SERBIAN REVOLUTIONARY WHO CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY

Abstract

Vladimir Gaćinović was born on May 25, 1890 in the village known as Kačanj in the municipality of Bileć. His parents was Jovan, a famous priest, and Saveta. After completing the primary school in Bileć Vladimir attended the gymnasium in Mostar from the autumn of 1901. Mostar was the center of all important events in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vladimir became mature really fast, bearing the seal of his native region of desperate nature, painful life and warrior tradition. He impressed the members of the literary elite of Mostar with his lecture about Petar Kočić. He also founded a secret student association and actively participated in the work of literary-philosophical societies Sloboda and Matica. In 1907, Vladimir attended Bogoslovija in Reljevo and at the beginning of 1908 he became a member of the newspapers known as Narod, where he remained until the annexation, when this publication was stopped under the pressure of censorship. On October 20, 1908, he was arrested for public resistance against occupying terror. After he was released Gaćinović went to Serbia across Montenegro. When he came in Serbia in January 1909, together with Bogdan Žerajić, Dragutin Kokanović, Aca Bogdanović and Jovan Gašić, Gaćinović finished the course in Vranje which was led by Lieutenant Aca Blagojević. By the end of that year he finished the seventh grade of the gymnasium in Valjevo. He graduated in the First Belgrade Gymnasium in June 1910, and on October 1 of the same year he begun studying literature under the mentorship of Jovan Skerlić at the Belgrade University. Serbian government provided him in 1911 a scholarship for philosophy studies in Vienna, as one of the best student of the Belgrade University. He was often absent from this studies due to the vibrant political and revolutionary activities in the country. The violent behaviour of the monarchy contributed to the mass gathering of citizens around a group of revolutionaries and on that way Mlada Bosna turned into a secret organization in the first half of 1911, after the article of Mlada Bosna published by Vladimir Gaćinović in the Almanac of the Prosvjeta. At that time, almost all revolutionary students accepted the idea of Vladimir Gaćinović and the program that he later exposed in his works “The Death of a Hero”. “Desperate cry” and “To those Who Come. Mlada Bosna became after that a secret revolutionary organisation whose founder and ideolical leader was Vladimir Gaćinović. That organisation had clear political program: “the liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its integration with Serbia”. Vladimir was a member of the organisation named “Unity of Death”, and he travelled to United States with Pera Slijepčevićt o find voluntary contributions and volunteers for the World War I. Vladimir Gaćinović was aslo the organizer of the assassination of the AustroHungarian Crown Prince. He graduated on the Faculty of Philosophy in Freiburg on the subject “Gij’s Ethic”. On the 5th of August after drinking coffee in the morning in a hotel in Fribog he lost consciousness. Doctors tried to save him and operated him but with no success. Vladimir Gaćinović died on Saturday, August 11, 1917, exactly at 14:30 pm. The death of Vladimir Gaćinović almost coincides with the shooting of Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis, the chief of the Intelligence Departmen of the General Staff of the Army of the Kingdom of Serbia. Although the causes of his death will probably never be clarified, post-mortem findings indicate that he was poisoned by arsenic. Vladimir Gaćinović was buried on August 14, 1917 at Sаing George’s cemetery in Gneva; in 1934 his remains were transferred to the Orthodox cemetery St. Marko at Koševo in Sarajevo. On November 22, 2002, at 11 am he was transferred again and his remains was buried at a family cemetery in Kačanj in Herzegoina on June 20, 2003.