GAVRILO – PRINCIPLE OF OUR SURVIVAL

Gavrilo Princip was born in the summer, July 13^th 1894, according to the old calendar. On this occasion, we spoke to the historian Ognjen Karanović, the president of the Center for Social Stability and lecturer at the Cultural Center of Novi Sad, in order to shed light on the numerous events that preceded the Sarajevo assassination as well as to answer questions and doubts - why propaganda from the West, when we talk about Gavrilo Princip, remains silent even today about numerous important historical facts.

Assassinations in Europe at that time were redundant. Therefore, the question arises: why, for example, the World War didn’t begin in 1898, when the Austrian empress was killed by an Italian? Why does Prof.Dr. Miloš Ković claim that Princip was more European than he was aware of. Why should we be proud that Princip is one of the most famous Serbs in the world, next to Nikola Tesla and Novak Đoković, regardless of the fact that the West considers him a "terrorist"?

"By shooting Ferdinand, Princip joined the ranks of the first Serbian soldiers to defend their homeland against the onslaught of the Austro-Hungarian and German 'civilization expeditions', which began their mission of spreading the alleged European civilization over the Serbian ethnic areas only a month after the Sarajevo assassination. All that in Mačva, Pocerje, in western Serbia, in Srem, in eastern Bosnia, where at that time the fate of Serbia was written in bloody ink on the countless corpses of Serbian youth who fell in battles in Cer, Kolubara and Drina. At such 'civilizers', Princip fired his two bullets. And the fight against such a civilizing mission since 1914 determined the complete spiritual and mental structure of the Serbian ethnic collectivity for all time. If we renounce the right to freedom of Gavrilo Princip and the rights of those martyrs from 1914, how can we expect (today) to somehow ensure the right to justice, which can only be based on freedom! That's why Gavrilo is the principle of our survival!" said historian Ognjen Karanović at the beginning of the conversation.

When we talk about historical context, how should we observe the events related to the assassination in Sarajevo, as well as the assassination itself?

Gavrilo Princip and his work were characteristic, typical offshoots of that era or, as historical science determined that period, Princip was a product of the era of imperialism, that is, the struggle of the oppressed against that era. Gavrilo Princip was, as Prof. Dr. Miloš Ković says, more European than he was aware of. Why is that? It was an era of political assassinations throughout Europe and throughout the world. Numerous patriotic, national, anarchist, leftist, and primarily youth organizations of different nations are killing crowned heads, rulers, presidents, prime ministers, governors, state officials and military commanders. The immediate inspiration of the members of Young Bosnia were Young Italy and Young Belgium. They were the legitimate heirs of identical youth movements and organizations from all over Europe - Young Switzerland, Young Germany, Young Ireland... And these were all conspiratorial, national, social, patriotic associations of the youth of European nations, which, under the influence of the ideas of the Italian revolutionary Mazzini, sprung up throughout the 19^th century, at the time of the elation and enthusiasm of European romanticism. What did they all have in common? Revolutionary violent methods of struggle for national and social emancipation that were prevented by the era of imperialism and its bearers - primarily the national elites of the great powers. For example, in Venice in 1912, a monument was unveiled to Guglielmo Oberdan, who tried to kill Franz Joseph in 1882. He didn’t succeed, and he was assassinated in his attempt, but the Italians declared him a national hero. The political and social origins of Gavrilo Princip are found in the cultural and historical patterns of Europe from the first decades of the 20^th century, but also in the former and present Bosnia and Herzegovina. At that time, there was a typical Austro-Hungarian colonial administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which behaved in that country like the British colonial administration in India or the Belgian colonial administration in the Congo. Absolutely all collective rights of the Serbian national corps in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been annulled. The inhabitants of Bosnia live in social, economic and educational poverty. At the trial, Princip himself said, among other things, that he committed the assassination out of revenge for the injured social and national rights of the South Slavic people in Austria-Hungary. He wanted to take revenge for the social misery in which the Austro-Hungarian authorities kept the peasants, the poor, to whose social milieu he himself belonged. Therefore, Princip is a young man who lives in a repressive regime of the Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which suppresses the complete historical and cultural heritage of an entire national community, in order to achieve its own colonial goals. Princip saw the way out of such hopelessness in which the then the society in Bosnia and Herzegovina was in violence against such a regime, i.e. the violence through which such a regime must be driven from the Balkan area.

Neither for America, nor for the EU, Gavrilo Princip never ceased to be responsible for the outbreak of the First World War. Shortly after the assassination, Austria-Hungary embarked on a punitive expedition against Serbia, just like Bill Clinton and NATO eighty-five years later. Why was that assassination the reason for the outbreak of the war?

Because at that time the German circles at the top of its military-political apparatus judged that the last hour had come when it was necessary to deal with the opponents and change the political map of the world in favor of the Central Powers, primarily the German Reich. Russia became the fourth economic power in the world with the potential to take over the first place by 1950. Great Britain and France in their colonial possessions held the economic resources of most of Africa, Asia and Oceania, without the intention of ceding any parts of their possessions to Germany. The USA and Russia were already the two leading military powers in the world, next to Germany. That "big bang", which could have happened in 1906, 1911, and 1908 during the First and Second Moroccan Crisis and the Annexation Crisis, could no longer be postponed. Nevertheless, the geopolitical conditions for the outbreak of the Great War will be met in 1914, when the Eastern Question was resolved under the motto "Balkan – to Balkan nations", when Serbia and Montenegro, with the liberation of Old and Southern Serbia, established a common border in the former Novi Pazar, Sandžak area and in Kosovo and Metohija. This is why, the geographical and infrastructural possibility for Austria-Hungary and Germany to establish communication with the Middle East through the port of Thessaloniki was cut off, and for them it was the "last straw".

Numerous assassinations took place in those years – none of them was the reason for the Great War, why is that?

It all started with the assassination of the French president Sadi Carnot in 1894, then the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian empress, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, Elisabeth, the famous cold-blooded Sisi, who was assassinated by the Italian revolutionary, anarchist Luigi Lucheni in 1898. The trend continued with the assassination of King Umberto I in Italy in 1900 (father-in-law of the Queen Jelena Petrović), then by the murder of Aleksandar Obrenović and Draga Mašin in Belgrade in 1903, Carlos I of Portugal and his son, the heir to the throne Luís, on the same day in Lisbon in 1908, King George Glücksburg in Greece in 1913. Then followed: assassinations of the prime ministers of Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria, as well as of the king Alfonso XIII of Spain. So who killed all those people, in the name of what, why? If it was not exclusively done by 'Serbian or Balkan terrorists', such as Princip and the Young Bosnians, who, as claimed by the British historian Christopher Clark and other representatives of modern historiography in the West, did it at the instigation of Serbia and Russia, in order to push Europe into the First World War So why didn't the world war break out in 1898, when an Italian killed the Austrian empress? Because the causes of the war do not lie in the activity and existence of Young Bosnia or in the assassination act of Gavrilo Princip in 1914, but the causes of the war were found in the context of time and historical processes and conditions in which all these murders, all these assassinations were committed. King Alexander the Unifier is considered the last victim of the First and the first victim of the Second World War.

What should Gavrilo represent for Serbs and how should we remember him?

As a fearless and honorable martyr and sufferer for the freedom of the Serbian people and the freedom of all South Slavic peoples. Those who renounce it, like the current Bosnian politicians in Sarajevo, do not want freedom.

AF: Franz Ferdinand about Serbs

• Franz Ferdinand was the son of Emperor Franz Joseph's younger brother, the son of Archduke Karl Ludwig, and was declared heir to the throne after the tragic death of the only son of Emperor and King Franz Joseph I.
• From 1899, he was married to Sophie from the prominent Czech count family of Hohenberg. But the very fact that Sophie did not come from a high-ranking dynastic family of a European ruling house, and most certainly because of her Slavic origin, her marriage in the Habsburg ruling house caused great upheavals and scandals and was never honestly accepted and recognized.

Franz Ferdinand always spoke of Serbia with great loathing to his interlocutors, as a country of savages where the only valuable thing that exists are the wonderful hunting grounds of wild pigs, and it is known that he was a passionate hunter.

He was a man with an arrogant attitude, often unpleasant in conversation and generally did not arouse much sympathy in people - says Karanović.

AF: Professor Miloš Ković's book about Princip

• At the end of the conversation, our interlocutor Ognjen Karanović recommended the book of professor M. Ković "Gavrilo Princip", documents and memories, jointly published by RTS and Prometej. Prof. Miloš Ković presented absolutely everything that has been said about Gavrilo Princip in the past hundred years - all scientific, literary and journalistic knowledge - in a concise and thriller-like manner. It enabled Princip himself to finally speak "in his own voice" and without unnecessary interpreters, authentically and credibly, point to events of that time.