Introduction: Balkan Paramilitaries – Undemobilized Combatants

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Dmitar Tasić
Keyword(s):  
Strong Influence ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Introduction provides information about the study chronological and geographical contexts; similarities and differences between broader European and Balkan phenomenon’s of paramilitarism after the First World War as well as most important features of Balkan paramilitarism in investigated period (1917-1924) such as: intensive political engagement, strong inclination towards guerrilla warfare, personal allegiances rather than organizational or institutional ones, active participation in armed conflicts, political crisis, coups, etc, arrival of ‘White’ Russians and ex Russian revolutionaries as the new bearers of paramilitarism and paramilitary violence in the Balkans, violence as an integral part of paramilitaries and reoccurring in identical or similar shapes despite the changes in ideological and political context. It also speaks of strong legacy of Balkan paramilitarism and how it continued to have strong influence in subsequent conflicts in the region—Second World War and Wars of Yugoslav Succession 1991–1999.

Beyond the Railway

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-244
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This concluding chapter provides a summary of the discoveries of the Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) from the conflict landscape of the Hejaz Railway. A decade in the desert revealed the anthropological archaeology of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18 to be more than the excavation of historically recent places or the survey of ruinous station buildings. It was rather an interdisciplinary study of the railway’s heritage from 1900 to the present, its role as a catalyst in creating a unique conflict landscape, and its intriguing relationships with earlier Hajj routes. The railway was also entangled with the beginnings of modern guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and a complex and sometimes volatile mix of traditional Bedouin culture, modernity, religion, and local and national politics. Furthermore, the Revolt itself was embedded in the wider regional and geo-political framework of the First World War and its many aftermaths: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the creation of the modern Middle East; the rise of Arab Nationalism; the Second World War; the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq; the destructive legacy of the Islamic State’s short-lived Caliphate announced in 2014; and Syria’s descent into a tortuous and tragic civil war.

Origins

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Dmitar Tasić
Keyword(s):  
State Building ◽  
First World War ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Chapter I presents the story of origins of modern Balkan paramilitaries which was shaped during the late 19th—early 20th century nation and state building processes in the Balkans. Existing traditions of guerrilla warfare were used during the struggle between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia over Ottoman Macedonia when all three countries initiated sending of small armed bands to Macedonia in order to protect their own and intimidate rivals followers. It also describes appearance of Albanian national movement and how Balkan countries used their respective paramilitaries during the Balkan Wars 1912-1913 and the First World War. It also shows how during the Toplica uprising in 1917 against Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian occupation regimes in Serbia happened yet another bloody encounter of Serbian, Bulgarian and Albanian paramilitaries. Situation after the First World War was characterised by adjusting to new realities, by creation of new organizations and by arrival of non-Balkan actors—‘White’ Russians émigrés and former participants in Russian revolutions. Both groups brought their own experiences, visions and rivalries.

Paramilitarism in the Balkans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitar Tasić
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
World War ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Career Trajectories ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This book is analysing the origins and manifestations of paramilitary violence in three neighbouring Balkan countries—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania after the First World War. It shows the role of paramilitarism in internal as well as in external policies in all three above-mentioned states, and it focuses on the main actors and perpetrators of paramilitary violence, their social backgrounds, motivations and future career trajectories. It also places the region into the broader European context of booming paramilitarism that came as the result of first global conflict, dissolution of old empires, creation of nation-states and simultaneous revolutions. While paramilitarism in most of post-Great War European states was the product of violence of the First World War and brutalization which societies of both victorious and defeated countries went through, paramilitarism in the Balkans was closely connected with the already existing traditions originating from the period of armed struggle against the Ottoman rule, and state and nation building projects of the late 19th and early 20th century. Paramilitary traditions here were so strong that in all subsequent crises and military conflicts in the Balkans, i.e. the Second World War and Wars of Yugoslav Succession during the 1990’s, the legacy of paramilitarism remained alive and present. Among several features of paramilitarism in the Balkans 1917 - 1924 this book analyse strong inclination towards guerrilla warfare as the integral part of the warfare culture of the Balkans paramilitaries.

scholarly journals Yu.A. Pisarev on the Russian emigration in Yugoslavia

2019 ◽  
pp. 446
Author(s):  
Konstantin Nikiforov
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Kingdom Of Yugoslavia ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

It is well known that Soviet academician Yu.A. Pisarev devoted his particular attention to the Balkans on the eve of the First World War. Taking a further step he published an article about the Russian emigration in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Russian House in Belgrade created by the emigrants, and the library located there which was later destroyed in the course of the Second World War. This article was one of the first works in the USSR devoted to this topic. Pisarev's life and scientifi c stance is fully displayed in the work.

تطورات رومانيا الداخلية وسياستها الخارجية أبان الحرب العالمية الاولى حتى احتلال بخارست (آب 1914 – كانون الاول 1916)

لارك ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
فهد عويد عبد
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
First World

The Balkan region in general and Romania in particular have witnessed major political developments during the First World War. Suffice it to say that the first outbreak of war began from the Balkans, namely Sarajevo, and ended in the Balkans, where the last peace treaties were signed with the surrender of Bulgaria on September 29, 1918. Years of War The Balkans were generally a theater in which the armies of the belligerents demonstrated their military capabilities. Moreover, in the same period, both sides of the conflict (the Axis Powers or the Wafd States) were struggling to obtain the support of the Balkans, including Romania, Sugary, political and economic, both on military operations or planed Supply issues or control over trade routes, and on the other side of Romania was seeking for its part to take advantage of the chance of war to the maximum extent possible to achieve the national dream of achieving political unity.

Western Ethnic Borderlands in the Influence of Russian-Soviet Propagangda Before and in the Years of the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (46) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Russian Identity

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics

The Motif of Sacrifice in the Literature and Culture of the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Rawlinson
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This chapter explores how Anglophone literature and culture envisioned and questioned an economy of sacrificial exchange, particularly its symbolic aspect, as driving the compulsions entangled in the Second World War. After considering how Elizabeth Bowen’s short stories cast light on the Home Front rhetorics of sacrifice and reconstruction, it looks at how poets Robert Graves, Keith Douglas, and Alun Lewis reflect on First World War poetry of sacrifice. With reference to René Girard’s and Carl von Clausewitz’s writings on war, I take up Elaine Cobley’s assertion about the differing valencies of the First and Second World Wars, arguing that the contrast is better seen in terms of sacrificial economy. I develop that argument with reference to examples from Second World War literature depicting sacrificial exchange (while often harking back to the First World War), including Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy (1952–61), and William Wharton’s memoir Shrapnel (2012).

Blockade and the Civilian Population

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Drew
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Strategic Bombing ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Drawing on several examples through history, this chapter illustrates the devastating potential that maritime blockades can have when they are employed against modern societies that are dependent on maritime trade, and particularly on the importation of foodstuffs and agricutltural materials for the survival of their civilian populations. Revealing statistics that show that the blockade of Germany during the First World War caused more civilian deaths than did the allied strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, and that the sanctions regime against Iraq killed far more people than did the 1991 Gulf War, it demonstrates that civilian casualties are often the true unseen cost of conducting blockade operations.

Homage to Dr med. Božidar Kostić

2021 ◽  
pp. 096777202097458
Author(s):  
Božidar Pocevski ◽  
Prim. Predrag Pocevski ◽  
Lidija Horvat
Keyword(s):  
Great Success ◽  
World War ◽  
The People ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Medical Faculties ◽  
Medical University ◽  
Independent Work ◽  
The Town ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Dr Božidar Kostić (1892–1960) – physician of noble heart – was born in Niš (Kingdom of Serbia) in a distinguished family of academically educated parents. As there were no medical faculties in Kingdom of Serbia, after high school, which he had finished with great success, in 1911 he enrolled at the Graz University of Medicine, a prestigious medical university. Soon he transferred to the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague, where he continued his studying for another ten semesters. In Prague, The Golden City, after the First World War, he finished his studies with an average grade of 10. After the Second World War, he worked as a doctor with a private medical practice in Belgrade, but soon he moved to Vranje, where he established the Town Polyclinic and contributed to the final flourishing of the most important forms of health care activities in liberated Vranje, donating his rich knowledge and skills, which led the health service to move to forms of independent work and development of new activities. For his contribution to the community, by decree of His Majesty King of Yugoslavia Alexander I Karađorđević, he received the Order of Saint Sava. Dr Božidar Kostić and his wife Pravda devoted their lives to the health and educational upbringing of the people in the south parts of Serbia (then Social Federative Republic of Yugoslavia). Until his last days he lived and worked as a true folk doctor.

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