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8. Kosovo Maiden(s): Serbian Women Commemorate the Wars of National Liberation, 1912–1918
- Indiana University Press
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8 Kosovo Maiden(s): Serbian Women Commemorate the Wars of National Liberation, 1912–1918 Melissa Bokovoy Shortly after the end of World War I and the uni¤cation of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes into one kingdom, the Serbian National Women’s Union invited the representatives of ¤fty women’s organizations from throughout the newly created Kingdom of Serbs,Croats,and Slovenes (hereafter Yugoslavia) to attend a meeting in Belgrade, the nation’s capital. Convening in September 1919, the organizers and participants decided to bring their organizations together into a single entity—the National Women’s Union of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—to develop women’s humanitarian, ethical, cultural, feminist, social, and national activities, and to represent Yugoslav women in international women’s organizations .1 Tempers ®ared and tensions among the participants emerged during the meeting. According to the Croatian journalist, Zagorka (Marija Jurif), the Serbian delegates sought to dominate the meeting and assert a position of ¤rst among equals based on their suffering, sacri¤ces, and heroism during the Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913) and World War I (1914–1918). Zagorka observed: To understand the psychology of this congress, one needs to understand the mood and the skill of the women, especially the Serbian women who are in the majority. Mainly, they show two sides: a strong natural intelligent strength and an unshakable , traditional patriotism. . . . In their national and political mood the majority of these women breathe powerful Serbian nationalism. The war suffering of the Serbian women still tempers their feelings. These women are the Mothers of the Nine Jugovifi. They understand Jugoslavenstvo as a territorial concept, and not as a national idea and a banner of jedinstvo [unity]. One can discern in their eyes and in their words the iron strength of Serbian patriotism that one must remember is a tribal patriotism that accepts sacri¤ce, which as of now, they can’t overcome.2 The historical and mythical terrain from which Serbian women drew their claims was one not only strewn with military and civilian bodies, citizen suffering and persecution, and alleged atrocities and brutalities, but also peppered with victories and triumphs. In the early months of the war, the Serbian army achieved several of these victories by defending its border and capital city, Belgrade, from the attacks of Austro-Hungarian troops. By 1915, however, Serbia succumbed to a typhus epidemic and the combined forces of the AustroHungarian and Bulgarian armies. Fleeing the enemy, tens of thousands of civilians, including the elderly, women, and children carrying only the basic necessities , went south. Eventually some remnants of the population and the army made their way to Greece, where they joined British and French forces. Other civilians, primarily women and children, fell under the occupation of Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. Reports noted the enormous suffering of this population under occupation through famine, deportation, imprisonment, executions, labor conscription, and the burning of villages. By mid-1917, South Slavs from the Habsburg Monarchy had joined the Serbian, British, and French forces in Greece. Together, these forces drove the Austrians, Germans, and Bulgarians from occupied Serbia in 1918. By war’s end, Serbia had lost nearly a quarter of its prewar population of three million. Both men and women, young and old, experienced total war as combatants, refugees, prisoners of war and occupation, victims, and mourners of the dead. Despite the visibility of Serbian women during the Balkan Wars and World War I, women’s experiences were either relegated to secondary roles or largely ignored in the commemorative practices and traditions that emerged in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. In the aftermath of the war, military cemeteries and monuments were constructed, and commemorative ceremonies began to take place that honored the fallen soldier. Such memory sites represented war as a military con®ict between soldiers and the soldiers as the ideal national citizens, sacri¤cing their lives so that the Serbian nation might live. The vast majority of the fallen soldiers were husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons, and the act of remembering and commemorating their lives and deaths was left to their wives, mothers, and sisters. In this chapter I examine how Serbian women’s individual acts of mourning and remembering the fallen were collected, nationalized , and universalized by Serbian intellectuals and representatives of the nascent Yugoslav state in order to privilege Serbian sacri¤ce and suffering over the other nationalities in the new country. Serbian women, and by extension Serbian men, could claim the status of ¤rst among equals, not as...