The 100-year anniversary of World War I (1914-18) may have come and gone, but the role of Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip – the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – remains controversial in the turbulent history of the Balkans. For some he was a terrorist, for others a hero.

The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo marked the 100 years since assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie over the weekend in series of ceremonies dedicated to the event that triggered the 1914-18 war, and numerous messages of peace were delivered with calls that history should not be repeated and that violence should be excluded from the modern world.

But if many are looking to the future, historians agree that the tragic event of June 28, 1914, still haunts the region, after Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were plunged into an atrocious inter-ethnic war more than seven decades later.Historians agree that the tragic event of June 28, 1914, still haunts the region, after Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were plunged into an atrocious inter-ethnic war more than seven decades later

“Unfortunately, it is possible to link World War I and its influence to recent events in the Balkans,” historian Danilo Sarenac of the Belgrade Institute for Modern History told IPS in an interview.

“World War I led to the creation of Yugoslavia, which disintegrated in the 1990s; there is a predominant idea among its former republics that this state was a sort of illusion, a mistake, a kind of ‘dungeon of nations’, and that it had to disappear,” he said.

When Yugoslavia fell apart, six new states – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia – were created. Ethnic Albanian-populated Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia in 2008, but has not yet been widely recognised as a state.

Socialist Yugoslavia itself was an heir to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, created at the end of WW I. Its biggest portion, Serbia, an ally of Great Britain and France, was rewarded for participation in victory over the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany by obtaining South Slav-populated areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia.

The assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was Gavrilo Princip, a 20-year-old Bosnian Serb and member of Young Bosnia, a revolutionary movement seeking the unification of all South Slav nations. He claimed to be “a Yugoslav (South Slav) nationalist” at his trial in 1914. At the time, Bosnia was part of the Austro-Hungary Empire that disintegrated in WW I.

According to Sarenac, “Princip’s action is being interpreted differently, depending on periods we observe in consecutive Yugoslavias.”

“When needed, Princip is a hero who helped create Yugoslavia; but, as newly carved out states (former Yugoslav republics) renounce Yugoslavia, they describe him as a ‘cruel Serb nationalist’. Divisions along such lines were visible in World War II, and came full circle in the 1990s. They were used or abused by everyone at will,” he added.

Princip is blamed by many outside Serbia as the man who triggered World War I, but historians say the world was practically ready for a major war due to many complicated circumstances.

“Princip’s act was just an ingredient that was needed to ignite it,” says Sarenac.

History books say that the Austro-Hungarian Empire blamed Bosnia’s neighbour Serbia for masterminding the assassination of the Archduke; Germany backed the Empire in declaring war against Serbia on June 28, and in a matter of days Russia, Great Britain, France and many other nations were drawn into an unprecedented conflict that took 16 million lives and left 20 million wounded.

For university history professor Predrag Markovic, there is a paradox among the states created by the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

“They deny that Yugoslavia was created as a deliberate project after World War I, that it was a secular state, designed to bridge religious and regional differences between its new member nations,” Markovic told IPS.

“At the time, Yugoslavia was created much like the European Union today, as a union of entities that share same values. It is absurd that newly created states (since 1991) deny its progressive essence, because many of them – like Macedonia or Slovenia – would not exist had there not been the Yugoslavia after the WW I and Serbia’s victory in it,” he added.

“Their people would cease to exist or would be blended into the ethnicity of the country they’d gone to; Croatia would have been split by Italy, Hungary and Austria,” according to Markovic.

However, he points out, Yugoslavia was a “noble idea”, but with inadequate solutions and deficiencies.

“It inherited all the problems of the empires it helped bring down – Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman (Turkish) state: large numbers of minorities, and an inability to efficiently steer and govern”, he says.

The inter-ethnic problems continued until the Communists took over after World War II, but the two pillars of their regime – late leader Josip Broz Tito and socialist ideology with a human face – helped Yugoslavia to survive.

Markovic says that when these two pillars collapsed, with death of Tito in 1980 and the end of cold war in the 1980s, nationalisms revived and took over in Yugoslavia, setting the scene for the disintegration that began with secession of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991. Bosnia followed in 1992. The secession was opposed by the largest republic of Serbia which was engaged in bloody wars that took more than 100,000 non-Serb lives.

“The experience of Yugoslavia is very ominous for the European Union, bearing in mind the differences that are arising now between the member states,” Markovic argues.

“The circumstances of 1991 were poorly understood by many, the European Union in particular,” The independence of the newly-created states “was hastily acknowledged without any exit strategy or awareness on the consequences, on the next steps; it is much like the rush into the war in 1914, or recently in Iraq,” he added.

In a recent essay on ‘Shots fired by Gavrilo Princip’, Bosnian historian Slobodan Soja summed up the political abuse of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by saying that there is a paradox in recent efforts to establish “whether Princip was a terrorist or not.”

According to Soja, a university professor and former Bosnian ambassador to several countries, “the noble idea of liberation of oppressed and unity among Slav nations is giving way to manipulation” in the deeply divided Bosnian society, where its Muslims, Serbs and Croats are still not mentally at peace.

“Had they known what kind of people would live 100 years on, I doubt that the members of the Young Bosnia movement would give their lives for the generations to come,” Soja wrote.

“The majority of people living today in Bosnia are simply not up to the task of criticising or praising the Young Bosnians. Those were the idealists whose ideas we badly need today,” he added.

The abandoned Goli Otok prison. Credit: Pokrajac CC BY-SA 3.0.

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Feb 3 2014 (IPS)

One of the best kept secrets of former Yugoslavia is out in the open after the online release of the names of 16,101 inmates of Goli Otok, or the Naked Island, the country’s only gulag – a Soviet system of forced labour camps – created 65 years ago.

The long list, available online at the Croatian website led to unprecedented reactions among the few survivors of Goli Otok and their families across the former federation that fell apart in 1991.

The reactions reveal how the hardships of many Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Slovenes or Serbs, all inmates of Goli Otok, remained a burden and a source of family shame for generations. They can now hope to come to terms with the traumatic past of their family members.Children were told their fathers were "on a business trip" that lasted years.

“I always wanted to know what was wrong with the life of my maternal grandfather,” Smiljana Stojkovic, a 45-year-old teacher in Belgrade, tells IPS.

Stojkovic remembers that her grandfather Stanko used to tell stories about his life as a shoemaker’s apprentice before World War II and of battles against Germans during the war, as he was a communist.

“It ended there with a vacuum until the time it came to us, his grandchildren, in the 1960s. We were told never to ask what happened in between,” she says.

Stojkovic now knows that her grandfather, who died in 2000, was an inmate of Goli Otok for seven years. “He must have said he preferred Stalin to (Yugoslav leader Josip Broz) Tito, being a loyal communist who believed in the (former) Soviet Union…Now I understand his silence,” she says.

Goli Otok is an uninhabited and tiny, almost barren island, six kilometres off the north Croatian coast. In July 1949, it was turned into a single prison for opponents of Yugoslavia’s political leadership which decided to leave the Soviet orbit in June 1948.

The decision is known as “the historic ‘no’” to Stalin, who demanded that Yugoslav communists topple the regime of Tito (1892-1980). In Stalin’s words, Tito became “a servant of imperialism”, or of capitalist countries of the West. Prior to that, Soviet and Yugoslav communists were allies in the battle against Germans in World War II.

“For many communists, it was impossible that Stalin was wrong,” says Zoran Asanin, head of the Belgrade Association Goli Otok.

In his words, and in the words and memoirs of many survivors, at party meetings they were simply asked if they preferred Stalin over Tito in 1948. If their answer was yes, they were sent to Goli Otok, without any court procedure or written sentence. Not even the closest family members knew where they were.

Political prisoners were shipped to the island from the nearby Bakar port on the Adriatic coast. There were four camps at the 4.7 sq km Goli Otok, with no sanitation or any decent facilities.

The island is known for its harsh climate – scorching summers and chilling winters. The inmates worked at the local quarry, often beaten by guards as “traitors” to the Yugoslav cause or even made to beat each other.

Famine and thirst were a daily routine – 200 decilitres of water per day and simple bread were provided for each inmate.

The recently released list of names provides a figure of 413 dead – either due to illnesses such as typhoid and untreated heart conditions or due to suicide – from 1949 until 1956 when the last political prisoners were transported to the shore and taken to ordinary jails all over former Yugoslavia.

For years, they were deprived of political rights, could not find employment, and many faced rejection by their family members who were exposed to harassment by secret police or neighbours and friends.

Children were told their fathers were “on a business trip” that lasted years, as many of the descendants say in their comments under the list of names available online. Wives were given instant divorces from the inmates of Goli Otok. But sometimes even that was not enough.

“I had to publicly renounce my husband at a (communist) party meeting in order to pursue my university professor’s career,” Rada B., 88, told IPS. “I had to promise he would not be able to see our daughter ever again and I did exactly that. She never forgave me.”

The truth about Goli Otok became slowly known in the 1990s, when Yugoslavia fell apart and many secrets of former communist regimes came out. However, the bloody wars of disintegration in those years prevented closure for the families, victims and survivors.

Only in recent years have Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia begun to compensate victims of Goli Otok, many of whom were innocent or not even communist.

According to Asanin, there are some 300 survivors of Goli Otok in Serbia. They have demanded political rehabilitation and compensation from the Ministry of Justice.

The state has agreed to pay 700 dinars (8.5 dollars) for each day spent at Goli Otok to former prisoners. So far, Serbia has paid 53 million dinars or more than 640,000 dollars to survivors or their immediate heirs.

The mostly anonymous comments and reactions under the list of names of Goli Otok inmates are touching and, sometimes, more revealing than the stories of inmates.

“I found my uncle, I know he was there because he joked about politics,” a comment by a woman named Beba says. “My grandfather was there only because he said that diplomatic magazines (post World War II shops for privileged communist leaders) should be open for all people,” a man named Bane writes.

People from all over former Yugoslavia have exchanged e-mails in order to learn more about the circumstances of their family member’s life or death at Goli Otok. Many have spoken of years of silence by relatives and recounted family tales of how innocent men disappeared overnight and ended up at the island.

“Yes, one could end up at Goli Otok simply because he had more than the others, due to gossip or because someone wanted somebody else’s wife,” Rada B. says. “But those were extraordinary times that called for extraordinary measures and we had to believe our leaders. Where would we end otherwise?” asks the retired university professor.

The island of Goli Otok remains deserted after the prison was closed, and only curious tourists visit it from time to time to see the remnants of former camps.