Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 63, Number 3, 2017, pp.369-381.

Terrorists are Other People: Contested Memory

of the 1914 Sarajevo Assassination
JELENA SUBOTI
Georgia State University
This article analyzes the contested remembrance of the assassination of Habsburg Archduke
Franz Ferdinand by Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip in 1914 in Sarajevo. I place the politics of
the assassination centennial commemoration in the context of Serbian and Bosnian
contemporary anxieties about their respective ontological insecurities. In Serbia, these anxieties
centre on Serbias fear of losing its international reputation as a state that was seen as
historically generous and self-sacrificing and a victim of historical injustice at the hands of
great powers. In Bosnia, anxieties revolve around its persistently unresolved international
status, failure to create any cohesive post-war Bosnian identity, and deep internal ethnic
divisions. The article explores ways in which the memory of the 1914 assassination is utilized
for contemporary memory-building purposes in both Serbia and Bosnia, as part of a larger
narrative of state-building, in which both states see themselves as indispensable nations that
cracked open the historical arc of the twentieth century. The article demonstrates the profound
anxiety historical commemorations provoke in internationally insecure states and illustrates
ways in which states can respond.

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old member of the Serbian radical

organization Young Bosnia, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to
the Austro-Hungarian imperial throne and his wife Sophie. Young Bosnia was a
ragtag group of young men who took themselves very seriously,1 and who were, it
turned out, quite incompetent at the whole business of terrorism. This is how their plan
worked on 28 June 1914: the seven conspirators lined the route along which the royal
couple was to drive. They each had instructions to kill Franz Ferdinand when given a
chance. The first conspirator lost his nerve and let the car pass unharmed. Then the
second hurled a grenade at the car, but missed, and the grenade instead exploded next
to another car, injuring spectators nearby. This failed assassin then swallowed a
cyanide pill and jumped into the river, but the cyanide didnt work and the river was
too shallow, so he survived and was promptly arrested. The eventual assassin, Gavrilo
Princip, was not much better at assassinations, but his fortune was that the driver of the
archdukes car took a wrong turn and the imperial couple just appeared a few feet away
from Princip, who then shot them at close range. He also tried to take a cyanide pill to
avoid capture again cyanide didnt work then he tried to shoot himself, but his
pistol jammed and then he was captured by the Austrian police. 2 He was tried and

1
Paul Jackson, Union or Death!: Gavrilo Princip, Young Bosnia and the Role of Sacred Time in
the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 7, 1
(2006), pp.45-65.
2
This account of the assassination attempt is based on Christopher M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How
Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2012).

2017 The Author.

Australian Journal of Politics and History 2017 The University of Queensland and John Wiley &
Sons Australia, Ltd.
DOI:10.1111/ajph.12369.
370 Jelena Suboti

sentenced to twenty years, as he was too young to receive the death penalty. He died of
tuberculosis on 28 April 1918 at the Terezin prison in todays Czech Republic.3
In what follows, I place the politics of the assassination centennial commemoration
in the context of Serbian and Bosnian contemporary anxieties about their respective
ontological insecurities. I explore ways in which the memory of the 1914 assassination
is utilized for contemporary memory-building purposes in both Serbia and Bosnia, as
part of a larger narrative of state-building, in which both states see themselves as
indispensable nations, nations that cracked open the historical arc of the twentieth
century. I first discuss why historical commemorations provoke profound state anxiety
in internationally insecure states, and ways in which states respond. I then compare the
centennial commemorations of the 1914 assassination in Bosnia and Serbia, before
concluding with a broader discussion of the role of centenary commemorations for
political memory and for state-building,
Centenary Commemorations and State Insecurities
Centenary commemorations are a relatively modern phenomenon. Historians often
identify the 1851 Great Exhibition in Londons Hyde Park as the first manifestation of
this kind, but it was really the centennial of the US Declaration of Independence in
1876 that began the ritual of massive and regular centenary events. Held soon after the
American Civil War, the purpose of the series of events, culminating in the centennial
exposition in Philadelphia, was to re-introduce Americans Unionist and
Confederate to their shared heritage.4 After the initial success of centenary
commemorations, other centenaries followed, imitating the form, style, and practices of
each other.5
As Brent Steele argues in the introduction to this special issue, centenary
commemorations provide occasions for re-examining the ethics, politics, outcomes,
and contested memories of particularly contentious historical moments.6 They create
opportunities for reevaluating past events, taking in any lessons learned from them,
and reaffirming national and state identities. Just like personal birthdays or
anniversaries, centenary commemorations and big number commemorations in
general mark the passing of time, but they also provide a time for self-reflection and
introspection, for measuring progress or regress, for remembering moments of success
or failure. Of course, this remembrance is always selective the successes or
triumphs are elevated, the losses and humiliations repressed, the unremarkable
quotidian life in between largely ignored. And while personal birthdays leave more
room for what, exactly, is to be reflected upon, centenaries revolve around a specific
event that needs addressing.

3
In fitting historical gruesomeness, Terezin was, during the Second World War, turned into
Theresienstadt ghetto, a collection centre for Czech, German, and Austrian Jews on their way to
Auschwitz. The grim connection does not end there. Jan Levit, the Jewish doctor who treated Princip
while he was at Terezin, was himself detained in Theresienstadt two decades later, from where he was
sent to his death at Auschwitz in 1944. See Paul Miller, Yugoslav Eulogies: The Footprints of
Gavrilo Princip, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh, 2014).
4
Terry McDonald and Mlanie Mthot, That Impulse That Bids a People to Honour Its Past: The
Nature and Purpose of Centennial Celebrations, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 12, 4
(2006), pp.307-20, 308.
5
Roland Quinault, The Cult of the Centenary, c. 17841914, Historical Research, Vol. 71, 176
(1998), pp.303-23.
6
Brent Steele, Centenary (Inter)national, 1914-1924: The Politics of Commemoration and Historical
Memory in International Relations (this issue).
Terrorists are Other People 371

Centenaries also serve nation-building and state-building purposes. They instill and
promote pride in locality, region and nation,7 they reveal a nations view of self. They
nurture nationalism, by providing public space for street rallies, media coverage, and
nationalist speeches and rhetoric, all necessary for nationalist mobilization.8 They
reveal or reaffirm societys values, and strengthen the bonds that hold it together.9
Critically, though, they serve to construct historical memory through specific political
programs, by creating historical across-time associations with historical figures and
pivotal events, making the time and history appear constant, linear, and inevitable.10
History, then, becomes shared destiny for all members of the community.11
Bringing this historical research in dialogue with the literature on ontological
security,12 I make a further claim that historical commemorations can provoke
profound state anxiety in insecure states. This anxiety may be particularly acute at
times of political transition from one form of polity to another, such as the collapse of
federations, regime change, newly independent statehood, and even peace after lengthy
conflict.13 At such times of great stress, states may be insecure about their international
status, or about their alliances and friendships, or about their secure identities (is who
we are about to change), or about their biographical continuities (is everything we
thought of our past and our future still the same). These state anxieties often manifest
themselves as inconsistencies, ambiguities, and narrative dissonance.14 Anxieties can
be contained by transference into manageable fear (through securitizing a concrete
policy issue over which a state can assume control) or by construction of stable
systems of meaning (such as hegemonic narratives).15
Commemorations and centenaries as especially visible forms of
commemorations are important not only in maintaining a stable sense of self
identity, but also in creating the self to begin with. It is mostly through memories that
identities are constituted.16 They help create and sustain a particular biographical

7
McDonald and Mthot, That Impulse That Bids a People to Honour Its Past.
8
T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, The Politics of War Memory and
Commemoration (London, 2000).
9
Felix Gilbert, Bicentennial Reflections, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 54, 4 (July 1976), pp.635-644.
10
Michael J Gonzales, Imagining Mexico in 1910: Visions of the Patria in the Centennial
Celebration in Mexico City, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 39, 3 (2007), pp.495-533;
Quinault, The Cult of the Centenary.
11
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots : Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition (Chicago, 1995).
12
Catarina Kinnvall, Globalization and Religious Nationalism in India: The Search for Ontological
Security (New York, 2006); Jennifer Mitzen, Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity
and the Security Dilemma, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, 3 (2006), pp.341-
70; Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State
(London, 2008), Aye Zarakol, Ontological (in)Security and State Denial of Historical Crimes:
Turkey and Japan, International Relations, Vol. 24, 1 (2010), pp.3-23.
13
Richard J. Evans, Redesigning the Past: History in Political Transitions, Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol. 38, 1 (2003), pp.5-12; Bahar Rumelili, Ontological (in)Security and
Peace Anxieties, in Bahar Rumelili, ed., Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace
Anxieties (London, 2015).
14
Amir Lupovici, Ontological Dissonance, Clashing Identities, and Israels Unilateral Steps
Towards the Palestinians, Review of International Studies, Vol. 38, 4 (2012), pp.809-33.
15
Rumelili, Ontological (in)Security and Peace Anxieties, p.14.
16
Jeffrey K Olick and Joyce Robbins, Social Memory Studies: From Collective Memory to the
Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp.105-
40.
372 Jelena Suboti

narrative through the use of historical memory, and careful curating of select events,
setbacks and triumphs, myths, and symbols.17 The identity of the contemporary self,
then, is defined by the incorporation into the selfs biography of past injury and
trauma.18 Historical memory, then, is no longer about the past but is very much about a
particular contemporary political project it supports and maintains, which of course
was the principal insight of Maurice Halbwachs.19
Securing a desirable memory, one that presents the state and the nation as heroes
and not villains20 of some commonly shared and recognizable international story (of a
global war, for example) is necessary for state contemporary status-seeking, for
membership in prestigious international clubs (such as the European Union), and for
securing all sorts of international reputational benefits. A desirable memory of the
First World War is an example of a type of memory that is important for states to
maintain and promote in order to belong to the international society of liberal European
states. In this reading, historical memory does not only shape state ontological security;
it constitutes it. It creates the identity, the person of the state.21 And because
historical memory is so critical to what state ontological security is, states routinely
discipline their public memory in pursuit of their contemporary (physical as well as
ontological) security needs. This process of mnemonical security seeking then
requires that distinct understandings of the past [] be fixed in public remembrance
and consciousness in order to buttress an actors stable sense of self as the basis of its
political agency.22 Rethinking historical remembrance in this fashion then allows us to
more systematically think through the ways in which historical memory is constitutive
of state ontological security and how contested memory creates state stress both within
states and with its significant others.
In the following sections, I illustrate this argument with the study of the contested
centenary commemorations of the assassination of Habsburg Archduke Franz
Ferdinand by Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip in 1914 in Sarajevo. I place the contested
remembrance of the assassination in Serbia and Bosnia in the context of state anxieties
and insecurities. In Serbia, these anxieties centre on Serbias fear of losing its
international reputation as a state that was seen as historically generous and self-
sacrificing and a victim of historical injustice at the hands of great powers. In Bosnia,
anxieties revolve around its persistently unresolved international status, failure to
create any cohesive post-war Bosnian identity, and deep internal ethnic divisions.
Gavrilo Princip in Contested Yugoslav Memories
The 1914 Sarajevo assassination has always been an integral part of a larger Yugoslav
public memory, and was especially acutely felt in Bosnia (the site of the assassination)

17
Felix Berenskoetter, Parameters of a National Biography, European Journal of International
Relations, Vol. 20, 1 (2014), pp.262-88, Catarina Kinnvall, Globalization and Religious
Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security, Political Psychology, Vol. 25, 5
(2004), pp.741-67, Vamik D. Volkan, Bloodlines : From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (New
York, 1997).
18
Zheng Wang, National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory:
Patriotic Education Campaign in China, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 52, 4 (2008), pp.783-
806.
19
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago, 1992).
20
Or, at least, villains reformed.
21
Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations.
22
Maria Mlksoo, Memory Must Be Defended: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security,
Security Dialogue, Vol. 46, 3 (2015), pp.221-37, 222.
Terrorists are Other People 373

and in Serbia (the ethnic homeland of the assassin Gavrilo Princip). For both Serbia
and Bosnia, being so directly connected to the event that precipitated the First World
War (and then, by extension, the Second World War as well) was, however, never
really a point of shame or regret. Instead, it was almost a point of pride, a marker of
international significance, and evidence that these were the countries that cracked open
the historical arc of the twentieth century. They mattered.
What also made the remembrance of the 1914 assassination an overall positive, and
not a negative public memory like it is in the rest of Europe, is that the First World War
marked the end of the two empires that subjugated the various South Slavic nations
(the Habsburg Empire historically controlled the lands of Slovenes, Croats and parts of
Bosnia; the Ottoman Empire the rest of Bosnia, Serbia, and Macedonia). From the
nation-building perspective, then, Princip did not start a devastating war that ruined
Europe instead, he liberated the South Slavs from colonialism, and allowed them to
create a common multinational union, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1918.23 This
perspective of the 1914 assassination as a historical good, and not a historical bad, is
necessary to take seriously as a starting point in analyzing the centennial remembrance.
Finally, what also makes this remembrance qualitatively different in Serbia and
Bosnia than in the rest of the world that may engage in commemorations of the onset
of the First World War is its almost uniform focus on Princip himself. All public
commemorations revolved around remembering the man, discussing his true
ideological leanings, and unraveling his various political entanglements and
sympathies. The commemorations became very personalized, and larger points about
the First World War, the creation of Yugoslavia, the multinational and decolonial
ideals Princip actually believed in, were lost. This personalization is important because
it signified that First World War commemoration in the former Yugoslavia, and in
Serbia and Bosnia in particular, was an issue of reputational politics, the contested
struggle to define an individuals memorial legacy.24 The First World War centenary,
then, became an arena for reputational entrepreneurs to reinvent Princips legacy for
their contemporary political needs while engaging in discursive rivalries.25
Although Gavrilo Princip was an ethnic Serb, his political activism was pan-
Yugoslav in nature, which is why his contemporary appropriation by Serbia as a
national hero is so notable.26 During his trial Princip said: I am a Yugoslav nationalist,
aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it
must be freed from Austria.27 This is why during Communist Yugoslavia, Princip was
remembered quite fondly as one of the heroes of the Yugoslav self-determination
movement, and as someone who led the path to the destruction of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire and the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1918. Princip, in
other words, represented the multicultural Yugoslav idea and the fact that he was an

23
From 1918-1929, the official name of this federation was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes.
24
Derek H Alderman, Street Names as Memorial Arenas: The Reputational Politics of
Commemorating Martin Luther King in a Georgia County, Historical Geography, Vol. 30 (2002),
pp.99-120, 103.
25
Gary Alan Fine, Reputational Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting
Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of President Harding, American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 101, 5 (1996), pp.1159-93.
26
Bojan Aleksov, Forgotten Yugoslavism and Anti-Clericalism of Young Bosnians, Prilozi, Vol.
43 (2014), pp.79-87.
27
Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo (New York, 1966), p.341.
374 Jelena Suboti

ethnic Serb was irrelevant to his activism. In fact, other members of Young Bosnia
came from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, including Muslim and Croat. As Mariya
Omelicheva demonstrates in her case study of Russian centenaries, the multi-ethnic
composition of the old Russian empire was also a point of pride in establishing the new
national holiday commemorating the popular uprising of 1612.28 Princip was also
remembered as a socialist, a left-wing anarchist, who embodied, although through
violent means, what the Communist revolution was all about.29
But who Princip was and what he represented all began to change with the collapse
of communism and emergence of competing Yugoslav nationalisms. As mentioned
above, in Serbia, the official narrative of the assassination is one of heroism: Princip
was a Serbian hero who assassinated a tyrant and led the path to the destruction of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. This then allowed for the self-determination of the Serbian
people who could finally join their Yugoslav brethren and create an independent post-
colonial state.
From an embodiment of pan-Yugoslav identity, he started to get appropriated as a
Serb and a Serb nationalist at that, first by politicians in the Bosnian Serb republic
(Republika Srpska) a Serb-dominated entity in post-1995 Bosnia and then by
Serbia proper. During the Bosnian War (1992-1995), Princip was immediately
appropriated by the Army of the Republika Srpska, when he in effect underwent
Serbianization.30 Republika Srpska military commanders routinely invoked his heroic
act to raise their troops morale. The Republika Srpska Army also minted a new medal
and named it after Princip. This transformation of Princip into an exclusively Serb
national hero also denied his importance to the larger Yugoslav idea, which was an
essential component of post-Yugoslav nationalized statebuilding effort.31 As Alexander
Barder shows, Turkish nationalists also downplayed the multi-ethnic composition of
the Ottoman Empire, considering its invocation part of the Ottoman propaganda.32
During, and especially after, the 1990s war, textbooks in the region began to change,
with a divergence in historical interpretation between textbooks in Serbia and
Republika Srpska that portrayed Princip as fundamentally a Serb nationalist hero, and
those in the rest of Bosnia that portrayed him as a violent radical and a terrorist.33 The
structural problem that allows for this memory war within Bosnia itself is that the
country has no federal law that regulates memorials and monuments, no unified
approach to remembrance, which all allows for competition in memory and
reputational politics. This memory competition is physically visible in the types of
monuments and memorials erected in different parts of the country, which all serve to

28
Mariya Omelicheva, A New Russian Holiday Has More Behind It Than National Unity:
The Political Functions of Historical Commemorations, this issue.
29
Alberto Becherelli, Remembering Gavrilo Princip, in Antonello Biagini and Giovanna Motta,
eds, The First World War: Analysis and Interpretation (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015).
30
Husnija Kamberovi, Commemoration of the First World War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Prilozi, Vol. 43 (2014), pp.7-15, 10.
31
Ibid.
32
Alexander D. Barder, Race War and the Global Imperial Order: The Armenian Genocide of
1915, this issue.
33
Denis Dzidic et al., Gavrilo Princip: Hero or Villain?, The Guardian, 6 May 2014.
Terrorists are Other People 375

mark the territory and public remembrance in exclusively ethnic categories.34 In other
words, Bosnia has no shared memory space.35
The 2014 centennial commemorations of the assassination brought these
increasingly diverging perspectives to a head, with competing and heavily politicized
ceremonies within different parts of Bosnia, and a completely separate set of
manifestations in Serbia.
Centenary Commemoration 1914 in 2014
The fact that Princip was, in todays parlance, a terrorist who led the world into the
worst carnage in history, has never been part of Serbian First World War remembrance.
Neither was the evidence of Serbias larger involvement in and financing of the Young
Bosnia movement. The 2012 publication of Christopher Clarks Sleepwalkers, a
revisionist historical account of the road to the First World War, which makes a much
tighter connection between larger Serbian nationalist desires and the Young Bosnia
movement, created an academic and political uproar in Serbia. It was specifically
Clarks argument about Princip being an agent of Serbias secret intelligence services
and the link between Serbian nationalist expansion of the early-twentieth century (the
Balkan wars of 1912-1913) and its brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1990s that
outraged the Serbian public. Clark was accused of anti-Serbian bias, and of unjustly
blaming Serbian romantic nationalism for the global violence that ensued. Serbian
academia went on a public relations offensive, with various establishment historians
reiterating the dominant Serbian narrative of Serbias fighting the just war against
Germany and Austria on the right side of the conflict, in which it suffered greatly and
lost almost half of its mobilized servicemen. The Serbian media ran daily stories
reaffirming this narrative, with headlines such as Austrians Planned the First World
War a Year before the Murder of Ferdinand; Vienna had a War Plan in 1913; and
We are not to Blame for the War.36
The Serbian public (academic, media, as well as mass) was therefore already primed
for defensiveness when a new controversy arose in 2014 over how properly to
commemorate the Sarajevo assassination. The plans for the centenary commemorations
called for a series of events in Sarajevo, including exhibitions, concerts and an
international meeting of youth peace activists.37 The main event was to take place in
the Sarajevo City Hall, which was heavily damaged by Bosnian Serb forces during the
Sarajevo siege of 1992-1995, and where a plaque outside reminds passers-by that the
building was destroyed by Serb criminals and that we should never forget. The
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was planned to perform, with a live broadcast on
Eurovision. The tone of the commemoration was also to be a sombre one, remembering
28 June 1914 as a tragedy, not a triumph.38

34
Anida Sokol, The Contested Memory of the Sarajevo Assassination, paper presented at the
European Integration-Between Tradition and Modernity Conference, Tirgu-Mures, Romania, 22-23
October 2015.
35
Nicolas Moll, Fragmented Memories in a Fragmented Country: Memory Competition and
Political Identity-Building in Todays Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 41, 6
(2013), pp.910-35, 931.
36
Paul Hockenos, World War I Conference in Sarajevo Divides Scholars, New York Times, 22 June
2014.
37
Dzidic et al., Gavrilo Princip.
38
Benjamin Beasley-Murray, Gavrilo Princips Legacy Still Contested, Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR) (26 June 2014), <https://iwpr.net/global-voices/gavrilo-princips-legacy-still-
contested>.
376 Jelena Suboti

This all outraged Bosnian Serb officials, and soon also officials in Serbia proper,
with Serbian president Tomislav Nikoli complaining that he could not attend an event
that amounted to an accusation against his people.39 Bosnian Serb leaders were also
incensed because Bosnian officials removed the old, communist-era monument to
Princip in Sarajevo shortly after Bosnia declared independence in 1992.40 Republika
Srpska President Milorad Dodik even advised the Serbian population not to participate
in the Sarajevo event because it offered a negative portrayal of the Serbian nation.41
The anxieties shown here were anxieties about Serbias international status as a
victor in a just global war, a constitutive part of Serbian state identity which
underpinned Serbias understanding of its recent (1990s) and contemporary relations
with its significant others (Bosnia, Croatia). Questioning the justness of Serbias past
behavior therefore questioned the justness of its recent ethnic war, which would
collapse the main pillar of Serbias sense of self.
So the Serb representatives canceled their participation in the commemorations and
organized their own, counter-centenary in Andrigrad. This Disney-like theme park
city, newly constructed near the town of Viegrad, was the creation of the
internationally-renowned Bosnian filmmaker Emir Kusturica in an effort to recreate
an authentic Bosnian Serb village.42 The main theme of the Andrigrad event was
Princips heroism and Serbian liberation from Habsburgs yoke. Opening the
festivities, Kusturica said: Gavrilo Princip was our national pride, a revolutionary who
helped us get rid of slavery [] Bosnia and Herzegovina was the last European colony
on Slav soil, and what he did on 28 June 1914 was a call for our liberation.43
Simultaneously to the Andrigrad celebration, a monument to Princip was being
unveiled in East Sarajevo, a Serb-dominated neighborhood within the perimeter of
the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska. At the ceremony, Republika Srpska
President Milorad Dodik said: Princip was a symbol of freedom as he was ready, as
an 18-year-old man, to give his life for the freedom of his own people. More
important, however, is that the unveiling of the monument signifies the struggle for
freedom today.44 Dodik also said that Serbs have never been aggressors: We never
attacked anyone, we only defended what is ours.45 A Bosnian Serb member in the
federal Bosnian presidency made a similar point: Gavrilo Princips shot was a shot for
freedom. His shot was a prelude to what some Europeans were preparing for years, and

39
Ibid.
40
Elvira Jukic, Bosnian Serbs Plan Gavrilo Princip Monument, Balkan Insight (27 January 2014),
<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/bosnian-serbs-plan-erecting-gavrilo-princip-monument>.
41
Becherelli, Remembering Gavrilo Princip.
42
<http://www.andricgrad.com/en/>. The cruel irony of the Andrigrad project, of course, is that the
reason why Viegrad can today impersonate a Serb village is that, as a two-third Muslim town
before the war, it suffered some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian conflict, including campaigns of
mass rape and systematic ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population.
43
John F. Burns, In Sarajevo, Divisions That Drove an Assassin Have Only Begun to Heal, New
York Times, 26 June 2014.
44
Telegraf, Gavrilo Princip Je Konano U Srbiji (28 June 2015),
<http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/beograd/1634063-gavrilo-princip-je-konacno-u-srbiji-na-vidovdan-
otkriven-spomenik-na-koji-se-cekalo-vise-od-jednog-veka-foto>.
45
Marija Risti, Serbia Unveils Monument to Gavrilo Princip, Balkan Insight (29 June 2015),
<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbia-reveals-monument-to-gavrilo-princip/1460/serbia-
zbulon-monumentin-e-gavrilo-princip>.
Terrorists are Other People 377

Serbs emerged from that war as winners.46 At the end of the ceremony, an actor
dressed as Princip in part reenacted the assassination by firing two shots in the air. He
then cited a poem Princip wrote in prison. But this ceremony soon turned into airing of
quite contemporary, and not centenary-type, grievances, as the people gathered in the
crowd shouted that the actor should instead shoot at NATO or shoot at the EU.47
In addition to political contestation, the 2014 centenary commemorations also
created an international academic controversy. As part of the official commemoration,
a conference entitled The Great War: Regional Approaches and Global Contexts was
scheduled to take place in Sarajevo on 19-21 June 2014, but a conflict ensued between
the conference organizers from the University of Sarajevo and a group of French
historians who were co-organizers of the event. The French group wanted to use the
conference as a tool of reconciliation and dialogue by including Serb, Croat and
Bosniac historians. The University of Sarajevo, however, wanted an academic
conference of leading international scholars on the First World War. As one of the
conference organizers said: We wanted a conference for historians, not for Bosnias
Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.48 The French partners pulled out, and the Bosnian Serb
historians complained of not being invited to participate. The controversy reached the
highest level of government in both Serbia and Bosnia. Serbias former Prime Minister
Ivica Dai warned: Serbia will neither allow a revision of history, nor will it forget
who the main culprits in World War I are, while Bosnian Serb entity president Dodik
accused the conference of being a new propaganda attack against the Serbs.49 Other
Bosnian Serb officials specifically complained about the content of the conference,
which brought together the losers of the war universities from Austria, Hungary
and Germany who refused to afford Princip the honor he deserved.50 Here, again,
the focus was on winners and losers of the War, and remaining with the winners was an
important element in maintaining a sense of Serbian ontological routine and calm.
The centenary commemorations did not, however, end on the actual centenary. A
year later in June 2015, Serbia unveiled its own monument to Princip, a gift from
Republika Srpska, in Belgrade, and on the occasion of the unveiling Serbian president
Nikoli said: Gavrilo Princip was a hero, he was a symbol of an idea of liberation.
Others can think whatever they want to. He then added somewhat ruefully: It is the
easiest thing today to blame everything on Serbs and Serbia []. [This is] the attempt
to amnesty the aggressor and indict the attacked, who used all of its diplomatic strength
to avoid the war.51 This is why, Nikoli claimed, we cannot lose the battles that today
are waged through books, media, Internet, so as we do not lose the halo of justice and
victory. We have deserved and received this halo of justice and victory during and
immediately after both world wars, since Serbia was then, as well as now, always
against the war.52

46
B92, Monument to Gavrilo Princip Unveiled in East Sarajevo (27 June 2014),
<http://www.b92.net/eng/news/region.php?yyyy=2014&mm=0>.
47
Aida erkez, Bosnian Serbs Erect Statue to Man Who Ignited WWI, Associated Press (27 June
2014).
48
Hockenos, World War I Conference in Sarajevo Divides Scholars.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
51
B92, Ne Dozvoljavam Vreanje Poklanih Srba (28 June 2015),
<www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2015&mm=06>.
52
Ibid.
378 Jelena Suboti

And while this appropriation of Princip for Serbias contemporary status-seeking

needs is evident in multiple Serbian elite statements such as, for example, the Serbian
presidents claim that [i]t is not Serbia that defends Princip and his pals, but they
defend Serbia with their insistence on truth, ideas and motives,53 perhaps the most
egregious appropriation of Princip for contemporary Serb national causes was by Ratko
Mladi, Bosnian Serb Army Commander accused of genocide and war crimes by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. As his pre-
trial proceedings began in 2012, Mladi shouted in the courtroom: Gavrilo Princip
gave his life for his people just as I did.54 The appropriation of Princip then went full
circle to justify the destruction of the very country he wanted to create.
Serbian and Bosnian Ontological Insecurities
It is at this very point that the remembrance of Princip hits both Serbian and Bosnian
ontological insecurities.55 In Serbia, these anxieties centre around preserving the
foundational narratives about Serbian identity which revolve around Serbia being
historically generous and self-sacrificing, a victim of historical injustice at the hands of
great powers, but also a hero nation that has scored many pivotal victories in many
wars (none of which it started, but was always dragged into), as well as an
indispensible nation, a nation that is at the crossroads between East and West.56 The
importance of being internationally indispensible as a critical element of Serbian
national identity has also produced the myth of the Balkan powder keg, which places
the Balkans at the center of all crucial world events.
At the same time, the First World War is one of the cornerstones of Serbias
collective memory: it was a national tragedy that led to the end of the Kingdom of
Serbia and the creation of a new multinational Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The war
produced catastrophic population losses and put in motion massive social, cultural, and
political change that Serbia in many ways has still not resolved. Serbian historiography
then, presents two somewhat conflicting views of the First World War: a heroic
interpretation of Princips actions and Serbias significance to international affairs, but
also a catastrophic interpretation of the wars aftermath, especially the creation of the
new Yugoslav state which contemporary Serbian history claims as illegitimate,
hegemonic, and fundamentally anti-Serbian.57
While in Serbia the centenary commemoration reactivated the self-reflexive search
for international status and continuing evidence that Serbia matters and is a
historically indispensible nation, in Bosnia it was immediately recast as yet another
example of Serbian aggression and expansion that leads to tragic consequences.58 The
fact that Ratko Mladi, the Bosnian Serb army commander who personally ordered and

53
Ibid.
54
Beasley-Murray, Gavrilo Princips Legacy Still Contested.
55
Mariya Omelicheva (this volume) similarly ties the changing of the dates of Russian
commemorative holidays to Russias ontological security needs.
56
For more on Serbian foundational narratives, see Jelena Suboti, Narrative, Ontological Security,
and Foreign Policy Change, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 12, 4 (2016), pp.610-27, eadem, Stories
States Tell: Identity, Narrative, and Human Rights in the Balkans, Slavic Review, Vol. 72, 2 (2013),
pp.306-26.
57
Dubravka Stojanovi, The Memory of the First World War in Serbia (Bologna, Italy: Bologna
Institute for Policy Research, 2014)< http://www.bipr.eu/eventprofile.cfm/idevent=0583DA37-05DE-
BF16-09DD7D0DA010D8AC/Dubravka-Stojanovic-The-Memory-of-the-First-World-War-in-
Serbia&zdyx=1>.
58
Dzidic et al., Gavrilo Princip.
Terrorists are Other People 379

oversaw the implementation of the Srebrenica genocidal killings, himself identified

with Princip only further solidified the connection between the 1914 assassination and
the genocidal horrors of the 1990s.
Politically, therefore, the commemoration of Princip as a Serb nationalist served
multiple contemporary purposes for the Bosnian state. It activated three major
contemporary Bosnian state insecurities: identity as a victim state; search for normalcy,
stability, and calm; and desire to be perceived as a European state. On the first point,
the centenary linked Serbian nationalist and expansionist 100-year-old past with its
more recent (1990s) aggressive and brutal state behavior and territorial aspirations to
Bosnia itself, but it also connected it to Serbian desires of the present, most directly the
continuing calls for Republika Srpska secession from the Bosnian state and unification
with Serbia proper. Since the narrative of Serbian aggression and territorial ambition as
the main culprit for the devastating war in Bosnia and its difficult and unresolved
aftermath is hegemonic, and shared across various levels of Bosnian society (other
than, of course, in Republika Srpska), the centenary of the Sarajevo assassination was
easily politically activated because it found a hospitable narrative framework to latch
on to.
The second level of Bosnias insecurity, the search for normalcy, has to do with the
fundamentally abnormal situation Bosnia has existed in since the end of the war in
1995. A complex multilevel federal state, it has very weak central powers, multiple
secessionist threats, profoundly ethnically segregated population, and uncertain
sovereignty after being a de facto international protectorate for two decades. It also
suffers from astronomically high unemployment (almost 50 per cent among youth),
huge flow of outward migration, and large swaths of territory abandoned and never
reconstructed after the wars devastation.59
It is this desire to be a normal state that has shaped its reaction to the 2014
centenary commemorations, and was explicit in the run-up to the 2014 events.
For the past 100 years, the information that the world has received from here was
about war and atrocities, said Ivo Komi, the mayor of Sarajevo. Now were
sending a different message of peace, love and understanding.60 The unifying theme
of the 2014 commemoration in Sarajevo, as the citys most visible international
moment since the end of the war, was: A Century of Peace After the Century of
Wars. The eyes of the world will be focused on Sarajevo once more, pleaded Mayor
Komi, and it is important that we send messages completely different from the
messages of war we sent in 1914 and 1992.61 The message of normalcy was conveyed
as directly as possible.
The third element of Bosnian insecurity was its uncertain status on the periphery of
Europe. Bosnia has been a European Union potential candidate country since 2003,
but its EU accession prospects are quite bleak, partly because of Bosnias stalled
reforms, but even more so because of a much broader issue of intra-EU enlargement
fatigue. This desire for Bosnia to join Europe was made poignantly by the president of
the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the opening of the Orchestra performance at the

59
Burns, In Sarajevo, Divisions That Drove an Assassin Have Only Begun to Heal.
60
Andrew MacDowall, Villain or Hero? Sarajevo Is Split on Archdukes Assassin Gavrilo Princip,
The Guardian, 27 June 2014.
61
Burns, In Sarajevo, Divisions That Drove an Assassin Have Only Begun to Heal.
380 Jelena Suboti

main 28 June 2014 Sarajevo event: This concert sends the message that, for us,
Europe is not complete without Bosnia and Herzegovina.62
This desire and longing for Europe also translated into a newly enthusiastic embrace
of Austria-Hungary and an emerging narrative in Bosnia that if it were not for Princips
terrorist act, Sarajevo would have been not that far in sophistication and culture from
Vienna, and it was Princip himself who ended this Bosnian golden age under
Austria. As an official in the Sarajevo city government said: For us a great deal of the
tradition of the Austrian Monarchy is being cultivated. We are proud of this period.63
Another high leader of the majority political party SDA (Stranka demokratske akcije)
argued: [the Austrians] did more for Bosnia than all the other rulers did in centuries
building railways, cities and institutions. The Austrians gave us a lot modern
systems of government, education and healthcare. For normal citizens of Sarajevo, it
was a crime for Princip to kill an innocent pregnant lady and her husband who came to
celebrate the accomplishments of Austria.64
This narrative turn away from seeing Austria as a colonial dungeon of nations to
seeing it as a civilizational and Europeanizing force stands, of course, in direct contrast
to the Serbian perspective that sees Princip as the agent of anticolonial liberation.
These narratives are incommensurable and mutually exclusive. They were also brought
into direct discursive conflict by the 2014 centenary itself.
Conclusion
Centenary commemorations serve multiple political purposes, and can generate a
renewed sense of state security, solidify state identity, or rekindle and mobilize
nationalism. They can also produce a sense of state insecurity, anxiety, and stress. The
2014 centenary commemorations of the 1914 Sarajevo assassination produced such
insecurities in both Serbia and Bosnia, although of a different kind in each state.
In Bosnia, the centenary further reinforced narrative and political divisions within
the state. Since the Bosnian state is weak and suffers from an internationally
unresolved status, it was unable or disinterested in being directly involved in the
centenary messaging. This then allowed substate ethnic entities to use the
commemorations for ethno-political purposes, which placed the centenary in the
middle of a memory war. This has made the memory of the 1914 assassination into a
Bosnian meta-narrative,65 a story about a story, always instrumentalized, always
contested, and always destabilizing. For Bosnia, further, the additional complication is
that the 1914 assassination is inextricable from its capital city itself.66 It is a
constitutive part of the spatial and mnemonic identity of Sarajevo, and by extension of
all of Bosnia, a dynamic similar to the one Matt McDonald discusses in this volume in
the context of the importance of Gallipoli not only as a space but as a location for
pilgrimages for Australians, especially as of late.67 The trauma of 1914 is built into the

62
Kamberovi, Commemoration of the First World War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, pp.13-14.
63
Miller, Yugoslav Eulogies: The Footprints of Gavrilo Princip, p.40.
64
MacDowall, Villain or Hero?.
65
Selma Harrington, The Politics of Memory: The Face and the Place of the Sarajevo Assassination,
Prilozi, Vol., 43 (2014), pp.113-39.
66
Paul Miller, Compromising Memory: The Site of the Sarajevo Assassination (Washington, DC,
2011) <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/MR333Miller.doc>.
67
Matt McDonald, Remembering Gallipoli: Anzac, the Great War and Australian Memory Politics,
this issue.
Terrorists are Other People 381

fabric of Bosnian memory and has activated a number of ontological security needs:
the need for normalcy, calm, and stable relationships with European others.
In Serbia, however, the 2014 centenary activated competing ontological security
needs: the need for status, reputation, and international relevance. It also reinvigorated
nationalist and secessionist claims for pan-Serbian territorial unification, claims that
were grafted onto the existing narrative of Gavrilo Princips anticolonial and
independence-seeking action, as the state implanted its own narrative onto a body of
congealed historical understanding.68
The purpose of this short case study was to put the historical research on political
remembrance in more direct dialogue with the literature on ontological security and
demonstrate multiple ways in which commemorations, and especially highly public
and visible commemorations such as centenaries, produce profound state anxiety in
insecure states. While most historical research on centenaries focused on their potential
to reaffirm state identities, my article points to ways in which centenaries were
destabilizing to state identities, creating new stress about state reputation, status, and
aspirations. Seeing centenaries in this light then allows us to trace more directly their
multiple effects, especially the way in which historical remembrance is itself a
contemporary political project constructed around present needs and desires.

68
Albert Grundlingh, Reframing Remembrance: The Politics of the Centenary Commemoration of
the South African War of 18991902, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 30, 2 (2004),
pp.359-75, 359.