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(Summary)
Fifty years ago, in an official visit to Sarajevo, capital of
Bosnia, at that time an Austro-Hungarian province, the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Empire of Austria
and of the Kingdom of Hungary, Croatia, etc., and his wife, the
Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg, died as victims due to an attempt
on their lives.
The murderers were Serbian, to whom military weapons had been
supplied and who were instructed in their use in Serbia itself.
The murder was an outstanding event in a long course of political
tension and subversive activities against Austria-Hungary by
the Serbians. Serbia was encouraged by Imperial Russia in its
intention to seize Bosnia and Hercegovina, two former Turkish
provinces, which had been occupied by Austro-Hungarian armed
forces in 1878, in accordance with the decision of the Berlin
Congress. Thirty one years later, in 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed
both provinces and incorporated them to its own territory. The
shots of the murderers in Sarajevo also were the first shots
ot the world war, which-according to Raymond Aron's statement-have
marked the beginning of the Twentieth Century's Thirty Years
War.
At the fiftieth anniversary of that fatal crime, which happened
in Bosnia, a province of Croatia, and in close relation with
events which exerted influence upon Croatia's political development
in the present century, the CROATIAN LATINAMERICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE
of Buenos Aires has prepared this special edition of STUDIA CROATICA
dealing with Bosnia and Hercegovina, as its own contribution
in shedding more light upon the origins of the First World War.
Redacting this edition, in which many contributions of several
outstanding Croatian authors are published, the editors have
started from the fact that in the extraordinarily abundant international
literature, treating the First World War, actually there is still
a huge gap existing on account of a partial and incomplete dealing
about the Bosnian and generally about the Yugoslav Question,
due to insufficient knowledge of facts and of documents hardly
accessible owing to ignorance of the language. Moreover, it would
be impossible to understand the development of events or to set
up responsibilities thereof without a correct valuation of the
political motives behind the forces in the conflict.
According to the opinion of the editors and contributors of this
publication, the main deficiency in a number of works about the
First World War is the acceptance as a proved truth of the propaganda
thesis, that Bosnia and Hercegovina are, on account of their
history and ethnical composition, uncontested Serbian territories.
For this reason, several Governments and individuals could find
some lenitive circumstances, favouring the inspirers, the organizers
and also the perpetrators of the Sarajevo crime, and consider
them in a certain light as the defenders of the would-be national
rights of the small Serbia against the contentious and powerful
Monarchy of the Habsburgs. Yet, those Governments fully agreed
with Albert Einstein's firm belief, expressed in a protest to
the League for Defense of the Human Rights against crimes of
the Royal Yugoslav dictatorship, in which the great scientist
emphasized that murder cannot be tolerated as a means to enforce
political goals.
It results from writings and documents of this edition that provinces
Bosnia and Hercegovina, owing to their history, to their political
and cultural traditions, to the geographical position and ethnical
composition, are not Serbian but Croatian provinces. This was
the fundamental reason which moved the Berlin Congress incorporate
them to the Croatian territories which were forming the southern
part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. From the exposed facts
it clearly follows that the Serbian pretensions, laying in the
core of the European conflict, were only mere tendencies to the
enlargement of the Serbian territory in close connivance with
Russian expansionism, aiming to the solution of the Eastern Question
in a way which was consistent with the Byzantine ambitions of
Czarist Russia and of Serbia.
The Powers victorious in the First World War accepted the Serbian
pretensions as fully justified, thus contributing to a solution
of the East-European problem which led to another World War and
to the present tension in a divided world.
It is a desire of the editors of this work to contribute to a
better understanding of the origins of the First World War and
of the rightful struggle for the restoration of the Croatian
State. Croatia, in unity with Bosnia, will part from the East
European bloc and will join the free European Nations where it
belongs to. on account of its geographical features, tradition
and strivings.
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