The Origins, Attributes, and Legacies of Paramilitary Violence in the Balkans

Open to the Public: Serbs and Ethnic Crossover in the United States

“…The Karađorđevići, meanwhile, would remain in power until 1945, first as kings of Serbia, and, after 1918, Yugoslavia. This setback notwithstanding, "Princess Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, " as she began to call herself, became a vocal defender of Serbia's claims to Macedonia, still owned by the Ottoman Empire in 1903. Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria all coveted Macedonia, and paramilitary violence between Bulgarian and Serbian squads/ bands, called čete (the forerunners of Ruth Mitchell's Chetniks), was endemic to Macedonia during the first decades of the twentieth century (Newman, 2013). For the princess, the upshot of this simmering conflict was that Serbia's ethnic claim to Macedonia required continuous (verbal) defense.…”

“…In November 1940, Mitchell joined the Chetniks, a far-right Serbian paramilitary organization, her subgroup being led by Kosta Open to the Public: Serbs and Ethnic Crossover in the United States Pećanac (Mitchell, 1943: 34-35). Even then, Pećanac was notoriously brutal toward Yugoslavia's Macedonian and Muslim populations-Mitchell, enamored, described him as a "great fighter" and a "perfect viking of a fellow" (Newman, 2013;Mitchell, 1943: 35). Timing also played a role-on October 28, just before Mitchell joined Pećanac, Italy invaded Greece.…”

The Battle for Post-Habsburg Trieste/Trst: State Transition, Social Unrest, and Political Radicalism (1918–23)

“…Most of these groups conceived themselves radical nationbuilders in the so-called shatterzones of empire, where the state authorities had collapsed and the public monopoly of violence had been contested or overturned. 59 In comparative terms, it is clear that the postwar crisis in the Adriatic "shatterzone" was not as violent and bloody as elsewhere in Central and Southeastern Europe. 60 On the one hand, as in other postimperial multilinguistic border towns, the state authorities operating in post-Habsburg Trieste felt threatened by the majority of the local people they were nominally governing-hence the fragmentation of the increasingly weak public powers they exercised and the subsequent proliferation of political and paramilitary violence.…”

Serbian Paramilitaries in the Breakup of Yugoslavia

“…This latter conflict would continue after the expulsion of the Ottomans from the region. 307 A significant part of this long tradition were the hajduks. 308 These, and other forces existed during much of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans.…”