Stop sending people to kill me.  We’ve already captured five of them, one with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow; and I won’t have to send a second. — message from Tito to Stalin found on Stalin’s desk after his death. In the …

  • June 2, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Assassinations That Weren’t

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In general he did a lot of useful things for Russia, one of which was the creation of Russian intelligence.  –Vasili Sokolov – Echo of Moscow Radio The fabled and feared Russian intelligence apparatus was not native, but was imported in the person of a Balkan man who referred to himself as an Illyrian Count …

  • May 24, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Great Game Begins… In Herzegovina

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Passion and levity have destroyed me.  I pay with my life for my sins.  Pray for me.–Alfred Redl Colonel Redl had good reason to kill himself in spring of 1913; as the head of the Evidenzbureau (counterintelligence) of Austria-Hungary,   he had been selling Austria’s secrets and war plans to Russia for over ten years. …

  • May 5, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Reason Austria-Hungary Lost

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World War I nearly started in 1909 over Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Worried about a changing circumstance in Europe after the Young Turk Revolution and increasingly bothered by the rhetoric from Serbia, Austria-Hungary felt it had to act in order to preserve the integrity of its borders and its empire.  On 6 October 1908, they announced …

  • May 3, 2021
  • History
  • Comments Off on Almost the First World War

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Near the end of September 1944 an important meeting between the Yugoslav Partizan leader, Josip Broz Tito, and Stalin took place.  It was not precisely easy for Tito to get to the meeting – he, his dog Tigar, and several advisors had flown to the Soviet lines in Romania before being transferred to Soviet aircraft …

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The leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party is carrying out a policy unfriendly toward the Soviet Union and to the All-Union Communist Party. In Yugoslavia an unworthy policy of belittling Soviet military experts and discrediting the Soviet Army has been permitted. Soviet civilian specialists in Yugoslavia have been subjected to a special regime, on the …

  • March 15, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Satellite Gone Rogue

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Jelena of Serbia, described as “plain”, but also quiet and amiable by the nanny of the Romanov children whose friendship she shared, was not what the rest of Europe’s nobility pictured when told of someone demanding the release of the Tsar and his family.  And yet, Jelena was the only member of the Royal Family …

  • March 12, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Story of a Balkan Princess

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The history of the Balkans is rife with the arguments of other nations playing out amongst the Slavic nations of south-west Europe.  Nowhere is this illustrated better than through the events of the 1800s.   As Russia became increasingly able to turn away from the endless wars of the Caucasus, the Balkans of the retreating …

  • March 10, 2021
  • Culture
  • Comments Off on A Fence Around the Russian Advance

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The best way to explain a thing tends to be the simplest – and the rise of memes have presented history with an unprecedented opportunity to get to the “truthiness” of historical situations.   Thus we can explain the four hundred+ year rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans this way: Of course, the …

  • March 8, 2021
  • Interesting
  • Comments Off on The Non-Balkan Nations Who Wanted the Balkans

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“I am the wife of a Romanov interned at Alapayevsk, and I am also the daughter of the King of Serbia.  As a relative of the Emperor, I have come to get news of him and ask to be allowed to see him.” Jelena of Serbia stood at the main gate of Ipatiev House in …

  • February 26, 2021
  • Serbia
  • Comments Off on A Princess Most Brave

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