Paramilitarism in the Balkans

Abstract

This book is analysing the origins and manifestations of paramilitary violence in three neighbouring Balkan countries—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania after the First World War. It shows the role of paramilitarism in internal as well as in external policies in all three above-mentioned states, and it focuses on the main actors and perpetrators of paramilitary violence, their social backgrounds, motivations and future career trajectories. It also places the region into the broader European context of booming paramilitarism that came as the result of first global conflict, dissolution of old empires, creation of nation-states and simultaneous revolutions. While paramilitarism in most of post-Great War European states was the product of violence of the First World War and brutalization which societies of both victorious and defeated countries went through, paramilitarism in the Balkans was closely connected with the already existing traditions originating from the period of armed struggle against the Ottoman rule, and state and nation building projects of the late 19th and early 20th century. Paramilitary traditions here were so strong that in all subsequent crises and military conflicts in the Balkans, i.e. the Second World War and Wars of Yugoslav Succession during the 1990’s, the legacy of paramilitarism remained alive and present. Among several features of paramilitarism in the Balkans 1917 - 1924 this book analyse strong inclination towards guerrilla warfare as the integral part of the warfare culture of the Balkans paramilitaries.