Comment by emanreus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emanreus | Hacker News Reader

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> Though it could be attributed to the author as a smaller mistake, as Franz was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist.

Not to nitpick but he was a Yugoslav nationalist. Though he was an ethnic Serb from Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the time occupied by Austria-Hungary.

During his trial he stated: "I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be freed from Austria."[1] He was a member of the Young Bosnia movement which included ethnic Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats.

The distinction will become important especially during WWII and later during Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s, and it's at the heart of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip#CITEREFDedijer...

The distinction is extremely important as since the breakup of Yugoslavia Serbian nationalists have tried and practically succeeded in erasing Young Bosnia's ideology presenting them as right-wing Serbian nationalists. Even saying they were Yugoslavian nationalists probably doesn't correctly convey to people of today what they really meant and wanted—they mostly also considered themselves anarchists/libertarian communists (one of the most read authors among the group was Kropotkin, Princip was actually reading his Memoirs of a Revolutionist the night before the assassination). Čabrinović was extremely active as an anarcho-syndicalist and had prior problems with authorities for organizing workers' struggles. They saw national (under the premise that most peoples of west Balkans are really the same ethnic group divided by religion) liberation as a means to further workers' liberation (if one looks at economic conditions of Bosnia, and most of Balkans at that time it can make some sense, but that's a different topic). What complicates their case was the fact that the assassination was materially supported by the Black Hand, a secret nationalist organization in the Serbian Army. To see how words and designations can mean little in politics, later in 1920's Yugoslavia there was a prominent “Yugoslavian nationalist“ movement ORJUNA (ORYUNA, Organization of Yugoslavian Nationalists) which was an openly fascist organization—the complete opposite of what Young Bosnia was.

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