The assassination of Aleksandar I Karađorđević, King of Yugoslavia on 9 October 1934, was a horrific crime and a tragedy for the South Slavic lands. The crazed assassin, who killed or wounded fifteen people while firing wildly in his regicidal rage, was a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation, a far-right fascist party with links to the Croatian Ustaše. The good and great man whose life he ended, on the other hand, had been a consistent and firm believer in the Yugoslav ideal of a state which would transcend ethnicity, and also an equally redoubtable opponent of fascism wherever the gruesome right-wing ideology reared its ugly head: whether in Italy or Germany or Croatia or Macedonia.
Aleksandar Karađorđević, born in exile in Montenegro to King Petar I of Serbia and Princess Ljubica Petrović-Njegoš of that country (daughter of then-Prince Nikola of Montenegro), was forbidden by law from entering his home country on account of the feud between his family and the Obrenovići who ruled Serbia at the time. Nonetheless, early on cultivated a sense of civic duty. He served as an Imperial Page in the Russian Army. His father took power after a brutal military coup that ended the Obrenovići in a particularly bloody fashion, and then later became Crown Prince when his violent and short-tempered elder brother Đorđe forfeited his claim to the Serbian throne after a scandal. He served as an army commander in the Balkan Wars during the early 1910s, and later as Prince-Regent as his father’s health began to fail. He assumed a commanding rôle in the Great War, heroically defending Serbia from Austria-Hungary until a series of defeats in 1915 against August von Mackensen led to his withdrawing the Serbian Army to Corfu. On Corfu, Aleksandar regrouped and reorganised the army, to great effect: when the Serbian Army landed again at Thessaloniki under his guidance, the Serbian Army played a spirited and significant part in the Allies’ final march to victory, routing the Central Powers’ troops at the battle of Kajmakcalan.
Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević was a very popular leader at this time, very similar to Shakespeare’s version of Prince Hal. He was close to his troops, and trusted them – and they him. The army he commanded was tough, egalitarian, not overly-concerned with rank; and he, their commander, was considered a ‘prince among the people’. At the same time, he was a dynamic, ambitious and at times ruthless reformer; in this he resembled Tsar Stefan Dušan – or at least the Yugoslavist mythological remembrance of him. Like the Serbian-Byzantinist Yugoslavists who came before him, too, he always held that the Serbian nation would be central to building a unified South Slavic state. He managed to achieve this in the last years of his father’s life: after the Great War ended, King Petar I was proclaimed the King of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs – a title which Prince Aleksandar himself inherited in 1923. By that time, Prince Aleksandar had married Princess Maria Hohenzollern of Romania, who became a highly-respected Queen among the Serbs: known for her charitable work and social philanthrōpia, her humility and her devotion to her family.
Of Aleksandar’s rule itself, little is known of his own attitudes since he kept no diary. However, his policies were always aimed at maintaining his own kingdom as a strongly-centralised unitary state. In this policy he could also be quite ruthless. His gendarmes violently suppressed movements that were considered subversive, that were aimed at federalising the kingdom, that smacked of ethnic separatism or religious chauvinism. These policies, understandably, earned him few friends within his kingdom – particularly among the Croats, the Slovenes or the Macedonians. The authoritarian style of King Aleksandar’s rule was aimed particularly at warding off the threats from Mussolini’s Italy (which sought to reclaim Slovenia and Dalmatia) and the rise of reactionary revanchist politics in Hungary. However, he maintained warm relations with the new Czechoslovak Republic and with the kingdoms of Bulgaria and Romania – it was he who forged both the Little Entente (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania) and the Balkan Entente (Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia) as defensive alliances against the great powers between the wars. (Tito’s policy of active non-alignment and disengagement from great power blocs was far from original – in foreign policy, too, there is continuity between the Kingdom and the Socialist Federal Republic.)
Unfortunately, it seems a legitimate interpretation to say that King Aleksandar’s domestic policies aimed at fighting fascism became a self-fulfilling prophecy. He certainly didn’t create the Fascist, Nazi, Ustaše and IMRO threats against his life and rule. However, it is likely that his crackdowns generated sympathy for these far-right groups and played into the hands of his enemies abroad. The assassin, Vlado Chernozemski, was a fanatical Macedonian assassin of the IMRO, who had before cooperated closely with both the Italian Fascists and the Croatian Ustaše in carrying out terrorist attacks and assassinations on Yugoslav soil. He had significant support outside the country from the Italians and right-wing elements in Bulgaria, and also within the country. When the assassination occurred in Marseilles, France, it created a grave diplomatic incident, and Italy had to do some work to deny involvement in the killing to avoid war with France and Britain.
King Aleksandar’s funeral, held at the Church of Saint George in Topola, was attended by half a million grieving Yugoslavs as well as a number of European dignitaries. His son, Petar II, succeeded him as King, but his rule was short – he came of age during the Second World War, fought like his father had to defend his people, but was later forced from his throne and into exile by Tito’s Communist partizans after the war was over.
May Christ our God grant His servant Aleksandar rest in the sight of His glorious countenance and among the company of His saints, and keep him in everlasting remembrance!
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