Henri Pozzi, 1935
The Serbian Scene - IV. Pan-Serbism << Contents >> The Bulgarian Scene - I. Bulgaria the Unlucky
"The more they play the idiot in that house the greater the results!"
That is what an American newspaper man said to me last year about the Press Bureau of the Presidency of the Council at Belgrade. His jibe was justified. This Press Bureau thinks and speaks Pan-Serbism for Yugoslavia. Its Director, working under the head of the government, forms opinion in the country and sends out official statements to newspapers not only in Yugoslavia, but all over the world, in which everything is coloured from the Serb point of view, and nothing contrary to the views and desires of the Dictatorship is allowed to pass. It is an amazing organization. I know, for instance, that in the summer of 1932 the Press Bureau held the key to the secret code of five foreign Legations--Great Britain, France, Greece, Bulgaria and Roumania.
The foreign correspondents in Belgrade are carefully documented and closely watched by the agents of the Bureau. Those whose independence is liable to be embarrassing to the Government are made as uncomfortable as possible. As a matter of fact, a correspondent of The Times who told the truth about the political and economic situation had his home invaded by the police one night, his papers scattered about and seized, and he was conducted to the Hungarian frontier.
The Press Bureau is backed with money. It has a reserve of several millions--doubled by secret funds from the Presidency. It knows how to use them. In its propaganda work it has the help of the Avala Telegraph Agency whose role it is to send to Yugoslav journals the official version of everything. It inundates the foreign press with Balkan information dictated by Belgrade. But the Press Bureau not only sends out news; it collects it--from carefully primed and highly-placed observers in every European capital except Rome. Even the Secret Service and the State police work with them.
The Pan-Serb diplomats and propagandists are strikingly similar to those of Germany in that they always act as if they were dealing with imbeciles or blind men. They play their game with the cards on the table. Thus by feigning ignorance on a question with which they are thoroughly acquainted, or by manifesting incredulous surprise before certain affirmations which are brought to their notice, with a little cleverness the Press Bureau is certain to arrive at quite astonishing results.
The two men who at present share the direction of this essential cog of Pan-Serb politics are Dr. Marianovitch and his associate, Dr. Radovanovitch. Neither of them can tolerate any scepticism or contradiction on the part of their foreign interlocutors. Each works according to his own nature, Dr. Marianovitch with more distinction and finesse; Dr. Radovanovitch with a cordial vulgarity and an inexhaustible fund of talk. But neither expects you to leave them until they have convinced you.
In the summer of 1932 Dr. Radovanovitch directed the Press Bureau alone. He arrived at the important post which he occupies by the support of secret organizations. Absolutely devoid of education, but of a pleasant temperment, he possesses one of the most prodigious faculties of elocution that I have ever encountered. As he knows he talks well, he expects to talk all the time.
I am indebted to him for enlightenment on the subject of the fate of Dr. Trumbitch, Dr. Korochetz, and M. Baricevitch, one of the leaders of the Democrat-Peasant coalition.
"We will have their hides," said Dr. Radovanovitch with fury, "I'd like to have them here in my hands and boot them to death."
Dr. Radovanovitch would have talked all night about the enemies of Yugoslavia, about the necessity of "striking first in order not to be stabbed in the back," and about the necessity of making French opinion understand this.
I went to see him prior to my departure for Macedonia where I was going to see things for myself. I visited his office a few hours before my departure for Skoplje and Southern Serbia. I asked him about the Macedonian question. "The Macedonian question," he said, "there is no Macedonian question. There isn't one because there are no Macedonian people. The regions which the Turks called 'Macedonia' are in reality purely Serb. Their inhabitants, with the exception of a few tens of thousands, are Serb--just as the populations of the provinces that you French and the English have thought fit to give to Greece in order to thank her, no doubt, for having shot your sailors at Zappeion!
"These populations, you will say to me, speak a different dialect derived from Bulgarian. But why not? For centuries our compatriots of Macedonia have had no other priests, no other teachers than the Bulgars, because the Turks tried to Bulgarise them. But today all the youth of Macedonia has again learned to speak the ancestral language. You will see with what enthusiasm the little children in our primary schools of Southern Serbia say, 'I am Serb! I am Serb!'
"I shall convince you, when I tell you that the populations which, according to our enemies at Sofia, we terrorise, violate and exterminate, have asked us for arms and ammunition in order that they might defend themselves in case of necessity against the incursions of organised bands of their pretended 'brothers' of Bulgaria."
I said: "But the Macedonians in Bulgaria say that the immense majority of the inhabitants of Souther Serbia hate you so much that nearly a half-million among them have already expatriated themselves. In order to put an end to this emigration en masse, you were forced to close your frontier over hundreds of kilometers with a barrier of barbed wire."
My interruption displeased Dr. Radovanovitch. "I know the story," he said dryly. "It is the sort of thing that Sofia serves up to the fools who listen to her."
"You are trying to suggest that the inhabitants of South Serbia are the Bulgarian race? The reply to this absurdity has been given by our great historian, Tichomir Djordjevitch in his famous book, Nasha Juzna Serbia (Our Southern Serbia). In it he proves that there exists at present hardly six or seven hundred thousand Bulgars of pure blood in all the Balkan peninsula. They are the last descendents of a tribe of Mongols who came to Europe in the wake of Attila, and who remained between Iskar and the Black Sea, the Danube and the Balkan Chain. Four-fifths of the so-called Bulgars
who people Bulgaria, that is to say nearly five million inhabitants out of six, are pure Serb."
"Agreed, Doctor," I said, "but what do you make of the conclusions of the Commission sent by the Russian Academy of Science in 1900 to visit Macedonia and fix definitely the question of nationalities? That Commission reported as follows: 'In Macedonia there still lives the same people who in the ninth century were already called Bulgar."
He hesitated an instant.
"The Russian Commission," he said, "have admitted they were paid by King Ferdinand to say what they said. That settles that!
"Let us come to this pretended emigration of the Macedonian population fleeing from our bad treatment. When we entered South Serbia in 1913 we found there thirty thousand Bulgars, descendents of families who had lived there under the Turkish domination. These Bulgars preferred to return to Bulgaria and we made haste to facilitate their depurture, only too happy to be rid of them.
"This horrifying story of a Southern Serbia that we have imprisoned behind a wall of barbed wire has nine lives. I certainly hope that you will help us kill it, if you still have time when you are down there to go as far as the frontier. It is true that we have had to wire certain defiles and gorges which we have found particularly favourable to Bulgarian bandits. But this does not exactly constitute hundreds of kilometers of steel walls, or lines of forts, or an hermetically-sealed frontier which have been used in the propaganda of the revolutionary committees of Sofia and their Italian and Hungarian allies!
"As for the 'atrocities', to use your expression, they do not concern us. We Serbs do not employ these methods. The Inquisition is not a Serb invention, it is Italian." "Spanish, Doctor," I corrected him gently. "Spanish." "Spanish, if you will," replied Dr Radovanovitch. "It makes little difference! Spain is worth no more than Italy! The atrocities denounced in the report of the Carnegie Commission, if they really happened, were the work of the bandits from Bulgaria, who come to pillage and assassinate, and these we have exterminated."
"Moreover, it will take you a very few hours to see what the attitude of our Southern population is. I have given orders that you may get a clear idea of it all. Wherever you wish to go our officials will conduct you. You may see the affection and the respect which the population lavish upon the dutiful men, who are our administrators.
"But do not confound the sentiments and the opinion of the Bulgar official circles with those of the popular mass whom they oppress. Don't let them make a fool of you!
"King Boris, for example, surrounded by Germanophile officers, and ignorant and dishonest officials, is detested by his subjects. Recall all the attacks directed against his life in the last few years."
I risked another interruption:
"These Bulgars affirm, and their declarations have been confirmed by the diplomatic corps at Sofia, that the ambush on the route to Kustendil was the work of individuals in the pay of your legation in Bulgaria."
Dr. Radovanvitch literally bounded out of his chair.
"Those people are capable of the most vile infamies," he cried. "Only they forget to remember that they commit more political assassinations in a month that do all the rest of Europe in ten years. We are not in the habit in Yugoslavia of assassinating or having our adversaries assassinated. They will assassinate King Boris without us!
"The day he embarrasses the ORIM or the Macedonian National Committee, his account is settled. His Italian marriage has succeeded not only in alienating him from the mass, who do not pardon him having married a Roman Catholic, but also from the true Bulgar patriots who understand that it is not Italy who can re-establish the prosperity of their country, but we only, their racial brothers!"
"But," I ventured, "King Alexander himself declared in 1930, if I am not mistaken, that the incorporation of Bulgaria into the Yugoslav community would be most undesirable."
"Yes, indeed," rejoined the Doctor. "His Majesty said that. But events have happened quickly since then in Bulgaria and elsewhere. His Majesty has since completely changed his opinion, as I can prove to you, because he himself told me."
"Doctor, take care!" I said. "We are going into the realm of dreams. I spoke with too many people last year in Bulgaria not to know the truth; I questioned too many Europeans; there are too many of my compatriots established in the country since the War, who are thoroughly acquainted with it."
"Not in the realm of dreams at all," replied the Doctor. "No, in the realm of realities of tomorrow!"
"A Balkan Federation, eh?" I asked. " A first step towards the United States of Europe so ardently desired by Aristide Briand?"
"No!" thundered Radovanovitch. "As General Givkovitch said to you here last year, the United States of Europe is the panacea of a quack doctor, the politics of a paralytic for weak nations. We are a strong people, led by men who do not waste words, and are not paralysed, I can tell you!
"A Balkan Federation such as certain irresponsible foreign circles advocate, which would leave to each of its members its administartive autonomy, its own political regime and even its finaces and its personal army, is impossible! Those Utopias which certain lawyers would institute would have no other aim than to lull our vigilance in order to rob us!
"Our idea is a Federation grouping together all the peoples of the Slav race established between the Black Sea, the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Alps and the Danube. It will not comprise Greece, but the present Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania and the Slav populations still under foreign domination. Such an ideal is not possible, it is not desirable and it will not be realised, if it does not come into being by the crystallisation of all these peoples around the central nucleus, Serbia.
"That is how it will happen, sir. And it will inevitably happen either in peace or in war."
War! I did not criticise the word. I have heard it so often last year, and again since my return here. Yesterday I heard it again from the lips of a peaceful professor at the University at whose side I dined at the French Legation and who said to me: "War is terrible, of course, but without it the entire social body dies. Peace is decadence!"
How like the German professors of 1914!
I said to Radovanovitch: "So Serbia is destined to play in the Balkan Peninsula the role which has been assumed by Prussia in Germany?"
"Exactly," the Doctor agreed. "All the Slavs of the South, under whatever may be the region they inhabit, whatever may be the State which they obey today, all have the same origin--Serb. The day is near when all will group about their common source, Serbia, for the integral realisation of the destinies of a great people!"
Enthusiasm transfigured the face of Dr. Radovanovitch. He was "living" his dream.
"Sofia, Skoplje, Bitolj or Ochride are all Serb," he went on. "Salonica has never been Greek; it has a Serb city peopled with Southern Serbs. Its affiliation to Greece has been its death sentence! It will not revive, it will not find again its lost prosperity, until it becomes again the great commercial port of the Balkans towards the Mediterranean and the Orient. And it cannot become this great port unless it returns to Yugoslavia, of which it is a natural and historical dependency. It is the same with Drama, Seres, Janina, Kastoria, which have been of no importance since they were delivered to the degenerate Greek nation.
"In the meantime, I tell you frankly, we have had enough of the collusion between the government of Sofia and associations of bandits installed in Bulgaria, where they conduct an abominable propaganda against us, and do not cease to organise attacks in Southern Serbia.
"Our general staff itself will proceed with the clean-up that Bulgaria refuses to make. We shall start by putting Sofia in her place for the last time. If nothing changes, we will appeal to the League of Nations, on giving it notice that we, since Sofia is powerless, are going to proceed ourselves to carry out the necessary police operation. Once this is done, the first attack committed on our territory, or against one of our subjects in Bulgaria will be the sign for our soldiers to occupy the departments of Sofia, Petrich and Kustendil."
"And after that?"
"What do you mean, after that? What do you expect would happen? We will exterminate a few dozen brigands, to the great satisfaction of the peaceful populations whom they terrorise; we will burn their haunts; King Boris and his clique will be eclipsed, and a few weeks later, in an unanimous spirit, the Bulgars, liberated by us, will proclaim their intention to unite with Yugoslavia.
"And I, my dear Doctor," I said, "am persuaded to the contrary. The entry of your troops into Bulgaria will rise against you the entire country. In all Bulgaria there will be but one desire. The closest national union will surround King Boris. It will be a war to death."
Dr. Radovanvitch made no sign.
"But," I went on, "in all that, what are you going to do about Italy? you don't suppose that if you invade Bulgaria, and especially if you express the intention of remaining there, that Italy will watch you without acting, do you? Italy will never permit you to install yourself at Salonica; she will never permit you to incorporate Bulgaria into Yugoslavia.
Your march on Sofia will call Italy up against you."
A gleam passed in the depth of his grey eyes:
"Italy will attack us," he agreed. "We know it! But what about that! She may have tanks, artillery, technical means that we do not have. She may have twice as many troops as we have. But what of that? Sooner or later it will be necessary for their men to encounter our own, man to man. Then we shall see. The Austrians had four men to our one in the Great War, but each time the Austrian troops hurled themselves against our one, they were crushed, and each Austrian (they proved it at Carso) is worth two Italians. All the carnivals and the parades of fascism have not changed the heart of those runaways of Caporetto. Let them come if it pleases them! We will teach them to run again.
"And what about France. Are you not our allies? If Italy attacks us, you will be obliged to aid us. Your interest is our interest, for Italy menaces you far more than she menaces us. She wants Albania, she wants Carinthia, Istria, and all the Dalmatian coast, but she also wants Corsica, and Tunisia and Algeria from you. Italy is much more your enemy than Germany is, but she can do nothing against you because of us, nothing against us because of you."
Dreams of madness! Certainly, but dreams which all those who are masters in Yugoslavia pursue obstinately and untiringly. Just as Russia, for three centuries, pursued the mad dream of Constantinople.
These mad dreams will cost Europe much blood, and first of all France, if she does not shatter them while there is still time by warning the men of the Pan-Serb dictatorship that though we are their allies for the maintenance of peace, we will never be their allies in adventures of provocation and rapine which will cost Europe more dead and more than the revolver shot of the Pan-Serb Gavrilo Princip!
The Serbian Scene - IV. Pan-Serbism << Contents >> The Bulgarian Scene - I. Bulgaria the Unlucky