authorities investigated this incident and determined the culprit was lance sergeant Bubalo, “a very good and conscientious official, as well as a member of the Roman Catholic faith” who overstepped his authority because of “overzealousness in carrying out his duties and by no means as a Roman Catholic was he intending to insult the holiness of the Church.” The gendarmerie command decided not to punish Bubalo for this violation, but because of the severity of the incident he was transferred to another post as soon as an opportunity presented itself.6 A similar unfortunate situation took place at the Catholic Church in Sisak during a memorial service in honor of Stjepan Radić, when “police agents clubbed people in front of the church,” as well as inside of the church.7 Even though Catholic priests on numerous occasions used sermons to agitate against the sokols,8 influenced believers to become members of the Crusaders (Križari), rejected celebrating state holidays, and openly spoke against the state,9 there were incidents when gendarmes took suspected priests in for questioning without any regard for the reputation or influence of these high church dignitaries among the people. For example, a  chaplain from Novalja, Janko Medved, was “placed in chains” and “forced to walk through crowds in Novalja, placed on a steamship to Rab, and again paraded through the streets full of people” because he referred to election posters of [Yugoslav National Party

 Document from April 24, 1934, not registered: Archives of Yugoslavia (AY), 63 (Religion Department)-107. 5  AY, 63 (Religion Department)-107, Archbishop`s Chancery of Vrhbosansko, 1224/1933 from May 2, 1933. 6  AY, 63 (Religion Department)-107, No. 61041 from June 26, 1934. See also: an interpellation of Dr. Nikola Nikić and other deputies addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs regarding the gendarmerie violence in Otočac village of Remetinec municipality, St. Klara in Zagreb district, Veliko Trgovište in Klanac district, Severin in Belovar district, Žuljani in Pelešac district, and Žeravac in Derventa district: 54th regular parliamentary session, July 25, 1933, SNYP (Belgrade: 1933), 339. 7  Interpellation of Alojz Pavlič addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs: 19th regular parliamentary session, December 16, 1932, SNYP (Belgrade: 1933), 367. 8  See AY, 63 (confidential archive)-11 (k 11). 9  See AY, 63 (confidential archive)-7 (k 6); AY, 63 (confidential archive)-15 (k 15); confidential 2207 from August 16, 1932, AY, 63 (confidential archive)-22 (k 22); AY, 138 (Ministerial Council)-8-57, AY, 63 (Religion Department)-106/107, et cetera. In terms of the King`s Manifesto (January 6, 1929), all the Catholic bishops were asked by the Minister of Religion “to work with their parish priests to consolidate the situation in the country,” “but no one responded to such an obligation, because not a single pastor received any instructions.” Confidential P(ublic). S(afety). No. 15 736 from June 17, 1929. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 131

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

132

Chapter 2

candidate Bogoljub] Jevtić he found in the church courtyard as trash.10 The minister of internal affairs, Živojin Lazić, was forced to respond to complaints from bishops at a conference in Zagreb about “the objectionable behavior of the government toward Catholic priests.” He warned the authorities that “it was necessary to act with particular tact and respect toward the representatives of recognized religions,” even if they have committed some kind of offense, because “priests are a part of the national intelligentsia, who are always in contact with the people and can therefore provide considerable help in maintaining peace and love among individuals, developing a state consciousness among the citizens, and preserving national unity and state integrity.”11 The gendarmes, as noted above, did not heed many of the official orders of the government. Their reckless actions toward the Catholic clergy harmed the general perception of the state government and the country, even though the official policies clearly stood against this kind of abuse. Orthodox priests accused of criminal offenses received a similar treatment, so it is possible to claim that the abovementioned brutality was an expression of the basic cultural worldview of the gendarmes. More broadly, it was an example of the disrespect that emerges when primitive masses have power in their grasp, rather than attack against the church or religion, especially considering that the perpetrators of these acts were often Roman Catholics themselves. Nonetheless, in the sensitive political atmosphere that dominated the areas outside of Serbia proper, these kind of incidents dangerously threatened the fragile interethnic and interfaith relations. The state authorities, even though they tried to investigate the attacks against the clergy, went only half way. The culprits were usually just transferred, and the opponents of the regime, including Catholic dignitaries, used these incidents for virulent propaganda not only against the regime, but against the state. The gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia numbered 18,000 people, so it was understandable that there would be numerous cases where individuals crossed the boundaries of their legal authority. However, it was the duty of the government, and in the interest of the state, to acknowledge all of the complaints about the excessive use of force as well as the brutality and arrogance of the gendarmes, and to strictly punish those guilty of such violations. Instead, the regime ignored the frequent criticism by representatives regarding these negative incidents, overlooking the fact that the people did not judge the state by its king, parliament, ministers, or measures taken by the government, but rather by the state representatives they came into contact with directly, namely gendarmes and local authorities. Unrealistically summarizing the situation in the Kingdom, certain deputies, including the minister of internal affairs, Živojin Lazić, praised

 The word “trash” was used in primary, rather than figurative meaning. No. 75/Prs from 3 May 1935, AY, 63–103/1935. 11  Confidential 1 No. 1540 from January 13, 1933, AY, 63 (Religion Department), 107. 10

Battling over 00 book.indb 132

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

133

the work of the gendarmerie and emphasized how in Southern Serbia “gendarmerie stations were inns for the people,”12 adding that “there was never a more correct government nor better behavior among the gendarmes” in that part of the Kingdom than during the royal dictatorship after January 6.13 The Yugoslav reality during the dictatorship was actually significantly different. The behavior of the gendarmes was provoking public disapproval and a revolt among the citizens, as well as open attacks against the police and gendarmerie. The public in Belgrade was particularly sensitive about police actions against students. In April 1931, during demonstrations at the University of Belgrade, students threw “bricks, furniture from the buildings, and anything else at hand” at the police who had surrounded the university, and “threatened to burn down the university buildings if the police did not retreat in 18 hours.” Even though the students had shown considerable aggressiveness toward the police, Belgrade public opinion reacted bitterly at the unnecessary beating of students on the city streets, especially at the moment when it seemed the crisis provoked by the demonstrations had faded. When the students began to disperse thanks to the intervention of the professors and started to walk through the city with them, in Poenkareva Street “gendarmes unslung their weapons and began beating the students with the rifle butts,” and when “the students fled, the gendarmes chased them down in courtyards and chased them out.” These events, which provoked “a very strong revolt against the police” among the citizens of Belgrade, were the talk of the town. People said: “Did we fight so much for the freedom of this country so that our children can be killed in this manner?” Citizens prepared to protest to the king because of the behavior of the police, since “the students had peacefully gone down the streets indicated by the police.” In the mass of people who observed the actions of the police were the French deputy military attaché, the Bulgarian military attaché, and the Albanian emissary.14 The governors [bans] of the Savska and Primorska banovinas also warned of the frequent direct attacks against the members of the gendarmerie by angry masses, and emphasized that “lately there have been conflicts between gen-

 Speech of the Minister of Internal Affairs Živojin Lazić, 27th regular parliamentary session, March 6, 1934, SNYP (Belgrade: 1934), 514. 13  Speech of the Deputy Marko Petrović, 27th regular parliamentary session, March 6, 1934, SNYP (Belgrade: 1934), 493. 14  Military Archives-Belgrade, Collection 17, 1-1-2-74. On the other hand, the British diplomatic representative (in Belgrade) Henderson wrote to the Foreign Office that “he had no sympathy for the students who create political problems,” Students in Yugoslavia between the ages of 20 and 25 were “traditionally undisciplined, and it was high time to discipline them” (Henderson’s report from December 11, 1931, AY, Foreign Office (FO), , 371–397–15 272). The British envoy also stressed that “the conduct of police in breaking up student demonstration was always exemplary” (Henderson’s report of the end of December 1933, date is illegible, AY, FO, 371–403–18 452). 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 133

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

134

Chapter 2

darmes on duty and individuals in which there have occasionally been several people involved.” Some of these incidents led to the use of firearms, “during which a  number of citizens were killed, and many were wounded.” The gendarmerie also suffered casualties—several gendarmes were injured, and one officer later died from his wounds. It was emphasized that these incidents were mostly provoked by “reckless youths” who usually did not know that in cases of attacking crowds the gendarmes had the right to use firearms.15 Skirmishes between the people and gendarmes were often caused by banal reasons such as arguments over girls,16 drunkenness, the singing of forbidden songs, and even church processions in Croatia. The situation got especially out of hand during the Eucharistic Congress in Omiš on June 20, 1932, which, according to official estimates, was attended by about 8,000 people. This religious holy day was transformed into a political demonstration, where people carried the banned Croatian tricolor, cheered for [Vladko] Maček and a free Croatia, and yelled “Down with the bayonets, down with the bandits.” While the small unit of gendarmes tried to stop the crowd that was drawing increasingly closer, a few of them, probably influenced by the oncoming masses, lost control and fired at the civilians. According to the official report, three bullets were fired.17 However, the interpolation of the minister of internal affairs, Nikola Nikić, described how initially two young men, the brothers Becići from Svinjine, were killed, followed by thirteen-year-old Pavelina from Sućurac, while the girl Plepel had her arm shattered and numerous other participants at the Eucharistic Congress were lightly wounded. “To make matters worse,” noted the interpolation, “the authorities tore and stomped on the Vranjak flag in front of the masses, and someone aimed a  rifle at the bishop of Split.”18 The command of the Primorska gendarmerie regiment reported that the use of force was justified because the crowd had directly provoked the gendarmes, approaching them and beating their chests while yelling: “stab here, shoo, you Serbian whore, damn you.” Others approached the gendarmes carrying Croatian tricolors with slogans such as: “Long live free Croatia, we will spill blood, but Croatia must be free, who are you protecting when the idiots have fled to France (alluding to the king’s sons).” The chaos escalated after parish priest Braškić held a “fiery speech full of calls for demonstrations and disorder” in front of the drunken masses.19

15

 Not registered, AY, 14–227–813.  Speech of the Deputy Stjepan Bačić, 27th regular parliamentary session, March 6, 1934, SNYP (Belgrade: 1934), 490. 17  Military Archives, Collection 17, 24–3-74. 18  Interpellation of Dr. Nikola Nikić and other deputies addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs regarding violence in Eucharist Congress in Omiš in June 1932: 49th regular parliamentary session, August 6, 1932, SNYP (Belgrade: 1932), 32. 19  The pastor said: “Jesus Christ, save this long-suffering Croatia and the people who suffer from hunger in this country.” Military Archive, col. 17, 24–3-7-74. 16

Battling over 00 book.indb 134

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:23

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

135

General Đorđe Aranđelović judged that “it was pure luck that the gendarmes behaved energetically in Omiš and Srinjina.” “As a human I can lament the spilled blood and victims,” wrote Aranđelović, “but I still claim that it was more than necessary to beat and terrify those people who had begun to believe that the disintegration of the state was near at hand.” Infantry colonel Petar Petrović had similar thoughts, emphasizing that the lack of an iron fist had influenced the growth of separatism, “because these people are in reality cowards and easily frightened. […] In Omiš, when those three rifles were fired, they even threw down their Croatian Church flag, which the gendarmes later had to pick up off the streets after the crowd scattered in all directions. During the occasional demonstration in Split, it is only necessary for two local cops to show up and all of the demonstrators flee.”20 The following Eucharistic conferences passed without incidents because the organizers and the masses had been warned that the state government would no longer tolerate any excesses.21 In late 1933 British ambassador [Neville Meyrick] Henderson reported to the Foreign Office that accusations of government “brutality and physical repression” were unfounded. Even though there were isolated incidents of harsh treatment of individuals arrested for political offenses, it should be kept in mind that “the Croats had a particular gift for stubborn pugnacity and small provocations.” Peasants arrested for insulting

 In his report, addressed to the commander of Adriatic Division, Petar Petrović pointed out that “the separatist movement in Split began when the railroad connected this town with Zagreb.” Petrović believed that Austria avoided constructing this railway connecting Split and Zagreb for political reasons, not financial. However, he noted, “fortunately, this railway line was almost throughout the winter snowbound.” Unregistered document from July 25, 1932, Military Archives, 17–18–3-74. 21  Military Archives, col. 17, 24–3-74. The Eucharist conventions often took on the character of political events, which was noticed by many neutral observers. Such a congress held in Zagreb in mid-August 1930 was classified, according to the British consul Bullock, “more Croatian than Yugoslav.” The American delegates expressed sympathy for the suffering of their brethren under current Yugoslav government, while someone from the crowd started to sing the Croatian anthem. The police intervened and the ceremony ended shortly thereafter. The congress was concluded with a speech by Archbishop Bauer on Jelačić Square. The speech, as noted by the British consul, concerned only Croats, Croatian history, and Croatian culture and traditions, while the king and government were not mentioned, nor was the word Yugoslav used. The words that he used did not “stick out,” but “it was noticeable which words he did not use.” Papal nuncio Pelegrineti was likewise surprised at the “animosity of Zagreb residents towards the regime,” along with the fact that not a single Yugoslav flag waved on any private house. The nuncio rejected the idea that it was due to some kind of “anti-Serbianism or anti-Yugoslavism,” while he explained that Bauer’s speech was intended for the masses and therefore did not mention the king or government. Report of the British consul Bullock from Zagreb on August 23, 1930, AY, FO, 394–144 444. 20

Battling over 00 book.indb 135

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

136

Chapter 2

the national flag, wrote Henderson, were usually drunk and numerically much stronger than the gendarmes.22 The degree of hatred toward the gendarmerie, the state authorities, and regime that existed in the areas outside of Serbia is evident from the violent conflicts between police and civilians in February 1935 that took place around Slavonski Brod, in the villages of Orivac, Sibinj, Podvinj, and Gornja Vrba. The negativity toward the authorities, as well as Serbs and everything Serbian, in the rural areas of the Savska and Primorska Banovinas were so rampant that the British consul to Zagreb, Makri, ironically noted that “the village population was violently anti-Serbian oriented, as much as was allowed by their limited intelligence and usual indolence.”23 The available sources show that the rebellious peasants in the villages around Slavonski Brod did not hesitate to directly challenge the state authorities, as well as openly attack the gendarmerie. Because the masses were numerically much stronger, the lives of the gendarmes were in danger, and several of them were injured. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

 Report from Henderson to the Foreign Office from late December 1933 (date unreadable), AJ, FO, 371–403–18.452. Henderson noted that “there is no reason to believe that the Croats were subjected to greater repression than the rest of the opposition,” and attributed the large number of arrests in Zagreb and Sarajevo to widespread communist activities. However, he did add that the police methods were “brutally medieval.” Report from Henderson to the Foreign Office from January 30, 1930, AY, FO, 371–393–14.1440. 23  Report from Henderson to the Foreign Office from December 24. 1933, AY, FO, 371– 402–18.452. 22

Battling over 00 book.indb 136

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Zoran Janjetović, “Uticaj srpskog faktora na položaj nacionalnih manjina u Jugoslaviji u razdoblju između dva svetska rata” [The Influence of the Serbian Factor on the Position of National Minorities in Yugoslavia During the Interwar Period], in Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije: Viđenje srpskog faktora [Writing a History of Yugoslavia: The Perspective of the Serbian Factor] (Belgrade: INIS, 2007), 105–9. Zoran Janjetović is a  senior research fellow at Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije (INIS). His research focuses on the history of national minorities in Yugoslavia, diplomatic and social history of socialist Yugoslavia, and World War II as well. His publications include: Between Hitler and Tito: The Disappearance of the Vojvodina Germans (Belgrade: INIS, 2000, 2005), Deca careva, pastočad kraljeva. Nacionalne manjine u Jugoslaviji 19181941 [Children of Emperors, Stepchildren of Kings: National Minorities in Yugoslavia, 1918-1941] (Belgrade: INIS, 2005); Od Auschwitza do Brijuna. Pitanje odštete žrtvama nacizma u jugoslavensko-zapadnonjemačkim odosima [From Auschwitz to Brijuni. The Question of Reparations to the Victims of Nazism in Yugoslav-West German Relations] (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2007); Nemci u Vojvodini [The Germans in Vojvodina] (Belgrade: INIS, 2009); and Od “Internacionale” do komercijale. Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji 1945-1991 [From “The Internationale” to Commercialization. Popular Culture in Yugoslavia 1945-1991] (Belgrade: INIS, 2011). The question of how much the Serbian factor influenced the position of national minorities is tied to the question of its general influence on the activities of the state. [...] [T]he influence of the Serbian elite on national minorities was varied, and in some cases did not even exist. The reasons for this can be found in the inherited legal, cultural, and other divisions in the Yugoslav lands,1 as well as in political considerations. During the first ten years there was no unification of the legal system, so despite formal unitarism, for a long time there was no real centralism. From the royal dictatorship of 1929 it began to be implemented, but it lasted only briefly. The division of the country into banovinas, considered by many to have been carried out for Serbian interests, in many regions effectively prevented the carrying out of centralized and unitary politics. The creation of the Yugoslav Radical Union (Jugoslovenska radikalna zajednica) heralded a kind of informal federalization of the country, in which the three coalition partners

 Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918–1988 [History of Yugoslavia 1918–1988], vol. 1 (Belgrade: Nolit, 1988), 30–85.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 137

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

138

Chapter 2

divided it into spheres of interest.2 This strengthened the tendency for political elites in the individual parts of the country to make many decisions on their own, including the approach toward national minorities, so the new party sought to integrate the representatives of the minorities in order to win political votes.3 In Croatia, already in the 1920s the Croatian Peasant Party had a majority of the minorities on its side, even though some factions of the party supported the socialists or even the Frankists.4 The creation of the Croatian Banovina in 1939 meant that the issue of minorities came under its jurisdiction, and the new rulers made an effort to gain the support of the minorities for themselves.5 The Slovenian People’s Party (Slovenska ljudska stranka) led by the minister of internal affairs, Korošec, used its position in the government to exert pressure on the German minority in Slovenia. Despite drawing closer to the German sphere of influence, Prime Minister [Milan] Stojadinović could not nor would want to stand in the way of his minister’s politics, even though the German minority, especially in Slovenia, was increasingly coming under the influence of the Nazis.6

 Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918–1988, 265–70.  Dušan Biber, Nacizem in Nemci v Jugoslaviji 1933–1941 [Germans in Yugoslavia, 1933–1941] (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1966); Matthias Annabring, Volk sgeschichte der Donauschwaben in Jugoslawien (Stuttgart: Verlag Südost-Stimmen, 1954), 64; Šandor Mesaroš, Mađari u Vojvodini 1929–1941 [Hungarians in Vojvodina 1929– 1941] (Novi Sad: Filozofski Fak., Inst. za Istoriju, 1989), 124; Belgrad im Mittelpunkt internationaler Besprechungen. Konstituierung der Regierungspartei, Nation und Staat, IX, 9, 1936; Bewegte innere Entwicklung. Neue außenpolitische Gesichtspunkte. Die deutsche Volksgruppe und die Regierungspartei, Nation und Staat, IX, 7, 1936; Josip Hanzl, Josip Matušek, and Adolf Orct, Borbeni put Prve čehoslovačke partizanske brigade “Jan Žiška iz Trcnova” [The Fighting Path of the First Czechoslovak Brigade “Jan Žižka of Trocnov”] (Daruvar: 1968), 48; Vladimir Geiger, Nijemci u Đakovu i Đakovštini [The Germans in Đakovo and the Surrounding Areas] (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2001), 131. 4  Archives of Yugoslavia, collection 66 (pov.), 99/238; Branislav Gligorjević, “Politička istupanja i organizacija Slovaka i Čeha u Kraljevini SHS” [Political actions and organizations of Slovaks and Czechs in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes], Zbornik Matice srpske za istoriju, 24 (1981), 140. 5  For example, in Croatia at the end of April [1939] the rules for the Hungarian cultural community were enacted. The Hungarians in Vojvodina had tried unsuccessfully for many years to get permission to establish a similar cultural association for all of Yugoslavia, or at least for Vojvodina. Mesaroš, Mađari, 209. In the middle of 1940 the German minority obtained further concessions in the field of education. Biber, Nacizem, 223. 6  Biber, Nacizem, 90; Arnold Suppan, “Zur Lage der Deutschen in Slowenien zwischen 1918 und 1938,” in Arnold Suppan and Helmut Rumpler, (eds.), Geschichte der Deutschen im Bereich des heutigen Sloweniens 1848–1941 (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1988). 2 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 138

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

139

The Serbian factor had the greatest impact on the position of national minorities in the two main regions with minorities: in Vojvodina and so-called Southern Serbia.7 However, during the interwar period, the Serbian elite had to take into consideration many factors. By far the most important one was the number and distribution of members of both minority and majority nations.

 Speaking on the basis of landownership, the German people in Vojvodina possessed a slightly higher percentage of land than the other groups of the province. The Germans were particularly overrepresented in the category of landowners with holdings between 25 and 50 hectares. With an exception of Hungarian landowners who usually lived outside the country, the Hungarians entirely owned less land than would correspond to their total share in Vojvodina population. They had the highest percentage of smallholders with holdings below 2.5 acres. More in Bogumil Hrabak, Dezerterstvo, zeleni kadar i prevratna anarhija u jugoslovenskim zemljama 1914–1918 [Desertion, the “Green Cadres” and Pre-War Anarchy in the Yugoslav Lands, 1914–1918] (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, Institut za istoriju, 1990), 15. “Volksdeutchers” (along with Jews) were also strongly and disproportionately represented in terms of property rights in the Vojvodina industry (Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije, 58). After the “nationalization” of banks in Vojvodina, the German financial companies had about 25 percent of the capital in the province, Serbian companies 60 percent, and Hungarian ones about 10 percent: Boris Kršev, Bankarstvo u Dunavskoj banovini [Banking in the Danube Banovina] (Novi Sad: Prometej, 1998), 47; Šandor Mesaroš, Položaj Mađara u Vojvodini: 1918– 1929 [The Position of Hungarians in Vojvodina: 1918–1929] (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, Institut za istoriju, 1981), 105; Nikola Gaćeša, “Privreda Vojvodine između dva svetska rata” [The Economy of Vojvodina between the World Wars], in Radovi iz agrarne istorije i demografije [Works on Agrarian History and Demographics] (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1995), 200. In the southern regions, the owners of large estates were mostly Muslim begs. Ali Hadri claims that begs in Kosovo and Metohija owned 40 percent of the arable land in 1910. Ali Hadri, “Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji” [Kosovo and Metohija in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia], Istorijski glasnik, vol. 1–2 (1967), 57. This percentage was certainly reduced in the coming decades, and it should be also noted that begs comprised only about 10 percent of Muslim population (Vladan Jovanović, “Turci u Južnoj Srbiji 1918–1929” [Turks in Southern Serbia 1918– 1929], Srpska slobodarska misao, vol. III (2001) 10, 135. This is evidence of considerable social differences among Muslims, especially taking into account the large number of Albanian families, which Hadri also points (58). The poorly developed industry of the southern region was largely in the hands of Christians, and partly Cincars. Mil. R. Gavrilović, Privreda Južne Srbije [The Economy of Southern Serbia] (Skoplje: Nemanja, 1933), 92–112. Meanwhile, the banking sector was neglected in Turkish times due to a lack of need and proper conditions for its development. In the southern parts of the country it developed only since 1918, mostly thanks to the National Radical Party. Gordana Krivokapić-Jović, Oklop bez viteza. O socijalnim osnovama i organizacionoj strukturi Narodne radikalne stranke u Kraljevini SHS, 1918–1929 [An Armour without a  Knight. The Social Bases and Organizational Structure of the People’s Radical Party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, 1918–1929] (Belgrade: INIS, 2002), 184.

7

Battling over 00 book.indb 139

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

140

Chapter 2

Another factor was the economic strength of the minority population, as well as the influence of their mother countries.8

8

 The role of minority issues in bilateral relations with the minorities’ mother countries was almost always second-ranked: economic and high-level political issues always had precedence, while minorities were used as a means for pressure or small change to pay off one another’s debts. Nonetheless, their position depended to some extent on the bilateral relations: the improvement of relations or the desire to improve them helped the position of minorities, while heightened tensions worsened the position of minorities on both sides of the border. It should be emphasized, however, that the mother countries viewed their nationals in Yugoslavia as weapons of foreign policy, and not as assets who should be protected for purely humanitarian reasons. See HansPaul Höpfner, Deutsche Südosteuropapolitik in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/M, Bonn: Peter Lang, 1983), 119, 314–22, 341–2, 351; Vuk Vinaver, Jugoslavija i Mađarska 1918–1933 [Yugoslavia and Hungary 1918–1933] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1971), 187, 198, 244, 385, 396, 412; D. Biber, 90; Gligor Popi, Jugoslovensko-rumunski odnosi, 1918–1941 [Yugoslav-Romanian Relations, 1918– 1941] (Novi Sad: 1984), 67, 76–7, 98, 104–5, 117, 132–3, 318–9; C. A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors. The Treaty of Trianon and its Consequences 1919–1937 (London, New York, Toronto: Simon Publications, 1937), 457; Anikó Kovács-Bertrand, Der ungarische Revisionismus nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Der publizistische Kampf gegen den Friedens vertrag von Trianon (1919–1931) (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1997), 286; Suppan, “Zur Lage der Deutschen in Slowenien zwischen 1918 und 1938,” 819, 826, 830, 899–900; Arnold Suppan, “Jugoslavija i Austrija od 1919. do 1938. Susjedstvo između kooperacije i konfrontacije” [Yugoslavia and Austria from 1919 until 1938. Neighbors between Cooperation and Confrontation], Časopis za suvremenu povijest, 3, (1986): 11; Želimir Bob Juričić, Ivo Andrić u Berlinu 1939–1941 [Ivo Andrić in Berlin 1939–1941] (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1989), 59, 62, 66, 89–90; Anthony Komjathy, Rebecca Stockwell, German Minorities and the Third Reich. Ethnic Germans of East-Central Europe Between the Wars (London, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980), 132; Karl-Heinz Grundmann, Deutschtumspolitik zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie am Beispiel der deutschbal tischen Minderheit in Estland und Lettland (Hannover-Dören: Harro v. Hirschheydt, 1977), 216; Archive of Yugoslvia (AY), 38, 47/105; 48/106; 184/331; Politisches Archiw des Auswärtigen Amtes (hereafter: PA), Abteilung IIb, Nationalitätenfrage, Fremdvölker in Jugoslawien, Politik, 6, Jugoslawien, Bd. 2-5; PA, Abt. IIb, Unterrichtwesen, Politik 17, Jugoslawien, Bd. 1; Abt. II, Politische Beziehungen, Jugoslawien und Deutschland, Politik 2, Jugoslawien, Bd. 3; Abt. IIb, Deutschtum in Jugoslawien, Politik 25, Jugoslawien, Bd. 1). Albania had not done enough for their minority, due to the military, political and economic weakness, internal instability, and the fact that the refugees from Kosovo were the toughest opposition to Ahmed Zogu, who ruled Albania from 1924 to 1939. From that side was a greater danger threatened to Yugoslavia, than the interference of Italy in abusing the Albanian irredentism was, especially after the occupation of Albania. Compare with: Giovanni Zamboni, Mussolinis Expansionspolitik auf dem Balkan (Hamburg: Buske, 1970), 464; Michael Schmidt-Neke, Entstehung und Ausbau der Königsdiktatur in Albanien (1912–1939). Regierungsbildung,

Battling over 00 book.indb 140

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

141

Because of the fact that Serbs in Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija were actually in the minority, the Serbian leadership had to take that into account when formulating their policies and make certain concessions to minorities. This was especially important in the south, where from the very beginning the Albanians showed a tendency for armed resistance against the rulers of the new state (just as they had resisted the Turkish empire), who were not strong enough to subdue them by force.9 Because of this situation, Belgrade was forced to make undesirable compromises with the Muslim elites and partially include them into the ruling structures, particularly at the local level. For example, in Southern Serbia a large number of district [opština] presidents were Albanians or Turks at a time when in Vojvodina (until 1927) districts were administered by commissars appointed by the government. Additionally, during that time more than ten representatives of Albanian or Turkish nationality10 sat in the National Assembly, while only one member of the “brotherly Czech nation“ managed to win a man-

Herrschaftsweise und Machteliten in einem jungen Balkan staat (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1987), 159; Bernd J. Fisher, Albania at War 1939–1945 (West Lafayette: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999), 7–72; Vuk Vinaver, “Fašizam i jugoslovensko-albanski odnosi na početku drugog svetskog rata” [Fascism and Yugoslav-Albanian Relations at the Beginning of World War Two], Istorijski zapisi 1-2 (1970); Hadri, “Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji,” 71; Avramovski, “Prilog pitanju italijansko-albanske propagande na Kosovu i Metohiji u vreme Minhenske krize i okupacije Albanije” [A Contribution to the Question of Italian-Albanian Propaganda in Kosovo during the Munich Crisis and the Albanian Occupation], Istorijski glasnik 2–3 (1964); Military Archive-Belgrade, collection 17, box 95a, folder 2, document 1; box 26, folder 2, document 35. 9  Bogumil Hrabak, “Reokupacija oblasti srpske i crnogorske države sa arbanaškom većinom stanovništva u jesen 1918. godine i držanje Arbanasa prema uspostavljenim vlastima” [The Reoccupation of the Areas of the Serb and Montenegrin States with an Albanian Majority in the Fall of 1918 and the Attitude of the Albanians towards the Newly-Established Authorities], Gjurmine albanologjike, 1 (1969); Bogumil Hrabak, “Stanje u Vardarskoj Makedoniji u jesen i zimu 1918” [The Conditions in the Vardar Macedonia in the Fall and Winter of 1918], Istorijski glasnik. 4 (1966); Bogumil Hrabak, Džemijet: organizacija muslimana Makedonije, Kosova, Metohije i Sandžaka 1918–1928 [Džemijet: The Organization of Muslims of Macedonia, Kosovo, Metohija, and Sandžak, 1918–1928] (Belgrade: B. Hrabak, 2003), 11–49; Mile Bjelajac, Vojska Kraljevine SHS 1918–1921 [The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, 1918–1921] (Belgrade: Narodna knj, 1988), 227–32. 10  Hrabak, Džemijet, 61–95, 109–16, 163–95. In 1923 Džemijet had as many as fourteen representatives in the National Assembly. Bogumil Hrabak, “Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija prema muslimanima Sandžaka, Kosmeta i Makedonije 1919–1929. godine” [The Attitude of the Yugoslav Muslim Organization towards the Muslims of Sandžak, Kosovo, and Macedonia 1919–1929], Novopazarski zbornik, 19 (1995), 168.

Battling over 00 book.indb 141

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

142

Chapter 2

date.11 There were several other similar examples, while in the second half of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, when Albanians and Turks no longer had their own political organization, their representatives still received seats in the National Assembly and later in the Senate.12 CONCLUSION Broadly speaking, the politics of the Serbian factor toward minorities in the territories of the Serbian elite considered historically and ethnically Serbian was not essentially different from the positions of the Slovenian and Croatian elites toward national minorities in their national territories.13 The reasons for this can be found in the conflicted history of relations14 between national minorities and the members of the three leading national groups in the state, the increased victorious nationalism (albeit with certain insecurities) of the elites, the relative economic inferiority in relation to and irredentism of the mother countries, and other factors. Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian elites held similar views regarding national minorities because they believed the new state needed to rectify historical injustices, which were blamed on national groups (such as Hungarians, Germans, Albanians, and Turks) whose members were identified (sometimes unconsciously) with the empires that had once dominated the South Slavs. In that manner the historical resentment toward former empires was, often unjustifiably, transmitted onto the masses of the minority population. Thus, Slovenes accused the German minority of denationalizing half of the original Slovenian national territory, limiting national rights, and economic oppression. Croats reproached

 Branislav Gligorijević, “Politička istupanja i organizacija Slovaka i Čeha u Kraljevini SHS” [Political actions and organizations of Slovaks and Czechs in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes], 141–3, 150–1; Leopold Lenard, “Narodne manjine u SHS” [National Minorities in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes], in Jubilarni zbornik života i rada SHS 1. decembar 1918–1928 [The Jubilee Volume of Life and Work in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, December 1, 1918–1928] (Belgrade: Beograd Izd. Matice Živih i Mrtvih SHS, 1928), 730, 732; Hanzl, Matušek, Orct, Borbeni, 49. 12  Biografski leksikon [The Biographical Lexicon] Narodno predstavništvo. Senat. Narodna skupština [National Representation. Senate. National Assembly] (Belgrade: Sedma Sila, 1939). 13  Zoran Janjetović, “Državotvorne ideje Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca o nacionalnim manjinama” [The State-Building Ideas of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes towards National Minorities], in Hans-Georg Fleck and Igor Graovac (eds.), Dijalog povjesničara-istoričara, vol. 1 [A Dialogue of Historians] (Zagreb: Zaklada Friedrich Naumann, 2000). 14  Zoran Janjetović, “Istorijski uzroci odnosa Hrvata i Srba prema nacionalnim manjinama u jugoslovenskoj državi 1918–1941. godine” [The Historical Causes of the Relationship of Croats and Serbs towards the National Minorities in the Yugoslav State 1918–1941], in Dijalog povjesničara-istoričara. 11

Battling over 00 book.indb 142

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

143

the Hungarians for attempted assimilation and obstructing the development of Croatia. With regard to the Germans, they were seen (along with other smaller minority groups such as the Czechs, Slovaks, etc.) as dangerous economic competitors who oppressed Croats in business matters. Serbs had similar complaints directed at these minority groups.15 In the meantime, Albanians were accused of forcefully occupying holy Serbian lands. Interestingly, the view of Turks was much milder, even though logically it could be expected that they would be seen as the main enemy and responsible for Albanian violence. There were two reasons for this milder position: even before the collapse of Turkish rule they were seen as tamer and more goodwilled than the Arbanasi, while after the fall of the Ottoman Empire it was possible to very quickly find a common language that was partly based on a common animosity toward Albanians. Thus, in the new state they paradoxically became an example of civil honesty and loyalty.16 On the basis of all of this, it is possible to say that the minority policies carried out in the different parts of the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia were more or less the same, even though their origins varied. The common source of these policies was the feeling of historical injustice and nationalism of the leading national groups, but numerous nuances at the microlevel were a result of local conditions and needs of the ruling elite. Thus, the Serbian factor as such was not able to completely shape policies toward minorities in the Kingdom, just as it was often unable to achieve dominance in other spheres. It was successful only in aspects of state life and in those territories where the Slovenian, Croatian, and BosnianMuslim factors had no direct interest. In those regions where these factors had interest, usually they were the ones determining the main political course and subsequently had strong influences. It was a similar case for policies regarding national minorities: local elites were responsible for the position of minorities, while a pro-Belgrade orientation among minority groups existed only in those regions where the influence of the central government was stronger. Along those lines, because of the abovementioned positions of the ruling circles of all three recognized nations, the attitudes of the Serbian elite often overlapped, or were similar, with those of the other two nations. Differences in minority policies resulted from practical politics, not out of principles. Because of this, interwar Yugoslavia was unable to implement unified policies regarding the question of  Serbs used to identify Vojvodina Germans, who were a minority themselves, with the hated Habsburg monarchy. Compare with: Zoran Janjetović, “Die Konflikte zwischen Serben und Donauschwaben,” Südost-Forschungen, 58 (1999), 127. 16  Military Archives-Belgrade, collection 17, box 26, folder 3, document 50. Already during the First Balkan War it was characteristic for the Serbian government to locally use Turks against the Macedonian population that was sympathetic to Bulgaria. See Dotation Carnegie pour la paix internationale, Enquete dans les Balkans. Rapport presente aux directeurs par les membres de la Commission d’enquete (Paris, 1914), 129, 131. 15

Battling over 00 book.indb 143

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

144

Chapter 2

national minorities, as was the case with many other issues. The similarities between the minority policies of the elites from the three leading nations were thus a product of circumstances, and not because of a political consensus. The Serbian factor was not completely successful in determining the fate of minorities even in the territories considered to be historically and ethnically Serbian, while its influence on the position of minorities in other parts of the country remained weak. Consequently, the elites of the other two nations sometimes dealt with their minorities more harshly than the Serbian elite could allow itself to do. For example, in the issue of Germans in Slovenia the government was unable to influence an easing of the harsh policies, even though maintaining good foreign relations was of interest for the entire country. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 144

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Sofija Božić, “Srbi u Hrvatskoj, hegemonisti ili potlačeni? Slučaj osječkih Srba (1918–1924)” [Serbs in Croatia, Hegemonists, or the Oppressed? The Case of Osijek Serbs (1918–1924)]. In Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije: Viđenje srpskog faktora [Writing a History of Yugoslavia: The Perspective of the Serbian Factor] (Belgrade: INIS, 2007), 65–78. Sofija Božić is a research fellow at INIS. Her interest focuses on political and social history of Serbs in Croatia between the two world wars, and Serbo-Croatian relations in the twentieth century. She is the author of Politička misao Srba u Dalmaciji: Srpski list/glas 1880–1904 [The Political Thought of Serbs in Dalmatia: The Magazines Srpski list and Srpski glas 1880–1904] (Belgrade: INIS, 2001); and Srbi u Hrvatskoj 1918–1929 [Serbs in Croatia 1918–1929] (Belgrade: INIS, 2008). SERBS IN CROATIA, HEGEMONISTS, OR THE OPPRESSED? THE CASE OF OSIJEK SERBS (1918–1924) The blood-stained breakup of Yugoslavia, which resulted from a multiphased secessional conflict that took the form of an ethnonational, ideological, civil, religious, and a territorial war in the 1990s, was followed by a flood of studies that could be named “instant history.” The authors of these studies often beforehand decided which side they would favor and defend in their biased publications, offering no more than monocausal explanations of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Namely, most attempts to explain the end of the SFRY started from the assumption that the main, even sole, guilt for the war lay with the Serbian side. Historians thus have a vital task to impartially, objectively, and rationally analyze the Serbian role in the creation and breakup of Yugoslavia, and examine its true role in the seventy years of existence of the multiethnic and religiously diverse Yugoslav community. In other words, the science and its competent representatives should examine the key hypothesis—one which has been popular in the world media—that the existence of Yugoslavia was the time of Serbian dominance over other nations and national minorities. The quest to identify deeper causes of disintegration of the most significant Balkan country took us back to the time immediately after Yugoslavia was established, when the Serbian factor had continuously and systematically been burdened with suspicion of hegemonist intentions. Considering the leading proponent of these suspicions, which were harbored until the breakup of Yugoslavia, was the Croatian side, we focused on the social context in Croatia and used fact logic in our search for the answer to the following question: Were the accusations against Serbs established in historical facts or were they politically motivated? It is a well-known fact that the Yugoslav historiography was under scrutiny for decades, serving politics and its goals. Ways of interpretation of historical facts and even the selection of research topics depended on the views,

Battling over 00 book.indb 145

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

146

Chapter 2

standpoints, and needs of the governing party.1 Instrumentalization of science, whose emancipation was shackled and obstructed, restricted historians in following a fundamental principle of their profession, and that is to “simply show how it actually has been” (Leopold von Ranke). This resulted in the creation of numerous stereotypes and black-and-white representations that blurred the picture of the past. One such stereotype was a cliché about the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) as a state whose nations were oppressed, threatened, and exploited by the majority Serbian nation; and where the freedoms and progress of other nations were being systematically curtailed under the rule of the Greater Serbian hegemony. The stereotype of the Greater Serbian hegemony placed a particular burden onto the historiography of Serbo-Croatian/ Croato-Serbian relations, which were typically interpreted in an uncritical way that confirmed popular clichés without any prior examination. Consequently, the translation of one-sided political views into science led to an established belief that the Serbian political elite was the main culprit for the unstable multinational relations in the country and a deep political crisis the Kingdom had suffered from the very beginning. To look at the circumstances from the Serbian prism, however, was not even considered. Views of the Serbian side were not only ignored and discounted, but were a priori rejected. This is why today we know of all the objections the Croats raised against the Serbs, the state and the bodies of authority, but we know so little of the objections that the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia might have had against Croats, whether they felt safe living in the Croatian society, or prevailed in the structures of power.2

 For more details see Đorđe Stanković and Ljubodrag Dimić, Istoriografija pod nadzorom, 2 vols [Historiography under Surveillance I-II] (Belgrade: Službeni list SRJ, 1996); Kosta Nikolić, Prošlost bez istorije: polemike u jugoslovenskoj istoriografiji 1961–1991 [A Past without History: Polemics in Yugoslav Historiography 1961–1991] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2003). 2  At the end of the 1980s a systematic research using various sources was started by Serbian historiographers, refuting established beliefs and stereotypes. Here we need to highlight the following recent works by Professor Đorđe Stanković: “Srbi u državnoj upravi u Slavoniji za vreme. Provizorijuma 1918–1921” [Serbs in the Public Administration in Slavonia in the Time of the Interim 1918–1921], Istorija 20. veka [History of the 20th Century], 1-2 (1999): 77–87; “Srbi u državnoj upravi Slavonije za vreme sprovođenja centralizacije vlasti 1921-1929” [Serbs in the public administration of Slavonia in time of the centralization of the government 1921–29], Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis [The Yugoslav Historical Journal], 1-2 (2000): 85–98; “Srbi u Slavoniji na izborima za Ustavotvornu skupštinu 1920. godine” [Serbs in Slavonia during the elections for the Constitutional Assembly in 1920], Tokovi istorij/Currents of History 1-2 (2002): 45–65; Istorijski stereotipi i naučno znanje [Historical Stereotypes and Scientific Knowledge] (Belgrade: Plato, 2004). 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 146

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Struggling with State-Building in Interwar Yugoslavia

147

CONCLUSION Summing up what has been discussed on the previous pages, we can conclude that members of the Serbian community in Osijek did not feel safe or at peace. On the contrary, they felt discriminated against and not fully protected. The sources we examined, focusing on the circumstances in the town of Osijek, shed an entirely different light on the thesis of the exploitation of Croats by the oppressing Serbs, which has long been accepted by historiography as a veracious historical interpretation. These sources have revealed that the representation of Serbs as hegemonists was a work of propaganda rather than a reflection of real circumstances, and that their everyday life was full of tension, while the Croats referred to themselves as “third rate citizens.” The Serbs were surrounded by intolerance, put under various forms of pressure and suffered violence, often fearing for their subsistence. Altogether, the case of Osijek and the position of the Serbian community in the Slavonian capital warn of a great divide, which existed in the Croatian society between members of these two nations. Similar research of Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian relations in other Croatian cities (and rural communities) would complete the picture of the depth of the mutual (dis)trust, which the two nations brought into the newly formed state, and ensure a more objective analysis of Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian relations as a whole. Translated by Marina Čižmešija-Williams

Battling over 00 book.indb 147

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Battling over 00 book.indb 148

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Chapter 3

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias James Frusetta and Stefan Sotiris Papaioannou

Battling over 00 book.indb 149

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Battling over 00 book.indb 150

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias in Southeastern European Historiography James Frusetta and Stefan Sotiris Papaioannou

T

he phenomenon of irregular, or paramilitary, violence has long figured prominently in historical writing on the Balkan region. Both Western historians and those from Southeastern Europe itself have understood paramilitary violence to be a perennial feature in Balkan society, yet one that has taken on different guises in different historical periods. While scholars writing in the English language often employ the term paramilitary, those writing in native Balkan languages more commonly use an equivalent of the term irregular to refer to the phenomenon in its more generic sense. Even more typically, scholarly works produced in Southeastern Europe simply employ one or more of the many terms that locals actually used in the past to denote various groups that can be considered practitioners of irregular violence. A nonexhaustive list of those colorful words would include kûrdzhalii, klephtes, panduri, haiduci, listes, razboinitsi, başıbozuk, četnici/chetnitsi, komiti, komitadzhi, andartes, and militsiia/milicija. Each one of those words, some of which will be elucidated below, reflects a particular temporal and national or regional context. Their shades of meaning can range from connotations of banditry/brigandage, to guerilla/rebel-hero to militia/ paramilitary. Nevertheless, both Western and local Balkan historians have understood those various terms to lie within a broader spectrum of irregular violence, which they consider to have played an important and recurring role in modern Balkan history. We may arrive at a working definition of what we mean by paramilitary, or irregular, violence with reference to influential scholarly understandings of the relationship between violence and the state. Max Weber famously defined the modern state as “the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a particular terri-

Battling over 00 book.indb 151

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

152

Chapter 3

tory.” 1 In more provocative terms, the modern state’s claim over the means of violence differs from the protection rackets of organized crime groups only in its scale and in the fact that the claim is backed by law. In return for protection money in the form of taxation or other extraction, the state administers legal armed organizations (militaries, gendarmeries, police forces) and through them claims to guarantee security to those living in its boundaries from potential threats by other armed organizations.2 If the various armed organizations administered by a state may be represented by the shorthand, military, and legally sanctioned violence called regular, then ir-regular or para-military violence is violence exercised by armed organizations not fully controlled by a state. Thus, bandits, pirates, rebel/guerilla movements, urban gangs, terror syndicates, and even legal privately-funded armed units all fall on a spectrum of irregular violence. Modern Balkan national traditions have regarded armed groups of outlaws as folk heroes in nineteenth and early twentieth century struggles against the Ottoman Empire for independence. The word used for these figures in the case of the early nineteenth century struggle for Greek independence—klephtes— even carries the direct connotation of thieves/robbers. Members of these groups preyed upon local rural populations both before and during the time they became involved in political struggles for national independence. Yet the heroic image of such figures derives precisely from their intrepid outlaw relationship to the Ottoman state, which according to the Balkan national narratives had been an oppressive foreign presence. This romantic national understanding bears some similarity to—though clearly predates—British historian Eric Hobsbawm’s influential concept of the “social bandit.”3 The tables turn dramatically in the traditional national narratives, when an armed irregular group is viewed as being in the service of a rival national movement. Thus, the paramilitary četnici—viewed as heroes in Serbian tradition—are viewed in the Croatian or Albanian contexts as the most notorious of their enemies whose lack of direct accountability to a government’s regular armed forces likely gave them license to practice especially ruthless violence. Similarly, the Bulgarian or Macedonian komitadjii evoke special dread in the Greek national context, the Greek andartes do so for Bulgarians and Macedonians. The Muslim başıbozuk are reviled in most Balkan

 Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (eds.), The Vocation Lectures, translated by Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004), 33. 2  This formulation is given by Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 3  Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959); and Bandits (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969). 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 152

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

153

national traditions, which view them as fanatic “Turkish” fighters who did the Ottoman state’s dirty work in punishing Christian stirrings for independence. Other than these divergences over whether various Balkan historic paramilitary phenomena were either brave national folk heroes or ruthless enemy chauvinists, controversies have long raged over the supposed ethnic identity of members of some irregular armed movements. The debates about ethnic identity have been especially heated in the case of armed groups that operated in the geographic region of Macedonia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Macedonian and Bulgarian national historiographies have conflicted over whether the members of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and its leaders, including Goce/Gotse Delčev/Delchev and Yane/Jane Sandanski, were ethnically Macedonian or Bulgarian.4 The identity of Christians from geographic Macedonia who participated in pro-Greek or pro-Serbian paramilitary formations is also disputed, especially if their native language was not Greek or Serbian. In the Greek and Serbian contexts they are claimed as Greeks and Serbs, while in the Bulgarian and Macedonian contexts they are often referred to as grkomani and srbomani—deluded or traitorous ethnic Bulgarians or Macedonians with false Greek or Serb consciousness. In addition to the prism of national tradition, another past ideological influence on local interpretations of the role of paramilitaries in Balkan history has been the four decades of socialist dictatorship over most of the region. Historians wrote about certain irregular armed groups not only as revolutionaries, but as progressive precursors to socialist revolutionaries. This Marxist approach had counterparts even in noncommunist Greece.5 In the socialist republics, World War II-era anti-fascist Partisans, as irregular armed groups, inherited the mantle of the heroic outlaw bands that helped fight for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet paramilitary fighters as historical actors have come under increasing critical scrutiny by historians in Southeastern Europe over the past two decades as one-party socialism has disappeared and as scholars have increasingly begun to challenge national myths. Historians from the former communist countries, echoing an earlier Greek historiographic trend that peaked in the 1970s and

 The alternative spellings of the heroes’ names given here reflect the preferred transliteration of each national group into Latin characters. 5  Tasos Vournas, To Elliniko 1848. Agones gia koinoniko kai politico metaschimatismo stin Ellada kato apo tin epidrasi ton Evropaikon astikodimokratikon exegerseon [The Greek 1848: Struggles for Social and Political Transformation in Greece under the Influence of the European Civil-democratic Revolts] (Athens: Private, 1952); for a later interpretation taking its cue from Hobsbawm’s ‘social banditry’ thesis, see Stathis Damianakos, Paradosi antarsias kai laikos politismos [A Tradition of Rebellion and Popular Culture] (Athens: Plethron, 1987). 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 153

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

154

Chapter 3

1980s,6 have increasingly assessed the late nineteenth and early twentieth century activities of paramilitary formations in their region as impediments to the consolidation and functioning of modern Southeastern European states. A few historians, influenced by critical literature on the construction of national identity and its sometimes destructive effects, have also focused their attention on the darker side of their own nations’ paramilitary traditions as they affected civilian populations of rival national groups. These new directions in local scholarship are illustrated in this chapter’s excerpts. BANDITS IN A FOREIGN STATE: IRREGULARS IN THE OTTOMAN BALKANS The pervasiveness of irregular forces in Ottoman-era Southeastern Europe relates in part to state practice. As elsewhere in Europe, the central authorities of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires were forced to tolerate provincial military forces for reasons of economy. Local militias, mercenary bands, armed communities (such as the Grenzer in Croatia), and bandits provided forces, both Muslim and Christian, that could be co-opted by the state in times of war or to provide additional security along the Habsburg-Ottoman military borderlands. As auxiliaries, irregular forces maintained themselves without regular recourse to the state treasury and the financial advantage offset the diminished security of the central authorities.7 Campaigns to eliminate bandits and other independent irregulars were troublesome and costly, leading Ottoman viziers to often negotiate instead with bandits and local militias or engage them to fight other independent bands.8 The existence of these irregulars provided a ready reservoir of military power for local and regional revolts against Ottoman power throughout the nineteenth century. The Serbian Uprisings of 1804–13 and 1815 and the Greek War of Independence of 1821–9 saw the widespread recruiting of Christian brigands on behalf of the revolts. In the Romanian lands the leaders of the Wallachian Uprising of 1821 drew on the region’s Christian panduri militia to launch the

6

 The most important Greek work in this vein was Giannis Koliopoulos, Listes. I kentriki Ellada sta mesa tou 19ou aiona [Bandits: Central Greece During the Mid-19th Century] (Athens: Hermis, 1979), upon which he elaborated later in the English-language volume, John S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece 1821–1912 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Among his specific targets of criticism in Brigands with a Cause, 12, were those Greek historians cited above who saw “progressive” stirrings in paramilitary unrest in 1848. 7  See Fikret Adanir, “Semi-Autonomous Provincial Forces in the Balkans and Anatolia,” in Suraiya Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 8  Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).

Battling over 00 book.indb 154

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

155

revolt. Irregulars were similarly utilized by Ottoman provincial authorities to suppress uprisings, such as the use of the Muslim irregular başıbozuk in Hercegovina and Bulgaria in 1875 and 1876. Given their perceived role in the struggles for independence, irregulars would be integrated into the rhetoric of national historiographies in Southeastern Europe. The presence of Christian brigands (or Christian and Muslim highlanders in Albania) was conflated with national resistance to Ottoman occupation. This tradition continued into socialist-era historiography, where classical Marxist approaches variously represented conational irregular bands as progressive forces (if perhaps not self-consciously so) opposed to Ottoman economic oppression.9 In Greece, historians on the left similarly adopted Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of “social banditry,” spurring scholarly debate over the intent and goals of irregular armed movements.10 Historiography after the revolutions of 1989 generally rejected the “protosocialist” nature of these irregulars. But except in rare individual cases,11 haiduk irregulars have retained their national credentials in each state’s popular and national histories: both as antecedent to and as participants in the armed violence, which accompanied national awakening and independence. Despite this, research on these groups has been relatively rare in scholarly historiography both before and after the dividing point of 1989. Relatively few studies of bandit irregulars as military organizations or as social institutions in their own right have been undertaken.12 Despite attention to their national credentials, political and military studies on irregular groups remain surprisingly underrepresented as well: only in 2000, for example, was a comprehensive study of the role of irregulars in the formation of the Serbian Uprisings finally published.13

9

 See Bedrush Shehu, Çështje Shqiptare në vitet 30 të shekullit XX [Albanian Question in the 30s of the Twentieth Century] (Prishtina: Instituti Albanologjik i Prishtinës, 1990); in English, see Bistra Cvetkova, “The Bulgarian Haiduk Movement in the 15th to the 18th Centuries,” in Gunther Rothenberg et. al. (eds.), East Central European Society in the Pre-Revolutionary Eighteenth Century (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1982). 10  For an introduction, see John S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece 1821–1912 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 11  One example is Haxhi Qamili in Albania, who led a rebellion in 1914 against the creation of a new independent state to be led by Prince William of the Netherlands. During the socialist era Qamili was lauded as an example of native resistance to foreign rule, but he became so affiliated with socialist historiography that in 2006 there were protests over a school being named in honor. 12  One recent study is Susana Andea and Avram Andea, “Înzestrarea cu arme şi organizarea militară a haiducilor lui Pintea. Anchetele Oficiale din 1700–1701” [Weapon Acquisition and Military Organization of Pintea’s Haiduci. The Official Investigations of 1700–1701], Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “Georghe Bariţiu” din Cluj-Napoca, 42 (2003), 189–204. 13  Radoš Ljušić, Vožd Karađorđe [Karadjordje the Leader], vols. 1-2 (Belgrade: Udruženje za srpsku povesnicu, 2000).

Battling over 00 book.indb 155

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

156

Chapter 3

The one area that received significant attention in both periods has been the cultural legacy of irregulars: for example, the way that popular memory has engaged the idea of banditry, chiefly in song and folklore.14 But such studies remain largely the work of anthropologists, ethnologists, and scholars of literature, where the memory of the haiduk irregular is seen as problematic—a modern rewriting of traditional folklore. The concept of irregulars contesting the central authority of the Ottoman Empire remains less problematic for most historians of the respective national traditions in Southeastern Europe. The same cannot be said for the history of irregular banditry in the national states following independence. NEW NATIONAL STATES, REGULAR AND IRREGULAR IRREDENTIST STRUGGLES With the establishment of new nation-states as successors to Ottoman rule during the course of the nineteenth century, governments’ difficulties in maintaining monopoly control over the means of violence in the Balkans through their regular armed forces did not disappear. Rather, the burden was transferred from the Ottoman Empire to the successor states. In 1834, four years after gaining formal independence, the Greek state first defined brigandage (listeia) as a crime. This reflected the fact that the former outlaw klepht bands and irregular armatoles, some of whom had participated in the war against the Ottoman Empire, now undermined the authority of the Greek state itself. For decades, the dynamic remained largely the same as that under the former Ottoman rule: outlaw bandits angled for amnesty and even state employment as irregulars to maintain local security against other outlaw bands. If bands could goad the state into backing an irredentist uprising across the Ottoman border (in other words, an uprising aimed at incorporating “unredeemed” nationals still under Ottoman rule into the national state), they could hope to find even more opportunities for employment by the state, which would use them as scouts and guerillas in the conflict.15 Bulgaria, after its initial establishment in 1878, also faced instability from armed bands of haiduks, although the regular army—initially led by experienced Russian officers—managed to rein them in much more quickly than had been the case in postindependent Greece.  For examples, see Gordana Djerić, “Evropsko/prosvetiteljski i nacional/romantičarski izvori kulturnog pamćenja: Refleksije u savremenim društvenim raspravama” [European/Enlightenment and National/Romanticist Sources of Cultural Memory: Reflections in Contemporary Social Debates], Filozofija i Društvo 31, no. 2 (2006): 77–88; Yannis Sygkelos, “Partisan Songs in the Balkans,” Études Balkaniques 44, no. 4 (2008): 196–218. 15  For a detailed discussion of this dynamic in post-independence Greece, see John S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece 1821–1912 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 14

Battling over 00 book.indb 156

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

157

However, toward the close of the nineteenth century and dawn of the twentieth, paramilitary organizations gained new vitality as political classes in Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro set their sights on more imperial territories, including Ottoman Macedonia, Thrace, Crete, Kosovo and Albania, and Habsburg Bosnia. Bulgaria-based émigrés from Macedonia and Thrace formed bands and made incursions into Ottoman territory in 1885 that embarrassed the Bulgarian government and helped to drag it into war with Serbia. Émigrés conspired in attempting to assassinate Prince Ferdinand in 1890 and Prime Minister Stambolov in 1891, and succeeded in killing the latter in 1895. These groups believed the prince and prime minister to be insufficiently aggressive in pursuing liberation of Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace. The émigrés, along with counterparts living within Ottoman borders, coalesced in the 1890s to develop large paramilitary networks that came to be known as the Internal MacedonianAdrianopolitan Revolutionary Organization (VMORO), based in Ottoman territory, and the Supreme Committee, based in Bulgaria. Members of these organizations staged violent incursions into Ottoman Macedonia in 1895 and 1902, and most notably led the Ilinden rising in 1903 with the involvement of up to 26,000 guerrillas.16 All of these in part targeted noncombatant local Muslims. The new Macedonian and Bulgarian paramilitary dynamism spurred increased paramilitary action from other quarters. Muslim başıbozuk exacted harsh reprisals against Christian populations in Macedonia and Thrace in the wake of the incursions and uprisings. Patriotic societies in Serbia and Greece (the Society of St. Sava and the Ethniki Etaireia, respectively) began to infiltrate irregulars (četniki and andartes respectively) into Macedonia to battle what they perceived as Bulgarian-backed irregulars from VMORO. Irregular units spearheaded uprisings of Albanians in 1910–12, who felt threatened by the irredentist designs of Balkan states on their territory, by the violence of Christian paramilitary units, and by the centralizing tendencies of the Ottoman Young Turk government. As before, terrorizing and extorting local peasants was part of the modus operandi of all of these irregular units. During this era of irredentist struggles waged by Ottoman successor states over remaining imperial territory, the new proliferation of armed bands was a double-edged sword for all governments involved. On the one hand, the irregulars’ lack of official status afforded irredentists an opportunity to pursue geopolitical goals using violent means while governments sympathetic with the irredentists’ goals could at least superficially deny responsibility. On the other hand, as in decades past, the governments’ lack of close control over irregular

16

 The figure comes from Duncan M. Perry, The Politics of Terror: The Macedonian Liberation Movements 1893–1903 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1988), 204.

Battling over 00 book.indb 157

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:24

158

Chapter 3

forces (again, lack of monopoly over the means of violence) could land them in trouble. Lack of essential control over paramilitary groups known as Mlada Bosna resulted in the most well-known fiasco for the Serbian government, which faced invasion in 1914 as punishment for its perceived backing of the AustroHungarian Archduke’s assassination. Irregular violence gave way to the primarily “regular” violence of armies and all-out war in several of the major irredentist struggles of the era. Yet in all of these cases, irregular armed units continued to play an important, if subtly changing role. In 1897, the latest of a long line of Christian guerilla uprisings against Ottoman authority in Crete as well as incursions by thousands of irregulars from Greece into southern Ottoman Macedonia drew Greece into a disastrous war with the Ottoman Empire. The Christian Balkan states’ continuing struggles for the remaining Ottoman European territories finally culminated in their alliance and inauguration of the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The war would primarily be fought by the regular armies of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, the Ottoman Empire and Romania, but paramilitary forces were also involved in crucial ways during these campaigns. Armed bands (četi/cheti, andartes, başıbozuk) served the regular armies as scouts with expert knowledge of the local terrain and set up provisional local authorities in advance of occupying regular troops. Along with regular armies—but with less formal accountability to a government—they also often plundered and otherwise brutalized noncombatants whom they perceived as unfriendly to their cause. A novel development of the Balkan Wars was the incorporation of thousands of men with origins in Macedonia and Thrace—many of them former irregular guerrillas—directly into the Bulgarian army as the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps. While these units often operated in small bands familiar to irregular fighters, they were commanded by regular army officers, giving them unprecedented levels of conventional military training and experience.17 This trend would continue and intensify during World War I. Yet despite the increasingly close and explicit cooperation between irregular and regular forces in the Balkans occasioned by the Balkan Wars and World War I, paramilitary organizations continued during this period to confront governments of Southeastern Europe with an acute challenge to their claim to the monopoly over the means of violence.

17

 The Volunteer Corps were notably used to garrison the Rhodopes mountain region, where they were used in the state-directed de-Islamization campaign among Muslim Pomak (ethnic Bulgarian) communities. On this, see Velichko Georgiev and Staiko Trifanov (eds.), Pokrustvaneto na bulgarite mohamedani, 1912–1913: Dokumenti [The Christianization of the Bulgarian Muslims, 1912–13: Documents] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 1995).

Battling over 00 book.indb 158

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

159

CONTESTING CONTROL OF THE NATIONAL STATES Bandit irregulars thus continued to pose a similar dilemma for the newly independent Southeastern European states as they had for the Ottoman Empire: the states’ monopoly of force had to be negotiated given both their relatively limited resources and the temptation to use irregulars in irredentist struggles against neighboring states. This situation continued past World War I, as interwar states faced the problem of building security against not just external, but internal irregular groups. In the immediate postwar period, these regimes faced resistance to centralization itself. Insurgents in Montenegro in 1919, peasant resistance in Croatia in 1920 and kaçak banditry in Kosovo all reflected opposition to the central authority of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (in reflecting local desires for autonomy, perhaps to the very concept of central authority itself). Ahmed Zogu in Albania faced a similar resistance to centralization; what sets the Yugoslav case apart, however, were the difficulties in creating security in the southern provinces of Old Serbia (Kosovo) and South Serbia (Macedonia). Although these topics were politically sensitive and untouched in socialist-era historiography, over the past ten years Serbian historians have produced several studies of the political and military costs for the government in effecting security in the south.18 The problems facing Belgrade were complicated by the presence of irredentist irregulars supported by neighboring states—most notably, a revived Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) that raided across the border from Bulgaria. The historiography regarding VMRO has, both in the socialist era and after 1989, been chiefly framed by rival Macedonian and Bulgarian national historiographies,19 although recent scholarship has placed greater emphasis on the difficulty of ascribing “pure” ethnic motivations for the group.20 Here, as in the case of security in Yugoslavia, the past ten years have seen increasing consideration of the way the organization challenged security within Bulgaria. It played  See Vladan Jovanović, Jugoslovenska država i Južna Srbija 1918–1929. Makedonija, Sandžak, Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini SHS [Yugoslav State and Southern Serbia, 1918–1929. Macedonia, Sanjak, Kosovo, and Metohia in the Kingdom of SCS] (Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2002); Dmitar Tašić, Rat posle rata: Vojska Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca na Kosovu i Metohiji i u Makedoniji, 1918–1920 [War After the War, the Army of the Kingdom and SCS in Kosovo, Metohia & Macedonia, 1918–1920] (Belgrade: Utopija, and Institut za strategijska istraživanja, 2008). 19  Much of this historiography reflects excellent and detailed scholarship but openly sympathizes with the subject matter. For examples, see Dimitur Tiulekov, Obrecheno Rodoliubie: VMRO v Pirinsko, 1919–1934 [Doomed to Sacrifice: VMRO in Pirin, 1919–1934] (Blagoevgrad: Makedonski nauchen institut, 2001). 20  Zoran Todorovski, Vnatreshnata makedonska revolucionerna organizacija, 1924–1934 [The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, 1924–1934] (Skopje: IP Robz, 1997). 18

Battling over 00 book.indb 159

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

160

Chapter 3

a substantial role in the 1923 coup d’etat that overthrew the democraticallyelected government of Aleksandur Stamboliiski, but threatened the stability of subsequent governing regimes.21 In that regard, VMRO as an interwar irregular paramilitary represents both a continuation of pre-1914 irredentist irregulars, and a transition to the future: paramilitary irregulars were increasingly organized in the service of ideology, championing new directions for society and the state. In this regard, it was the Bulgarian Communist Party that represented the direction of the future through such acts as the 1925 Sveta Nedelya bombing. Such acts were the precursors of the more significant right-wing, ideologically-driven paramilitary groups that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. The emergence of paramilitary wings of political parties is a phenomenon across Central and Eastern Europe in the interwar era, and Southeastern Europe was no exception. Rarer was the willingness of such paramilitary party wings to use violence to further political conspiracies against the state itself. Most groups in Southeastern Europe failed to take that step. The Lăncieri (Lancers) of Alexandru Cuza’s National-Christian Defense League (Liga Apărării Naţional Creştine, LANC) in Romania attacked Jews and political opponents. The armed wings of the (Serbian) Yugoslav National Movement ZBOR (Jugoslovenski narodni pokret ZBOR) and the numerous small Bulgarian groups—the Warriors (Ratnitsi), Popular Social Movement (Narodno Sotsialno Dvizhenie), the Union of Bulgarian National Legions (Suyuz na bulgarskite natsionalni legioni, or Legionari)—rarely ventured even that. This makes the violence committed by the Ustaša Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Ustaša Hrvatski Revolucionarni Pokret) and the Legion of the Archangel Michael (Legiunea ‘Arhanghelul Mihail’) all the more striking. Both engaged in sporadic terrorism throughout the 1930s, the Iron Guard assassinating Romanian Prime Minister Ion Duca in 1933, the Ustaša helping to kill King Aleksandar of Yugoslavia in 1934. Increasingly authoritarian states responded to the challenge of irregulars by seeking to coopt such movements, just as they had in the nineteenth century. Autocratic leaders created their own populist militia paramilitaries under their control, such as Defender (Brannik) in Bulgaria, the National Organization of Youth in Greece (Ethnikí Orgánosis Neoléas) or Sentinel (Străjeria) in Romania. Bulgarian historiography on these groups well reflects trends throughout the region. “Fascism“ in socialist historiography initially echoed the political definition of the Communist Third International, that fascism represented the most vicious extension of capitalism and the interwar governments after 1934 were “monarchofascist.” By the 1980s scholarly dissent had emerged, but only in 1990 did a vigorous historiographical debate emerge over terminology, new approaches 21

 Aleksandur Grebenarov, Legalni i taini organizatsii na makedonskite bezhantsi v Bulgariia (1918–1947) [Legal and Secret Organizations of the Macedonian Refugees in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Makedonski nauchen institut, 2009).

Battling over 00 book.indb 160

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

161

and whether groups definable as “fascist” existed in Bulgaria.22 The following two decades have seen the publication of several works focused on or engaging fascist ideology with greater sophistication.23 But attention to the paramilitary arms and the way violence was used by these movements remains largely unaddressed, not just in Bulgaria but throughout the region. Accounts of paramilitary violence are often narrative synopses of events,24 with only a few attempts to include armed irregulars within the context of larger ideological movements.25 World War II created further armed irregular challenges to the state. Hitler’s new order in Southeastern Europe is being reassessed in Western historiography as a surprisingly ad hoc venture, and one in which local irregulars were harnessed as a stop-gap measure to meet the manpower demands of local security and economic extraction.26 Nazi Germany in particular pursued a complicated strategy of working with existing indigenous institutions (e.g., the Serbian Volunteer Corps), facilitating the creation of new structures (such as the formation of Security Battalions in Greece) and the direct recruitment of locals into Germanofficered units (most notoriously, regionally-raised elements of the SS). Irregulars not only offered vitally needed manpower, but created political leverage: having postponed any permanent allocation of conquered Yugoslav and Greek 22

 The historiographical debate was opened in 1990 by the publication of Plamen Tsvetkov and Nikolai Poppetrov, “Kum tipologiiata na politicheskoto razvitie na Bulgariia prez 30te godini” [Towards a typology of the political developments in Bulgaria in the 1930s], Istoricheski Pregled 46, no. 2 (1990): 63–78; and Vladimir Migev, “Politicheskata sistema na Bulgariia ot 9 juni 1923 do 9 septemvri 1944 g.” [The Political System of Bulgaria from 9 June 1923 to 9 September 1944], Istoricheski Pregled 46, no. 9 (1990): 77–88. 23  The key work in this regard is Nikolai Poppetrov, Fashizmut v Bulgaria [Fascism in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Kama, 2008). Also of use is the intellectual consideration in Roumen Daskalov, Bulgarskoto Obshtestvo: Durzhava, Politika, Ikonomika (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2005); the comprehensive historiography in Roumen Daskalov, Ot Stambolov do Zhivkov: Golemite Sporove za novata bulgarska istoriya [From Stambolov to Zhivkov: The Great Disputes for the New Bulgarian History] (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2009), 187– 294. In contrast, a more apologetic approach is Nikola Altunkov, Narekoha gi fashisti: Legioneri, Otetspaisievtsi, Ratnitsi [They Called Them Fascists: Legionaries, Father Paisiists and Ratniks] (Sofia: Tangra, 2004). 24  Mihail Daescu, “Rebeliunea legionară şi sfârşitul regimului national l­egionar în judeţul Alba” [The Legionary Rebellion and the End of the National-Legionary Regime in Alba County], Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica 10, no. 1 (2006): 241–49. 25  Constantin Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the ‘Archangel Michael’ in Interwar Romania (Trondheim: Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies, 2004). 26  On this, see, Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York: Penguin, 2008) ; Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth, eds., The Waffen-SS: A European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). See also Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS: die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol, 2015)..

Battling over 00 book.indb 161

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

162

Chapter 3

territory, Germany could play irregular movements off against coalition partners and promise adjusted final borders based on wartime contributions. Such irregular groups saw some attention by scholars during the socialist era, and expanded attention in the 1990s, but often for the purpose of affirming perceived historical injustices.27 Scholars focused more frequently on collaboration by the state and state leaders, driven by historiographical debates such as the role played by Ion Antonescu in World War II and the Holocaust.28 In this regard, the key trend since 2000 has been the increasing publication of memoirs (often self-justifying in nature) of notable paramilitary collaborators or of sympathetic texts seeking to rehabilitate such groups. Analytical works putting such figures (and organizations) in the context of the war remain somewhat fewer.29 The organization and use of local irregular occupation forces by Axis Bulgaria and Axis Romania has received surprisingly little attention. Wartime resistance by irregular groups continues to gather much more attention. If the socialist era saw an undue stress on the role of Communist partisan groups in fighting German forces and local collaborators (even in states, like Romania and Bulgaria, where partisan movements were small), the post1989 period saw a similar stress on “nationalist” resistance movements—for example, the Albanian Balli Kombëtar and the Serbian Chetniks. Scholarship on the nationalist resistance has, particularly in the past decade, expanded to consider the role of anticommunist paramilitaries in fighting after 1945. The Romanian case is particularly instructive in this regard, with a flurry of articles appearing after 2000.30 At least some of this scholarship is likely motivated by

27

 See, for example, Gjorgji Malkovski, Bugarskata fashistichka organizatsija “Branik” vo Makedonija, 1941–1944 [The Bulgarian Fascist Organization “Brannik” in Macedonia,” 1941–1944] (Skopje: Institut za natsionalna istorija, 1992). 28  With respect to Antonescu and the Holocaust, see Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi, Romănia şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului [Romania and Transnistria: the Problem of the Holocaust] (Bucharest: Curtea veche, 2004). 29  Respectively, see for example, Dimitrije Ljotić, Videlo u tami [Seen in the Darkness] (Valjevo: Društvo Hilandar Valjevo, 2006); and Georgji Malvoski, “Dejnosta na VMRO (Mihalovisti) vo Makedonija vo Btorata svetska vojna (1941–1944)” [Activities of VMRO (Mihailovists) in Macedonia in the Second World War (1941–1944)] Glasnik 47, nos. 1–2 (2003). 30   See Vladimir Tismăneanu et al., Raportul Final Al Comisiei Prezidenţiale Pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste Din România [Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania] (Bucharest, 2006), 320–44, for an overview. For example, see Dorin Dobrincu, “Rezistența armată anticomunistă din Munţii Făgăraş—Versantul Nordic. ‘Grupul Carpatic Făgăraşan’/Grupul Ion Gavrilă (1949/1950– 1955/1956)” [The Anticommunist Armed Resistance in the Făgăraş Mountains the Northern Versant. ‘The Făgăraş Carpathian Group’/ Ion Gavrilă’s Group (1949/19501955/1956)] Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “George Bariţiu” din Cluj-Napoca 66, 2007 (editura Academiei Române, 2008): 433–502; Neculai Popa, Represiune şi rezistenţă în

Battling over 00 book.indb 162

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

163

the desire to demonstrate a sense of anticommunist nationalism. It may also serve, in a fashion similar to some recent Holocaust historiography in Romania, as a political means to suggest that the struggle between Iron Guard die-hard irregular bands and the security of the emerging Romanian People’s Republic was a struggle between two “totalitarian” ideologies (and thus to equate the two). Perhaps unnoticed is the subtle point that only in the socialist era was the state able to eliminate independent, irregular paramilitaries once and for all and establish the state’s monopoly on violence. The period of “transition” in the 1990s allowed for new opportunities in the production of history, establishing trends that have continued into the twentyfirst century in terms of how scholars engage irregular conflict in Southeastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The potential for a more pluralistic historiography freer of state influence allowed for a wave of “sympathetic” popular historiography that seeks to rehabilitate the name of various paramilitary movements. Yet, although sympathetic portrayals of armed irregular groups remain a key element in the respective historiographies of national independence, critical approaches have continued to grow over the past decade, reevaluating the role of paramilitary violence, state responses to these groups, and how this clash between irregular and state forces contributed to the targeting of civilians by both sides. Since 2000 historiography addressing fascism and paramilitary formations in Southeastern Europe has continued to expand and to seek new approaches. The more suggestive trend in scholarly analysis is the increasingly critical scrutiny of the role played by paramilitaries in the struggles for national independence, rivalries between states, and conflicts over state centralization. The three sets of excerpts are correspondingly intended to highlight trends and discussions in this regard. They represent critical approaches exploring how paramilitary groups sought to redefine state power, to pursue such visions through the use of violence, and how the state itself used violence in return to pursue order and security.

ţinutul Neamţului [Oppression and Resistance in the Neamţ Lands] (Bucharest: Editura Vremea, 2000); Cezar Zugravu (ed.), O istorie a rezistenţei şi a represiunii, 1945–1989 [A History of Resistance and Oppression, 1945–1989] (Iaşi: Editura Tipo Moldova, 2002); and Constantin Hrehor, Muntele mărturisitor. Anii rezistenţei/anii suferinţei [The Mountain stands Witness. The Years of Resistance/Years of Suffering] (Iaşi: Editura Timpul, 2002). Particularly interesting is the use of oral sources in Antonio Faur, “Căpitanul Ştefan Popescu—liderul grupului de rezistenţă din sudul Bihorului (1946–1950)” [Captain Ştefan Popescu—The Leader of the Resistance Group in South Bihor (1946–1950)], Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “George Bariţi u” din Cluj-Napoca, 63 (2004): 651–64; and Dorin Dobrincu, “Formaţiuni din rezistenţa armată anticomunistă în sudul Moldovei (1945– 1958)” [Armed Anticommunist Resistance Formations in South Moldova (1945–1958)], AIO–Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Orală, 6, no. 4 (2005): 163–92.

Battling over 00 book.indb 163

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

PARAMILITARIES VERSUS ARMIES: BULGARIA, GREECE, AND YUGOSLAVIA Tasos Kostopoulos, Pólemos kai Ethnokátharsē: Ē xechasménē pleurá mias dekaetoús ethnikḗs exórmēsēs, 1912–1922 [War and Ethnic Cleansing: The Forgotten Side of a Decade-Long National Campaign, 1912–1922] (Athens: Vivliorama, 2007), 40–42. Tasos Kostopoulos, author of several books and columnist for the Athens newspaper Ephēmerída tōn Syntaktṓn, established himself over the past two decades as a vocal critic of the standard Greek nationalist views on politically sensitive historical topics such as the Macedonian question. In War and Ethnic Cleansing he criticizes paramilitary forces of each country not merely for posing a nuisance to state authority but in particular for their cruelty toward ordinary inhabitants of other ethnic backgrounds. In the excerpt below, Kostopoulos discusses the “atrocities” that Greek irregular andartes committed against non-Greek civilians. The margin for committing atrocities is also larger when it comes to the action of irregulars, such as the bodies of “scouts“ set up by former fighters of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia and other armed militants to act behind the lines of the Turkish army. The Carnegie Report lists a minimum of 195 killings, extensive looting, and raping by Greek rebels who had advanced into the area of Pangaion,1 activities confirmed by published memories of local Greeks.2 Similar information exists, from other sources, regarding the action of “scouts” in Western Macedonia: the burning of villages, mass executions, raping and looting of Muslim villages around Siatista, Grevena and Kastoria, often in collaboration with local Christian villagers.3 The violence committed against unarmed civilians was often in reprisal over similar acts carried out by Muslim irregulars during the early  Dotation Carnegie [Carnegie Endowment] 1914, 57, 273–7.  Triantafyllos Rantsios, O kathenas tous itane kai mia istoria [Everybody was his own story] (Athens: Gnosi 1984), 41–42; on the accumulation of “large fortunes” by the guerillas “through much extortion, both lawful and unlawful,” as well as the pillaging (even) of Greek villages by them, see: Dionysios Livieratos, Ores machis, Imerologio [Hours of Battle, Diary] (Athens: Elliniki Euroekdotiki, 1991), 58–59. 3  Stavros Kelaidis, Ethelontika somata Kriton en Makedonia [Kretan volunteers in Macedonia] (Athens: Tsikounakis Press, 1913), 148–49; Karavitis 2001, 183, 224, 226, 317 and 343–44; Nikolaou Petimeza, Imerologion Ekstrateias 1912–13 (Athens: Pankalavrytian Enosis, 1981), 197; Dikonymos-Makris, Imerologion Polemou 1912–13 en Makedonia kai Ipeiro [War Diary from the 1912-13 War in Macedonia and Epirus] (Thessaloniki: 2003), 67–8; IAM [Historical Archive of Macedonia]/GDM [General Administration of Macedonia]/117, Kosmas Velios to King Constantine, Athens 16.6.13. 1 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 164

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

165

days of the war or following the retreat of the 5th Division at the Battle of Sorovic.4 This was literally a war of annihilation, in which only flight secured survival. “We started out towards Liapsista [present-day Neapoli at Voio] which we captured without a fight because the Turks fled as soon as they saw us marching in that direction, taking their families with them except for a few that stayed behind,” wrote a veteran fighter in his journal. “As soon as we entered the town, houses were indiscriminately set on fire, followed by looting by regulars and irregulars alike, in reprisal over the destruction of Christian villages which had been razed to the ground by the Turks. It goes without saying that many Turks, who were injured and were hiding in their houses, were forced out by the fire and were immediately murdered.”5 The situation was similar at the Epirus front, where the months-long stagnation of operations turned the conflict into a showdown between armed guerilla groups of Greek “scouts” and “Turko-Albanian gangs.”6 As early as the first days of the war, the Ottoman army and the “Turkish guerillas” that accompanied it had been burning Greek villages and killing any inhabitants that had been unable to leave.7 With the retreat of the Turkish army, the Greek forces undertook “to cleanse the region of guerilla Albanian gangs,” using methods that are not elucidated by official military historiography. However, there is a record of certain “deviations” of these irregular units “towards plundering and pillaging.”8 Moreover, it is telling that, during negotiations regarding their surrender, the Muslims of Preveza demanded that no “Cretan or Epirot guerillas” enter the town—a con-

 For a review of this vicious circle of reprisals: Yannis Glavinas, “The Vaalades of Voio, Kozani during 1912–1924 through the reports of the province’s deputy governor,” Valkanika Symmeikta, 12–13 (2001–2002): 153–7. 5  Dikonymos-Makris, Imerologion Polemou, 68. 6  Margaritis Yorgos, Anepithymitoi sympatriotes [Unwanted Compatriots] (Athens: Vivliorama 2005), 138–39. According to the official history of the Hellenic Army General Staff (GES), the “volunteer corps” of “scouts” in Epirus already numbered 1,000 men by the first weeks of the war (O Ellinikos Stratos kata tous Valkanikous Polemous. Vol. II. Epicheiriseis en Ipiro. Athens National Typography 1932, 46). Along the way, they were reinforced by several hundred more men, locals and settlers (O Ellinikos Stratos kata tous Valkanikous Polemous. Vol. II. Appendix. Athens National Typography 1932, 42–45, 54, 85, 88, 102–3, 155). On “Turkish guerillas” and “Albanian gangs,” see GES 1932, Vol. II. 42, 45–46, 52, 55 and GES 1932, Vol. II. Appendix, 45, 67–69, 85–86, 102–3. 7  GES 1932, Vol. II, 26 (Ammotopos), 52 (Gotista, Prosgoli); GES 1932. Vol. II. Appendix, 34–35 (Koumoutzades) and 54 (28 villages of Ioannina); Lyntia Tricha (ed.) Imerologia kai grammata apo to metopo: Valkanikoi polemoi, 1912–1913 [Diaries and Letters from the war front: Balkan Wars 1912–13] (Athens: ELIA, 1993), 76 (Koumzades), 77 (Mouliana, Anogi); Dikonymos-Makris 2003, 74 (Drestiniko), 76 (Demati) and 81 (Varlaam). 8  GES 1932, Vol. II, 45, 53, and Appendix, 65. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 165

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

166

Chapter 3

dition formally accepted but actually violated the very same day. Nevertheless, in the days that followed, the removal of the “scouts” was considered necessary even by the local military administration in order to achieve a “stabilization of order.”9 In Thesprotia, meanwhile, armed clashes between guerilla groups would evolve into undeniably more massive affairs, with thousands of armed Chami resisting the advance of the Greek army, and the burning and looting of villages on all sides.10 The same scenes played again more to the north, with the Greek army’s entry into Northern Epirus and the campaign to disarm the numerous Muslim villages there. In order to subjugate the latter, artillery11 was used and, in some cases, more drastic measures. “Today I realized the total savagery of war,” wrote an infantryman on the day after the capture of the small town of Pliassa, on the outskirts of Korytsa. “Muslim women and children were crying. Townsfolk were being shot like turtle doves. Houses were burning as far as the eye could see. Horror!”12 Translated by Mary Kitroeff

 GES 1932, Vol. II, 60–61, 64.  GES 1932, Vol. II, 65, 69, 74, 109–10; GES 1932, Vol. II, Appendix, 84–85, 88–89, 102–3, 132, 155; K.D. Stergiopoulos, To mikton ipirotikon stratevma kata tin eleftherosin tis Ipirou [The mixed troops of Epirus during the Epirus Liberation] (Athens, 1968), 191, 250. 11  Lyntia Tricha (ed.), Valkanikoi Polemoi 1912–1913 [Diaries and Letters from the war Front: Balkan Wars 1912-13] (Athens: ELIA, 1993), 111, 114. 12  Tricha (ed.), Valkanikoi Polemoi 1912–1913, 63–64. On the destruction of Muslim villages between Monastir and Korytsa, see also Christina Pitouli-Kitsou, Oi ellinoalvanikes scheseis kai to boreioipirotiko zitima kata tin periodo 1907–1914 [The Greek-Albanian relations and the North Epirus issue in the period 1907–1914] (Olkos: Athens, 1997), 420 and the British Vice Consulate in Monastir to Lowther. Monastir 23.1.13, photocopy in Beitullah Destani (ed.), Ethnic Minorities in the Balkan States, 1860– 1971 (London: Archive Editions Ltd., 2003), vol. 2, 285. 9

10

Battling over 00 book.indb 166

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Dmitar Tasić, Rat posle rata: Vojska Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca na Kosovu i Metohiji i u Makedoniji, 1918–1920 [War After the War: The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Kosovo and Metohia and in Macedonia, 1918–1920] (Belgrade: Utopija & Institut za Strategijska Istraživanja, 2008), 475–77, 479, 498. Dr Dmitar Tasić is a Visiting Professor at the University Hradec Kralove in the Czech Republic. He received his PhD from the University of Belgrade and has worked for many years for the Serbian Military History Institute/Strategic Research Institute. He has been the editor of the Military History Review since 2013 and is President of the Serbian National Commission of Military History. Dr Tasić’s main research interest focuses on the role of the military in Yugoslav society, the two world wars and their aftermaths as well as Yugoslavia’s relationship with other Balkan states. His publications include over a dozen articles and book chapters, plus two books: The Tito-Stalin Split and Yugoslavia’s Military Opening toward the West, 1950–1954: In NATO’s Backyard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016) (together with Ivan Laković); and Rat posle rata: Vojska Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca na Kosovu i Metohiji i u Makedoniji, 1918–1920 (Belgrade: Utopija & Institut za Strategijska Istraživanja, 2008), where he presents the turbulent events in the southern parts of the newly established state, postwar renewal, armed incidents, politically motivated acts of violence, and general insecurity. WAR AFTER THE WAR

The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in Kosovo and Metohia and Macedonia, 1918–1920 Despite the initial shock over Bulgarian military defeat, IMRO (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) quickly got back to its feet. Although its main patron, the Bulgarian state, temporarily had to suspend its assistance to the organization and turn to its numerous internal and foreign affairs problems, the IMRO leaders took an independent path relying on their own resources, and publicly announced the fight for autonomous Macedonia as their slogan. Several fractions emerged within the organization and as the conflict among them grew deeper, they finally split over disagreements about further ways to fight. Recruitment and training centers for Chetniks (called komiti in Macedonia) were re-established in Đustendil, Gornja Džumaja, Nevrokop, and Petrič. At the same time, Bulgaria was going through various changes. Reports of the Delegation of the High Command pointed to the strengthening of left forces on the Bulgarian political scene, in particular the Agrarian Union of Aleksandar Stamboliyski, but also the tesnyaki (narrow) and broad socialists. Stamboliyski was determined to introduce thorough changes in the Bulgarian internal and foreign affair poli-

Battling over 00 book.indb 167

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

168

Chapter 3

cies, abide by the terms of the peace treaty signed in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and settle the conflicts with all the surrounding countries. Very soon, the military and civil authorities in Macedonia had to face up to the growing presence of Chetniks in the field. Although their operation and presence were not as intense as they used to be in the Balkan Wars, they were seen throughout Macedonia, with their main centers of operation in Bregalnica region, Tikveš, Strumica, Kočani, and Maleš regions. After the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was signed, it became obvious that Macedonia would not become Bulgarian. In the fall of 1919, the group gathered around Todor Aleksandrov and Aleksandar Protogerov prevailed in the internal conflicts, and during 1920 the IMRO had its forces back in field in Macedonia. Numerous battles with the army and gendarmerie followed. The Chetniks, however, started losing the aura of romantic revolutionists and freedom fighters due to numerous plunders, arson attacks, and murders they committed, all of which were driven exclusively by materialistic motivations. Certain members of the civil authorities, however, acting in their personal and party interests, kept diminishing or denying information on the presence of Chetniks in the field. This resulted in the military and civil data often being completely incompatible. It was not until the fall of 1920 and the communists’ relative victory in the local elections when things started changing. The support given to communists by Chetniks and their pre-election appeals and instructions to vote for the communists forced the civil authorities to give a more serious consideration to the problem of IMRO and set up a  new basis for the cooperation with the army. Measures taken to fight the actions of IMRO turned out very costly for the state as additional funds had to be provided for the work needed to be done on setting the borders, the work of the intelligence, and salaries for the railway guards and members of flying squads. In Kosovo and Metohia, the Albanian rebellion smoldered on with varying intensity. The direct leaders of the rebellion were Drenica kaçaks. Active since Ottoman times, these armed rebels were brigands, avengers, revolutionaries, and assassins all in one, and they fought against all institutions of the modern state with great zeal and determination. Supported by Italians, they worked for the Kosovo Committee. Although Drenica was their heartland, they were also active outside this region. They inspired Albanians, many of whom became their followers. The state tried everything to suppress their activities, but all of the methods proved equally unsuccessful. The kaçak leader Azem Bajta was successful in avoiding ambushes and escaping chases. However, in the postwar years there was a lot of tension and disagreement between representatives of military and civil authorities. District and canton chiefs of police continuously requested assistance from the army, while military commanders complained that the gendarmerie was not adequately employed. Military and civil authorities tried to fight the problem of the possession of personal weapons among inhabitants of the South and Old Serbia, insisting on urgent disarmament of Albanians, and then all other citizens. However, the results of regular disarmament actions, particularly those taken among Albanian citizens, were disproportionate to the number and level

Battling over 00 book.indb 168

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

169

of the engaged military and police forces. Military leaders persistently called for the implementation of a special decree for these regions and the use of extraordinary repressive measures against all participants and collaborators in the rebellion. The state authorities, on the other hand, insisted on dealing with these problems through regular legal mechanisms and the work of the police and judicial bodies. It seemed like there was a conscious denial of the seriousness of the situation and underestimation of the opponent, the level of its organization and determination. At the same time, the notion of an organized and modern state was being taken for granted and viewed entirely outside the local context—not as something that needed building, but as a phenomenon that existed and functioned in itself. To illustrate how wrong this belief was, it is enough to mention that in the height of battle along the Albanian border in August 1920, the preparations for elections were taking place through distribution of voting material—ballot boxes and balls. Trying to solve certain problems, the army resorted to proven methods— formation of flying squads. The first to be engaged was Jovan Stojković Babunski. However, in spite of the fast actions taken to re-form the squad and begin with its activities, the squad had to be dismantled due to brutality of its operations. Similar to the case of Albanian battalions, here also army commanders paid more attention to the efficiency of the flying squad than the collateral damage done by its operations. This initially influenced the decision on re-forming the squad, as the situation at the time became unbearable due to the operations of the IMRO and infiltrations of the Chetniks. Under the new political circumstances, however, there was no room for the old Chetnik fighting methods. Babunski went through a personal tragedy as well. As new acts of violence emerged, his own fellow fighters turned their backs on him and burdened him with full responsibility for these acts. Having received this fatal blow, he opted for a slow death rather than turning himself in to the authorities in Belgrade and answering charges raised against him and his fellow Chetniks. Nevertheless, the army did not give up on using Chetnik squads. Regardless of the controversy surrounding them, flying squads were still actively employed, and were composed of many Chetniks who used to be members of the squad led by Babunski. While the Allied offensive on the Salonica front was in full swing, the duke Kosta Pećanac mobilized his “committee detachment,” which made the advancement of the Allied forces into Metohia significantly easier. He is distinguished for the seizure of Peć and Dečani. However, in spite of the assistance his detachment provided to the security forces, its operations became a problem as they were not legally regulated. As the duke and his squad operated outside the legal framework, the decision was made to dismantle the squad. Translated by Marina Čižmešija-Williams

Battling over 00 book.indb 169

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Vladan Jovanović, Jugoslovenska država i Južna Srbija 1918–1929. Makedonija, Sandžak, Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini SHS [The Yugoslav State and Southern Serbia, 1918–1929. Macedonia, Sanjak, Kosovo, and Metohija in the Kingdom of SCS] (Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2002), 197–205. Vladan Jovanović is the author of several monographs focusing on the integration of Macedonia and Kosovo into Yugoslavia and the corresponding role and policies of the interwar state. Jovanović gained his PhD at the Belgrade University, and is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for the Recent History of Serbia. The Yugoslav State and Southern Serbia explores how the interwar Yugoslav state sought to create security and counter the threat posed by paramilitary groups; this excerpt critically focuses on the use of reprisal actions to limit komitadji violence in South Serbia. (See also the List of Contributors, p. 314.) OPPRESSION BY THE OFFICIALS AND THE POLICE AS THE PRODUCT OF THE ANTI-KOMITADJI ACTION As is proven by several different sources, the largest number of government “sins” was committed in South Serbia under pretext of “fighting the Kaçaks [Albanian rebels-cum-bandits] and the Komitadjis [Bulgarian terrorists].” The unreliability of the scanty statistics, which originated with the state and the tendentiousness of Muslim interpellations in Parliament, blurs the real picture of the obviously repressive administration in South Serbia, to which the Orthodox population was also subject to no smaller degree. This makes more interesting the data from Croat sources who claim that during the first three years of the Yugoslav power “the rough-neck administration and Turkish terror of the Belgrade government in Macedonia” resulted in 742 persons killed, 50 mosques destroyed, 110 mills, 6,344 houses, and 132 villages burned down (from where 55,068 people joined the bandits).1 The minister of the interior warned the military authorities in 1920 on occasion of burning the village of Krnjina that it was a “great evil” to punish the entire village because of a couple of criminals. Viewing the social side of the problem apart from the moral, M. Trifković concluded that in that way the state 1

 Đorđe Stanković, “Nacionalizam i politička kultura (istorijsko iskustvo prvih godina jugoslovenske države),” [Nationalism and political culture (historical experience of the first years of the Yugoslav state) Tokovi istorije/Currents of History, 1-2 (1992), 116. Professor Stanković adduces that in the permanent sections of Dr. Rudolf Horvat in the journal Slobodni dom an aggressive Croat propaganda was spread, the questions of Albanian rights and threat to the population of Macedonia were raised. The quoted data also stem from there.

Battling over 00 book.indb 170

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

171

was encumbered also with the obligation to support those citizens who had been left homeless!2 The bad reputation of Puniša Račić was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for communist newspapers who accused him of having changed the ethnic makeup of South Serbia in favor of the Orthodox with the “dagger.” 3 Poorly qualified officials plus the corruption and collaboration of local officials with Komitadji leaders accumulated negative energy in an environment that had already been insufferable. Commanders of the Third Army District turned increasingly often to the Ministry of Education to replace bad officials, primarily those born in South Serbia. It turned out that they were most prone to collaborate with Macedonian organizations, such as the teacher Milivoje Madžarević from Kratovo, collaborator of the priest Trajko Arsić who intended to found a  “Macedonian Party.” Police officers in South Serbia often had no school or other qualifications (“taken from the street, separated from plough and trade and turned into officials”). Such cadres could be promoted in office only by “framing political crimes” and by inventing various cases (Valandovo, Strumica, and Štip in 1925).4 In Debar a man was holding the post of the “captain,” having come to the office straight from the Požarevac prison. Twenty-two armed men summoned a meeting of locals between the ages of 16 to 60 in Sv. Nikola in September 1923 (“they took the municipal drum and by using the drum, with the knowledge of the municipal government, with the knowledge of the district government, they summoned the meeting”). Weapons were taken away from all those who gathered (despite valid licenses), and fifty people were arrested and beaten without mercy. For this incident and the terror in the villages of Donje Đurđance and Barbarst, the Democrats accused not only the minister of the interior but also the whole Radical government. In Tetovo, six prominent citizens were arrested

 JDA/II, doc. 592, 591. “It finds a bad echo abroad and harms the respectability of our people and the interests of the state, it causes more rebels and new reprisals against our elements, who are thinned and not very numerous, in those parts as it is.” 3  Rad. List za odbranu i organizaciju radnog naroda, no. 64, August 5, 1928. Making a comment on the consequences of the murder in the Parliament (and the fact that Stjepan Radić haden’t succombed to his wounds immediately) the journalist of Rad reminded: “Puniša had had a surer hand. He slaughtered Albanian women and children with greater success. He used to kill six with one bullet. He slaughtered with a dagger the Turks of Kosovo and of the Metohija, and sooner would the knife get hot than he would get tired. That revolver brought luck to him: he earned a pretty little fortune with it and he also changed the way our statistics in South Serbia looked in favor of the Orthodox.” 4  “The police authorities usually arrest some person of no concern first, and beat him up in prison during two or three days and force him in that way to confess there is a Komitadji organization, and they even tell him to name such and such persons, apart from himself who are in the organization. There the police administration usually quotes adherents of my party. [...] Such confessions can in no way be refuted in the court later on [...] because the authorities in no way allow a doctor to officially examine them.” (Ignjat Stefanović, SBNS, LIX, red. sast. March 6, 1926, 299.) 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 171

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

172

Chapter 3

and sentenced to fourteen years in jail for singing a Bulgarian song (the Democrats’ leader Davidović says: “They shouldn’t have been sentenced for that song, because I as a small schoolboy, and not only I, but all Belgrade, used to sing Roar Marica in these streets of Belgrade [...] and if one was allowed to sing the Bulgarian anthem here, let this national song, that resembles, or has a Bulgarian character, be sung”). In the same speech Davidović criticized the anti-Komitadji units for misappropriating the duty of investigating authorities instead of chasing Bulgarian bands. Furthermore, the opposition accused some prominent Radicals of collaborating with Komitadji leaders and bandits, and they reciprocated with similar accusations.5 Other reports record that in the District of Kumanovo “The district chief had beaten a teacher,” whereas in the Tetovo area innocent people were arrested. The district chief in Veles, Stevan Pavlović came into possession of a receipt proving that Komitadjis had collected “a Komitadji tax.” He made copies of it and, when necessary, searched houses of disloyal citizens where he allegedly had found these receipts. The MP [Member of Parliament] Slavko Dukanac wondered: “It’s an unheard of thing that someone could work on secession of part of our state and its unification with Albania 30 km deep in the rear, when the gendarmerie and the military are in that rear and when not a bird can pass through there, not to mention anything else.”6 In the Turkish village of Orizari, five peasants killed another two, and on the run they killed one from their own group. The rest of the group joined a Bulgarian Komitadji band, thus becoming political outlaws. A little later, four Turks killed three Komitadjis, cut off their heads and with those spoils came to the mayor of Orizari and “bought off their other crimes with the heads of the Bulgarian Komittadjis.”7 The Komitadji band of the Bulgarian leader Stojan Mišev (which had first given itself up to the Serbian authorities in Štip) reactivated on August 18, 1923 marauding villages of Ovče Polje. On that occasion inhabitants of many villages were terrorized (Gradište, Gabreš,  Lj. Davidović, SBNS, LV red. sast. October 11, 1923, 1702–3; Šuenković informed the members of parliament that the Radical Mita Dimitrijević had openly collaborated with the Komitadji leader Pančo Mihajlov on creation of an “independent Macedonia that would be independent within the borders of the State of the Balkan Federation, stretching from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.” Dimitrijević and Mihajlov had a talk on September 17, 1924 in front of the head of the District of Kočane. On the other hand, Vasilije Trbić accused Šumenković of having said at the Democrats’ rally in Prilep in 1923: “Brothers, we’ll give you Bulgarian churches and schools.” (SBNS, V preth. sast. March 24, 1925, 153–55.) 6  ASANU, no. 13313/10, Stevan Pavlović, 4-5; SBNS, XLI red. sast. September 29, 1923, 1474. 7  The entire case was regarded as the “exchange of favors” between the local authorities and the agas and beys of Veles who as go-betweens between the Turkish band and the mayor “made themselves the way to squeeze Macedonian peasants undisturbed.” Radnik 3 (1922): 2–3. 5

Battling over 00 book.indb 172

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

173

Kučkarevo, Živanje, Pezovo, etc.). Some 130 peasants in the villages of Minino, Karatmanovo and Corfulija “lay in sheep skins due to this terrible beating.” In mid-May 1923, a Komitadji company of seventy men came to the village of Smokvice (District of Đevđelija) and forced the locals “to swear an oath to the Revolutionary Committee and to give a statement they would fight for the liberation of Macedonia.” Since the district chief was quickly informed, a company of infantry was sent “in two rail-cars with an engine,” which dispersed the Komitadjis and the peasants went home. However, when they came close to the village, the district chief ordered all peasants between the ages of 16 and 60 to be arrested, after which the soldiers opened fire on them. Forty-four men from thirty houses in that village were arrested and taken to the Đevđelija prison where they were held for three months without any interrogation.8 Gendarme pursuit of the Komitadjis were most intensive in the territory of the District of Veles. The ill-reputed Veles gendermerie burst into the village of Drenovo in mid-February 1924 and accused the peasants of sheltering bandits. Under pressure of “the whip and the rifle butt” the peasants confessed to crimes and twenty-four of them were put in prison. A similar scenario was played in the villages of Banjice, Vrlevci, Otišino, and Štip where the gendarmes’ pursuit was reinforced by units from Skoplje. Together with the Serbian Kommitadjis (various murderers and thieves, mostly Turks who were well paid and went roamed villages, molesting the local population) the gendarmerie of Veles arrested en masse, and took peasants into custody from Bistrica and Kriva Kruška. The search for the Komitadjis was extended to the town of Veles itself where the Kratovo company of the chief Mina Stanković comprising former Bulgarian Komitadjis, was brought in. The local notary of the Albanian village of Jabučište arrested people, hung them upside down and flogged, burned wet hay under them “forcing them thus to pay ransom for themselves in Turkish lire.”9 The murder of Miša Mihajlov and his son on the way to Novo Selo was filed away, regardless of numerous witnesses. Risto Gligorović was killed in Đevđelija and the baker Georgi Anđušev in Negotino (to whom a gendarme said during an argument: “You’ll remember me!”). At the same time, drunken gendarmes strangled Risto Komitov and stabbed him afterward with a knife in the village of Rožden. In the village of Dren, two locals lost their lives. Among the “officially uncleared” murder cases included the murders of Savo Đorđev 8 9

 Radnik 76 (1923): 2; 82 (1923): 3.  ASANU, no. 13313/10, Pavlović, 7–8; Radnik 111 (1924): 1; 116 (1924): 7; 119 (1924): 3. The Chetniks of Mina Stanković arrested respected citizens of Veles and and“interrogated” them in the district hall and on the Štip road. The company of the chief Kušev enclosed the town center of Veles before the elections in 1923, scaring pupils and throwing hand-grenades through the town, whereas several gendarmes in Solanj robbed the priest and rode the peasants, “racing who would come first.” M. Kujundžić, SBNS. III red. sast. (June 4, 1923), 332.

Battling over 00 book.indb 173

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

174

Chapter 3

from Živalo, Dane Trajkov from Sušica, and Jane Stojčev from Alakinci. Mone Đermov, a taylor from Štip was killed by a gendarme patrol escorting him from Carevo Selo to Štip. A lad from Štip, a returnee from Bulgaria was incarcerated in the Štip prison. When his parents came to visit him, they were told: “That’s no longer your son, Lord have mercy upon his soul.” In the village of Živalo a peasant had an argument with the gendarmes who cut his woods so that he disappeared. “Bulgarian mother” of his inquiring relatives was cursed. A body without a head was found in a village, whereas a railroad-keeper was run over by a train on the Preševo-Letevci line. A Roma was hanged from a tree and beaten in the village of Sušica whereas a local murderer was set free in another as “the only Serb in the village.”10 In the village of Mojina near Đevđelija a family of three was slaughtered and robbed, and as two border guards were captured the next day with 20,000 dinars in their pockets and bloody coats, they said they had “shot and killed a  rabbit, and that it had been rabbit’s blood,” so they were released the same day!11 Soldiers often caused conflict. Thus on August 2, 1921 the soldiers of the fourth detachment for collecting war booty burned the house of Boža Iljković in the village of Dunja (in the Bitola area) where they were billeted.12 In the mass of repressions practiced by gendarmes, mention should also be made of their prohibiting Easter celebrations to peasants, of beating village mayors (e.g., “for not having given him the baked pie”!). Taylors, merchants, village mayors (“for a gendarme to beat up a municipal or village mayor, that’s like smoking a cigarette”) were subject to physical maltreatment. Gendarmes took bribes openly, forced citizens “to stand guard for them during the night while they slept, to weed out the grass around the station, to bring them wood from the mountains by corvée.”13 The security situation was critical in the area of Bitola in

 DBMN/II, 27–30.  Ignjat Stefanović, SBNS, LIX red. sast. March 6, 1926, 299. 12  AJ, 14–179–664, 763. “The private of that detachment Radomir Radosavljević himself confessed to have thrown by accident an ignited cigarette to gunpowder that was in front of the house, so that fire caught the eaves that was otherwise low, so that the house burned to the ground. There were also 8 sheaves of this year’s rye, 5 beech beams 3-4 m long and some 300 kg of wheat hay from last year. The damage was estimated as 3,000 dinars. It was established that the fire was caused by negligence.” 13  Stefanović, SBNS, LIX, red. sast. March 6, 1926, 302–3. According to him, “in the villages, left, center and right one hears squeaking, screaming, wailing and crying of women, children and men of various age. There’s nowhere singing, music, joy, nowhere a smiling face in a village, everybody’s in mourning, they wail and run away from the village until the gendarmes pass through the village. Because of this terror of theirs, peasants sell their estates and run away into towns. Splendid prospects for the future of our South! Peasants escape to towns, the Turks to Asia and the villages remained deserted, to till the land by themselves.” 10 11

Battling over 00 book.indb 174

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

175

1926. A notary from the Prespa District was abducted by the Kaçaks, taken to the mountains, and six months later his corpse was found without a head. A group of Kaçaks made an incursion into Bitola itself, severely assaulting the gendarmes, whereas a police agent, otherwise a Turk, was mysteriously killed in Carev Dvor. In summer 1925 the Kaçaks robbed a car with Turkish merchants near Resan, taking 200,000 dinars. They were never captured. Not far from Bitola, the mayor of Ljubljana was killed in his car.14 A communist paper tried to prove the thesis of allegedly obvious synchronization of parliamentary elections and Komitadji incursions. The commentator of the Radnik noticed that the state of emergency in Macedonia, coupled with an unheard amount of bloodshed suddenly ceased after the elections were called in 1923! By connecting this “election maneuver” of the gendarmerie and the military with the creation of angst in towns, the journalist noticed that “all fires were suddenly put out when the ballots of the Macedonian voting slaves were dropped without a sound into ballot boxes.”15 Aware of the negative effects of such incidents, the Ministry of the Interior forwarded to local authorities some instruction for improved communication with the local environment. Gendarmes and police officers should get closer to “all nationalities” and pay special attention to folk customs—whereby “deriding their customs and habits and the dialect they spoke was strictly forbidden.” It was also desirable that officials attended celebrations and baptisms, and funerals too. In general, there should be efforts to establish godfatherly relations between officials and the local population.16 ABUSES AND THE CORVÉE The question of “political hygiene” and relations of government officials with the state imposed itself in Serbia immediately after the Balkan Wars. Reminding his colleagues in Parliament in February 1914 that the former political struggle “under the banner of programs and people’s tribunes” mutated into “the struggle for financial institutions,” Jovan Skerlić noted that the increasing number of Serbian politicians managed to “couple” the job of an MP with that of a “state supplier.”17 The practice of government officials doing business with the state indicated a serious erosion of moral values, whereby the fortune of Nikola Pašić

 Kosta Timotijević, SBNS, LIX, red. sast. March 6, 1926, 309.  Radnik 30 (1923): 3. 16  IMN/4, 155–56. 17  Jovan Skerlić, Feljtoni. Skice i govori [Feuilletons, sketches and speeches] (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1964) 383–84, 409. Speaking of politicians starting to do business with the state Skerlić adduced a wide-spread phenomenon of the highest government officials applying for mining concessions in the name of family members. At that, ministers had the right to be members of executive boards of banks and the like. 14 15

Battling over 00 book.indb 175

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

176

Chapter 3

was particularly conspicuous, since it equaled one seventh of the budget of the Kingdom of Serbia before the war!18 The state of postwar chaos and poor consolidation of the Yugoslav state were a perfect breeding ground for the development of corruption. Opposition MPs warned increasingly in the early 1920s that “millionairs were mushrooming” and that under a “national-chauvinist veneer” quite practical goals of the ruling elites were hidden. Due to prosecuted economic scandals trust in teh judicial system was eroded (“big fish always manage to slip through the nets of justice and the small fry get caught”).19 The scope of corruption invited the sarcastic note of “Politika” on January 16, 1923, that it was better to be a Serb than an inhabitant of a developed Western nation, “because for the same thing for which a Frenchmen, an Englishmen or a German would be shot in his homeland, a Serb stays alive in his generous fatherland and receives cash to boot!” Regardless of occasional political and national dissonance, the unity of politicians inclined to corruption was noticeable “when it came to putying the hand into the state’s pocket,” which confirmed the maxim that people do not differ in religion, nationality and race, but in character.20 In 1927 alone, “six to seven pillars of the present-day regime” (mostly police clerks) were sitting in the Skopje prison. Abuses occurred also in the Ministry of Transportation: “A receipt for 6,000 dinars for the sum I received from the purse of the Committee for Building of the Veles-Štip railway-line as pay for the services rendered to the Committee—deputy minister of transportation Bora Popović.” So, a high official was selling his “counsels” to each department, in addition to his regular salary. The sister of the MP of Chemyiet Cenan Zija, the widow Shehia Zija from Bitola was apprehended in the Caribrod customs house in April 1923 for smuggling silk and shawls from Istanbul. The problem was obviated when the General Management of the Customs annulled the act of the above mentioned custom house, even though Shehia had confessed her guilt. The MP Nikola Sretenović made the intercession of Cenan Zija known (allegedly Zija paid 10,000 dinars) after which the indictment against his sister Shehia was annulled. Protection “along ethnic lines” was recorded in Peć where local Montenegrins were rustling cattle in cahoots with the authorities. In the words of colonel Nedić, “the Montenegrin authorities ignored their co-nationals” so they went

 Zvonimir Kulundžić, Politika i korupcija u kraljevskoj Jugoslaviji [Politics and Corruption in Royal Yugoslavia] (Zagreb: Stvarnost Zgb B.Vremeplov, 1968), 24–7. Krsta Cicvarić noted succinctly about the question of corruption: “Mr. Pašić is, first of all, rich. That’s the first precondition to be able to appeal to the people. How he came by his fortune is an accidental matter; the main thing is that he demands nothing from anyone and that, if need be, he can always bang with his pocket-book.” 19  Kulundžić, Politika i korupcija, 35–40. 20  Kulundžić, Politika i korupcija, 750. 18

Battling over 00 book.indb 176

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

177

unpunished.21 When it was discovered in 1921 that many high ranking politicians were involved in the scandal of the reselling of copper wire (Ž. Rafajlović, M. Trifković), the investigation was channeled to catching smaller fry in Veles. The local banker and the activist of the Democratic Party Jovan Đorđević and the teacher and banker Voja Nenadć were involved in buying copper wire for “air railroad” that the Administration of the War Booty had bought as “scrapped and discarded metal” for 80,000 dinars, and which was selling it as new, assessing its price at one million dinars!22 “As soon as one passes Ristovac, one feels, it’s not this state there any more,” warned Jovan Magovčević in Parliament on occasion of increased mass persecution and manhandling of the Democrats from South Serbia. A scribe took a merchant off the train (Baljezović, a member of the Democratic Party) of the Skopje-Kumanovo line and sent him to Skopje as “suspect.” A similar thing happened to the Democrat Lazar Slavković (suspect as “communist”), the mayor of the commune of Uroševac, who was prevented from coming to Belgrade and complaining about it. A Democrat, Ljubomir Vuksanović was terrorizing the Metohija District as the district chief in Peć. He was reproached for beating teachers in his office, for opening a pubcum-cinema in Peć and for financial malversations committed by taking goods from the Ministry of Alimentation and by reselling them. People were held in custody without a warrant, whereas others were released on his authority. He turned the yard of the County Administration into a garage where he put two new cars and he increased his despotic power by bringing a secretary from the Ministry of the Interior and opening an attorney’s office for him (“after a short while that very same secretary buys a house that is nowadays worth 150,000 dinars, he buys a vineyard, he buys a meadow”). Many officers in the territory of the Third Army District also the disliked arrogance of the local grandees. General Vasić complained that the chief of the Prizren District Derontić did not wait for him [in his office] when he was touring the border area, but that he had to go and find him at his home!23 * * * It was noticed that immediately before the Balkan Wars the corvée was gaining importance in the Bitola area. There was corvée for the county and for the district chiefs, secretaries, notaries, et cetera. When Stojan Protić was about to visit the area, a “ministerial corvée” was imposed: peasants brought hens, gees, turkeys, ducks, lambs, pigs, baskets full of eggs, cheese, fruits, wood “and some  AVII, P-4, kut. 57, fasc. 15, br. 29/1, Report of February 22, 1919; SBNS, LIX, red. sast. March 1927, 85; LXV, red. sast. March 24, 1927, 52; XLIX, r.s. October 4, 1923, 1563–65. 22  ASANU, no. 13315/71, Jovan Đorđević, 6; ASANU, no. 13316/97, Voja Nenadić, 4. 23  AVII, P-4/3, kut. 57, fasc. 16, br. 32/1; J. Magovčević, SBNS, XXIII red. sast. February 5, 1924, 506–7; Nedeljko Simonović, SBNS, VII red. sast. June 8, 1923, 430–32. 21

Battling over 00 book.indb 177

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

178

Chapter 3

even hanged a bag or two of the Tetovo beans on pack-saddles.”24 This version of corvée in kind was innocuous indeed compared with the later forms of these free and volunteer favors.” Although the Vidovdan Constiution forbade the use of corvée, this provision did not hold good for South Serbia. Moreover, in the budget bill for 1923/24 the use of corvée was foreseen for repairing state roads (twice a year—seven days in the spring and seven in the fall at the most).25 The Financial Budget for 1924/25 (art. 289) enjoined the regional, county, district, and communal chiefs to maintain the roads “either by surtax or by use of people’s [labor] force,” whereas every liable person had to respond to summons from the authorities. Students, soldiers, state officials, invalids, as well as religious ministers, mayors, village chiefs, and notaries were exempt. Women were exempt from direct work obligation but not in the case of replacement, that is, when a male member of the household would avoid the obligation. Lists of liable persons were made by tax authorities before March 1, a copy being sent to communal courts, building and administrative police authorities. Every liable person could find a replacement for himself (a person between the ages of 18 and 50), and if he would not do it, the communal authorities hired workers and the “irresponsible” liable person had to reimburse them. On the other hand, a person working at such a task, could not be kept longer than four days “without his consent.” “People’s force” was used only for the more simple works, meaning clearing roads of snow and mud, digging of canals, clearing of covered areas, planting trees, securing roads against floods, extraction and transportation of gravel, making of road metal from the quarried stones, et cetera. The local government provided carts, sieves for sand, picks, and mallets, whereas citizens had to bring hoes, hacks, and spades from their homes. Work was supervised by building authorities and by the police, and for better control, the practice of not organizing work in adjacent communes at the same time was introduced. Building engineers assessed and declared the completion of certain sections: complaints about their work were forwarded to the Building Ministry, whereas complaints about the incorrect “use of people’s force” were sent to the Ministry of the Interior.26 The need to build gendarmerie stations was also satisfied by imposing corvée, so that people (“who still had no building for communal court, who had no decent school building, who had not a single fountain”) were forced to build a gendarmerie station worth 300,000 dinars at that time. People liable for military service in the territory of the Third Army District were obliged to take part in building the Veles-Štip railway line.27 The inhabitants of Peć asked the military command in 1919 to spare them from the corvée, that is, supplying oxen carts because they 24

 ASANU, no. 13313/17, Corvée for Mr. minister.  Privredni alamanah Jugoslovenskog Lloyda, chapter VIII, 8. 26  Pravilnik o upotrebi narodne snage za opravku javnih puteva [Order on the use of people’s force for the repair of public roads] (Belgrade, 1924), 3–10. 27  Gligorije Anastasijević, SBNS, XV red. sast. June 19, 1923, 659; S. Vukosavljević, XX red. sast. January 31, 1924, 453. 25

Battling over 00 book.indb 178

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

179

needed them for fieldwork.28 There was a stoppage in food transport in the Bregalnica Division District, so that the command would be allowed “to use a corvée of 200 wagons.”29 For Nekaj and Mertur, the erection of roads and bridges was foreseen, which, in agreement with the police, would be built by the locals.30 Throughout the winter of 1927/28 the police ordered the population of South Serbia to guard the railway line “using their own clothes, bread, light, and firewood.” The obligation of peasants to build roads by corvée was cynically by the authorities, “the people were doing it of their own free will.” Peasants from Macedonian villages were used en masse, as for tasks of guarding roads, villages, and railroads, but also for chasing the Komitadjis. In these pursuits peasants were unarmed, walking at the head of the column with sticks in their hands in front of the armed gendarmes. This “voluntary militia” was exposed to hunger and cold, so that the exhausted Trajko Lukar who had fallen asleep, was run over by a train near Veles and two more peasants died under similar circumstances at the Gradsko-Krivolak railway line. “Volunteers” were gathered in Belgrade itself, usually prominent innkeepers and craftsmen from South Serbia were recruited. They were taken away to prevent competition with the (politically powerful) Belgrade innkeepers.31 By the “militarization” of the railway line, that is, by posting strong garrisons in Niš, Skopje, Lapovo, and Belgrade (1919), the government of Lj. Davidović intended to prevent a  strike of the Zaječar railroad workers, which was believed to be connected to one in Bulgaria.32 Having experienced all the “boons” of the administrative apparatus in South Serbia Adam Pribićević concluded: “In such a benighted, scarred and debased environment, power turns into omnipotence and succumbs to temptation to commit abuses. Therefore the government was, so to say, organized abuse.”33 Translated by Zoran Janjetovic

 AVII, P-4/3, kut. 57, fasc. 1, br. 1/23, the letter of May 2, 1919.  AVII, P-4/3, kut. 57, fasc. 2, br.1/86, the report of December 11, 1919. Since cars were unavailable to transport food from Veles to Štip, Colonel Radovanović was allowed to to use corvée so as not to leave the troops without food. The corvée was allowed by the commander of the Third Army District, who nevertheless suggested: “Don’t encumber the people unless absolutely necessary [...] I ask that good gas be sent instead of benzol as urgently as possible, because there is danger of hunger and demoralisation of the troops in the Bregalnica Division District.” 30  JDA/II, dok. 392, 426. 31  DBM/II, 26–7. Dušan Ivančević, SBNS, LVII, (March 30, 1928), 92–4. 32  Bogumil Hrabak (ed), “Zapisnici sednica Davidovićeve dve vlade od avgusta 1919. do februara 1920 ” [Minutes of Davidovic’s two government sessions from August 1919 to February 1920], Arhivski vjesnik 13, no. 1 (1970): 81–2. 33  Adam Pribićević, Od gospodina do seljaka, prir. Čedomir Višnjić [From a Gentleman to a Peasant, edited by Čedomir Višnjić] (Zagreb: SDK Prosvjeta, 1996), 117. 28 29

Battling over 00 book.indb 179

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:25

Veselin Yanchev, Armiya, obshtestven red i vutreshna sigurnost. Bulgarskiyat opit 1878–1912 [Army, Public Order and Internal Security: The Bulgarian Experience 1878–1912] (Sofia: IF-94/ Veliko Turnovo: Faber 2006), 203, 208–9. Veselin Yanchev’s work notably includes several institutional histories both of political parties and the Bulgarian army in the early twentieth century. Completing his doctorate in 1991, Yanchev later became a member of the faculty of the University of Sofia and published extensively in the past decade. In Army, Public Order and Internal Security he argues that irregulars provided a direct threat to public order of which the Bulgarian army was cognizant and actively sought to suppress. THE ARMY AGAINST EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL “BRIGANDS” Apart from guaranteeing public order during elections and civil unrest, the army proved necessary also in ensuring the state security—in dealing with attempts at destabilization of the country, when the new prince was expelled and the government was overthrown. At the roots of these events along with the internal and the external opposition stood Russia, which refused to recognize Ferdinand’s election as legal. Russia no longer relied on the weakened and scattered opposition, not even on the oppositional serving army officers, but rather on the organization of bands outside the country, which upon their entry in Bulgaria would raise the population and expel Ferdinand and Stambolov. This, however, did not mean that any other antigovernment acts would not be pursued and supported. As Zinoviev, the head of the Asiatic Department, pointed out in an instruction to Hitrovo, Russian diplomats should lend “support to the trustworthy persons who had expressed readiness to take an active part in the banishment of Prince Coburg-Gotha from Bulgaria.”1 […] The events of 1885–86 pushed the problem of the brigandage to the background but it remained persistent and vital. What characterizes [the phenomenon] is that unlike the period before the Union2 it no longer spread just in the eastern parts but pervaded the entire country. In the district of Varna brigandage did not stop during the war with the Serbs and this brought up the need to call pursuit parties and for additional expenditures.3 On April 21, 1886 brigands demanded 86 lira as ransom money from the inhabitants of the village of Yarlovo, the county of Samokov. Having been refused, they attacked the village but were 1

 Avantiurite na ruskiya tsarizum v Bulgaria. Po dokumenti na tsarskite arhivi [The Adventures of Russian Tsarism in Bulgaria. On the Basis of Documents from the Tsarist Archives] (Varna: Steno 1991), 96–7. 2  Translator’s note: The unificaton of Eastern Rumelia with the Principality of Bulgaria, in 1885. 3  Durzhaven vestnik [State Gazette], 35 (April 22, 1886).

Battling over 00 book.indb 180

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

181

repulsed by policemen and soldiers, and four were captured. On the following day they attacked the village again but without success.4 On April 22 of the same year in the village of Malkochevo, the county of Sevlievo, was captured Mustafa Aliev, the leader of a gang who from the beginning of the year had been active in the counties of Sevlievo and Tuzluk.5 After the Union, numerous gangs of brigands appeared along the Turkish border. The district governors of Plovdiv, Haskovo, and Burgas sought aid from the government to deal with the issue. The Council of Ministers decided to appoint seventy-five people in the pursuit parties. On June 18, 1886, 25,000 Bulgarian leva6 were assigned for their costs.7 The gang of the four brothers Todor, Veliu, Petur, and Blago Nikolov, Macedonians settled in the Lukovit area, became particularly notorious. It consisted of fifteen to twenty men who committed many robberies and murders and in October 1886 even caught the Austrian vice consul who was on his way to the Grand National Assembly in Turnovo.8 In December 1886 the Council of Ministers allocated additional funds for the maintenance of counter gangs in the district of Burgas.9 These facts show that brigandage was not just a side product of the general instability after August 9,10 but a phenomenon with deep roots in Bulgarian social life. After the beginning of spring 1887 the entire country swarmed with gangs of brigands. The Ministry of the Interior concluded that they existed in the counties of Vratsa, Oriahovo, Lovech, Turnovo, Ruse, Razgrad, Silistra, Sofia, Plovdiv, Pazardzhik, Sliven, Kiustendil, and Trun. Their acts had catastrophic effects on trade, crafts, and agriculture. The activities of the brigands compromised security in the state in front of the outer world and created vexing diplomatic incidents. To manage the problem the state allocated considerable means for the maintenance of the increased staff of the police and of the pursuing parties, for prizes for those who had captured or killed brigands. Such prizes were granted to four Turks from the village of Üç [Iuch in Bulgarian] Tepe [modern Tri mogili], the county of Hadzhi Eles [modern Purvomay], who on March 20, 1887 killed 4

 Durzhaven vestnik, 43 (May 13, 1886).  Durzhaven vestnik, 57 (June 19, 1886). 6  Translator’s note: Leva is the national currency of Bulgaria. 7  Durzhaven vestnik, 59 (June 24, 1886). 8  Toma Vassiliov, Zhivot i spomeni [Life and Memoirs] (Sofia: Pridvorna pechatnitsa 1938), 94. 9  Durzhaven vestnik, 9 (January 24, 1887). 10  This conclusion of St. Gruncharov is based on his reliance on T. Vassiliov, who claims that there was no mention of brigandage in 1884–1886. St. Gruncharov, “Ofitserstvoto i politicheskiyat zhivot v Bulgaria prez perioda 1884–1886” [The Officers’ Corps and Political Life in Bulgaria, 1884–1886], in Izvestiya na Instituta za voenna istoriya i Voennoistoricheskoto nauchno druzhestvo [Notifications of the Institute of Military History and the Military Historical Society], Т. 33 (1982), 91; Stoicho Gruncharov, Politicheskite sili i monarhicheskiyat institut v Bulgaria 1886–1894 [Political Forces and the Institution of Monarchy in Bulgaria, 1886–1894] (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1984), 135. 5

Battling over 00 book.indb 181

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

182

Chapter 3

the famous bandit Deli Ibriam Osmanoglu, and to K. Marinov who killed the bandit Marin Pavlov, with a record of several murders in the region of Teteven.11 On August 17, two Turks from the village of Karabashli, the county of Shumen, killed the brigand Osman Karagiozov. On November 3 the inhabitants of Avlanli [modern Palauzovo], the county of Sliven, captured four bandits. On November 14, two brothers from Platikovo, the county of Kiustendil, killed the brigand St. Manchev who was trying to persuade them to join him.12 The initiative of the population was far from sufficient for the solution of the problem. In June 1887, Radoslavov decided to cope with the brigandage and suggested, while the regents adopted, a bill regarding carrying arms. The Law envisaged the introduction of permit tickets for carrying weapons but it did not yield the expected results.13 The government was highly dissatisfied with the moves of the police in the persecution of the brigands. In the county of Plovdiv, out of eight cases the police was able to settle only one, capturing three of the brigands. The police in the Lovech and Teteven areas allowed the brigands to infest the roads committing robberies and killings. In the region of Belovo the free roaming of brigands brought about the introduction of execution. This was why on July 4, 1887 the Ministry of the Interior instructed the provincial governors to take the necessary measures for the persecution of the brigands, to investigate and punish those police commanders who were careless in performing their duties.14 Thus brigandage, which was rooted both in the tradition and in the detachment of part of the population from its normal social environment, in the economic and political crisis, had again turned into a  factor that destabilized the order and security in the country. Its settlement required special measures and they were proposed by the Minister of the Interior, St. Stambolov. On November 20, 1887, he put forward at the attention of the deputies a Bill, which brought economic and political brigandage together and contained measures for its eradication, called a Bill for the Eradication of Brigandage. On December 1, 1887, the Law for the Eradication of Brigandage was adopted. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

11

 Durzhaven vestnik, 45 (28 April 28, 1887).  Durzhaven vestnik, 7 (January 19, 1888). 13  ЦДА/TsDA (Tsentralen Durzhaven Arhiv/ Central State Archive), F. (Fund) 173, o (opis/inventory) 1, a.e. (archival unit) 162, f. 11–13. 14  Durzhaven vestnik, 75 (July 9, 1887). 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 182

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

FASCISM IN THE INTERWAR BALKANS Mario Jareb, Ustaško-domobranski pokret [The Ustasha-Homeguard Movement] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2006), 225, 230–7. Mario Jareb, currently at the Croatian Institute of History, received his historical training in the first scholarly generation during the transition in the 1990s, and was awarded his PhD in 2003. His first monograph, The Ustaša-Homeguard Movement, advanced a detailed analysis of the origins and development of the Ustaša to 1941. In this excerpt, Jareb highlights the use of violence (which he describes as “terroristic”) by irregulars against the Yugoslav state. TERRORIST CHARACTERISTICS OF THE YUGOSLAV REGIME The Yugoslav authorities, along with the usual political and diplomatic methods used against the representatives of the Croatian émigré community, sought to physically eliminate prominent émigrés. Therefore the regime organized several assassinations against the émigrés. [...] In any case, the actions by both sides in this kind of war were characterized by the use of terrorist methods. The answer to the question who first started it is not easy, although the fact is that after the declaration of the dictatorship the regime merely increased the already established practice of using terror against its political rivals (which was particularly expressed during the tragic events of 1928). It is also a fact that the Ustaša organization (and its predecessors, such as the illegal organization Croatian Homeguard) appeared only after those events, which leads to the conclusion that it was the regime that initially behaved in that fashion. Of course, that does not justify the fact that the Ustaša organization from the very beginning of its activities resorted to terrorism as one of its fundamental methods of functioning. Nevertheless, that situation helps to explain why among Croats at that time there were individuals and groups who believed that only through that kind of struggle could a free and independent Croatian state be achieved. This was indirectly confirmed by subsequent Ustaša authors, who often stated that the beginning of Ustaša activity was connected to the establishment of the royal dictatorship. For example, in 1942 Blaž Lorković admitted that “there was a lack of the necessary preconditions among the people for a revolutionary kind of struggle, because they were under the strong influence of their democratic and pacifist leaders, believing that the unity among the nation’s ranks and the righteousness of their cause was strong enough to force the respect of their will. On January 6, 1929, this concept suffered a heavy blow, and at the same time created the opportunity for Dr. Ante Pavelić, the leading representative of revolutionary Croatia, to enter the arena of the Croatian national struggle as its

Battling over 00 book.indb 183

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

184

Chapter 3

fighter in the first ranks.”1 In 1943 Danijel Crljen sharply criticized pacifism, which he held to have dulled the reaction of Croats toward the misfortunes they found themselves in, including the imposed dictatorship, writing that with the meager “means at the Poglavnik’s disposal, he [...] consistently and decisively stood up against philosophy and politics, which had become mutually intertwined around the ideas of pacifism [...]. Slowly and gradually the Croatian people were torn from their torpor and inactivity into which they had partially fallen. Even pacifists, little by little, came to their senses and began to abandon their lifelong philosophy, because the harshness of Croatian everyday existence hit them in the head even more than the sound and thorough Ustaša evidence of the same.”2 Even the wartime Ustaša propaganda, which usually emphasized the Poglavnik’s alleged “genius,” foresight, and absolute adoration among the people, had to admit that segments of the Croatian population (Ustaša propaganda mentioned all of the Croatian people) changed their behavior only under the influence of the regime’s conduct after the establishment of the dictatorship. A number of contemporaries, including Svetozar Pribićević, believed that the growth and activities of the Ustaša-Homeguard movement were the result of reactions to the methods of the regime. Initially, the main organizer of these kinds of Ustaša activities was Gustav Perčec. He directed them from Hungary, where he maintained previously established contacts and over time made new ones. The centers of these activities in Hungary were located in regions close to the Croatian border. Accordingly, border regions in Croatia close to Hungary, such as the part of Podravina near Koprivnica, grew in importance for Ustaša actions. One of the earliest examples of military-terrorist actions by individuals and groups from inside Croatia in cooperation with Perčec was the group around Mijo Seletković and comrades, which was tried in the spring of 1931 for actions one year earlier. In the indictment against them it is possible to see some allegations characteristic of the Ustaša activities of that period.3 It was alleged that the accused were members of a secret organization (“The Legion of Fighters for the Freedom and Independence of Croatia”), in which potential members had to swear a special oath of allegiance to Dr. Ante Pavelić.4 The indictment also

 Blaž Lorković, “Ustaški pokret u borbi za oslobođenje Hrvatske” [The Ustaša Movement in the Struggle for Croatian Liberation], Hrvatski narod (10 February 1942), 6. 2  Danijel Crljen, Naš poglavnik [Our Leader] (Zagreb: Nakladna knjižara Velebit, 1943), 42. 3  The indictment was reprinted almost in its entirety in the article “Veliki proces proti Hrvata u Beogradu” [The Great Trial against the Croats in Belgrade], Hrvatski domobran (Buenos Aires) no. 1 (June 12, 1931) 2, 4–5. 4  “Veliki proces proti Hrvata u Beogradu,” 5. The indictment claimed “Tilman and Bošnjaković allegedly crossed the Hungarian border in order to go to a meeting in Pécs with a gentleman from Zagreb. This gentleman from Zagreb spoke to them in Croatian, and Tilman recognized him as Dr. Pavelić. [...] He asked them if they would join his organi1

Battling over 00 book.indb 184

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

185

claimed that several of the accused maintained contacts with Gustav Perčec in Hungary. In particular this was held against the main suspect, Mijo Seletković, who allegedly organized people in Croatia (specifically Đakovo, where most of the accused came from) and sent them abroad.5 The principal charge regarded the planned assassination of the so-called homage deputation, which intended to visit the king and express the professed loyalty and support of Croatian regions and the Croatian population. The group around Seletković and [Andrija] Tilman, the two main suspects in the assassination attempt, had planned on placing explosives on the track where the delegation’s train was supposed to pass.6 The analysis of the activities of the group of suspects (as described in the indictment) shows that their actions were typical of the domestic Ustaša movement during that period. This includes four elements characteristic of the Ustaša actions inside Croatia: 1. The lack of a strong domestic Ustaša organization, and the direct connection between individuals and groups with Ustaše abroad. 2. The illegal transfer of personnel, weapons, explosives, and propaganda materials from abroad into the country. 3. Carrying out sabotage and assassinations. 4. Informational-propaganda activities inside the country. The individuals and groups in question were in contact with the Ustaša organization abroad (in the initial period mainly with Perčec), and with the encouragement and support of that organization carried out domestic actions. Furthermore, they helped transfer members of the Ustaša organization who as émigrés had constantly lived abroad back into the country. Yet for the most part there is evidence that a strong domestic organization did not exist. This is confirmed in the documents, since neither the indictment nor the final judgment, could provide

zation, and when they confirmed that they would, he asked them to raise three fingers in the air and swear and oath. At that moment they entered into the ‘Legion of Fighters for the Freedom and Independence of Croatia.’” 5  “Veliki proces proti Hrvata u Beogradu.” This part of the indictment claimed that Seletković “resided in Vienna, and came into contact with Pavelić and Perčec. He remained in touch with Perčec. [...] Seletković recruited people in Đakovo, sent them across the border, and gave them a phone number and a password. Afterwards, when these kinds of people returned to Đakovo, he gave them instructions how to carry out assassinations.” 6  For a discussion of this part of the indictment, see “Hrvati pred sudom velike Srbij e. U Beogradu” [Croats before the Court of the Greater Serbia in Belgrade], Grič. Hrvatska korespondencija [Croatian Correspondence], May 7, 1931, 3. The article claimed the suspects were accused of “trying, directly or indirectly, to blow up the train used by the deputation of prostitutes traveling to Belgrade on April 22, 1930.”

Battling over 00 book.indb 185

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

186

Chapter 3

proof of a strong organization among the suspects. This was the case in numerous other examples. N. Kisić Kolanović noted that during this period “the Ustaša organization in Croatia was relatively weak,”7 although there is no doubt that in some regions there existed Ustaša organizations in the narrower sense of the term. That was the case in Koprivnica and its surroundings. In 1933 an Ustaša organization operated in the village of Gola close to the Hungarian border, maintaining direct contact with the Ustaša camp in Janka Puszta. Moreover, several of the individuals had been formally accepted into the Ustaša organization, since they had taken the Ustaša oath “on the revolver, cross, and bomb, which were placed between two burning candles.”8 A number of Ustaša groups were formed near Zadar under the initiative of Ante Brkan and Andrija Relja, the leaders of the Ustaša “center,” which operated in that city since 1931.9 The establishment of that center was connected to Branimir Jelić’s and Gustav Perčec’s visit to Zadar that year.10 Around the same time, nine Ustaša groups were formed in the Zadar region (or more broadly, northern Dalmatia): in Lukova Šugarja, Tribnje pod Velebita, Starigrad, Benkovac, Banjevci, Biograd county (the villages of Vrana, Pakoštane, and Drage), Kukljica, Ugljan, Kalima, and Preko on Dugi otok.11 During this period, domestic groups, in cooperation with Ustaša organizations abroad (or more specifically, with Gustav Perčec), obtained explosives and weapons and secretly transferred them into Croatia. Concretely, in the case of the accused group connected with Mijo Selektović, the main location for meetings and activities was Pécs, the capital of the Hungarian part of Baranja and geo Nada Kisić Kolanović, NDH i Italija [The Independent State of Croatia and Italy] (Zagreb: Naklada Ljevak, 2001), 25 8  According to the article “Najveći dosadašnji process po zaštiti države,” [The Greatest Trial Thus Far on the Law of the Protection of the State] Novo doba (Split), XVII (July 26, 1934) 174, 3, the quote was attributed to Franjo Maronić, one of the suspects from Podravina, whose trial was held at the court for state security in Belgrade in July 1934. 9  Croatian State Archive (HDA), RSUP SRH, SDS, 013.0/44, report “Rekonstrukcija ustaškog aparata i pokreta sa područja kotara Zadar” [A Reconstruction of the Ustaša Apparatus and Movement in the Area of Zadar County], 1. 10  “Rekonstrukcija ustaškog aparata i pokreta sa područja kotara Zadar.” The report notes that “in the spring of 1931, the Ustaša leaders Dr. Branko Jelić and Gustav Perčec arrived in Zadar. It has not been confirmed who they met with, but based on what followed, it is clear they came to form a ‘center.’ Several months later, Gustav Perčec returned to Zadar and called on ANTE BRKAN, who was well-known in Zadar as a follower of [Ante] Starčević. He stayed with Brkan several days, and during that period he won him over to the Ustaša movement, introduced him to the goals and tasks of the Ustaša organization, and put him to work. At that time, Brkan swore the oath of allegiance in front of Perčec, and was told that all others he recruited should likewise take a similar oath. During those days, Perčec visited Andrija Relja in Zadar, a merchant who was a self-declared Croatian nationalist. Perčec informed Brkan that he had recruited Relja, and gave him the task to establish contact with the latter.” 11  “Rekonstrukcija ustaškog aparata i pokreta sa područja kotara Zadar,” 7–8. 7

Battling over 00 book.indb 186

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

187

graphically the closest city to that group of suspects. Allegedly, several of them, including Mijo Selektović, Andrija Tilman, Antun Herman, and Aleksandar Gros, personally traveled to Pécs and resided in that city.12 Furthermore, the indictment noted that suspects Herman and Gros received training in handling explosives and weapons (it was indirectly alleged the main suspect Mijo Selektović did likewise), which suggests there existed some kind of Ustaša center or training camp.13 The main centers used to smuggle weapons and propaganda material into Croatia were Zadar, Rijeka, and Janka Puszta in Hungary. The main organizer of transferring weapons and personnel from Hungary into Croatia was Gustav Perčec. From “Janka Puszta contacts were maintained with Međumurje and Podravina, through the use of individuals with dual citizenship. That center was used to transfer weapons, time bombs, and Ustaša propaganda materials.”14 According to the same source, the “connections were regular individuals, Ustaša believers, who could legally obtain passports.”15 The role of dual citizens was revealed during the aforementioned trial, held in Belgrade in 1934. During the trial, the suspect and dual citizen Franjo Maronić admitted that he had participated in the smuggling of weapons, namely time bombs, bombs, revolvers, and ammunition.16 Zadar and Rijeka were likewise transfer points for smuggling people, weapons, and explosives.17 In that sense, apparently Rijeka was the city where those kinds of activities began the earliest. From the very beginning, Vjekoslav Servatzy, was engaged in those actions. In Zadar, all Ustaša activities were directed by Ante Brkan and Andrija Relja.18 Sources indicate that “the weapons smuggled onto the territory of Yugoslavia in the first year of operations by the ‘center,’ in the region of Zadar and Lika, included about fifty pistols, about ten military rifles, the same number of hand grenades, and several time bombs.”19 The Zadar center was connected to, and to some degree subordinated to, Servatzy in Rijeka. In April 1931, the members of the group associated with Seletković and Tilman had intended to destroy the train tracks and assassinate the homage deputation traveling by train from Zagreb to Belgrade, which would have passed

 “Veliki proces proti Hrvata u Beogradu” [The Great Trial against the Croats in Belgrade], Hrvatski domobran, 2 (June 12, 1931) 1, 4. 13  “Veliki proces proti Hrvata u Beogradu,” 4. 14  HDA, report “Ustaški pokret od 1918. do 1941” [The Ustaša Movement from 1918 until 1941], 24. 15  “Ustaški pokret od 1918. do 1941,” 24. 16  “Najveći dosadašnji process po zaštiti države” [The Biggest Process on the Basis of the State Protection Law Thus Far], Novo doba XVII (July 26, 1934) 174, 3. 17  HDA, report “Ustaški pokret od 1918. do 1941,” 24. 18  HDA, RSUP SRH, SDS, 013.0/44, report “Rekonstrukcija ustaškog aparata i pokreta sa područja kotara Zadar,” 1 19  “Rekonstrukcija ustaškog aparata i pokreta sa područja kotara Zadar,” 7. 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 187

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

188

Chapter 3

through the station in Vrpolje near Đakovo. Their indictment also mentions plans to assassinate Dr. Nikola Nikić.20 All of this alludes to the “technical preparations” described in Techniques of the Revolution (“Tehnike revolucije”) from 1932, which envisages organizing attacks against individuals and buildings.21 According to this Ustaša document, assassinations are demonstrative and demoralizing means to remove an individual or destroy an object that supports the enemy’s rule. Demonstrative assassinations primarily serve to sow confusion and nervousness among the enemy, and secondly to provide practical training for individual revolutionaries in handling explosive materials in the field [...]. Finally, the purpose of demonstrative assassinations is to show the helplessness of the government in the face of revolutionary actions, as well as to kill the activities and spirit of the police.”22 Regarding attacks against buildings, the document emphasized that they should be carried out “since just like attacks against individuals, they produce fear and confusion among the enemy, and at this stage it allows individual Ustaše to practice handling explosives as well as obtain training in silent and surprise attacks.”23 In fact, from 1931 to 1934, the instructions from Techniques of the Revolution were widely adopted, and numerous attacks against the representatives of the regime and government buildings were carried out. All available sources suggest Perčec as the main organizer of these attacks.24 The indictment against the group around Seletković and Tilman shows that this practice already began in the spring of 1930. One of the most well-known assassinations on a representative of the regime took place in February 1931, when the peasant Ivan Rosić shot local official Andrija Berić with a rifle in Nova Gradiška. Rosić and a group of eleven others (mainly peasants) were arrested and tried in the State Court for Internal Security. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

 Dr. Nikola Nikić from Nikinaca in Srijem was a member of the HSS in the 1920s. Already during that period he broke ranks with Stjepan Radić, and later on he supported the dictatorship by entering the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’s parliament. 21  The text was partially published in the February and April 1932 issues of Ustaša. Vijesniku hrvatskih revolucionaraca [Ustaša: The Newspaper of Croatian Revolutionaries]. 22  “Tehnike revolucije,” in Ustaša. Vijesniku hrvatskih revolucionaraca (February 1932): 3, in the section titled “Assassinations.” 23  “Tehnike revolucije” (April 1932): 4, in the section titled “Attacks on buildings.” 24  According to Vladeta Milićević, Perčec “rose to the position of Pavelić’s deputy and commanded the training camp for terrorists in Janka Puszta. These terrorists individually crossed the Yugoslav border and killed police officers.” Vladeta Milićević, Ubistvo kralja u Marselju [A King’s Murder in Marseilles] (Beograd: Filip Višnjić, 2000), 39. 20

Battling over 00 book.indb 188

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatska 1918–2008 [Croatia 1918–2008] (Zagreb: EPH 2008), 145–8. (On Goldstein’s biography, see p. 111) The brutal suppression of national freedoms and identity [by the Yugoslav regime] provoked an extreme nationalist reaction. In 1932, from the main Ustaša headquarters in Italy, [Ante] Pavelić published the first issue of Ustaša—newspaper of Croatian revolutionaries. This publication, as well as some other documents, advocated the most radical means for achieving an independent Croatia, including terrorism: “In the struggle for sacred goals, all methods are allowed, even those most horrible.” Of these methods, violence, which also signified terror, played a  key role: “THE KNIFE, THE REVOLVER, THE MACHINE GUN, AND THE TIME BOMB, these are the idols, these are the bells which will announce the dawn and resurrection of the INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA,” noted the introduction signed by the Poglavnik (“leader”) in the first issue of Ustaša from February 1932. In the following years, the Ustaša movement developed a cult (eventually a myth) around knives (as did the Četniks, who had many ideological similarities with the Ustaše), which in the order of weapons were always mentioned first. The knife (or dagger) became one of the “Ustaša trademarks,” “the centuries-old means for dealing with the enemy. The Ustaše do not carry daggers as ornaments, but because of their importance for combat in close quarters.” During the early 1930s, carrying and using a knife was used to prove one’s bravery, but it is also possible to conclude from these positions that the Ustaše were laying plans in which knives would be used to commit massive crimes. From the summer of 1932, members of the Ustaša organization planted bombs in train and police stations (in Osijek Koprivnica, and Goli), resulting in dead and wounded civilians. A former minister, Mirko Neudorfer, was among those killed during these attacks. According to the testimony of Ljubo Miloš, while still in exile on the Italian island of Lipari, several Ustaše had already “spoken with Pavelić about how to uproot the Serbs in Croatia [...] how to provoke a rebellion among the Serbs if the Serbs do not do it themselves, because that will justify their liquidation.” In that same aggressive spirit, Ustaša publications during the decade spent in exile spread the cult of revenge and hatred. The obsession with bloodlust and violence quickly reached mythical proportions, creating a fertile ground for the genocidal crimes of the NDH. Thus the Ustaše in the internment camps on Lipari were systematically indoctrinated in the spirit of revenge and trained to commit terrorist acts. The organizers and perpetrators of the first mass killings in the NDH, as well as the commanders of the first “death camps,” including those who were a part of the Jasenovac camp system, were for the most part former internees from Lipari. In another issue of Ustaša from 1932, the article “It is Necessary to Slaughter” advised that “those who drink the blood of the Croatian people need to be slaughtered, so that never again can that kind of evil appear in the Croatian

Battling over 00 book.indb 189

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

190

Chapter 3

lands.” In the subsequent issues of the same paper, most often in the Poglavnik’s introductions or in the articles of Mijo Babić (1903–41, one of Pavelić’s closest associates who killed nearly twenty Ustaše suspected of disloyalty on Lipari), similar instructions could be found: “the Ustaša army must fight to exterminate the parasitic profiteers [šićardije] in Croatia”; “it is necessary to wash away the filth with blood”; “when the bloodletting begins, streams of blood will flow”; “the drops of blood will turn into entire currents and rivers, because the enemy’s [dušmane] blood will flow in currents and rivers, and bombs will sow their bones like the wind sows chaff,” because “every Ustaša is waiting for the call [...] to throw their soul and body into battle with the enemy, to kill and crush him”; and “the key roles will be played by the sacrifices, revolvers, bombs, and sharp daggers of Croatian Ustaše, who will cleanse and cut away everything that is rotten in the healthy body of the Croatian nation.” By September 1932 the phrase “CHASE THE MONGRELS ACROSS THE DRINA RIVER” written in capital letters was used regularly, and one month later a rhyme celebrated the sirdar [leader] who “Wherever he arrives he catches up with Serbs/All traces of life will be erased.” In 1933 Mile Budak published the often quoted verse “Flee you mongrels, across the Drina River.” These were slogans that revealed the anti-Serb (along with anti-Yugoslav) ideology of the Ustaša movement. What Pavelić did not want to publish or say in public, he told his inner circle. According to the testimony given in 1951 by Ante Brkan, Pavelić’s aide-de-camp during the period of Italian exile, in 1934 in Torino “Pavelić stated that it was necessary to slaughter all of our enemies, and that meant all Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.” Brkan claims that he complained to Pavelić that it “was impossible because the Serbs make up 25% of the population in Croatian lands,” but “Pavelić refused to change his mind on that issue.” In fact, this kind of radicalism combined with militancy portended a war in which there would be no mercy for the enemy. Those kinds of statements were favored by the patron of the Ustaša movement, Benito Mussolini, who published the founding text of fascist ideology, The Doctrine of Fascism, in 1932: Fascism believes in neither the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates pacifism, which carries within itself the renunciation of the struggle and the fear of sacrifice. […] War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. The following year Pavelić published the Principles of the Croatian Ustaša Movement. This document upholds the idea of national exclusivism, in other words limiting all state and national activities to those who “are by descent and by blood members of the Croatian nation.” Article 12 of the Principles states that “of those in Croatia whose origins are not from the peasantry, in 90 out of 100

Battling over 00 book.indb 190

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

191

cases they are of non-Croatian descent and blood.” In addition to national exclusivism, which can be connected at least indirectly to the influence of Nazism and fascism, the aforementioned ideal of a “peasant state” confirms the deeply ingrained inability of Pavelić’s followers to understand and accept contemporary social changes. They desired to return Croatian society to the “innocence of the simple life,” which was a historical and social anachronism. Thus, those kinds of anachronisms were elevated into values that represented the “eternal” special qualities of the people. Neither Pavelić, nor his closest associates, had any concept of how to stimulate social or economic development. The next fundamental ideological feature of the Ustaša movement was legal historicism, in other words, the reliance upon Croatian historical state rights and laying claim over all territories that once were, or allegedly were, part of Croatia, were settled by Croats, and even beyond. Ustaša ideologists included not only Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Croatian ethnic space, but also Sandžak, Srijem, and Bačka. They demanded the unconditional rejection of all legal ties with other Yugoslav peoples. Already published in the United States in 1929, Pavelić claimed “the establishment of a Croatian state” was the precondition for “a lasting peace in the Balkans,” which corroborated with the thesis that “coexistence with Belgrade is not possible.” He also listed proof of the various ways Croats were exploited, and concluded that “the Croat people want nothing to do with Belgrade.” Pavelić and his followers rejected the act of unification in 1918, and considered the Drina River to be the border between two worlds, the east and the west (a position held by Milan Šufflay in the 1920s). In order to negate links with other Slavs, in particular with Serbs, they advocated the (senseless) theory about the Gothic origin of Croats. In addition to national exclusivity and the exaltation of the state, the Ustaše appropriated from Fascism and Nazism the glorification of military options in achieving political goals, negative opinions toward communism, socialism, and Western (liberal) democracy, and the concept of the absolute leader (Führer, Duce), who deserved unquestioned loyalty as the head of the government. Thus, everyone who wanted to become a member of the Ustaša movement needed to take an oath of allegiance. The potential member swore “to God almighty and everything considered holy to abide by the Ustaša principles,” which included “carrying out all of the Poglavnik’s orders without question.” Whoever was sworn in also vowed that if they “violated this oath [...] they can expect to be put to death.” There were individuals as well as entire groups who accepted these extreme ideas. In the first place, these were workers and peasants who were already nationalists. As a rule, they were generally first generation migrants into cities or peasants who had become familiar with urban life, who often came from “undeveloped regions” with feelings of being abandoned by the “system.” Therefore they were easily drawn in by right-wing (as well as left-wing) slogans. Their view of the world and subsequent ideological position developed during a period of rapid capitalist development with all of its negative consequences for the

Battling over 00 book.indb 191

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

192

Chapter 3

working classes, in addition to the permanent agricultural crises resulting in rising debts and ruin among the peasantry. The primary culprit for this situation, according to their perception, was “Serbian hegemony.” There were also narrower groups who believed the Yugoslav regime had done them great harm; for example, former officers of the Austro-Hungarian Army (such as Slavko Kvaternik, [Stjepan] Sarkotić, [Ivan] Perčević, [Stjepan] Duić, and others) who lost their positions, and Muslim begs [notables] who lost their lands during agrarian reforms. Ustaša ideology proselytized to the “common man,” offering him the security of the “national community” during difficult times of crisis. In return it required the renunciation of individuality—“duty and accountability towards the group should be the basis of all private activities of every individual who is a member of the Croatian nation.” To be a “member of the Croatian nation,” that is, belonging to the “Croatian national community,” was a literal translation of the German word Volksgemeinschaft—in Nazi ideology the establishment of a kind of “national community” was the main purpose of the Nazi revolution, the central goal whose realization required the dedication of all forces. All racially superior Germans were included in the Volksgemeinschaft (all Croats in the case of the “Croatian national community”), in which party allegiance, social status, and wealth became irrelevant. They were superseded by the spirit of racial unity. In 1934, the Ustaše, along with Macedonian nationalists, organized the assassination of King Aleksandar in Marseilles during his official visit to France. The Italian and Hungarian secret services also played key organizational roles. This was the most spectacular “success” of the VMRO and the Ustaša movement before the establishment of the NDH. An international scandal erupted after the assassination in Marseilles, once it became evident that Italy assisted the organization responsible, namely the Ustaše. Thus the Italian government was forced to arrest the Ustaše—some were placed in prison while others were confined to internment camps. Ante Pavelić, who was directly involved in the organization of the assassination, was likewise arrested. He spent nearly two years in prison. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 192

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Nikolai Poppetrov, Fashizmut v Bulgaria: razvitie i proyavi [Fascism in Bulgaria. Development and Activities] (Sofia: IK Kama, 2008), 7–9, 69–72. Nikolai Poppetrov emerged as a leading scholar of the history of Bulgarian fascism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the publication of critical reappraisals of the Bulgarian movements in Bulgarian Historical Review and Istoricheski Pregled. The excerpts below, from Fashizmut v Bulgaria, represent the development of earlier articles, firmly situating the development of fascist ideology in terms of the social, political, and economic crises of interwar Bulgaria. Notably in 2009 Poppetrov published the first primary sourcebook on Bulgarian fascism, entitled Sotsialno naliavo, natsionalizmut napred. He is a member of the Institute for Historical Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. FASCISM IN BULGARIA By order of a number of factors, which are indicated in the text, fascism echoed and found adherents in Bulgaria. Its presence in the Bulgarian space is beyond doubt. Initially it was manifested only in the propaganda of the experience of Italian fascism, consequently, also in the establishment of formations, which partially or fully professed a fascist program and organizational principles. Taking into account the specifics of fascism in its Italian prototype and its other European expressions, and its development under Bulgarian conditions, we may give the following definition of the phenomenon in Bulgaria:

• Ideas and political programs similar to and identical with the fascist pro-

totype spread in Bulgarian context. Organizations with several hundred to several dozens of thousands membership were founded. • Fascism in the form of a single political organization (but also as ideology) has not been in power and has not participated in the government of the country. […] Three major stages may be discerned in terms of ideas, ideology, propaganda, and organization in the development of fascism in the Bulgarian context:

• early fascism (proto-fascism), in the first half of the 1920s, a  period of

active initial acquaintance with, respectively, propaganda of Italian Fascism, and of formation of the first organizational nuclei of fascist activity; • an increasing interest in the phenomenon and of the rapid development of some organizations; a period coincident both with the world economic crisis and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, namely, the period of the second half of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, until the coup of 1934; and

Battling over 00 book.indb 193

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

194

Chapter 3

• a fully developed fascist ideology and of organizations with considerable membership, activity, and presence, in the second half of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s. OUTLINE OF THE SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE “SECOND WAVE” OF BULGARIAN FASCISM By January 30, 1933, when the national socialists took over the government in Germany, the Bulgarian followers of Mussolini and Hitler had already gone through the phase of organizational and ideological building. They were at a  stage when they were able to deploy efforts to enhance their influence. The disposition of powers in the right-wing space showed the prevalence of organizations, which presented themselves as the unique spokesmen for all-nation goals rather than for ones mechanically borrowed from fascism. BNSK (Bulgarski narodensuyuz “Kubrat”/Bulgarian People’s Union “Kubrat”), SBRZ (Suyuz “Bulgarska rodna zashtita”/“Bulgarian Home Defense” Union), and SBF (Suyuz na bulgarskite fashisti/Union of Bulgarian Fascists) were in deep organizational crisis; NSBRP (Natsionalsotsialisticheska bulgarska rabotnicheska partiya/ National-Socialist Bulgarian Workers’ Party) of [Hr.] Kunchev was of no importance; Natsionalna Zadruga (National Zadruga) enjoyed changeable success. The new factors—Zveno, NSD (Narodno sotsialno dvizhenie/National Social Movement), Mlada Bulgaria (Young Bulgaria), SMNL (Suyuz na mladezhkite natsionalni legioni/Union of the Youth’s National Legions) were on the offensive. The explanation for this is simple: they grasped the live tendencies of the moment, laid an emphasis on the mass social leanings, and became spokesmen of discontent and desires that had captured sizeable social circles. The popularity of the representatives of this “second fascist wave” may be attributed also to the clear structuring of the agenda and the goals set in it. The social, the problématique related to the economic crisis, the indebtedness of a considerable part of the peasant population, the insecure position of the workers are being drawn in the limelight. Society (nation, national community) is seen as a community consisting of three main components—peasants, workers (i.e., producers), and organizers. Labor is held to be the most fundamental national (communal) value, while the right to labor is proclaimed as one of the major principles of the new authoritarian or fascist state. Solidarity, the sense of duty and obligation to the community (collectivity), is the main uniting feature of relations within the community. From a social angle, the very fascist formations are presented as movements, that is, as mass organizations in which all social (property) differences are made null and void. The antiliberal pathos, which transpires in all texts, demonstrates the intention to break with the past, with a wrong direction, a way of thinking and conduct that are alien to the Bulgarian mentality. The conclusions and the platforms of

Battling over 00 book.indb 194

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

195

Zveno and NSD show a pragmatic approach of identifying problems and offering solutions for them, and a concrete program to deal with them at that. There is unanimous belief in the political circle and in the movement that the establishment of a just economic and social order is connected with changes in the existing situation, with the introduction of planning and control. The restraint and abolishment of liberalism in the economic life, the endorsement of principles bringing together employees and employers, and regulating the economic and social relations are only possible with the active involvement of the state in the economic and social spheres. Thus the question of the leading role of the state in the economic and social life is imperatively included in the agenda of the day. This is the source of the preference given to the organization of society based on estates through professional representation of interests—a position that places the two formations closest to fascism. As a matter of fact, the corporate system, which had become very popular in the right-wing space at the beginning of the 1930s, was not entirely alien to Bulgarians. As an estate organization BZNS (Bulgarski zemedelski naroden suyuz/ Bulgarian Agricultural National Union), for example, had always maintained the view that the best representation of social interests would be on the basis of (professional) estates. This oblique and rather contingent closeness between agriculturalist estateness and fascist corporatism would, for example, explain the successes of the NSD among peasants. New is also the approach to the most painful problem of the national agenda—the national question. Members of Zveno, Mlada Bulgaria, and of the National Social Movement valued the nationstate as a fundamental element in the contemporary and future development of Bulgaria. To one or another degree, their preferences went to irredentism. However, in their current programs, as well as in their direct ideological and organizational activities, the national question and the revision of the unjust peace treaties occupied only a secondary, subordinate place. The social and economic issues had a primary role and this made their political line harmonious with the immediate problems of the bulk of society. Anti-Semitism became an essential feature of the Bulgarian political landscape. It was maintained by Rodna Zashtita, which made serious efforts to formulate its understanding of the kindred relationship among Masons, Jews, and communists (Bolsheviks). The organization used every opportunity to manifest its anti-Semitism (e.g., in the trial against its member Kalpakchiev who had maltreated a Jew for mercenary reasons, 1932). Zveno, NSD, and Mlada Bulgaria manifested toleration for Jewry and did not show any anti-Semitic tendencies. However, anti-Semitism found a warm reception among the youth’s movement of the Legions. Some local circles and bodies of the Legions made anti-Semitism their main direction of propaganda (e.g., the journal Mosht [Power], published in Plovdiv, 1933). Their anti-Semitic argumentation is very similar to that of the national socialists, but it lacked the racist aspect, as the theory of the pure race

Battling over 00 book.indb 195

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

196

Chapter 3

did not find any significant echo in the Bulgarian political space. What needs to be underscored is that as early as the beginning of the 1930s, the political trend defined here as fascist had acquired to a  considerable degree an anti-Semitic dimension. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

Battling over 00 book.indb 196

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Constantin Iordachi, “Charisma and Violence: Criminal Revenge versus Christian Morality.” In Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the “Archangel Michael” in Inter-war Romania (Trondheim: Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures & Societies, 2004), 137–45. Constantin Iordachi is professor at the Central European University, Budapest. His publications include works related to national identity, the Holocaust in Romania, and fascism in both its Romanian and wider European manifestations. In Charisma, Politics and Violence, Iordachi uses a modified version of Max Weber’s concept of charismatic leadership to explain the Legion’s rise and its mobilizing power, and situates its ideology within the context of interwar Romanian discourse. (See also the List of Contributors, p. 313.) CHARISMA AND VIOLENCE: CRIMINAL REVENGE VERSUS CHRISTIAN MORALITY The charismatic nature of the Legion accounts for its violent character. Violence is a universal feature of generic fascism; however, the self-destructive nature of the Legion and its propensity for sacrifice single it out in comparison to other movements. Stanley G. Payne pointed out that, although the Legion “was sometimes violent in the extreme,” its violence was “in one sense qualitatively different from that of other radicals and revolutionaries,” namely in its emphasis on self-sacrifice “leading to veritable immolation“ resembling “the most moralistic and idealistic of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary assassins at the turn of the century.”1 The Legion practiced a reactive type of violence, stemming from two main sources: revenge for what they perceived as their public humiliation and punishment for treason.2 First, its vengeful character was indicative of the stigmatic identity of the two main Legionary protagonists, Codreanu and Moţa, accounting for their criminal behavior. In 1924 Codreanu was arrested by prefect of police

  Stanley G. Payne, Fascism. Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), 117. This feature was noted by other scholars, as well. See, for example, Zeev Barbu’s comment: “I know of no other fascist movement which inculcated in its members a deeper sense of personal dedication and sacrifice.” Zeev Barbu, “Rumania,” in S. J. Woolf (ed.), European Fascism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 157. 2  This is not to say that the Legionaries were provoked to violence by authorities, as Eugen Weber suggested. In fact, Zeev Barbu recollects that, in the public meetings he attended in interwar Romania, Legionaries were the ones causing troubles and instigating to violence. Moreover, Romanian authorities lacked firmness, alternating harsh methods with conciliatory attitudes. Despite their propaganda claims, Legionaries were thus perpetrators rather than victims. See Barbu, “Rumania,” 159–160. In this paper, the reactive character of the Legionary violence refers to their perception of being victimized. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 197

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

198

Chapter 3

Constantin Manciu together with fifty student activists, carried in handcuffs through the city center and then maltreated. The humiliation of being slapped and spat by the police and then publicly “derided” by Jews—a traumatic experience amply documented in his memoirs—generated a deep crisis of identity, which Codreanu solved by endorsing violent revenge: “From now on I  will always keep my revolver on me. And, at the first, the slightest provocation, I will shoot; nobody will be able to change my decision.”3 Codreanu’s cult of the revolver served as a symbolic compensation for his stigmatic symptom of powerlessness and inadequacy.4 The experience of personal humiliation was later projected at the level of the entire Legionary community, accounting for the strong emphasis on pride and honor put by the Legionary code of conduct: “I believe there is no greater suffering for a fighter, who lives from pride and honor, than disarming and then humiliation. Death is always sweeter than this.”5 This manner of rationalizing violence by appealing to moral categories such as “integrity,” “purity,” and “righteousness” is characteristic of charismatic movements of a sectarian authoritarian orientation.6 Second, since Legionaries preached the creation of a new, homogeneous and internally unified national community, political treason and religious conversion—defined as forms of one breaking his/her organic ties with the community—were regarded as capital sins.7 It was therefore not by chance that the Legion’s two founding political acts were crimes punishing treason or corruption: in 1923 Moţa wounded his comrade Alexandru Vernicescu for denouncement, while in 1924 Codreanu killed chief of police Manciu to “avenge” his humiliation and repression of student nationalism. Codreanu’s and Moţa’s criminal actions emulated the local model of popular haiducs, as fighters for social justice outside state institutions; they can also be seen as part of the postwar trend of “shooters” that proliferated in European politics in the first postwar years.8  Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu, “Pe Rarău,” Pentru legionari, vol. 1 (Sibiu: Totul pentru Ţară, 1936), 199. 4  On this issue, see also John Millfull, “‘My Sex the Revolver: Fascism as a Theatre for the Compensation of Male Inadequacies,” in John Millfull (ed.), The Attractions of Fascists. Social Psychology and Aesthetics of the ‘Triumph of the Right’ (New York, Oxford, Munich: Berg, 1990), 176–85. 5  Codreanu, “Complotul Studenţesc din octombrie 1923,” Pentru legionari, 165. 6  On this point, see also Barbu, “Rumania,” 159–60. 7  Nae Ionescu, “Trădarea şi convertirea,” in Fenomenul legionar. Introduction by Constantin Papanace (Cetatea Eterna [Rome]: Editura Armatolii, 1963), 28–29. 8   Francisco Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 1919–1941. Mistica ultranaţionalismului (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1993, 2nd ed. 1995), 81 (Original Spanish edition: La Mística del Ultranacionalismo. Historia de la Guardia de Hierron. Rumania, 1919–1941, Bellaterra: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 1989). See also E. J. Hobsbawm, “The Social Bandit,” in Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1959), 13–29. In the latter’s view, “A man becomes a bandit because he does something which is not regarded as criminal 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 198

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

199

The Legion’s violence was directed not only against Romania’s ethnic minorities such as the Jews but also against the country’s political establishment, regarded as corrupt and inefficient. The Legionary “hierarchy of guilt” was discussed and agreed upon by the Văcăreşteni since the 1923 student plot: The first problem posed to us was the following: who had to pay first? Who are the guiltiest for the terrible state of the country: Romanians or Jews? We unanimously agreed that the first and guiltiest are scoundrel Romanians who, for Judas’ money, have betrayed their people. The Kikes are our enemies and in this quality, they hate us, poison us and exterminate us. But the Romanian leaders who place themselves in the same category with them are more than enemies: They are traitors. The first and most terrible punishment is deserved first of all by the traitor and then by the enemy. If I had a single bullet, and in front of me there were an enemy and a traitor, I would shoot the latter.9 Accordingly, Codreanu defined the fight against the corrupt and treacherous political establishment as a precondition for solving the Jewish question: “The Romanian people cannot solve the Jewish question before solving the problem of politicianism.”10 This list of priorities imprinted the Legion an antiestablishment orientation from its very inception. The practice of violent revenge contradicted the alleged Christian basis of Legionary ideology, generating pressing moral and ideological dilemmas. At a personal level, the tension between Ion I. Moţa’s and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s self-professed Christian convictions and their option for violence is documented by numerous witness accounts, which pointed out that the two were at times torn apart by moral dilemmas in justifying their crimes. The sociologist Mircea Vulcănescu argued that Codreanu “was often tortured by guilt which furrowed his face with deep wrinkles of regret, and darkened, behind their usual fierceness, his blue eyes.”11 Similarly, in 1932, Nichifor Crainic provided a  shocking account of Codreanu’s first experience as a  speaker in the Romanian parliament [...]. Although he had before him an elaborate text authored by Crainic, Codreanu was unable to declaim it. Inquired by Crainic over the reasons for his deplorable failure, Codreanu confessed that during his speech he constantly feared the audience would openly blame him for his crime, calling him

by his local conventions, but is so regarded by the State or the local rulers.” The career of a social bandit always starts with a small incident that pushes him in outlawry; the incipient bandit is nevertheless regarded by the local population as “honorable” and noncriminal. See 15, 16. 9  Codreanu, Pentru legionari, 163. 10  Codreanu, “Gânduri de viaţă nouă,” Pentru legionari, 178. 11  Vulcănescu, Nae Ionescu asa cum l-am cunoscut, 81.

Battling over 00 book.indb 199

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

200

Chapter 3

a criminal. He then showed Crainic his pistol, stating he was ready to use it for punishing the eventual verbal aggressors for attempting to humiliate him. In order to justify their deeds, Codreanu and Moţa published autobiographies, entitled Pentru legionari and Cranii de lemn, respectively, resembling the genre of spiritual memoirs proliferating at the turn of the century, especially in France. Although these works were propaganda materials written for the consumption of the Legionaries and for recruiting new members, they document the convictions and main motivations of the two leaders during a particularly formative period of their existence. In retrospect, these autobiographies can also shed light on the death of the two leaders, which followed the inflexible constraints of their charismatic self-identification. According to Vulcănescu, Moţa, “tortured by bitter remorse” for his sin, went to fight in the Spanish Civil War “so that God judges him.”12 In the same vein, Papanace argues that Codreanu chose to confront the king’s repression, fearing that taking refuge abroad might be regarded by his followers as an abdication from sacrifice. From a  theoretical point of view, the Legion’s pursuit of violence was legitimized by invoking the eclectic intellectual and political writings of French theorist Georges Sorel (1847–1922). Building mainly on the ideas of PierreJoseph Proudhon and Friedrich Nietzsche, Sorel advocated the renewal of the social order through a new form of apocalyptic politics in which violence played a central role.13 Under the impact of Sorel’s writings and political engagement, many intellectuals in Italy and France deserted the democratic idea in favor of the cult of violence.14 Sorel’s ideas were incorporated into Legionary ideology, as well. Since 1926, in articles published in Conştiinţa Naţională and later in Axa, Nicolae Roşu tried to “legitimize violence, practically and theoretically” by valuing “the moral and dynamic sense of Sorelian violence.”15 Legionary fanaticism led to the creation of “death squads” whose members fulfilled revenge missions at all costs, thus imprinting a terrorist character on the Legion. Ion I. Moţa valued self-sacrifice as the most efficient way of political combat, in a paragraph that synthesizes the self-destructive character of the movement: “The spirit of sacrifice is essential! We all dispose of the most formidable dynamite, the most irresistible instrument of fighting, more powerful than tanks and rifles: our own ashes.”16 Codreanu also claimed that “The Legionary loves death  Vulcănescu, Nae Ionescu asa cum l-am cunoscut, 100.  David Ohana, “Georges Sorel and the Rise of Political Myth,” History of European Ideas, 13 (1991) 6, 733–46. 14  See Jack J. Roth, The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980), and his claim that Italian Fascism was “a Franco-Italian enterprise.” 15  Nicolae Roşu, “Dizolvarea Gărzii de Fier,” Axa II (December 23, 1933) 24, I. 16  Ion Moţa, “Spasmul şi concluziile sale,” in Almanahul Societăţii “Petru Maior” (Cluj: Cartea Românească, 1929), 207. 12 13

Battling over 00 book.indb 200

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

201

since his blood forges the cement of a future Legionary Romania.” The propensity of sacrifice led to the glorification of Legionary death, celebrated in numerous manifestos as “our dearest wedding among weddings,” as in the song by Rady Gyr, the official poet of the Legion, entitled “The Anthem of the Legionary Youth”: The Guard, the Captain, Recasts us into iron eagles The Fatherland, The Captain, And the divine archangel. Death, only Legionary death, Is our dearest wedding among weddings, For the Saint’s Cross, and for the Fatherland, We defeat forests and subdue mountains. There is no prison which frightens us, No torture, no hostile storm, If we all are to fall, struck in the forehead, Death for our Captain is dear to us.17 In comparing death to a wedding, Gyr alluded to a traditional feature of the widespread popular vision of a “cosmic Christianity.” In its most sublime form, this attitude in the face of death was expressed in the popular ballad Mioriţa, a masterpiece of Romanian folk poetry, of which over 700 variants spread throughout the country are known. After being told by a magic sheep of an imminent plot to assassinate him, the ballad’s hero, a well-to-do shepherd, adopts a passive and resigned attitude, portraying his death as a stellar wedding ceremony. Another popular source for the cult of the sacrifice was the mythical figure of the Manole mason. According to a historical legend, Manole built the church of Curtea de Argeş, the medieval residence of Wallachian princes. Since the church repeatedly collapsed, in order to erect the building Manole had to sacrifice his own wife, by building her into the wall. Manole’s figure appeared in numerous works attempting to define the Romanian national character in the interwar period.18 Due to its importance, Sorin Alexandrescu defined the “Manolic passion” as a main feature of the Romanian political culture.19  Radu Gyr, “Imnul tinereţii legionare,” music by Ion Mânzatu, in Cântece legionare, edited by Ioan-Laurian Tota (Bucharest: Editura L.A.M., 1997), C. Iordachi’s emphasis. 18  Among the most important ones, see Lucian Blaga’s drama Meşterul Manole (1927). See also the chapter on Manole in Mircea Eliade, De Zalmoxis à Gengis-Khan. Études comparatives sur les religions et le folklore de la Dacie et de l’Europe orientale (Paris: Payot, 1970). English ed.: Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God: Comparative Studies in the Religions and Folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). 19  Sorin Alexandrescu, Paradoxul Român (Bucharest: Univers, 1998), 23. 17

Battling over 00 book.indb 201

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

202

Chapter 3

In addition to Christian symbolism and popular attitudes toward (self-) sacrifice,20 Legionary ideologues also referred to the cult of death practiced by the Dacians, ancient inhabitants of the territory of Greater Romania celebrated as ancestors of the Romanian people. The Dacians defied death and offered their bravest heroes as voluntary sacrifices to their gods, as messengers to the other world. In a similar vein, the Legionary cult of death was closely associated to the cult of the martyrs and presented the possibility of communion with God: “Our dead Legionaries have made the link between sky and earth. Every Legionary grave means a new root in the earth, on which the Legion is firmly grounded.”21 The challenge of justifying violence became even more acute with the multitude of Legionary terrorist acts, most notably those committed by the Nicadori and the Decemviri. They introduced the practice of political assassinations in Romania, shocking the public. Under what conditions was a Legionary crime acceptable? What, if anything, differentiated a Legionary killing from an “ordinary” crime? How were the assassins to be punished? Legionary ideologues and theologians engaged in long speculative exercises in order to justify and exculpate these murders. Constantin Papanace reports a vivid debate he had in prison with the assassins of Mihai Stelescu, the Decemviri, over the moral, political and Christian justification of Legionary crimes and their meaning. Although his essay has a propagandistic nature, it nevertheless reveals the Legionaries’ own understanding of violence. Asked by the Decemviri to expose his position regarding their deed, Papanace acknowledged the impossibility of reconciling the belief in Orthodox Christianity with the sin of committing a crime: Because you asked me to speak openly, I want to make clear the following: No matter how many moral, national or political justifications would exist for the radical punishment applied to the traitor Stelescu, from a Christian point of view—and those who are theologians know this better—it constitutes a moral sin. And the Legionaries, who regard the Christian dimension as the basis of their spiritual formation, cannot disregard this issue. This remains valid, even if there indeed exist many Christian states that maintain the punishment of death in their legislation. On this particular issue, personal or national motivations cannot attenuate the gravity of our deed. The only great excuse I see for you is your voluntary capitulation to police to pay for your sin in front of human justice, as well. The fact that there has not been any intention

 For an anthropological analysis of popular customs treating death as a wedding, see Gail Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 21  Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, “Cuvânt pentru legionari,” (June 24, 1937), 3. 20

Battling over 00 book.indb 202

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:26

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

203

of escaping justice from your part proves that we are not dealing here with a terrorist act. We are dealing with an active expression of faith— which, it is well understood, is inferior to passive (non-violent) expression, characteristic of true Christian forms—but is by far superior to so many kinds of irresponsible killings under the form of individual, collective, or revolutionary utilitarian terrorism, etc., or under legal cover, such as execution platoons, battlefields, etc. [...]. Therefore, together with material and earthly repenting, continuous prayers for forgiveness and mostly Christian repenting is needed for Doomsday.22 In order to exculpate Codreanu’s responsibility for the crimes committed on behalf of the Legion, Papanace presented them as voluntary initiatives at grassroots levels. However, if they were indeed spontaneous, the criminal acts of the Nicadori and the Decemviri violated Legionary discipline. Papanace acknowledged that punishing them for insubordination was a very delicate issue since the members of these “death squads” were, in fact, emulating the founding political acts of the Legion’s leadership: On this issue, the Captain’s power of decision is not totally free. The fact that he himself, as well as Moţa, were forced by circumstances to answer violently to abuses and treason hampered him from punishing similar acts. Moreover, he was compelled to show even more understanding, even at the risk of creating confusion. The situation would have been totally different had the founders of the Legion not had the fatality to walk, in their youth, constrained by circumstances, on the road to violence, in order to avoid suffocation by abusive politicians. This fatality continues to this day. Ultimately, the Legionaries are its victims.23 By portraying Legionaries as victims of circumstances, Papanace attempts to exculpate their crimes, with the viewpoint that their violence was in self-defense: Indeed, from a Christian point of view, these acts remain regrettable. But they were the fatal consequence of the oppression by alienated and sold-out Romanian politicians, exercised at foreign instigation. Had the Legionaries been granted the liberties guaranteed by the constitution and had they not been denigrated in all forms and by all means, most surely those desperate acts would have not been committed.24

 Constantin Papanace, Despre Căpitan, Nicadori şi Decemviri. Crâmpei de amintiri (Cetatea Eternă [Rome]: Editura Armatolii, 1963), 42. 23  Papanace, Despre Căpitan, 43. 24  Papanace, Despre Căpitan, 43. 22

Battling over 00 book.indb 203

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

204

Chapter 3

Papanace thus portrayed the Legionary assassins as innocent victims, as martyrs who consciously took the burden of avenging betrayal, even at the risk of sacrificing their liberty. He glorified the perpetrators as earthy incarnations of Archangel Michael’s revenge characterized by altruism, purity of soul and capacity for sacrifice. Only in this light can one understand the candid portraits Papanace draws of the Nicadori: It seems to me that their innocence was best expressed by Doru’s shining figure of an archangel, illuminating the ‘box’ of the main defendants. How impressive was this Nicadorian ‘synthesis’! Niki’s thundering regards, stemming from nicely arched eyebrows, Iancu’s figure, framed by a prominent forehead, would have remained incomplete if they were not nuanced by the equilibrated but shy serenity of Doru. Only in this way did the archangelic attributes complement each other: strong determination, straightforward judgment, and seraphic serenity. The picture was impressive in its totality. The sympathy emanated by Doru was irresistible not only to the Legion’s followers but also to its most uncompromising, yet fair, enemies. It was irradiating, attenuating the dark colors with which a certain part of the press portrayed the ‘ferocious’ Legionary criminals. Serenity was Doru’s most fascinating feature.25 Following this line of twisted reasoning, Papanace concluded by reasserting the political usefulness of violent revenge in repressing both external betrayal and internal treason. In doing so, he implicitly acknowledged that, far from constituting regrettable accidents, assassinations were, in fact, central to the Legion’s development. His conclusion is very telling in this respect: “the sacrifice of the Nicadors, as well as yours [of the Decemviri], despite the problems they raise, are not in vain. The movement will venerate them.” 26 Papanace’s essay illuminates the Legionaries’ understanding of violence, stemming from their self-professed charismatic legitimacy. It also reveals the Legionary “code of conduct” in publicly justifying their aggressions. Legionary crimes were presented as heroic acts of social justice: since state institutions were corrupted, Legionaries took on themselves the burden of revenge on behalf of the community. In order to repent for their moral sins, after fulfilling their criminal “missions” the members of the death squads voluntarily surrendered to police. At the same time, they were hailed by Legionary propaganda as martyrs for the national cause.27

 Papanace, Despre Căpitan, 43.  Papanace, Despre Căpitan, 43. 27  For the legionary cult of the martyrs, see Constantin Papanace, Martiri Legionari (Cetatea Eternă [Rome]: Editura Armatolii, 1952), 25 26

Battling over 00 book.indb 204

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

205

The Legion’s discourse on violence underwent several tactical changes during the time, due to new political circumstances. Initially, Legionary terrorist attacks resembled the actions of a “Romantic assassin, who dies killing, out of desperation”28; Legionary violence was selective and demonstrative, being based on the action of individuals or of small teams.29 The growth of the Legion into a mass party and its coming to power demanded more sophisticated elaboration on the nature of violence, its political usage, and its relation to the totalitarian state. At the beginning of Carol’s personal regime, Codreanu tactically denounced violence. He gave up claims to legitimate forms of charismatic violence, invoking in his defense the civil rights and liberties stipulated by the constitutional order he had previously so vehemently opposed. He asserted that: The Legionary Movement will never resort to complot or a coup in order to prevail. By the very essence of our beliefs, we are against conspiracy. This would mean violence of an outward character, while we expect victory from an inner realization of the nation’s soul. We have walled ourselves inside a framework of perfect order and legality, so as to be above any reproach. We will follow the line of the country’s laws without provoking anybody, without answering to any provocation. But do not believe that this will be of any avail. The way our government thinks is: “We cannot destroy you under the pretext that you have violated our laws; therefore, we will violate our laws and destroy you. Have you decided to enter ‘legality’? Well, we will be illegal in relation to you.” So, we have been locked up in a purely diabolical system: we are accused by the press and all the official media of propaganda, of violating the law, and it is just because we maintain ourselves unshakably within the confines of the law that our adversaries are able to crush us in the more cruel way. They try to throw us out of that state of legality into one of violence. But we won’t allow ourselves to be pushed into that position. We have decided to act in the framework of the law. We do not want to use force. We do not want to use violence.30 The lawless assassination of Codreanu and of other legionary leaders in 1938 occasioned polemics over the meaning of “legality.” Mihail Sturdza (Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Legionary government) denounced the execution of

 Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 79.  Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 82–3. 30  Quoted in Michael Sturdza, The Suicide of Europe. Memoirs of Prince Michael Sturdza, Former Foreign Minister of Rumania (Boston, Los Angeles: Western Islands, 1986), 37. 28 29

Battling over 00 book.indb 205

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

206

Chapter 3

Legionary leaders as “the slaughter of the flower of the Romanian youth.” He criticized the cruelty of the massacre, arguing that “the bodies of those murdered were left for days at the crossroads as in the times of Genghis Khan.”31 A Legionary song glorified the sacrifice of “Miti Constantinescu death squad,” who avenged the Captain by assassinating Armand Călinescu, the Prime Minister of Romania, in 1939 including them into the panoply of Legionary assassins, made up of the Nicadori and the Decemviri: We are a squad of Legionary revenge And Decebal, in a terrible hurricane, Raises in us from millenarian times To terribly avenge the Captain. We are the team of Legionary revenge And in our chests we have the shadow of the holy martyrs To open to the Guard a road to the sun, We descend from Nicadori and Decemviri. For the destiny of the betrayed country, And for the people broken in chains, For light and for justice, We raise as the Dacians did out of the earth Prahova winner in eternity Digs our creed in granite rock, Through our merciless arm, The Holy Archangel punishes.32 Debates about the meaning of violence amplified during the Legion’s short rule, when the organization could mobilize state institutions and capacities for pursuing its enemies. In order to justify its campaign of punishment, the official Legionary propaganda presented revenge as a necessary act of justice leading to the salvation of the community. Constantin Noica hailed the purifying effect of violence, openly assuming the contradiction between the Legionary code of conduct and the moral code preached by the church: Violence does not always mean blindness; sometimes, it means thirst for purity. The Captain and Moţa have struck up. Yet they have struck because their gestures had a purifying effect on the heart of this people. And they have struck up only then. Is it a sin to deal a blow? Moţa knew the answer; the Captain knew it, too. That is why he once told

31 32

 Sturdza, The Suicide of Europe, 149.  “Imnul echipei Miti Dumitrescu,” by Ion Tolescu, music by Ion Cubicec, in Cântece legionare, Constantin Iordachi’s translation and emphasis.

Battling over 00 book.indb 206

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Irregular Violence: Bandits, Guerillas, and Militias

207

a  priest: “We are sinful towards the Church; this is the Legionaries’ attitude toward the Church.” But the spirit of the community had asked all those who were giving punishment, to punish. Do you understand the drama in a Christian’s conscience? You have to lose your soul in order to purify the soul of your nation. This is true. The Church does not allow you to lose your soul.33 Once liberated from its Christian moral constraints, Legionary violence escalated to unchecked heights, evolving from selective and demonstrative revenge to organized terror and arbitrary killing.

33

 Constantin Noica, “Sufletul cetăţii” (The Soul of the Community), Buna Vestire 14 (September 23, 1940), quoted in Zigu Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1999), 360.

Battling over 00 book.indb 207

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Battling over 00 book.indb 208

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Chapter 4

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture John R. Lampe and Roumiana Preshlenova

Battling over 00 book.indb 209

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Battling over 00 book.indb 210

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

The Retreat from Economic History John R. Lampe and Roumiana Preshlenova

In contrast to the study of European diplomatic and military interaction with the twentieth century Balkans, as reviewed in chapter 1, Western scholarship has paid only limited attention to foreign economic and cultural influence. For economic history, this recent neglect is part of a general turn away from the discipline itself, leaving only the business history of major multinational enterprises and financial networks as a line of lively inquiry. And for cultural history, to which Western scholarship has increasingly turned, an emphasis on major ideas, public discourse, and collective memory has favored sources that are difficult to assemble for our region, particularly for outsiders. The region’s own historians wherever located have now paid enough attention, some of it in English or German, to these gaps in economic and cultural history to justify the present chapter. Relatively free from the temptation of some of their colleagues in diplomatic and military history to look pejoratively at European influence as foreign intervention, they have concentrated on the precommunist period, the 1920s in particular. For economic history, the widespread tendency to ignore the post-1945 period reflects a reaction against the subject as a scholarly foundation stone of the Marxist teleology used to validate the history of the various communist parties. Its ideologically determined direction from exaggerating origins of an industrial working class to the presumed advances of post-1945 socialist industrialization was discredited by the faltering and final failure of those advances by the 1980s. In Bulgaria, the Marxist discipline, centered in the Karl Marx Economics University, received the greatest attention and did indeed produce some still valuable publication. From the 1990s there followed an initial turn to find lost capitalist virtue in the interwar economy, accompanied by some recycling of the previous emphasis on Western economic domination. More recent attention to institu-

Battling over 00 book.indb 211

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

212

Chapter 4

tional history in Serbia as well as Bulgaria has debated the merits of the financial framework that was the major avenue for European influence after World War I. Exploring the range of European cultural influences has generated less controversy, now freed of its Marxist identification as a vehicle for bourgeois hegemony. The questions considered do however remain posed in terms of specific national influences, from British French and German to Russian. Italian futurism and American mass media have been neglected in the range of regional publication. Our selections provide a comparison of at least these four competing influences in Belgrade and Sofia. Let us first review the Western and regional scholarship in English against which this new work from the region should be judged, more limited in economic history than in cultural relations. The bulk of that economic publication appeared before the communist collapse in 1989. Scholars originally from the region, most of them based in Britain, provided the individually authored chapters for volumes I and II of The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919–1975, eds. M. C. Kaser and E. A. Radice (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1985 and 1986). The chapters on interwar agriculture and state industry by Hungarian-based historians Iván Berend and György Ránki represent Marxist scholarship at its best, supported like the other authors by the same wealth of interwar statistics and their assembly by economic historians encouraged by the postwar regimes. For the Balkans, studies prepared by Liuben Berov of Sofia’s Karl Marx Economics University are frequently cited. At the same time, what Ránki makes of the positive role of state industry in the upswings of the 1930s and Berend’s verdict on the failed socioeconomic transformation of interwar agriculture infer a logical progression to post1945 communist nationalization and collectivization. Such an inference is missing from the interwar chapters in John R. Lampe and Marvin R. Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 1550–1950, From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982). While their account still draws heavily on scholarship from the communist period, the authors emphasize the role of finance and foreign trade as evidenced by the statistical record of the period. Unlike the two Oxford volumes noted above and most of the pre-1989 Western scholarship on “Eastern Europe,” treatment of Greece is not omitted. According to more detailed attention is Mark Mazower, Greece and the Interwar Economic Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Like Lampe and Jackson, Mazower acknowledges the problems of the 1930s with reliance on the liberal market framework of the 1920s, but also avoids the emphasis on German economic penetration that was a common theme of Marxist scholarship. A Western argument for economic determinism based on interwar GermanBritish rivalry for raw materials in a “semicolonial” Southeastern Europe has recently appeared in Paul N. Hehn, A Low Dishonest Decade, The Great Powers, Eastern Europe and the Economic Origins of World War II (New York: Continuum, 2006). Calling this “struggle for markets and raw materials” the under-

Battling over 00 book.indb 212

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

213

lying cause of World War II, Hehn focuses more on the question of what role this Balkan trade played in Germany’s long-term economic ambitions and Nazi-era military mobilization than on its role in the local economies, as did an earlier work by William Grenzbach.1 For Yugoslavia, its limited American connections by the 1930s are covered in Linda Killen, Taming the Peripheries: The U.S.Yugoslav Economic Relations in the Interwar Years (New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, 1994). But none of the works cited address the crucial role of British and French influence in shaping the domestic financial structure of a liberal market economy in the 1920s, as has a recent work on the British role in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.2 A group almost entirely composed of regional scholars has at least examined the specific role of foreign banks from the late nineteenth century through the interwar period in Kostas P. Kostis (ed.), Modern Banking in the Balkans and West-European Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999). Recent Bulgarian scholarship has focused on how its largely agricultural economy fared not only with the consequences of World War I and of the cooperative institutions that expanded in the brief years of Aleksandar Stamboliiski’s Agrarian regime, but also examined the struggle for financial accommodation in the Anglo-French framework of the 1920s and the German trade agreements of the 1930s. Martin Ivanov joined the German economic historian Adam Tooze in preparing a detailed journal article that challenged the previous emphasis of Marxist scholarship on industry and an underperforming interwar economy.3 After addressing the extensive agricultural growth, which was indeed reaching its limits before 1914, they make a strong case for a turn to intensive growth in what remained by far the largest part of the Bulgarian economy across the interwar period. Their statistical evidence makes a welcome start at repairing past inattention to data reliably collected in the interwar period. Flexibility in responding to market signals, widespread rural literacy, and state support, centered on the cooperative network, fed a significant increase in productivity that overcame the burden of the refugee influx of the early 1920s. There remained the problem of adjusting to a  European financial structure dominated by the victorious powers, Britain and France. They led the way

 William S. Grenzbach, Jr., Germany’s Informal Empire in East Central Europe: German Economic Policy toward Yugoslavia and Romania, 1933–1939 (Stuttgart: Georg Steiner Verlag, 1988). See also Georgi Ranki, Economy and Foreign Policy: The Struggle of the Great Powers for Hegemony in the Danubian Valley, 1919–1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, 1983). 2  Miklós Lojkó, Meddling in Middle Europe, Britain and the ‘Lands Between,’ 1919– 1925 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006). 3  Martin Ivanov and Adam Tooze, “Convergence or Decline on Europe’s Southeastern Periphery? Agriculture, Population and GNP in Bulgaria, 1892–1945,” The Journal of Economic History 67, no. 3 (2007): 672–703. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 213

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

214

Chapter 4

in demanding reparation payments from defeated Bulgaria. Several Bulgarian scholars have addressed this issue as it evolved across the interwar period. Daniel Vachkov explored the problems of Bulgaria’s adjustment to the post-1918 economic order. He argued that the burden of Bulgaria’s reparations debt frustrated its efforts to obtain the British or other European loans needed to stabilize the currency and stimulate the economy until 1924.4 Martin Ivanov carried the story further into the early Great Depression years with a study of how the Bulgarian National Bank struggled to survive losses from excessive domestic credits given by its branches and the rest of the Bulgarian banking system once the Great Depression descended in 1929.5 Pleas to Paris and London to modify the terms of the remaining reparations debt went unheeded, leaving the National Bank to rely on high interest rates and deflationary policies that made matters worse. A more recent work by Vachkov and Ivanov presented a more systematical view of Bulgaria’s struggles with its foreign debt across the entire interwar period.6 Their research and similar inquiries have been much facilitated by the collection of several thousand pages of National Bank records and documents into four published volumes.7 One of the two comprehensive interpretations published in Bulgaria on the course of its economic development in the precommunist period draws heavily on these collections and the National Bank archives themselves. Roumen Avramov has presented his findings in three lengthy volumes and also in the brief overview of “Bulgaria’s Twentieth Century Economy” from which our translated excerpt is drawn.8 Both briefly and at length, Avramov turns away from the  Daniel Vachkov, “Dulgoviyat problem na Bulgariya v godinite sled Prvata svetovna voina” [The Debt Problem of Bulgaria in the Years after the First World War], in Martin Ivanov, Cvetana Todorova and Daniel Vachkov, Istoriyata na vunsniya durzhaven dulg na Bulgariya, 1878–1990 [The History of Foreign State Debt in Bulgaria, 1878–1990], vol. 2 (Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank, 2009). 5  Martin Ivanov, Politicheskite igri s vunshniya dulg, bulgarskite syuzheti na stopanski krizi. 1929–1934 (Political Games with Foreign Debt, Bulgarian Involvement in the Economic Crisis, 1929–1934) (Sofia: Zlato Boyadhiev, 2001). 6  Daniel Vachkov and Martin Ivanov, “Bulgarskiyat vunshen dulg mezhdu dvete svetovni voini, 1919–1944” [Bulgaria’s Foreign Debt Between the Two World Wars, 1919– 1944] in Martin Ivanov, Cvetana Todorova and Daniel Vachkov, Istoriyata na vunsniya durzhaven dulg na Bulgariya, 1878–1990 [The History of Foreign State Debt in Bulgaria, 1878–1990], vol. 2 (Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank, 2009). 7  The two collections with the interwar period, each running to 1,168 pages, are Bulgarska Narodna Banka, Sbornik dokumenti, vol. III, 1915–1929 (Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank, 2001) and Bulgarska Narodna Banka, Sbornik dokumenti, vol. IV, 1930–1947 (Sofia: Bulgarian National Bank, 2004). 8  Roumen Avramov, Stopanskiyat XX vek na Bulgariya (Sofia: Center for Liberal Strategies, 2001). Running to a combined total of over 2,000 pages, his three volumes are Roumen Avramov, Komunalniyat kapitalizum: Iz bulgarskoto stopansko minalo [Communal Capitalism: From Bulgaria’s Economic Past] vols. 1-3 (Sofia: Fondatsiya Bulgarska nauka i kultura, Tsentur za liberalni strategii, 2007). 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 214

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

215

above emphasis on the burdens that the European financial framework placed on the interwar Bulgarian economy. He traces its limitations instead to what he calls “communal capitalism,” the domestic burden of client list connections between the country’s own financial institutions and the political establishment. It is these arrangements, particularly between local leaders of Stamboliiski’s cooperative institutions, the Agrarian Bank, and the post-Stamboliiski governments that created an economic culture hostile to the market mechanism and therefore Western or “pure capitalism.” Dimitar Dimitrov turns away from both of these critical views to call the 1920s a relatively successful period for the Bulgarian economy, much aided by the League of Nations loans approved by the European financial community late in the decade. In our excerpt from his most recent work, he cites the support of European banks for the two League loans of 1926 and 1928 as crucial in the economic accommodation of the post-1918 influx of refugees, adding that credit from Czech and Swiss banks helped to make up for the lack of access to British or French capital.9 Only the restrictive ties to German economy of the late 1930s and into the war years, according to Dimitrov, kept the Bulgarian economy from carrying through a second successful transition toward becoming a modern European economy after World War I had interrupted what he identifies as a first transition well underway. His appealing scenario, it should be noted, is not supported by either the statistical detail of the Ivanov and Tooze article or the archival base of the Avramov argument. Serbian publication has looked more narrowly at the problems of establishing a single financial framework and a single currency across the new Yugoslav state. Hopes for favored access to French and other West European markets in the 1920s were disappointed but at least provided the same French financial support as provided to Romania, but not Bulgaria, until the Great Depression descended. The continued lack of access to French markets but the eventual provision of loans from the Paris capital market are tracked in Vladimir L. Cvetković, Ekonomski odnosi Jugoslavije I Francuske, 1918–1941 (Economic Relations between Yugoslavia and France, 1918–1941) (Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2006). Initial disappointments in the presumed French financial connection until the issue of war debts could be settled and also the struggle to connect the disparate territories of the new state into a single working economy is detailed in Ivan M. Becić, Finansiska politika Kr, SHS, 1918–1923 (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2003) and in his Ministarstvo Financija Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1918–1941 (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2012). Becić

 From Dimitar St. Dimitrov, Sravnitelna stopanska istoriya [Comparative Economic History] (Sofia: Vano Nedkov, 2002) through other works to his Znaesh li ti koi sme, ili trite bulgarki prehodi kum Evropa [Do you Know Who We Are? Three Bulgarian Transitions toward Europe] (Blagoevgrad: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Neofit Rilski, 2006).

9

Battling over 00 book.indb 215

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

216

Chapter 4

examines the initial years of a new Yugoslav economy unburdened by the reparations debt confronting Bulgaria but facing an equally serious problem. Access to extensive French credit from Serbia’s wartime ally was not forthcoming. Its absence made the challenge of establishing a single financial framework across previously unconnected territories more difficult. Then Yugoslavia informally before 1931 and formally afterward faced the burden of prolonged adherence to the gold standard, overvaluing its currencies. For Belgrade, the resulting disadvantage helped to turn their agricultural exports toward the German clearing agreements proferred as early as 1934. Goran Nikolić, Kurs dinara I devizna politika Kraljevene Jugoslavije, 1918–1941 (The Dinar Exchange Rate and the Currency Policy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941) (Belgrade: Stobovi kulture, 2001) examines the trials of the Yugoslav National Bank in Belgrade to maintain the international stability of the dinar, including its listing on the Zurich stock exchange. In the excerpt below, Nikolić argues that this central bank remained free of the often presumed political influence of the Belgrade-based government, with the major exception of the dinar’s legal convertibility imposed in 1931. It was the bank’s leadership that was responsible for the currency’s overvaluation through the 1920s, in hopes of attracting foreign investment.

Battling over 00 book.indb 216

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

ACCOMMODATING THE INTERWAR EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ORDER AND INFLUENCE Ivan M. Becić, Finansiska politika Kr. SHS, 1918–1923 [Financial Policy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes 1919–1923] (Belgrade: Stubovi culture, 2003), 220–3, 227–8. Ivan Becić received his BA (1996) and his MA (2002) from the Department for the History of Yugoslavia at the Humanities Faculty of Belgrade University. In addition to the cited volume, he published several journal articles on the historiography of the interwar Yugoslav economy. He is an associate researcher of the Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade and a member of the Society for Social History “UDI-Euroclio.” Due to the mostly agrarian character of its economy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was forced to trade primarily with the former enemy countries or those who represented a threat to it, so that in a way she was in a vice between her political and economic interests. Usually the Kingdom sold her products in Italy, Austria and Germany. She had waged the war against Austria and Germany, whereas Italy, although an ally in that war, turned into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ most dangerous adversary after its end. The main wartime ally, France, had a negligible share in her foreign trade, which was also the case with postwar ally Czechoslovakia, who played a significant role in the Yugoslav Kingdom’s imports, but had no interest in selling goods from the Kingdom on its territory. Thus the main partners in foreign trade and economic cooperation remained the old ones and not the wartime allies. Due to the makeup of their economies and their distance, these countries were not interested in the wares from the Kingdom, which herself had no great interest in importing goods from these countries, whose costs were increased significantly because of the costs of transportation from the distance. In 1918 France even canceled the Serbian-French trade treaty of 1907 and abolished the most-favored nation clause, so that economic relations could be kept up thanks to provisory regulations. 1 Trade with the most important foreign political partner, France, was also made difficult because of the economic crisis that spread after the war and also hit the victorious, but much devastated, France. It was an “economically faltering state.”2 Regardless of the state of affairs in France, the Kingdom had a constant deficit in foreign trade because France was interested in exports with political

 Danica Milić, “Privredni položaj Srbije po završetku ratnih operacija” [The Economic Position of Serbia at the End of the War], Zbornik radova istorijskog instituta, vol. 8 (1990): 60. 2  AY, 65–234–712. The report of the Commercial Agency from Marseilles of May 11, 1920. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 217

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

218

Chapter 4

strings attached, preventing the penetration of German goods into the Kingdom of SCS.3 All these developments clearly showed that the attempts of the Belgrade government to distance itself from Central Europe and to attach itself to the Western allies remained fruitless. For that reason France did not import wares from Yugoslavia, but participated by extending military-financial aid until 1920. In August 1921 France asked for repayment of prewar and wartime debts, whose first payment conditioned floating of the armament loan for the Kingdom of SCS that was granted in September 1922.4 Obviously, despite the reduction of its negative balance over the years, the ratio between the exports and imports could not have been even nearly due to the nature of the goods involved. Namely, the Kingdom exported chiefly food, raw materials, and semifinished products, and it imported much more expensive industrial goods. The high foreign trade deficit influenced the exchange value of the Yugoslav currency disastrously and was one of the important factors contributing to the steep fall in the dinar in this period. The state tried to protect itself from the negative trade balance by a series of customs barriers, of which none were durable and all were an attempt at building up the local industry to satisfy domestic needs. For that reason the contemporaries described the customs policy thus: “After the war we wander incessantly between the policy of open door and a protectionist policy of a state bent on developing its own industry at all costs.”5 The malfunctioning of the state apparatus across the entire state territory, poor rolling stock, lack of adequate stockpiling facilities, destroyed roads and railway lines, overburdened telephone and telegraph lines, all of which complicated the difficult economic and political situation in the country. The situation was made worse particularly by a poor railway connection, so that goods sat for days and even months at stations on the way. For instance, goods traveling from Kruševac to Užice (within Serbia) took as long as twenty-three days.6 Internal economic problems of the state were caused by its mixed ethnic makeup, established ways, and various customs, and almost [every province] had a financial apparatus of its own based on different principles, various kinds of tax, customs, monopoly, duty, and excise legislation. For that reason it is clear

3

 AY, 65–234–712, the report of the Consul-General from Marseilles of November 20, 1922 and the remark of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of December 26, 1922. 4  Vuk Vinaver, Jugoslavija i Francuska između dva rata (Da li je Jugoslavija bila francuski “satelit”) [Yugoslavia and France between the Wars (Was Yugoslavia a French “Satellite”)] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1985), 437–8. 5  Arhiv za pravne i društvene nauke [The Archive of Legal and Social Sciences], (September 1925), 81. 6  Smiljana Đurović, Državna intervencija u industriji Jugoslavije (1918–1941) [State Intervention in Yugoslav Industry (1918– 1941] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1986), 27.

Battling over 00 book.indb 218

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

219

why a number of temporary ministerial measures aimed at making possible some kind of functioning of the financial apparatus until the Ministry of the Finance could be organized in a unified manner. A unified way of organizing financial organizations met with the opposition of the authorities of provinces. Every attempt at introducing control over the activities of provincial financial organs was perceived as a lack of trust in the Slovenes and the Croats and a way to appoint “people from Šumadija” (Serbs) to important posts in the country. On the other hand, from the lists of the employees of the financial delegations outside of Serbia, only a few names sounded Serbian. Insulation in the areas regarded as one’s own and interest in solving only local problems were very pronounced in the provinces that used to be part of Austria-Hungary until recently. In January 1919 public dissatisfaction was expressed because Croatia had closed her borders for the flow of foodstuffs, which caused great shortage in Slovenia. This was answered by the prohibition of the flow of industrial goods from Slovenia to Croatia. Narrow interests were displayed also by the administrative organs in the Bačka who closed their borders for export of foodstuffs while people in Bosnia starved, et cetera.7 Within such confinement, borders often led to absurdities unthinkable in serious states. The Serbian government received loans from the United States during 1919 that were used for import of fat, flour, and bacon for feeding Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, and because of smuggling, also Croatia and Slavonia. The loans were in dollars and were booked as part of the wartime debt of Serbia to the United States. Surplus products from the Vojvodina and Slavonia, or those which became surplus because of smuggling from Bosnia into Slavonia, were exported to Austria and Hungary and Austro-Hungarian krones were earned in exchange. Transit exports to Austria and Hungary were also smuggled thanks to corrupt officials, and were intended for final sale in the markets which possessed an abundance hard currency (in Switzerland, for instance).8 All this led to the Kingdom of SCS incurring debts in hard currency, even while receiving payment for the goods produced in her territory in Austro-Hungarian krones that were losing value daily. They were becoming a heavy burden on state finances due to their exchange for future national currency of the Kingdom. The situation did not change throughout 1919 and the Ministry of Trade and Industry received a number of complaints about obstacles to free trade between the provinces. Stojan Ribarac, the minister of trade and industry, explained the danger of such a situation before the Council of Ministers on March 18, 1919, saying that “the political unity that had been achieved at such a price would be an illusion

7

 Obzor (January 21, 1919), no. 16, 3.  Nikola Vučo, Agrarna kriza u Jugoslaviji 1930–1934 [The Agrarian Crisis in Yugoslavia, 1930–1934] (Belgrade: Prosvjeta, 1968), 4.

8

Battling over 00 book.indb 219

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

220

Chapter 4

if a province in the new state should be separated from another by barriers of any kind, if the traffic between one province and the next should be dependant on any condition and stipulation. We’ve been separated for much too long, to divide ourselves further. And if we had to put up with forcible division, there’s no reason that we ourselves should continue it. Furthermore, economic division creates conditions for political division too, and with such a division we’d never feel as one people.”9 Unfortunately, this timely warning went unheeded so throughout the five year period of divisions, local interests got the upper hand over the common ones. Like other financial laws, the budget legislation found its basis in Serbian legislation because at that time it was considered the most modern. Frequent changes of administrations interrupted equalization of financial regulation. The process was delayed with every new government until its newly formed commissions were acquainted with the work of their predecessors. Passing budget was carried out under heavy pressure of the increasing needs and frequent government changes. Under such circumstances all budgets except for the last one for 1922/23 were passed by decree and temporary laws, not by Parliament. From the start, financing of the state was carried out through extraordinary loans decided by government orders and enforced by the regent’s decrees, most often the case with military loans. Many of these loans were approved by the Council of Ministers disregarding the opinion of the finance minister, or receiving approval only after the loan had already been realized. State budget policy had all traits of financial disorder: out-of-budget provisory state, financing by month, fictitious projections of incomes, supplementing of budget projections by subsequent laws, ineffective spending in branches of the administration, lack of an efficient budget control, expenditures uncovered from the regular budget incomes, closing of budget holes by loans, et cetera. The picture of irregularities and irresponsibility was complemented by provincial governments who spent their expenditures inherited from the wartime. Unlike Serbia who had no authorities at the secondary level, the provincial government of Croatia survived until 1924.10 This was very detrimental to solving social problems in Serbia that were, due to her suffering in the war, pressing (for instance, passing the law on invalids for the entire country was postponed for years since it was not equally important for all provinces). Parliamentary debates about the budget were most often used as a stage for skirmishes between political opponents who quarreled about who brought what into the new state, who had had the largest number of victims,

9

 AY, 65–5–35, the report of the minister of trade and industry to the Council of Minister on March 18, 1919, a copy. 10  Branislav Gligorijević, “Stapanje Srbije sa jugoslovenskom državom” [The Fusion of Serbia with the Yugoslav State], Zbornik radova istorijskog instituta, vol. 8 (1990): 128.

Battling over 00 book.indb 220

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

221

who had the lowest level of corruption, who paid higher taxes, et cetera. From the budget debates, two diverging opinions on the organization of the new state could clearly be discerned. For the Serbs it represented a unified entity, whereas the Croats and the Slovenes stressed special characteristics and differences that were unbridgeable, although the internal policy of the postwar governments was also criticized by the MPs who voted for the passing of the budget. From the point of view of MPs from Serbia, financial independence of the provinces was the manifestation of secessionist desires or, refering to prewar inclusion in Austro-Hungary, the mention of autonomy being called “austronomy.” The finances of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were encumbered with high wartime debts incurred for its creation, with a large quantity of paper money in circulation from the war. It was a divided economy with limited natural resources—even though it was internationally believed that the country was rich in natural resources. Thus, examples of the Kingdom of SCS as the second most fertile country for wheat (after Turkmenistan) were cited, of it being full of exhaustless forests of oak and beech trees, of undiscovered quantities of coal, copper, sulphur and other ores, of large hydroenergetic potential, et cetera.11 The neglected fact was that for its development, a much larger energy base was needed; above all, oil. Finally, what could we say about our overall impression of the financial policy of the Kingdom of SCS? It did not exist in a rounded out and sufficiently thought out form. The actions of the state organs did not reach deep. We have a state unable to satisfy its basically small needs and which in practice functioned by itself and not thanks to the power of clearly envisaged leadership. Judging by the situation in the Parliament and in the country, one could say that the new state was not ripe for unification, that the national characteristic of the three peoples were much too pronounced and that the trust in speedy betterment, in the first place, material one, was not realistic. Many kept referring to “the old times” and not enough effort was invested in making “the new ones” better. Translated by Zoran Janjetovic

11

 Epoha (March 18, 1921), no. 516, 1.

Battling over 00 book.indb 221

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Roumen Avramov, Stopanskiyat XX vek na Bulgariya [Bulgaria’s Twentieth Century Economy] (Sofia: Tsentur za liberalni strategii, 2001), 25–9, 63–4, 81–2, 103–4. Roumen Avramov is an economist by training. He worked at the Economic Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences until 1989. After the fall of communism, he became vice chair of the Agency for Economic Programming and Development to the Ministers’ Council and expert and member of the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB). R. Avramov, previously program director at the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia currently permanent fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Sofia, launched the publication of a series of documents of the BNB from its founding in 1879 onward. In 2004, together with Martin Ivanov, he established a seminar with the title “The Future through the Culture of the Past: Bulgarian Economic and Social History,” a forum of economic and social historians from different institutions. Among his most significant scholarly contributions is a multifaceted study on the Bulgarian economy, a three-volume edition under the title “The Communal Capitalism.” The relation between foreign economic agents (patterns, partners, and supervisors) and native developmental efforts from the reestablishment of the Bulgarian state to the present is the main aspect of his explorations. This is probably the most thorough critical reading of the Bulgarian economic culture published after 1999. The proposed excerpts are from the pilot project of the study, a kind of concise version.1 Avramov’s language is expressive, impressive, and not rarely metaphoric. Statistical data are held to a minimum to make the text comprehensible for a broader public. Remarkably, R. Avramov does not include publications of D. St. Dimitrov in his list of cited works. This creates the impression that the two trends toward an optimistic and very critical reading of Bulgaria’s economic history evolve parallelly to each other, without communication. The deep roots of Bulgarian communality are in the poverty and primitiveness of society after the Liberation. Notwithstanding the state’s relative advance they have not been overcome throughout the century. In a state with limited capital, in the absence of institutions and of stratified social fabric, the natural instinct for self-preservation leads to seeking grounding in stable communities. […] The family (friendship) principle has always played the role of the “societal.” Economic society is structured to a much higher degree around “clan” (in the widest possible meaning of the word) connections than around the capital.

1

 Roumen Avramov, Stopanskiyat XX vek na Bulgaria [The 20th Century Bulgarian Economy] (Sofia: Tsentar za liberalni strategii, 2001).

Battling over 00 book.indb 222

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

223

This is why the first economic enterprises bear the mark of friendly, family, or political circles. […] It is not by coincidence that the classical forms of impersonal capital markets like the stock exchange had a difficult and painful birth in Bulgaria. At the same time from the outset the traditional trade companies have been regarded as family and political formations rather than associations for investment. […] The strong disposition toward the collective (communal) principle in Bulgarian economic life quickly found adequate expressions. Cooperatives undoubtedly turned out to be the most appropriate form, which acquired exaggerated dimensions. It has become a kind of trademark of the economic specificity of the country before and after 1944. […] Through its political influence the cooperatives’ lobby in Bulgaria succeeded in massively promoting the principle of preferential treatment of the collectivist over private structures. […] Cooperativism was raised to the status of official state ideology. It was imposed upon state officials while “anti-cooperative” acts received negative sanction from the state. […] Cooperative structures are in the first place ready networks and this makes them politically and economically very attractive. […] The “public-state” principle is not a  creation of the communist regime. This formula characterizes [activity of] the pillars of the Bulgarian financial system even before 1944— BNB [Bŭlgarska Narodna Banka/Bulgarian National Bank], BZB [Bŭlgarska Zemedelska Banka/Bulgarian Agrarian Bank], BTsKB [Bŭlgarska Tsentralna Kooperativna Banka/Bulgarian Central Cooperative Bank], and following their merger in 1934, also the BZKB [Bŭlgarska Zemedelska Kooperativna Banka/ Bulgarian Agrarian Cooperative Bank]. Here it is a matter of a real model of banking in which the financial institutions fulfilled orders in favor of “public welfare” (understood and designed according to the tastes of every next ruling elite). They demonstrated unlimited imagination in distributing subsidized credit, in remitting dues, in which its clients rather than the shareholders were the real masters of the bank and the main goal of their activities was not the development of the institution through gaining profit but rather the consumption of profit. […] In Bulgaria, immediately after the Liberation, fears turned against private and group interests. Not that the risk of subjecting to the interests of the government had not been grasped in this country. However, in the scale of trustworthiness the state stood much higher than private capital. This explains why as early as Petko Karavelov (the 1880s), defense was not directed at the state’s violations but at those of the private interests. Thus, the state had to protect the bank from itself on the assumption that this was the only way it would be able to defend against the other, greater evil, what in the eyes of Bulgarian society was private capital. Naturally, such a balance is impossible. The temptation and the possibility to drain the central bank have always been there and no government has ever voluntarily waived it. With regard to the financial system, this has entailed destabilization, [such as] difficulties with the introduction of the full-value gold standard,

Battling over 00 book.indb 223

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

224

Chapter 4

and in extreme cases, hyperinflation.2 One of the most dramatic public debates on the problems of economic policy in the country began in 1928 when under the pressure of the League of Nations, Bulgaria was forced to change the institutional framework of its monetary authority. It revealed all the demons and fears of Bulgarian economic life—of private capital, of the shareholding principle, and of foreign investors. The idea of ensuring the independence of BNB by transforming it into a private joint-stock bank was at loggerheads. (Such an idea had already been launched on several occasions in the late nineteenth century but had always been confronted with flat refusal by the government.) The motives behind such fierce resistance, after fifty years of existence for the BNB, were no longer as abstract as they had been at the time of Petko Karavelov. Among the defenders of a state bank of issue there were, no doubt, people who were still subject to ideological clichés and delusions. However, the BNB had already a long enough history, which made it clear for everybody how this institution had been subjected to political authority, and through it to private interests. The consequences of this possession were all too well-known to be easily bypassed. There is no doubt that despite the ideological wrapping, the battle of 1928 was cynical and with the clear understanding that a loss of the BNB by the state would mean tangible loss of its power. Placed under pressure from outside, outraged public opinion at home and the political class, the government showed remarkable resourcefulness in postponing sine die its decision about the transformation of BNB into a joint-stock bank. The hypocritical assumption that the state is an impartial arbitrator and guardian of the public interest remained formally intact although it was crystal clear that the very state had fallen prey to group and political interests. This “justified” the established practice that was considered more acceptable conceding state property (in this case the BNB) “on rotational principle” to the political clans, which came one after the other in the government of the state rather than yielding (or selling) state capital to a stable private investor. There was not a single moment in the twentieth century when Bulgaria was a full member of “Europe,” certainly not in the contemporary meaning of the term. The deep roots of the civilizational differences stem from the division of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine influence, the religious schism, and the Ottoman rule. In all these continental and global events Bulgaria had fallen “on the wrong side,” not where the modern notion of European cultural identity had been shaped. Long unfortunate experience could not pass without leaving traces. Thus, claims on “Europeanism,” not only in Bulgaria, but in the entire region are

2

 See Dimitǔr Ǐordanov, BNB 1879–1908 [Bulgarian National Bank 1879–1908] (Sofia, 1910); Stoyan Bochev, BNB kato emisionen, kambialen i krediten institut [Bulgarian National Bank as an institute of issue, exchange and credit] (Sofia 1924), in Stoyan Bochev, Kapitalizmǔt v Bǔlgaria [Capitalism in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Fond. Bǔlgarska nauka i kultura/ V. Tǔrnovo, Abagar, 1998), 139–202.

Battling over 00 book.indb 224

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

225

not groundless. But these lands are nonetheless lacking in several cultural layers of development in the direction they had taken in the West. […] The problem of a European or non-European economic identity stood equally stark for Bulgaria at the beginning and the end of the century. The twentieth century began and ended with the painful economic opposition of Bulgaria with Europe. This took place in two very different ways but the roots of the problem remain identical because it is a matter of a deeper cultural problem. Very quickly the more farsighted intellectuals understood that European culture and European commodities are interrelated.3 At the beginning of the century Europe stood as a power that had overrun the Bulgarian market with commodities consumers had long been craving [even without knowing], while producers execrated. This divide in the perception of the “European” (the “modern”) also split the national consciousness. On the one hand, “Europe” is an enemy that ruins. At the same time for the elites it is a  yardstick for progress and a  cultural goal that is difficult to attain. Filling this abyss became the main “existential” problem of Bulgarian economic development. In any case, it created a permanent point of departure in the self-evaluation and the self-comparison with the outside world. “How does Europe see us?” and “To what extent have we adopted its values?” turned into the key and most recurring questions of the century. […] Our economic history during the twentieth century is the history of an “encased” state, whose strategic decisions in the field of economic policy have been made either abroad or, if at home, under the conditions of a highly limited level of freedom. As a rule these have been “modernizing” decisions going against the inertia of Bulgarian economic culture. In Bulgaria the “drive” for changes has been chronically weak, and the power of the status quo remarkably strong. The ensuing lack of creativity is probably one of the most characteristic national features. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

 Stoyan Bochev, Kapitalizmǔt v Bǔlgaria. I have analyzed at length this problem in the introductory study to the texts of Stoyan Bochev.

3

Battling over 00 book.indb 225

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Dimitar Dimitrov, Znaesh li ti koi sme? Ili trite bulgarski prehodi kum Evropa [Do You Know Who We Are? Or Three Bulgarian Transitions toward Europe] (Blagoevgrad: Univ. Izd-vo “Neofit Rilski,” 2006), 42–8. Dimitar St. Dimitrov is a trained historian who made a routine career in teaching economic history. In 1974–99 he taught history at the Economic University in Sofia.1 Afterward he became professor in economic history and European integration at the Economic Faculty of the Southeast University “Neofit Rilsky” in Blagoevgrad and at the Academy of Insurance and Finances in Sofia. He also taught comparative economic history at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia and at the Agrarian Academy in Plovdiv. Most of his books are designed for and addressed to university students, that is, they shape or at least have some impact on a new generation of economists, economic historians, and probably even sociologists. In general, he represents the positive reading of the Bulgarian economic achievements before World War II. Even during the last century of Ottoman domination, Bulgarians confidently built the fundamental economic factors for their decisive transition to modern European capitalist market economy! While their Balkan neighbors were restoring their statehood and organizing their independent political life, they took over the bulk of economic assets of the Ottoman Empire: the major part of the agrarian, artisanal, and manufactured production, and the major part of its domestic commodity turnover volume as well as its international trade. By the mid-nineteenth century many affluent Bulgarians like the Bogoridi, the Tŭpchileshtovs, Chomakovs, Hadzhipenchovich, and others, had already been playing a significant role in the economic policy of the Empire, while other Bulgarian wholesale merchants like Evlogi and Christo Georgiev, Toshkovich, the Palauzovs, and others, created solid commercial and economic connections with the developed Western countries, with Russia, with Romania [...]. Thus, long before the Liberation had come into being were set the solid economic foundations of the rapid boom for the modern market development of Bulgaria in the first two post-Liberation decades! The Liberation would accelerate the processes of transition and within less than thirty years the economy of Bulgaria would acquire the features of a true capitalist economy. It is exactly in the last two decades of the nineteenth century that the second transition of Bulgarians to Europe was accomplished. With respect to the economy, this is the time when modern Bulgarian capitalism was established and developed; the time when the modern economic policy of the first Bulgarian bourgeois parties and governments took shape. This policy and the increasing penetration of Western European economic influence and Western

1

 Its former name is Higher Economic Institute “Karl Marx.”

Battling over 00 book.indb 226

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

227

capital created conditions for a quick completion of the economic transition to European capitalism. It was then that the first protectionist laws of the young Bulgarian state were introduced, which stimulated the emerging industrial production, modern credit, and international trade. In its economic development Bulgaria was fully integrated with the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe. The government of Stambolov and its entire economic policy accelerated this process: apart from contracting the first state loans with which it built the modern transport system and infrastructure, it invited Western specialists and qualified workers; it also sent hundreds of young Bulgarians to schools and universities in Europe with a clear goal: to become the builders of the modern market economy of Bulgaria and to develop the modern bourgeois culture of the country. By the end of the century many of them had already joined the creation of the modern Bulgarian market economy. Stambolov’s government also marked the beginning of a  deliberate and consistent policy of encouraging and supporting Bulgarian industrial production. […] Despite its Russophile inclinations, in order to bring to its completion the transition to Europe, in the last years of the nineteenth century the government of Dr. Konstantin Stoilov carried on and elaborated this policy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, although considerably inferior by major economic indicators in the developed states, the Bulgarian market economy was undergoing a solid and impressive boom, which would prompt the American President Theodore Roosevelt to say that in the Balkans there was one economic phenomenon, and its name was Bulgaria. What is more, Roosevelt even reckoned that by some economic indices Bulgarians surpassed the phenomenal Japanese! And indeed, within a strikingly short period, between 1879 and 1903, the Bulgarian economy showed a marked growth not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Industrial and agrarian production increased more than 2.5 times, as well as the volume of commodity turnover. Even more, in terms of quality, Bulgarians achieved a relatively good level of modern industrial, infrastructure, and economic organization, which had no analogy, at least not in South Eastern Europe. As pointed out above, although they achieved their political liberation much later than their neighbors—seventy years after the Serbs and fifty years after the Greeks. In the last decades of Ottoman rule, Bulgarians managed to not only become the main economic factor in the Empire, but while still within its boundaries, adapted better than others to modern European market relations, and established and developed the best infrastructure in the Balkans. It is exactly this that ensured their quick economic as well as political prosperity to modern European market capitalism and to the European bourgeois political system and culture! The stable foundations of the “phenomenon” of the quick transition to modern Europe, had actually been built in the course of the last two centuries of slavery. On the eve of World War I, in most general terms the economic transition of Bulgarian society to Western Europe had been accomplished. A solid factory, though predominantly light, industry had been created, stimulated by modern

Battling over 00 book.indb 227

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

228

Chapter 4

legislation; a reasonable infrastructure had been established; by 1912, more than 2,000 km of railways and more than 9,000 km of modern roads had been built, which connected all important industrial, trade, and port centers; the three main ports of Ruse, Burgas, and Varna had been modernized and supplied with several modern merchant ships; considerable Western capital and investment had been attracted; a rather good modern credit system of public and private banks as well as of joint-stock and cooperative credit institutes had been founded; trade turnover doubled and the sphere of Bulgarian international trade connections expanded; the agrarian economy outgrew the frame of the patriarchal and medieval sharecropping relations and developed as private and capitalist, although far from the productivity of the most developed Western agrarian economies. A modern state structure strictly followed the contemporary principles of European economic policy and stimulated the development of the Bulgarian capitalism. At that time the Bulgarian economy was indeed one of the best in Eastern Europe. Although hard to compare with the most developed Western European economies at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was already a typical capitalist economy, while the economic motivation of the majority of Bulgarians was a modern market mentality. Even the national catastrophe, the total economic destruction and the enormous reparation obligations by the Neuilly Treaty after 1919, did not change the general direction of the development of modern Bulgarian capitalism. Despite the territories taken away [from Bulgaria], the reparations and the enormous material losses, the hostile environment in the Balkans, the heavy economic and political isolation of the country, within one decade Bulgarian economy recovered and reached its prewar level. By the middle of the first postwar decade the economy had overcome the catastrophe, and not only with regards to the economic dimensions. Now it also strongly affected the social state of Bulgarian society, as well as the political life, and even the psychology of Bulgarians, causing utmost aggravation of a notorious centuries-old antagonism in society—this time also stimulated by alien ideologies. By 1925 the agrarian economy had already been restored on the basis of a considerable restructuring with several fold increase in the production of industrial crops, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and others at the expense of the significantly reduced grain produce, mainly because of South Dobrudja’s occupation by Romania. […] During the second half of the 1920s, despite the postwar economic crisis, industrial production underwent a considerable boom and also reached its prewar level. Although it did affect Bulgarian industry, the world economic crisis of the beginning of the 1930s was quickly overcome, and in the second half of the decade it was again on the rise. Despite the fact that this industry remained light in processing raw materials, without the possibilities of the most advanced industrial countries, it can be characterized as a modern European one. […]

Battling over 00 book.indb 228

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

229

During the second part of the 1920s the Bulgarian financial system also recovered. This was the result of the restored production and of two loans, the so-called Refugee and Stabilization, issued to the country by European banks. They not only allowed the accommodation of thousands of new Bulgarian refugees who flooded the country after the wars, coming from the lost Bulgarian territories, but also contributed to quickly overcoming the grave postwar financial crisis and inflation. The crisis was also caused by the withdrawal of considerable capital and investments from France and Britain immediately after the war. Bulgarian entrepreneurs and bankers, however, compensated with new contacts in Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and later with Germany, Austria, and Italy. […] The Bulgarian financial system was also fully bound up with the European. During the second half of the 1930s, despite certain repercussions from the world economic crisis, the Bulgarian economy was again standing well in Southeastern Europe by its economic indices and was showing stable growth with good perspectives for the years to come. World War II and its consequences, however, again radically changed the directions of its economic and political development, cutting her off far more drastically from normal market and capitalist relations, severing generations of Bulgarians from normal market motivation. Bulgaria did not participate actively in World War II, with the exception of its final phase. […] Basically it preserved its prewar economic potential. In this sense, after the war the country should have had the economic potential to develop relatively well and to play again a  significant role in European economic relations. After the delineation of the spheres of influence of the Great Powers of the antifascist coalition, however, Bulgaria fell in the Soviet zone of occupation with all due consequences: by the end of the 1940s all opposition to the Communist Party supported by the USSR had been annihilated; the nationalization of the big urban states and of the banks carried out in 1947 also crushed the economic power of the capitalist class. By the end of the 1950s the Soviet economic and political model had been fully imposed. Its enforcement was accompanied by total repression, which led not only to the smashing of the intellectual and economic elite but also to a huge social and demographic transformation. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

Battling over 00 book.indb 229

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:27

Goran Nikolić, Kurs dinara i devizna politike Kraljevine Jugoslavije, 1918– 1941 [The Course of the Dinar and Foreign Exchange Policy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2001), 219–21, 226–9. Goran Nikolić received his BA in foreign and domestic trade (1998) and in international economics (2002) from the Economics Faculty of Belgrade University. He is an analyst at the Research Center of the Economic Chamber of Serbia and a research fellow at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade. He publishes conjuncture analyses and deals with various topics such as foreign trade, international economy, and economic history. Among his publications are: Kurs dinara i devizna politika Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1918–41 [The Course of the Dinar and Foreign Exchange Policy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941]; Geopolitika savremene Ukrajine [The Geopolitics of Contemporary Ukraine], Ekonomija svakodnevice [The Economics of Everyday Life]; Pokazatelji spoljnotrgovinske razmene Srbije sa EU i svetom [The Indicators of Serbia’s Foreign Trade with the EU and the World]; Geopolitika Zakavkazja [The Geopolitics of Transcaucasia]. The fixed rates regime that functioned in the Kingdom of Serbia since its entry into the Latin Monetary Union in the 1870s was practically abandoned at the beginning of World War I. The strong devaluation of the Serbian currency in the first postwar years, which was due to the intervention of the National Bank and was a result of the disorganized state financial sector as well as enormous deficit, certainly was not caused by the flexibility of floating rates, or more precisely, the dirty fluctuations of the currency rates that were in effect at the time. With regard to the prices of the most valuable precious metal (i.e., the gold reserves in the state treasury, the prices that were overvalued eleven times until they were revalorized on June 28, 1931), the old Kingdom of Serbia parity remained in effect, since that was used to calculate the base rate, but the official rates and the unrestricted stock exchange listings reveal the parity had been abandoned. The dramatic growth in public spending in nearly all countries, including Yugoslavia, was the result of the creation of a different kind of world where extensive social spending and the increase in state participation in the economic sector became the norm. In Yugoslavia the practice of the inflationary financing of budgetary expenditures did not result in hyperinflation as was the case in the majority of Central and East European countries. The subsequent recovery of the currency from 1923 to 1925 should not be attributed to the currency rates, but rather to the specific conditions and actions of the state authorities. In the mid-1920s the old parity of the dinar was devalued about elevenfold, which stabilized the currency along the lines suggested by the economic conference held in Genoa. By 1923 expansive monetary policies, which along with the large trade deficit, were the leading cause of the dinar’s depreciation and were replaced with restrictive policies that initially allowed for the appreciation

Battling over 00 book.indb 230

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

231

and subsequently, after 1925, the stabilization of the dinar’s exchange rate. The domestic value of the dinar, in contrast to the international exchange rate, from the mid-1920s continued to strengthen, with a maximum growth rate (the greatest level of deflation) achieved during the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The stabilization of the dinar certainly contributed to the relative balancing of trade and a strong influx of foreign capital in the second half of the 1920s. From 1925 to 1931 the currency exchange rates were formally variable, but effectively they were at a fixed parity with stable world currencies. The overvalued exchange rate of the dinar was maintained through the intervention of the National Bank in stock markets, which fulfilled the insufficient demand for foreign means of payment. The dinar was not formally fixed to a single currency, but considerable attention was paid to its stock exchange listing in Zurich. The exchange listings in domestic stock markets were generally inverse to those abroad. It is possible to criticize the fixed currency rates in the second half of the 1920s because it insulated the dinar from the real economic shocks, and in that way failed to ease the negative economic consequences of the agrarian and great global depression. However, for a relatively small economy such as Yugoslavia’s (which, due to its insignificant role in global trade, could not influence the prices of international goods), a fixed exchange rate was more appropriate, considering the existing theoretical approach. In the third quarter of 1931, Yugoslavia shifted to a legally convertible currency that confirmed its fixed exchange rate with the Swiss franc that had a really small deviation of +/- .05 percent. However, the project of the “Golden dinar,” that is, a gold-foreign currency standard, had to be abandoned due to the flight of capital, even though formally the parity with the Swiss franc was retained despite the inability to get gold or foreign currency at that rate.1 Thus, from 1931 to the beginning of the war, Yugoslavia formally preserved the legal parity of the dinar, but by 1932 another parity was introduced that was 28.5 percent more than the official one by early 1933. The exchange rate of the dinar had the goal of stimulating exports and discouraging imports. The depreciation of the currency from 1932 and the strengthening of protectionist policies were reactions to the challenges facing the entire world: the threat of autarky as a consequence of the decrease in foreign trade and a drastic drop in the international flow of capital. Foreign currency and trade regulations, along with relatively stable state finances and fewer assets in the foreign trade balance prevented a greater devaluation of the Yugoslav currency. The actual devaluation of the Yugoslav currency was formally recognized with the introduction of the prima and was a response to the earlier depreciation of the dinar during the summer of 1932. At that point the dinar depreciated on the Swiss stock market, and since the Yugoslav currency was in fact fixed to the  Foreign currency could only be obtained after considerable administrative procedures.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 231

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

232

Chapter 4

Swiss franc (this parity was used to calculate the parity toward other currencies), the dinar in effect linearly depreciated by about 25 percent to 30 percent. Postponing the official recognition of the currency’s depreciation by implementing a prima on the exchange rate that affected all significant transactions (including gold from 1936) was very similar to the devaluations of the currency by the SFRJ [Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia] and the SRJ [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] in the second half of the twentieth century, which often followed after a discrepancy between the market value and official value of foreign currencies. Both parities (old and new) were fixed, since they did not change independently of the Swiss currency, which had an inverse listing in regard to the dinar (which was definitely overvalued) on the Swiss stock exchange. Nevertheless, when the Swiss franc devaluated in 1936, the dinar did not follow, but continued to have its official exchange rates based on the stock market listings of the franc in Zurich, which at that point were 30 percent lower. The fixed rates regime in the 1930s gave the Yugoslav currency psychological support and it retained, alongside a devaluation in free trade, a parity with the leading world currencies on global stock markets, remaining overvalued. However, already by 1933, free currencies were being listed on the Zagreb stock market based on flexible exchange rates, that is, based upon supply and demand. Nonetheless, because of the constant intervention of state authorities with the goal of preventing too much fluctuation in the exchange rates (in other words, their fall), this can be better characterized as “managed floating exchange rates.” The advantage of this foreign currency strategy was that it eased actual economic shocks. […] Foreign currency, as well as economic policies, pursued by Yugoslavia during the interwar period were (luckily!) not original enough that it is possible to argue that they were often copies of foreign currency regulations from other European countries. Moreover, the fluctuations in the exchange rates of the dinar were similar to those of many other currencies in the region, and the multiple rates during the 1930s were not an exception because an almost identical practice was characteristic for the majority of neighboring countries. During the entire interwar period, Yugoslavia followed the leading global economic policy trends and practices. In the postwar years it practiced an inflationary policy and had a significantly devalued currency, while in the second half of the 1920s it actually stabilized the dinar along with ending monetary expansion. During the Great Depression, Yugoslavia had a restrictive monetary policy and depreciated its currency, followed by expansive monetary policies in the late 1930s and a fixed parity of its currency along with foreign currency and international trade restrictions. The majority of other countries in the world had similar experiences between the two world wars. During the 1930s, when it is possible to differentiate between countries with liberal foreign currency trade and those with a controlled (pegged) foreign currency trade, Yugoslavia vacillated between these two modalities, even though for the most part it was closer to those countries with foreign currency restrictions.

Battling over 00 book.indb 232

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

233

Enacting and organizing foreign currency and international trade restrictions were essentially taken from the legislation and experiences of other states, especially Germany, France, and Czechoslovakia. However, a complete copy of foreign solutions was not always possible because of the specificity of the foreign currency and international trade situation, as well as the general conditions in the country. The cadre that created the foreign currency policy (in the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank) was generally of high quality (considering the overall lack of educated individuals in the country) because these institutions had Yugoslavia’s leading economists who, educated abroad, adopted the leading economic doctrines and practices of that era. The political influence on foreign currency policies was not insignificant, since ministers and bureaucrats were often members of the ruling party, but the actual policies were generally pursued without an ideological background and with a degree of political direction that could not seriously affect its impact. The imposed legal convertibility of 1931, which is the most glaring example of the dominance of political will over economic logic, was ultimately an exception to the general practice. Corruption, a widespread phenomenon in interwar Yugoslavia, was most often manifested in the areas of foreign currency policy that involved customs’ control and records; in fact, certain interventions were not possible due to the bribability of the customs’ employees. Foreign currency policies were based on estimates of the current situation. The most acceptable solution was always sought out according to the given conditions, but efforts were made to preserve currency stability, which is the practice in most central banks in the contemporary world. However, hardly any country after World War II carried out deflationary policies as the price to pay to preserve the stability of the national currency like Yugoslavia, but also many other countries, in the early 1930s. Experiments with foreign currency policy, particularly intense during the initial postwar years, were quickly abandoned if they did not yield good results. By the mid-1920s, foreign currency policy was a well-developed system with consistent regulations. If we accept the argument that even with the best possible alternative foreign currency policy and exchange rate for the dinar during the interwar period, it would not have significantly improved the overall economic and social situation in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (it is hard to believe that Yugoslavia at that time could have had a considerably faster industrialization without forced accumulation, and unlikely could have attracted a greater amount of foreign capital when neighboring countries, with much better infrastructures, were unable to do so). Nevertheless, it is valid to ask some additional questions. Was it possible to avoid too much depreciation of the currency during the initial postwar years? To what degree was the overvalued currency in the late 1920s a factor in the stagnation of exports? Was the implementation of the project for a golden dinar truly damaging? Should the dinar have been more devalued in the early 1930s? Were the

Battling over 00 book.indb 233

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

234

Chapter 4

soft currency trade and the inauguration of the pegged foreign currency trade good solutions? Was the devaluation of 1938 justified? The strong depreciation experienced by the dinar in the initial postwar years was partly a consequence of mistakes committed by those individuals creating foreign currency policy due to too much experimentation, such as the inadequate use of foreign currency reserves before interventions, which was a result of the expansive monetary policies and balance of payments deficits. On one hand, it is hard to believe that with the most rational foreign currency policy the Ministry of Finance could have achieved considerably better results in light of attempts to maintain the exchange rate of the dinar, the unchanging inflation, and foreign trade balance. On the other hand, had the government pursued less expansive monetary and fiscal policies (the deficit of the trade balance was impossible to have been significantly reduced), the dinar would have retained a greater percentage of its prewar worth, resulting in stronger social tensions and a less equipped army (which at that time was the greatest factor for integration and security in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes). The strong depreciation of the dinar had a stimulating effect, through its undervaluation, on the growth of exports beginning in the 1920s. Considering the fact that other currencies were being devalued at the same time, one can only speculate whether or not the measures taken in depreciating the Yugoslav currency could have been somewhat lessened. The degree to which the overvaluation of the dinar in the second half of the 1920s was a factor in stagnating exports is not easy to precisely determine. The factor that certainly contributed to the fall in the dinar value of exports was the agricultural crisis, which was manifested through the drastic drop in prices of agricultural products. This crisis greatly affected Yugoslavia, since these products formed the bulk of the country’s exports. The fall in prices during this period, while partially improving the competitiveness of Yugoslav exports, was not enough to offset the overvalued currency in relation to the majority of global currencies and had a negative effect because of the noticeable lack of liquidity in the economy and the restricted credit policy. There are some indications that a smaller depreciation of the dinar during that period, accompanied by an increase in credit activity, could have strengthened the export performance of Yugoslavia. However, it should be emphasized that the leading cause of stagnating exports was the drop in agricultural prices. Alternatively, the depreciation exacerbated Yugoslavia’s already unfavorable trade relations and negatively influenced confidence in the currency. The damage caused by the golden dinar action can be measured through the outflow of capital and loss of the country’s financial credibility. The loss of 1.5 billion dinars in foreign currency is not a small amount considering the total amount of Yugoslavia’s trade (about 30% of the total amount of exports and imports, which was about half of the maximum total achieved in the 1920s), but it is not such a large sum in comparison to the gross national product (about 3%). However, keep in mind that after 1931 the dinar would have had to have

Battling over 00 book.indb 234

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

235

been devalued even without this unsuccessful action, since it was caused by the inevitable loss of capital (it was flowing out of the country even before the introduction of the golden dinar) and the devaluation of currencies in the neighboring countries in the early 1930s, which made Yugoslav products overpriced. The strict foreign currency protectionism, particularly articulated through the clearing house method of exchange, was the global norm in the early 1930s. Even though the clearing agreement was an anomaly because it significantly redirected global trade, at that moment it was a good way to overcome a rapidly shrinking world market. The recovery of Yugoslav trade and its return to the average levels from the 1920s began exactly when the clearing house method of business was introduced. The clearing house strategy allowed Yugoslavia to achieve equality, or close to equality, with some countries that it previously had a trade deficit with. Only through the implementation of a pegged dinar was it possible to avoid an even greater outflow of foreign capital (as well as domestic), which would have additionally shaken the Yugoslav economy. Regarding the implementation of the prima, that is, essentially the devaluation of the dinar during 1932, it must be emphasized that this was an action forced by the dinar’s collapse on world markets during the summer of that same year. The devaluation yielded good results in the early 1930s because it had an important role in activating exports and reviving domestic production. In 1934 the dinar was one of the most undervalued global currencies, and clearly a reason for Yugoslavia’s economic recovery during that time. However, many other countries began to devalue their currencies at this time as well, likewise improving their exports and production. In that context it is possible to assume that the devaluation of the dinar in relation to other currencies in 1938 should have taken place several years earlier, and that its resulting positive effects could have been enjoyed even sooner. Economists at that time were not eager about the devaluation of 1938. They considered it to be an ineffective way of improving the economy’s competitiveness as well as increase prices linearly, canceling out any positive results. However, the devaluation in the winter of 1938 had quite a positive effect on the trade balance with countries that had liberal foreign currency regimes, since exports with them increased significantly while imports diminished. Had this measure been adopted earlier, it would have probably improved the level of exports even more and fixed the foreign trade balance. Knowing that about one third of foreign trade took place with countries that did not have a clearing house system, it appears this would not have had an important impact. However, only when considering that the free foreign currencies strategically important for the state were secured from this source is it apparent how important trade with countries with free foreign currency markets was for Yugoslavia in relation to its percentage of the overall trade. The effects of these measures could no longer be analyzed after the end of 1939 due to the outbreak of war that redirected Yugoslavia’s foreign trade. Translated by Vjeran Pavlaković

Battling over 00 book.indb 235

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Cultural Influences in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria Roumaina Preshlenova and John R. Lampe

The tracking of interwar European cultural influence begins with World War I itself. Chapters on the South Slavs (Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs), Bulgaria, and Romania are included in European Culture in the Great War, The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914–1918, edited by Ariel Roshwald and Richard Stites.1 Andrew Wachtel describes the separate trials but common momentum for French-encouraged Yugoslavism spreading among Croats and Slovenes as well as Serbs toward the end of the Great War. Maria Bucur traces a more specific French connection for Romania, fueled by the belated wartime alliance and reaction against the 1918 German occupation. The postwar French legacy was a division between two influences, unitary nationalist mobilization around heroic imagery and the cynical mockery of newly popular cabaret and variety shows. Evelina Kelbetcheva echoes recent Bulgarian scholarship to argue that the two “national catastrophes,” the loss of the Second Balkan War and World War I, pushed Sofia’s intellectual elite away from its prewar emphasis on “national revival” and more toward the cultural trend of disillusioned modernism that developed in defeated Germany. Recent work from Bulgaria has also addressed the issue of post-1918 European cultural influence and the extent of pre-1941 German influence. A number of publications appreciate the wider European influences in Bulgarian litera-

1

 Ariel Roshwald, Richard Stites (eds.), European Culture in the Great War, The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 193– 266.

Battling over 00 book.indb 236

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

237

ture and art as evidence of a common European cultural history.2 These positive connections also emerge from the cultural figures selected, versus the negative judgments for the choices in economics and politics, in a volume entitled “The Hundred Most Influential Foreigners in Bulgarian History.”3 A special interest in German influence may be tracked through the numerous publications appearing since 1989.4 Cultural connections, specifically to the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in literature, the arts and architecture were strongest in the 1920s when economic relations and influence were minimal. They were limited at that time to a common concern over postwar reparations.5 Then, however, as economic ties to Germany grew and tightened into the late 1930s, the cultural linkage on which the Nazi regime hoped to expand failed to materialize. This failure may be seen in the translated selection from Milcho Lalkov’s contribution to the above-referenced Natev volume on Germany’s “uneven presence” in interwar Bulgarian history.

2

 Ivan Kremenski, Bulgaria v Evropa I sveta prez XX vek [Bulgaria in Europe and the World in the 20th Century] (Varna: IK Steto, 2005); Roumen Daskalov, Mezhdu Iztoka I Zapada: Bulgarsski kulturni dilemi [Between East and West: Bulgarian Cultural Dilemmas] (Sofia: LIK, 1998); Atanas Stamatov, Evropeiski proektsii vukhu bulgarskata kultura [European Influence on Bulgarian Philosophical Culture] (Sofia: Seminar 333, 1996); Rouzha Marinska and Petar Shtilianov (eds.), Sofia-Evropa—Bulgarskata zhivopis (1900–1950) v konteksta na evropeiskoto izkustvo [Sofia-Europe, Bulgarian Painting, 1900–1950, in the Context of European Art] (Sofia: Natsionalna hudozhestvena galeriya, 1999). 3  Andrei Pantev and Borislav Gavrilov (eds.), Stote nai-vliyatelni chuzhdentsi v bulgarskata istoriya [The Hundred Most Influential Foreigners in Bulgarian History] (Sofia: Reporter, 1999). 4  Georgi Markov, Bulgaro-Germanski otnosheniya, 1931–1939 [Bulgarian-German Relations, 1931–1939] (Sofia: 1984) and on the earlier years his Golyama voina i bulgarskiyat kliuch za evropeiskiya progreb, 1914–1916 [The Great War and the Bulgarian Key to the European Powderkeg, 1914–1916] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 1995) and his Goliamata voina I bulgarskata strazha mezhdu Sredna Evropa i Orienta, 1916–1919 [The Great War and the Bulgarian Barrier between Central Europe and the Middle East, 1916–1919] (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 2006). On broader connections, see Roumiana Preshlenova, “Dinge, die verbinden. Überlegungen zu den deutsch-bulgarischen Bezeihungen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” EU-Bulgaristik. Perspektiven und Potenziale. Festgabe für Norbert Randow zum 80. Geburtstag. Hrsg. von Christian Voß Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, Band 6 (Berlin: Otto Sagner Verlag, 2009), 51–64; and Marcus Wien, Markt und Modernisierung. Deutsch-bulgarishe Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, 1918–1944, in ihren konzeptuellen Grundlagen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007). 5  See the essays in Atanas Natev (ed.), Usvoyavane i emantsipatsiya: vstupitelni izslevaniya vurkhu nemska kultura v Bulgaria [Acquisition and Emancipation: Introductory Studies in German Culture in Bulgaria] (Sofia: K&M, 1997).

Battling over 00 book.indb 237

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

238

Chapter 4

The only continuous presence in the cultural history of interwar Yugoslavia was the consistent French effort to build on the educational and literary ties established in the immediate months after World War I. The chances given to young Serbian army officers to study at French universities were combined with France’s diplomatic determination to support the new state and its authority over the former territory of Austria-Hungary from its base in Belgrade. The initial result was a set of French schools, institutes, and subsidies also based in Belgrade and supporting the cultural ideal of assimilation to Yugoslavism from a Serbian core. While there would be no change in the commitment of French foreign policy to this projection, two studies of Franco-Serbian ties in a recent compendium on their pre- and post-1914 course indicate that French cultural initiatives also recognized the demands of non-Serbian regions for separate treatment and recognition. Stanislav Sretenović calls attention to the French decision by 1927 to reorganize its consulates and their cultural activities so that Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Skopje would have equal standing with Belgrade, leaving only Sarajevo under Belgrade’s aegis. Veljko Stanić acknowledges the initial Serb-supported origins of the Zagreb-based journal Nova Evropa but goes on to note that its French and British contributors had gone from celebrating the new unitary state to echoing Croatian complaints about the absence of a multiethnic federal framework by the later 1920s.6 This evolution of British views may also be seen in Ivo Mardešić, Croatia and Great Britain, The History of Cultural and Literary Relations (Zagreb: Most, 1995).7 More broadly, Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Na­ tion, Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford University Press, 1998) explores the mixture of European and various South Slav influences. For Belgrade in the 1920s, he finds a promising modernist confluence emerging. It drew on Italian as well as French trends while bringing non-Serbs, especially from Dalmatia, into the city’s artistic and literary milieu. The mixture’s promise for creating a common Yugoslav culture did not survive the decade. David A. Norris, Belgrade, A Cultural History (London: Oxford University Press, 2009) notes the turn of Miloš Crnjanski and others in the capital city’s literary circle away from Yugoslav enthusiasms by the 1930s. For details on interwar Serbia, see Milenka Milojković-Djurić, Usponi Srpske Kulture, 1900–1941 (Sources  Stanislav Sretenović, “L’Action culturelle française auprès des Serbes au sein du Royaume des Serbes, Croates et Slovenes (1918–1929),” 415–8, and Veljko Stanić, “Les Themes culturels français au Royaume de Yougoslavie, L’exemple des revues ‘Srpski Kniževni Glasnik’ et ‘Nova Evropa,’” in Dušan Bataković (ed.), La Serbie et la France, Une Alliance Atypique (Belgrade: Institut des Êtudes Balkaniques, 2010), 449–86. 7  See also Ivo Mardešić, Hrvatska/Velika Britanija: povijest kulturnih i književnih odnosa [Croatia / Great Britain: History of Cultural and Literary Relationships] (Zagreb: Croatian Writers’ Association, 1995). 6

Battling over 00 book.indb 238

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

239

of Serbian Culture, 1900–1941), 2 vols. (Novi Sad: IKSZS, 2008–9). The same limited promise for Yugoslavism came to the Croatian capital of Zagreb in the 1920s not only from Nova Evropa but also from its interaction with new Central European directions. As described in Celia Hawkesworth, Zagreb, A Cultural History (Oxford University Press, 2008), the ties were strongest in music and architecture. The literary and dramatic works of Miroslav Krleža dominated Croatian links to the radical left across interwar Europe. His growing disillusion with interwar Yugoslavia came from Marxist class criticism of bourgeois domination. The disillusion of the poet Tin Ujević was the classic case of failed Croatian accommodation with Belgrade’s domination of the literary Yugoslavism. The influence of Western eugenic thinking over the same period is considered in chapters on Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia in Blood and Homeland, Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeastern Europe, 1900–1940, Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds. (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007). This originally British extension of social Darwinism to the supposed science of eugenic engineering had the effect here of promoting the ethnic majority’s nativist origins at the expense of any foreign influence, more broadly from Europe or locally from ethnic minorities. The promotion of original peasant culture and the rejection of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, the Jewish minority in Romania, and the Roma minority in both, were the most obvious consequences. For Greece, its unique “cult of the ancient” served to dismiss the claims of the Bulgarian or Macedonian Slavs to genetic equality. The influence in Yugoslavia was more complicated. As presented by Rory Yeomans, in Blood and Homeland (83–122), there were two variations, the Croatian and, rather than the expected Serbian, the Dinaric, or generic Yugoslav. The cultural dissemination of the Croatian version received support from the political influence of the predominant Croatian Peasant Party in the 1920s and from its growing cooperative network in the 1930s. Only the wartime fascist government of the small Ustaša party sought briefly and unsuccessfully to implement the long-held notion that Croatian ethnic reach extended to the Bosnian Muslims. Their brief regime advanced the idea that Croatian ethnic origins had more in common with the German Aryans than the South Slavs. Belgrade’s leading ethnographer of the 1930s had maintained that the various South Slavs were in fact a single superior “Dinaric race” of mountain warriors and masculine women. Evidence of the larger physical size of their brains was presented to demonstrate their superiority to German Aryans. There was hardly any wider dissemination of this bizarre notion, which in any case was a struggle against Serbian ties to French and Russian culture that spread from Belgrade University after World War I. (See Predrag Marković, Beograd i Evropa, 1918–1941, Evropski uticaj na proces moderniizacije Beograda (Belgrade and Europe, 1918–1941, European Influence on the Process of Modernization in Belgrade) (Belgrade, 1992.) Bulgarian eugenic claims were more modest despite the continuing extension of ethnic identity to include all Macedonians. The post-1918 regime of the

Battling over 00 book.indb 239

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

240

Chapter 4

major peasant party, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, was overthrown by a bloody coup in 1923, thereby limiting the celebration and promotion of their pure rural origins and customs. A few eugenics societies failed to survive into the 1930s. Only during World War II did the influence of German eugenic initiatives under the Nazi regime see a proposal for rewarding larger families of “pure Bulgarians.” The law faced opposition from Tsar Boris, who was not an ethnic Bulgarian. It was in Romania that the cultural assumptions of European eugenics, and other primarily French currents, were widely accepted and came to distinguish its interwar elite. The spread of eugenic thinking from scientific argumentation into the social anthropology and peasant hygiene or preservation projects of Dimitrie Giusti in the 1930s is detailed in Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). The implicit emphasis on racial selection and exclusion took precedence in World War II, as demonstrated by Vladimir Solonari, Purifying the Nation, Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania (Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Before then, as he also makes clear, the larger part of the cultural connection to the eugenics movement came from its attraction to the Romanian peasantry, its authentic, nativist social values, and its rights to political representation. As described in his chapter on “The Great Debate” in Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), Keith Hitchins poses this “peasantist” approach of Nicolae Iorga and others against the “Europeanist” and “traditionalist” approaches whose three-corned contest preoccupied interwar Romanian politics. Consciously resisting European influence like the peasantists, the traditionalists fastened on the Romanian Orthodox Church to support its struggles against modernizing European ideas and against the rival churches with which the territory of Greater Romania confronted. The initial Europeanists, on the other hand, embraced European modernization, some for its promise of industrial development but more for the explicitly French ideal of a centralized state and an assimilationist educational system. French observers and authorities welcomed the application of this approach to the new territories of Transylvania and Bukovina. As noted in chapter 1, Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, Regionalism, Nation-Building & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1929 (Cornell University Press, 1995) spells out the way in which the ruling National Liberal Party in Bucharest used school curricula and media control to dismiss the previously dominant Hungarian influence in Transylvania and the predominant Austrian role in Bukovina. But like Solonari, she finds separate emphasis on national modernization on a European pattern and ethnic identity based on autochtonous tradition overlapped as Romanian culture entered into the 1930s.

Battling over 00 book.indb 240

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

241

COMPARING EUROPEAN CULTURAL INFLUENCES IN BELGRADE AND SOFIA The selections below are translated from works already cited in our Overview. For Belgrade, Ranka Gašić compares the set of British and German influences that joined with the major French presence also noted in the Overview. Miroslav Jovanović looks at the considerable role of emigre anti-Bolshevik Russians on the high culture of both Belgrade and Sofia. Milcho Lalkov tracks a German cultural influence in Sofia that did not mark a  political turn toward the Nazi regime before World War II was under way. Together, this mixture of external influences offered the further promise of some sort of integration into the wider European community. No such promise would emerge again until recent post1990 decades. By then, the fascist and communist frameworks, which had in fact divided the continent and discouraged the free flow of influence, had vanished. But the region’s experience since 1989 suggests the legacy of this first decade of wider exchange has been positive.

Battling over 00 book.indb 241

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

COMPARING EUROPEAN CULTURAL INFLUENCES IN BELGRADE AND SOFIA Ranka Gašić, Beograd u hodu ka Evropi. Kulturni uticaji Britanije i Nemačke na beogradsku elitu 1918–1941 [Belgrade on Its Way to Europe. British and German Cultural Influences on Belgrade Elite, 1918–1941] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2005), 259–65. Ranka Gašić is a research fellow at Institut za savremenu istoriju (Institute of Contemporary History). Her research interest focuses on Serbo-Croatian relations and Yugoslavism in the early twentieth century, Serbian press in the Habsburg Monarchy, history of Belgrade between the world wars, elites in the Serbian society, free-masons in Belgrade, and cultural influences of Britain and Germany in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. She is the author of: “Novi kurs” Srba u Hrvatskoj. Srbobran 1903–1914 [The “New Path” for Serbs in Croatia. Srbobran 1903–1914] (Zagreb: Prosvjeta, 2001); and Beograd u hodu ka Evropi. Kulturni uticaji Britanije i Nemacke na beogradsku elitu 1918–1941 [Belgrade on Its Way to Europe. British and German Cultural Influences on Belgrade Elite, 1918–1941] (Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2005). CONCLUSION The influence of Great Britain and Germany on the cultural life and development of the interwar Belgrade were decisively conditioned by the perception of the Balkans and especially of the new state of the South Slavs by these two powers, and by the relation of the Belgrade bourgeoisie and of our prominent cultural workers to each of these two states as well as of the respective cultural circles. The Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia had primarily a political significance for Great Britain as part of the new international order after World War I, whereas the economic importance of this region was almost negligible. Germany’s interest in the new Yugoslav state was quite the opposite of Britain—economic interests were by far the most important, whereas the political ones were in a way, only their consequence. The experiences of the Belgrade elite from the previous war as well as the prevailing ideology of liberalism and parliamentary democracy, at which Britain exactly served as an ideological and political model, influenced greatly the creation of attitudes (toward the former ally or opponent). Thus the perceptions of Britain and Germany in Belgrade were at odds with their interests in Belgrade and the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia. The decisive role in creation and upkeep of the institutions dealing with the cultural ties with Britain and the United States was played by “networks” of people of influence in society who were interconnected through studies, who stayed abroad during the war and after it, and later on through political, family,

Battling over 00 book.indb 242

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

243

and economic ties. This held true particularly for the well-organized Anglophile circles who had already been included during the war in the activities of various British humanitarian organizations aiding victims in Serbia. On this basis after the war, they organized their associations for cultural propaganda. German cultural propaganda had no such “networks.” Institutions for cultural cooperation with Germany were usually created on political initiative, based on common activity of some German and Yugoslav politicians and public figures. While the “Anglophiles” formed an ideologically and organizationally comparatively coherent group, the “Germanophiles,” otherwise rare in Belgrade, did not constitute a similar unit. They were given their name in the 1930s by their political opponents, who implied by that an adherence to the Nazi regime, and not a championing of German culture. Cultural transfer between these countries and the Belgrade bourgeoisie was carried out both within and without an institutional framework. The institutional framework was comprised of three groups: the first was formed from institutions for cultural propaganda in Britain and Germany, the second, mixed societies in the country and abroad, and the third—immediately prior to World War II—the German and British cultural institutes who took over the care of overall cultural propaganda. The first group was comprised of the British Council in London and the German Academy in Munich, who represented cultural policies of their respective nations in our territory, regardless of the differences in time, the way in which they came into being, as well as in the degrees and modes of control by their states. The second group included mixed associations who cooperated more concretely and directly. The number and dispersal of the mixed associations underpin the thesis of greater interest of the German side for these connections than was shown by Great Britain, but at the same time, of quite the opposite orientation of the Belgrade bourgeoisie. While there were two such societies in Germany, there was only one in England. On the other hand, in Belgrade there was only one Yugoslav-German society and three “Anglophile” societies, whose work started much earlier. Finally, the third group was made up of the British and German cultural institutes. Both of them were set up in 1940, so it was clear they acted as wartime propaganda tools. Since under wartime conditions the British propaganda could rely on the local “infrastructure” in Belgrade, the British institute acted like a “shadow leadership.” The mixed societies operated as before and on the board there was a place for one, very reliable Belgrader, Vladeta Popović. On the other hand, the German cultural institute, lacking such support from “within,” had exclusively German leadership and took over complete organization of cultural activities. Outside this framework, cultural transfer was taking place in all spheres of social life, especially in ars and everyday life, with new media—radio and film— contributing considerably to it. To a certain extent, the state directed these processes, but cultural influences were adopted spontaneously, as part of the general process of inclusion of the Belgrade bourgeoisie in European trends. In music and

Battling over 00 book.indb 243

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

244

Chapter 4

drama the Belgrade scene was traditionally under the influence of the Germanspeaking regions and Central Europe. The same trend was observed after World War I. On one hand, musicians, conductors, and directors from Germany and Austria left a considerable trace in the history of our scenic arts than did their AngloSaxon colleagues. On the other hand, Belgrade musicians played more often and much longer on Central European stages than in Britain. The British influence in theatre appeared suddenly after World War I and was marked by a significant increase in two ways: plays by British playwrights became numerous and popular in Belgrade, surpassing German authors. In those years translation of these works from the English began—having been previously translated from German. However, in the media the situation was opposite. The press, as a traditional medium, was used exclusively by the British cultural and political propaganda in Belgrade. However, influences of these two countries and cultures competed vigorously in fields of new powerful media—radio and film. In the first case, it was the clash between the British private sector and the German state as an exponent of its interests in the beginning years of World War II. Each side had its adherents among the local cadres of the Belgrade radio station. In the case of film, the struggle between American and German distributers was going outside of our borders. Although our region fell to the German film industry, Hollywood production made strong incursions in these parts, acquainting broad masses of the population with American culture. English influence was not as present in the arts either before or after World War I, since there was no artistic school that would exercise larger influence outside of Great Britain. Expressionism, as an original German stream, had an immense echo in the world and in our country. The interwar period was mostly marked by the change of traditional styles, which found different expressions in various fields of art. In literature the strong French influence, embodied in the works of Jovan Skerlić and Bogdan Popović, experienced a strong challenge from expressionism. Where traditionally most-read French and Russian literature remained the most popular, sales of German books—especially from expert fields—as well as translations from English that started after World War I, witnessed a considerable increase. However, trends in painting were quite opposite. Traditional German influence and artists’ education in Central Europe were replaced by French influence that remained dominant until World War II. The traditional conflict between the national and the European continued in music, with the European trends taking a lead from the Prague school of expressionism under direct Viennese influence. Belgraders experienced the same change of cultural trends—Central European, mainly German models from the time of the Kingdom of Serbia, were replaced by new, Western European ones. While women followed Parisian fashion, the idea of a well-dressed man presupposed English style and English materials. Anglo-Saxon forms of social life entered our territories for the first time. New games, sports, and night entertainment, as well as social organizations,

Battling over 00 book.indb 244

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

245

came from America and Britain. Mass culture, as one of the features of the twentieth century, was and is following Anglo-Saxon models. The economic and political situation in the country between the two world wars, as well as in its relations with Britain and Germany, respectively, determined the influence of these states on our science. Economic reasons were always of primary importance, so for that reason German influence on science was much larger than the British one. In that respect, World War I brought no change. The traditional German influence on science, economy, and the organization of institutions remained very strong, regardless of the political orientation toward Western Europe. This is shown in the following examples: first, German was more widely learned than English and there were Serbian-German schools in Belgrade, whereas similar English schools did not exist; second, despite constant education of cadres for English instruction, it was never introduced as a mandatory subject until the end of this period; third, several Germans living in Belgrade at that time made great contribution to the organization of our institutions; finally, the transfer of goods through reparations was much larger than the donations coming from Britain and the United States. Political rapprochement with the Third Reich in the late 1930s led to further strengthening of institutionalized cooperation in the field of science, in the form of excursions and various kinds of additional expert training in Germany. Foreign influences were also visible in the creation of certain expert profiles in accordance with the needs of the new state and foreign capital. Cadres needed by the state were mainly educated in Germany and Austria, whereas the needs of British capitalism were decisive for the choice of studies in England. British and German cultural influences in Belgrade evinced certain dynamics during the examined period. In the 1920s German influence was almost completely suppressed. Rare visits from musicians, mostly from Austria, as well as of theater troupes from Germany kept up the thin thread of cultural exchange with this region. On the other hand, the British influence received its institutionalized framework with the foundation of the Anglo-American-Yugoslav Club in 1924. During the first years of the Dictatorship of January 6, cultural propaganda of both sides became more active. Wartime memories were partly suppressed and the Belgrade bourgeoisie became more open for cultural cooperation with the Germans. For the first time since World War I Belgrade high school students went to German and Austrian schools in the early 1930s. During the 1928/29 season there were more guest musicians from Germany than Austria. Preparations for the first representative exhibition of German art in Belgrade overlapped the founding of the Yugoslav-German Society, as well as the German school. All three initiatives were launched in 1929. British influence, which was more visible than German in preceding years, was also intensified and more organized between 1929 and 1932. The Chair for the English language and literature (1929), the Association of the Friends of Great Britain and America (1932), and the daycare center “Charles Dickens”

Battling over 00 book.indb 245

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

246

Chapter 4

(1932) were founded then. British musicians held several concerts during 1929– 30, in connection with the increased activity of the Belgrade Anglophiles. In the first years of the Dictatorship of January 6, two big exhibitions of British artists in Belgrade (1929) and Yugoslav in London (1930) were held, with considerable response and good publicity in Belgrade. In the second half of the 1930s British and German influence became dominant, and due to the political situation in Europe, our territory became an arena of conflict. The dominance of Germany was complete in the Yugoslav economy, as well as its political pressure on the government. Founding the German high school, the German Scientific Institute, and declaring German the first foreign language in Belgrade, high schools in 1940 were the fruit of economic and political pressures. Cultural propaganda did not play such an important role for the Third Reich as before, so the British Council was much more active than the German Academy. A new strengthened surge of Anglophile activity began then, as seen by increasingly frequent visits of significant musicians, the foundation of the second English daycare center (1939), and of the British Institute in Belgrade (1940). Finally, any cultural transfer between different societies always took place within a certain ideological framework. This holds particularly true for the interwar period, the time of exclusive ideologies, already known in historiography as “the time of the exclusive” (A. Mitrović) or as “the time of extremes” (E. Hobsbawm). In that respect, British and German cultural influences represented diverging and, in the late 1930s, completely opposite ideological orientations. British influence was always marked by the ideology of liberalism and parliamentary democracy espoused by the vast majority of the Belgrade bourgeoisie, and by Yugoslavism, or, “Yugoslav nationalism” enrooted in a much smaller, elite circle of the Belgrade intelligentsia, which supported the federalist reconstitution of the country. While British cultural influence had a firm base in well-organized Anglophile circles throughout the interwar period, German influence experienced considerable change in that respect. During the 1920s, while it was comparatively weak, it consisted mainly of ties between representatives of the Belgrade intellectual elite with Hermann Wendel, a politician of socialdemocratic orientation. Strengthening and renewal of ties with German culture happened around 1930, in the times of the Weimar Republic. However, during the 1930s the German cultural influence served to spread Nazi propaganda, so that it was more imposed on rather than accepted by the Belgrade cultural circles. Thus, on the eve of World War II, and then in 1939–40, these two influences came to respresent two opposing political poles. Translated by Zoran Janjetovic

Battling over 00 book.indb 246

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

247

Miroslav Jovanović, Ruska emigracija na Balkanu 1920–1940 [The Russian Emigration in the Balkans, 1920–1940] (Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2006), 199– 200, 203–4, 409–11, 419. Miroslav Jovanović is assistant professor at the Department of History (Chair of General Contemporary History) at Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He was one of the leaders on international project on History Teaching in Southeast Europe. He is a specialist on the history of Russia, East Europe, and the Balkans as well as Russian emigration in the twentieth century. He is the author of: Doseljavanje ruskih izbeglica u kraljevinu SHS 1919–1924 [The Settlement of Russian Refugees in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 1919–1924] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 1996); Jezik i društvena istorija. Društvenoistorijski okviri polemike o srpskom književnom jeziku [Language and Social History: The Sozialgeschichte Framework of the Debate on the Serbian Literary Language] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 2002); Moderna Srbija 1804–2004: tri viđenja ili poziv na dijalog, vol 1 [Modern Serbia1804–2004: Three Views or A Call to Dialogue] (Belgrade: 2005); Ruska emigracija na Balkanu 1920–1940 [The Russian Emigration in the Balkans, 1920–1940] (Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2006); Kriza istorije [The Crisis of History] (Belgrade: Serbica, 2009). THE RUSSIAN EMIGRATION IN THE BALKANS (1920–1940) The first period: The period of immigration; beginning of the 1920s (1919–22/23). After the defeat of the White Army in the Russian Civil War, around 200,000 refugees in several waves of immigration fled Russia and came to the Balkans. The second period: The time of adoption and the first wave of migration; mid-1920s (1923–26). Due to a series of factors (including the decision of French authorities to displace Russian army units from the camp near Constantinople and employ them on contract in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia; the decision of Turkish authorities in 1926 to change the legal status of Russian immigrants in Constantinople; the loss of jobs of the Russian contract soldiers in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia; increased interest of French and Belgian companies to employ Russian refugees; etc.), a more or less final dispersion of Russian refugees among the Balkan states took place. This was followed by a longer process, which at one point ran simultaneously with the dispersion, of mass migration of Russian refugees from the region. After the migration the number of Russian refugees in the Balkans stabilized at around 70,000. The third period: The period of consolidation; end of 1920s–beginning of 1930s (1927–31). Following the rapid mass migration from the region, there was a significant decline in migration processes (it should be stressed, however, that they never completely stopped). During this time there were also indications of a long term and full adaptation of the refugees to the circumstances of life in

Battling over 00 book.indb 247

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

248

Chapter 4

the new environment. In this period the number of refugees stabilized at around 55,000 to 60,000. The fourth period: The beginning of assimilation, followed by mild but continuous migrations; 1930s (1931–39/40). In this period the life of Russian refugees stabilized and they more fully integrated into society. The process of migration was still ongoing. By the beginning of World War I the number of refugees had dropped to around 40,000. The fifth period: The years of World War II were marked by the intensified reintegration and pronounced politicization of refugee life. The sixth period: The time of mass and permanent migration from the Balkans or complete assimilation; postwar years (1944/45–48/50). Due to the political changes, which ensued after World War II, the number of Russian refugees and their descendants plunged to 10,000 across the entire Balkan region. RUSSIAN REFUGEES AS A SOCIAL GROUP No matter how logical it seems to simply define the Russian refugee group as a social group without any further explanation, it is still necessary to refer to modern theoretical postulates1 and explain the key factors that made 40,000 individuals in Yugoslavia, 200,000 in the Balkans, and 2 million across the entire world feel like members of one wider community, which the contemporaries and many subsequent researchers referred to as “Russia beyond its borders,” despite their separate experiences and visions, discontent, or mutual disagreements and animosity. The transformation of an incoherent mass of individuals into a single social group and reshaping into a unit that had certain properties of a social structure—a sort of a “refugee society”—constituted the main sociostructural features of the Russian refugee group. This process was determined by four factors. The Russian refugee group was at the same time a realistic unit and a part of a considerably wider unity. It offered a structured social framework for the life of refugees. The group itself was characterized by active and continuous collective views and ideas. Most importantly, the group had a common goal to which it aspired.

Groups as a realistic and partial unity The political significance and the mass character of the exodus of Russians from their homeland attracted a lot of public attention in Europe between the world wars. This indicated that they formed a realistic and conspicuous collective unity (irrespective of whether these were groups of 1,000–2,000 people in Greece and Romania, or groups of several dozens or hundreds of thousands of refugees, 1

 In order to theoretically define the character and typology of the Russian refugee group, we used the structuralist positive definiton of the notion of social group formulated in Georges Gurvitch (ed.), Sociologija [Sociology], vol I. (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1966), 201.

Battling over 00 book.indb 248

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

249

which was the case in France, Germany, and Constantinople at the beginning of the 1920s). Various factors were in play, which helped this mass of people find their own identity, and be identified by their environment as a more or less single unity. First, all people who fled Russia at the time—regardless of their reasons for emigrating, their origin, educational background, or a social status—held a unique status as refugees in the new society. Second, they were connected by their native language, which was the most natural means of communication within the group. Next, the public in societies in which they now lived treated them as refugees and members of a unique refugee group (who had to be taken care of, given accommodations, employed, provided with food and health insurance, etc.), but also as people who were of different origin from them, and shared different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, habits, and mentality. This is logical, as it was most natural for an observer to identify a group of people who read Russian newspapers, frequented Russian bars, and communicated in Russian as a single unity. At the same time, however, and at different levels, the Russian refugee group formed only a partial collective unity, as it was a part of a much wider unity. Regardless of their big numbers, Russian refugees constituted only a (smaller) part of a considerably larger unity of Russian population, to which people belonged by birth. Within the group of Russian citizens, they formed only that part which included people who decided to leave the homeland. This was merely a part of a multimillion group of people who in their everyday communication used Russian as their native language. Therefore, the Russian refugee groups in certain countries, for example 40,000 Russians in Yugoslavia or 35,000 in Bulgaria, represented only part of a significantly larger refugee group in the world.

Continuous and active collective standpoints and ideas There were two ideas that embodied the principal beliefs embraced by the Russian refugees: consistent anti-Bolshevism and the idea of the preservation, further development and promotion of the cultural tradition of prerevolutionary Russia. Relentless anti-Bolshevism was undoubtedly the most active and persistent collective attitude of the Russian refugee group, which greatly contributed to its coherence. A renowned Russian director, Jurij L’vovich Rakitin, who lived in Yugoslavia, wrote about the birth and essence of this standpoint already at the beginning of the 1920s: “I lived in Constantinople as an immigrant because I had refused to submit to them, the murderers of my homeland and my emperor. I joined the crowd of emigrants who rejected the new state—Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.”2 At the end of the 1930s, Nikolai Fjodorov pointed to the persistence of this standpoint throughout the years between the two world  Cited from Aleksej Arsenjev, “Rakitin među ruskim emigrantima” [Rakitin among the Russian Émigrés], Zbornik Matice srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku [The Matica Srpska. Review of Theatrical Arts and Music], 16–17 (1995): 249.

2

Battling over 00 book.indb 249

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

250

Chapter 4

wars: “Russian emigrants constitute an internally integral political organism which is firmly connected by the ideological and realistic implacability towards Bolshevism and the Soviet government [...]. The general and principal political position of the émigrés is anti-Bolshevik by principle. The vast majority of them takes an implacably hostile position towards the ideology of Bolshevism and the work of the Soviet government, which gives an exquisite inner strength and unity to the emigration group. [...] However, apart from sharing the relentless idea of principled anti-Bolshevism, which has tied the emigration into a unified whole like a steel chain, the emigration is otherwise unusually wide and diverse.”3 This unambiguous anti-Bolshevik character of the Russian emigration somewhat eased the position of the refugees in the time of explicit fear among the European political forces in the early 1920s that the revolution, and the Bolshevik revolutionary ideas in particular, might spread across Europe. However, after a relative normalization of the relations between USSR and most European countries in the mid-1920s, anti-Bolshevism of the Russian emigration grew into a kind of a burden for Russian refugees. Nevertheless, it was impossible for the Russian emigration to escape its own (political) character and forget the reasons that led to the exodus, or brush aside the fact that, from the emigrant perspective, it was the Bolsheviks who were to blame for their fateful destiny. The other standpoint was firmly grounded on the idea that only true, traditional Russian cultural values could be linked to the prerevolutionary, imperial Russia. The refugees believed they were the ones who needed to continue this culture and tradition. Various authors discussed this idea, but the most concise definitions were given by Katarina Kuskova and Boris Pavlov. Katarina Kuskova wrote: “It was indisputable that the Russian emigration played an important role both as a live carrier of the Russian spirit and features of the Russian culture, and as an initiator of a more vigorous interest in the Russian history, arts, and literature.”4 Boris Pavlov wrote from the perspective of the Russian refugee province of Veliki Bečkereg: “not only did Russian people not neglect their sacred duty to educate new generations in the Russian spirit, but indeed, they saw it as their obligation to preserve old Russian customs and tradition.”5 This cultural matrix was emphasized as a counterpoint to the new Bolshevik culture—Proletcult, which was developed in Soviet Russia. The idea of the preservation and further development of the prerevolutionary Russian culture was also manifested in the organization of Russian schools, which aimed to maintain the basic values  Nikolaj Fedorov, Ruska emigracija. Historija, suština, rad, značenje [The Russian Emigration. History, Essence, Work, Meaning] (Zagreb: Impresum, 1939), 1, 5. 4  Katarina Kuskova, “Sudbina ruske emigracije” [The fate of Russian emigration], Nova Evropa, XXI (1930) 4: 236–7. 5  Boris L. Pavlov, Russkaya koloniya v Velikom Bechkereke (Petrovgrade-Zrenyanine) [The Russian Colony in Veliki Bečkerek (Petrovgrad-Zrenjanin)] (Zrenjanin: Narodni muzej, 1994). 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 250

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

251

of the earlier life (the values that the refugees remembered), and preserve the old orthography as a symbol of the olden times and a true Russian language. RUSSIAN CULTURE IN THE BALKANS One of the main problems of the command of the Russian army units, which were building the road from Vranje to Bosilegrad was, according to the testimony of the commanders themselves, a lack of books to read. As they stated at the time, “Cossacs would read with passion anything that was within reach.” Cossacs were sent a selection of literature with some 200 titles, which even included Chekhov’s collected works, but the books perished along the way. The soldiers thus decided to collect 4,000 Yugoslav dinars in order to create a small library at the camp. The fact that a Russian soldier, who spent his free time in a dugout he built himself, longed for a book at the end of a long day of physical work in a remote and hardly accessible area of the Kingdom of SCS near Besna Kobila mountain pass, reflected to a great extent the attitude of a Russian person in the emigration toward literature and culture in general. Preservation and development of the Russian culture in the emigration represented yet another link, if not the most conspicuous, in a series of symbolic connections between the émigrés and the homeland they had left. Russians were present and active in the life of science and arts as lecturers, organizers of cultural life, prominent artists, architects and builders, both in the scientific and cultural institutions of the countries they lived in. Consequently, in present-day discussions on the rich and complex set of questions related to the life of the Russian emigration in the Balkans, it is their presence and role in the cultural life that is put in the foreground, although in somewhat simplified terms. Even in the collective conscience of contemporary Balkan societies, the works of George Ostrogorsky, Pjotr Mihailovich Bicilij, Jurij L’vovich Rakitin, or Nikolai Masalitinov almost entirely overshadow all of the problems linked to the Russian emigration, such as their integration into the new societies, regulation of their legal status, their individual psychological traumas, or efforts to organize a specific immigrant society. SCIENCE The presence and activity of the Russian immigrants in the domain of science was threefold: they formed scientific associations, lectured at universities and schools in the Balkan countries, and organized Russian scientific life (they organized public lectures, established open universities, etc.). However, the scientific activity among the Russian emigration was not equally developed in all Balkan countries. In present-day discussions on the scientific work of the Russian emigration in the Balkans, what is usually implied is the wide scientific activity that Russians developed in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, but not in Constantinople, Greece, or Romania, where Russian scientific life was almost nonexistent. There were

Battling over 00 book.indb 251

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

252

Chapter 4

several factors that influenced this. First, scientific life could not fully develop before the refugees had settled in and adjusted to the new environment, which took place around the mid-1920s. However, by that time the number of refugees in Constantinople, Greece, and Romania had dropped so significantly (only 1,000–2,000 refugees remained) that it was impossible to organize any scientific project that was slightly more demanding. Also, the governments of these countries did not appear interested in using the knowledge and experience of Russian professors and scientists, which is why they quickly decided to look for adequate employment in some other country of Russian refugee settlement (often in the neighboring Balkan countries, the Kingdom of SCS, and Bulgaria). On the other hand, the governments of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria welcomed prominent Russian experts and were happy to offer them employment in civil service, at local universities and high schools. They also approved of the establishment and work of the Russian scientific institutions. Among the scientific institutions the Russian refugees founded in the Balkans, the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade and the Russian Academic Group in Sofia were most distinguished. The Russian Scientific Institute was founded on September 16, 1928, during the fourth congress of the Russian academic organizations in the emigration, held in Belgrade and presided by Professor V. G. Korenchevski, member of the Lister Institute in London. The aim of the congress was to create a permanent scientific center for the development of free Russian scientific thought. However, this was not the first Russian scientific institution founded in the Kingdom of SCS. Immediately after the arrival of the first bigger refugee group, the Association of Russian Scientists was founded (in 1920). Soon after the liberal wing of the Association of Russian Scientists broke off and formed a separate organization in 1921, the Russian Academic Group was established. The idea to establish the Institute in Belgrade initially came about in 1922 at the second congress of Russian academic organizations in the emigration, but had not been realized until six years later. The Russian Scientific Institute was funded by the government of the Kingdom of SCS, which helped the Institution to quickly grow into the leading scientific center of “Russia beyond its borders” (although there were similar institutes operating in Prague and Berlin). Initially the Institute was located in the building of the Serbian Royal Academy. In 1933 its premises were moved to the newly opened Russian House in Belgrade, named Emperor Nikolai II. The Institute actively operated until the beginning of World War II in 1941. In accordance with its constitution, the Institute had a council (composed of all full members), the board, which was an executive body made up of the president, vice president, and other three members, and the publishing and revision committees. In the entire period of its existence (from 1929 to 1941), the number of permanent members ranged between 40 and 60, while the number of member associates constantly grew from 12 in 1929 to 48 in 1938. Yugoslav scientists also participated in the work of the Institute.

Battling over 00 book.indb 252

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

253

A  special activity of the Institute was organization of guest lectures by Russian scientists from all over Europe. Beside these lectures, the Institute also organized scientific conventions, seminars, courses, and lectures, and published an esteemed scientific journal Records of the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade. In order to facilitate a continuous development of Russian science, the Institute provided assistance to young scientific workers from Yugoslavia and other countries, offering fellowships that included work at European universities and an introduction to methodology of scientific work. * * * Owing to the high level of cultural awareness of the Russian refugee group, the arts marked the social life of the Russians in the Balkans in various ways. From their first day in exile, the refugees turned to culture and arts in search of fulfillment, looking for a sanctuary or a retreat from the dullness of everyday life. As an illustration, already at the end of the 1920s, Russians organized a narrative newspaper and opened a central library at the refugee camp at Gallipoli, while at the camp on Lemnos Island they opened a theatre and cinema. Among refugees who fled Russia, there were already affirmed writers, poets, painters, actors, directors, opera singers, and ballet dancers, and after a few years of living in exile a new generation of artists arose. This paved the way for a versatile artistic development in spite of the hard conditions of émigré life. Although producing art in exile in one part almost exclusively applied to the world of Russian refugees (e.g., literature and poetry), the other forms of art (such as painting, sculpting, and the stage and musical arts) had more of a universal character and became an inseparable part of a more general artistic and cultural development of Balkan societies. Translated by Marina Čižmešija-Williams

Battling over 00 book.indb 253

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

Milcho Lalkov, “Germania v bulgarskata istoriya 1878–1939—problemi i tendentsii na edno neravnomerno prisustvie” [Germany in the Bulgarian History 1878–1939. Problems and Trends of an Uneven Presence]. In Atanas Natev (ed.), Usvoyavane i emantsipatsiya: vstupitelni izsledvaniya vurhu nemska kultura v Bulgaria [Acquisition and Emancipation. Introductory Studies on German Culture in Bulgaria] (Sofia: “K&M,” 1997), 177–94. Milcho Lalkov (1944–2000) was history professor at the Sofia University “St Kliment Okhridski.” His main research areas were the political developments in the Balkans since the nineteenth century and Austro-Hungarian activities in the Balkans.1 The presented extract is from his contribution to the pilot phase of a research project on German culture in Bulgaria. In his text, M. Lalkov focused on the controversial role Germany played in Bulgarian history after the reestablishment of the small Balkan state by the European Great Powers at the Berlin Congress in 1878 until the outbreak of World War II. In particular, the instrumentalization of German cultural penetration into Bulgaria for political influence has been questioned. It did not influence as much decision makers as the dynamic development of the political constellation in favor of Bulgarian attempts at achieving national unification. Admittedly, the latter motivated the political elite in Bulgaria to choose alliance with Germany twice in the two world wars. In order to restore her influence in Bulgaria, “after 1919 Germany had banked on two factors—presence in the economy and cultural influence.”2 During the two governments of the Alliance [1923–31],3 the Weimar Republic pursued a policy of so-called cultural recruitment. The expanding network of German schools in Bulgaria started popularizing the German language. The interest in German literature and the press increased, while in scholarly research the contributions dedicated to Bulgaria already exceeded those of the prewar and the war period. German higher education institutions opened their doors even wider to Bulgarian students who later in their homeland, form political and intellectual elite with favorable attitude toward Germany.

 On his scholarly work, see Roumiana Preshlenova, “Prof. DSC. Milcho Dimitrov Lalkov (5.09.1944–11.06.2000)”, Études balkaniques 3 (2000): 172–5. 2  Elena Boyadzhieva-Kyulyumova, Germanskata kulturna politika v Bǔlgaria, 1919– 1944 [German Cultural Policy in Bulgaria, 1919–1944] (Sofia: Univ. Iz-vo Sv. Kliment Okhridski, 1991), 278. 3  Translator’s note: The Democratic Alliance based on the National Alliance and several other parties came on power on 9.06.1923, following a coup against the government of the Agrarian Union. It had two successive governments, of Professor Alexander Tsankov and Andrey Lyapchev (1923–1931). 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 254

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:28

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

255

“Political neutrality” and “peaceful revision,” economic independence and secure markets, love of peace while concluding treaties and secret armament, cultural independence and “national propaganda,” summarize the principles on which the further Bulgaro-German rapprochement would be based.4 In its resistance to the antirevisionist international policy of France and Britain, the government of the People’s Block, which came to power in 1931, relied also on partnership with Germany. This was also necessitated by the consequences of the world economic crisis (1929–33) since the vast German market offered opportunities for the sale of Bulgarian agricultural production. The prediction of a German economic expert that: “For us, the possibilities for advancement in the Balkan states become real only when they do not receive credits from France and turn to Germany for the sale of their agrarian excess production,” came true.5 The Bulgarian economic orientation to Germany, which was fixed in treaties and clearing agreements, gradually found its way in the policy of Bulgarian governments of the 1930s. Their formula “active trade with Germany—loyal diplomacy with France” did not only reflect the natural dictates of the need for the German markets and the weak possibility of the Western democracies to ensure easily accessible credits for Bulgaria. Despite the ideological differences between the liberaldemocratic views of many of the leading Bulgarian politicians and the National Socialist regime of Adolph Hitler, in power in Germany since January 1933, Germany stood out as the only force capable of dealing a crucial blow on the Versailles system, that is, a  possibility to resolve the Bulgarian territorial and minority problems. This explains the general approval, which welcomed the treaty for trade and shipping, concluded with Germany on June 24, 1932. It facilitated the “German economic struggle with the postwar status-quo and created favourable conditions for the development of Bulgarian economy.”6 It would, however, be an exaggeration to claim that the Bulgaro-German rapprochement was developing smoothly within this general geostrategic track. During the 1930s Bulgaria was making use of German market opportunities but turned into a raw-material supply source for Germany and a convenient market for its industrial products. This also gave birth to a dependency difficult to overcome in foreign trade. It was aggravated during the series of cabinets put together by the neutral G. Kioseivanov, which strengthened the authoritarian regime of Tsar Boris between the end of 1935 and beginning of 1940. In 1939 the German share in Bulgarian imports reached 65.5 percent, while Bulgarian exports were  Georgi Markov, Bǔlgaro-germanskite otnosheniya 1931–1939 [Bulgaro-German Relations 1931–1939] (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1984), 233. 5  Weltwirtschaft im Visier. Dokumente zu den Europa- und Weltwirtschaftsplänen des deutschen Imperialismus von der Jahrhundertwende bis Mai 1949 (Berlin, 1949), 230. 6  Kosyo Penchikov, Germaniia i Iugoiztochna Evropa 1919–1923 [Germany and Southeastern Europe 1919–1923] (Sofia, 1993), 227. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 255

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

256

Chapter 4

67.8 percent. The mushrooming German joint-stock companies, which were mostly subsidiaries of German concerns, quickly ousted French, Belgian, British, and Swiss capital. The sweeping economic achievements of the quickly restored and already accelerated German pace were popularized by the frequent visits of high-standing German figures, from Field Marshal Göring in 1935 to the Minister of Economy Funk at the end of September 1938. However, during the [last] three prewar years, the Bulgarian balance of trade with Germany had remained negative. At every opportunity the Reich exerted strong pressure on Bulgaria in order to receive more commodities, which had value in hard currency (devise). This unilateral financial and economic dependence placed Bulgaria in a disadvantageous position because it introduced a high level of predetermination in foreign policy. Not without reason, even the renewed plans from Berlin to create a “Balkan axis,”—an economic entity tretching from the German border to the Black Sea and an adaptation of the idea for the building of an economically united “Central Europe” from the time of World War I, which was unpopular in Bulgaria—was regarded as dangerous by Bulgarian ruling circles. The Sofia governments made supple moves in their attempts to find other markets, partners, and investors, with a view to circumventing the threatening shadow of the German monopoly in the economy of Bulgaria. In their policy regarding the Third Reich until the beginning of World War II, the Bulgarian governments successfully implemented the strategy of “reserved friendship,” which discounted the risky connection between economic dependence and political commitment. This was why they continued to take credits from all large countries. Within the common struggle against the dictates of Versailles and Neuilly, Bulgaria manifested “sympathizing neutrality” to the growing German revisionism, while at Wilhelmstrasse Bulgarian nonalignment was appreciated as beneficial to the current foreign policy strategy of the Reich. On the one hand, the steady revisionist line in the foreign policy of the Third Reich led to a rapprochement in the Germany-Italy-Bulgaria triangle [...] the fascist regime of Mussolini was not simply ideologically identical with the German National Socialism, but also Rome invariably demonstrated its discontentment with the peace treaties. On the other hand, these international realities logically entailed quick growth of German influence in Bulgaria in the prewar years, and an even stronger belief in some germanophile circles that the Third Bulgarian Tsardom could rectify the historical mistakes of 1912–18, and achieve its national unification only with the help of the Reich. […] Yet, fascist ideas gained ground only among limited circles of Bulgarian society. Only thin and weak organizations imitated Italian fascism or German national-socialism while trying to adapt them to the specific Bulgarian conditions. This was why the “cultural and political offensive” campaign carried on and further developed several positive aspects of the “cultural recruitment” of the time of the Weimar Republic, which allowed for a fruitful and mutually ben-

Battling over 00 book.indb 256

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

European Influence and Reaction: Economics and Culture

257

eficial intellectual collaboration. The volume of the educational and academic influence, the study of language, and to a lesser extent of arts and letters were the fields in which the inherited positive traditions stand out most clearly. […] In this sense, German cultural policy should not be regarded as one of the main political and ideological instruments for the alliance of Bulgaria with the Reich in March 1941. The accelerated development of international relations toward a new global clash, the dynamic of Bulgaro-German political contacts, and the economic dominance of Germany in Bulgaria were instead those objective prerequisites, which were decisive in the commitment of the two states to an alliance during World War II. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

Battling over 00 book.indb 257

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

Battling over 00 book.indb 258

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

Chapter 5

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II Constantin Iordachi and James Frusetta

Battling over 00 book.indb 259

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

Battling over 00 book.indb 260

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Holocaust and the Treatment of Minorities in Wartime Balkans Constantin Iordachi and James Frusetta

The treatment of ethno-religious minorities and the issue of the Holocaust during World War II have emerged in the last two decades as major research questions in local historiography in the Balkans, stirring debates and controversies. However, the emergence of these issues, long and arduous, were only a few points of convergence with and integration into the larger field of ethnopolitics, genocide, and Holocaust studies developed outside the region.1 After 1989/91, local historiographies in the Balkans focused preponderantly on issues of resistance, victimization, and retribution connected with the study of their communist past. Due to their markedly different national histories, the issue of the Holocaust carries quite distinct connotations in various national contexts. In Yugoslavia the question of the Holocaust was approached mostly in connection with the history of World War II and diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany; later on, the issue was refocused on the history of interethnic relations, in close connection with the Yugoslav wars of succession. In Romania the issue of the Holocaust was compared and contrasted with the history of the Soviet or Romanian Gulag, generating—as in many other Central European countries—a confusing public debate over competing martyrology. It was only in the last decade that the Holocaust emerged as a topic in its own right, linked with larger historiographical issues such as integral nationalism, fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism. Recent studies

 Marina Cattaruzza and Constantin Iordachi (eds.), “Introduction. Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in East-Central Europe: New Research Trends and Perspectives,” East Central Europe 39, no 1 (2012): 1–12.

1

Battling over 00 book.indb 261

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

262

Chapter 5

also tried to integrate the anti-Jewish policies in the Balkans in the more general question of ethnic cleansing during World War II. In this introduction, we provide an overview of the recent historiographical trends in the history of minority issues during World War II in the Balkans, with an emphasis on the Jewish question and the Holocaust. ROMANIA In Romania, historiographical controversies surrounding World War II focused on the nature of the Antonescu regime but were gradually extended to cover the regime’s anti-Jewish policies. In the last decade, in particular, there has emerged a new wave of critical research on the deportation and partial extermination of the Romanian Jews. During the communist regime, the official interpretation of history argued that Ion Antonescu’s wartime regime (1940–44) was a fascist dictatorship. The August 23, 1944, coup d’etat that ousted Antonescu from power and made possible Romania’s military insurrection against Nazi Germany was presented in communist historiography as a major turning point in history, inaugurating a new era of revolutionary transformations leading to the establishment of the communist regime. To substantiate this interpretation of history, early communist historiography blurred the distinction between the nature of the Legion and that of Antonescu’s wartime regime, portraying them both as fascist. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Romanian historiography partially liberated itself from this Stalinist interpretation of the Antonescu regime2 but instead developed a highly problematic revisionist approach to the topic. In the context of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s ideological conflict with Gorbachev’s reformist agenda in the USSR, General Antonescu was gradually rehabilitated as a patriot, a savior who rescued the country from the fascist terror and a  fighter for Romania’s territorial integrity against Stalinist Russia. To be sure, communist historiography continued to blame Antonescu for his collaboration with Nazi Germany and for his responsibility in Romania’s military disaster on the Eastern Front. Yet it downplayed Antonescu’s initial collaboration with the Legion ‘Archangel Michael,’ emphasizing instead the irreconcilable differences between the two parties, which led to the Legion’s rebellion and its forceful removal from power by the army in January 1941. Communist historiography also overlooked Antonescu’s anti-Semitism, highlighting instead his actions to institute a regime

2

 Aurică Simion, Regimul politic din Romania în perioada septembrie 1940–ianuarie 1941 [The political regime in Romania in the period September 1940–January 1941] (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1976); Aurică Simion, Preliminarii politico-diplomatice ale insurecţiei române din august 1944 [Political-diplomatic preliminaries of the Romanian insurrection of August 1944] (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1978).

Battling over 00 book.indb 262

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

263

of “law and order” against the Legion’s unruly anarchy and terrorism, and even rescue Jews toward the end of the war. The trend of Antonescu’s rehabilitation continued for a  while in Romanian historiography after 1989 as well. In the ideological confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism, which marked the process of democratic consolidation in postcommunist Romania, Antonescu was presented as a martyr for the national cause and, in a major departure from the communist interpretation, a victim of communist repression.3 However, unlike the late communist-era historiography, which emphasized the differences between Antonescu’s regime and the Iron Guard, postcommunist revisionist historiography has also attempted to rehabilitate the latter, downplaying the conflict between Antonescu and the Legion and pointing instead to their patriotism, idealism, and sacrifice for the national cause.4 More recently, in response to this revisionist trend, numerous historians have deconstructed the “Antonescu myth” and its political instrumentalization.5 These

 Gheorghe Buzatu et al. (ed.), Mareşalul Antonescu în faţa istoriei [Marshall Antonescu facing history], 2 vols. (Iaşi: BAI, 1990); Larry L. Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993); Dorel Bancoş, Social şi national in politica guvernului Ion Antonescu [Social and National in the politics of the Ion Antonescu Government] (Bucharest: Eminescu, 2000); and Ioan Dan, “Procesul” Mareşalului Antonescu [The “Trial” of Marshall Antonescu] (Bucharest: Lucman, 2005). 4  Kurt W. Treptow and Gheorghe Buzatu, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu în faţa istoriei [Corneliu Zelea Codreanu facing history] (Iaşi: 1994). 5  Eduard Mezincescu, Mareşalul Antonescu şi catastrofa Romaniei [Marshall Antonescu and the catastrophy of Romania] [Bucharest: Artemis, 1993]; Paul Michelson, “In Search of the 20th Century: Marshal Ion Antonescu and Romanian History; A Review Essay,” Romanian Civilization 3, no. 2 (1994): 73–103; Randolph L. Braham, Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Michael Shafir, Între negare şi trivializare prin comparaţie. Negarea Holocaustului în ţările postcomuniste din Europa central şi de Est [Between Negation and Trivialisation through Comparison: The Denial of the Holocaust in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe] (Iaşi: Polirom, 2000); Michael Shafir, “Marshal Antonescu’s Postcommunist Rehabilitation. Cui bono?” in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era (Boulder, CO: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies Graduate Center/City University of New York and Social Science Monographs, 1997), 349–410; Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), published in Romanian as Istorie şi mit in conştiinţa romanească (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997); Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–44 (New Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Vladimir Solonari, Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania (Washington, D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010). 3

Battling over 00 book.indb 263

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

264

Chapter 5

scholars also focused on the rise of anti-Semitism, the partial extermination of Romanian Jews during World War II, and the nature of Antonescu’s regime.6 This led to a larger debate over Romania’s participation to the Holocaust. By and large, scholars involved in this debate took one of three main stances: negationist historical revisionism, denying that Romania participated in the Holocaust; functionalist, regarding external factors, especially foreign policy considerations, as having the main role in the partial extermination of Romanian Jews; and intentionalist, underscoring the importance of the internal factors in the extermination of Jews, particularly the spread of anti-Semitism. The debate culminated in 2003, when Romanian president Ion Iliescu stated that the Holocaust was not directed only against the Jewish population but against other ethnic and political groups, as well, such as the communists (for details, see p. 283 below). The harsh criticism of this statement in Israel, the United States, and Western Europe led President Iliescu to establish the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, led by Elie Wiesel. The Final Report of the Presidential Commission, published in 2005, concluded that the campaign of deportation and extermination of Jews conducted by Antonescu’s government was triggered by antisemitism and was an integral part of the Holocaust during World War II, thus supporting the intentionalist side.7 The establishment of the Commission led to an increase in the scholarly attention devoted to the Holocaust in Romania, marked by the formation of new institutes, the establishment of new museums, and the organization of new academic workshops and university courses, and the revision of history curricula and textbooks. In addition, the official endorsement

 See I. C. Butnaru, Holocaustul uitat: consideraţiuni istorice, politice şi sociale cu privire la antisemitismul romanesc (Tel Aviv: ACMEOR, 1985); English ed.: The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); Carol Iancu, Shoah in timpul regimului Antonescu (1940–1944) [Shoah during the Antonescu Regime (1940–1944)] (Iaşi: Polirom 2001); Lya Benjamin, Prigoană şi rezistenţă in istoria evreilor din Romania, 1940–1944 [Repression and resistance in the history of Jews in Romania, 1940–1944] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); Jean Ancel, Contribuţii la istoria României. Problema evreiască, 1933–1944 [Contributions to the History of Romania. The Jewish Question, 1933–1944], vols. 1-3 (Bucharest: Hassefer, 2001). For a comprehensive overview of this literature, see Constantin Iordachi, “Problema Holocaustului în România şi Transnistria—Dezbateri istoriografice,” in Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi (eds.), România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice şi comparative [Romania and the Trans-Dniestr Region: The Question of the Holocaust. Historical and Comparative Perspectives] (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004), 23–77; Alexandru Florian, (ed.), Holocaust Public Memory in Postcommunist Romania (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2018). 7  Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid and Mihai E. Ionescu (eds.), Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (Iaşi: Polirom, 2005). 6

Battling over 00 book.indb 264

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

265

of the Commission’s Report, and the adoption of legislation against Holocaust denial by the Romanian Parliament, have effectively eliminated overt negationist claims from public and official discourse, setting the debate on new foundations. In addition to the extermination of Romanian Jews, the deportation of Roma population in Transnistria also drew the attention of Romanian historians, who approached the topic using new archival and oral history sources.8 Viorel Achim claims there had not been a “Gypsy question” in Romania until the end of the 1930s; the “sudden” emergence of “the Gypsy question” at the beginning of the 1940s was due to German influence, but was also Antonescu’s own initiative, directly linked with his plans of ethnic cleansing and Romanianization of the economy.9 Achim estimates that about 10 percent of the Roma from Romania or 25,000 persons considered “dangerous” or “undesirable” were deported to Transnistria, among which there were 11,441 nomad and 13,176 sedentary; about half of the deportees died due to harsh living conditions. These conclusions were reinforced by Lucian Nastasă and Andrea Varga, who, in an introduction to a collection of documents regarding the history of these deportations, claimed that the Roma from Romania had not been the subject of a planned extermination campaign, as “not a single case of assassination (not to speak of a pogrom or a massacre) committed by the Romanian or German authorities has been known of or denounced thus far.”10 However, the Romanian authorities were guilty of the death of 12,000 Gypsies due to the “extremely poor organization of the deportation” and of the living conditions in the camps, about which the authorities did know but did nothing to improve.11

 S ee Viorel Achim, Ţiganii în istoria României [The Gypsies in the History of Romania] (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 1998), 133–52; Bancoş, Social şi naţional, 215–37; Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania, 225–37; Vasile Ionescu (ed.), Deportarea Rromilor în Transnistria. De la Auschwitz la Bug [The Deportation of the Roma in the Trans-Dnister Region: From Auschwitz to Bug] (Bucharest: Aven Amentza, 2000); Lucian Nastasă, Andrea Varga (ed.), Minorităţi etnoculturale. Mărturii documentare. Ţiganii din România (1919–1944) [Ethno-Cultural Minorities. Documentary accounts. Gypsies in Romania (1919–1944)] (Cluj: Centrul de resurse pentru diversitate etnoculturală, 2001); Viorel Achim, “Die Deportation der Roma nach Transnistrien,” in Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, Juliane Wetzel (eds.), Rumänien und der Holocaust. Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 101–11; Brigitte Mihok, “Die Verfolgung der Roma. Ein verdrängtes Kapitel der rumänischen Geschichte,” in Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, Juliane Wetzel (ed.), Rumänien und der Holocaust. Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 25–31; and Dumitru Şandru, “Deportarea ţiganilor în Transnistria în 1942” [The Deportation of the Roma in the Trans-Dnister Region in 1942], Arhivele Totalitarianismului 5 (1997): 23–30. 9  Achim, Ţiganii în istoria României, 133–52. 10  Nastasă and Varga (eds.), Minorităţi etnoculturale, 17–8. 11  Nastasă and Varga (eds.), Minorităţi etnoculturale, 18. 8

Battling over 00 book.indb 265

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

266

Chapter 5 YUGOSLAVIA

The historiography of interwar and wartime Yugoslavia illustrates the challenges posed to scholars by the history of the Holocaust in the Balkans. The Holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Serbia has been the focus of numerous historians.12 The most thorough study of wartime Serbia based on a wide range of sources is Branko Petranović’s Srbija u drugom svetskom ratu, 1939–1945; the book presents a detached view of Chetnik divisions and independence, despite an overriding sympathy for the Partisan cause.13 Much of the research on fascism in Yugoslavia concentrated, nevertheless, on the Ustaše movement in Croatia in view of its radicalism, its Italian connections, its high-profile terrorist activities and the fact that the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) lasted for over four years (April 10, 1941– May 8, 1945). In communist Yugoslavia, the first official interpretations of the Ustaše did not go beyond Marxist stereotypes. The Ustaše was portrayed as an imported fascist movement without a social base in Croatia itself, but made up of terrorist cells active in Italy, Germany, or Hungary, torn by conflicting influences and lacking an ideology of its own. The Independent State of Croatia was regarded as no more than a puppet state under dual, German and Italian, foreign occupation. Only gradually did a more nuanced Marxist interpretation emerge, supported by new documentary evidence provided by the publication of primary sources on the Ustaše located in local or foreign archives.14 After the breakup of Yugoslavia, research on the Ustaše movement had been an integral part of the process of writing national history in Serbia and Croatia, closely linked with

 For general overviews, see Stefan K. Pavlowitch, Hitler’s New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Sabrina P. Ramet and Ola Listhaug (eds.), Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 13  Branko Petranović, Srbija u Drugom Svetskom Ratu, 1939–1945 [Serbia in the Second World War, 1939–1945] (Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački i novinski centar, 1992). 14  See Ferdo Čulinović, Okupatorska podjela Jugoslavije [The Division of Yugoslavia under the Nazi Occupation] (Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački zavod, 1970); Matija Kovačić, Od Radića do Pavelića, Hrvatska u borbi za svoju samostalnost, uspomene jednog novinara [From Radić to Pavelić: Croatia’s Struggle For Independence, Memories of a Journalist] (Munich and Barcelona, 1970); Mladen Čolić, Takozvana Nezavisna Država Hrvatska [The So-Called Independent State of Croatia] (Belgrade: Delta Press, 1971); Ivan Jelić, Hrvatska u ratu i revoluciji, 1941–1945 [Croatia in War and Revolution, 1941–1945] (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1978); Ljubo Boban, Hrvatska u arhivima izbjegličke vlade 1941–1943 [Croatia in the Archives of the Yugoslav Government in Exile, 1941–1943] (Zagreb: Globus, 1985); Vasa Kazimirović, NDH u svetlu nemačkih dokumenata i dnevnike Gleza fon Horstenau: 1941–1945 [The Independent State of Croatia in Light of German Documents and the Diary of Glaise von Horstenau] (Belgrade: Nova knjiga, 1987). 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 266

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

267

the narrative of victimhood and retroactive justice. In Serbia, research on the Ustaše was generally meant to demonstrate the traditional anti-Serbian character of Croatian nationalism and the campaign of ethnic cleansing that accompanied the process of state-building in the NDH. This legacy was then used as a weapon to discredit Croatia’s separatist agenda. In contrast, in independent Croatia, the newly emerging official narrative of national history presented the Ustaše’s experiment in nation- and state-building as part of a teleological process leading to Croatia’s independence in 1992. This orientation led to numerous allegations that the official historical discourse aimed at rehabilitating the Ustaše, or at least its state-building activity, by portraying its separatist agenda as a legitimate reaction to Belgrade’s interwar authoritarian practices, while downplaying the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Serbian character of its ideology. The success of Croatia’s war of independence and the process of political democratization that occurred in the post-Tudjman era led to new, critical scholarly perspectives on the Ustaše’s history, not only liberated from Marxist stereotypes15 but also gradually informed by the liberal critique of fascism developed in Western Europe since the 1980s.16 In this context, Ustaše’s anti-Semitism and participation in the Holocaust recently emerged as a distinct topic of research, as scholars began to tackle more systematically the emergence and evolution of racialist thinking in Croatia in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, assessing the impact of this thinking on the genocidal and ethnic-cleansing policies implemented in the NDH, the role played by violence in this process and the relations among the multiple actors involved.17 New work also assesses the

 For an idiosyncratic but non-Marxist view of the Ustaše, see works by the U.S.-trained historian Jere Jareb: Pola stoljeća hrvatske politike [Half a Century of Croatian Politics] (Zagreb: Institut za suvremenu povijest, 1995); Zlato i novac Nezavisne Države Hrvatske izneseno u inozemstvo, 1944–1945 [The Gold and Money of the Independent State of Croatia Taken Abroad] (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 1997); Državno gospodarstveno povjerenstvo NDH, od kolovoza 1941. do travnja 1945, dokumentarni prikaz [The State Economic Committee of the Independent State of Croatia from August 1941 until April 1945, a Documentary View] (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2001). 16  For a recent example, see Goran Miljan, Croatia and the Rise of Fascism: The Youth Movement and the Ustasha during World War II (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018). 17  Ivo Goldstein, “Antisemitizam ustaškog pokreta” [Antisemitism of the Ustaša Movement], in Ljubo Boban and Nikeša Stančić (eds.), Spomenica Ljube Bobana 1933– 1994 [In Memory of Ljubo Boban] (Zagreb: Zavod za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 1996), 321–32; Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein, Holokaust u Zagrebu [The Holocaust in Zagreb] (Zagreb: Židovska općina, Novi Liber, 2001); Ivo Goldstein, Hrvatska povijest (Zagreb: Novi Liber, 2003); Ivo Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu 1918–1941 [The Jews of Zagreb 1918–1941] (Zagreb: Novi Liber, 2004); Ivo Goldstein, “The Independent State of Croatia in 1941: On the Road to Catastrophe,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, no. 4 (2006): 417–27; Nevenko Bartulin, The Ideology of Nation and Race: The Croa15

Battling over 00 book.indb 267

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

268

Chapter 5

genocidal record of the NDH’s concentration camps, most importantly Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška.18 These efforts, and the convergence of local and external strands of scholarship,19 is expected to further integrate the literature on the Ustaše within the context of comparative fascist and genocide studies. BULGARIA The Bulgarian state’s minority policies have enjoyed considerable attention in domestic historiography after 1989. This has included explorations of Bulgaria’s treatment of minorities in the broader period of World War II, although almost exclusively focused on two issues: the Holocaust in Bulgaria, and its treatment of the more numerous Muslim minority. Both cases are treated as discrete issues, rather than together in synthetic approaches to the state’s overall minority policies or on the nature of the wartime regime. tian Ustasha Regime and its Policies toward Minorities in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945, PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales, November 2006, 13–14, http://www.jasenovac-info.com/biblioteka/Bartulin2.pdf; see also his boook: The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and Rory Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation. The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 18  Ljubo Boban, Hrvatska u arhivima izbjegličke vlade 1941–1943 [Croatia in the Archives of the Yugoslav Government in Exile, 1941–1943] (Zagreb: Globus, 1985); Ljubo Boban, “Notes and Comments: Jasenovac and the Manipulation of History,” East European Politics and Societies 4, no. 3 (1990): 580–92; Vladimir Žerjavić, Opsesije i megalomanije oko Bleiburga i Jasenovca [Obsession and Megalomania Surrounding Bleiburg and Jasenovac] (Zagreb: Globus, 1992); Nataša Mataušić, Jasenovac, 1941–1945: logor smrti i radni logor [Jasenovac, 1941–1945: A Labor and Extermination Camp] (Jasenovac and Zagreb: Javna ustanova Spomen-područje Jasenovac, 2003); Mario Kevo, “Posjet poslanika Međunarodnog odbora Crvenog križa logorima Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška u ljeto 1944” [The Visit of International Red Cross Delegates to the Camps of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška in the Summer of 1944], Časopis za suvremenu povijest 40, no. 2 (2008): 547–84; Tomislav Dulić, “Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945: A Case for Comparative Research,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 3 (September 2006): 255–81; and Alexander Korb, “Nation Building and Mass Violence: The Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945,” in Jonathan C. Friedman (ed.), The Routledge History of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 2010), 291–302; and Alexander Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien 1941-1945 (Hamburg: Institut für Sozialforschung, 2013). 19  For a  relevant example, see the special issue “The Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 1941–45,” published by Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion 7, no. 4 (2006): 399–550, subsequently published as a book: Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), The Independent State of Croatia 1941–45 (London: Routledge, 2007); published in Croatian as Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.) Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Zagreb: Alinea, 2009).

Battling over 00 book.indb 268

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

269

The majority of Bulgaria’s Jewish minority survived World War II, when the Bulgarian government ultimately refused to deport its own citizens into German hands. This record is mixed by the same regime’s willingness to transfer for extermination over 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied territories in Greece and Yugoslavia. Internally the regime also enacted discriminatory legislation against Jews (the Law for the Protection of the Nation or ZZN, analogous to the Nuremberg Laws), as well as special taxes, the use of conscripted labor, and the requirement that Jews move from towns to the countryside. As early as the 1950s a debate emerged over who had “rescued“ the Bulgarian Jews, with several local scholars championing the Bulgarian Communist Party and its partisan resistance and a movement among émigrés arguing for a heroic Tsar Boris III standing up to Hitler.20 Communist-era historiography accordingly attempted to ascribe the rescue of Jews to laudable characteristics of the Bulgarian people, while attributing the impetus for deportations in the occupied lands to the “monarcho-fascist” regime21—although the Holocaust itself was not central to Bulgarian historians’ definition of this term.22 This debate expanded greatly in the 1990s but as a development of the earlier, communist-era trends. Bulgarian historians now variously ascribed the key role to government figures such as Boris, Dimitur Peshev (who led a parliamentary protest against deportations), or to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (which protested deportation on humanitarian grounds).23 The renewed interest in the role of these figures has led to more nuanced approaches and appraisals of their  On the postwar period, see the bibliographic essay by Frederick Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 223–30. See also David Koen et. al. (eds.), Borbata na bulgarskiia narod za zashtita i spasiavane na evreite v Bulgariia prez Vtorata svetovna voina [The Struggle of the Bulgarian People for the Protection and Rescue of Jews in Bulgaria during the Second World War] (Sofia: Bulgarska akademiia na istoriya, 1978). 21  See, for example, Kiril Vasilev et al. (ed.), Istoriya na antifashistkata borba v Bulgariia, 1939–1944 [History of the Anti-Fascist Struggle in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1976). 22  On the historiography of the concept of “monarcho-fascism,” see Roumen Daskalov, Ot Stambolov do Zhivkov: Golemite sporove nza novata bulgarska istoriya [From Stambolov to Zhivkov: Great Disputes in the New Bulgarian History] (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2009), 213–27. 23  See Nir Baruh, Otkuput: Tsar Boris i sudbata na bulgarskite evrei [Ransom: King Boris and the Fate of the Bulgarian Jews] (Sofia: Univ. Iz-vo Sv. Kliment Okhridski, 1991); Hristo Boiadzhiev, Spasiavaneto na bulgarskite evrei prez Vtorata svetovna voina [The Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews During the Second World War] (Sofia: Univ. Iz-vo Sv. Kliment Okhridski, 1991); Pavel Stefanov, “The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust,” Religion in Eastern Europe 26, no. 2 (May 2006): 10–19; Tzvetan Todorov, The Fragility of Goodness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). By international scholars, see Gabriel Nissim, Chovekut koito spria Hitler [The Man Who Stopped Hitler] (Sofia: NS, 1999); and Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp (Holbrook, MA: Adams Media, 1998). 20

Battling over 00 book.indb 269

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

270

Chapter 5

actions,24 but attention continues to remain fixed on the concept of the “rescue of the Jews,” as seen in the included passage from Yosif Illiel. Relatively, a small amount of local attention has been given to such figures as Aleksandar Belev, the commissar of Jewish Affairs, or why the Bulgarian state agreed to discriminatory policies or to deportations from Thrace and Macedonia. This historiography is further complicated by renewed international appreciation given in the 1990s to Tsar Boris and church leaders for their role in saving the Bulgarian Jews from deportation.25 Such recognitions have prompted critical attention to Bulgaria’s wartime record in the American and Israeli popular press.26 More broadly, the expansion of literature exploring the Holocaust has been paralleled with popular histories seeking to draw parallels to Bulgarian suffering in the past.27 Bulgaria’s Muslim minority, too, was subject to discriminatory state policies and laws during the wartime period, including the Law for the Purity of the Nation (similar to the ZZN, above). Here, however, such policies extended earlier into the 1930s and on into the 1950s, culminating in the emigration of over 150,000 Muslims in 1950–51. Communist-era historiography put the onus for previous discriminatory policies on the broad “bourgeois” regimes of 1878– 1944, and argued that the communist regime promoted a progressive approach, in line with Soviet nationalities policy.28 This approach faded by the 1980s, as the

24

 See, for example, Nediu Nedev, Tsar Boris III: Dvoretut i tainiiat kabinet [King Boris III: The Palace and the Secret Office] (Plovdiv: Hermes, 2009), 372–80. Roumen Avramov and Nadia Danov, Deportiraneto na evreite ot vardarska makedoniya, belomorska trakiya i pirot, mart 1943g: dokumenti ot bulgarskite arhivi [The Deportation of Jews from Vardar Macedonia, Aegean Thrace and Pirot, March 1943: Documents from the Bulgarian Archives] (Sofia: Obiedineni iztateli, 2013); for a critical view, see Steven F. Sage, “The Holocaust in Bulgaria: Rescuing History from ‘Rescue,’” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 31:2, 139-145. 25  In 1994, for example, Boris III was acknowledged by the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Jewish National Fund; in 1999 U.S. President Bill Clinton praised Bulgaria’s wartime record in a trip to Sofia; in 2002 Metropolitans Kiril and Stefan were recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous among the Nations” for their role in opposing deportations. 26  In 1996 the Jewish National Fund, for example, dedicated a forest park in Israel in the name of Boris III. In 2000, however, the Israeli government responded to public criticism raised in the press of Boris’s more ambiguous wartime record by withdrawing that dedication. Such public criticism, we suggest, stimulates and encourages the on-going debate over agency in the Holocaust. 27  See Georgi Voinov, Genotsidut i Holokstut nad bulgarite, izvurshen ot: iuden, turtsi, gurtsi, rusnatsi, surbi, komunisti, masoni, bogobortsi, globalisti, tsionisti [The Genocide and Holocaust Against the Bulgarians, Performed by Jews, Turks, Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Communsits, Masons, Atheists, Globalizers, Zionists] (Sofia: Arateb, 2006). 28  See, for example, Ivan Memishev, Uchastieto na Bulgarskite Turtsi v Borbata Protiv Kapitalizma i Fashizma, 1919–1944 g [The Participation of the Bulgarian Turks in the Struggle Against Capitalism and Fascism] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1977).

Battling over 00 book.indb 270

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

271

regime led by Todor Zhivkov intermittently pursued the assimilation of ethnic and religious minorities. After 1989, however, domestic historians took an entirely new direction, with broad attention now being given to attempts by various Bulgarian governments to assimilate or encourage the emigration of Muslims. Proceeding from local scholarship on the Ottoman era, historians now looked at the ethnic relations from Bulgarian independence until World War I.29 This approach soon extended to the communist regime’s uneven record of ethnic policies in the postwar period. The accompanying passage from Gruev represents recent new attention to the ways the post-1944 regime continued trends of isolating the Muslim minority, suggesting linkage between interwar and postwar authoritarianism.30 It also represented a critique of the communist era, moving attention away from the faults and failures of the regimes of 1933–44 to that of the period 1944–89. While valuable, and rightfully emphasizing the greater pressures on Muslim minorities after 1944, linkages to the earlier wartime period remain weak and the parallels with anti-Jewish policies have largely been neglected. Despite considerable recent attention to each of these issues, the need for synthesis remains. Specific attention should be paid to how Bulgarian governments from 1934 through the early communist regimes envisioned the ethnic character of the state, to the concept of national renewal during crisis, and to the use of state policy to segregate minorities or encourage emigration. GREECE The fall of the military dictatorship in 1974 began the transition from “traditional” to “new history” in Greece, creating conditions for the reevaluation of World War II and the Greek Civil War of 1946–49. Prewar and interwar Greece has received limited but highly politicized attention in comparative fascist studies, focusing mostly on the contradictory nature of the General Ioannis Metaxas’s rule (1936–41). Influenced by the Comintern’s dogma on fascism, classical Marxist works treated Metaxas’s “4th

 Zhorzheta Nazurska, Bulgarskata durzhava i neinite maltsinstva (1879–1885) [The Bulgarian State and Its Minorities] (Sofia: Lik, 1999); Velichko Georgiev and Staiko Trifanov (eds.), Pokrustvaneto na bulgarite mohamedani, 1912–1913: Dokumenti [The Conversion of the Bulgarian Muslims, 1912–1913: Documents] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo Prof. Marin Drinov, 1995). Notable also are multiple book series from the International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations in Bulgaria, including the series “The History of Muslim Culture in the Bulgarian Lands” (Istoriya na miusiulmanskata kultrua po bulgarskite zemi). 30  See also Mihail Gruev and Aleksei Kaluonski, Vuzroditelniiat protses: Miusiulmanskite obshtnosti i komunisticheskiiat rezhim [The Revival Process: Muslim Communities and the Communist Regime] (Sofia: Institute za izsledvane na blizkoto minalo, 2008). 29

Battling over 00 book.indb 271

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

272

Chapter 5

of August” regime as unambiguously fascist.31 By contrast, non-Marxist works argued that the Metaxas regime was conservative-authoritarian or, in the words of J. L. Hondros, a “royal bureaucratic dictatorship.”32 Although the Metaxas regime exhibited numerous fascist trappings, it was ultimately a case of superficial, mimetic fascistization.33 More recently, several scholars have argued that Metaxas’s rule can be more productively studied within the framework of comparative fascism studies. Michael Mann argued that the political regime of Greece was semiauthoritarian until Metaxas’s 1936 coup, semireactionary authoritarian in the first two years of Metaxas’s rule (1936–38) and monarcho-fascist after 1938 until its end in 1941.34 Aristotle Kallis claimed that the Metaxas regime illustrates the process of convergence and hybridization between conservative and radical right-wing or fascist parties in Europe. He argued that, even if Metaxas’s rule lacked a fascist mass movement with a revolutionary ideology, it was nevertheless experiment in radical rule in a fascist vein.35 The experiences of minorities in that broad period (1940–49)—Muslims (Turks and Albanian Chams), Slavic Macedonians, and Jews—received more limited attention, emerging strongly only after 1989.36 This process has been  Pantelis Pouliopoulos, Ta  laϊka metōpa, o 2os Pankosmios Polemos, ē Diktato­ria tēs 4ēs Augoustou [The Popular Fronts, the Second World War and the 4th of August Dictatorship] (Athens: Protoporiaki Vivliothiki, 1958); Nikos Psirou­kis, K athestōs tēs 4ēs Augoustou [The 4th of August Regime] (Athens: Epike­ro­ti­ta, 1975); Spiros  Η.  Linardatos,  Tetartē Augoustou  [The Fourth of August] (Athens: Themelio, 1975), 9–30. 32  J. L. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance: The Greek Agony, 1941–44 (New York, 1983), 26. 33  See Yannis Andricopoulos, “The Power Base of Greek Authoritarianism,” in Stein Ugelvik Larson, Bernt Hagtvet and Jan Petter Myklebust (eds.), Who Were the Fascists? Social Roots of European Fascism (Bergen, Oslo and Tromso: Universitetsforlaget, 1980), 568–84; Martin Blinkhorn, Fascism and the Right in Europe, 1919–1945 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 110; David Close, “Conservatism, Authoritarianism and Fascism in Greece, 1915–1945,” in Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 210. 34  Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 45–6. See also Mogens Pelt, “The Establishment and Development of the Metaxas Dictatorship in the Content of Fascism and Nazism, 1936–41,” in Gert Sorensen and Robert Mallett (eds.), International Fascism, 1919–45 (London and Portland: Frank Cass, 2002), 143–72; Marina Petrakis, The Metaxas Myth: Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece (London, New York: Tauris, 2006). 35  Aristotle Kallis, “Neither Fascist nor Authoritarian: The 4th of August Regime in Greece (1936–1941) and the Dynamics of Fascistisation in 1930s Europe,” East Central Europe 37, nos. 2-3 (2010): 303–30. 36  Stefanos Katsikas, “The Muslim Minority in Greek Historiography: A  Distorted Story?” European History Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2012): 446; Antonis Liakos, “Modern 31

Battling over 00 book.indb 272

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

273

driven both by the perceived need to engage claims in the historiography of neighboring states, and also by a Greek academic diaspora in which numerous young scholars have pursued postgraduate work or academic positions abroad, and subsequently challenged academic orthodoxy within Greek institutions. State-minority relations in Greece during World War II are complicated by the context of the interwar period and the Greek Civil War. The expansion of Greece’s borders in 1912–13 and 1919 led to suspicion of the Turkish, Cham, and Slavic Macedonian minorities as possible “fifth columns” along the borders. The Metaxas regime in 1940 was representative of these long existing trends, although it was not (unlike previous interwar governments) notably antiSemitic.37 Policies shifted dramatically with the Axis invasion. Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupiers now sought (and obtained) support among the Cham and Slavic Macedonian minorities, while the Jews faced increasing pressure from 1941–44 (and, for many, ultimately deportation and extermination). The Greek Civil War, finally, saw large numbers of Slavic Macedonians rally to the National Liberation Front (NOF) and the Communist Party of Greece. The experiences of minorities in the wartime years were thus connected to occupation, to collaboration, and to the Civil War, issues that continued to exert considerable contemporary political weight. The experience of Greek Jews during the occupation was initially framed within a  narrative of shared suffering, which posited that Greek Christians opposed the Holocaust as part of the Axis occupation.38 Increased attention in the 1990s has led to a more critical approach by Greek scholars since 2000 that has highlighted the role of anti-Semitism and collaboration by Greeks in shaping the local Holocaust.39 The Holocaust is increasingly examined as a Jewish experience distinct from the wider Greek experience of occupation.40 Scholarly research on Slavic Macedonians and Chams emerged more gradually. Although the entrance of “left-leaning” historians into Greek universities

Greek Historiography (1974–2000): The Era of Tradition from Dictatorship to Democracy,” in Ulf Brunbauer (ed.), (Re)Writing History: Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 373. 37  Aristotle Kallis, “Fascism and Religion: The Metaxas Regime in Greece and the ‘Third Hellenic Civilisation,’” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 2 (2007): 229–46; Katherine Fleming, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton: Princeton Univeristy Press, 2008), 95. 38  Polychrones Enepekides, Hoi diōgmoi tōn Hebraiōn en Helladi, 1941–1944 [The Persecutions of the Jews in Greece, 1941–1944] (Athens: Ekdoseis Papazese, 1969). 39  See this issue in Andrew Apostolou, “Strategies of Evasion: Avoiding the issue of collaboration and indifference during the Holocaust in Greece,” in Roni Stauber (ed.), Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 2010). 40  Giorgos Liolios, Skies tēs polēs: anaparastasē tou diōgmou tōn Hevraiōn tēs Veroias [Shadows of the City: Representations of the Persecution of the Jews of Veria] (Athens: Ekdoseis Eurasia, 2008).

Battling over 00 book.indb 273

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

274

Chapter 5

after 1974 led to a plurality of approaches to the wartime era of 1940–49, this did not extend to new approaches to minority relations. The establishment of an independent Republic of Macedonia, with erratic expressions of territorial claims on the Greek region of Macedonia, triggered an outpouring of scholarly and popular writing.41 By the mid-1990s, distinct attention to the role of minorities emerged and, moreover, to policies of the Greek state that marginalized these groups in the interwar and wartime era.42 Although Greek historiography since 2000 often disputes the character and dimensions of a Slavic Macedonian minority, sustained attention is being given to their wartime role and their relations with the state.43 While the smaller Cham minority has received less attention, some consideration has been given not simply to wartime acts of collaboration, but to how relations with the Greek state form part of a larger context for collaboration.44 Despite these changes in scholarly historiography, the wartime status and role of minority groups remains a contentious and politicized issue in popular histories and in the press. CONCLUSIONS The study of minority policies during World War II in Southeastern European historiography was overshadowed during the communist period by local debates over the nature of the region’s interwar and wartime regimes. The years following 1989 (or after 1974, in Greece) resulted in a surge of scholarship on these and related topics, as well as memoirs and popular histories. Much of this scholarship, however, simply recast the communist-era debates, reappraising both the interwar governments and the postwar dictatorships as well. The impetus to bring minority policies into local scholarship emerged from the more open political and academic climate. Greater access to, and increased communication with foreign scholarship, increasingly integrated into domestic debates over such issues as the  On this, see Erik Sjöberg, Battlefields of Memory: The Macedonian Conflict and Greek Historical Culture. PhD dissertation, Umeå University, 2011. 42  Ioannis Koliopolos, Leilasia fronimáton [Plundered Beliefs] (Thessalonika: Ekdoseis Vanias, 1995), published in English as Plundered Loyalties: World War II and Civil War in Greek West Macedonia (New York: NYU Press, 1999). An earlier exception on the interwar period is George [Giorgos] Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 43  As both example and survey of the literature, see Vasilis Gounaris, To makedoniko zitima apo ton 19o eos ton 21o aiona: istoriografikes prosengiseis [The Macedonian Question from the 19th to the 21st century: Historiographical approaches] (Athens: Alexandreia, 2010). 44  Giorgos Margarites, Anepithymētoi sympatriōtes: stoicheia gia tēn katastrophē tōn meionotētōn tēs Helladas: Hevraioi, Tsamedes [Unwanted Compatriots: Findings on the destruction of minorities in Greece: Jews, Chams] (Athens: Vivliorama, 2005). 41

Battling over 00 book.indb 274

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

275

nature of fascism or national roles in the Holocaust, contributed to this. So did the increasing opportunities for study or scholarship abroad, which led younger historians of the Balkans to establish themselves in other countries and serve as academic conduits. Easily underrated, however, is the role of international political pressure, as proven by the 2003 circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. But intra-Balkan debates contributed to this upsurge in interest, as well; since 1989, Bulgarian accounts of the “rescue” of Bulgarian Jews have been criticized by Macedonian scholarship stressing the deportation of Jews and by Greek scholarship highlighting Bulgarian administration of the occupied territories and its impact on local inhabitants. Overall, it is not surprising if the historical study of the Holocaust and the treatment of minorities remain overshadowed by other issues for Southeastern European historiography. It took thirty-five years for the Holocaust to emerge as a central theme in the historical profession in Western Europe and the United States.45 Holocaust scholarship in the United States, moreover, has largely neglected to incorporate Southeastern Europe (or, indeed, Eastern Europe).46 It is hoped that the continued growth of scholarship will lead to new innovative approaches by Balkan historians to the treatment of minorities during World War II, with an impact outside the area, as well.

45

 See, passim, Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987). 46  Omer Bartov, “Eastern Europe as the Site of Genocide,” Journal of Modern History 80, no. 3 (2008): 557–93.

Battling over 00 book.indb 275

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:29

“The Comparative Trivialization of the Holocaust,” Chapter 13, “Distortion, negationism, and minimalization of the Holocaust in postwar Romania.” In The Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, 2004, 45–55, available at http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/en/report/ english/1.13_Distortion_Negationism_and_Minimalization.pdf THE COMPARATIVE TRIVIALIZATION OF THE HOLOCAUST The category of “comparative trivialization” is complex, but it basically refers to the abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust, of banalizing its atrocities, or conditioning the memory of this tragedy. Here, several additional clarifications must be made. First, the comparative methodology has been, and remains, a basic instrument in historical studies, and is naturally a legitimate methodology in the study of the Holocaust, as well. As early as the 1950s, and with increasing frequency over the past twenty years, numerous studies were published comparing the Holocaust with other genocidal phenomena—the communist atrocities in Ukraine and other parts of the former USSR and Asia, the Armenian Genocide perpetrated at the order of the Turkish authorities during World War I, as well as more recent genocides.1 On the other hand, postwar historiography has paradigmatically treated the Holocaust as an essentially unique phenomenon. There is by-and-large a consensus among important historians on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, although the criteria for this uniqueness are not the same for every scholar. Most of these historians agree that the specific difference between the Holocaust and other genocides rests in the “intended totality”2 of the Final Solution, which aimed at all Jews wherever they lived, and made no exceptions (e.g., through collaboration or conversion of the “enemy” into a “New Man,” which was possible in the case of communist repressions). During the past two decades, the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been subjected to intense debates.3 Suffice it to say that in their proximity, a trend was born that hijacked the legitimate use of comparisons for the purpose of minimizing the Holocaust. A valuable and legitimate cognitive instrument used for improving historical knowledge and for the delimitation of similarities and differences between comparable phenomena has thus been turned into a strategy of

1

 See, for example, Alan S. Rosenbaum, (ed.), Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives On Comparative Genocide (Boulder CO, Oxford: Westview Press, 1996); Yves Ternon, Statul criminal. Genocidurile secolului XX [The Criminal State. The genocides of the twentieth century] (Iaşi: Institutul European, 2002). 2  Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001), 49 3  Wulf Kansteiner, “From Exception to Exemplum: The New Approach to Nazism and the ‘Final Solution,’” History and Theory 33, no. 2 (May 1994): 145–71.

Battling over 00 book.indb 276

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

277

denial, of minimalization, and of banalization of the Holocaust. The negationists and those promoting trivialization by comparison abuse the multilayered meanings of the term “uniqueness” to accuse Jews of trying to build a “monopoly on suffering” for lucrative purposes.4 They engage in these allegations despite the fact that experts on the Holocaust have repeatedly shown that its uniqueness is not argued in order to transform the tragedy of the Jews into the only collective suffering that should be paid attention to or into a tragedy incomparable to any other, but in order to draw attention to the extreme specificity of the Nazi collective project.5 The theme of the “monopoly on suffering” is sometimes present in academic studies as well. In his famous introduction to The Black Book of Communism (1998), Stéphane Courtois wrote: After 1945 the Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror. [...] More recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a  unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand.6 Courtois’s final remarks are a  charge against the Jews. He further added that “Communist regimes have victimized approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million of the Nazis.”7 The remarks triggered numerous controversies, including contributors to the Black Book—some of whom distanced themselves from Courtois’s calculation of victims as well as from some of his presumptions in the “Introduction.”8 This dispute is beyond the focus of this study, but it is important to note that Courtois’s controversial propositions have had a great impact in Eastern Europe, where prominent politicians

 The theme was recently resurrected in the wake of the publication of Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London, New York: Verso, 2000). 5  Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, 39. 6  Stéphane Courtois, “Introduction: The Crimes of Communism,” in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 23. 7  Courtois, “Introduction,” 15. 8  Ronald Aronson, “Communism’s Posthumous Trial,” History and Theory 42 (May 2003): 222–45. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 277

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

278

Chapter 5

and intellectuals have uncritically embraced them.9 The comparison to the Gulag has trivialized the Holocaust in three ways. The first was described by Alan S. Rosenbaum and Vladimir Tismăneanu as “competitive martyrology.”10 Based on the number of victims, this argument contests the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the special attention it has benefited from; second, the argument also attributes the absence of a proper memorialization of the Gulag to the alleged “monopoly” exerted over international collective memory by the Holocaust; finally, the same argument often accuses the Jews of having been instrumental in establishing the communist regimes—a charge aimed at “explaining” and retroactively justifying the Holocaust. But, as already mentioned, the Holocaust’s uniqueness does not rest in the number of victims it produced. Furthermore, if the memorialization of communism in Eastern Europe is on shaky grounds, this is neither due to an alleged “monopoly” exercised by the memorialization of the Holocaust, nor is it so because of some Jewish “complicity” in obstructing its exercise. Rather, the phenomenon is due to the absence of social, political, and academic inclination in these countries to study, assume responsibility for, and properly memorialize communism.11 Finally, studies undertaken thus far as well as this report12 demonstrate that the stereotype that would have the Jews as having played a key role in the process of communist East European takeovers is lacking any empirical basis and is nothing other than a political myth with anti-Semitic undertones. Fascist political formations and political regimes of fascist type had incessantly fostered the theme of Judeo-Bolshevism in their propaganda, and after 1989, the focus of attention on Jewish PCR members and leaders had been widely used in Eastern Europe in order to obfuscate the contribution of the ethnic major-

 Michael Shafir, Între negare şi trivializare prin comparaţie. Negarea Holocaustului în ţările postcomuniste din Europa central şi de Est (Iaşi: Polirom, 2000), 115. [English ed.: Michael Shafir, Between Denial and “Comparative Trivialization”: Holocaust Negationism in Post-Communist East Central Europe (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2002)]. 10  Alan S. Rosenbaum, “Introduction,” in Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Alan S. Rosenbaum (ed.) (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 2; Vladimir Tismăneanu, “Martirologie competitivă? Reflecţii asupra Cărţii negre a comunismului,” [Competitive martyrology? Reflections on The Black Book of Communism] in Încet spre Europa. Vladimir Tismăneanu în dialog cu Mircea Mihăieş [Slowly, Toward Europe. Vladimir Tismăneanu’s conversation with Mircea Mihăieş] (Iaşi: Polirom, 2000), 201–11. 11  Helga A. Welsh, “Dealing with the Communist Past: Central and East European Experiences after 1990,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 3 (May 1996): 413–28; for Romania’s case see Adrian Cioflâncă, “Politics of Oblivion in Postcommunist Romania,” Xenopoliana 9 (2001) 1–4: 107–14. 12  See chapter 1.4. 9

Battling over 00 book.indb 278

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

279

ity.13 It is accurate to assert that Jewish adherence to communist parties has been relatively elevated in the initial phase of communism. Yet the assertion must be amended by several caveats. The antifascist, egalitarian, and humanist communist message transformed the communist parties into a refuge for ethnic minorities. Against the background of the political atmosphere of the mid-twentieth century, these parties alone appeared to offer opportunities for salvation and social mobility to the marginalized or those persecuted on ethnic grounds.14 Jews did not adhere to communism due to their Jewishness; on the contrary, they did so in the name of internationalism, as a sort of identity strategy that would, they hoped, reduce the burden of ethnicity.15 After the communist advent to power, the number of Jews in communist parties as well as in the newly established government institutions mattered less than the “visibility” of Jews in authority positions, which was something difficult to accept by the local masses and elites, imbued as they were with antisemitic stereotypes.16 The situation of the Jews in the communist bloc changed dramatically in the 1950s, once Stalinist antisemitism became official policy.17 Finally and most importantly, it must be emphasized that the advent of regimes in Eastern Europe has been a complex process made possible by the Soviet military occupation and

 Leon Volovici, “Antisemitism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: A  Marginal or a Central Issue?” Acta. Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism 5 (1994): 16–17; Vladimir Tismăneanu, Fantasies of Salvation. Democracy, Nationalism and Myths in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1999), passim. 14  Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons. A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003), 77, passim; Jan T. Gross, “Pânza încâlcită: analiza stereotipurilor legate de relaţiile dintre polonezi, germani, evrei şi comunişti,” [A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists] in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, Tony Judt (coord.), Procese în Europa. Al doilea război mondial şi consecinţele lui (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2003), 102–71. In English see as The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 15  Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons; Robert Levy, Gloria şi decăderea Anei Pauker [The glory and decay of Ana Pauker] (Iaşi: Polirom, 2002), 156, passim; Ion Ianoşi, Prejudecăţi şi judecăţi [Prejudice and Judgment] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), 74, passim; Paul Johnson, O istorie a evreilor [A History of the Jews] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2003), 352 ff. 16  Historian Jan T. Gross notes that the persistence of the “Judeo-Bolshevik” myth after 1945 does not tell much about the role played by Jews in the communist regime, but much about “how unseemly, how jarring, how offensive it was to see a Jew in any position of authority”; Jan T. Gross, “Pânza încâlcită,” 33. Author’s emphasis. For a similar interpretation see Gheorghe Onișoru, România în anii 1944–1948. Transformări economice şi realităţi sociale [Romania during 1944–1948. Economic transformations and social realities] (Bucharest: Fundaţia Academia Civică, 1998), 160. 17   Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 127 ff. 13

Battling over 00 book.indb 279

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

280

Chapter 5

political pressure, by the support or the passivity of majorities in local populations (irrespective of their ethnic background), and by the international context. This is the background against which the Holocaust-Gulag comparison is employed—not for a better understanding of Nazi and communist crimes, but in order to avoid the memorialization of the Holocaust or to condition assuming responsibility for it on the (chronological and pathological) primacy of the Gulag. Quite frequently, Nazi policies are being justified as a response to communism. This type of argumentation penetrated academic debate during the socalled Historikerstreit (Historians’ Quarrel) in the second half of the 1980s. Several German historians, of whom the most prominent was Ernst Nolte, argued that Nazism both emulated communism and was a reaction to it. Viewed from this perspective, the Holocaust was also deemed to have been inspired by communist criminal practice, whereas Nazi atrocities were said to be explainable by wartime conditions, to have nothing specific about them when compared with other twentieth-century atrocities.18 The attempt to “normalize” the Holocaust and to lessen the indictment against Nazism was promptly amended at the time by many important historians, who showed that Nolte had no evidence to back up his hypotheses. 19 As early as the 1970s, in response to Nolte’s Germany and the Cold War, American historian Peter Gay forged the concept of comparative trivialization, which is also used in this chapter, to describe an attempt to bring about the “humanization” and the elaboration of a “sophisticated apology” of Nazism by “pointing, indignantly, at crimes committed by others.”20 Unlike Gay, however, the concept of comparative trivialization as here employed applies also to non-German (including Romanian) wartime and postwar depictions of the Holocaust. A distinction is made among several categories of comparative trivialization: (1) the competitive comparison, which holds that atrocities worse or at least equal to the Holocaust have been committed, and that, consequently, the Holocaust does not merit special status; in the Romanian case, for example, reference is made to atrocities committed against Romanians by Nazis, Hungarians, and Jews, to atrocities committed against communists by Antonescu, and others; (2) the banalizing comparison which “normalizes” the Holocaust by assimilating it to violent events that regularly occur in the history of the mankind, such as wars; the Holocaust is presented as a regrettable, yet unsurprising outcome of war; (3) the parochial comparison in which the situation of the Jews in Romania is depicted as having been better than their situation in Nazi Germany or in states subject to similar circumstances; (4) the deflective  Geoff Eley, “Nazism, Politics and the Image of the Past: Thoughts on the West German Historikerstreit 1986–1987,” Past and Present 121 (November 1988): 171–208. 19  Richard E. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow. West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (London, 1989), 50. 20  Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), xi–xii, 51. 18

Battling over 00 book.indb 280

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

281

comparison, which considers fascism and the Holocaust to be the outcomes of communism, with the latter, in turn, often being a synonym for Jews according to negationist logic; (5) the transactional comparison in which acceptance of the past and fascist crimes is predicated on accepting the assumption by Jews of responsibility for communist and other crimes perpetrated in Romania and elsewhere in the world. The intellectual and political profile of those who engage in comparative trivialization is very diverse. One finds in the same category strange bedfellows: negationists and extremists alongside personalities whose profile is democratic and whose reputation is otherwise excellent. This heterogeneity warrants a separate analysis. For now, suffice it to say that it is an illustration of the exceedingly confused ideological and cultural makeup of postcommunist transitions. This subchapter merely attempts to depict the situation as it stands at the moment of the study’s writing; in other words, it is an inventory listing the different forms of comparative trivialization by conceptual categories as well as fully reviewing the variety of social actors engaged in one form or another of comparative trivialization. This may explain why personalities of high reputation who are on record having deplored the Holocaust, yet at other times have made hazardous and selfcontradicting statements, are mentioned here. It must be emphasized that their inclusion is not in any way geared at presenting a global evaluation of either their intellectual work or personality; rather it is aimed at drawing attention to the negative impact that risky formulations might have on public opinion and the Romanian cultural and political environment. Our scrutiny begins with those negationists who also indulge in Holocaust trivialization. Once more, Professor Coja’s profile is imminently prominent. He makes use of banalizing and parochial comparisons to claim that the situation of Jews under Antonescu was not as grave as people might believe. In 2002, Coja denounced as “a lie” that Jews were sent to the camps in Transnistria “just because they were Jews.” Only two categories of Jews ended up in Transnistria: those who were not “Romanian citizens” and had “illegally crossed the border,” which was “normal due to wartime conditions,” and “the Bessarabian and Bukovinan Jews, who were suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies or proved to entertain them.” But such camps, according to Coja, had also existed in the United States during the war for Japanese suspected of nonloyalty to the nation. Detainment conditions in Transnistria, according to a letter sent by Coja to former U.S. first lady Hilary Clinton as representative of LICAR and of the Vatra Românească (Romanian Hearth) Union, had been “by far superior to those the U.S. and Canadian Japanese had in concentration camps set up by the Roosevelt administration.”21 It might be true, Coja conceded that the “identification” of “traitor-Jews” had been carried out “with a certain amount of approxima-

21

 România mare, July 26, 2002.

Battling over 00 book.indb 281

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

282

Chapter 5

tion.” It may have led to the inclusion of Jews who had been loyal to Romania among those deported, while possibly leaving out nonloyal Jews. The explanation, however, ought to be sought in the abnormal wartime conditions: “Á la guerre comme à la guerre!”22 The camps in Transnistria, Coja claimed, “never were extermination camps, since practically any Jew could leave for whatever destination, except Romania proper.”23 Or, as he put it at the 2001 symposium, “those concentration camps (how lugubrious this denunciation sounds!) […] were nothing but villages. No barbed wire, no military watch. They only had a few gendarmerie, patrolling only during the night, in order to defend the Jews against Ukrainian civilians, who, for various reasons, could have acted violently against the Jews.”24 The parochial comparison is widespread due to the myth that makes Antonescu and his regime into “saviors of Jews.” The argument is based on deliberate misinterpretation (dating back to the communist regime and largely popular in the 1990s25) of the reasons that forced the regime to change its policies toward Jews and Roma as of late 1942. The change, however, was but a tactical and opportunist attempt of adaptation to the altered conditions on the front line. Yet, the change is depicted as reflecting a humanitarian gesture. The negationists retroactively project policies toward Jews in the second part of the war to the first period of Antonescu’s dictatorship, while minimizing or ignoring the pogroms and the deportations. It is even claimed that Jews in Transnistria were protected by Antonescu, who offered them refuge in Romania and allowed them to continue on to Palestine.26 In fact, Antonescu was apparently unaware of the

 Ion Coja, “Simpozion internaţional: Holocaust în România?” [International Symposium: Holocaust in Romania] (1-7), România mare (13 July–24 August, 2001). 23  Ion Coja, Marele manipulator si asasinarea lui Culianu, Ceaușescu, Iorga [The Grand Manipulator and the Assassination of Culianu, Ceausescu, Iorga] (Bucharest: Editura Miracol, 1999), 183. 24  Coja, “Simpozion internaţional,” author’s emphasis. 25  Michael Shafir, “Reabilitarea postcomunistă a mareşalului Antonescu: Cui bono?” in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Exterminarea evreilor români şi ucraineni în perioada antonesciană (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002), 410–3. In English, see Michael Shafir, “Marshal Antonescu’s Postcommunist Rehabilitation. Cui bono?” in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era (Boulder, CO: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies Graduate Center/City University of New York and Social Science Monographs, 1997), 3 49–410. 26  For the first instance in postcommunist times when the claim was made see “Maresalul Antonescu i-a salvat pe evreii din Romania. Un dialog Raoul Şorban-Adrian Păunescu, Bucharest, January 17, 1996,” [Marshal Antonescu Saved the Jews of Romania. A Raoul Şorban–Adrian Păunescu Dialogue, Bucharest, January 17, 1996] Totuşi iubirea [Love nevertheless], No. 2, January, No. 4, February 1–8, No. 5, February 8–15, 1996. 22

Battling over 00 book.indb 282

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

283

Hungarian Jews’ presence in Romania.27 As Randolph L. Braham has shown, the explanation for this unusual act of the Romanian authorities lies elsewhere.28 The Romanian negationists claim that in Transnistria the Jews benefited from living conditions superior to those Romanians at home had to endure during the war. For example, one of the most terrible camps in Transnistria, Vapniarka, was described by Tudor Voicu in an article published in România mare in August 2002 as having a  moviehouse. Antonescu, Tudor Voicu wrote, had been the “savior” of Romanian Jewry, only to find himself after the war accused by the ungrateful Jews of antisemitism.29 Radu Theodoru also mentions the alleged Vapniarka cinema, but he does so using a deflective negationist explanation, which is unusual for him—an integral negationist. The blame for atrocities committed at Vapniarka and elsewhere, Theodoru claims, should be laid at the door of “the Jewish inmate Kommisars” and of “communists whom the authorities had failed to identify as such.”30 In 1999 Coja admitted that Jews in Transnistria had died of hunger or illness, because Antonescu rightly saw no reason to spend the country’s war-strained budgetary resources on Jews who were not Romanian citizens, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Romanians were “confronting hunger and a lack of medicine on the Eastern front.”31 Păunescu has also contributed to the banalization of the Holocaust. According to the poet-turned-politician, it would have been impossible for Jews not to be among the victims of such a tremendous war; but Păunescu takes a step further: Antonescu, he claims, deported Bessarabia and Bukovina Jews to Transnistria in order to save them from the starvation that ethnic Romanians were enduring back at home.32 Nor have only Romanians embraced the argument. According to Larry L. Watts, a U.S. historian who resides in Bucharest, the Marshal had been the “de facto” protector of Jews against plans to implement the “Final Solution,” because he shared the “Western standards […] concerning human and fundamental civic rights.”33 The transac-

27

 According to Radu Lecca, had Antonescu been aware of the presence of Hungarian Jews on Romanian territory, “he would have ordered the law to be implemented and they would have been shot.” See Radu Lecca, Eu i-am salvat pe evreii din România [I Saved the Jews of Romania] (Bucharest: Roza vânturilor, 1994), 289. 28  Randolph L. Braham, Exterminarea evreilor români şi ucraineni,, passim; Randolph L. Braham, “Naţionaliştii români şi viziunea disculpabilizantă a istoriei. Folosirea Holocaustului în scopuri politice” [The Exculpatory History of Romanian Nationalists: The Exploitation of the Holocaust for Political Ends], in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Exterminarea evreilor români şi ucraineni, 73–88. 29  România mare, August 18, 2000, 53. 30  Radu Theodoru, Mareşalul [The Marshal] (Bucharest: Miracol, 2001), 38. 31  Coja, Marele manipulator, 184. 32  Totuşi iubirea, 12 (April 2–9 1992). 33  Larry L. Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993), 392–3.

Battling over 00 book.indb 283

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

284

Chapter 5

tional comparison is often intertwined with deflection: indulging in semantic abuse, the negationists employ “Holocaust” as a linguistic construct to call for recognizing “the Holocaust against the Romanian people” perpetrated by Jews or the “Red Holocaust” inflicted by them on mankind. In 2001 GRP leader C. V. Tudor stated that Romanians “are awaiting the time when the holocaust (sic!) perpetrated against Romanians, by no means a lesser one than the holocaust (sic!) perpetrated against the Jews, will be officially acknowledged.”34 As early as 1991 Tudor was telling his readers that “the Jews brought Bolshevism and terror to Romania.”35 A full decade on, he had not changed opinion: interviewed on a private television channel, he said that Stalinist Romania had been “led by Jews.” In what was purported to be a display of bravery, he continued: “Are people scared of saying this? I shall tell it; let them shoot me, let them lock me up because I dare tell the historical truth.”36 In 1992–1993, PRM Senator Mihai Ungheanu published a long serial in România mare on “The Holocaust of Romanian Culture,” which was eventually turned into a volume attributing to Jews and only to Jews the plight of imposing the jidanoviste line and of destroying physically and spiritually the postwar Romanian intelligentsia. As has been mentioned, the discourse of prominent political personalities entails formulations that raise the suspicion of indulging in comparative trivialization. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, President Iliescu said in 2003 that the Holocaust was not singular to the Jewish people and that “many others, including Poles, perished in the same way.” Iliescu asserted that, in the course of the war, Jews and communists were evenly treated by the Nazis and used the example of his own father who died at the age of 44, only one year after liberation37 from a concentration camp. The interviewing journalist pointed out that only Jews and Roma were targets of Nazi extermination, but the President did not change his statement at that time. However, the President’s speech of October 12, 2004, on the occasion of the first commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania, demonstrated that the President has fully grasped and internalized the dimensions of the Holocaust and the role played by Romania in it. According to our conceptual categories, Iliescu had engaged in a competitive comparison. Predictably, the interview sparked criticism in Israel and the United States.38 The controversy stirred by the presidential interview had among its consequences the establishment of the Wiesel Commission. 34

 România mare (June 22, 2001).  România mare (October 25, 1991). 36  Interview on the OTV channel, July 31, 2002. In the same interview, Tudor questioned the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, 54. 37  Ha’aretz-English edition (July 25, 2003), www.haaretzdaily.com. Romanian transcript of the interview in the daily Evenimentul zilei (August 26, 2003). 38  Michael Shafir, “Negation the Top: Deconstructing the Holocaust Denial Salad in the Romanian Cucumber Season,” Xenopoliana, vol. 11, no. 3-4 (2003): 90-122. 35

Battling over 00 book.indb 284

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

285

The position of Romania’s other postcommunist president was also somewhat ambiguous. On one hand, in a 1997 message to the FCER, President Emil Constantinescu emphasized that “the planners of this unforgivable genocide were not Romanians;” on the other hand, he acknowledged that the Romanian authorities had “organized deportations, set up concentration camps and promulgated racial legislation” and that “the death of innocents can be neither forgiven, nor undone, nor forgotten. [...] As president of all Romanian citizens [...] it is my duty to keep alive the memory of Jews who fell victim of the genocide.”39 Constantinescu’s statement had only a minor echo in Romania. Except for the FCER’s publication Realitatea evreiască, no media outlet carried it in full— not even the national radio and television. Among the few who reacted was historian Floricel Marinescu. He published in Aldine, a nationalist and fundamentalist weekly supplement of the democratic opposition daily România Liberă, a  highly critical article on Constantinescu’s statement, where he indulged in both competitive and deflective comparative trivialization: From a  strictly quantitative perspective, the crimes perpetrated in the name of communist ideology are far larger than those perpetrated in the name of Nazi or similar ideologically-minded regimes [...] Yet, no prominent Jewish personality [from Romania] has apologized for the role that some Jews have played in undermining Romanian statehood, in the country’s Bolshevization, in the crimes and the atrocities committed [by them] [...]. Proportionally speaking, the Romanians and Romania suffered more at the hands of the communist regime, to whose oncoming the Jews had made an important contribution, than the Jews themselves had suffered from the Romanian state during the Antonescu regime. [...] The Red Holocaust was incomparably more grave than Nazism.40 Surprisingly enough, shortly thereafter, Marinescu was appointed a presidential councilor. His ideas were shared by many Romanian intellectuals close to the center-right political parties that were at the country’s helm during Constantinescu’s presidential term (see supra).41 INFLUENCES OF THE ROMANIAN EXILE Three influential personalities of the Romanian exile display recurrent usage of comparative trivialization formulations in essays and books published in Romania: Paul Goma, Monica Lovinescu, and Dorin Tudoran. One of the few anticommunist dissidents forced into exile in the late 1970s, in recent years

 Realitatea evreiască 49–50 (April 16–May 15, 1977), 55.  România liberă (March 7, 1998). 41  See Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Fascisme et communisme en Roumanie: enjeux et usage d’une comparaison, in Stalinisme et nazisme: Histoire et mémoire compares, coord. Henry Rousso (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1999), 201–46. 39 40

Battling over 00 book.indb 285

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

286

Chapter 5

Goma has produced several tracts42 in which he demands that the “Red Holocaust” perpetrated on the Romanian people with a significant Jewish contribution be acknowledged and assumed by them. The leitmotif of his well-publicized latest book, The Red Week, is rendered by the following quote: “The Red Holocaust, planned by them too, began for us, Romanians, one year earlier than theirs: [it started] on June 28, 1940—and it is not over even today.”43 Goma argues that after the cession of Bessarabia and Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Jews (adults and children) committed many acts of aggression against, and humiliation of the Romanian army. They are said to have acted both on Soviet orders and out of “racial hatred” and “hate of Romanians.” Nearly all Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, he writes, acted “in that Red Week against all Romanians” (p. 171). Goma unequivocally and repeatedly acknowledges Romanian responsibility and even a “collective guilt” for what he calls “the abominable pogrom in Iaşi,” as well as for the deportations to Transnistria (pp. 20, 240, 248, 319),44 yet he argues that “the truth forbidden for half a century” (p. 256) is that those atrocities were exclusively committed out of an urge to avenge, in circumstances specific to wartime, the earlier murders committed by the Jews. He makes no mention of Antonescu’s antisemitic policies and denies the existence of Romanian antisemitism. Goma vows “everlasting gratitude” toward “the Liberating Marshal” (p. 244). On nearly every page, he dwells on the alleged Jewish culpability for bringing communism to Romania (for several pages he lists names of Jewish communists), for having made money out of monopolizing suffering (pp. 10, 115, 183–99) and for having committed murders that “darkened and drew blood from the entire 20th century.” As a consequence, Goma demands that these “unpunished executioners” be tried by a “Nuremberg II” tribunal (pp. 95, 170, 217, 274). This book illustrates a discursive register typical of trivialization through comparison and constitutes a synthesis of negationism and antisemitism that can hardly be found in a Romanian-language publication. On the other hand, if Goma excels through radicalism, he is not very original. Similar ideas in dif Paul Goma, “Basarabia şi ‘problema’” [Bessarabia and “the Problem”], Vatra 3–4 (2002): 43–41 and 5–6 (2002): 32–46, as well as Jurnalul literar 5–10 (March, April, May 2002): 1, 8–9; Paul Goma, Basarabia [Bessarabia] (Bucharest: Editura “Jurnalul literar,” 2002); Paul Goma, Săptămâna roşie 28 iunie—3 iulie 1940 sau Basarabia şi evreii [The red week: 28 June–3 July 1940, or Bessarabia and the Jews] (Chişinău: Museum, 2003 and Bucharest: Editura Vremea XXI, 2004). This latter book was also serialized in România liberă’s supplement Aldine. For a well-informed reply see Radu Ioanid, “Paul Goma între Belville şi Bucureşti” [Paul Goma between Belleville and Bucharest], Observator cultural, 177 (June 15–21, 2003). 43  Goma, Săptămâna roşie, 2004, 20, author’s emphasis. 44  One can find also deflective accents in Goma’s book, the author claiming, like Ion Coja, that the Legionnaires that killed Jews during the Iron Guard rebellion were, in fact, Jews dressed in Iron Guard uniforms. Goma cites, in Antonescu’s defense, “normal Jews” such as N. Minei and Al. Şafran. On this occasion, he mentions Filderman’s, 57. 42

Battling over 00 book.indb 286

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

287

ferent formulations traveled in the right-wing circles of the Romanian diaspora and were echoed in Romania proper. Thus, on April 27, 1993, columnist Roxana Iordache wondered in the daily România Liberă when Jews will “kneel down” before Romanians and ask for pardon for what they had done to them. The huge Red Holocaust of German-based Romanian author Florin Mătrescu circulated similar ideas. The book received a positive review in January 1996 in the respectable weekly România literară. The “monopoly of suffering” topic became even more prominent in Romania and in the Romanian diaspora after the publication of Stéphane Courtois’s Black Book of Communism. Thus, in the second half of the 1990s, two Romanian exiles, Dorin Tudoran (a courageous anticommunist dissident who lives in the United States) and Monica Lovinescu (who lived in Paris since the immediate aftermath of the war) apply to Romania the critique that Stéphane Courtois and J. F. Revel aim at the refusal of the Western political and intellectual Left to condemn and critically explore communism with the same energy with which the Left denounces fascism. Thus, in a string of articles he wrote for România literară,45 Tudoran blames “the Jewish lobby” for its “suspect,” “indecent,” “counterproductive monopoly over this century’s suffering.” He wonders “why the Jews have the right to an international lobby that would spare us from amnesia, while we, the rest, are doomed to remain ‘merely’ the victims of the Gulag and have no right to indict the Red Holocaust” (No. 12/1988). In one of these articles, Tudoran quotes a problematic statement by Courtois (who speaks of “a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity,” which, Courtois claims, has “prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world”) to conclude: “This is how it was possible to have this indecent monopoly over tragedy and over pain. This is how it was possible, this arrogant exclusivity over memory, remembrance, and commemoration. This is what made possible the blackmail, this is how debate was repressed, this is how taboos 45

 Dorin Tudoran, “Nepoţii gorniştilor” [Bugler’s grandchildren] (I–II), România literară 12 (April 1–7, 1998) and 13 (April 8–14, 1998); “Mitologii recurente” [Recurrent mythologies], România literară 16 (April 29–May 5, 1988); “Şantajul” [Blackmail] (I–II–III), România literară 19 (May 20, 1998); 20 (May 27–June 2, 1998), and 21 (May 3–10, 1998); “Gimnastica de întreţinere sau pretextul Sebastian” [Gymnastics for Maintenance or the Sebastian Pretext], România literară 22 (June 10–16 1998); “Iubeşti poporu’?” [Do you love the people?], România literară 23–24, (June 17–23, 1998); “Practica şi doctrina” [Practice and Doctrine], România literară 26 (July 1–7, 1998); “Logica genocidară” [Genocidal Reasoning], România literară 27 (July 8–14, 1998); “Chestiunea epistemologică” [The Epistemological Question], România literară 28 (July 15–21, 1988); “Ocultarea sau Comuniunea Sovietică” [Obedience or Soviet Communion], România literară 29 (July 22–28, 1998); “Moscova şi monitorizarlâcul” [Moscow and the ‘monitorization affair’], România literară 30 (July 22–August 4, 1998); “Lectura de rasă” [A Racial Reading], România literară 32 (August 12–18, 1988): 58.

Battling over 00 book.indb 287

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

288

Chapter 5

were declared” (No. 29/1998). Like Courtois, Tudoran never charges the Jews directly as accomplices in instituting an amnesia on the “Red Holocaust.” Rather, he only hints at it in the rhetorical questions that litter his articles. The same incriminating inference based on the Courtois model is to be found in articles published by two remarkable intellectuals and friends of Tudoran and Lovinescu—Nicolae Manolescu, editor-in-chief of România literară, and Gabriel Liiceanu, philosopher and director of the Humanitas publishing house. After deploring the sentence passed on Garaudy in France, Manolescu writes: “Is anyone afraid of losing the monopoly over unveiling crimes against humanity? Well, it seems that the loss of such a monopoly is of concern to some people. Yet, it is ‘testimony,’ which in Goma’s version turns into a document legalized in New York in 1956 (p. 22)—thus displaying Coja’s influence on him unfair and immoral to gag those who deplore the millions of victims of communism just out of fear that not enough people would be left to deplore the millions of victims of Nazism.”46 While Manolescu’s formulations are closer to those of Tudoran, Liiceanu’s are nearer to Courtois’s, the Romanian philosopher is more explicit than the French historian is. In a 1997 speech delivered on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Liiceanu wondered: “How was it possible for one who, at a certain moment in history had to wear the victim’s uniform, to later don the garment of the executioner?”47 The concern was not novel with Liiceanu. Back in 1995, in an editor’s note to the translation of a book on Romanian antisemitism published by Humanitas, he had distanced himself from “those who are ever-ready to speak up as victims, but forget to testify as executioners.”48 Later in his diary, published in 2002, Liiceanu elaborated: “Is it that difficult to understand that one first settles accounts with the evil one has encountered, that uprooted one’s own life, that highjacked one’s own history and whose effects one cannot rid oneself of even ten years after its departure from the scene? [...] Whence the vain refusal of cohabitation in sufferance? Whence this claim, admitting no counterclaim, to being a unique victim?”49 Monica Lovinescu has, in turn, posed questions; yet, she also has several firm answers. In the foreword to Diagonale, a volume com-

 N icolae Manolescu, “Holocaustul şi Gulagul” [The Holocaust and the Gulag], România literară, no. 9, March 11-17, 1998; “Cum am devenit rinocer” [How I became a rhino], România literară, no. 32 (August 12–18, 1998). He adds that the monopoly is “highly comfortable.” 47  Gabriel Liiceanu, “Sebastian, mon frère,” in 22, April 29–May 5, 1997, reprinted in Declaraţie de iubire [Declaration of Love] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001), 5–23. 48  Gabriel Liiceanu, “Nota Editorului” [Editor’s note], in Leon Volovici, Ideologia naţionalistă şi “problema evreiască” în România anilor’30 [Nationalist ideology and the “Jewish issue” in the ‘30s’ Romania] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995), 7. 49  Gabriel Liiceanu, Uşa interzisă [The Forbidden Door] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002). Author’s emphasis. 46

Battling over 00 book.indb 288

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

289

prising articles she had published over the years in România literară, she wrote the following: “Is it really necessary to wonder if the resurgence of the antifascist obsession is not in fact aimed at hiding the real murders of communism and their perpetrators? The question is, of course, rhetorical, and the answer is yes. Rightwing negationism is now followed by, and even more widespread than, left-wing negationism.”50 The concept of “left-wing negationism” is borrowed from J. F. Revel. In a  laudatory review of Revel’s The Grand Parade, Lovinescu wrote that he has managed to unmask the mechanism employed for transforming “the duty to commemorate the victims of Nazism into an excuse to impose on us the obligation to forget the Gulag.”51 But Revel, in turn, relies on several academic sources, including Ernst Nolte52 and Alain Besançon. If Nolte’s brand of “revisionism” has been discussed in the first section of this study, it must be pointed out that Revel misquotes Besançon when he writes, “according to the formula suggested by Besançon, the ‘hypermnesia of Nazism’ diverts attention from the ‘amnesia of communism.’”53 Indeed, Besançon authored the two phrases, yet he never argued in his Le malheur du siècle that the “hypermnesia of Nazism” diverts attention from the “amnesia of communism.”54 He just noted with regret that Nazism and communism are being memorialized differently and provided several reasons for the discrepancy, yet none of those reasons may legitimately constitute a basis for Revel’s interpretation. Revel’s book ensured that Besançon’s opus was popularized with Revel’s distortion in right-wing intellectual milieux in France55 (including those of the Romanian diaspora there56). It is worth noting that Revel’s reading of Besançon is quoted on the Internet sites of extreme-right groups and publications.57

 Monica Lovinescu, Diagonale [Diagonals] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002), 6.  Lovinescu, Diagonale, 175. Author’s emphasis. 52  Jean-François Revel, Marea paradă. Eseu despre supravieţuirea utopiei socialiste (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2002) published in France in 2000 as La Grande Parade: essai sur la survie de l’utopie socialiste (Paris: Plon, 2000). The citation from Nolte is taken from the exchange of letters between the German historian and Francois Furet, published in Romanian translation as Fascism şi communism (Bucharest: Univers, 2000), 127–8. 53  Revel, Marea paradă, 111. 54  Alain Besançon, Le malheur du siècle. Sur le comunisme, le nazisme et l’unicité de la Shoah (Paris: Fayard, 1998; Romanian ed.: Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999). 55  For example, Jean-François Revel, “Devoir de mémoire et Communisme,” Le Figaro, February 12, 2001. 56  See, for example, the dialogue between Dan Culcer and Paul Goma in Asymetria. Revista de cultură, critică şi imaginaţie / Asymetria - revue roumaine de culture, critique et imagination 1, no. 2 (November 2000): http://www.asymetria.org/culcergomafrench.html 57  Besançon is cited via Revel on the Internet sites of several radical-right groups and publications. 50 51

Battling over 00 book.indb 289

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

290

Chapter 5

It is important to point out at this stage that Besançon, Revel, and Courtois do not share the same opinions. Thus, Besançon correctly pleads for comparing and commemorating Nazism and communism with the same care, whereas Revel and Courtois blame the problems with the commemoration of communism on the commemoration of the Holocaust. This is the key difference between benign comparison and comparative trivialization. Revel forces the comparison into an overinterpretation serving his anticommunist discourse, while Courtois does the same by inserting an incriminating insinuation directed at the Jews. In Romania, prestigious intellectuals such as Tudoran, Manolescu, and Liiceanu preferred to popularize the opinions of Revel and Courtois rather than that of Besançon, and they did so by using provocative concepts (“Red Holocaust,” “monopoly on suffering,” “Judeocentrism”) that are widely popular in radical-right circles.

Battling over 00 book.indb 290

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

Lya Benjamin, “Bazele doctrinaire ale antisemitismului antonescian,” [The Doctrinarian Foundations of Antonescu’s Antisemitism], in Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi (eds.), România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice şi comparative [Romania and Transnistria: The Question of the Holocaust. Historical and Comparative Perspectives] (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004), 237–51, here 237, 247–51. Dr. Lya Benjamin is an emeritus researcher at The Center for the History of the Jews in Romania (Centrul pentru Studiul Istoriei Evreilor din Romania, CSIER), an institution for the preservation and study of archival fonds on the history of Jews in Romania established in 1978 as part of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. Dr. Benjamin specializes in the history of Jews in Romania, with a focus on Jewish identity, Zionism, the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Romania. She served as member of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, established by President of Romania Ion Iliescu in October 2003. Her publications include Prigoană şi rezistenţă în istoria evreilor din România, 1940–1944: Studii [Repression and Resistance in the History of Jews in Romania, 1940– 1944: Studies] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001); and Hary Kuller, Lya Benjamin, Album. Muzeul de istorie a evreilor din România Şef Rabin Moses Rosen [Album. The Museum of the History of Jews in Romania “Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen”] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002). She was editor of: Evreii din România între anii 1940–1944 [The Jews in Romania in 1940–1944], vols. 2, parts 1 and 2; and Vol 3, parts 1 and 2, (Bucharest: Hasefer, 1988, 1990, 1999); and Evreii din România în texte istoriografice: antologie [The Jews of Romania in Historiographical Texts: Anthology] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2002).

The Doctrinal Foundations of Antonescu’s Anti-Semitism ARGUMENT Our present scholarly literature increasingly suggests that Antonescu’s antiSemitism was circumstantial, dictated under external pressure or by the strategic imperatives of the war. In our opinion, such an interpretation is the result of either unfamiliarity with key documents issued by the head of the state or members of the government in general, or certain tendencies to minimize the real nature and dimensions of the anti-Semitic policies promoted by the Antonescu regime. Antonescu’s anti-Semitism was not born as an ad hoc reaction to a certain international circumstance, but was intended to be a wide-ranging political program based on a classic as well as modern anti-Semitic tropes. His aim was the exclusion of the Jewish community from Romania’s economic, political, and social life, extending to measures of physical extermination.

Battling over 00 book.indb 291

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

292

Chapter 5 ANTONESCU’S RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITIC THOUGHT

The European, American, and Israeli historical literature underlines the relationship between integral nationalism, modern anti-Semitism, and political racism. It emphasizes the criminal dimension of modern anti-Semitism that started with discrimination, denigration, and accusations against the Jewish people and culminated into the policy of physical extermination. Romanian historical literature does not take into account the racist aspect of Antonescu’s anti-Semitism. It perceives racism as a doctrine that argues for the inferiority of a human collectivity based on physical particularities such as skin or hair color, the shape of the nose, et cetera. This is, of course, not the case for Antonescu’s anti-Semitism. The racist nature of his anti-Semitism is characterized by: 1) The judging of Jews as individual persons, based not on their personal qualities or defects, but on their belonging to the Jewish ethnicity; 2) the extrapolation of certain Jews’ negative features upon the entire ethnicity; 3) the demonizing accusations against Jews based on their ethnic origin and affiliation to Judaism; 4) the construction of the image of Jews based on anti-Judaic and anti-Jewish archetypal stereotypes and clichés typical of modern racist thought. Thus, in the Marshal’s conception, Jews represented absolute evil, Satan, the internal enemy that he viewed as more harmful than the external one, because the external enemy could cripple the country’s body, whereas the internal one “poisoned and morally degraded the soul of the nation.”1 According to him, Jews were a pestilence to Romanianism, who “drained, impoverished, speculated and thwarted the development of the Romanian nation for a few centuries.”2 Furthermore, he perceived the misery that the Romanian nation endured in 1940 (an allusion to the territorial losses imposed to Romania by the USSR and Nazi Germany) as “essentially of Jewish inspiration and execution.”3 In accordance with the spirit of the age, the anti-Semitic discourse of the Marshal identified the Romanian Jewry either with the so-called Judeo-Communism or Judeo-Bolshevism, or with the global JudeoMasonic plutocracy that aimed at dominating the world and deciding its fate,

 A statement from Antonescu to the writer Al. Brătescu-Voineşti during an interview on March 5, 1943, in Lya Benjamin (ed.), Evreii din România între anii 1940–1944 [The Jews in Romania in 1940–1944], vol II: Problema evreiască în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniştri [The Jewish question in the Council of Ministers’ stenographs] (Bucharest: Hasefer 1996) (in the following, Probl. evr.), 501–2. 2  Order 255 issued by General Ion Antonescu to army and gendarmerie units in the country, in Problema evreiască, 263. 3  Marshal Ion Antonescu’s reply to a letter from the Federation of Jewish Communities, October 19, 1941, in Lya Benjamin, Prigoană şi rezistenţă în istoria evreilor din România, 1940–1944 [Repression and Resistance in the History of Jews in Romania, 1940–1944: Studies] (Bucharest: Hasefer, 2001), 383. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 292

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

293

a conspiracy “that always played a behind-the-scenes role at every conference and every peace congress.”4 In all the clichés above, one can identify influences of the anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic notions from the pre-Christian and Christian periods up until the Nazi ones from the modern era. The racist character of Antonescu’s anti-Semitism results from its rhetoric as well as the numerous anti-Jewish measures specific to the racist policy of the age. We have in mind: 1. The racial definition of Jewishness. In emulating Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, the Antonescu regime’s anti-Jewish legislation not only constituted the legal basis for the separation of Jews from the rest of the population within the state, but also provided the racial definition of Jewishness for the identification of Jews in the context of a state built on ethnocratic principles. In order to be able to provide­­—in view of complete statistics and in every aspect of the Jewish problem—a unitary definition of Jewishness, which would correspond with the country’s interests and the racial principle, Marshal Antonescu ordered a “census of persons of Jewish blood.” To this end, a legal decree significantly titled “On the census of persons of Jewish blood” was passed. According to the dispositions of this law, all persons whose parents or grandparents, one or both of either, were of Jewish blood had to take part in the census. The parents and grandparents who were or had been born into Judaism or were registered as members of a Jewish community were considered of Jewish blood. Children of Jewish blood who had not been baptized until the age of one were considered as affiliated with Judaism.5 2. The measures for the defense of “the purity of Romanian blood” were theoretically argued and practically initiated. Antonescu deemed it his moral and political obligation to defend the purity of “Romanian blood” and prevent it from mixing with Jewish blood. He prohibited Jews from hiring Christian servants, because they had children with “Jewish boys” and the entire race was thus tainted. “This is a measure of racial protection—concluded the leader—that we have to take.”6 On March 18, 1941, Antonescu signed the decree banning the conversion of Jews to Christianity. This measure was adopted on the grounds that the ethnic identity of the nation had to be protected from “mixing with Jewish blood.”7 The head of the state viewed the ethnic purification and racial homogenization of the Romanian people as paramount. Thus, at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on March 7, 1941, Antonescu stated: “Gentlemen,

 The minutes of the Council of Ministers of November 13, 1941, in Problema evreiască, 335. 5  Decree-law 3416 of December 16, 1941 pertaining to the Census of persons of Jewish blood, in L.A., 179. 6  The minutes of the Council of Ministers of April 4, 1941, in Problema evreiască, 215. 7  Substantiation report for the Decree-law pertaining to the modification of Art. 44 in the Law on the general regime of denominations, March 18, 1941, in L.A., 120. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 293

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

294

Chapter 5

bear in mind the need of this nation to take advantage of this disaster in order to purify itself, to become homogenous [...]. I have in mind the general interest of the Romanian nation that demands from us to stop being tolerant, which is the reason why we are today mixed with so many foreigners who have caused the greatest harm to us [...] I will make no more concessions. I only have mercy for the Romanian nation. The issue must be treated individually and collectively alike. I am not interested whether it is about a Ukrainian, Greek, etc. They all have to leave Romania.”8 On October 6, 1941, he reiterated this idea saying: “I can recover Bessarabia and Transylvania, but it would amount to nothing unless I purify the Romanian nation, since it is not borders that give strength to a nation, but the homogeneity and purity of its race. And this is my main goal.”9 The concepts of ethnic homogenization and purification, which the Marshal stated with so much fervor in his political speeches, underpin the policy of ethnic cleansing first in Bessarabia and Bukovina. Documents demonstrate that the policy of ethnic cleansing initiated in these provinces in the summer and autumn of 1941 represented a local variant of the “Final Solution.” The displacement and deportation to Transnistria of tens of thousands of Jews from these two Romanian provinces actually meant the mass elimination of a population based solely on its Jewish ethnic origin.10 We can conclude that Antonescu’s racist doctrine formed the basis for the local forms of the genocide characteristic of the Holocaust. Through his anti-Semitic policy, Marshal Antonescu created an indigenous version of the racist policy promoted by the Nazis. His rhetoric was filled with anti-Jewish invectives that often resembled phrases used by the Nazis; in his view, the basis for the unity of the people and state was also the racial homogenization of the Romanian people resulting from ethnic purification or the banishment of foreigners, as he expressed it on several occasions. Similarly to the Iron Guard, the Marshal also claimed that the foreign presence as well as the humanitarian and democratic spirit of the Romanian political class, which was in the service of “Geneva,” represented a direct threat to national unity. Relevant in this respect is his following assessment of the interwar period: “[those] were the years of the dissolution of the national spirit […] when the nation […] was destroyed by the ideologues of humanitarian theories, the admirers of Geneva, the cronies of Muscovite dens.”11 Nevertheless,  The minutes of the Council of Ministers of March 7, 1941, in Problema evreiască, 207.  The minutes of the Council of Ministers of October 6, 1941, in Problema evreiască, 326–7. 10  In this respect, see the letter that W. Filderman wrote to Marshal Antonescu on October 11, 1941, published in Matatias Carp, Cartea Neagră. Suferinţele evreilor din România. 1940–1944 [The Black Book. The Sufferings of the Jews in Romania, 1940– 1944] vol. III: Transnistria, 2nd ed. (Bucharest: Diogene, 1996), 242. 11  Marshal Antonescu, Istoria mă va judeca [History will judge me] (Bucharest: Editura Academiei de Înalte Studii Militare, 1993), 143. 8 9

Battling over 00 book.indb 294

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

295

Antonescu’s anti-Semitism differed from German Nazism. While the ambition of Nazism was the total physical extermination of the Jewish ethnicity, Marshal Antonescu ultimately limited himself to a policy of ethnic purification and partial physical extermination. His ambition was to cleanse Romania of Jews irrespective of the method and not necessarily through physical extermination. The aim of this article has been to demonstrate that Antonescu’s anti-Semitism was not an accident. It was a typical product of extremist nationalism that emerged in the Romanian context, but was imposed as state policy in an international context that witnessed the advent in a certain area of Europe of a regime that promoted a policy of physical extermination of the Jewish ethnicity. The Antonescu regime did not protest against this regime; on the contrary, it collaborated with it and glorified it. In March 1942, when the terrible atrocities committed by the Nazis were evident, Mihai Antonescu was expressing his belief in the “civilizing mission of Germanism in the East” as well as his desire that Romanians built together with the Germans “a new and great continent.” He concluded: “This is our struggle in the East.”12 The Antonescu regime promoted its xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist policy guided by the belief in the triumph of this type of Germanism. Its ultimate goal was the total elimination of Jews and foreigners in general from the Romanian society as well as Romania’s integration into the new order that it hoped to achieve with support from Nazi Germany. In conclusion, three fundamental concepts underpinned Antonescu’s doctrine: integral nationalism, xenophobia, and racist anti-Semitism. Translated by Leonard Ciocan

12

 Mihai Antonescu, România în Europa de mâine [Romania in tomorrow’s Europe] (Bucharest: Universul, 1942) Speech held at the Great Assembly of the clergy and educators at the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest on March 19, 1942, 23–4.

Battling over 00 book.indb 295

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

BULGARIAN DEBATE OVER “WHO SAVED THE JEWS?” Yosif Ilel, “Why did the Bulgarians save the Jews in Bulgaria,” in Vladimir Paunovski and Yosif Ilel, Evreite v Balgariya mezhdu unishtozhenieto i spasenieto. The Jews in Bulgaria between the Holocaust and the Rescue. Bilingual edition (Sofia: Adasa Pres, 2000), 165–69. Yosif Mayer Ilel was born on August 7, 1921 in Plovdiv. He studied in a vocational school for internal combustion engines and in 1946 participated in an assistant commander course at the Military School in Sofia. He was an antifascist fighter who fought as a partisan for two years and after the September 9, 1944 communist coup d’état as a front-line volunteer and an assistant commander of a combat engineer battalion in the Bulgarian army. He became an officer in the Bulgarian army and is now a reserve colonel. His work examines the youth of his generation as well as memoirs of his life and the country’s development. His most prominent work is the two-volume memoir Istoriyata pishehme s krav [The History We Wrote with Blood] (Sofia: Zaharii Stoyanov, 2007), of which the first volume was published originally as Tryabvashe da izdurzhim [We Had to Endure] (Sofia: Voenno izdatelstvo, 1986). More than fifty years have passed since the Bulgarian Jews were rescued from their physical destruction in the gas chambers of Hitler’s death camps. That is a unique fact, a phenomenon of the most modern Bulgarian and European history. It does not wither and it keeps on moving and astonishing every honest and unprejudiced citizen of the world. A small nation struggled against the mighty and cruel Hitler’s machine of destruction and managed to rescue its Jews from death. That was something that no other nation or country in Europe could do except for the small state of Denmark. The latter managed to rescue its 6,000 Jews. One night they were put on ships and evacuated to neutral Sweden. It is also true that by the dictator Franco’s order the Spanish embassies in Europe helped the Jews with Spanish citizenship and made their migration to Spain possible. The rescue of a compact mass of Jews—almost 50,000 men, women, children, and elderly, however was managed only by the democratic circles in Bulgaria with the decisive and active support of the prevailing part of the Bulgarian people. Today when we speak about the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews in 1941–44, we point out various favorable internal and external factors leading to the success of that dramatic battle. However, nowhere in reports, studies, papers, celebrations, et cetera an accent has been put on the struggle of the Bulgarian Jews themselves for the successful outcome of that epic and dramatic battle. It was a battle against the attempts of Hitlerites and their adherents in Bulgaria, in the person of the Bulgarian governments, for “radical solution of the Jewish ques-

Battling over 00 book.indb 296

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:30

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

297

tion,” that is, for the physical destruction of the Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps. It is as if the Bulgarian Jews did not care about their own fate, as if they were some inert mass indifferent to their present and future, to life and death, to everything that was all in all to them. The Bulgarian Jews, however, contributed to the dramatic battle for their own survival. They proved to be one of those favorable factors, which arose in 1943 and contributed to the failure of the efforts of the Nazi leaders and their adherents in Bulgaria for the deportation and the physical destruction of the Bulgarian Jews, the fact that they survived from the Holocaust, that is, from their physical destruction, carried out systematically in the countries occupied by Germany or allied to it, was a logical consequence of the centuries-old coexistence of Bulgarians and Jews. The main question of the present paper is the role and place of the Bulgarian Jews in the struggle for their survival from the Holocaust. Before we dwell upon this issue, however, we will pause on those favorable factors, mainly external in character, which in the end led to the failure of the attempts for deportation and physical destruction of the Bulgarian Jews. We will dwell in brief upon some of the factors for that survival without any pretensions of being comprehensive, which is not necessary since many researchers, historians and writers made praiseworthy efforts to interpret scientifically the aspects of the question, surprised by the unique fact about the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. First we should point out the struggle of the Bulgarian democratic circles against the adoption of the Nation Defense Act (NDA), its application and consequences. After 1939 the Bulgarian government, following the advice and experience of Hitler’s Germany, started to prepare the NDA on the analogy of the Nuremberg Acts for pure nation. That act was directed primarily against the Jewish minority in Bulgaria—at that time it was about 50,000 people. Even before the beginning of the discussion in the National Assembly regarding the NDA adoption, different organizations and people started a  struggle, huge in size, for rejecting that antihumane act. They were the Bulgarian democratic circles, the Holy Synod, the Consistory of the Jews in Bulgaria, the underground Workers’ Party, the Youth Workers Union (YWU), the unions of the doctors, writers, artists, and other antifascist organizations. The democratic circles knew that the NDA was directed not only against the Jews, but also against the freedoms of the entire society.   * * * The National Assembly finally passed the NDA on December 24, 1940. A month later tsar Boris III ratified it by a decree and in January 1941 the act was promulgated in the Official Gazette. The NDA became a fact. The Jews were proscribed. With the acts, regulations, and orders that followed they were deprived of their properties, the right to work in state and public institutions, the right to have their place of residence without permission, the right to serve in the army. The Jews had to put special badges on their clothes.

Battling over 00 book.indb 297

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

298

Chapter 5

They ware forbidden to go to public places, in many cities they were put under curfew, etc.. But even the most devoted advocates of that act could imagine the situation and its development in practice that led to the coercive deportation of 11,459 Jews from the annexed territories Thrace and Macedonia to Hitler’s death camps. Only twelve of them survived! However, that was only a part of the 20,000 Jews planned to be the first stage of the “radical solution of the Jewish question” according to the agreement between Theodor Dannecker, Hauptsturmführer of SS. The other 8,000 Jews had to be selected from the Jews living within the old boundaries of the country—Sofia, Plovdiv, Rousse, Haskovo, et cetera. In pursuance of that plan about 10,000 Jews—men, women, children, and elderly, specified for deportation to the camps in Germany—were gathered in schools and storehouses in the larger towns of the country. According to eyewitnesses the scene was pathetic. In accordance with the plan at first, 2,500 people from Sofia had to be deported. The deportation of the Jews from Aegean Thrace and Macedonia, and the beginning of the action for the deportation of an additional 8,000 Jews living within the old boundaries of the country, detonated the Bulgarian democratic circles. The palace, the government, the National Assembly, and other institutions were once again flooded with letters of protest, telegrams, and statements. Kiril, the metropolitan of Plovdiv and Stefan, the metropolitan of Sofia, took a strong stand for decisive defense of the Bulgarian Jews. In the literal sense, the delegation from Kyustendil and the vice chairman of the National Assembly Dimitar Peshev began the struggle against the deportation of the Jews and their release from custody on March 10, 1943. It was a dramatic battle. N. Gabrovski, minister of the Interior, was forced to release the detained Jews after the hours-long urgent request by D. Peshev and his fellow townsmen. That, however, did not satisfy D. Peshev. A few days later he sent a statement of protest against the deportation of the Jews to Prime Minister B. Filov. Forty-three deputies signed it, most of who were members of the ruling majority. One of the main arguments, pointed out by the people fighting for the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, was the fact that during 1941–43 the question about “the radical solution of the Jewish question,” that is, for their physical destruction, was not yet a question for the governments of Romania and Hungary. The Bulgarian government turned out to be the only one of the Germany-allied countries, which, in fact, first began to send its Jews to Hitler’s death camps. A number of external factors also had an influence on the delay and failure of the deportation of the Jews from the interior of the country. On the whole, that was the defeat of Hitler’s army under the command of the overrated marshal Rommel by the Anglo-American troops in North Africa in 1942. That was the first important victory of the allied army. But the defeat of Hitler’s corps d’elite near Stalingrad, on the Volga River had a  big influence on the image of Germany with signs of its possible defeat in the war. More than 1,500,000 German, Italian, and Romanian soldiers and officers died in the Stalingrad battle, which

Battling over 00 book.indb 298

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

299

continued for more than four months. After the last battles, which ended on February 2, 1943, more that 330,000 German soldiers and officers were taken prisoners-of-war, at the head with the commander-in-chief of the elite army Field Marshal Paulus. The Bulgarian government declared a three-day mourning on the occasion of the defeat of Hitler’s army near Stalingrad. Shock from the defeat at Stalingrad was general. On March 1943, Prime Minister B. Filov wrote in his diary that “The tsar […] considers the German cause as lost.” We can say with certainty that if the defeat of Hitler’s armies at Stalingrad had been three to four months later, the fate of the Jews, living within the old boundaries of the country, would not have differed from that of the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia.

Battling over 00 book.indb 299

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

Mikhail Gruev, Mezhdu petolǔchkata i polumesetsa: Bǔlgarite myusyulmani i politicheskiyat rezhim (1944–1959) [Between the Five-Pointed Star and the Crescent: The Bulgarian Muslims and the Political Regime (1944–1959)] (Sofia: IK “Kota,” 2003), 107–8, 122–4. Dr. Mikhail Gruev is an associate professor at Sofia University “St. Kliment Okhridski.” His research interests focus on the recent history of Bulgaria, ethnic and cultural issues, minorities, and historical anthropology. Selected publications include “Vuzroditelniyat protses.” Myusyulmanskite obshtnosti i komunisticheskiyat rezhim: politiki, reaktsii i posleditsi [The “Revival Process.” Muslim Communities and the Communist Regime: Politics, Reactions, and Consequences]. (Sofia: CIELA, 2008) (co-authored with Alexei Kalionski); and Preorani slogove. Kolektivizatsiya i sotsialna promyana v Balgarskiya severozapad (40–te–50–te godini na HH vek) [Reploughed Boundaries: Collectivization and Social Change in The Bulgarian Northwest (40s and 50s of the XX century)] (Sofia: CIELA, 2009).

Changes in the Policy Regarding Bulgarian Muslims, 1949–1959 THE TURKISH EMIGRATORY QUESTION AND BULGARIAN MUSLIMS From 1949 Bulgarian Muslims had become involved in the emigration psychosis, which had seized not just the Turkish but also the Muslim population of the country in general. In 1950–51 state policy was refracted in a  specific way through the concurrent emigratory wave. The reasons for this Turkish emigratory wave, the most massive prior to the so-called rebirth process, should be sought in the difficult adaptation to the new “socialist” way of life and to the collectivization propagandized by the regime. According to V. Stoyanov, very important in this respect was also the effect of Ankara’s propaganda, the example of the Bulgarian Jews’ emigration to Israel, and others.1 Applications to leave the country and emigrate to Turkey started growing in 1949 and during May–July spread throughout the country. The psychosis seized also the Bulgarian Muslim population who, too, began submitting applications for emigration. This obliged the leadership of the Communist Party and the government to take quick measures in order to gain control over and channel the emigration.

1

 Valeri Stoyanov, Turskoto naselenie v Bǔlgariya mezhdu poliusite na etnicheskata polytika [The Turkish population in Bulgaria between the poles of ethnic politics] (Sofia, 1998), 108.

Battling over 00 book.indb 300

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

301

On July 17, 1949 it was decided at a session of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) that Dobri Terpeshev, member of the Politburo and chairman of the State Planning Committee, would be sent on a tour around the Rhodope counties to find out about locally prevalent feelings. Ten days later, on July 27, Terpeshev submitted his report to the Politburo. The reaction of the person authorized by the highest executive body of the Communist Party suggests that he was probably putting forth possibilities for a solution already discussed in the high echelons of power. In his report he related the opinions of various local party leaders and functionaries.2 In general, they spoke in favor of a selective issuance of exit visas, with priority for the organizers of the campaign and an emigration of no more than 30 to 40 percent of the Turks in the Rhodope counties. The secretaries of the county committees of the BCP in Ardino and Zlatograd who attended the session confirmed that the desire of the Bulgarian Muslims to leave Bulgaria was as strong as that of the Turks. All Party functionaries were unanimous that exit visas should be issued in autumn after gathering the crops, tobacco in particular, to avoid risking the fulfillment of the plan. Along with the emigration, these meetings of D. Terpeshev with the activists of the BCP also raised the issue of the consolidation (merger) of some of the scattered settlements in the Rhodope counties. Indeed, the plans for this campaign were concerned mainly with the Turkish settlements in the counties of Momchilgrad and Krumovgrad but also with some Bulgarian Muslim areas in those of Ardino, Zlatograd and, later, Chepino. Thus, the chairman of the County People’s Council, Momchilgrad, suggested that 364 hamlets in the county be consolidated into sixty-five settlements. The First Secretary of the County Committee of BCP in Krumovgrad proposed that 104 villages with 250 hamlets be merged into twentyfour villages. This regrouping of hamlets included also a number of settlements of Bulgarian Muslims.3 It aimed at attracting the inhabitants of the hamlets to the lower and more fertile lands. These were the reasons to block (even before the emigration campaign) the construction of new buildings except for settlements that were intended to become the centers of the merged hamlets. The full realization of this plan was to be carried out after the completion of the emigration campaign. It is not easy to explain the purpose of and rationale behind this campaign, which would only be implemented partially in years to come. The official explanation stated it was being done for the good of the inhabitants of these hamlets, so they could be given more fertile land. There are several possible reasons for this meaningless campaign. One may have been the collectivization, which had already begun, with the authorities’ ambition being to induce people to enter the TKZS (Trudovo kooperativno zemedelsko stopanstvo/cooperative farm) by alienating them from their properties. Another goal of the campaign for the consolida ЦДА/TsDA (TSentralen Dŭrzhaven Arkhiv/Central State Archive), Ф. 1Б/F(und). 1B, op. (inventory) 6, a.e. (archival unit) 637, f. 17–36. 3  DA (Durzhaven Arkhiv/State Archive)—Kǔrdzhali, F. 60, op. 1, a.e. 24, f. 30–50. 2

Battling over 00 book.indb 301

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

302

Chapter 5

tion of settlements in some of the Rhodope counties was the establishment of more effective control over this population, keeping in mind the proximity of the border. In any case it is difficult to explain the artificial acceleration of otherwise natural demographic processes, which had occurred elsewhere in the country, just in the course of a much longer period of time. The emigration campaign of 1949–51 served as an occasion for the authorities to speed up this process. […] 1949 marked the beginning of a series of political events and trials that characterized the totalitarian regime established in the country. One of the first among them was the trial of the Protestant pastors. In compliance with the practice in the Bulgarian, by then totalitarian, state where every act of reprisal of the authorities against “inconvenient” people was “supported” by petitions, rallies, meetings and other demonstrations of the “people’s will,” this trial was also backed by all the people, the community of the Bulgarian Muslims included. Since this was a group of religious functionaries, the regime started collecting petitions and telegrams from representatives of the other religious communities against Protestant pastors as alleged foreign agents. The Rodopska Pravda [Rhodope Justice] newspaper also took part in the campaign with the publication of a letter, under the title Bulgarian Mohammedan Intelligentsia Condemns the Traitors-Evangelists, of Riza Solakov, former functionary of the Rodina Association4 and currently director of the Secondary School for Bulgarian Mohammedans in Plovdiv, in which, on behalf of the “entire Bulgarian Mohammedan intelligentsia,” he took a stand on the occasion. It states: “We, the Bulgarian Mohammedan religious intelligentsia, express our deep indignation and condemn the Evangelist clergy who are brought before the law and who, taking advantage of the religious freedom granted to all religious denominations by the government of the OF (Otechestven Front/Fatherland Front), have turned into agents of international imperialism and traitors to their Fatherland.”5 The quoted text does not need any additional commentary. It is indicative of the spirit of the time and of the political situation in 1949 and in years to come. Another important event with direct repercussions on the life of Bulgarian Muslims, but also on that of the entire society, were the elections held twice in 1949. The first ones were for county, town, regional, and village people’s councils, held on May 15, 1949. In fact these were the first postwar local elections, and at the same time, the first one-party ones. The results did not evoke surprise in anybody. As Rusi Hristozov, the then assistant minister of the Interior, put it  Translator’s note—RG: Rodina Association was founded in 1937 by Bulgarian Muslim intelligentsia who advocated modernization of the Muslim tradition and the inculcation of a Bulgarian national consciousness among members of the group. Eventually the Bulgarian government got strongly involved in its activities introducing methods of persuasion, which went beyond voluntary adherence to its program. In 1944 it was declared fascist organization, many of its leaders were tried and imprisoned, and the organization was disbanded. 5  Rodopska Pravda [Rhodope Justice] 7, 20.02. 1949. 4

Battling over 00 book.indb 302

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

303

in his memoirs: “The opposition—we had dealt with it, and the internal situation was stable, so the results were really good.”6 According to official data, 96.73 percent of the voters took part in the elections, and 92 percent voted for the OF.7 Hence, during the years and decades to come the percent of “support for the people’s power” would be similar and even higher. The results in the Bulgarian Muslim settlements were no exception. What is specific in their case was the preservation of voting in separate stations for men and women. Due to compulsory voting, for many women this was their first participation in elections. The Rodopska Pravda newspaper provides a true illustration of the pompous and parade atmosphere at these elections: “As early as 6 am the Rhodope population, grateful to the people’s government [...] have been thronging in front of the ballot boxes at the various polling stations in Zlatograd. The Bulgarian Mohammedan women and the men separately, and in close lines, with slogans and posters and to the sound of folk instruments—bagpipes, drums and zurnas, go to the ballot boxes.” Similar scenes could also be observed in Nedelino where “the Bulgarian Mohammedan women, for the first time in their lives, demonstrated their devotion with a solemn advance to the polling stations, in several lines of about a hundred persons each.”8 The picture described above is from the region of Zlatograd but it can also be seen on printed pages in other Bulgarian Muslim counties in general. Even in the Nevrokop district where at previous elections a considerable number of the votes in many of the Muslim villages had been cast for the opposition, the situation was similar to that described by the Rodopska Pravda. Apparently. The measures undertaken by the regime and the forced resettlements, in particular, were fruitful. An assessment of the party working on the organization of the May 15, 1949 elections by the County Committee of the BCP, Nevrokop reports that the so-called enemy acts at the time of the preelection campaign in the Bulgarian Muslim villages had been much less than those in the Macedonian ones.9 The same document also speaks of the desire of the Muslims mixed with “Macedonians” in villages to have their own polling stations or to be allowed to somehow indicate their ballots in order to show that they all would vote for the OF. Translated by Rossitsa Gradeva

 AMVR (Arkhiv na Ministerstvoto na vǔtreshnite raboti/Archive of the Ministry of the Interior), F. 15, op. 1, a.e. 14, f. 394. 7  AMVR, F. 15, op. 1, a.e. 14, f. 394. 8  Rodopska Pravda 13 (May 23, 1949). 9  DA-Blagoevgrad, F. 5B, op. 8, a.u. 8, f. 7. 6

Battling over 00 book.indb 303

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

Artan Puto, “Disa Plane për Emigrimin e Çifutëve në Shqipëri” [Plans for the Emigration of Jews in Albania], Përpjekja 2, no. 3 (1995): 102–7. Dr. Artan Puto (b. 1966) is a historian of modern Albania focusing his research on the concept of the nation, the history of the Jews in Albania, and historiography. He completed his doctoral studies at the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence in 2010 defending a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Idea of Nation during the Albanian National Movement, 1878–1912.” Puto has been a regular contributor to the influential, interdisciplinary journal Përpjekja, under the rubric “Historical Consciousness,” where he published two articles on the history of the Jews in interwar Albania. The first one, partially published below, deals with the attempts by the Albanian state to bring to the country Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany with the goal of offering them citizenship in exchange for financial investment in the country’s economy. The second article, “Ebrenjtë në Shqipëri në Pragë të Luftës së Dytë” [The Jews in Albania on the Eve of the Second World War], Përpjekja, 3 (1996): 8, 74–90, argued that between 1937 and 1939, the Italian Fascist state pressured the Albanian government to adopt discriminatory policies against Jews who wanted to come to Albania. The Albanian government complied formally with the Italian request but never actually implemented it. SOME PLANS FOR THE EMIGRATION OF JEWS TO ALBANIA In the beginning of 1934, Jewish networks became interested in Albania. This concerns plans of the Zionist organizations for the relocation and settlement in our country of several thousands Jews, who fled Nazi Germany. In order to understand what these attempts represented, it is necessary to review the international political situation of the time. It is well-known that Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 signaled the beginning of a difficult period for the Jews of Germany, that is, discrimination, persecution, and genocide. In these conditions it became clear that there was no other way for them [the Jews] to be safe but to flee to safer countries. The emigration of such a large mass of people created two main problems. First was the need to find a proper place where these refugees could settle, and second, to organize their relocation. The solution to the first problem was the relocation from Germany to Palestine, favored by the Zionist organization as a future Jewish state. The second problem was more difficult: how to implement such a massive relocation to the Middle East. The importance of this question went beyond Zionist interests. It involved those in the international politics of the time. For the decision-makers of the Zionist international organizations it was clear that in order to reach their goal, it was necessary to find wider support. One of the most interested powers of the

Battling over 00 book.indb 304

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

305

time was Fascist Italy. To Rome it was clear that the Jewish problem could cause undesirable complications in Europe. Facilitating the relocation of the German Jews to Palestine appeared as an appropriate way to avoid those complications. In addition, the general interest in Zionism would serve to futher involve Italy in the Eastern Mediterranean, at the expense of British interests. The Zionist leaders, for the most part, were interested in keeping good relations with Mussolini. Italy was still one of the more accommodating European countries toward Jews. Thus, it was crucial to keep open the bridges of communication between Italy and Palestine in order to guarantee the refugee-free traffic through the Italian territory. Albania was also attracting the attention of Jewish circles who were trying to find a  gateway through which the refugee masses would cross. They considered Albania as a possible station for Jewish refugees who could stay there temporarily while waiting to be transported to Palestine. […] Therefore, the international agencies of the League of Nations, in this case, the High Commissioner for Refugees, considered the migration of the German Jews as a temporary solution. Albania was not chosen by accident. As a country with open access to the Adriatic Sea, Albania would serve, in this first phase, as a temporary place for German Jews, who would later continue their journey across the sea to Palestine. From the first letter of the League’s commissioner for Albania, we can infer that the Zionist circles were interested in bringing a considerable Jewish community to Albania. From the manner in which the relocation to Albania was planned, it can be inferred that this was not about people who would simply transit the country. The plan to rechannel the Buna and Drini rivers in order to free arable lands, and the investment of 8 million golden francs, reveal plans to establish permanent Jewish colony in Albania. This was at least what the Albanian government understood, and for this reason it not only welcomed these plans, but suggested their extension in other areas of the country. Nevertheless, the letter received in September [1935] from the High Commissioner for Refugees seems to have been sent in order to clarify that the League had changed its opinion in favor of the emigration of smaller groups of people and not of large numbers. What was the reason for this change? This question is not easy to answer, as we have no relevant documents to draw on. Nevertheless, the archival records we have at our disposal regarding the evolution of these attempts during 1935, helps us advance a reasonable explanation. […] After this correspondence, the Albanian-Israelite contacts seem to have become frozen. They were mentioned once again on November 22, 1935 in a letter from the Albanian consular officer in Vienna, T. Rrota, sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Albanian consul wrote about the attempts of the Central Committee of the Jewish Emigrants in London to establish some settlement in Albania. It states: “It seems that after the last decision of the NationalSocialist Government in its last general meeting in Nuremberg, in September of this year, the project of colonizing Albania with Jewish elements has now been given a concrete form. For two months we have received numerous questions

Battling over 00 book.indb 305

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

306

Chapter 5

from the networks of Israelite emigrants of Germany about the possibility of their emigration to Albania as traders and industrialists, emphasizing always that for this purpose the German government would allow them to take with themselves part of their wealth.” At first sight, it looks strange that after a few months of total silence, the question of migration to Albania is again on the surface. The answer to this question is to be found, nevertheless, by looking slightly back in time to the meeting on November 13, 1934, between Mussolini and Goldmann (head of the Committee of the Jewish Delegations). The meeting was made possible by the intervention of baron Aloisi, who was a member of the Commission of the Three, charged by the League of Nations to solve the problem of the Saarland (if the pending plebiscite returned it to Germany). Goldmann emphasized the urgent problem of approximately 7,000 Jews who would risk becoming victims of the discriminatory policies of Hitler after the plebiscite. Mussolini promised to intervene by doing his best to help these Jews leave Germany with their wealth within a year after the plebiscite. Following the Italian intervention a clause was inserted in the agreement of December 3, 1934, signed in Rome between France and Germany. According to this clause, the Jews received the right to leave Germany with their belongings. After the return of this region to German jurisdiction, on January 13, 1935, Berlin promised to not impede on the free movement of the Jews from the Saar. On the basis of this agreement, the German government also planned to send a part of these unwanted Jews to Albania. Why were these plans not implemented? The answer to this question can be found in the positions of the League of Nations and the Albanian counterpart. The League of Nations and the Jewish international organizations conceived of these plans as a temporary solution. Their real aim was the final settlement of these emigrants in Palestine. Why then did the Jewish network offer the possibility of investments in Albania? Here, we should add that these offers were not new and confined contacts of the Jewish circles with the Albanian government. At the meeting between Mussolini and the Zionist head Weizmann, on November 17, 1934, the latter offered to Italy important military-agrarian concessions in Palestine, in exchange for the assistance Rome would provide to Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. This seems to have been a well-thought out plan for the purpose of enhancing the Italian interest in helping Jewish emigration to Palestine. But the Albanian government wanted to obtain the final settlement of Jews on its territory. The desire to secure Jewish investment proves this point clearly. This attitude of the Albanian authorities is articulated in an article in the Jewish Daily Post in July 1935: The minister of Albania in London declared in the name of his government that the Jews could enter Albania and invest their capitals in agriculture and industry. He promised that they would also be offered other facilities. The minister also added that the government would not

Battling over 00 book.indb 306

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

307

let them come, earn money and go. They have to come, settle down and become Albanian citizens according to the Albanian law, otherwise they have no right to buy land. This demand for permanent settlement, however, was not the only reason for the failure of these plans. The same daily newspaper published another article in which the main reason was disclosed: “The invitation made by the Albanian government to Jews to settle in that country was well received, according to the Bulgarian press. The official daily news Pravda wrote on this issue, among other matters, that before the news was made known to London and New York, the Italian government sent to Albania the Minister of National Economy, Mr. Orlando Crolanza. He came to ensure two important Italian concessions in Albania: (1) the arable fields of Albania (Myzeqe) for the establishment of Italian farmers for twenty years, and (2) three other territories for mineral exploitation for ninety years. The correspondent of the Bulgarian daily news added that this visit occurred only after the demand of the Albanian government for Jewish investment. The Albanian government considered it more profitable to give a private concession to Jewish industrialists, but Italian political pressure forced it to act in favor of Italy.” Thus, it was Italian intervention that gave the fatal blow to these attempts. In fact, it could not be otherwise. Italy had full economic control of Albania and was treating it like a colony, and it would never allow the Albanian side to enter into relations with other partners. Translated by Etleva Lala

Battling over 00 book.indb 307

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

Valentina Duka, Çështje të Historisë Bashkëkohore të Shqiptarëve [Contemporary Questions of the History of Albanians] (Tirana: Libri Universitar, 2008), 202–5. Dr. Valentina Duka (b. 1959) is a professor at the Department of History and Philology, University of Tirana. Her research focuses primarily on Albanian urban history at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Albanian diaspora in the United States, the relationship between state and religious communities (Catholic and Orthodox) in the first half of the twentieth century, and Albanian historiography. She has written several monographs, such as Qytetet e Shqipërisë në Vitet 1914–1924 [The Towns of Albania, 1914–1924] (Tirana: Toena, 1997); and Dokumente Britanike për Shqipërinë dhe Shqiptarët [British Documents on Albania and Albanians], 2 vols. (Tirana: Toena, 2002). The following excerpt summarizes the debates in Albanian historiography on the contribution of the Albanians to the saving of the Jews in Albania during World War II. ISSUES RELATED TO THE CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE ALBANIANS Preserving good relations with Italy, and not racist reasoning, prompted the Albanians to adopt laws restricting the entrance of Jews in the country, concluded Puto.1 The Italian occupation of Albania on April 7, 1939 excluded the possibility of reaching any agreement between Jews and Albanians. According to Professor Shaban Sinani,2 after the proclamation of the “Final Solution” doctrine, which in the beginning of 1939 constituted “the basis of antiSemitic violence,” “an essential difference in the attitude of the royal diplomacy of Albania on the Jewish question” is visible.3 Sinani stated: “the diplomacy of the Albanian Kingdom started to take responsibility for the Jews endangered in those areas where Nazi authority was in force.”4 He also thinks that, independently from the pressure that originated from Rome,5 “The royal government of Albania [...] did not draft any anti-Semitic law” and the only related step was Article 23, in which “according to the stan-

 Artan Puto, “Hebrejtë në Shqipëri në prag të Luftës së Dytë” [The Jews in Albania on the Eve of the Second World War], Përpjekja 3, no. 8 (1996): 74–90. 2  Shaban Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve” [The Diplomacy of Monarchical Albania in Saving of the Jews], Korrieri (November 20, 2004): 18–19. 3  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 18 4  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 18. 5  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 18–19. 1

Battling over 00 book.indb 308

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

309

dard of the time, one had to declare race in the visa application.” 6 Sinani argues there was a high degree of resentment in Rome about the hospitality of the Albanians toward the expelled Jews, who arrived in Albania from other European and Balkan countries.7 He believes the Italian legation in Tirana was also worried about the fact that those Jews who settled in Tirana became part of the communist movement.8 ALBANIAN HISTORY WRITING AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE ALBANIANS TO THE PROTECTION OF THE JEWS DURING WORLD WAR II The vast majority of the historical writings on the Albanian-Jewish relations highlight the contribution of the Albanians to the protection of the Jews during World War II. There are certainly debates about this argument among Albanian historians over the following question: What was the main factor that made the Albanian people protect the Jews during the Holocaust? This is an important question for Albanian scholars, as Albania’s protection of Jews was a unique achievement in one of the darkest and most terrible chapters in the history of mankind. As a matter of fact, other than Albania, there were other countries such as Denmark and Bulgaria, where local Jews were protected, but the case of Albania is different. Albanians protected not only the Albanian Jews but also those who came from other European countries. The Albanians hid and gave shelter to the foreign Jews, despite the Nazi threat. Here is the core of the debate: What made the Albanians protect the Jews? Scholars give various answers to this question. According to Apostol Kotani, “although foreign anti-Semitic propaganda had arrived in Albania […], the Albanian people welcomed the rejected and persecuted Jews, sheltered them and created conditions for them to engage in productive activities […] and lived alongside them, treating them like relatives.”9 Facts show the Albanians disregarded the Nazi orders and did not denounce the Jews. Furthermore, without being afraid of the consequences of sheltering and hiding Jews, they (the Albanians) protected them (the Jews), saved them from concentration camps and other dangers, gave them shelter in their own homes and fed them their own bread, which was then scarce even for themselves.10 Kotani explains the attitude of the Albanians toward the Jews with the practice that the Albanians have always had in welcoming foreigners who came to Albania. In addition, the protection of the Jews became a humanitarian issue for  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 18.  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 19. 8  Sinani, “Diplomacia e Shqipërisë mbretërore për shpëtimin e hebrenjve,” 19. 9  Apostol Kotani, Hebrejtë në Shqipëri gjate shekujve [The Jews in Albania during the Centuries] (Tirana: Dituria, 1996), 35. 10  Kotani, Hebrejtë në Shqipëri gjate shekujve, 68. 6 7

Battling over 00 book.indb 309

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

310

Chapter 5

Albanian families. According to Kotani, when it was seen that the Nazi were intensifying their search and pressure for capturing Jews, their protection became a galvanizing issue across the entire society, a duty in the military ranks of the National-Liberation Front and of the National-Liberation councils.11 In his book The Jews in Albania during the Centuries, Kotani has also provided a long list of Albanian family names who protected Jews during the Holocaust and also listed towns and villages in which Jews were sheltered and protected. This latter list of the towns, introduced by him, covers all of Albania, from south to north. It includes Vlora, Korça, Fier, Berat, Lushnja, Elbasan, Librazhd, Kavaja, Durres, Tirana, Kruja, Dibra, and Shkodra.12 Another historian, Ana Lalaj, agrees with the opinion expressed by Professor Kotani. She underlines the fact that the Jews “found in Albania a certain peace,”13 at a time when “Europe and the Balkans were overwhelmed by AntiSemitic violence,” because “humanity would appear as the central feature of the Albanian society.”14 Professor Lalaj makes a direct link between the humanity of the Albanians and the “institution of hospitality,” which is “a moral value in the Albanian history.” According to her, the general antifascist spirit and the relatively low number of Jews in Albania left no room for resentment among Albanians. There was no legacy of hatred among the Muslim Albanians, whose religion, unlike Christianity, did not have two millenniums of hatred toward the Jews for crucifying Christ. There were other important factors which account for the pro-Jewish attitude of the Albanian society.15 One has to do with the psychological disposition of the Albanians despite “having no doubt, blind prejudgments, and phobia towards those who are different in religion, appearance, habits, language, dress etc.”16 In the introduction of the archival document guide that deals with the history of the Jews in Albania, in the Albanian State Archives, the compilers, Nevila Nika and Liljana Vorpsi, note that Albanians who had long been divided into four religious communities, probably found it easier to support and to protect the Jewish community.17 Professor Shaban Sinani advanced another opinion. According to him, the explanation that the Nazi doctrine failed in Albanian due to Albanian Canon Law,

11

 Kotani, Hebrejtë në Shqipëri gjate shekujve, 70.  Kotani, Hebrejtë në Shqipëri gjate shekujve, 107–122. 13  Ana Lalaj, “Rasti i hebrenjve dhe humanizmi i popullit shqiptar” [The Case of the Jews and the Humanism of the Albanian People], Studime Historike 3–4 (2004), 180. 14  Lalaj, “Rasti i hebrenjve dhe humanizmi i popullit shqiptar,” 180. 15  Lalaj, “Rasti i hebrenjve dhe humanizmi i popullit shqiptar,” 181. 16  Lalaj, “Rasti i hebrenjve dhe humanizmi i popullit shqiptar,” 182. 17  Nevilla Lika and Liljana Vorpsi (eds.), Guidebook. A Reference to Records About Jews in Albania Before, During and After the Second World War (Tirana: State Central Archives, 2006), VII. 12

Battling over 00 book.indb 310

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

The Jews and Other Minorities during World War II

311

is not logical.18 He does not support the other thesis either, that the salvation of the Jews in Albania had to do with their small number and that “they represented neither a competing factor nor a danger to the local inhabitants.”19 He does not agree with the other thesis, which ascribes a political context in the protection of the Jews from the Nazi persecution because according to him the archival sources show that in Albania the Jewish question was not a political one. The Jews in Albania were saved neither by nationalism, nor communism or any other political factor,20 but according to him, the main reason why the Albanians protected the Jews from the Holocaust was “the Albanian ethnotype, whose core is the protection of the one who is in danger.”21 He emphasized that “the Albanian ethnotype (etnotipi) expresses one of its most crucial qualities in the attitude towards the other, expressed when the other is in danger, or when the other falls into the position of being surrendered and unprotected, even when he is an enemy. In this position, he does not see him as an enemy, but as a human being who asks for help and deserves solidarity.” According to him, “the best example of the protection of the other in danger is the case of the Jews.”22 Nevertheless, Professor Sinani does not conclude without mentioning another related factor. He gives credit to the positive role of the Albanian government, which according to the Albanian archival sources had an agreement with the Albanian regency’s post-Italian leadership and the Nazi army based on the following formula: “let the Nazi army be treated as a visiting army, with the condition that the Reich’s authorities do not intervene in the internal affairs of the local government.” Referring to the formula of the pact and the reaction of the Reich’s institutions, he continues, “it can be safely concluded that in the eyes of the Nazi authorities in Tirana, the Jewish question was considered an “internal affair.”23 THE HOLOCAUST AND HISTORY TEACHING IN ALBANIA In a history textbook, Albanian students encounter the concept of the Holocaust for the first time when they are thirteen years old. In the seventh grade an Albanian student is introduced to the main events leading to the Holocaust from the interwar period to World War II under the topic “Germany during the Nazi

18

 Shaban Sinani, “Prania kulturore hebraike në Shqipëri,” [The Jewish cultural presence in Albania] in Shaban Sinani and Naim Zoto (eds.) Një Shqipëri tjetër [Another Albania] (Tirana: Argeta-LMG, 2006), 267. 19  Shaban Sinani, “Etnotipi shqiptar i mbrojti hebrejtë,” [Albanian ethnotype saved the Jews] in Një Shqipëri tjetër, 274. 20  Sinani, “Etnotipi shqiptar i mbrojti hebrejtë,” 278–9. 21  Sinani, “Etnotipi shqiptar i mbrojti hebrejtë,” 278–9. 22  Shaban Sinani, “Hebrejtë në Shqipëri dhe shpëtimi i tyre në periudhën naziste,” [The Jews in Albania and their rescue during the Nazi period] in Një Shqipëri tjetër, 287. 23  Sinani, “Hebrejtë në Shqipëri dhe shpëtimi i tyre në periudhën naziste,” 290.

Battling over 00 book.indb 311

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

312

Chapter 5

dictatorship.”24 In the eleventh grade, students receive more extensive knowledge about the Holocaust in the textbook “Historia 3,” in the Social Profile, chapter V, sections “Germany on the way to the Nazi take-over” and “Domestic and foreign policies of Hitler.”25 The politics and practice of Hitler toward Jews are to be based on his principle of inferior races subject to persecutions or extermination. Here young people learn also about the core of the Holocaust, the very fact that 6 million Jews perished during World War II. According to the text, the only “guilt” of the Jews, is the fact that they were honorable citizens, who worked for their well-being and fully observed the laws of the country in which they lived. In two textbooks on Social Profiles and Natural Profiles, photos of the concentration camps illustrate the policy of Nazism for the physical destruction of the Jews. In the extracurricular program, teachers ask students to collect materials about the Holocaust and write essays about the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews.26 Translated by Etleva Lala

 Fehmi Rexhepi and Frashër Demaj, Historia 8 [History 8] (Pristina: Shtëpia Botuese e Librit Shkollor, 2005), 24. 25  Llambro Filo, Ilira N. Sulo, Gëzim Sala, Moikom Zeqo, Pranvera Dibra, Loreta Terihati and Viola Grillo, Historia 3, Profili Shoqëror [History 3, Social Studies] (Tirana: Shtëpia Botuese e Librit Shkollor, 2003), 77. 26  Llambro Filo, Petrit Nathanaili, Adrian Papajani, Fatmiroshe Xhemali and Moikom Zeqo, Historia 3 Profili Natyror [History 3, Natural Studies] (Tirana: Shtëpia Botuese e Librit Shkollor, 2004), 53. 24

Battling over 00 book.indb 312

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

List of Contributors

James Frusetta received his PhD in history from the University of Maryland, his master’s in history from Arizona State University, was an exchange fellow with the of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, and obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. Having previously taught at the American University in Bulgaria and the College of William and Mary, he is currently an associate professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College and a teaching fellow at the campus Wilson Center for Leadership. His research interests include work in political violence in Southeastern Europe, state-building in modern Europe, and currently focus on pedagogical approaches to historical methods. His publications include “The Final Solution in Southern and Southeastern Europe: Between Nazi Catalysts and Local Motivations” in Jonathan Friedman, ed., Routledge History of the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 2011), 265–277; and “Fascism to Finish the Nation: Bulgarian Fascism’s Uncertain Palingenesis of the National Project” in C. Iordachi, ed., “Fascism in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe: A Reappraisal,” East-Central Europe, 37 (2010) 2–3: 280–302. Constantin Iordachi is Professor of History at the Central European University, Budapest and Vinna, co-editor of the journal East-Central Europe (Leiden: Brill), and President of the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies (www.comfas.org) He has published widely on comparative history in Central and South-Eastern Europe, mostly on citizenship, fascism, and communism. His publications include Liberalism, Constitutional Nationalism, and Minorities: The Making of Romanian citizenship, c. 1750–1918 (Leiden: Brill, 2019); Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the ‘Archangel Michael’ in Inter-war Romania (Trondheim, 2004). He is editor or co-editor of over sixteen books and journal issues, among which: Redobândirea cetățeniei române: Perspective istorice, comparative şi aplicate/Reacquiring Romanian Citizenship: Historical, Comparative and Applied Perspectives (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2012); “Fascism in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe: A Reappraisal,” East-Central

Battling over 00 book.indb 313

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

314

List of Contributors

Europe, 37 (2010) 2–3; Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2009, 2010, translated in Romanian and Turkish; The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparisons and Entanglements (Budapest: CEU Press, 2014); Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2013); Transforming People, Property and Power: The Process of Land Collectivization in Romania, 1949–1962 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009); Romanian ed.: (Iaşi: Polirom, 2004); and România și Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului. Perspective istorice si comparative [Romania and the Trans-Dniester Region: The Question of the Holocaust. Historical and Comparative Perspectives] (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004). Vladan Jovanović is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Recent History of Serbia in Belgrade. He obtained his BA, MA and PhD degrees from the Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University. His main research interests focus on the integration of the formerly Ottoman territories of Macedonia and Kosovo into the interwar Yugoslav state, but also on inter-ethnic violence, national identity, forced migration, and transnational smuggling networks throughout the post-Ottoman Balkans. He is the chief editor for monographs at INIS, and head of the project “National identity: political, social and cultural transformation“ at the same institution. He is the author of three books and fifty book chapters and articles: Jugoslovenska država i Južna Srbija 1918–1929. Makedonija, Sandžak, Kosovo i Metohija u Kraljevini SHS [Yugoslav state and Southern Serbia 1918– 1929. Macedonia, Sanjak, Kosovo and Metohija in the King dom of SCS] (Belgrade: INIS, 2002); Vardarska banovina 1929–1941 [Vardar Banate, 1929–1941] (Belgrade: INIS, 2011); and Slike jedne neuspele integracije: Kosovo, Makedonija, Srbija Jugoslavija [Images of a Failed Integration: Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Fabrika knjiga & Peščanik, 2014). Vangelis Kechriotis (1969–2015) studied history at the Department of History and Archaeology of Athens University (BA, 1995), at the University of Essex (MA in comparative history, 1996) and at the University of Leiden (Ph.D., 2005), where he defended his doctoral dissertation on The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Community between Autonomy and Patriotism, under the supervision of Erik Jan Zürcherat. He received numerous fellowships in prominent academic institutions in Europe and the United States. Between 2003 and 2015, Kechriotis taught at the Department of History of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. His research focused on the study of late Ottoman imperial ideology, Christian and Jewish communities (especially the Greek minority), and nationalism in the Balkans. Kechriotis published many articles and book chapters related to these topics, and served as co-editor of the following major publications: Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States and Modernism: Representations of National Culture (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010); Economy and

Battling over 00 book.indb 314

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

List of Contributors

315

Society on Both Shores of the Aegean (Athens: Alpha Bank Historical Archives, 2010); and “The Late Ottoman Port-Cities and Their Inhabitants: Subjectivity, Urbanity, and Conflicting Orders,” Special Issue, Mediterranean Historical Review [24/2 (2009)]. Vangelis Kechriotis tragically passed away in the early stage of this project’s completion. His essay in the current volume is one of his latest contributions to scholarship. John R. Lampe is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Global Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Among his many publications, his most recent book is Balkans into Southeastern Europe, 1914– 2014, A Century of War and Transition (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014). He is currently co-editing with Ulf Brunnbauer a Handbook on Balkan and South-east European History for Routledge. Stefan Papaioannou is an Assistant Professor of History at Framingham State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland in 2012. He is currently writing a monograph entitled Balkan Wars between the Lines: Violence and Civilians in Macedonia, 1912–1918, based on his doctoral dissertation which was awarded the John O. Iatrides Dissertation Prize for the best English-language dissertation on a Greek subject by the Modern Greek Studies Association (2013). His research interests include the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the First World War, evolution and perceptions of wartime violence, irregular violence, and Western images of the Balkans. Vjeran Pavlaković is an Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He received his Ph.D. in History in 2005 from the University of Washington, and has published articles on cultural memory, transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia, and the Spanish Civil War. Recent publications include “The Controversial Commemoration: Transnational Approaches to Remembering Bleiburg,” in Politička misao (2018), “How Does This Monument Make You Feel? Measuring Emotional Responses to War Memorials in Croatia” (with Benedikt Perak), in The Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural Mediation and Reception (2017), and The Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (Belgrade: Standard 2, 2016). He is also the lead researcher on the project “Framing the Nation and Collective Identity in Croatia: Political Rituals and the Cultural Memory of 20th Century Traumas” funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ). Roumiana Il. Preshlenova graduated in History and German Language from Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridksi.” Her area of expertise is Balkan history in the 19th and 20th centuries with special emphasis on relations between the Balkans and Central Europe, economic history, education, nation-building and

Battling over 00 book.indb 315

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

316

List of Contributors

identities. Recently, she has published monographs on Bulgarians at universities and higher schools in Austria-Hungary in 1879–1918 and on Austro-Hungarian politics in the Balkans in 1878–1912 (both in Bulgarian) and edited/co-edited six collective volumes in Bulgarian, German and English. She has coordinated several international research projects, and participated in the Working Group of the Austrian and Bulgarian Academies of Sciences (1996–2000). Preshlenova is member of the Editorial Board of the journal Etudes balkaniques (Sofia) and the Hiperboreea journal. She is currently Director of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre for Thracology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and guest lecturer at Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridksi.”

Battling over 00 book.indb 316

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

Index

A Academy of Insurance and Finances, Sofia, 226 Achim, Viorel, 265 Adriatic Sea, 172, 305 Aegean Thrace, 298 Agrarian Academy, Plovdiv, 226 Agrarian Union, Bulgaria 167, 254 Alakinci, 174 Albania, 172, 304–306; creation, 14, 32; border 169; during World War II, 15; Canon Law, 310; Albanian ethnotype, 311; historiography, 308, 309; Albanian-Jewish relations, 309; protection of the Jews, 309–12 Albanian State Archives, 310 Albanians, 168; Albanian battalions, Macedonia, 169 Aldine, weekly, 285 Aleksandar I, King of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1921–29) and of Yugoslavia (1929–34), assassination in Marseilles (1934), 192; dictatorship, 245, 246 Aleksandrov, Todor 168 Alexandrescu, Sorin, 9, 201 Aliev, Mustafa, 181 Aloisi, Pompeo, baron 306 Anagnostopoulou, Sia, 61–2, 70 Anastassopoulos, Antonis, 59 Angelou, Alkis, 58 Anglo-American-Yugoslav Club, 245

Battling over 00 book.indb 317

anti-Semitism, 16, 26, 102, 127, 195, 261–4, 267, 273, 278–9, 283, 286, 288, 291–5, 308–10 Antonescu Regime (1940–44), Romania, anti-Jewish policies, 261, 286, 293; extermination of Jews, 264–5; deportation of Roma, 265; ‘Romanianization’ of the economy, 265 Antonescu, Ion, General, 17, 162, 262–5, 280–3, 285–6, 291–5; “savior of Jews,” 282–3; anti-Semitism, 261, 291, 292, 295; racism, 293–5; “Antonescu myth,” 263; “the Liberating Marshal,” 286 Antonescu, Mihai, 295 Archangel Michael, 205 Ardino, 301 Armenian Genocide, 276 Armenians, 76, 84, 276 Arsić, Trajko, 171 Artuković, Mato, 103 Asia, 276 Association of Russian Scientists (1920), 252 Association of the Friends of Great Britain and America (1932), 245 Athens, 164 August 23, 1944, Romania’s military insurrection against Nazi Germany, 261 Austria, 217, 229, 244, 245 Austria-Hungary, 219, 221, 238; activities in the Balkans, 254. See also Habsburg Empire

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:31

318

Index

Avlanli [modern Palauzovo], Sliven county, 182 Avramov, Roumen, 214, 215, 222 Axa, magazine, 200 B Babić, Mijo, 190 Babunski, Jovan Stojković, 169 Bačka, 191, 219 Bajta, Azem, 168 Balkan Federation, 172 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 1–3, 13, 45, 61, 75, 83, 118, 158, 168, 175, 177. Second Balkan War, 236 Balkans, 211, 212, 227, 242, 247, 247, 247, 251, 251, 254, 255, 261, 275 Balta, Evangelia, 59–60 Banac, Ivo, 5, 10 Banat, 9 Banjevci, Biograd county, 186 Baranja, 186 Barbarst, 171 Barbu, Zeev, 197 Bataković, Dušan, 12 Battak massacre of 1876, 10 Becić, Ivan M., 215, 217 Belev, Aleksandar, 270 Belgrade University, 170, 230, 239, 247 Belgrade, 177, 179, 187, 191, 212, 216, 238, 239, 239, 241, 242, 243; concerts of British musicians, 246; Belgrade bourgeoisie, 242, 243, 245; intelligentsia, 246; musicians, 244; British influence in theatre, 244; English Daycare Center (1939), 246; exhibitions of German art, 245; exhibitions of British artists (1929), 246 Belovo region, 182 Benjamin, Lya, 291 Benkovac, 186 Berat, 310 Berend, Iván, 212 Berlin Peace Congress (1878), 11, 33, 254 Berlin, 252 Berov, Liuben, 212 Besançon, Alain, 289, 290

Battling over 00 book.indb 318

Bešlin, Branko, 127 Besna Kobila, 251 Bessarabia, 294 Bicilij, Pjotr, 251 Biondich, Mark, 6, 18, 100 Bistric, 173 Bitola, 174, 177 Bjelajac, Mile, 17, 104, 122, 128 Black Sea, 172, 256 Boban, Ljubo, 99 Boeck, Karin, 6, 13 Bogoridi, 226 Boia, Lucian, 9–10 Bolshevism, 194, 284; Bolshevization, 285 borders, 7, 130, 154, 156–7, 159, 177, 181, 184, 191, 219, 294, 302; border changes, 1–2, 11, 14, 162, 273 Boris III, Tsar of Bulgaria (1918–1943), 269, 298, 240, 255, 270 Bosilegrad, 251 Bošković, Ivan J., 101 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 191, 219 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2, 6, 11–13, 15–16, 85, 87, 104–5, 108, 111–12, 114, 131, 157, 191, 219 Bosnian Muslims, 2, 6, 87, 143, 239 Božić, Sofija, 128, 145 Braham, Randolph L, 283 Bregalnica, 168, 179 Bridge, F.R., 11 Brigandage, 151, 156; in Bulgaria, 180–182; Law for the Eradication of Brigandage (1887), 182; Greek irregular (andartes), pillages 164 British Council, London, 243, 246 British Institute, Belgrade (1940), 243, 246 Brkan, Ante, 186, 187, 190 Brown, Keith, 7 Brunnbauer, Ulf, 4 Bucharest, 240 Bucur, Maria, 11, 236, 240 Budak, Mile, 190 Bukovina, 9, 240, 281, 283, 286, 294 Bulgaria, 181, 211–212, 215, 216, 224, 225, 236, 239, 247, 251, 254, 257, 309; Grand National Assembly, Turnovo,

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index 181; national anthem 172; army, 180; military defeat, 167, 214; nationalization of industry and banks (1947), 229; literature, arts and architecture, 237; partnership with Nazi Germany, 255–256; refugees, 229; nonalignment, 256; the press, 307 Bulgarian Agrarian Bank [Bŭlgarska Zemedelska Banka, BZB], 223, 215 Bulgarian Agrarian Cooperative Bank [Bŭlgarska Zemedelska Kooperativna Banka, BZKB], 223 Bulgarian Agricultural National Union (Bulgarski zemedelski naroden suyuz, BZNS), 195, 240 Bulgarian Central Cooperative Bank [Bŭlgarska TsentralnaKooperativna Banka, BTsKB], 223 Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP), 229, 269, 300, 301, 303 Bulgarian economy, 213, 215, 222; merchants, 226; Western investment, 228; trade, 228; finances, 222, 229; cooperativism, 222; infrastructure, 228; market economy, 227; industrial production, 227; Bulgarian-German trade agreements (1930s), 213; trade with Germany, 256 Bulgarian Exarchate, 44, 52–6 Bulgarian Home Defense Union (Suyuz “Bulgarska rodna zashtita,” SBRZ), 194 Bulgarian Mohammedan women and the men, 303 Bulgarian National Bank [Bŭlgarska Narodna Banka, BNB], 214, 222–224 Bulgarian Orthodox Church, 269 Bulgarian People’s Union “Kubrat” (Bulgarski narodensuyuz “Kubrat,” BNSK), 194 Buna River, 305 Burgas, 181, 228 Byzantine influence, 224 C Călinescu, Armand, 206 Čapo, Hrvoje, 104

Battling over 00 book.indb 319

319

Carev Dvor, 175 Carevo Selo, 174 Carnegie Report, 164 Carol II, King of Romania (1930–1940), 205 Castellan, Georges, 49 Catholicism, 17, 54, 84, 101–3, 118, 131–2, 308 Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 261 Cenan Zija, 176 Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, 222 Center for the History of the Jews in Romania, Bucharest (Centrul pentru Studiul Istoriei Evreilor din Romania), 291 Central Committee of the Jewish Emigrants, London, 305 Central Europe, 218, 230, 244, 256 Centre for Advanced Studies, Sofia, 222 Cham minority, 273, 274 “Charles Dickens” Daycare Center, Belgrade, 245–6 Chekhov, Anton, 251 Chepino, 301 Chetniks, 15–17, 101, 152, 157, 162, 167–9, 189, 266 Chomakovs, 226 Christian–Muslim relations, 56, 85–9 Ciocan, Leonard, 295 Cipek, Tihomir, 104 Ćirković, Sima, 6 Čižmešija-Williams, Marina, 147, 169, 253, Clark, Christopher, 11 Clayer, Nathalie, 12 Clinton, Hilary, 281 Coja, Ion, 281, 282, 283 Communism in Eastern Europe, memorialization of, 278; crimes, 280 Communist Party of Greece, 273 Constantinescu, Emil, President of Romania (1996–2000), 285 Constantinescu, Miti, leader of Legionary death squad, 206 Constantinople Patriarchate, 36–7, 56–7, 62–3, 75–81, 83–4; conversion to Islam, 36, 39, 41

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

320

Index

Constantinople, 247, 249, 251, 252. See also Istanbul Conştiinţa Naţională, 200 cooperative farm (Trudovo kooperativno zemedelsko stopanstvo, TKZS), 301 çorbacis, 37, 41, 48 Corfulija, repression, 173 Cornwall, Mark, 13 Cossacs, 251 Courtois, Stéphane, Black Book of Communism, 277, 287, 288, 290 Crainic, Nichifor, 198–199 Crampton, Richard, 7, 13, 47 Crljen, Danijel, 183 Croatia, 185, 187, 191, 219; provincial government, 220; émigré community, 183; national struggle, 183 Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, 183 Croatian Peasant Party, 239 Croats, 183, 189, 219, 221, 236; Gothic origin of, 191; Crolanza. Orlando, Minister of National Economy, Italy, 307 Curtea de Argeş, 200 Cvetković, Vladimir L., 215. Czechoslovakia, 217, 229, 233

Đevđelija 173, 174; Đevđelija prison, 173 Anđušev, Georgi, 173 Dibra, 310 Dimić, Ljubodrag, 122, 125 Dimitrijević, Mita, 172 Dimitrov, Dimitar St., 215, 222, 226 Djokić, Dejan, 6 Dobrivojević, Ivana, 121, 130 Dogo, Marco, 5 Donje Đurđance, terror in, 171 Đorđević, Jovan, 177 Drage, village, Biograd county, 186 Dragostinova, Theodora, 8 Drapac, Vesna, 5, 12 Dren, 173 Drenica, 168; kaçaks rebellion, 168 Drenovo, 173 Drina River, 190, 191 dual citizenship, Hungary and Croatia, 187 Dugi otok, 186 Duić, Stjepan, 192 Duka, Valentina, 308 Dukanac, Slavko, 172 Dunja, 174 Durres, 310 Đustendil, Macedonia 167

D Dacians, 202 Đakovo, 185, 188 Dalmatia, 6, 13, 101, 103, 105, 108, 111, 117–20, 145–6, 186, 219, 238 Dannecker, Theodor, Hauptsturmführer SS, 298 Danova, Nadya, 30, 35 Daskalov, Roumen, 5, 31–2, 43 Davidović, Ljubomir, 172, 179 Debar, 171 Dečani, 169; seizure of, 169 Decemviri, 202–4, 206 Denmark, 309 Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence Đermov, Mone, 174 Derontić, 177

E Eastern Europe, 228, 230, 247, 275 Eastern Front, World War II, 261 Eastern Mediterranean, 305 Eastern Rumelia, 34, 180 Economic Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, 222 Elbasan, 310 England, 245. See also Great Britain. Ephēmerída tōn Syntaktṓn, newspaper, 164 Epirus, Greek scouts, 165; “Turko-Albanian gangs, 166 ethnic cleansing, 2, 17, 262, 265, 267, 294 ethnic minorities, 7, 28, 126–7; Germans in Yugoslavia, 138–9, 142–4; Greeks in Bulgaria, 8; Romania, 9; Serbs in Croatia, 6, 105, 117–8, 145–7; Turks in Bulgaria, 30, 41, 87; Yugoslavia, 137–44 ethnopolitics, 261

Battling over 00 book.indb 320

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index Eugenics, 11; Bulgaria, 239; Germany, 240; eugenic engineering, 239; European eugenics, 240 Europe, 224, 225, 226, 227, 239, 305 European Union, 2–3, 61–2, 226, 241 Evlogi, 226 F Fascism, 121, 160–3, 183–8, 190–6, 197–207, 261; Balkans, 183–207; Bulgaria: 193-196; Croatia, 183–192, 266–8; comparative fascism studies, 268, 272; monarcho-fascist regime, 269; Comintern dogma on fascism, 271; and the Holocaust, 275 Fatherland Front (Otechestven Front, OF), Bulgaria, 302 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. See Yugoslavia. federalism, 1–2, 5, 119, 121, 137, 172, 238, 246 Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, 291 Feldman, Andrea, 103 Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, 157, 180 Fier, 310 Filov. B., Prime Minister, 298, 299 Final Solution, 283, 294, 276, 308 Fischer, Bernd J., 8, 15 Fjodorov, Nikolai, 249 France, 12–14, 192, 213, 217, 218, 229, 233, 249, 255, 288, 306 Franco, Francisco, General, 296 Franz, Eva Anna, 6 Franzinetti, Guido, 5 frontiers. See borders G Gabreš, 172 Gabrovski, Dimitar N. 298 Gallipoli, refugee camp, 253 Gara, Eleni, 60, 63, 85 Garaudy, 288 Gašić, Ranka, 241, 242 Gay, Peter, and the concept of comparative trivialization, 280

Battling over 00 book.indb 321

321

Genghis Khan, 206 Genocide, 261. 268, 276, 277, 285, 287, 294, 304; genocide studies, 268. See also Armenian genocide; and Final Solution. Georgiev, Christo, 226 German Academy, Munich, 243, 246 German National Socialism, 193, 194, 256; Aryans, 239; German Scientific Institute, Belgrade, 246 Germany, 213, 217, 217, 229, 233, 237, 243, 244, 245, 249, 254, 255, 298, 304; cultural propaganda, 243; cultural life and development, 242; German culture in Bulgaria, 254; German film industry, 244; Weimar Republic, 246, 254, 256; Nazi Germany (Third Reich), 237, 240, 241, 243, 245, 246, 256, 257, 304, 311 Giusti, Dimitrie, 240 Gligorović, Risto, 173 Gola, 186 Goldmann, Nahum, 306 Goldstein, Ivo, 100–2, 105, 111, 189 Goli, 189 Goma, Paul, 285, 286, 288 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 261 Göring, Hermann, Field Marshal, 256 Gornja Džumaja, Macedonia 167 Gradeva, Rossitsa, 182, 225, 229, 257, 303 Gradište, 172 Gradsko-Krivolak railway line, 179 Grandits, Hannes, 4, 12 Great Britain, 4, 12–16, 18, 62, 66, 68, 135–6, 212–15, 229, 238–9, 241–6, 256, 298, 305 Great Depression, 214, 215, 228, 231, 232, 255 Greater Romania Party, 284 Greece, 212, 239, 239, 248, 251, 252, 271, 273; Axis occupation, 273; borders in 1912–13 and 1919, 273; academic diaspora, 273; Greek Christians, 273; nationalism 164; Greek region of Macedonia, 274 Greek Civil War (1946–49), 271, 273 Greek Uprising of 1821, 50, 57–8, 154

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

322

Index

Greeks, 227 Greene, Molly, 60, 63, 85 Grenzbach, William, 213 Grevena 164 Gros, Aleksandar, 187 Gross, Mirjana, 98 Gruev, Mikhail, 271, 300 Gulag, 261, 278, 280, 287 Gumz, Jonathan E., 13 Guy, Nicola, 14 Gyr, Radu, “The Anthem of the Legionary Youth,” 200

trivialization,” 276, 281; HolocaustGulag comparison, 280; gas chambers, 296; extermination camps, 297, 298; in Yugoslavia, 261; in Romania, 261; in Nazi-occupied Serbia, 266 Holy Synod, 297 Hondros, J. L., 272 Hösch, Edgar, 50 Hristozov, Rusi, 302 Humanitas Publishing House, 288 Hungary, 184, 185, 187, 219; Hungarian secret services, 192

H Ha’aretz, Israeli daily, 284 Habsburg Empire, 1–2, 11–13, 50, 82, 97, 99, 104–5, 109, 111–13, 116–8, 127, 129, 143, 154, 157, 181, 192, 219, 221, 238, 240, 242, 245 Hadzhi, Eles county [Purvomay], 181 Hadzhipenchovich, 226 Hall, Richard C., 13 Hasanbegović, Zlatko, 102 Haskovo, 181, 298 Hawkesworth, Celia, 239 Hehn, Paul N., 212 Herman, Antun, 187 Hibbert, Reginald, 15 Higher Economic Institute “Karl Marx,” Sofia, 226 Historia 3, textbook, Albania, 312 Historikerstreit (Historians’ Quarrel), 280 History Teaching in Southeast Europe, international research project, 247 history textbooks, 40 Hitchins, Keith, 9, 240 Hitler, Adolf, 194, 269, 304; Hitler’s corps d’elite, 298 Hitrovo, Michail, 180 Hoare, Marko Attila, 7 Hobsbawm, Eric, 246 Hollywood, 244 Holocaust Remembrance Day, Romania, 284 Holocaust, 16–17, 162–3, 261–70, 273, 275– 8, 280–4, 290–1, 294, 296–9, 309–12; Holocaust studies, “comparative

I Iatrides, John O., 15 Ilel, Yosif, 296 Iliescu, Ion, President of Romania (1989– 96, 2000–4), 264, and the Holocaust, 284, 291 Iljković, Boža 174 Illiel, Yosif, 270 Illyrian movement, 54, 117 IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization); 167–9. See also VRMO Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) (April 10, 1941–May 8, 1945), 192; puppet state, 266; and ethnic cleansing, 267 Ιnalcık, Halil, 80 Institute for the Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade, 170 Institute of Contemporary History (Institut za savremenu istoriju), Belgrade, 217, 242 Institute of European Studies, Belgrade, 230 integral nationalism, 261, 292 International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, 264; Final Report of the Presidential Commission, 264; and history curricula and textbooks, 264; and legislation against Holocaust denial, 264 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 288

Battling over 00 book.indb 322

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index international intervention, 3–5, 11–4, 18, 66–7, 211 Iordache, Roxana, 287 Iordachi, Constantin, 197 Iorga, Nicolae, 240 Iron Guard, Romania, 294, See Legion ‘Archangel Michael’ irredentism, 60, 82, 142, 156–60, 195 Israel, 264, Israeli press, 270 Istanbul, 176. See also Constantinople, Italian Fascism, 190, 193, 200, 256, 305. See also Mussolini, Benito. Italy, 2, 43, 140, 189, 192, 200, 217, 229, 256, 266, 305, 306, 307; Italian futurism, 212; secret services, 192; arrestment of the Ustaše, 192 Ivanov, Martin, 213, 214, 215 J Jabučište, 173 Jackson, Marvin R., 212 Jakir, Aleksandar, 6, 103, 105, 117 Janjatović, Bosiljka, 101 Janjetovic, Zoran, 127, 137, 179, 221, 246 Janka Puszta, 186, 187 Jareb, Mario, 17, 102–3, 183 Jasenovac, 268 Jelavich, Barbara, 49 Jelavich, Charles, 11 Jelić, Branimir, 186 Jelić-Butić, Fikreta, 18, 99 Jesus Christ, 310 Jews, 16–17, 88–9, 102–3, 127, 160, 190, 195, 198–9, 239, 259–312; Romania, 198, 239, 261, racial definition, 293; Bessarabia, pro-Soviet sympathies, 281, 286; Northern Bukovina; deportations to Transnistria, 286; adherence to communist parties, 194, 279; Germany, 305, emigrants, 306; Greece: 273, Hungary: 283; Albania, 304; Bulgaria, National Defense Act, (1941), 270, 2978; rescue of Bulgarian Jews, 275, 296; Consistory of the Jews, Bulgaria, 297. See also anti-Semitism Jireček, Konstantin, 39–40

Battling over 00 book.indb 323

323

Jovanović, Miroslav, 241, 247 Jovanović, Vladan, 170 Judeo-Bolshevism, 278, 292 K Kaçaks, 170; incursion into Bitola, 175 Kalima, Dugi otok, 186 Kallis, Aristotle, 272 Kalpakchiev, 195 Karabashli, 182 Karagiozov, Osman, 182 Karakasidou, Anastasia N., 7–8 Karatmanovo, repression 173 Karavas, Spyros, 60 Karavelov, Petko, 223, 224 Karl Marx Economics University, Sofia, Bulgaria, 211, 266 Kaser, M. C., 212 Kastoria, 164 Kavaja, 310 Kelbetcheva, Evelina, 236 Kent, Marian, 11 Ker-Lindsay, James, 6 Killen, Linda, 213 Kingdom of Serbia, 230, 244, 176 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. See Yugoslavia Kioseivanov, G., 255 Kiril, Metropolitan of Plovdiv, 298 Kisić Kolanović, N., 186 Kitroeff, Mary, 166 Kitromilidis, Paschalis, 56 Kiustendil county, 181 Kočane, District of, 172 Kočani Region, 168 Kolar-Dimitrijević, Mira, 100–1, 105 Koliopoulos, John S., 13, 154–6 Kolovos, Elias, 59 Komitadjis, 170-173; “Komitadji tax,” 172, 179 Komitov, Risto, murder of, 173 Konortas, Paraskevas, 56, 63, 78 Korça, 310 Korenchevski, Professor V. G., 252 Kosovo, 2–3, 6, 105, 111–2, 128, 141–3, 157, 159, 167–8, 170–1

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

324

Index

Kostis, Kostas P., 213 Kostopoulos, Tasos, 164 Kotani, Apostol, 309, 310 Koulouri, Christina, 61 Kratovo company, 173 Kratovo, 171 Krišto, Jure, 101, 103 Kriva Kruška, 173 Krivokapić-Jović, Gordana, 122, 128 Krizman, Bogdan, 99 Krleža, Miroslav, 239 Krnjina, burning of, 170 Kruja, 310 Krumovgrad, 301 Kruševac, 218 Kučkarevo, 173 Kukljica, Dugi otok, 186 Kuljić, Todor, 122–3 Kumanovo, District of, 172 Kunchev, 194 Kuskova, Katarina, 250 Kvaternik, Slavko, 192 Kyustendil, 298 L Lala, Etleva, 307, 312 Lalaj, Ana, 310 Lalkov, Milcho, 237, 241, 254 Lampe, John R., 4, 212 Lapovo, garrison, 179 League of Nations, 215, 224, 306; High Commissioner for Refugees, 305 Legion ‘Archangel Michael, Romania, 197–207, 262–3; and anti-Semitism, 198; and its leadership, the Văcăreşteni, 199; and the 1923 Student Plot, 199; and death squads, 200 Legion of Fighters for the Freedom and Independence of Croatia, oath of allegiance to Dr. Ante Pavelic, 184 Lemnos Island, refugee camp, 253 Liapsista [present-day Neapoli at Voio], 165 Librazhd, 310 Liiceanu, Gabriel, 288, 290 Lipari island, Italy, 189

Battling over 00 book.indb 324

Lister Institute, London, 252 Livezeanu, Irina, 9, 240 Ljubljana 175, 238 London, 214, 306, 307, exhibitions of Yugoslav art (1930), 246 Lorković, Blaž, 183 Lory, Bernard, 30 Lovech county, 181, 182 Lovinescu Monica, 285, 287, 288, 289, Lukova Šugarja, 186 Lukovit area, 181 Lushnja, 310 Lyapchev, Andrey, 254 Lyberatos, Andreas, 60, 64, 90 M Macedonia, 7, 32, 53, 60, 64, 66–7, 74, 152–3, 157–9, 164, 167–75, 274; relation to Bulgaria, 168, 270, 298, 299; North- (Vardar-), 2–3, 45, 50, 105, 111, 128, 179; Pirin, 34 Macedonians, 179, 239 Maček, Vladko, 99, 119, 134 Madžarević, Milivoje, 171 Magaš, Branka, 6 Magovčević, Jovan 177 Malcolm, Noel, 6 Maleš Region, 168 Malkochevo, Sevlievo county, 181 Manchev, St., 182 Manciu, Constantin, 198 Mann, Michael, 272 Manole Mason (Meșterul Manole), historical legend, 200 Manolescu, Nicolae, 288, 290 Manoschek, Walter, 18 Marinescu, Floricel, 285 Marinov, K., 182 Marković, Predrag, 123–4 Markovich, Slobodan G., 12 Maronić, Franjo, 187 Marseilles, 192 Marxism, 28, 34, 57, 153, 155, 211–13, 239, 266–7, 271–2 Masalitinov, Nikolai, 251 Masons, 194

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index Matalas, Paraskevas, 57 Matijević, Zlatko, 101 Matković, Stjepan, 98 Mătrescu Florin, 287 Mazower, Mark, 212 Mazower, Mark, 4, 15, 212 Međimurje, 111–12 Međumurje, 187 Metaxas, Ioannis, General, 271–3; Metaxas regime, 271–3; and anti-Semitism, 273 Metohia 167, 168; Allied forces in, 169; rebellion of Drenica kaçaks Metohija. See Kosovo Meurs, Wim van, 5 Middle East, 304 migration, 8, 14, 106, 126, 129, 247–52, 270–1, 300–6 Mihailovich, 251 Mihajlov, Pančo, Komitadji leader 172 Milićević, Nataša, 123–4 Military School, Sofia, 296 Miller, Nicholas J., 6 millet system, 44, 71, 73–6, 90–1 Miloš, Ljubo, 189 Milošević, Slobodan, 2, 122–4, 129 Minino, village 173 Mioriţa, popular ballad, Romania, 200 Miša Mihajlov, murder of 173 Mišev, Stojan Mishkova, Diana, 4, 43, 47 Mitrović, Andrej, 13, 122, 246 Mladinić Machiedo, Norka, 103 Mojina, 174 Momchilgrad, 301 Montenegro, 3, 6, 11, 15–16, 112, 157, 159, 176, 219 Mosht, Plovdiv, (1933), 195 Moța, Ion I., 197- ; and suicidal terrorism 200 Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina, 5 Muslim–Christian relations. See Christian–Muslim relations Muslims, Macedonia, irregulars, 164; begs [notables], 192; Turks, 272; Albanian Chams, 272; settlements in Bulgaria, 300, 303; emigration, Bulgaria, 268, 271

Battling over 00 book.indb 325

325

Mussolini, Benito, 190, 194, 256, 305, 306, 306; The Doctrine of Fascism (1932), 190 N Nastasă, Lucian, 265 National Liberal Party, Romania, 240 National Liberation Front (NOF), Greece, 273 National Social Movement (Narodno sotsialno dvizhenie, NSD), Bulgaria, 194, 195, National Zadruga (Natsionalna Zadruga), 194 nationalism, 5, 8, 11, 82–3, 86, 90–1, 103, 142–3, 162–3, 236, 261; Albanian, 45, 49–51, 67; Bulgarian, 8, 10, 30–55, 64, 69, 83, 92–4; Croatian, 102–3, 117, 189–91, 267; Greek, 56–57, 60, 63–65, 75, 91–4, 164; Macedonian, 45, 192; Romanian, 198; Serbian, 122–3; Turkish, 62–3, 66–7, 71–6; Yugoslav, 5, 101, 103, 105, 117–20, 129, 246 National-Liberation Front, 310; NationalLiberation councils, 310 National-Socialist Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Natsionalsotsialisticheska bulgarska rabotnicheska partiya, NSBRP), 194 Nazism, 280, 288, 294, 295, 310; crimes, 280. See also German National Socialism. Nedelino, 303 Nedić, colonel 176 Negotino, 173 Nenadć, Voja, 177 Neuburger, Mary, 8 Neudorfer, Mirko, 189 Nevrokop, 167; Nevrokop district, 303 New Bulgarian University, Sofia, 226 New York, 288, 307 Nicadori, 202–4, 206 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 200 Nika, Nevila, 310 Nikić, Nikola, Dr., 188 Nikola, Sv., 171 Nikolai II, Emperor of Russia, 252

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

326

Index

Nikolić, Goran, 126, 216, 230 Nikolić, Goran, 216, 230 Nikolov, Blago, gang leader, 181 Nikolov, Petur, gang leader, 181 Nikolov, Todor, gang leader, 181 Nikolov, Veliu, gang leader, 181 Niš garrisons in (1919) 179 Noica, Constantin, 206 Nolte, Ernst, 280, 289 North Africa, Anglo-American troops, 298 Northern Dalmatia, 186 Northern Epirus 166 Nova Evropa, 238, 239 Novo Selo, 173 Nuremberg Laws, 297 Nuremberg, 305 O Official Gazette, Bulgaria Okey, Robin, 12 Oriahovo county, 181 Orizari, 172 Orthodox Christianity, 10, 18, 41, 52, 56–94, 269; Orthodox-Catholic religious schism, 224 See also Bulgarian Exarchate, Constantinople Patriarchate Osijek Koprivnica, 189 Osmanoglu, Deli Ibriam, 182 Ostrogorsky, George, 251 Ottoman Empire, 10–12, 30–40, 45, 50, 58–89, 226, 224, 227; legacy, 3, 5, 18, 29–34, 40–42, 61–2 Ottoman Studies, 41, 47, 59, 63, 79–80 Ovče Polje, 172 Oxford, 212 P Paisiǐ Hilendarski, 35–7, 41, 54 Pakoštane, village, Biograd county, 186 Palauzovs, 226 Palestine, 304, 305, 306 Papanace, Constantin 202, 204 paramilitary forces, 3, 18, 67, 101, 151–66, 170. See also Chetniks Paris, 214, 287; fashion, 244 Pašić, Nikola 175

Battling over 00 book.indb 326

Paulus, Friedrich, Field Marshal, 299 Păunescu, Adrian, 283 Pavelić, Ante, Dr., 183, 184, 189, 191, 192; Principles of the Croatian Ustaša Movement, 190; Poglavnik (“leader”), 189, 190, 191 Pavlaković, Vjeran, 123, 188, 192, 235 Pavlov, Marin, 182 Pavlov. Boris, 250 Pavlović, Stevan, 172 Pavlowitch, Stevan K., 6, 16 Payne, G. Stanley, 197 Pazardzhik county, 181 Peć, 177; seizure of, 169 Pećanac, Kosta, Duke, 169 Pécs, 184, 187 Perčec, Gustav, 183, 187 Perčević, Ivan, 192 Perić, Ivo, 100 Perović, Latinka, 124 Përpjekja, interdisciplinary journal, 304 Peshev, Dimitur, 269, 298 Petranović, Branko, 122, 266 Petrič, 167 Pezovo, 173 Pichler, Robert, 12 Pizanias, Petros, 58 Platikovo, Kiustendil county, 182 Pleterski, Janko, 13 Plovdiv county, 181, 182 Plovdiv, 181, 296, 298 Podravina, 187 Politika, 176 Pomaks, 8, 39, 158 Pop, Ioan-Aurel, 9 Popović, Bogdan, 244 Popović, Bora, 176 Popović, Vladeta, 243 Poppetrov, Nikolai, 193 positivism, historical, 35, 124, 129 Požarevac prison, 171 Prague, 252; Prague school of expressionism, 244 Pravda, 307 Preko Dugi otok, 186 Preševo-Letevci railway line 174

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index Prespa, District of, 175 Preveza, 165 Pribićević, Adam, 179 Pribićević, Svetozar, 183 Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Bulgaria, 180 Proletcult, 250 Protestant pastors, 302 Protić, Stojan, 177 Protogerov, Aleksandar, 168 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 200 Puto, Artan, 304, 308 R Račić, Puniša, 171 Racism, 261 Radić, Radmila, 128 Radić, Stjepan, 6, 99–100, 119–20, 131, 171, 188, 266 Radice, E. A., 212 Radnik, 175 Radojević, Mira, 122, 128 Radoslavov, 182 Rafajlović, Ž., 177 Rakitin, Jurij L’vovich, 249, 251 Ramet, Sabrina, 16, 18, 102 Ránki, György, 212 Razgrad county, 181 Realitatea evreiască, 285 Records of the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade, 253 Red Holocaust, 284, 286, 285, 287, 288, 290 Relja, Andrija Ustaša leaders, 186, 187 Research Center of the Economic Chamber of Serbia, 230 Revel J. F., 287, 290, The Grand Parade, 289 Ribarac, Stojan, 219 Rijeka, 187 Ristovac, 177 Roar Marica, song, 172 Roberts, Elizabeth, 6 Roberts, Walter R., 15 Rodina Association, 302 Rodna Zashtita, 196 Rodopska Pravda, 302, 303

Battling over 00 book.indb 327

327

Roma minority, 17, 174, 190, 239, 265, 282, 284; in Bulgaria, 239; in Romania, 239, 265; as targets of Nazi extermination, 284 Roman Empire, 224 România Liberă, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, Romania, 3, 8–18, 32, 39, 45, 50, 158, 160, 162, 163, 197–207, 215, 226, 228, 236, 239, 240, 248, 249, 251, 252, 261, 262–5, 275, 276–95, 298; Stalinist Romania, 284 Romanian Orthodox Church, 240 Romanov Empire. See Russian Empire Rome, 256, 305, 306 Rommel, Erwin, Marshal, 298 Roosevelt, Theodore, US President, 227; Roosevelt administration, 281 Rosenbaum, Alan S., 278 Roshwald, Ariel, 236 Rossos, Andrew, 7 Roşu, Nicolae, 200 Roudometov, Viktor, 8 Rousse, 298 Rožden, 173 Rrota, T., 305 Ruse county, 181 Ruse, 228 Russia, 180, 226, 247, 253; Russian army units, 251 Russian Academic Group, Sofia, 252 Russian emigrants, 247, 250, 251, 253; professors and scientists, 252; antiBolshevism, 241, 249; anti-Bolshevik orientation, 250; soldiers in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 247 Russian Empire, 1, 11–3, 29, 38, 66, 82, 115, 180 Russian House in Belgrade, 252 Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade (1928), 252 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 249 S Saarland, 306 Salonica front, Macedonia 169 Samardžija, Marko, 103

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

328

Index

Sandžak, 111, 191 Sandžak, 191 Sarajevo, 238 Sarkotić, Stjepan, 192 Sarygiannis, Marinos, 59 Savo Đorđev, 173 Schmidt, Oliver Jens, 6 Schwander-Sievers, Stephanie, 8 Secondary School for Bulgarian Mohammedans, Plovdiv, 302 Seletković, Mijo, 184–5, 187 Serbia, 212, 216–21, 230, 238–9, 242–5, 252, 266–7 Serbian Military History Institute/Strategic Research Institute, 167 Serbian National Commission of Military History, 167 Serbs, 189, 191, 219, 221, 227, 236 Servatzy, Vjekoslav, 187 Sevlievo county, 181 Shkodra, 310 Siatista 164 Silistra county, 181 Simić, Bojan, 128 Sinani, Shaban, 308, 309, 310, 311 Skerlić, Jovan 175, 244 Skopetea, Elli, 60, 62, 65 Skopje, 177, 238; Skopje garrisons (1919), 179; Skopje prison, 176 Skopje-Kumanovo railway line, 177 Slavic Macedonians, 272, 273, 274 Slavković, Lazar, 177 Slavonia, 111–12, 114, 145–7, 219 Slavs, 191 Sliven county, 181 Slovenes, 219, 221, 236, 219 Slovenia, 3, 13, 97, 104–6, 111–12, 138, 144, 219 Smokvice (District of Đevđelija), Komitadji repression 173 social anthropology, 240 social Darwinism, 239 Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ). See Yugoslavia Society for Social History “UDI-Euroclio”, 217

Battling over 00 book.indb 328

Sofia county, 181 Sofia University, 300 Sofia, 212, 236, 241, 298 Solakov, Riza, 302 Solonari, Vladimir, 17, 240 Sorel, Georges, 200 Sorovic, Battle of, 165 South Dobrudja, 34, 228 South Serbia, 168, 178, 179; ethnic makeup of, 171; mass persecution of the Democrats 177; police officers, 171 South Slavs (Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs), as “Dinaric race,” 239, 242 Southeast University “Neofit Rilsky,” Blagoevgrad, 226 South-Eastern Europe, 212, 227, 274 Soviet Russia, See USSR Spanish Civil War, 200 Sretenović, Nikola, 176 Sretenović, Stanislav, 238 Srijem, 191 St. Kliment Okhridski University, Sofia, 254, 300 Stalingrad, Battle of, 298, 299 Stamatopoulos, Dimitris, 57 Stamboliyski, Aleksandar 167; 213, 215 Stambolov, St., 180; and brigandage (1887), 182; Stambolov government, 227 Stanić, Veljko, 238 Stanković, Đorđe, 122 Stanković, Mina, 173 Stara Gradiška, 268 Starigrad, 186 Stavrianos, Leften Stavros, 49 Stefan, Metropolitan of Sofia, 298 Stelescu, Mihai, 202 Štip, 171, 172, 174; Štip prison 174 Stites, Richard, 236 Stoilov. Konstantin, Dr., 227 Stojanovich, Trajan, 83 Stojčev, Jane 174 Stoyanov, V., 300 Strumica Region, 168 Strumica, 171 Sturdza, Mihail, 205 Šuenković 172

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index Šufflay, Milan, 191 Sugar, Peter, 5 Sundhaussen, Holm, 18 Sušica, 174 Swiss franc, 232 Switzerland, 219, 229 T Tanzimat reforms, 32, 44–6, 50–1, 58, 62, 70, 72, 74, 82–3, 90, 92 Tasić, Dmitar, Dr., 167 Tepe [Tri mogili], 181 Terpeshev, Dobri, 301 Teteven region, 182 Tetovo, 171 Theodoru, Radu, 283 Third Bulgarian Tsardom, 256 Thrace, 270, 298, 299 Tikveš Region 168 Tilman, Andrija, 185, 187 Tirana, 309, 310 Tismăneanu, Vladimir, 278 Todev, Iliya, 32, 52 Todorova, Maria, 4, 8, 28, 61 Tomasevich, Jozo, 16 Tooze, Adam, 213, 215 Torino, 190 Torrey, Glenn E., 13 Toshkovich, 226 Trajkov, Dane, 174 Transnistria, 265, 281–3, 286, 294; concentration camps in, 281, 282 Transylvania, 9, 240, 294 Trbić, Vasilije, 172 Treaties of Versailles, 256 Treatment of Minorities (1919), 261 Treaty of Neuilly, 168, 228, 256 Trencsényi, Balázs, 10 Trew, Simon, 16 Tribnje pod Velebita, 186 Tričković, Radmila, 80 Trifković, M., 170, 177 Troebst, Stefan, 7 Trotsky, Lev, 1–2 Trun county, 181 Tsankov, Alexander, 254

Battling over 00 book.indb 329

329

Tudjman, Franjo, 2, 267 Tudor, Corneliu Vadim, 284 Tudoran, Radu, 288, 290, 285, 287 Tŭpchileshtovs, 226 Turda, 239 Turda, Marius, 11, 239 Turkey, 300; propaganda. 300; emigratory wave, 300 Turkish yoke, 30, 36, 49, 56, 59, 85–8 Turks, 165, 172; in Bulgaria, 239; Rhodope counties, 301 Turnovo county, 181 Tuzluk county, 181 U Üç [Iuch in Bulgarian], 181 Ugljan, Dugi otok, 186 Ujević, Tin, 239 Ukraine, 276 Ungheanu, Mihai, 284 Union of Bulgarian Fascists (Suyuz na bulgarskite fashisti, SBF), 194 Union of the Youth’s National Legions (Suyuz na mladezhkite natsionalni Legion, SMNL), 194 United States of America, 191, 219, 212, 242, 245, 264, 270, 275, 281, 284, 308 University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic, 167 University of Tirana, 308 USSR, 229, 250, 276, 292; Soviet Russia, 250; Soviet model, 229; Stalinist Russia, 261; and antisemitism, 279 Ustaša—newspaper of Croatian revolutionaries, 189 Ustaše, 17–18, 97, 99, 102, 130, 160, 183–92, 239, 266–8; ideology, 190; oath, 186; Principles, 191; propaganda, 183; wartime government, 239; terrorism, 183; Techniques of the Revolution (1932), 188; camp in Podravina, 184; camp in Koprivnica, 184; cult of knives, 183-5; military-terrorist actions, 183-5; Italian connections, 266; anti-Serbian hatred, 267; anti-Semitism, 267. See also Independent State of Croatia

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

330 Užice, Serbia, 218 V Vachkov. Daniel, 214 Valandovo, 171 Vapniarka, camp Transnistria, 283 Varga, Andrea, 265 Varna, 228 Vasić, Miloš. General, Third Army District, 177 Vatra Românească (Romanian Hearth) Union, 281 Veles, District of, 173; 177; Veles gendarmerie, 173 Veles-Štip railway line, 178 Veliki Bečkereg, Russia, 250 Venizelos, Eleftherios, 13 Verdery, Katherine, 10 Veremis, Thanos, 13 Vernicescu, Alexandru, 198 Vezenkov, Alexandŭr, 31–2, 43–5, 47 Vidovdan Constitution, 178 Vlachs, 7 Vlora, 310 VMRO, 192. See also IMRO Voicu, Tudor, 283 Vojvodina, 105, 111–12, 115, 126–7, 139, 141, 143, 219 Volga River, 298 Volksgemeinschaft, 192 Vorpsi, Liljana, 310 Vrana, 186 Vranje, 251 Vratsa county, 181 Vrpolje, 188 Vuksanović, Ljubomir, 177 Vulcănescu, Mircea, 198, 199 W Wachtel, Andrew, 103, 236 Wachtel, Baruch, 5, 103, 238 Weindling, Paul J., 11, 239 Weizmann, Zionist head, 306 Wendel, Hermann, 246 Western Europe, 227, 245, 264, 267; Western democracies, 255

Battling over 00 book.indb 330

Index Western Macedonia, 164; violence against unarmed civilians, 164 White Army, Russian Civil War, 247 Wiesel, Elie, 264; Wiesel Commission, 284. Williamson, Samuel L., 11 World War I, 212, 213, 215, 227, 230, 238, 239, 242, 244, 245, 213, 229, 233, 240, 241, 244, 247, 252, 236, 256, 271 World War II, 273, 254, 257, 261, 261, 268, 269, 271, 274, 312 Wrigley, Linda, 15 Y Yanchev, Veselin, 180 Yarlovo, 180 Yeomans, Rory, 18, 239 Young Bulgaria (Mlada Bulgaria), 194, 195 Young Turks, 61–3, 65–6, 68, 70–7 Youth Workers Union, Bulgaria, 298 Yugoslav economy, 217, 235; building the Veles-Štip railway line, 178; Ministry of the Interior, 175, 177, 178; Ministry of Transportation. 176; Building Ministry, 178; Ministry of Finance, 219; debt, 216; monetary policies, 218, 230–1; Slovene finances, 221trade, 235; Ministry of Trade and Industry, 219 Yugoslav-German society, Belgrade, 243, 245 Yugoslav National Bank, Belgrade, 108, 216, 230, 231, 233 Yugoslav Partisans, 6, 15, 16, 153, 266 Yugoslavia, 5, 87, 176, 213, 215, 218, 231– 4, 238–9, 242, 247–9, 251; dissolution, 2–3; wars of succession, 261; interwar, 18, 95–147; Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes,13, 97, 159, 167–9, 234, 247, 251; Kingdom of Yugoslavia, royal dictatorship (1929–35), 5, 98–101, 119, 122, 133, 137, 183; World War II, 15–16; Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), 232; Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 232. Yugoslavism, 236, 238, 239, 242, 246, 286; literary Yugoslavism, 239; Yugoslav nationalism, 246

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32

Index Z Zachariadou, Elisabeth, 59, 80 Zadar, 186, 187 Zagreb, 184, 187, 238, 239; Zagreb stock market, 232 Zelea-Codreanu, Corneliu, 197-207; and the cult of the revolver, 198; and the 1923 Student Plot, 199; as Captain, 202 Zhivkov, Todor, 271

Battling over 00 book.indb 331

331

Zija, Shehia, 176 Zionism, 291; Zionist organizations, 304 Živalo, village, 174 Živanje, 173 Zlatograd, 301, 303 Zurich Stock Exchange for Goods and Commodities, 216 Zurich, 231 Zveno, 194, 195 Ιnalcık, Halil, 80

2020. 07. 17. 0:29:32