Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

12 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

a sheer plunder, and if Austria-Hungary wants to swallow us, we shall gnaw its stomach.Ӣ

In their organisation of the society the founder members followed the practice advocated by Chernishevsky and other Russian revolutionaries. Each of them headed a secret group or “kruzhok” consisting of three members, none of whom knew the membership of any other kruzhok. To preserve secrecy the rules and aims of the society were not committed to paper, and correspondence was carried out by means of coded messages. The members of the society argued that the people of Bosnia and Hercegovina needed to be ideologically prepared for the final overthrow of their imperialist masters. To this end they set about organising secret societies and groups in the provinces and establishing links between the different villages. They also decided to make contact with “revolutionary, anarchist and nihilist organisations which exist in the world.”” One of their number left for Russia in January 1909 in order to establish links with the Russian revolutionary movement and to learn their methods of work.

Mitrinovi¢’s activities were interrupted during the summer months of 1909 which he spent in Hertzgnovi recuperating from suspected tuberculosis. By the autumn, however, he was actively involved in the launching of a new journal, Zora, “the voice of the Serbian progressive academic youth.” According to Palavestra, Mitrinovic, during the course of 1910, “held with his own hands many threads of the publishing and editorial policy of Zora.”° His work was interrupted once again in the summer of 1910 when he was arrested by the authorities. His friend Bogdan Zeraji¢ had evolved a plan to assassinate the Emperor Franz Josef on the occasion of his visit to Mostar and Sarajevo. Nothing came of this and so, a short time later on June 13th, 1910, Zeraji¢ had attempted to assassinate General Maryan Varesanin, committing suicide with the final shot from his revolver. It was alleged that Mitrinovic was an accomplice and an instigator of the act. An anonymous note to the Sarajevo authorities alleged that:

This man received to our knowledge 600 crowns a month from Belgrade . . . To Croatian writers he pays in advance a fee for working for Serb journals etc. . . . For the better elucidation of this attempt it is necessary at once to carry out a search of the rooms of Dimitrije Mitrinovi¢ in Zagreb. We add that we have written this letter to you, because this letter has the purpose of bringing to an end the conspiracies of the dangerous Mitrinovié . . „10

Mitrinovié was arrested and his rooms duly searched. Nothing incriminating was found and he was released after a few days, although his passport was confiscated for a while in an attempt to restrict his travelling.