Conclusion: the Partisan-Chetnik Conflict in Retrospect

The war of 1992–1995, which pitted supporters of a unified and multinational Bosnia-Hercegovina against supporters of a Great Serbia, was in a sense a rematch of the Partisan–Chetnik war of a half-century before. Its outcome was equally paradoxical: the establishment of a Bosnian state formally independent but in fact under foreign rule; formally unified but in fact partitioned three ways; formally at peace but in fact locked in a permanent conflict, a conflict that is at once a cold war and a civil war. The very ambiguousness of this outcome is, perhaps, the best testimony to the enduring nature of the Partisan–Chetnik divide in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

The Communists and the Serb Rebellion, c. April–September 1941

The Partisan movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina was the product both of long-term socio-economic developments at home and of the short-term ‘accident’ of foreign invasion and occupation; it involved the merger of a traditional Serb-peasant uprising and a modern urban-revolutionary movement; and it represented both a characteristic chapter and a turning-point in modern Bosnian history. The Axis powers of Germany and Italy, by destroying the Yugoslav kingdom, changed the course of Bosnian history. Their installation in power of the Ustasha regime, and the latter's genocide of the Serb population of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, unleashed a resistance movement that would take shape as the Partisans. Yet the Partisans were not simply an armed response to the new order, but a revolutionary movement of a specifically Bosnian kind.

Introduction: Understanding the Partisan-Chetnik Conflict

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to present a history of the birth and rise of the Partisans in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as a Communist-led movement of resistance to the German and Italian occupiers and their domestic collaborators; of the emergence of a Chetnik movement as a conservative, Serb-nationalist rival to the Partisans; and of the conflict between the two. It analyses the impact that the conflict with the Chetniks had on Partisan policy and organization, and the evolution of the Partisan movement under the influence of this conflict. Finally, it examines the sequence of events that enabled the Partisans to emerge effectively as the victors in the contest with the Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina by the autumn of 1943, and the reasons for the Partisan success. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Bosnia-Hercegovina Defeats Great Serbia, c. June 1942–October 1943

Bosnia-Hercegovina was by mid-1942 effectively a patchwork of small fiefdoms. The Ustasha-held towns were islands in a hostile sea. Rebel Bosnia-Hercegovina was a world partitioned, militarily and geographically, between two antithetical movements: the Chetniks and the Partisans. Rural localities were held by Partisans, Chetniks or Muslim militias whose spheres of influence ebbed and flowed. In eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Chetniks were triumphant, their Great Serb ‘state’ appearing to be born, based on their nationally and religiously exclusive, patriarchal and traditionalist rural values. In western Bosnia-Hercegovina, however, the cosmopolitan, internationalist, and modernist Communists, children of the towns, ruled a parallel ‘state’, the mass of whose peasant foot-soldiers were no different from those of its Chetnik counterpart, but whose governing ethos made it the polar opposite of the latter. As each movement consolidated its rule in its ‘own’ part of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the stage was set for a showdown between them that, at one level, represented the clash between modernist and traditionalist political values, and at another between the Bosnian and the Great Serb ideals.

From Serb Rebellion to Bosnian Revolution, c. December 1941–March 1942

The irretrievable breakdown of Partisan–Chetnik relations in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the beginning of open enmity between the two movements had profound consequences for the practices of both, as each moved away from the centre ground towards their respective political extremes. For the Chetniks, the break with the Partisans involved the progressive abandonment of all pretence at resistance to the occupying powers, the shift to outright alliance with the quisling regime in Serbia on a Great Serb nationalist basis, and the adoption of a more systematically genocidal policy towards the non-Serb population. For the Communists, the break involved the adoption of a more radical left-wing outlook that would have negative short-term consequences for the movement. But it also involved a shift from an essentially military strategy based on leading a predominantly Serb armed struggle against the Ustashas, to a political struggle aimed at building a genuinely multinational movement of Croats, Muslims, and Serbs against the ‘reactionary bourgeoisie’ of all nationalities. This shift would transform the Partisan movement from a Serb rebellion into a Bosnian Revolution: in other words, into a movement for radical political and social change on an all-Bosnian basis. Yet it would be many months before this policy would bear fruit for the Communists.

The Partisans in Western Bosnia, c. July 1941–October 1942

The Partisan movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina varied in character according to region. In western Bosnia, the region known as ‘Bosanska Krajina’, the Partisans operated autonomously in relation to the Bosnian Partisan command in East-Bosnia. The Partisan movement in Bosanska Krajina went through the same phases as the Partisan movement in the eastern parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina of initial co-operation with Chetnik elements, followed by the breakdown of co-operation, followed by outright war. Yet the very different geographical circumstances of Bosanska Krajina, combined with its stronger and more resilient Communist organization, meant that the Partisan movement there survived and flourished while its counterpart to the east decayed and collapsed. Not only were the Bosanska Krajina Partisans more successful in their confrontation with the Chetniks, but they were more successful in implementing the new Communist policy of building a genuinely multinational guerrilla army that encompassed Croats and Muslims as well as Serbs. Consequently, Bosanska Krajina became not just the heartland of the Bosnian Partisan movement, but the centre of activities of the Yugoslav Partisans as a whole.

The ‘Left Errors’ and the Partisan Crisis, c. February–June 1942

The policy pursued by the KPJ and Partisan leadership in the period of the Foca Republic marked a step away from a Serb-oriented resistance strategy, towards one that was genuinely multinational. Nevertheless, the shift in strategy could not, in the short term, defuse the crisis that was enveloping the Partisan movement as a result of the conflict with the Chetniks. The character of the Partisan base — overwhelmingly Serb and peasant and prone to xenophobia towards non-Serbs and non-peasants — made it a fertile ground for the spread of Chetnik propaganda emphasizing the allegedly alien and ‘anti-Serb’ character of the Communists. Chetnik agitation and propaganda consequently undermined the Partisan movement from within. Meanwhile, the Communists responded to the crisis with various, contradictory measures that accelerated the Partisan decline. These ranged from continuing efforts at accommodating the chauvinistic sentiments of the Partisan rank-and-file; to ill-judged actions against individual Partisans guilty of pro-Chetnik agitation, which often served to inflame the feelings of other Partisans against the Communists; to left-extremist excesses and the mass killing of so-called ‘fifth columnists’ and ‘kulaks’, as well as of ordinary civilians of all nationalities; possibly even to collaboration with the NDH's armed forces against the Chetniks. The combination of Chetnik agitation and propaganda, Communist confusion and errors, and Axis and Ustasha military assaults, resulted in the virtual collapse of the Partisan movement in eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina.

The Great Serb Reaction, c. August–December 1941

The KPJ's careful organization and preparation made it the most important leader of the Serb rebellion in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia in the summer of 1941. It was able to assume this position as a result of the social links that bound its members to the Serb peasants who comprised the overwhelming majority of the rebels. No other political group had prepared for participation in a guerrilla uprising and the KPJ therefore enjoyed a head start over all rivals in its quest for leadership over the latter. There was, however, a latent opposition among wide sections of the conservative, patriarchal, religious, and nationally homogenous Serb peasantry to the KPJ and the values it represented: urban civilization, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, republicanism, secularism, and equality of the sexes. The Chetnik movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina arose as a Serb-nationalist, conservative, anti-Croat, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and anti-urban resistance to the KPJ's leadership of the uprising-in short, a ‘Great Serb’ reaction to the ‘multinational Bosnian’ resistance proclaimed by the Communist leaders. The first months of the Partisan movement saw the Communists attempting to reconcile the military necessity of an alliance with the Chetniks with the political necessity of opposing the divisive and destructive chauvinism that they stood for. As the impossibility of squaring this circle became increasingly apparent, the Partisans were gradually, reluctantly but inexorably pushed into war with the Chetniks.