by Nenad Z. Petrovic.

In the magazine IDEJE, owned and edited by Miloš Crnjanski, a series of polemical texts were published in late 1934 and during 1935, in which racist views and theories were expressed. The polemic between the two doctors was initiated by Branimir Maleš, an anthropologist and associate of the Central Hygiene Institute in Belgrade. Maleš claimed that blood types did not mean much, nor were they of decisive importance, in determining racial affiliation.

The question of the existence or non-existence of the Aryan race group cannot have any particular basis in the prevalence of blood groups. The author thus entered into a polemic with one of the theses of the racial theorists of Aryanism. Maleš’s theses were responded to, but without any indication that he was doing so, by another physician, Svetislav Stefanović.

He held the opposite opinion that blood groups are very important for determining racial affiliation. He attached importance to German racial theorists and fully accepted their opinion, and these were theories that had the opportunity to flourish in the climate of the National Socialist “revolution” after 1933, and therefore it is no coincidence that these ideas gained “citizenship rights” among a number of Serbian distinguished intellectuals, such as Stefanović.

This poet and translator of Shakespeare says: “The importance of blood groups in the racial problem is also understood and presented by Prof. Hans Gunther, the main ideologist of German racism and the author of the standard book ‘Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes’, whose last edition, Munich 1934, recorded a circulation of 84,000 copies. /…/

All this, in my opinion, shows that the blood index has already confirmed its importance in the investigation of the racial problem and that without it, even if it has only recently been recognized and established, racial questions cannot be treated, and even less can the existence of racial differences be renounced and denied.

On the contrary, racial science and anthropology in general have gained with this index one of the most important elements for the scientific investigation of the racial problem, which is on the agenda not only of pure speculation but also of current politics.”

Speculations about the “blood index” were not new. Stefanović considered himself one of the pioneers in this type of research. The method of compiling statistics on the frequency of certain blood groups among certain nations and populations in certain regions was extremely unfounded, and the conclusions drawn from a relatively small number of subjects were questionable.

Professor Ludvik Hirschfeld also examined blood groups on the Salonika front during World War I. He had the opportunity to take blood for serological analysis from sick soldiers of different races and nations – in addition to refugee Serbian soldiers, there were also French colonial troops from North Africa. The “blood index” would represent the mathematical ratio of the prevalence of the two most numerous blood groups – A and B within a nation, state or region. It was obtained by the formula: A-ABB+AB

Blood group A is predominant in the Nordic European race, group B is predominant in Asian and African peoples, while group O is dominant in American natives – Indians. In the “northern peoples” (Nordic race), the “blood index” is the highest because group A is the most widespread. An example of this is the English, who have the highest “blood index” of 4.30.

In Asian and African peoples, it is below 1. Stefanović cites statistics on the “blood index” for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, without distinguishing its individual peoples, which according to him is on average 2.01. This would make the Yugoslavs an “intermediate”, middle type. According to research generally said to have been conducted by the Central Hygiene Institute in Belgrade, the “blood index” was derived by banovina, which means geographically and not by people.

The area of ​​the Belgrade City Administration, Primorska banovina (southern part of Dalmatia and parts of Herzegovina), Zetska banovina (Montenegro with Dubrovnik coast, Sandžak and Metohija) and Danube banovina (Vojvodina and northern part of Serbia) have the highest index ranging from 2.12 to 2.64.

On the contrary, the Drina banovina (central and eastern Bosnia and western Serbia), the Vrba banovina (northwestern Bosnia), the Drava banovina (Slovenia) and the Sava banovina (Croatia with the largest part of Slavonia and northern Dalmatia) show a lower index than the cross-section in Yugoslavia as well as the previously listed administrative areas. The table looks like this:

UG Belgrade – 2.64

COASTAL BANOVINA – 3.37

ZETA BANOVINA – 2.25

DANUBE BANOVINA – 2.12

DRINA BANOVINA – 1.92

SAVA BANOVINA – 1.66

DRAVA BANOVINA – 1.61

VRBA BANOVINA – 1.29

What immediately catches the eye is that there is no data for two banovinas – parts of pre-war Serbia: Moravian and Vardar! Despite everything, Stefanović found these dubious statistics sufficient to establish a hierarchy of individual regions and populations:

“It must indeed seem significant that precisely those parts of Yugoslavia show the highest European blood index, where state-building forces, both in the past and in more recent times up to the present day, have been and are operating most visibly. The parts with a low blood index, lower than the average, should be especially examined with a view to the admixture of foreign racial qualities on a larger scale.”

Maleš’s book on race.

Branimir Maleš also believed that the constant mixing (crossbreeding) of certain “racial qualities” leads to the loss of racial, biological differences, which he considers negative. Race is not only made up of physical but also mental characteristics. If a people is older, it is biologically more homogeneous. Therefore, the author believes, “foreign infiltration” should be minimized. The biological bond is stronger when a people is aware of their community and when they know how to appreciate their racial and cultural characteristics:

“Everything that is good, both physical and psychological, that constitutes the better part of a race, becomes part of the program of nationality, of the nation. Race and group are inscribed in golden letters in the program of Hitler’s efforts. When Mussolini created a new town, intended for the Italian working people – Littorio, he ordered that a detailed anthropological survey of its inhabitants be carried out every year, to take into account what is good and what is bad.

Every race has its own values, every race has its own role in the history of the people and the world. But that is precisely why these values ​​need to be known, and the state is obliged to take them into account. In that case, nationality and race become synonyms, two paths that lead to the same goal: affirmation, progress and a better life for the entire people. In nationality we find our cultural and political efforts, in race our aspirations for the health, physical and mental progress of the people.” (Ideas, 10/35)

Nations are mixtures of races, wrote Maleš, but each emphasizes its predominant racial characteristics. Among the Yugoslavs, the “hegemony” of the Dinar people prevails on the basis of biological superiority, which is manifested by the dominance and prevalence of their characteristics when crossing with others:

“From Herzegovina, from Montenegro, partly from Lika, as well as from other parts of our country where the majority of the population belongs to the Dinaric race, Dinaric elements, physical and mental, spread now faster, now slower, but without interruption, everywhere where there are Serbs and Croats.

Dinaric characteristics are almost all and almost always dominant, i.e. when crossing, when mixing with non-Dinaric characteristics, they prevail, are hereditary, and are inherited by closer and more distant descendants. /…/ So we could speak of the biological, ethnic hegemony of the Dinaric race.”

(The message is clear: people are like a species of cattle that “crossbreed” and inherit some qualities, and we must preserve our best racial characteristics contained in the Dinar people because they are the most powerful. From this, one could conclude that other parts of Serbs that are not the “Dinaric race” are of little value and should be subordinated to the Dinar people?!)

Maleš: Exterminate the weak

Maleš further claims that race represents a set of psychological and physical characteristics. Since the latter are unchangeable, efforts should be made to preserve the mental characteristics of the people. (This is a well-known conservative call not to accept any foreign influences in the field of spiritual culture and not to change anything in the mentality of the people, not even its bad sides). Maleš believes that in order to improve the people and the state, everything that is sick and degenerate should be “removed”. The offspring of “racially pure types” should be forced.

“And then we should eliminate those who are unfit for life, the product of disease and degeneration, the incurably ill, regardless of what race such hereditary burdened persons belong to. We should enable the offspring of healthy parents, both physically and mentally, especially offspring of racially pure types and with greater physical and mental harmony, and not allow individuals and generations of biologically and characterically weaker values ​​to develop – that must be the brightest goal of a people.

This is the continuous biological struggle that every people, every nation leads. If we preserve all our biologically essentially national values, if everything that is truly ours, and the best of that which is ours, is affirmed at every opportunity, we will be worthy of our better and older ones, what is racially ours will be preserved, just as Kosovo, Mohacs, Cer and Kajmakcalan preserved it.” (On Human Races, Belgrade, 1936)

There are two obsessions of racists: preserving the “purity of the race” and the continuous “struggle of races”. The first is unthinkable without some state intervention. However, in interwar Yugoslavia, such appeals remained without government support. Maleš and Stefanović considered themselves pioneers of eugenics in our country.

Stefanović, while debating at the XVII Congress of the Yugoslav Medical Society, whose long-time president had also spoken out on the topic of protecting the nation by preventively eliminating the sick and hereditarily burdened.

Although in principle an opponent of abortion, especially that for social reasons such as poverty, unwanted children and the like, he advocated abortion and even sterilization for “racial-hygienic” reasons. “The “less valuable” (people with hereditary physical or bodily defects) reproduce more than the “more valuable” (he does not give their definition) and we must not close our eyes to this fact, even if we do not agree with the measures of forced sterilization, the total number of which, from several thousand or several tens of thousands of medically indicated ones, is lost to the millions of forced and artificial abortions.”

“All cultures up to now have been created by certain races, or nations, by certain racial types. It has always been the strength of the race that has overcome political and economic factors and created culture, state and nation. Economic factors have accompanied certain cultures, and often led them to decadence, to decline and ruin. Race is therefore the primary factor in the creation of culture, state and nation, and economic factors are secondary.

Race, one could say, in a word, creates treasures, cultural and material, it also creates wealth, according to the eternal paradox of history and according to the beautiful saying of the ancient Greek philosopher of the pre-Socratic era, Theogonys, wealth ruins the race. Also, large cities are a factor of decadence “already in the third or fourth generation”.

Degeneration leads to the impoverishment of broad layers of the working people, and then racially inferior qualities penetrate into higher layers. “The infiltration of lower social classes into higher ones and spiritual decadence are the main causes of the collapse of Ancient Greece, not economic reasons,” Stefanović believes.

We have already shown how Serbian ultra-rightists linked demography with the racial issue, and from there, through the “racial struggle”, one can easily get into the waters of daily political speculation with a racist background. Maleš warned of the “yellow peril” as a demographic phenomenon, trying to explain past and current war entanglements in the Far East.

He first states that the white, European race has proven to be lacking in solidarity with each other. In the World War, the “Europids” abandoned the previously tacit “racial solidarity” and forced their “colored” people to fight against other white people. (Here there is a clear allusion to the colonial troops of France and Britain who fought against Germany and Austria-Hungary.) Maleš begins his xenophobic and racist essay with true romantic enthusiasm in which he describes the climate of the enemies of the white race:

“Far away towards the sunrise there is a fertile mountainous land where people of small stature and yellow complexions live. There are many of them. Their land is called Sham. And the people are called Sham. These yellow people, who – as is believed – will rule the world, represent a problem of great interest for science, demography and biodynamics.”

Then the writer laments the progress of “colored people” (both yellow and black) because he believes that they must remain humiliated and exploited, while the solidary whites rule the world.

Stefanović also predicted the possibility that the yellow race, adopting the technical achievements of the West, would surpass the white Nordic-European race. It is possible that “less valuable races” if they are compact and cooperative will dominate the “more valuable races”.

Even when he denies the theory of the power of ruling as the dominant ability of the Germans (the Nordic race) on a specific example, Stefanović does not do so from an anti-racist position. On the contrary, he emphasizes that the power of ruling is not given once and for all, and he emphasizes the “Dinaric racial type” as a kind of replacement for the already experienced Nordic race:

“Perhaps this human or racial type has completed its historical mission – just as individualistic capitalism has – and the time has come to cede it to another, let’s say immediately, man of the Dinaric racial type, who by all signs is increasingly conquering in numbers and terrain and, hopefully most importantly, in mental and spiritual qualities, bringing with him a new social and cultural structure of society and the state.

In a spiritual sense, this would mean: in place of the Nordic ruling man, the Dinaric human type of man will replace not the ruling type but the heroic-human type of man, not the hero-lord, hard, cruel, harsh, egoistic and inhuman, but a hero filled with kindness, softness of heart and soul, who not only knows how to rule but also heroically endure the blows of fate and hardships, which the ruling type, inclined to a hedonistic understanding of life and the world, cannot do – in a word, instead of the Iberian and Hermensch, a man of the human type, instead of the Hermensentum, the type of humanity, for which concept, as it seems to me, is Mr. Gezeman has found a very happy and very characteristic adequate expression: humanitas heroica. If I had to choose between the Nordic Hermensch and the Dinaric human type, I am determined for the latter. It is up to us to make it not only the will of individuals but also the will of history.” (Ideas 22/35)

With this, Stefanović has come a long way in his intellectual and political development from a liberal leftist intellectual to a racist theorist who wants to replace the German “superhumans” (ubermenschen) with the Serbs – “Dinaroids”. We have already emphasized that there are two Stefanovićs, who stand opposite each other like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The turning point in him occurred around 1933. The former Anglophile and republican transformed into a prominent propagator of Italian fascism, corporatism and racism.

In the publications of the Res Publica Cooperative

Historian Nenad Ž. Petrović published the book “Ideology of Barbarism” with the subtitle “Fascist and National Socialist Ideas among Intellectuals in Belgrade 1929-1941. (published by Zadruga Res Publica – Mostart, Belgrade-Zemun, 2015). With this study, the author refutes the widespread opinion that fascism in Serbia had no deeper precursors and that it came exclusively from imports.

In agreement with the author and publisher, we are publishing an excerpt from this book that presents the racist views of two influential intellectuals in the interwar period, Svetislav Stefanović and Branimir Maleš.

Source

https://www.danas.rs/vesti/drustvo/srpski-rasizam/