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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions

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'Union or Death!': Gavrilo Princip, Young Bosnia and the Role of 'Sacred Time' in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism
Paul Jackson a a Oxford Brookes University,

Online Publication Date: 01 March 2006 To cite this Article: Jackson, Paul (2006) ''Union or Death!': Gavrilo Princip, Young Bosnia and the Role of 'Sacred Time' in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 7:1, 45 - 65 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14690760500477935 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14690760500477935

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 7, No. 1, 4565, March 2006
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Union or Death!: Gavrilo Princip, Young Bosnia and the Role of Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism

PAUL JACKSON
Oxford Brookes University
pnjackson@brookes.ac.uk Oxford Francis PaulJackson 0 1 700000Summer Group Taylor and Movements 2006 &Article UniversityOxfordEngland OriginalBrookes 2006 Ltd 1469-0764 Francis Ltd and Totalitarian(print)/1743-9647Political 10.1080/14690760500477935(online)Religions FTMP_A_147776.sgm

ABSTRACT This article seeks to investigate the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand from the ideological perspective of his assassins: the Young Bosnia movement. More specifically, it views Young Bosnias ideology as a form of political religion. It begins by constructing an ideal-typically defined syndrome of how radicalised, counter-hegemonic ideologies draw on senses of the numinous as part of their praxis. The article argues that through this lens we can enrich our understanding of the movements ideological dynamic. By taking as a point of departure the Young Bosnias conception of cultural time, which they believed to be unstable, the article argues that the movement promoted a mental state that demanded the need to act out what were perceived as personally heroic and socially redemptive fantasies. To the members of Young Bosnia, these fantasies, dramatising individual and societal redemption, were understood as narratives of renewal, or palingenesis. Following a theoretical discussion exploring this syndrome ideal-typically, the model is then used to generate a reading of the ideology that underpinned the Young Bosnia movement. After this, the article turns its attention to Ferdinands killer, Gavrilo Princip, and the cohort helping to carry out the assassination. This groupings willingness to commit suicide after completing their mission was, the article argues, the product of a host of mythopoeic resources drawn upon by the Young Bosnia movement in order to elaborate a palingenetic ideology. Further, it claims that their actions provide an excellent case study in which one can see how a broad synthesis of socialist, Marxist and nationalist ideologies, alongside poetic resources, each induced the palingenetic condition in the assassins. Finally, it provides an explanatory framework that allows us to interpret how this ideology could justify political violence both against others and against their own persons.

Introduction Although the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand has been the object of much historiographical attention, little theoretical interest has been given to the importance of the cult of self-sacrifice and martyrdom conditioning his killers, therefore precipitating the momentous events that followed. In fact, the willingness of the assassins to sacrifice their own lives for the higher cause of the nation
Correspondence Address: Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP. Email: pnjackson@brookes.ac.uk
ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/06/010045-21 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14690760500477935

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was an integral aspect of their ideologically motivated violence. This article seeks to redress this neglect by moving beyond commonplace views of the actions of Gavrilo Princip and his accomplices as secular nationalist terrorists, and instead explores the role that sacralised elements played in the nationalist ideology of Princip and his cohort. It argues that they can be viewed as manifesting elements of the modern palingenetic condition a cultural climate that fosters projects for imagined futures that are designed to bring about fundamental political and cultural rebirth to resolve a sense of degeneration perceived to characterise in the present. Further, the extreme nationalism of Princip constituted a form of political religion because it was a fusion of politics with a type of faith associated with metaphysical religion that generated an ideological dynamic in which the self could be transcended and sacrificed in order to serve the perceived needs of the community.1 The following also draws on a theory of the way the sense of a supra-personal mission radically alters an individuals perception of personal time and mortality, which has led to the postulation of the need for a new subdiscipline, chrono-ethology, that studies human behaviour through the perspective of time.2 In this article, I shall briefly outline the categories of this ideal-typically constructed heuristic tool before using it to generate a chronoethological reading of the motives behind Franz Ferdinands assassination. Sacrificial Violence in Relation to Chrono-Ethology: A Summary The desire that someone should pay the debt of sacrificial death and redeem the world to new innocence: this eternal dream of mankind may rise to murder, this eternal dream may rise to clairvoyance. All knowledge waivers between the dreamt wish and the foreshadowing dream, all knowledge of the redeeming sacrifice and the kingdom of salvation.3 Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers There does not exist within academia a single conceptual paradigm to understand terrorist and fanatical behaviour, merely a range of more or less heuristically useful ones. The anthropological thrust of a chrono-ethological perspective argues that religious and ideological fanaticisms are linked to the subjective understanding of an individuals relationship with (a) phenomenological, personal time, which begins at birth and ends at death, and (b) a shared sense of cultural, communal time, which begins with the creation of a society and ends with its demise. Both of these can be infused with meaning not only through rational thought, but also through what are, essentially, mythopoeic thought patterns. The models underlying thesis argues that we can present a simplified representation of human consciousness as a system that has the inbuilt ability to experience personal and communal conceptions of time in two qualitatively different ways. First, they can be viewed in a state of rectilinear chronos the sense of a stable flow from past to future, present in periods of political stability and secondly in terms of a period of kairos, which people can become sensitive to during periods of perceived or actual political crisis, and during which the normal sense of continuity between the past and future needed to generate a sense of political and social stability appear temporarily suspended. In this second temporal state, scenarios emphasising contingency and crisis are bought to the fore in debates; the sense of living

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 47 during a moment of historical opportunity is given privileged status over accepting the status quo when formulating ideological praxis; action is motivated by a guiding ideology that draws on inspiring events from the past to reconceptualise the future; and through what is perceived to be altruistic behaviour, the individual can feel renewed connections to senses of the sacred. This bifurcation is admittedly a gross simplification, yet it is within an exponential psychological elaboration of connections to the notion of a moment of opportunity, or kairos, in the individual and communal awareness of time that we can locate the rationale of the self-immolating fanatic. Within academia, theorists have repeatedly constructed models that acknowledge this phenomenological distinction between a profane time and a higher sacred time, even though empirical evidence for this assertion may be elusive. These have included Walter Benjamins notion of reconnecting with myths of past revolutions in order to motivate the dynamics of Marxist revolutionary thought. As outlined in his Thesis on the Philosophy of History, Benjamins idea was that revolutionaries would become sensitive to chips of Messianic time that would give access to a sense of historical mission and secularised sense of sacred action. This sensitivity would enable one to generate a profound and selective reading of the past that would highlight myriad historic events that each dramatise fundamental changes, and in combination these would form a constellation of messages that would inspire revolutionary action in the present. He contrasted this sense of living at a moment infused with revolutionary possibility with homogenous, empty time of everyday life. The latter was to be eschewed by the good Marxist, who should formulate a praxis that tapped into these chips of Messianic time, and their associated higher calling.4 In a less polemical exploration of this archetype, Frank Kermodes lecture series, The Sense of an Ending, again draws out this distinction between rectilinear chronos and a time of opportunity, or kairos. His thesis sketches out a temporal model in which the second category has great heuristic value in interpreting the repeated occurrences of senses of the apocalyptic found in the literature, cultural milieus and political ideologies of societies marked by modernity. Those personally experiencing a moment of kairos perceive a selected view of the past as a sort of guiding light shining into the future, one that projects into the future a counterfactual scenario that, at bottom, is utopian insofar as it offers a profound image of hope emerging from a state of despair. In such times, the present is viewed as, somehow, out of joint,5 a liminal time in between historical epochs. In contrast to senses of personal and communal time characterised by an impression of chronos which places the founding myths of society safely in the past, and the apocalyptic narratives of its demise in the distant future, thereby placing the community within a discrete historical epoch kairos suggests the imminent, or even immanent, sense of an ending of an old order that engenders the opportunity for a fundamental paradigm shift in the political and cultural hegemony, and a termination of the status quo.6 It is therefore an unstable period that offers the potential for new founding myths for a society to develop and old ones to be destroyed. Other theorists and philosophers who have identified similar senses of the sacred and profane in temporal experiences, and who have seen these as manifestations of hope-filled myths projecting forms of utopianism into the future and that emerge from despair, include Ernst Cassirer,7 Mercia Eliade,8 Joseph Campbell,9 Ernst Bloch10 and Jacques Derrida,11 each in possession of his own particular philosophical point of departure, terminological details and analytical peculiarities.

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To this distinction between chronos and kairos in personal and cultural constructions of time, we can add to our model the notion of projective narratives, that is, the means of rationalising personal time. In short, these are the existential narratives (the stories individuals tell about their lives in order to narrate meaningful links between their past experiences and their future aspirations) that form the psychological connections of identity between the self and communities. As with crises in communal time, crises in personal time lead to the cultivation of ideas that draw out a sense of kairos rather than chronos. In order for the types of ideologies that emerge during a period of perceived kairos and present hope for their followers to function, their thinking must be directed towards fundamental change in the near future, and specifically they must create utopian counterfactual scenarios for their adherents future selves, alongside society to which they identify, potentially to inhabit. At bottom, the self and communal narratives are inherently intertwined, and they allow the fanatic to narrate their future conduct in a matrix that will have agency over the political future of the society to which they identify. In many ways, this is common feature of human psychology, and as true of the political fanatic as any other politically conscious actor. Consequently, from this perspective Griffin argues against the view that fanatics are committing pathological acts: most acts of political fanaticism, far from being pathological (awry) in themselves, are extreme examples of quintessential human capacity to structure real life on the basis of narrative fictions. Indeed human life may well be literally unliveable without a shifting kaleidoscope of plans goals, ideals, myths, fantasies, obsessions and utopias that together constitute maps of reality that have more in common with the phantasmagorical elucubrations of medieval cartographers than satellite-based topographies available to modern geographers. In this context the fanatic is only an extreme example of perfectly normal human beings.12 The distinction between the normal psychology and that of the fanatic can be found in the fact that the existential narratives that are generated by the fanatic are highly influenced by mythopoeic tropes that shape their perception of the world in particular stark fashions. These tropes create in the fanatic the sense of ones life being locked into a predetermined narrative structure, thereby inculcating a sense of mission and destiny in the individuals motivation for action, and portraying the fanatic as an active agent who takes a personal and communal story to its logical conclusion. One can argue that, in order to deduce the motives of the political fanatic, we must attempt to extract from extant data what their perceptions of these stories were. Chrono-ethology argues that the three mythopoeic tropes of greatest significance to the narration of fanatical political activity are (a) the self as an archetypal hero, (b) the sacrifice of something of profound value, including the fanatics own life, and (c) the myth of societal rebirth. To summarise briefly the dynamics of these recurring mythic structures in relation to an attempt to suspend a sense of personal and cultural chronos, and activate sensitivity to kairos, at least for an esoteric vanguard, let us start with the myth of the hero. The important element of the hero myth in relation to chrono-ethology lies in its extraordinary mythopoeic resonance in linking the self to a wider sense of regeneration. Their employment in the stories narrating the creation of new

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 49 worlds (cosmogonic myths) is a reoccurring theme among the creation myths of many belief structures. For example, Prometheuss theft of fire from the Gods, or Moses leadership of the Israelites from Egypt and subsequent reception of the Ten Commandments, can both be seen as figures possessing this quality. Other prophetic figures can be seen similarly, at least for those outside these mythological and theological paradigms, as reoccurrences of the same underlying archetype: the offering of spiritual regeneration to a cultural milieu through inspirational and heroic activity of a chosen individual. In his exhaustive study of this archetype, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell proposes a monomyth as shorthand for this recurring pattern: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a religion of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.13 In the process of purifying and sacralising their political and cultural milieus not to mention their desire to destroy the hegemonic political authorities political fanatics may be seen to narrate their own activity as endless permutations of this sacralising monomyth, or archetype. Through this process, fanatics can perceive themselves as key players in the metamorphosis, or rather palingenesis, of the community to which they identify. Their boon to their fellow man is to change their society from one governed by an alienating hegemony, whose effects are perceived as degenerative and contaminating for the community, to one perceived as regenerated. Further, the various events perpetrated by an individual or esoteric group of fanatics may also hold the potential to key into the more general desires of their community, though this is contingent on a wider willingness to empathise with the fanatics ideology. Therefore, the use of familiar points of cultural reference is also key to creating a politics with a sense of common identity that, by drawing from a sense of a communal past, guides action in the present in order to reshape fundamentally the communitys future. This hero myth can also merge with the notion of ritualised self-sacrifice as an integral part of ascetic, selfless behaviour underpinning the heros quest: to become truly fearless, one must go beyond death by accepting oneself as already dead. This selflessness therefore creates the hero prepared to sacrifice his or her own life for a perceived higher cause. This elision is a reoccurring phenomenon of fanatical violence, and can be seen in manifold permutations of the spiritual and the violent throughout history. Examples of this include the Japanese Samurai and the Native American Brave; warriors who find the idea of self-sacrifice in holy war traditions found in the crusades or in jihad; and the nationalised permutations of sacred heroic action, such as the deeds of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots during the Second World War, or the Romanian Iron Guard nests. Although the metaphysical nuances of each group are highly diverse, the common factor lies in their members perception of themselves as a part of a heroic elite within their society. As a part of this elite, they are prepared to die in battle as a vanguard fighting for a cause that extends beyond the material realm, in its full magnitude, and offers the ability for a special type of immortality for those whose lives are sacrificed to their higher cause. This sense of living out the role of a communal hero is appealing to the fanatic as it offers the ability to perceive of their praxis as manifesting all the key qualities of a legendary hero

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who is operating in the present rather than merely fantasising about such activities and will offer them a powerful sense of giving birth to a new age. It thereby combines a highly selfish drive for personal immortality through the cultural memory of legends and so forth, and also, potentially, an eternal metaphysical home of some description, alongside a deeply altruistic aspect redeeming not merely the self but an entire society, and for the fanatic bringing a sense of chronos back to society. This sense of dying to oneself to be reborn as a sacred cultural hero within a particular society, therefore, forms one permutation of the myth of creation and rebirth. This provides the vital link between self-sacrifice and the wider societal purpose of the fanatics mythopoeic calculus. Further, what is created by this profound rationale for self-destruction is a belief in a powerful new dialectic between present and future. Such a dialectic simplistically views the present as decadent and degenerate, and contrasts this with a utopian and regenerated future. This dialectic frames the behaviour of the fanatic and powerfully suggests the need to form myriad strategies in order for them to achieve the switch from the former to the latter. Further, it is in this latter category the utopian future that the fanatic has generated a new psychological homeland, rendering the present as a state characterised by a sense of liminality. This dialectic between the degenerate present and a utopian future is central to a fanatics subjective perception of the world, and allows for the creation of an increasingly Manichaean perspective on political events that rationalises ideological praxis by eschewing grey areas for simplified binary opposites. The politically dominant force in the present is seen as the cause of the senses of decadence, degeneration and anomie that are perceived by the fanatic. This political hegemony, obviously, becomes the target for the fanatics ire and attack. It is the destruction of the ruling interloper who is perceived to be intruding into the longer historical or communal narrative of the society to which the fanatic identifies that forms the basis of the fanatics goals. Therefore, the ideology of the fanatic intuits not only the sense of an ending of the existing political hegemony, but also contains countervailing narratives of hope to establish a new hegemony, one that has, as its basis, the redemption of the people and society to which the fanatic identifies, and to provide for them an authentic psychological homeland. In sum, the chrono-ethological perspective suggests a reading of politically fanatical activity notably suicide or martyr acts of terrorism that highlights the role played by certain key mythopoeic aspects relating to the subjective experiences of personal and cultural time, as perceived by their perpetrators. In particular, this approach highlights, first, that the fanatic attempts to live out a hero myth that, secondly, justifies self-sacrificial acts including, in extreme cases, suicide in order, thirdly, to create a milieu of self-sacrificial martyrdom which has the wider aim of achieving the overthrow of a hegemonic force, and which will lead to societal rebirth. The employment of poetic discourse and ritual behaviour to enact out the numinous experiences of a higher, sacred time kairos that is infused with possibility for change is central to the profound connection, established in the fanatics mindset, between a mythologised past and a vision of a utopian future. By studying the actions of extremists as being conditioned by such a psychology, it becomes possible for outsiders to their movement to develop an empathetic understanding of the delusion whereby acts of terrorist violence and self-immolating activity appear legitimate and even sacred to their perpetrators.

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Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 51 Bosnia in the Twentieth Century and Resources for Ideological Constructions of Crisis14 Before examining the Young Bosnia movement, it is worth briefly summarising the historical context surrounding the Archdukes assassination, in order to sketch the historical background against which the ideology of the movement evolved. The region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, composed of Serbs, Croats and Muslims, was until 1878 ruled by the Ottoman Empire. After the kmets (serfs) rising of 1875 that sought to overthrow Ottoman rule, the region was transferred to a Habsburg occupation at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. With the legal shift of responsibility to Austro-Hungary came a small phase of modernisation to the region. However, in the main the region remained predominantly underdeveloped, highly illiterate and agrarian. The new Habsburg occupier suppressed political opposition, though underground networks of counter-hegemonic political activity did exist. These were connected with forms of piecemeal cultural awakening and not political violence. To the east of Bosnia lay Serbia, itself growing in stature as an independent South Slav nation, with Belgrade presented as the Piedmont of the Balkans. Within Bosnia, desires for achieving autonomy from the great powers were often focused upon Belgrade; within Serbia various plans were also formed for creating unified South Slav political structures. At the turn of the century, the future of the region was increasingly unstable. It became the geographical site for a number of differing international political projects: a possible return to Ottoman rule, consolidation as an Austro-Hungarian frontier land or, potentially, the key Serbian acquisition in the construction of either a federal Yugoslavia or a new Greater Serbia. This uncertainty was compounded on 6 October 1908, when the region was fully annexed by the Austro-Hungarian authorities. They were fearful of, among other factors, either an attempt to recapture the region by the Ottoman Empire itself radicalised by the Young Turks movement or a Serbian invasion. After the annexation of 1908, a fundamental change in cultural and political attitudes towards Austro-Hungary can be observed throughout the Balkan region. In Serbia, the organisation Narodna Odbrana (National Defence) was created to combat Austro-Hungarian domination through counter-hegemonic literature. Its primary purpose was to radicalise Serbian, as well as South Slav, youth organisations in Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. Within a few months, National Defence boasted over 5,000 members across the South Slav region. National Defence was augmented by another organisation in Serbia, which had the specific agenda of creating a Greater Serbia, rather than a unified Yugoslavia. This group was an offshoot of the Serb Army and was called Union or Death, more commonly known as the Black Hand. Union or Death was created in 1911 and was dominated by the charismatic and bellicose Serbian general, General Apis. In Bosnia, the cultural reaction to the annexation was one of renewed hostility towards the Habsburg rule. Among politically conscious students, there was a marked shift away from the piecemeal cultural awakening associated with dominant ideologues such as Thomas Masaryk. This was replaced with far more ascetic, bellicose and revolutionary ideas that were similar to those of National Defence. These radicalised Bosnian youths began to gain a public profile through the organisation of secret societies, street demonstrations and

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other subversive activity, and came to be known as the Young Bosnia movement. Broadly, this was a shift away from the earlier emphasis on forms of piecemeal cultural metamorphosis which now appeared no longer credible as an agent of change and towards a radicalised political and cultural world view, often through violent acts and embracing an openly revolutionary rhetoric. This new palingenetic, mood that sensed the need for violent ideological praxis was expressed many times, for example here by Borivoje Jevti c, one time roommate of Gavrilo Princip:
ce a] [t c u

Masaryk realism, good for the northern country and its inhabitants at a much higher level of civilization, was not applicable to Bosnia, which had no corresponding culture and which for its awakening needed the smell of blood more than the three Rs.15 To get a clearer idea of their general ideological rubric, we can read the objectives of one society attended by Gavrilo Princip: 1. To oppose everything national and antinational in the material and spiritual life of our peoples by means of: a. Radical anticlericalism. b. Radical elimination of destructive alien influences and promotion of Slavization of our culture against Germanization, Magyarization and Italianization. c. Fighting against attitudes of servility, sneaking and contemptibility and raising of national honour and pride. d. Expropriation of estates, liquidation all prerogatives of aristocracy and all social privileges and the democratisation of political consciousness and the political awakening of people. A national defence against alien spiritual and material forces; national offensive to reawaken the subjugated and half-lost parts of our people by spiritual and material means.16

2.

What becomes clear from this and other sources is the fusion of a sense of national identity, defined as a spiritual, collective entity, thereby promoting a sacralised politics; the desire for the removal of foreign influences, expressed in a language concerned with senses of both spiritual and national alienation; a socialistinspired politics with a progressive programme of wealth redistribution; the desire for a new politics seen as just, or legitimate; the appeal to abstract human qualities such as honour and pride, implying an acute sensitivity to a lack of dignity in the then present political dynamic; and the use of rhetorical tropes of rebirth political reawakening of people and reawaken the subjugated, for example. This can all be seen as expressions of an ideology both sensitive to crisis and seeking to find hope through a deeply held sense of renewal. The ideas that fed into this project were highly diverse, and included anarchists such as Kropotkin and Bakunin, utopian socialists such as William Morris, Marxist revolutionaries such as Trotsky, philosophers such as Nietzsche, and romantic national revolutionaries such as Mazzini, Garibaldi and various figures from German nationalist movements. Though these thinkers are highly idiosyncratic, they all typified the palingenetic condition of modernity insofar as they sought to achieve counterfactual futures that moved away from a present perceived as

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 53 being in a state of crisis and decadence, and presented a variety of alternate visions of idealised futures. These diverse ideologues appear to have been used syncretically by the Young Bosnia movement collectively to forge the rationalisation of desires for a reconnection with the idea of national independence, one sympathetic to ideas of redistributive socialism. Moreover, thanks to this broad ideological synthesis, the young intellectuals of Young Bosnia, notably Princip himself, felt they were living in a distinctly modern milieu in which they formed part of the cultural and political avant-garde. This is a situation that, as Kermodes model suggests, encourages the experience of contemporary history in terms of a kairos, pregnant with possibilities, rather than a dead chronos. Also, this was an intellectual dynamic sensitive to a sense of spiritual ambivalence, due to the wider impact of the partial secularisation of European society, often associated with definitions of modernity. For example, one Young Bosnian article called The National Milieu and Modernism, published in 1908, stated: It is not important which attitude a man has regards to todays problems. One could be a Socialist, an individualist, a spiritist, a theosophist, a Buddhist metaphysic whatever he likes but the most important thing is to feel our pain and our efforts, to understand todays problems. The one who feels this agitation of our time, who is trying to find the remedy for todays calamities, is modern, despite his opinion as to what this remedy consists of. Modern man is the one who in this epoch of democracy and libertarianism, feels in our country the whole absurdity of an anachronistic system, who feels hunger and the lack of justice for our poor masses and who is fighting for bread and freedom for a naked and starved people.17 Again the sensitivity to the present as a time of crisis and the attempt to articulate this as a period of kairos is overwhelming. In the post-annexation period, the growing cohesiveness of national identity and sense of social injustice developing among the Young Bosnians was further radicalised by the stories of violent conquest by South Slavs in the Balkan wars. Ivo Andri c, the author and one-time member of the Young Bosnia movements, described this impact on the new intelligentsia in his Nobel Prize-winning The Bridge over the River Drina:
ce a] [t c u

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These were a new sort of young men, educated in various cities and states and under various influences With every summer they brought back with them free-thinking views on social and religious questions and an enthusiastically revived nationalism which recently, especially after the Serbian victories in the Balkan wars, had grown to a universal conviction and, in many of these youths, to a fanatical desire for action and personal sacrifice.18 Such a passage highlights the role played in modern palingenetic movements by the myth of an anthropological revolution pioneered by a new breed of human beings the new man attuned to the needs of an imminent new era.19 In 1910 what had previously been a subject of speculation was transformed into a historical act. A Young Bosnian named Bogdan Zeraji c was determined to shoot Emperor Franz Joseph on 3 June during his visit to Sarajevo. However, despite
Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u

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following Franz Joseph on parts of his official tour, Zeraji c was unable to pluck up the courage to carry out the assassination. He regained his resolve on 15 June, and at 11.20 a.m. he made an attempt on the life of the new governor of the region, General Marijin Varesanin. As the governor returned from the Bosnian Sabor (parliament), Zeraji c fired five bullets at his carriage. Vare sanin himself was not injured; all Zeraji cs bullets missed him. Vare sanin then stopped the coach in order to find the perpetrator, who had by this time had turned the gun on himself, and the Governor found Zeraji cs body lying on the bridge from where he had fired. Myths soon developed around the new martyr. Princips roommate recalled that the governor had kicked Zeraji cs body repeatedly, saying you scum, you scum, though no proof for this exists. Others claimed his dying words were: I leave my revenge to Serbdom. One youth later recalled the impact of the event:
c] s a o r [ n Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u s] c a o [ r n Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u s] c a o [ r n Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u

I was then in the fourth class of the Sarajevo school. Up to that time we had only read about the terrorist exploits of the revolutionaries, which stirred our imagination, but we never dreamed that something like that could happen in our own town It seemed as if the eyes of the youth were suddenly opened. Young men passing by the Emperors Bridge, where Zeraji c killed himself after the unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Governor, started to pay him homage by taking off their caps.20
ce a] [t c u

This sense of respect for Zeraji cs sacrifice subsequently took a more clearly sacralised turn. The Young Bosnians discovered Zeraji cs grave in the Sarajevo cemetery; it then became a shrine for the movement. As early as 1912 Princip gave an oath on Zeraji cs grave to redeem his death. Other Young Bosnians decorated his grave with flowers, only for the police to remove them the next morning. The movement now had a martyr to add to its mythopoeic armoury. One highly influential ideologue of the Young Bosnia movement promoting this myth of individual martyrdom was Vladimir Ga cinovi c. His underground writings often attempted to intensify the longing for the sacred in the ideological sensibilities of the Young Bosnians. For example, the following quotation demonstrates how the pervasive metaphors of awakening and renewal, as well as appeals to past traditions, were used to foster a revolutionary spirit:
Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u

These young people, not yet awakened, will be our apostles, the creators and cross-bearers of new religions and new hearts. They will awaken our dead gods, revive our fairies who have withered away because of sadness and love, they will bring a new empire of liberty and man, and save the Serbian soul from vice and decay.21 After Zeraji c turned himself into a national martyr, Ga cinovi c wrote a highly influential underground pamphlet called Death of a Hero, one that marked the mood among many radicalised youths of the Young Bosnia groups. Here, we can again find tropes of cultural degeneration that could only be transcended through the actions of a new man embracing vitality and change. Ga cinovi c continued that in the face of the resignation and apathy of the age there comes upon the stage a man of action, of strength, of life and virtue, a type such as opens an epoch, proclaims ideas, and enlivens suffering and spellbound hearts.22 He then continues to extol the virtues of sacrifice, presenting Zeraji cs act as the actions of
Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u ce a] [t c u Zn [c] a o r ce a] [t c u

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 55 a heroic type of new man that is artistic and in solidarity with the unfortunate and downtrodden, before summing up the immediate futures predicament: Young Serbs, you who are rising from the ruins and foulness of to-day, will you produce such men? It seems as though this sums up the whole Serbian problem, political, moral, and cultural.23 Note here the notion that sacrificial activity is seen as both a creative and a performative act, one that is seen to transcend the merely tactical aims of an assassination attempt and rational explanations for the suicide such as to protect the organisations secrets from the authorities and works on a rhetoric level to draw on the mythopoeic qualities of martyrdom. This is consciously designed to have a didactic, ideological impact. Further, from a chrono-ethological perspective, this performative act is steeped in mythologising a sense of rebirth. The underlying notion of the death of the individual self to the higher national cause expressly holds, for Ga cinovi c, the potential to open a new epoch, where a new society is able to emerge, as if like a phoenix, from the ruins and foulness of to-day. He then directs this social narrative of regeneration through sacrifice towards other individuals, questioning their ability to meet the call to arms and building on the sense of crisis and opportunity. The notion of a united South Slav region was not only debated by Young Bosnians and Serb groups: Slovene youths were also becoming more radical and were developing an interest in the notion of revolutionary methods for achieving national self-determination. As in Bosnia, the incursion of cultural Germanisation through Habsburg rule, especially in school lessons, led to a radicalised youth seeking to forge the emergence of Slovene culture. Many in Slovenia, especially among older generations, were wary of the notion of a Greater Serbia, of which Slovenia would be a subordinate region. However, youth groups like the Slovene secret society Preporod (Rebirth) were interested in forging a common South Slav state through the revolutionary overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy. In its underground journal of the same name, the group published Article 35 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man claiming the right to revolution. As with their neighbours, this radicalisation was peppered with localised metaphysical resources. One article from 1913, drawing on the symbolism of the God Perun the Serbian God of thunder, war, strength and creation sent a message of solidarity to the Young Bosnians that read thus:
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Among Us Is the Powerful God, Perun We hear that the struggle has been waged in your part as well, that the voice of the God Perun is echoing. Do not be afraid, our friends. Do not waiver, because we, from the Bosnian mountains, are with you, with our soul, hearts, and the devastating thunder of Peruns gift to us. Forward bravely for our joint deed, in the great struggle for Yugoslavia.24 Croatia was also experiencing a radicalisation of youth groups directed against the Habsburg monarchy. There were demonstrations at the University of Zagreb in the early months of 1912, including a protest against the dictatorial rule of Count Slavko Cuvaj. Here, for the first time, the protestors included Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim youths. This sparked sympathetic demonstrations in Bosnia, attended by, among others, Gavrilo Princip. In July 1912, after acquiring weapons from the Black Hand, Young Bosnian Luka Juki c unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Cuvaj in a Zagreb street. Yet his actions nevertheless managed to kill a policeman and the Chief of the Croatian Department of Information before being arrested.
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The Habsburg reaction was to crack down sharply on student activities, which itself served to enhance Young Bosnias sense of alienation from the ruling class. In response, Juki cs death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in a bid to cool the atmosphere. Within the palingenetic mindset of Bosnian ultra-nationalists, such persecution by the enemy only fed the sense of the deepening crisis and the imminent need for national rebirth. Across the South Slav region, youth groups were increasingly alienated from, and disillusioned with, Austro-Hungarian hegemony. Consequently, they turned to ideological violence and direct action, and desired a self-governance that they could perceive as legitimate. Given this multi-ethnic sense of alienation and desire for national renewal, it is worth stressing that there existed a common unifying narrative to the collective sense of South Slav identity, especially given the centrality of its role in providing mythopoeic resources to the Young Bosnians. The symbolism of the enforced rule of the South Slavs stretched back to the defeat on 28 June 1389, on Kosovo Field, of Prince Lasar of Serbia by invading Turkish forces. This battle has since been seen as the symbolic defeat of the South Slav region more generally and led to the infliction of hundreds of years of Ottoman rule. Important here is the sense of a common South Slav identity existing before the defeat, and that a discrete body of people since the defeat had been oppressed for hundreds of years by alien forces, thereby providing a continuity between a distant, mythologised past and the present. This single historic event became highly mythologised over the following centuries and, through oral traditions and later through written romantic verse, became symbolic of a powerful formative myth for the construction of common South Slav identities as an oppressed people. A series of national martyrs was created around the event, including Prince Lazar, and also figures such as Milo c Obili c, who reputedly killed the Turkish commander the night before the battle of Kosovo Field. The Serbian Orthodox Church consecrated 28 June as St Vitus Day, the most sacred day in the Serbian calendar. One key author who influenced the Young Bosnians was Petar Petrovi c Njego s, whose romantic poem from 1847, Mountain Wreath, drew on the legend of national subjugation at the hands of a foreign power.25 Njego s was a poet likened in stature to the Serbs as Shakespeare is to the English, and Princip among others knew much of Njego ss verse by heart. Njego ss poem explores the themes of national struggle and freedom from oppressive external rule, heroic martyrdom and the right for Serbians and South Slavs to live peacefully and independently from the oppression symbolically commencing with the defeat of 1389. For Young Bosnians, the cultural production based upon the symbolic sense of defeat signi fied by the Kosovo legend which like Njego ss poem presented poetic and quasi-philosophical commentary on its injustice contained the underlying esoteric mythopoeic elements central to their ideological project: heroic acts; idealised self-sacrifice for the national cause; a bifurcation between a suppressed and sacred community and a profane tyranny; and the idea of renewal and redemption through the defeat of the Turks. The Young Bosnians transposed this traditional enmity from the earlier Ottoman rule to the Habsburg monarchy, and therefore were able to use the Kosovo legend, and the myriad cultural products that surrounded it, to legitimise their own fanatical self-sacrifice. Through such exoteric dimensions, they could develop an ideology that also held currency with the wider cultural and political awakening in the South Slav region. From this necessarily highly condensed account, it can be seen that the South Slav region was experiencing, at least among sections of its youth, sporadic and
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Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 57 unpredictable acts of revolutionary demonstrations and violence committed by extremists convinced that they were the vanguard of national renewal. They perceived the Habsburg monarchy to be tyrannical, and were attempting to both build on old myths and forge new ones in attempts to awaken their own cultural milieus against the background of an even more generalised sense of the crisis of the modern world, and the need for a new beginning for society. The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and its Aftermath The decision for the Archduke to visit Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 was made for several reasons. First, the Archdukes visit was intended to demonstrate the Habsburg Empires power in the area and, more specifically, to demonstrate that, after the Balkan wars, the monarchy retained its interest in the region. Also, General Potiorek, the regions governor, wanted the Archduke to inspect the troops, thereby fulfilling his duty as Inspector General of the Armed Forces. Potiorek was also keen for a member of the royal household to visit, as no prince had visited since Emperor Franz Josephs tour in 1910. Among the Habsburgs, the visit appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, nor is there any reason to believe that they purposely chose a state visit on St Vitus Day. We have seen how an ideology of revolutionary national liberation was forming among sections of the South Slav intellectuals, especially among a radicalised younger generation. Now let us focus on one subgroup within this dynamic, that of Gavrilo Princip and his associates. This cell was headed by schoolteacher, Serbian soldier and intellectual, Danilo Ilic. Like Gacinovic, Ilic was one of Young Bosnias leading intellectuals with connections to the Serbian revolutionary societies, and was therefore a valuable contact for other Young Bosnians especially those based in Sarajevo. Ilic and Princip were old friends, and first met in 1907 when Princip moved to Sarajevo to study at the citys Merchant School and rented the spare room in the Ilic household. Already, Princip was a committed revolu tionary. He was also very well read and held ambitions to become a poet, an elision between the political and the creative not only evocative of Njego s, but also important to his later ideological development. In personality he was ascetic, abstaining from vices like alcohol and tobacco, and also refrained from romantic relationships. In 1911 Princip began taking part in street demonstrations and was expelled from school in February 1912. Following this, he moved to Belgrade, initially to join the komite (the irregular Serbian units). However, Princip was turned down for being too small and too weak. This was a humiliation Princip would not forget, and the dismissal must be seen as a key factor in his resolve to find another way to fight for the Serbian and Yugoslav cause. By 1914 Princip was living in Belgrade and studying at the First Belgrade High School. The news of the Archdukes forthcoming visit in the summer, around the anniversary of the defeat of Kosovo Field, was publicised from mid-March. Upon hearing the news, Princip met with a fellow Young Bosnian, Nedeljko Cabrinovi c, who was also in Belgrade. Princip put the idea of an attempt on the heir apparent to him in a local park, and at the trial, Cabrinovi c recalled: After a short moments hesitation, I accepted this offer. We gave each other our word of honour, shook hands and departed.26 Princip, deciding they needed more recruits, then asked his roommate Trifko Grabe z to join the plot, and he enthusiastically accepted the offer. Offering an insight into Princips mental state during this formative period of the plot, friends observed he was often in deeply melancholic moods, though this was
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contrasted with a more optimistic view on the potential of a change in the regions political system. For example, he underlined the following lines in the poem Our Today: Even if we have not created anything ourselves, We shall at least have put an end to the misery of our time. Our graves will be the new foundation Of the new life without the flaws of today Of the better life which at least leads somewhere From a chrono-ethological perspective, what stands out from these lines is the way individual death is seen as a prelude to communal rebirth. It highlights his sense of wanting to be a key player in an imminent social revolution, and his underlining suggests that a true turning point in his society is only achievable through self-sacrifice, a task for which, as we shall see, he felt ready. The three nationalists decided to procure weapons for the plot from the komite. Princip and an old friend, Milan Ciganovi c, himself an ex-komite soldier, appear to have then contacted each other. As to the arrangements for the assassination, a lack of reliable sources means that here the story becomes vague. We have to rely mainly on a narrative of the events written by a bookshop owner and fellow conspirator, Du san Slavi c, some 14 years after the event. It appears from the text that Milan Ciganovi c and several other figures created a new secret society, based in Belgrade, sympathetic to the cause. These included Djuro Sarac, a fellow Young Bosnian, and Slavi c himself. This society was called Death or Life, and again drew upon many mythical and symbolic practices, thereby imbuing the ideology with a distinctly sacralised concept of the nation. For example, the council of seven members who headed Death or Life explicitly drew on the 1389 legend, naming themselves the Spirits of the Avengers of Kosovo. The level to which the individual was subordinate to the will of the organisation was demonstrated by a membership ritual that required not only the swearing of an oath promising secrecy in all activities, but also for a letter written to the Council of Spirits pledging the members suicide, if ever requested by the council, after the completion of a mission. To symbolise their enmity towards the Habsburg monarchy, the council held at least two meetings on the site of the 1868 assassination of Serbian Prince Mihailo Obrenovi c, who was killed, reputedly, with the aid of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. It appears that at these meetings Princip and the others were officially proposed as the future assassins and were called to join the society. After Princip, Grabe z and Cabrinovi c were sworn into the society they were issued with weapons and trained in their use. Milan Ciganovi c acquired the bombs and guns for the assassination from General Tankosi c the general who had previously refused Princip a place in the Serbian komite. (Incidentally, Princip, on hearing of the generals involvement, refused the latters request for a meeting, not forgetting his humiliation.) Tankosi c then offered to help the three conspirators travel from Belgrade to Sarajevo. This supply of weapons and passage is the most significant link between the assassination attempt and the Serbian terrorist organisation the Black Hand often incorrectly cited as the perpetrators of the assassination as Tankosi c was a member of the societys central committee. Death or Lifes Council of Spirits also furnished the three conspirators with cyanide poison, which they were then instructed to take after
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Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 59 the assassination of the Archduke. Princip reputedly claimed he would take his directly after the assassination. The three men thereafter made their way back across the border with the weapons and poison, crossing the checkpoint undetected with the help of the Black Hands connections to the Serbian Army, and then on to Sarajevo. This underground activity can all be seen as adding to the poetic quality of the assassins senses of mission and destiny. Meanwhile in Sarajevo, Danilo Ili c had been in contact with Princip and had recruited more assassins for the operation. He initially contacted Mehmed Mehemedba si c, the only Muslim among the conspirators. Ili c and Mehemedba si c had a history of such activities: they had been co-conspirators with the Black Hands General Apis in an attempted assassination on General Potiorek in 1913, though this had failed. Ili c met Mehemedba si c in March 1914 and the two agreed to stall their plans to mount another attack on Potiorek in favour of the new plot to kill the Archduke. Ili c also recruited two students from a younger, more radicalised generation of Young Bosnians, who were fully committed to the revolutionary overthrow of the Habsburgs and the creation of a culturally and politically unified South Slav state. First, Vaso Cubrilovi c contacted Ili c indepen dently, having his own ideas for an assassination, and secondly, in late May 1914 Cubrilovi c discussed the idea of an assassination with fellow student Cveto Popovi c, and he too joined the growing number of would-be assassins. The seriousness of the attempt was not lost on these youths. Popovi c noted the profound new outlook he acquired in the run-up to the attempt, especially in its relationship to the Kosovo Field mythology:
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Cn [c] a o r

After I gave my word to join the plot I spent the whole night thinking and dreaming about the assassination. In the morning I was quite a different man. Convinced that I only had until June 28th to live, Vidovdan St Vitus Day I looked upon everything from a new angle Only one thought tormented me: that we might not succeed and thus make fools of ourselves.27
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Cabrinovi c wrote to a couple he was friendly with a day before the assassination, and similarly asserted this reorientation of life in the face of to his mind at this point certain death. In an expression of hope for the future, this letter simply read:
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DEAR FRIENDS, On the eve of my death, deadly ill, I wish you and your wife all possible happiness in our new and free fatherland.28 The only conspirator who appears to have demonstrated second thoughts over the endeavour was Danilo Ili c. This was not only through his own moral ques tioning of the merits of the assassination, but also on account of the reservations of General Apis, who, sources suggest, did not support any such assassination attempts as they may have engendered a war between Austria and Serbia at a time when Serbia was ill-prepared for such an eventuality. In mid-June the Chief of Death or Life, Djuro Sarec, went to Bosnia in an attempt to pass on this message. Unable to enter Sarajevo, as the authorities there knew him to be a subversive figure, he met with Ili c in Bosanki Brod. Ili cs growing unease was
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further influenced by his own reasoning that the reaction of the authorities to the assassination would only lead to greater suffering for the Serb people. Also, Ili c was having doubts about the strategy of an assassination without the presence of a cohesive revolutionary party able to capitalise on the situation. However, it appears that Princips stronger will to action led to Ili cs continued willingness to participate. At the initial inquiry, Princip claimed: I was not in agreement with the postponement of the assassination because a certain morbid yearning for it had been awakened in me.29 Perhaps through Princips force of personality, Ili c accepted his role in the events and prepared plans for the placements of Life or Deaths assassins, based upon a newspaper report of the Archdukes route through Sarajevo. Ili c issued the plans and weapons to the conspirators on the afternoon and evening of 27 June. Indicating the importance of earlier martyrs as figures to help inspire action, Ili c then went and spent some time at Zeraji cs shrine. Cabrinovi c later did the same. Gavrilo Princip sat drinking with friends until around 11.00 p.m., and then also visited the grave, leaving flowers. On the morning of the assassination, the seven assassins took up positions along the imperial partys route, mingling freely with the crowds gathering to see the Archduke. The first assassin to make an attempt was not Princip but Cabrinovi c. When he saw the approaching convoy, he asked a police agent which car the Archduke was travelling in, to which the police agent enthusiastically indicated the third one. Cabrinovi c then took his bomb, activated it and threw it towards his target. He missed, and the bomb exploded on the street behind the car, injuring around a dozen people. Cabrinovi c then took his cyanide and jumped into the river Miljacka. Seconds later, he was dragged from the shallows, and when questioned who he was, he exclaimed, I am a Serbian hero. It appears the cyanide was in some way defective and did not have the desired effect, and Cabrinovi c was taken to the local authorities. The Archduke then travelled swiftly to the town hall to be greeted by an unaware Lord Mayor, who began his speech: Your Imperial and Royal Highness, your Highness! Our hearts are full of happiness on the occasion of the most gracious visit . After realising the gravity of the situation, the Mayor discussed with General Potiorek and the imperial party a new plan of action. An alternate route, away from the crowded Apel Quay where Cabrinovi c had launched his bomb, was decided upon and the Archduke headed back to the motorcade. Back on the streets, his driver failed to take the new turning off Apel Quay for the alternate route. Realising his mistake, the driver braked to turn around and, at this point, Princip stepped forwards. In his own words, speaking just 45 minutes later to the local judge:
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When the second car arrived, I recognised the Heir Apparent At that same moment I was filled with a peculiar feeling and I aimed at the Heir Apparent from the pavement I believe that I fired twice, perhaps more, because I was so excited. Whether I hit the victim or not, I cannot tell, because instantly people started hitting me.30 Princip also tried to take his poison, but vomited. He then tried to raise his pistol to his head, but was prevented from pulling the trigger as he was dragged away. The Archduke and his wife were declared dead around an hour later. The wider international consequences of the assassination are out of the scope of this article, but are well known to all who know the history of the origins of the

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 61 First World War.31 It is worth highlighting that the European public was highly conscious of the unfolding events, as reported in the popular press, which increasingly whipped up the war fever so marking the summer of 1914.32 Locally, there was a crackdown on Serbian organisations as the authorities followed up leads gained by the arrest of Cabrinovi c and Princip. Apart from Mehemedba si c, who avoided detection, the conspirators were tried in October 1914 with a number of others connected with the assassination. At the trial only Ili c was old enough at the time of the assassination to qualify for the death penalty. He was hanged. Cubrilovi c received a 16-year jail sentence, and Popovi c 13 years. Princip, escaping the death penalty by one month, was sentenced to 20 years hard labour, as was Grabe z and Cabrinovi c. Of those sentenced, only Cubrilovi c and Popovi c survived the war; the rest died of tuberculosis whilst in prison. No members of the organisation Death or Life, despite a brief investigation into the possibility of its existence, were prosecuted and the organisation escaped official detection. We can glean further insight into Princips thoughts on the assassination from a series of notes taken by one Dr Pappenheim, a psychiatrist who conducted a series of prison interviews with Princip before he died of tuberculosis in 1918. In these interviews, Princip asserted his belief that his act would spark a wave of nationalist fervour one that would be the prelude to an irresistible movement of national liberation. The role of the Bosnian intellectuals was, therefore, crucial. Pappenheim noted that Princip
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considers that if he prepared the atmosphere the idea of revolution and liberation would spread first among the men of intelligence and the later in the masses Thought that if Austria were thrown into difficulties then revolution would come. But for such a revolution one must prepare the ground, work up feeling. Nothing happened. By assassination this spirit might be prepared. There had already been attempts at assassinations before. The perpetrators were like heroes to our young people Thought that thereby attention of the intelligentsia would be directed upon it. As for instance Mazzini did in Italy.33 Pappenheim asked Princip to write down some of his own understandings of his motives during these interviews. Princips thought was clearly marked by a deeply held sense of utopian revolutionary nationalism, a varient of a palingenetic mindset: There must be created a realization where differences equalise, (adds) are equalised, between European peoples. But we as nationalists, although we had read socialistic and anarchistic writings, did not occupy ourselves much with this question, thinking that each of us had another duty a national duty.34 As for the timing of Princips sense of destiny in murdering the Archduke, his testimony shows that once he learned of the Archdukes visit, he put aside more general ideological activities and he became focused solely on the assassination attempt. He immersed himself in reading material that would prepare him psychologically for the assassination and the suicide that would follow it. Pappenheim noted that he Read much in Sarajevo. In Sarajevo used to dream every night he was a political murderer. Read much about the Russian revolution,

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about the fightings. This idea had taken hold of him. Admits the earlier constraints had vanished.35 Interestingly, Princip showed he was aware of the contemporary instabilities in Europe that many intellectuals claimed portended a world war: it is all indifferent to him, on account of his illness and the misfortune of his people. Has sacrificed his life for the people. Could not believe that such a World War could break out as a result of an act like this. They did indeed believe that a World War might break out, but not at that moment.36 Pappenheims notes go on to say that Princip was unable to feel contrition: cannot feel responsible for the catastrophe; and that he felt that no good had come of the action: fears he did it in vain. However, the Young Bosnians viewed Princips actions as those of a national hero. For example, fellow conspirator Cubrilovi c commented thus upon the dynamic between the Kosovo Field defeat and the regenerative heroism of Princips double murder: The Serbs carry on a hero cult, and today with the name of Milos Obili c they bracket that of Gavrilo Princip; the former stands for Serbian Heroism in the tragedy of Kosovo Field, the latter for heroism in the final liberation.37 Ivor Ili c, a schoolboy and Young Bosnian from Tuzla on the day of the assassination, noted the impact of the assassination:
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it proves that Young Bosnia is alive, that there exists an element which is prepared to be martyred The life of a nation exists in blood, blood is the God of a nation, death superseded the insurrection, and the assassination is the insurrection of the nation.38 In the literature that developed around the subject in Yugoslavia, Princip was often hailed as a national hero, especially in hagiographic biographies like Bora Jetvi cs. In post-1918 Yugoslavia there were also attempts to appropriate the episode as part of the creation a historic sense of national identity by attaching the conspirators names to cultural and political institutions. Further, Marxist historians of the region have often attempted to portray Young Bosnia critically as a movement lacking a coherent ideology but Princip generously, as a key agent of change in the Marxist conception of history.39
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Conclusions and Tentative Suggestions Poets unlike other men are faithful only in the hour of calamity and leave those who are enjoying well-being. We poets are born for struggle; we are passionate hunters, but we do not eat the prey. A thin and almost invisible fence divides us; it is not as keen as the edge of the swords but nevertheless it is just as lethal. Without damage to my soul I could not cross this line, because we can endure anything but authority.40 Ivo Andri c, A Story From Japan
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This article has shown that the Young Bosnia movement attempted to become the nucleus of a popular movement of national reawakening by unifying the most

Sacred Time in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism 63 extreme elements of Serbian and other South Slav nationalisms, and that this was part of a more general phenomenon which saw radicalised youth organisations unifying around the common enemies of external rule. We have also seen the presence of a distinctly sacralising semiotics at the heart of this movements ideology, a feature that is crucial to understanding how the movement was able to inspire acts of violence and self-sacrifice. Consequently, it seems appropriate to consider the Young Bosnia ideology to be one partially assuming the form of a political religion among its less committed and fringe membership, in addition to becoming a fully-fledged one for its core membership. This is because it drew not only on elements of faith that are common to all forms of ideological commitment, but also because it contained an overtly metaphysical axis far removed from a simply materialistic conception of secular nationhood, or progressive political movement, for its core followers, such as Princip. Further, the Young Bosnians can be seen to have been motivated by particular aspects of a mythologised past and a utopian sense of the future that, to their minds at least, elevated their behaviour above the everyday and turned them into an esoteric body of actors (a self-conscious vanguard). These cells, via their individual struggle, terrorist activity and, ultimately, readiness for self-sacrifice, enacted at an individual level the sense of apocalypse needed to inspire action that, on a Societal level, would destroy the old hegemony of the Ottomans and Habsburgs, and would redeem the masses of the population in a new future. We can therefore see that, for the committed members of Young Bosnia, their project clearly contained mythopoeic tropes of sacralised ideological praxis. By interpreting their psychology in this way, we are offered a heuristically usefully approach to Young Bosnias motivations: believing they were living during a time that was out of joint, they devoted themselves to generating hope for fundamental change, and they envisaged that ideologically motivated murder and self-sacrifice were perpetrated in order to find a wider sense of societal redemption. The various political instabilities of the region in the period leading up to the assassination, combined with the growing desire for national self-determination in the body politic of the region, fed into this development of esoteric palingenetic ideologies. The period also produced events that seemed to bear out the conclusions of the mythopoeic ideological constructions that were created by the regions radicalised youth. This inculcated, on a societal level, a faith in the rebirth of the nation, and on an individual level induced the archetypal hero figure prepared to sacrifice his life for the greater good. In this, the Young Bosnians believed themselves to be the harbingers of a new era of unified independence for the South Slav region, exemplifying the trope of rebirth symptomatic of the palingenetic condition.

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Notes
1. For a lengthy and useful discussion of the concept of political religion and sacralised elements of ideology, see Emilio Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1/1 (Summer 2000), pp.1855; and for a summary of the role of the mythopoeic elements present in all ideological constructs, and the powerful psychodynamic force they can hold over behaviour, see Christopher Flood, Political Myth: A Theoretical Introduction (London: Routledge, 1996). 2. For a full explanation of this approach, see Roger Griffin, Shattering Crystals: The Role of Dream Time in Extreme Right-Wing Political Violence, Terrorism and Political Violence 15/1 (Spring 2003), pp.5794.

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3. Herman Broch, The Sleepwalkers (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), p.296. 4. Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, in idem, Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999), pp.24555. 5. The allusion is to Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5, when Hamlet is told by the ghost of his dead father that he was murdered by Claudius, and therefore learns of the unjust nature of Claudiuss reign as the new king. 6. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). 7. Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974). 8. Mercia Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (San Diego, CA: Harvest Books, 1987). 9. Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (London: Fontana Press, 1993). 10. Ernst Bloch The Principle of Hope, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). 11. Jacques Derrida, The Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (London: Routledge, 1994). 12. Griffin (note 2), pp.601. 13. Campbell (note 9), p.30. 14. In addition to texts already cited, the following were of general assistance in conceiving this section: Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 18041999 (London: Penguin Books, 1999); Davis MacKenzie, Serbian Nationalist and Military Organisations and the Piedmont Idea, 18441914, East European Quarterly 16/3 (1982), pp.32344; Carole Rogel, The Slovenes and Yugoslavism 18901914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Starvo Skendi, Balkan Cultural Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); and Wayne S. Vucinovich, Mlada Bosna and the First World War, in Robert A. Kann, Bla K. Kirly and Paula S. Fichtner (eds.), The Habsburg Empire in World War I: Essays on the Intellectual, Military, Political and Economic Aspects of the Habsburg War Effort (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp.4570. 15. Borivoje Jevtic , as quoted in Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p.238. 16. Dedijer (note 15), p.217. 17. Mitrinovic , quoted in ibid., p.232. 18. Ivo Andric , The Bridge over the River Drina (London: Harvill Press, 1959), pp.2312. 19. The concept anthropological revolution is derived from Emilio Gentiles observation of the phenomenon of modern palingenetic ideologies and state structures generating idealised images of redemptive male figures, such as the Nazi Aryan man or the new Soviet Man. For more on the function of this concept within totalitarian ideologies, see Gentile (note 1); for more on the roles of idealised images of the male figure in politics throughout the twentieth century, and the new man, see George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 20. Dragoslav Ljubibrati c , quoted in Dedijer (note 15), p.249. 21. Gac inovic , quoted in ibid., p.213. 22. Gac inovic , as quoted in R.W. Seton Watson, Sarajevo (London: Hutchinson, 1925), pp.701. 23. Gac inovic , quoted in Seton-Watson (note 22), pp.701. 24. Dedijer (note 15), p.222. On the use of traditional gods as a part of the semiotics of nationalism and violent ideological constructs, it is also of interest to note that another European god of thunder, war and states of trans-like holy madness, Wotan/Wodin, not only played a key role in the vlkisch thought that fed into Nazism, but also the same god was evoked by the Latvian proto-fascist movement the Thunder Cross. 25. Petar Petrovitch Nyegosh, The Mountain Wreath (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1930). 26. Dedijer (note 15), p.290. 27. Ibid., p.305. 28. Cabrinovic , quoted in ibid., p.281. 29. Dedijer (note 15), p.309. 30. Ibid., p.321. 31. For an extended discussion of the July Crisis, see Hew Strachan, The First World War: Volume I: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.64102. 32. For a longer discussion on the role of the media in the generation of war fever during 1914, see Steven Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 18801918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp.2601. 33. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Confessions of the Assassin Whose Deed Led to the World War, Current History (August 1927), pp.699707, 7036.
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34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. Ibid., p.705. Ibid., p.706. Ibid., p.704. Cubrilovic , quoted in Dedijer (note 15) p.260. Dedijer (note 15), p.324. See Vucinovich (note 14), esp. pp.5962. Ivo Andric , A Story From Japan, reprinted in Dedijer (note 15), pp.2334.
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