Lessons from Sarajevo and the First World War

The First World War in Yugoslavia

Following the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the Imperial administration in Vienna held the Serbian government responsible and used the occasion to declare war on Serbia. Since Russia was an ally of Serbia, the elaborate system of Great Power alliances was activated, and what was initially a local Balkan conflict developed into the First World War. Serbia repelled a number of Austro-Hungarian offensives, but by late 1915 the Serbian forces, weakened by the lack of man-power and ammunition and plagued by typhoid fever and other diseases, faced defeat by a coalition of Austro-Hungarian, German, and Bulgarian troops. In the attacks on Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian armies consciously deployed units from the South-Slavic parts of the Empire, allegedly with the aim of preventing mutual support between the South Slavic peoples. Moreover, several cases of war crimes and abuse of Serbia’s civilian population took place during these campaigns. ⁷ Defeated, the Serbian army together with the king and government retreated through Kosovo and the Albanian mountains, where the army suffered heavy losses due to cold and hunger. From the Albanian coast, allied ships evacuated the surviving Serbian soldiers to Corfu, where the army was reorganized and prepared to be engaged on the southern front near Thessaloniki. ⁸

Though the Croatian and Bosnian parts of the Empire did not themselves constitute battle fields, with the exception of small Serbian advances in the summer and autumn of 1914, these regions suffered severely from the war. Young men were drafted and sent to distant fronts where the Empire was engaged. The demand for food and other supplies for the army strained the economy to the extreme and created famines and local riots. Moreover, especially in the first years of the war, Serbian civilians in Austria-Hungary were treated harshly by the Empire’s soldiers and militia. ⁹

In September 1918, the Serbian army took part in the allied offensive on the southern front, advancing northwards and liberating Belgrade by 1 November. ¹⁰ Thus, Serbia came out of the war as one of the victorious allied powers. Yet it had paid dearly for the victory both in military and civilian lives: Serbia had lost one-quarter of its population both as a result of the formidable military effort and due to famine, diseases, and widespread crimes against civilians in occupied Serbia. ¹¹

During the autumn of 1918, as the Austro-Hungarian administration was disintegrating, its South-Slavic provinces were in a chaotic condition, created not least by pillaging by gangs of deserted and demobilized soldiers. Moreover, the advancing Italian army threatened to take over Dalmatia. Already in the summer of 1917, the heads of the so-called Yugoslav Committee, claiming to represent the South Slavs within Austria-Hungary, met with representatives of Serbia’s government on Corfu and agreed on plans to establish a Yugoslav state by uniting the South-Slavic parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Serbia and Montenegro after the war. ¹² In November 1918, the “National Council of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,” constituted by politicians from within the Empire, addressed the Serbian administration in Belgrade, requesting a unification of the South-Slavic lands, thus allowing the Serbian army to reestablish order in the South-Slavic provinces of the collapsing Empire and to secure Dalmatia against Italy. ¹³

On the 1st of December 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was declared in Belgrade. It owed its existence to a war that had been a massive human catastrophe, but also a triumph for some and a humiliating and degrading systemic collapse for others. How was the young kingdom to commemorate this First World War?

First World War Memory in the Yugoslav States

In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929) as elsewhere in Europe, the colossal losses of human lives in the First World War created universal and fundamental human needs to commemorate and mourn lost relatives and loved ones. Indeed, according to Jay Winter, “commemoration was a universal preoccupation after the 1914-1918 war.” ¹⁴ Yet, while the immediate purpose of memorial monuments was to give people occasion to mourn and remember their lost ones, First World War commemoration also took a central cultural and political function. In European states, memory politics after the war created the basis for what George Mosse has called “the cult of the fallen soldier,” which became an essential part of many European nationalisms. ¹⁵ While the real horrors of the war were covered in a mystical idea of “the war experience,” the cult of the fallen soldier and its main symbol, the grave of the Unknown Soldier, could be used to promote ideals of military heroism and self-sacrifice for one’s country. ¹⁶

In the years after the war, monuments to the fallen were erected all over Serbia. ¹⁷ More than two hundred war memorials and monuments were erected, and Aleksandar, prince regent and later king of the new Yugoslav kingdom, attended numerous memorial ceremonies. ¹⁸ Perhaps the most prominent monuments to the glorious deeds of the Serbian army in the Great War are the “Monument to the Unknown Hero” on mount Avala outside Belgrade and the “Conqueror,” standing on a column in the city’s old fortress and staring across the rivers Sava and Danube toward Vienna. Both of these monuments seem to serve the double purpose of honouring the victorious army and its fallen soldiers as well as creating a public memory of the war that could be used to strengthen the coherence of the new state.

Indeed, according to Milan Ristović, the victories of the Serbian army at Salonica quickly became a national myth, playing a “cohesive role” in the young South-Slav state after 1918. However, as Ristović points out, these victories were somehow also an exclusively Serbian memory. ¹⁹ The focus on Serbian victories on allied side inevitably resulted in the alienation of the many thousands of Yugoslav veterans from the Habsburg armies, who were also denied pensions and welfare. ²⁰ Though King Aleksandar was personally deeply engaged in veterans’ groups and war commemoration, there was little support for attempts to erect memorials to Yugoslavs fallen on the Habsburg side. ²¹ Monuments to Habsburg veterans are nearly only found in cemeteries. ²² Though in the mid-1920s attempts were made to expand the work of the veterans’ organisation to include soldiers and officers from the Habsburg armies, the question of the war experience remained hugely divisive in the interwar Kingdom. It featured prominently in political debate, it was a topic of dispute between well-known Serbian and Croatian authors, and it was allegedly a main reason behind one of the biggest political crises in interwar Yugoslavia, the shooting of leading Croatian representatives in the Parliament by the Serb-Montenegrin Puniša Račić. ²³ Yet the monument at Avala, which was designed by the sculptor Ivan Meštrović at the king’s request in 1933, displays a clearly Yugoslav symbolism with eight caryatids, dressed in different folk costumes from Yugoslavia’s different regions, carrying the central roof. ²⁴ Thus the Avala monument, which was finished in 1938, may represent an attempt to re-create First World War memory as a shared Yugoslav rather than an exclusively Serbian national myth.

Outside Serbia, activities to commemorate the First World War were significantly less intense. One example is the rather less spectacular monument in the shape of a simple stone bloc, erected in 1919 in Zagreb’s city cemetery, Mirogoj, in memory of the soldiers killed in the war. In 1939, a sculpture of a Christ-like figure and a mourning woman was added. ²⁵ Unlike the glory and heroism which characterizes Avala and the Conqueror in Belgrade, the monument in Mirogoj seems to convey only sorrow, loss, and suffering, thus representing a different First World War memory from the one in Belgrade. Presumably it made little sense in Zagreb, where most fallen soldiers had fought on the Austro-Hungarian side, to echo the triumphant heroism of Serbian war commemoration. As Filip Hameršak has pointed out, though a number of war memoirs from Croats in the Habsburg armies were published, military activity in the First World War was generally quite an “unpopular” topic in Croatia. ²⁶

Both the efforts to honour the fallen soldiers and the attempts to promote a Yugoslav patriotism are visible in Yugoslav history schoolbooks from the interwar period. Though they were written and published in different parts of the country, all schoolbooks shared the new Yugoslav kingdom’s narrative of the First World War, based almost exclusively on Serbia’s war experience. In very short summary, the schoolbooks told a story of how Serbia had always aimed to liberate the South-Slavic lands under Austria-Hungary; how Vienna used the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as an excuse to declare war on Serbia, although Belgrade had, according to this version, no connections at all to the assassination; and how the Empire sent a grand army against “little Serbia,” but this army was repeatedly repelled by Serbia’s “heroic army.” In the winter of 1915, the Serbian army accompanied by the old King Petar, the prince regent Aleksandar, and the government had to retreat in what the schoolbooks describe as a Serbian Golgatha, because of the climate and attacks from hostile locals in the Albanian mountains. After the evacuation and a break at Corfu, the books emphasized, the Serbian army’s heroic fighting on the front at Thessaloniki enabled it to penetrate enemy lines and liberate Serbia and the rest of Yugoslavia in 1918. This facilitated the unification of all South Slavs in one state, which is presented as almost solely a result of Serbian efforts. ²⁷ The ways in which the war was experienced in the regions of Yugoslavia that had been part of Austria-Hungary are hardly considered in this narrative. Schoolbooks printed in Zagreb in this period generally mirror those from Serbia. ²⁸ Apparently, the emphasis on the Serbian army’s Yugoslav ambitions served as a substitute for a Croatian war history. In this way, fallen soldiers were honoured and Yugoslav patriotism promoted. In reality, however, in the interwar kingdom there was little official First World War memory beyond the Serbian narrative. In opting for a single Serbian/Yugoslav First World War memory, which emphasized the Serbian armies’ heroic fighting and presumed quest for Yugoslav unity, the Yugoslav state apparatus made it rather difficult to include the war experiences of the South Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Stories of systemic collapse, civilian suffering, and soldiers fighting on the side of Serbia’s enemies would inevitably challenge both the simple unifying narrative and the dominant heroic tenor of official Yugoslav memory.

After the Second World War, interpretation and writing of history were dominated by Yugoslavia’s new Communist regime. In this period, the First World War was completely overshadowed by the memory of the Second World War, in which the Communist Party itself had played a crucial role. Only from 1964, when the 50th anniversary of the assassination in Sarajevo actualized the memory of the war, did Yugoslavia’s government start sponsoring projects commemorating the war and its victims. From then on, the First World War was increasingly interpreted also as a war of liberation, which created the basis for the first Yugoslav state. ²⁹

The history schoolbooks of communist Yugoslavia, as well as widely circulated history books, largely retained the interwar period’s dominantly Serbian narrative of heroism and sacrifice, albeit clearly influenced by a Marxist frame of interpretation. ³⁰ Gavrilo Princip and Young Bosnia were seen as freedom fighters. This was clearly expressed by the plaque erected on the place where Princip fired his gun at Franz Ferdinand: “From this spot, on the 28th of July 1914, Gavrilo Princip with his shot marked the popular protest against tyranny and the centuries–long yearning for freedom of our peoples.” ³¹

The history books continued to emphasize the triumphs of the Serbian army during the war, while there were few descriptions of conditions in the Austro-Hungarian lands. ³² Similarly, schoolbooks from the 1970s, presenting the First World War as a war of liberation and as the foundation for the establishment of the Yugoslav state, repeated the Serbian heroic narrative. Yet these books also described the suffering in the South-Slavic parts of Austria-Hungary, including famine and conscription to the Imperial armies and the allegedly widespread longing among all South Slavs for unification with Serbia. ³³

During the 1970s, renewed interest in the First World War resulted in publications on war history and memoirs from veterans from the Salonica front, and, in 1988, the erection of a new monument on Belgrade’s Danube bank to the defenders of the city. ³⁴ Yet, from the late 1970s, the official Yugoslav First World War narrative was challenged, as historians questioned if the unification of Yugoslavia was really such a widespread desire as history writing suggested. ³⁵ Moreover, Serbian authors Dobrica Ćosić and Danko Popović rewrote the memory of the First World War as an exclusively Serbian martyrdom, symptomatic of the suffering and sacrifice of the Serbian nation, also in the Second World War and in the Yugoslav project in general. ³⁶ While these fictional works were highly popular and went through several editions, public statements from Ćosić were banned from publication, and his views on history criticized by the Yugoslav press. ³⁷ Obviously, the Yugoslav state apparatus saw his strongly national version of First World War memory as a challenge to internal consensus.

While Yugoslav historiography had always in the service of state coherence, overemphasized the unitary aspirations of the South Slav peoples, the critique probably came at this particular time because the political atmosphere allowed it. Political control of history was less strict under Yugoslavia’s liberal version of socialism, and there was more widespread trust in the political stability of the Yugoslav state. Yet the revisionist approaches to First World War history also followed the pattern of much more visible and politically sensitive revisions of the established versions of the history of the Second World War. In the 1980s, Yugoslav, and not least Serbian, historians and authors of fiction engaged in a substantial rethinking of Second World War history, moving from a focus on military technicalities in a class war of the united Yugoslav peoples against Fascist occupiers and collaborators towards interpretations emphasising national experiences and national victimisation in genocide and massacres against civilians. Internal Yugoslav crimes, most importantly the genocide committed by Croatian Fascists against Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia, were especially dominant in the debates. ³⁸ Similarly, the focus on national victimization and conflict with other Yugoslavs became characteristic of rethinking of First World War.

First World War Memory after Yugoslavia

The collapse of communism in Yugoslavia and the violent destruction of the Yugoslav federal state accelerated historical revisionism. In the successor states, widely disparate, often narrowly nationalistic interpretations of the region’s history developed, especially with regard to the Second World War and the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. ³⁹ Until recently, however, the First World War was the subject of much less interest and was not to the same extent rewritten. Moreover, after almost a century had passed, the First World War had become a different type of memory. It could no longer be commemorated by those who actually experienced it; no veterans were around to give their version. The war became a “prosthetic memory,” indirectly remembered, as it was presented to readers and viewers through various media, often in highly emotional forms that enabled them to become emotionally involved in a past of which they had no personal knowledge. ⁴⁰ The role of media and mediation is crucial for, as Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney point out, “memory can only become collective as part of a continuous process whereby memories are shared with the help of symbolic artefacts that mediate between individuals . . . and create community across space and time.” ⁴¹

In Yugoslavia, the First World War was commemorated, monumentalized, and mediated fairly continuously for 70 years, and though war memories were at times overshadowed by more recent, urgent, or politically expedient elements of the past, it remained relevant. Thus, after the fall of Yugoslavia, a well-established and widely mediated First World War narrative existed, available to those for whom it would be meaningful and useful.

In Serbia, First World War memory retained its heroic and dominantly Serbian narrative, which was created in the interwar years and kept alive in the socialist period. Serbian history books and schoolbooks generally continued in the line of the Yugoslav, that is, Serbian-dominated, First World War memory tradition, focusing on the victories and sacrifices of the Serbian army. One history textbook for secondary school described how “On the parts of the front where Serbian forces attacked all of the enemy’s defence system was destroyed. Thus the greatest loss of human lives and the greatest epic in the history of the Serbian people took place.” ⁴² Moreover, schoolbooks emphasized the suffering of Serbian civilians and the “unprecedented” crimes committed by the Austro-Hungarian army against civilians in western Serbia. ⁴³ A widely read popular history of Serbia also underlined the decisive role of the First World War and pointed out the military participation of the Serbian royal house. ⁴⁴

The political importance of First World War memory in Serbia seems to have increased under the government of Prime Minister Ivica Dačić and President Tomislav Nikolić, both of whom took office in summer 2012. Since November 2012, Armistice Day has been a national holiday in Serbia, widely celebrated with participation by prominent politicians. ⁴⁵ Indeed, these commemoration practices and the media coverage they attract give the politicians a platform to state their interpretation of history and the lessons to be learned from it. In doing so, the politicians draw on the Yugoslav, that is, Serbian-dominated, First World War memory tradition, which makes references to the First World War widely recognisable and emotionally evocative. Yet, they also make revisions to make the narratives and lessons fit current needs.

Whether Serbia could in any way be held responsible for the outbreak of the First World War is a core question in Serbia’s discussions about the war. This is connected to how the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, should be understood, and consequently how the character and effect of the assassination should be assessed. In the autumn of 2013, Serbian newspapers repeatedly quoted historians from Serbia and elsewhere claiming that Princip was not a terrorist as we understand them today; that his act can in no way be seen as causing the outbreak of the war since Austria would have attacked Serbia in any case; that Serbia was not responsible for starting the war; and that attempts to enlarge the importance of Princip and his deed are really aimed at liberating Germany and Austria from the responsibility of having caused the First World War. ⁴⁶ President Nikolić also stated his view on this: On 11 November 2013, in an open letter in the Serbian daily Politika, Nikolić argued that the attempts to declare the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand a terrorist attack simply aimed to proclaim Serbia a priori culpable for the outbreak of the First World War. This Serbia could and would not accept. The cause of the First World War, wrote Nikolić, was Austria-Hungary’s aims to conquer Ottoman territory in the Balkans. Moreover, the Austrian and German emperors had already in 1913 agreed to annihilate Serbia. ⁴⁷

The question of guilt and responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War was further actualized in Serbia with the publication in 2012 of Christoffer Clark’s book Sleepwalkers. How Europe went to war in 1914. Arguing that the developments leading to the outbreak of the First World War were too complex and chaotic for simple explanations, Clark pointed attention towards the Balkans and the role of Serbia in particular. ⁴⁸ Clark’s thesis caused a lot of reaction in Serbian media, not least with regard to the question of whether Serbia could be held responsible for the war’s outbreak. ⁴⁹ At an academic conference in Belgrade in June 2014, President Nikolić, referring explicitly to Clark’s book, criticized attempts to question Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of the Great War. The president further argued that “no serious person would accuse Serbia of having caused the Great War. Serbia did not enter the war to conquer new territories, new natural resources and economic benefit. Serbia entered the war to survive.” ⁵⁰

Indeed, both Nikolić and Dačić have repeatedly underlined that Serbia can in no way be held to blame, but should rather be praised for her enormous self-sacrificing efforts in the First World War. On 11 November 2013, at an Armistice Day ceremony in Belgrade’s new cemetery, Dačić stated that “every attempt to designate Serbia as responsible for the First World War is an attempt to distort and revise history.” ⁵¹ On the same day at a ceremony for the fallen soldiers at the Avala monument, Nikolić wrote “Many owe to Serbia, Serbia owes to you, without you this would have been a foreign land, a foreign tongue would be spoken, foreign songs would be sung.” ⁵²

While these commemoration manifestations serve internal Serbian purposes in remembering a historical catastrophe and celebrating the nation and its sacrifices, they are also messages aimed at the outside world. Some are directed at Serbia’s neighbouring countries, stating wariness and critique of the signals coming out of Sarajevo in connection to the planned marking of the centennial, not least the framing of Princip as a terrorist and the proposed plans to erect a monument to the murdered Archduke. ⁵³ Others, like Nikolić’s mention of the guilt owed by many to Serbia’s fallen soldiers, seem to be intended as a call to international society and the European Union for recognition of Serbia’s sacrifices in the First World War.

In late November 2013, President Nikolić held a widely media-covered conversation with Dobrica Ćosić, well-known author of, among many other books, a four-volume historical novel about Serbia’s First World War experience. According to Nikolić, the war has “left a permanent trait in the character of our nation and state, who in the war went through unspeakable suffering, great trials, but showed all their strength and survived in spite of everything.” Ćosić suggested that the celebration of the centenary should be a chance to start talking about the European character of the struggle of the Serbian people who had invested both themselves and their state in defending “the civilizational values of Europe.” The point about Europe was not wasted on Večernje novosti’s journalist, who finished the article with an account of Nikolić’s meeting with a high-ranking German politician, during which the Serbian President emphasized Serbia’s wish to become a part of the European family and its willingness to do everything necessary to realize that. ⁵⁴

Yet the European dimension of Serbia’s First World War memory may also serve as a pro-European appeal to Serbs. In December 2013, at the commemoration ceremony marking the 99th anniversary of the battle at Kolubar, where the Serbian army repelled an Austro-Hungarian offensive, Prime Minister Dačić underlined that Serbia had nothing to feel ashamed of with regard to the First World War. Dačić further argued that “The guardians of the gate, as they called us in England in those days, demonstrated how honourable it was to die for the fatherland, and how honourable it was for Serbia and the Serbs to die for Europe then.” ⁵⁵ Dačić thus used First World War memory to promote what he saw as a heroic pro-European tradition in Serbia, presumably with the aim of making his government’s pro-European agenda seem more natural, national, and traditional. But there was an outward agenda too, because the account of the ceremony at Kolubar finished off nicely with a separate column recounting complaints from Dačić about difficulties in the negotiation with the EU, and his appeal that “we need good news from the EU.” ⁵⁶

Serbian politicians have drawn heavily upon a memory tradition established within the two Yugoslav states. The existence of this tradition, a solid prosthetic memory, has presumably made the commemoration activities and references to the First World Memory broadly recognizable and emotionally evocative. Yet, where the Yugoslav memory tradition was certainly dominated by Serbia’s war history, it did aim for a Yugoslav dimension, and the narrative of the First World War was closely connected to the creation of Yugoslavia as a natural consequence of Serbia’s struggle against Austria-Hungary. The Yugoslav ambition has now been completely abandoned, and First World War memory has become exclusively Serbian. Prime Minister Dačić has explicitly rejected the Yugoslav project, blaming Yugoslavia for Serbia’s difficulties and suggesting that everything Serbia achieved, including contributing to allied victory in the First World War, was destroyed by the other peoples in the Yugoslav federation. ⁵⁷

Unlike Serbia, where the First World War has remained a relevant event both historically and politically, in the post-Yugoslav independent republic of Croatia the First World War has been close to absent from public memory. According to historian Tvrtko Jakovina, this was because after the 1990s and the break-up of Yugoslavia, no-one knew what to do with the First World War. ⁵⁸ Croatia’s relationship to the war is certainly complicated. On one hand, Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and thus the great majority of Croats who participated experienced the war from the losing and culpable side. On the other hand, emphasizing opposition to the Empire would mean closer alignment with the Yugoslav cause, from which Croatia has sought to distance itself. Moreover, the Yugoslav version of First World War history was thoroughly dominated by the Serbian narrative, which made it difficult to develop a specifically Croatian war memory that could contribute to the nation-building project after the break-up of Yugoslavia. And in the 1990s other parts of history more urgently needed readdressing or were more easily included in a positive and coherent national narrative. Some aspects of First World War history were addressed, but they were limited and certainly different from the main elements of the narrative in the Yugoslav period. Croatian history writing and history schoolbooks no longer revered Serbia’s military heroism or her Yugoslav aspirations. Instead, First World War history was either thoroughly international or remained within a strictly Croatian understanding, focusing on hunger, material scarcity, and the toils of Croatian conscript soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army. ⁵⁹ A popular history book described Croatia as squeezed between the expansionist ambitions of both Serbia and Austria-Hungary. ⁶⁰ Thus, the new Croatian First World War narrative seems to focus on the war experience of ordinary Croatian citizens and soldiers, thus rejecting the First World War projects of the neighbouring countries and avoiding the grand narratives and heroism that characterized the Yugoslav war memory.

Nevertheless, the approaching centenary of the war’s outbreak caused stories about the First World War and events relating to it to appear more frequently in Croatian media. Often these stories take a general and quite international perspective on the war, describing it as a pan-European conflict and drawing parallels to international issues of the day. Thus, in the spring of 2014, the daily newspaper Večernji list, quoting from several historians’ conferences and pointing out the dreadful costs of warfare, referred to the outbreak of the First World War as a reminder of the fragile nature of international diplomacy. The situation of 1914 was compared to the 2014 crisis in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and the experience from the First World War was presented as a warning to international politicians; a lesson on the risk of war in Europe. ⁶¹

The increased interest in the First World War has also resulted in initiatives on the official level. Croatia’s Minister of culture Andrea Zlatar Violić was made head of a national programme, which is to mark the centenary of the First World War through more than 70 projects of art and culture. According to the minister, such an effort is needed: “The First World War has been very weakly addressed in our history writing. There are books about the period until 1914 and those dealing with events after 1918, but the First World War remained a black hole. We are starting from scratch in a way and for us this anniversary is an occasion to consider something that has for decades been left aside.” ⁶² The programme will run for four years and is also intended to have an international outreach, connecting Croatia to other countries by sharing and exporting cultural products.

As the First World War draws more attention in the Croatian public, a more specifically Croatian war memory may be developing. In the commemoration programme headed by Zlatar Violić, specific emphasis will allegedly be put on a project to identify all Croatian victims in the war, something that has not been attempted before. ⁶³ Accounts of the main frontlines where Croatian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army fought and fell in large numbers appeared in the daily press during the spring of 2014. A long feature article in Večernji list described a core battlefield in Galicia where around forty thousand Croatian soldiers were killed. Emphasizing the experience of ordinary soldiers and the extraordinary courage of the Croatian divisions, the article suggested that it was time Croatia started paying its debt to these soldiers by taking care of the Croatian war graves that had been protected by local Ukrainians. The article thus pointed to a moral obligation to remember and commemorate Croatia’s fallen First World War soldiers. Moreover, it argued that the First World War could be a convenient memory, because unlike many other parts of Croatia’s history, this memory is not characterized by chasms between left and right in Croatian politics: “in this narrative there are no clear divisions, because both Tito and Kvaternik and many others fought on the same side and because then there was little talk about Croatian statehood.” ⁶⁴ Apparently the First World War, having been overshadowed for decades, is now on its way to becoming a unifying Croatian national memory which, like First World War memory in many other European countries, honours the fallen soldiers as national victims, while it draws the lesson that war is a meaningless loss that Europe and the World must protect themselves against.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, after the fall of Yugoslavia, elites of the three main national groups, Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (referred to as Muslims until 1993), have promoted different revisionist versions of their shared history. The Croat and Serbian versions have generally followed the patterns established in Zagreb and Belgrade, respectively, while Bosniaks have suggested a third one, focusing on the Bosnian state and the roles of the Muslim community. ⁶⁵ Bosniak history writing of the First World War face challenges similar to those troubling Croatian history: preferably it should be distanced from the Serbian and Yugoslav narrative, and since there is very little First World War memory tradition outside the Serbian and Yugoslav one, it has to be established almost completely anew. In addition, writing a positive and usable history of the war on the Austro-Hungarian side may be further complicated by the fact that such a narrative is completely contrary to the Yugoslav memory tradition that Bosnia shared for 70 years.

As in Croatia, the First World War has certainly not been a main topic in Bosniak history writing. What has been written about the war seems to focus either on military and strategic aspects or on victim narratives, describing in details atrocities committed against Bosnia’s Muslim population, especially by other South Slavic nations. ⁶⁶ Such victim narratives have taken a dominant position in Bosniak politics and public memory in the last twenty years, when the theme of genocide and of Bosniak victimization more generally has become an integral part of Bosniak history writing. ⁶⁷ This focus on victim narratives has at times created biased and oversimplified interpretations of history that highlight ethnic conflict, thus potentially contributing to national mobilization and frustrating interethnic understanding and reconciliation in Bosnia.

The heroic Yugoslav narrative of the First World War and Serbia’s victories and hardships has disappeared from Bosniak history schoolbooks. Instead, descriptions of the war focus on Bosnian battlefields, refugees, material shortage, and military losses. ⁶⁸ A high school textbook from 2007 also mentions the Austro-Hungarian repression of Bosnia’s Serbs during the war. ⁶⁹ Descriptions of Serbia’s heroism seem to be replaced by accounts of courageous and competent Bosnian units in the Austro-Hungarian army. Medals and orders received by these units during the war are highlighted, and one book tells the story of Gojkomir Glogovac, whose extraordinary efforts at a battle near Bukva in Serbia earned him the order of Maria Theresia and the noble rank of Baron. ⁷⁰ These new Bosniak schoolbooks seem to aim at constructing a new patriotic Bosniak and somehow pro-Austrian memory of the First World War. While this narrative is completely opposite the Yugoslav pro-Serbian narrative, the basic elements are the same: Patriotism and military accomplishments remain crucial features, whereas main actors and alliances are different.

The view of Gavrilo Princip is one of the most obvious changes in the Bosniak perspective on the First World War. Princip, a revolutionary hero in the Communist period, is now a “Serbian terrorist.” ⁷¹ On the commemorative plaque put up in 2004, the text no longer mentions fight against tyranny or urge for freedom. It simply states, in both Bosnian and English, that “from this spot, on the 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia.” It could be argued that this text, by using the term assassination and mentioning the killing of the Archduke’s wife, is a neutral, leaning towards negative, description of the deed. Moreover, the English version may suggest that this plaque is also meant for tourists. Indeed, the commemoration of Princip and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand seems to be directed towards neighbouring states and the wider European community, more than towards Bosniaks themselves.

The Sarajevo Commemoration: Whose Memory?

Even though the First World War is being included in a patriotic Bosniak memory, it seems to be far from having an established form. Especially the plans for the commemoration of the centenary of the Sarajevo assassination and the outbreak of the war suggested that the organizers in Sarajevo were uncertain about what and how to commemorate. The history of the First World War was apparently not the main issue of the planned events. More than a year before the anniversary, Alija Behmen, Sarajevo’s former mayor and honorary member of the foundation “Sarajevo, Heart of Europe” that organized the commemoration, announced that both France and Austria were to be involved in the commemoration. Behmen said that in June 2014, “a great number of cultural events will take place. The champions of Tour de France will be here as well as the Olympic champions and many famous names from the world of sports, culture and theatre. . . . It is very serious. This will not be a commemoration ceremony. It will have a cultural atmosphere. Next year Sarajevo will be a cultural meeting place.” ⁷² Jasmina Pašalić, head of the foundation “Sarajevo, Heart of Europe” said in January 2014: “We will have sport, music, culture and that will send a message of peace. That is our aim, that such an evil thing will never be repeated, and we do not glorify any side.” ⁷³ The French ambassador to Bosnia, Roland Gilles, who was allegedly deeply involved in the arrangements and the Tour de France delegation, made similar statements, reminding that this was an international war that cost the lives of more than ten million people, and thus the celebration was not about Princip but about promoting peace for the future generations. ⁷⁴

The plans for 2014 in Sarajevo were expansive: Parallel to the ceremonial marking of the centenary of the First World War, the city council intended to celebrate also the thirtieth anniversary of the Sarajevo winter Olympics, the reopening of Sarajevo’s old city hall, the twentieth anniversary of Sarajevo’s film festival, and the 60-year anniversary of the signing of the European cultural convention. ⁷⁵ This could sound like a rather mixed set of messages. Among the crucial events were apparently the cycling Grand Prix on 22 June with the participation of current and veteran stars from the Tour de France and a concert by Vienna’s philharmonic orchestra in the city hall on 27 June, which was a gift from the orchestra to the city. The mayor of Sarajevo, Ivo Komšić, explained in January 2014 that it was important during the marking of the centenary of the Sarajevo assassination and the beginning of the First World War “that completely different messages and pictures go out in the world, and these are messages of peace and hope.” ⁷⁶

The organizers in Sarajevo did not seem preoccupied with planning a grave and serious commemoration of one the biggest catastrophes in European and not least in Serbian history. The scheduled presence of the many stars and celebrities sounded more like the plans for an Oscar nomination. Apparently, a main aim of the organizers was to place Sarajevo on an international map of culture. The centenary was an extraordinary opportunity, and the historic event itself as well as the fundamental questions of how it was to be understood and commemorated seemed less important to the organizers of the commemoration in Sarajevo.

Indeed, the plans for Sarajevo 2014 were rather far from the solemn ceremonies and wreath-laying that are usually associated with First World War commemoration. They were certainly also at odds with the general approach to First World War memory in Serbia and the Serbian part of Bosnia, where the main themes were usually heroism, self-sacrifice, and suffering. The president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, repeatedly protested against the plans for marking the centenary in Sarajevo, which he saw as an assault on Serbs in Bosnia. “Thinking about who is behind this,” he said, “there can be no doubt that this, just like numerous cases until now, will be used to change history, which can certainly be seen as an attack on Serbs.” Moreover, Dodik stated that no official representation of Republika Srpska was expected to participate in the commemoration programme in Sarajevo. ⁷⁷ The protests had no effect. The organizers argued that Dodik wanted to manipulate the citizens of Republika Srpska and that he was probably motivated by lack of money or running a pre-election campaign. ⁷⁸

By comparing the challenging of history and memory to an attack on Serbs as a nation, Dodik apparently sought to defend the rights of Serbs to honour the heroic and tragic Serbian First World War memory. Nevertheless Dodik was losing the competition of who could use First World War memory and to which purposes. While the Serbs had the heroic history, Sarajevo’s city administration controlled the main location and could use it for branding the city internationally. By inviting both Austria and France, the city council showed itself to be promoting European ideals of peace and reconciliation. Sarajevo thus appeared progressive and pro-European, while the representatives of Republika Srpska were cornered as stubborn and self-absorbed traditionalists.

In this connection, it is crucial to remember that memory, even when prosthetic, is about strong emotions and loyalty. While Bosniak First World War memory has barely established itself and thus cannot be expected to carry a strong emotional impact, Serbian war memory is based on a strong and well-established memory tradition, founded in a glorious and tragic history, which may be highly emotionally evocative. Though the Bosniak elite abandoned this memory tradition, Dodik and other representatives of Republika Srpska tried to retain it and use it, presumably to ensure the attachment and loyalty of Bosnia’s Serbs towards Serbia and against Sarajevo. By employing First World War memory and the struggle over how and what to commemorate in a competition for international branding and national mobilization, Bosnia’s different elites may create deeper emotional chasms between the nations of Bosnia.

In Conclusion

The patriotic First World War memory that was established during the seventy years of Yugoslav statehood is now dissolved and transformed into exclusively national narratives, hugely influenced by political developments in Yugoslavia’s successor states. While the Serbian army’s sacrifices and victories remain a part of patriotic public memory in Serbia and the Serbian part of Bosnia, new narratives of the war are being developed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia.

The Yugoslav memory tradition influenced First World War memory in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in crucial but rather different ways. With few adjustments, mainly in the form of national purification and removal of the Yugoslav elements, the Yugoslav pattern remained in Serbia, thus ensuring a well-known and strongly emotionally loaded set of references in commemoration practices. The newly composed Bosniak First World War memory is almost modelled on the Serbian/Yugoslav heroic and militaristic pattern, but with different ethnic identifications and changes of primary alliances. In Croatia, the primary effect of the Yugoslav memory tradition, due to Croatia’s abandonment of both the Yugoslav and the communist narratives, was general absence of First World War memory. Yet the current actualization of the First World War in the formerly Yugoslav region seems to create a need for a war memory also in Croatia. The current use of war memories in the political negotiations across ethnic and state borders probably makes this need no less acute.

The actualization of First World War memory by the approaching centenary of the war’s outbreak provoked rather different reactions. In Serbia and the Serbian parts of Bosnia, where the war memory is both tragic and heroic, political demands are for a solemn and grave commemoration. Croatia and the Bosnian federation, however, have much less of an emotionally loaded memory tradition and do not feel as obliged towards their victims and fallen soldiers. Therefore, they have the opportunity to use the commemorative events for various commercial and diplomatic purposes. Whereas for Serbian politicians and history writers, the lessons to be learned from the First World War are about heroism, the costs of self-sacrifice, and having sacrifices honoured and recognized, in Bosnia and Croatia the lessons to be learned are more universal and optimistic, pointing to the need for international peace and friendship. Yet, in all three states, the lessons pointed out are also intended to situate the post-Yugoslav societies firmly within a European memory community, be it one of allied heroism and victory or of cross-European reconciliation and cooperation.