Dmitar Tasić, MSc: War after the War: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians Armed Forces in Kosovo and Metohija and Macedonia 1918-1920

This publication deals with the events that took place in Macedonia, South Serbia and Kosovo and Metohija (South and old Serbia) right after the First World War. This region inherited a powerful legacy from Ottoman rule, years of Balkan nationalisms, rebellions, epidemics and conflicts. The newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians had to face different traditions, cultures and political ideas and to reconcile numerous antagonisms at the same time – primarily religious and national. Those problems were connected to unsolved disputes that Yugoslavia had with its neighbors. The Yugoslavs had a very clear goal – successful incorporation of those regions into their heterogeneous and ambitious state. The Yugoslav Armed Forces had a mission to establish stable and secure surroundings as the main precondition for spurring economic, cultural and political development. The complexity of political relations in those regions was manifest in everyday life through the Albanian rebellion, the infiltration of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization’s guerrillas (Внатрешна Македонска Револуционерна Организација - ВМРО), terrorism, border conflicts and occupation of new regions.