In the book “The First World War as a Caesura? Demographic Concepts, Population Policy, and Genocide in the Late Ottoman, Russian, and Habsburg Spheres” from 2020, we find interesting information. Namely, the biases of the newly recruited Slavic gendarmeries in the Austro-Hungarian army of 1914. These conscripts would treat Slavic Orthodox Montenegrins and Catholic and Muslim Albanians harshly. Albanian beys were interned with “remorseless severity” and Albanian boys aged 14-18 were also interrogated violently. Serbian Orthodox minority of Peja, who had been murdering and pillaging the Albanians since 1912, were spared from any violence. This information shows us the level of Slavic ethno-religious bias against Albanians at the time, regardless of their religion.

Cited:

“The Austro-Hungarian gendarmerie formations in Montenegro were clearly biased towards the Slavic Muslims in the occupied territory: many soldiers and non-commissioned officers were Slavic Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina, most of them openly favoured their fellow Slavic Muslims and practiced unprovoked brutality against Orthodox Montenegrins.

But the gendarmerie’s bias was not necessarily religiously motivated-there was a strong ethnic as well as social-revolutionary component as well: the gendarmes were also hostile towards Catholic as well as Muslim Albanians.

During the ‘Vešović-Affair, for instance, the Orthodox Serb minority in the district of Peja, which had treated the Albanian Muslim majority as second-class-citizens since 1912, was widely spared from internment, though most Albanian beys members of the wealthy, landowning elite were interned with “remorseless severity”, including male adolescents aged 14 to 18. After years of Montenegrin despotism, Slavic Muslims in Austro-Hungarian gendarmerie uniforms began to wreak havoc.

The disastrous economic situation in the military governorate-general could only be stabilized by massive imports of food crops from Austria-Hungary, which, while not preventing hunger in Montenegro succeeded in mitigating it at least slightly. However, the desolate nutrition situation in Montenegro became worse from year to year. A particular hardship and provocation for the tribes was the requisition of their livestock.

This led to more and more Orthodox Montenegrins remembering the traditional ‘predatory way’ they had gained the resources to feed their families just a few decades ago: by seizing booty. In many districts inhabited by Orthodox tribes, bandits gathered in the mountains and forests. In early 1918, there were so many predatory bands active in the military governorate-general that the Austro-Hungarian forces and civilian decision-makers feared they would face a full-fledged insurgency.

However, it can be speculated that a high-ranking Orthodox Serb civil servant from Bosnia and Herzegovina was the mastermind behind the oppression of the Orthodox Montenegrins in the military governorate-general. It was said that Ljeskovac, who was district civil commissioner in Kolashin, wanted to kill “miserable Montenegrins”. In Milovan Dilas’ novel Montenegro, Ljeskovac is the archetypical Bosnian Serb loyal to Austria-Hungary, who wants to unite all South Slavs under Habsburg rule.

On 15 June 1916, up to fifty Montenegrin officers and civil servants were supposed to be arrested on the accusation of having planned an armed revolt against the occupiers. Among those officers was General Radomir Vešović (1871-1938), who shot the officer sent to arrest him and fled into the inhospitable mountains of Kolashin. This led to thousands of internments. Vešović was never caught but surrendered after negotiations in late 1917.”

References

The First World War as a Caesura? Demographic Concepts, Population Policy, and Genocide in the Late Ottoman, Russian, and Habsburg Spheres 2020.

Footnotes: See Hetzer, p. 346-357, Dilas, pp. 105-277, (Rakočević, Crna Gora u prvom svjets-kom ratu, p. 317).