Mladen Stojanović

Mladen Stojanović ( sr-cyr, Младен Стојановић; 7 April 1896 – 1 April 1942) was a Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav physician who led a detachment of Partisans on and around Mount Kozara in northwestern Bosnia during World War II in Yugoslavia. He was posthumously bestowed the Order of the People's Hero.

At the age of fifteen, Stojanović became an activist in a group of student organizations called Young Bosnia, which strongly opposed Austria-Hungary's occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1912, Stojanović was inducted into '' Narodna Odbrana'', an association founded in Serbia with the goal of organizing guerrilla resistance to Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation by Austria-Hungary. Stojanović was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian authorities in July 1914, and although he was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment, he was pardoned in 1917. He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine after World War I, and in 1929, opened a private practice in the town of Prijedor. In September 1940, he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ).

Following the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and their creation of the Independent State of Croatia, Stojanović was arrested at the behest of the Ustaše, Croatia's fascist ruling party. He escaped prison and went to Kozara, where he joined fellow communists that had escaped from Prijedor. The KPJ chose Stojanović to lead the communist uprising in Prijedor. The uprising began on 30 July 1941, although neither Stojanović nor any of the other communists had much control over it at this stage. The Serb villagers of the district seized control of a number of villages and threatened Prijedor, which was defended by the Germans, Ustaše, and Croatian Home Guards. In August 1941, Stojanović was recognised as the principal leader of the Kozara insurgents, who were then organised into Partisan military units. Under Stojanović's direction, the Kozara Partisans began attacking the fascists from the end of September 1941. In early November 1941, all Partisan units in Kozara were merged into the 2nd Krajina National Liberation Partisan Detachment, commanded by Stojanović. By the end of the year, most of Kozaracovering about was controlled by Stojanović's detachment.

On 30 December 1941, Stojanović arrived in the Grmeč district, which was in the zone of responsibility of the 1st Krajina National Liberation Partisan Detachment. The Italian troops operating in that area portrayed themselves as protectors of the Serb people. Stojanović's task was to counter such propaganda and mobilise the Partisans of the 1st Krajina Detachment to fight against the Italians. He stayed in the area until mid-February 1942, by which time the Partisan leadership of Bosnia-Herzegovina considered he had completed his tasks successfully. At the end of February 1942, Stojanović was appointed chief of staff of the Operational Headquarters for Bosanska Krajina—a unified command of all Partisan forces in the regions of Bosanska Krajina and central Bosnia. The Operational Headquarters' main task was to counter the rising influence of the Serb nationalist Chetniks in those regions. On 5 March 1942, Stojanović was severely wounded in a Chetnik ambush. He was taken to a field hospital in the village of Jošavka. Members of the Jošavka Partisan Company defected to the Chetniks on the night of 31 March, and took Stojanović prisoner. The next night, a group of Chetniks killed him. In April 1942, the 2nd Krajina Detachment was named "Mladen Stojanović" in his honour, and a few months later he was posthumously awarded the Order of the People's Hero. After the war, his service to the Partisan cause was commemorated by the construction of a memorial in Prijedor, the naming of streets, public buildings and a park after him, in song and in film.

Early life

Stojanović was the third child and the first son of Serbian Orthodox priest Simo Stojanović and his wife Jovanka. He was born in Prijedor on 7 April 1896. Bosnia-Herzegovina was then occupied by Austria-Hungary; Prijedor was located in Bosanska Krajina, the north-western region of the province. Bašić 1969, pp. 9–12 Stojanović's father was the third generation of his family to serve as a Serbian Orthodox priest. He had graduated from a theology faculty, becoming the first in the family to attain a higher level of education. Simo was active in the political struggle for ecclesiastical and educational autonomy for the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mladen Stojanović's maternal grandfather was a Serbian Orthodox priest from Dubica, Teodor Vujasinović; he had participated in Pecija's revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

Stojanović completed his elementary education at the Serbian Elementary School in Prijedor in 1906. In 1907, he finished the first grade of his secondary education at the gymnasium in Sarajevo, before he entered the gymnasium in Tuzla, where he would complete the remaining seven grades. His brother Sreten Stojanovićwho would become a prominent sculptorjoined him at the Tuzla gymnasium in 1908.

Young Bosnia activist

Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina on 6 October 1908, which caused the Annexation Crisis in Europe. The Kingdom of Serbia protested and mobilised its army, but then on 31 March 1909, it formally accepted the annexation. In 1911, Mladen Stojanović became a member of the secret association of students of the Tuzla gymnasium called ''Narodno Jedinstvo'' (National Unity); its members described it as a youth society of nationalists. Bašić 1969, pp. 20–25 Dedijer 1966, pp. 580–83 It was one of a group of diverse student organisations later called Young Bosnia, which strongly opposed Austria-Hungary's rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The activists of Young Bosnia were Bosnian Serbs, Muslims, and Croats, though most were Serbs. The first organisation regarded to be part of this group was established in 1904 by Serb students of the Mostar gymnasium. Dedijer 1966, pp. 293–98 1905 saw considerable political unrest among the Serb and Croat students of the Tuzla gymnasium. Although the provincial government imposed the name "Bosnian" on the language of the province (Serbo-Croatian), the students demonstratively termed it as Serbian or Croatian depending on their ethnic affiliation.

Young Bosnia's activists regarded literature as indispensable to revolution, and most of them wrote poems, short stories, or critiques. Stojanović wrote poems, Bašić 1969, pp. 180–82 and read the works of Petar Kočić, Aleksa Šantić, Vladislav Petković Dis, Sima Pandurović, Milan Rakić, and later the works of Russian authors. Bašić 1969, pp. 15–16 In his final years at the gymnasium, he read Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Bakunin, Nietzsche, Jaurès, Le Bon, Ibsen, and Marinetti. National Unity held meetings at which its members presented lectures and discussed current issues concerning the Serbian people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. All members of the association were Serbs. Generally, Stojanović's lectures were about educating people on practical issues of health and the economy. During the summer break of 1911, Stojanović travelled across Bosanska Krajina lecturing in villages. One of the aims of Young Bosnia was to eliminate the backwardness of their country.

In early-to-mid 1912, Stojanović and his schoolmate Todor Ilić joined '' Narodna Odbrana'' (National Defence), an association founded in Serbia in December 1908 on the initiative of Branislav Nušić. It aimed to organise a guerrilla resistance to the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and to spread nationalist propaganda. National Defence soon established a network of local committees throughout Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Its members from the latter territory gathered intelligence on the Austrian army and passed it to the Serbian secret service.

Stojanović and Ilić travelled illegally to Serbia during the summer break of 1912 to receive military training that National Defence organised for its members. They stayed for several days in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, where they met Gavrilo Princip, another activist of Young Bosnia who was also a member of National Defence. Stojanović and Ilić then spent a month at army barracks in Vranje in southern Serbia, undergoing military training under the command of Vojin Popović, a famous Chetnik guerrilla fighter. When they returned to school, they resumed their activities with National Unity. Its members decided that Muslims should also be drawn into the association. After Trifko Grabež was expelled from the Tuzla gymnasium for slapping a teacher during a quarrel, the association organised a school strike. Most of the students who participated were Serbs; the strike gained little support among students of other ethnicities. The school took disciplinary measures against Ilić and Stojanović, who were regarded as the main organisers of the strike, and Ilić lost his scholarship.

In the autumn of 1913, Stojanović commenced the final year of his secondary education. National Unity was visited that year by a group of activists of Young Bosnia who were university students in Prague, Vienna, and Switzerland. They held a series of lectures for the members of the association, explaining their views on the current political situation, and promoting the unity of South Slavic peoples in their struggle to liberate themselves from Austria-Hungary. These lectures influenced Stojanović to adopt a Yugoslavist stance. At the beginning of 1914, Ilić and Stojanović became, respectively, the president and the vice-president of National Unity, which numbered 34 members, including four Muslims and four Croats. Bašić 1969, pp. 36–40 At that time, National Unity was one of the most active groups of Young Bosnia.

According to Vid Gaković, who was a member of National Unity in 1914, Stojanović was an ambitious and talented young man. He was determined that his voice would be heard and he liked being the centre of attention. He was severe to younger members of the association, whom he sometimes sharply criticised. Nevertheless, younger students liked being around him. Gaković described him as a tall and handsome man who greatly cared about his appearance; he wore a bow tie and a broad-brimmed hat. Bašić 1969, pp. 49–52

On the morning of 28 June 1914, in Sarajevo, Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austriaheir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungaryand his wife Sophie. Princip was a member of a group of conspirators, which included Trifko Grabež; the whole group was arrested by the Austrian police after the assassination. Blaming Serbia for the attack, Austria-Hungary declared war a month later, initiating World War I. Shortly after the assassination, Stojanović wrote in his notebook a quote from Giuseppe Mazzini: "There is no more sacred thing in the world than the duty of a conspirator, who becomes an avenger of humanity and the apostle of permanent natural laws." On 29 June, Stojanović took his final exams at the Tuzla gymnasium. Soon afterwards, he and Ilić wrote a draft of their manifesto to South Slavic youth, referring to Young Bosnia in a sentence:

Vojislav Vasiljević, a close friend of Princip's, was a member of National Unity, and when the Austrian police searched his notebooks they found a list of members. Vasiljević kept this information as evidence of the payment of membership fees. All those on the list, including Stojanović, were arrested on 3 July 1914. Soon after, Stojanović's younger brother Sreten was arrested for anti-Austrian revolutionary correspondence between himself and Ilić. Beside the conspirators behind the assassination, six groups of activists of Young Bosnia were arrested. The group containing the members of National Unity was called the Tuzla group. The criminal investigation against them began on 9 July, and lasted for more than a year. They were kept in prisons in Tuzla, Banja Luka, and Bihać. In the Banja Luka prison, they were all kept in the same room, enabling them to organise political and literary discussions. They issued a comic and satirical magazine, called "Mala paprika" (Little Paprika), the copies of which they made using carbon paper. A number of copies found their way out of the prison.

In the Bihać prison, the Tuzla group created a literary magazine named "Almanah" (Almanac). In its first and only issue, Mladen contributed several poems and an essay. Its editor-in-chief was Ilić, while Sreten Stojanović and Kosta Hakman contributed illustrations. The Stojanović brothers and Ilić learned French during their incarceration. The trial of the Tuzla group was held between 13 and 30 September 1915 in Bihać. Ilić was sentenced to death, Mladen to sixteen years' imprisonment, and the other members of the group received sentences between ten months and fifteen years. Especially aggravating for Ilić and Mladen was their participation in the 1912 military training in Serbia. The Austrians became aware of this because their army temporarily took Loznica in western Serbia at the beginning of World War I, and there they found National Defence documents containing records of all Bosnians that attended the training.

Mladen and other members of the Tuzla group were sent to the prison in Zenica. Three months after they were sentenced they were joined by Ilić, whose death penalty had been commuted to 20 years' imprisonment. In the Zenica prison, each convict had to spend the first three months in solitary confinement. This was very hard on Mladen, who became mentally unwell and became so emaciated that Ilić could hardly recognise him. He recovered and took a course in shoe-making which was given in the prison. Afterwards, he fell seriously ill and had to undergo surgery in the prison hospital. Bašić 1969, pp. 61–65 In late 1917, the Austrian authorities pardoned all convicts of the Tuzla group except Ilić. Mladen went to his family in Prijedor. After a medical examination, he was declared unfit for army service due to his surgery and as a result was not drafted into the Austrian army. He entered the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, shortly before the disintegration of Austria-Hungary in November 1918.

Interwar period

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenesrenamed Yugoslavia in 1929was created on 1 December 1918, and incorporated Bosnia-Herzegovina. Stojanović continued studying medicine in Zagreb. As a former activist of Young Bosnia, he was offered a King's scholarship but he refused it. In Zagreb, he reunited with his former schoolmate Nikola Nikolić, who had also been a member of National Unity. After his release from the Zenica prison, Nikolić was drafted into the Austrian army and sent to the Russian front where he surrendered to the Russians and participated in the October Revolution. Nikolić's account of the revolution influenced Stojanović to adopt a more leftist stance. During this period, Stojanović's favourite authors were Maksim Gorky and Miroslav Krleža. His professor of anatomy, Drago Perović, arranged for him to visit an anatomical institute in Vienna. Stojanović went there several times in 1921 and 1922 and befriended members of a leftist association of Yugoslav students at the Vienna University. Bašić 1969, pp. 87–89 When they held a protest against the king and government of Yugoslavia, Stojanović took part and delivered a speech. Behind the protest stood the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (''Komunistička partija Jugoslavije'', KPJ). Bašić 1969, pp. 101–2

Stojanović graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1926, and he worked for two years as a trainee physician in Zagreb and Sarajevo. He then opened a private practice in Pučišća on the Adriatic island of Brač

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases