"I live and shall die for federalism; it is the sole salvation for
the monarchy, if anything can save it."
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
The IMRO was a populist organization established by intellectuals
(as such groups often do) but staffed by peasant, lumpenproletariat
and dwellers of the slums formed by Macedonian refugees all over the
Balkans and especially in Sofia. Its members swore allegiance on a
bible and a gun - two universally potent symbols. The nationalist-
terrorist movement which bore the improbable by-name of "The Black
Hand" was no such thing. It was elitist - only members of the
officer corps and government officials could join. But the two
shared an ethos and methods of operation. The IMRO sought to
liberate the parts of Macedonia which were under Greek and Serb
control - and the Black Hand (official name: "Union or Death")
sought to do the same for Serbs under Ottoman or Habsburg rule. The
Black Hand was the precursor of the Great Serbia dream. But whereas
the IMRO - at least until 1913 - did not enjoy the support of the
state and its mechanisms, the Black Hand was, for a long time, the
long arm of the Serb government and the Serb state. To the
generation of post-Yugoslavia It is a familiar story. In human
affairs, the dream of a Greater Serbia is no less a recurrent
nightmare than the numerable German Reichs and Serbia erupted upon
the world stage no less frequently and regularly than its northern
equivalent.
Serbia, Montenegro and Russia fought a war against Turkey in an
effort to capitalize on a Serb peasants' revolt in Bosnia in 1875.
The latter were mightily and rather inhumanly oppressed by the local
Moslem nobility (enmity has long roots in the Balkans). It was a
holy war for the protection of holy (Orthodox) mother church. It was
this conflict that led to the Turkish capitulation embedded in the
San Stefano Treaty of 1878. It was not the first time that Balkan
borders were re-drawn but, with the creation of Bulgaria, extending
all the way to lake Ohrid, a few taboos were broken. A new state was
created, Russia was introduced as a major player and the Sick Man of
Europe (the Ottoman Empire) was in death throes. It also generated a
new problem, the Macedonian one. The treaty of Berlin sought to
restore the balance but to no avail. The inexorable germination of
the nationalistic ideal has commenced. When the Treaty placed
Bosnia-Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration and allowed
Habsburg garrisons to camp inside Serbia (effectively severing it
from Montenegro) - the seeds of discontent blossomed into the evil
flowers of violence.
No one cared what the local populace had to say. The Austrian
brought roads and railways and modern mining and forestry and
industry to this hitherto European backwater. Reversing the Ottoman
infliction was no mean feat. Yet, the Austrians chose to rule by
division, to motivate through hate and to buy the love of their
subjects rather than to earn it.
They befriended the Moslem landlords and pitted the Serbs against
each across a denominational divide. This volatile state of affairs
was only aggravated by the abolition in 1881 of the Military
Frontier, which brought hundreds of thousands of Serbs into the
remit of an increasingly and virulently nationalistic Croatia. The
Hungarians used this to their advantage by fanning Croat-Serb
hostility. After all, they had a historical account to settle with
the Serbs who quashed an Hungarian rebellion not 40 years before (in
1848-9) and were awarded with the half autonomous Duchy of
Vojvodina, an integral part of the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Ausgleich of 1867 (which divided the loot between Austria and
Hungary) deprived Vojvodina of its autonomy. The Magyars rushed back
in with German and Austrian settlers and immediately embarked upon a
massive campaign of forced assimilation. Thus, as Vojvodina
prospered with roads and railways and large commercial farms ("the
breadbasket of the empire") - it became more hate-riven and
explosive. In the Balkans, affluence and commerce seem only to
encourage envy and belligerence and neighbourly relations are no
barrier to mutual slaughter.
A self-appointed "guardian of all Serbs", the Serbian state
willingly engaged in agitation and confronted both other ethnicities
and the Dual Monarchy in its quest to safeguard the well-being,
welfare, prosperity and equal treatment of the Serbs, all noble
goals, no doubt.
Yet instability is contagious, a lesson not learn by Serb
politicians. Even as the Bosnian uprising was in progress, King
Milan stuck an Austrian knife unto its back. He agreed to not foment
rebellion in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in return for a free hand in
Macedonia and some export concessions for some agricultural produce.
In 1885, he acted upon his grandiosity to disastrous outcome. Four
years later, he abdicated in disgrace. Not till 1893 was order
restored in the person of King Alexander whose most important act
was marrying his concubine, Draga Masin in 1900. They were both
massacred in June 1903 by disgruntled officers in their own palace
and that was the end of one dynasty (the Obrenovic's) and the
beginning of another (the Karadjordjevic's). A young officer, a
member of the general staff of the army, by the name of Dragutin
Dimitrijevic ("Apis" - the "Holy Bull" was his endearing nickname,
or, perhaps, the bee, from the Latin root, as Petrovic, the attache
to the Serbia legation in London has it in "Black Hand Over Europe"
by Heneri Pozzi) planned it all in 1901. Remember this name, his
role in our history has only just begun.
As is usually the case, the honeymoon looked both passionate and
auspicious. The new King was of the reforming kind and keen on
economic progress and wealth formation. Regretfully, his
implementation fell short of his intentions. Serbian agriculture
lagged behind its more commercialized and industrialized
competitors, the population grew relentlessly and rural debts buried
the semi-feudal rustic peasantry under its increasing burden.
It is against this background of mounting and mercurial discontent
that the "Black Hand" was formed. Attesting to the spreading of the
rot throughout the Karadjordjevicean state, was its cancerous
metastasis through all levels of the army and the government. Apis
the regicide was appointed chief of intelligence of the general
staff, no less. He later confessed to planning the murders of King
Nicholas of Montenegro, King Constantine of Greece, the German
Kaiser and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. How much of it was Balkan
delusions and how much reality is still open to debate - but the man
relished death and firmly believed in its transforming and
catalysing powers. The Black Hand became a state within a state (a
feat later emulated by the IMRO). Those bureaucrats and politicians
not already members of the shady outfit, obeyed its express or
perceived wishes out of terror, more imagined than exercised. The
army was entirely in thrall. The accelerated advance of Dimitrijevic
through the ranks serves proof of the growing influence of his
cankerous outfit. He became professor of tactics at the Military
Academy where he taught subversion and terror more than military
strategy. By 1913, he was chief of intelligence, as we mentioned and
by 1916 he was attained the rank of colonel at the age of 40.
Though formally established only in 1911- the Black Hand cast its
shadow long before. It engaged mostly in propaganda and in the
seeding of armed bands in Macedonia prior to the two Balkan wars.
Its biggest achievement was probably the inception of numerous
revolutionary cells among the Serbs of Bosnia.
The longer and more thorough the meddling, the more the languid
relationship between Austria and Serbia deteriorated. The former
imposed tariffs on the exports of the latter in an aptly named "Pig
War". As Serb subversion intensified in Bosnia, Austria annexed it
and Herzegovina outright discarding the pretence of autonomy it has
maintained. Stymied in one border - the Serbs reverted to another.
The Illinden uprising ignited Slav imagination. Serbia has long
hungered after its slice of a dismembered Macedonia and Thrace in a
banquet attended by both Bulgaria and Greece. But the fresh
atrocities - not devoid of religious and ethnic dimensions - endowed
the whole endeavour with an aura of a holy war. This delirium was
further stoked by the apparent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
following the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908. Yet, in its
drang nach suden, Serbia found itself once more entangled with the
Austrians who had their own designs on Macedonia and Novi Pazar. The
risk of losing Kosovo and Metohija was very real and the conflict
assumed the robes of a crusade, both cultural and religious. To the
Serbs the very maintenance of their self-identity and civilization
was at stake.
This was the background to the onslaught of the Balkan Wars.
Serbia collaborated with the more potent of its potential enemies
(Greece, Bulgaria) in the Balkan League. To cleanse the Balkans of
all Turks was the explicit goals of hush-hush treaties and
clandestine encounters. The hidden agenda bespoke of Austria. The
initial triumphs against the Turkish army (reversing a trend three
centuries old) lent an air of inevitable invincibility and divine
justice to the whole endeavour. It is interesting to mention that it
was little Montenegro which was the first to declare war in almost
all Balkan conflicts. Whether as Serbian proxies or because of the
contentious nature of the Montenegrins remains unclear. Whatever the
case may be, a second war among the winners of the first left Serbia
with its agenda fulfilled and with its territory almost doubled. It
gained part of the Sandzak, all Kosovo and Metohija and the bulk of
Macedonia. Its tax paying population increased by half as much in
less than two years. Had it not been for Austria's minacious
insistence, Albania would have never been born on Serb occupied
territory. The creation of this (artificial, so the Serbs felt)
Albanian state deprived Serbia - alone among the victors - from
access to the sea. It had another cause for paranoid delusions and
deepening sense of victimization at the hands of vast conspiracies.
Relegated to the geopolitical sidelines, denuded of their conquests,
coerced by a Big Power, the Serbs felt humiliated, stabbed in the
back, discriminated against, inferior and wrathful. Frustration
breeds aggression we are taught and this true lesson was never more
oft-repeated than in the Balkans.
The raging rivalry between an eastward-bound Austria and a defiant
Serbia was bound to boil over. The Black Hand was there to provoke
the parties into a final test of strengths and willpower. Dame
Rebecca West voices her doubts regarding the true intent of the
Black Handers in their involvement (which she does not dispute) in
the events that followed. Based on all manner of circumstantial
evidence and the testimonies of mysterious friends of furtive
conspirators she reaches the conclusion that they did not believe in
the conspiracy to which they lent their support. The Black Hand went
along with the planning and execution of the assassination of
Archduke, heir to the throne Franz (Francis) Ferdinand in 1914,
disbelieving all the way both the skills and the commitment of the
youthful would be assassins.
Perhaps so. Yet there can be little doubt and, indeed, there is no
dispute that The Black Hand was introduced to a cabal of plotters
called "Mlada Bosna" (Young Bosnia), headed by one Illich and that
this introduction was effected by the 22 year old influential
Bosnian revolutionary Gacinovic (Gachinovich) who lived in Lausanne
in Switzerland. The Black Hander Ciganovic (Tsiganovitch) made
contact with one Gavrilo Princip and Chabrinovich and together with
another Bosnian, Tankosic (Tankosich). The latter - a self
proclaimed sharpshooter - immediately set about testing the sniping
skills of his co-schemers in a secluded wood. With the mild
exception of Princip, they were no good.
Despite this disheartening display of incompetence (Princip claimed
at his trial to have aimed at a general sitting next to the
Archduke), the Black Hand equipped them with bombs (of the wrong
kind, points West correctly), pistols and suicidal Prussic acid
(which didn't work). They were smuggled to Sarajevo by two
collaborating border guards. As opposed to rumours, Gavrilo Princip
was not a member of the Black Hand, nor was the Black Hand involved
in his training. Moreover, the connection between Mlada Bosna and
Crna Ruka (Black Hand) was made only a short time before the
eventful June 28, 1914.
It was a challenge and on Serbia's national day at that. The
Austrians were elated having been handed the excuse to educate
Serbia and cut it to size. They issued an ultimatum and the rest is
the history of the first truly global conflict, the First World War.
In 1917, in a surprising turn of events, Alexander, the Commander in
Chief of the Expatriate Serbian Army in collusion with the Serb
premier, Nikola Pasic, arrested Apis and 200 of his collaborators,
thus shattering the Black Hand irreversibly. It is always surprising
how really brittle and vulnerable these apparently invincible
organizations of terror are. The IMRO, after having terrorized
Bulgaria for decades and decimated its political elite, was reduced
to rubble, bloodlessly, in a matter of a few weeks in 1934.
The same happened with the omnipotent and all-pervasive Black Hand.
It vanished in a whimper. In May 1917, Dragutin Dimitrijevic (Apis)
was executed together with 2 or 6 of his Black Hand colleagues.
Finally it was death, not union that caught up with them. The trial
was closed to the public, opaque and hurried. The King apparently
believed - or claimed he did - that the prisoners conspired on his
life. West testifies in her great opus "Black Lamb Grey Falcon" that
transcripts of the trial were banned and that it was forbidden to
mention the mere historic fact either in speech or in print. The
members of the Black Hand lived secretly and dies mysteriously and
meaninglessly.
But the Black Hand - like the IMRO - was a child of the times. The
Balkans was perceived to be the gate to the crumbling Ottoman
Empire, The coveted prizes were not dirt poor Macedonia or Albania.
It was the stepping stone and the springboard that they represented
to much vaster territories, to the riches of the orient, to the
exotic realms of Asia. All Big Powers and would be Big Powers
engaged in the pugilistics of self-positioning. The demise of the
Ottomans was imminent and this imminence exerted subtle but
verifiable pressure on all the participant in this grubby grabbing
game. Additionally, in this fin de siecle, all involved felt doomed.
The rumblings of counter-revolutionary Russia, the drang nach Osten
of Austria - all were attempts at self re-definition and self-
preservation.
Perhaps this explains the outlandish and disproportionate reaction
of Austria to the needling of Bosnian terrorism. assertive
minorities constituted a direct threat to the very cohesion of
Empire. And Serbia blocked the hitherto unhindered path to eastern
territories - depriving Austria of lebensraum and raison d'etre.
Faced with a limiting event horizon, Austria imploded like a black
hole, unto itself.
The driving force behind it all was really Austria and its growing
existential angst. It struck a modus vivendi of mutual paralysis in
the Balkan with Russia as early as 1897. It lasted ten years in
which only Austria and Russia stood still but history defied them
both. To its horror, Austria discovered that in its pursuit of
glorious and condescending isolation, it was left only with Germany
as an ally, the very Germany whose Weltpolitik put it on a clear
collusion course with the moribund Sublime Port. Russia, on the
other hand, teamed up with a rising power, with Britain, at least
implicitly. The abrupt and involuntary departure of the pliable and
easily corruptible Obrenovic's in Serbia bode ill to the checks and
balances Austria so cultivated in its relationship with the
recalcitrant Serbs. Karageorgevic was much less enamoured with
Austrian shenanigans. The final nail in the ever more crowded coffin
of Austrian foreign policy was hammered in in 1908 when the Young
Turks effectively re-opened the question of the administration of
Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria.
These territories were always under Turkish sovereignty, the
Austrians "discovered" to growing alarm. One solution was to annex
the administered units, as Austria's Minister of Foreign affairs
suggested. He further offered a trade-off: recognition of Russia's
rights of passage through the Dardanelles. The Russians accepted
only to be abandoned by the Austrians in the crucial vote. Austria
annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina unilaterally - but Russia was still
prevented from crossing into the warm waters, its ambition and
obsession. Russia learned a lesson: always back your client
(Serbia), never back down.
Elsewhere, tensions between the Big Powers were growing and eroded
their capability to institute a system of efficacious self-
regulation. Armed conflict erupted between Germany and France in
Morocco more than once. Britain and Germany were engaged in a naval
arms race which depleted the coffers and the social cohesion of
both. Italy declared war on Turkey in 1911 and even invaded the
Dardanelles. Serbia and Bulgaria struck a bargain to expel the
Ottomans from Europe (see above, the Balkan Wars). Thus, with the
field narrowing and getting more crowded, an Austrian-Serb
Armageddon was all but inevitable.
The irony of it all is that Austria presented the only viable
solution to the problem of multi-ethnicity and muti-culturalism. The
history of the Balkans in the 20th century can be effectively summed
up in terms of the contest between the Serb and Hungarian model of
co-existence and its Austrian anathema.
The Serbs and Hungarians aspired to ethnically and culturally
homogenous states and were willing to apply violence towards the
achievement of this goal either by forced assimilation of minorities
or by their expulsion or worse. The Austrians proposed federalism.
They envisaged a federation of politically, culturally and
religiously autonomous entities. This peaceful vision constituted a
direct threat on the likes of the Black Hand. Peaceful, content
citizens do not good rebels make. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says:
"Such is the logic of terrorism: Its greatest enemies are the
peacemakers".
The Black Hand did not operate in empty space and was not alone. In
1908 Serbia formed "The National Defence". Its main function was to
agitate against the Austrians and to conduct propaganda for the Serb
cause. There were other organizations but all of them were
contemptuously labelled "intellectual" by Apis, who craved violence.
Ironically, one of the original band of conspirators against King
Alexander in 1901-3 was Petar Zivkovic (Zhivkovitch). But he soon
separated himself from the Black Hand and joined the White Hand,
another group of officers, more moderate, though no less
authoritarian. Another King Alexander (who was also murdered but in
1934), King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed
"Yugoslavia"), appointed him Commander of the Palace Guards in 1921
and Prime Minister eight years thereafter.
Zivkovic lost no time in disbanding all political parties and
(elected) municipalities. He embarked upon an endless string of show
trials of opponents of his dictatorship, communists and anti-
monarchists. He introduced a one-party, government-controlled
electoral system.
Thus, in an ironic twist of history, the Black Hand came to its own,
after all. One of its former members a Prime Minister, a dictator,
under a king installed by its slaughterous coup. Black Hand or White
Hand - the means disputed, the ends were always in consensus. A
Great Serbia for the Great Serbian people.