Politika
- Twilight of a Regime...
- From the Memoirs of Mil. J. Nikolajević
- After the Elections in Greece
Politika's page of 11 November 1926 carried an editorial, 'Twilight of a Regime...', arguing that recent events in Fascist Italy could mark the beginning of the collapse of Fascism and showed that Italy under dictatorship, despite its reformist and nationally regenerative image, was orderly only in appearance. The paper also printed the opening of the memoirs of Mil. J. Nikolajević, who served at the Serbian court from King Milan's abdication in February 1889 to 29 May 1903, rising from orderly officer to Marshal of the Court. A cartoon on the Greek elections had the foreign minister hoping that an agreement with Greece would become possible once the vote was over.
This edition covers only the opening passages of three items on Politika's page of 11 November 1926. The OCR candidates were unusable, so the text was transcribed from the page images, and passages break off at the image tile edges. The editorial and the memoir are translated only as far as their opening paragraphs. The smaller cartoon captions are smudged, and the police minister's line could not be transcribed in full. The headline ПОСЛЕ ИЗБРОА У ГРЧКОЈ appears to misprint ИЗБОРА ('elections'); the original headline keeps the printed spelling.
Translation
Twilight of a Regime...
In recent days, events have been taking place in Fascist Italy that could mark the beginning of the collapse of the Fascist regime and of the Fascist experiment in general. At the same time, these events show that Italy under a regime of dictatorship — even if that regime has the appearance of a reformist and nationally regenerative movement, which is how Fascism presents and describes itself — is orderly only in appearance, not in reality.
From the Memoirs of Mil. J. Nikolajević
From 22 February 1889, the day of King Milan's abdication, until 29 May 1903, with brief interruptions, I spent my service at the Court, first as an orderly officer, then as an aide-de-camp, and finally as Marshal of the Court.
After the Elections in Greece
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: It seems that after the elections in Greece we will be able to come to an agreement with her.
Context
What had just happened in Italy: the Bologna shooting of 31 October 1926
The editorial appeared eleven days after a shot was fired at Mussolini on 31 October 1926 as he rode in an open car through Bologna. That shooting was the latest in a run of attempts: the former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni had been arrested on 4 November 1925, Violet Gibson grazed Mussolini's nose with a pistol shot on 7 April 1926, and the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine at Porta Pia in Rome on 11 September 1926. In Bologna a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, was lynched; the terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell later wrote that the boy was likely innocent and the affair either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. Politika read the events of those days as evidence that the regime's order was a façade and that its collapse might be starting. The regime's actual response ran the other way. The Bologna attempt resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police, repeating a pattern seen after the Zaniboni affair, which historians believe the government engineered as a pretext to consolidate power, and after which laws enacted in late 1925 enabled the suppression of any opposition political organization. The excerpt itself does not name the specific events it has in mind.
The court Nikolajević served: the last Obrenović reign, 1889–1903
Nikolajević gives his dates in the Old Style calendar that Serbian sources of the period used. His 22 February 1889 corresponds to the 6 March given in Western-calendar accounts, the day King Milan suddenly abdicated in favour of his son without offering a satisfactory reason; the new king, Alexander, was twelve years old. His closing date, 29 May 1903, is the night of the May Coup, 10–11 June by the Western calendar, when a group of army officers led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević (Apis) killed King Alexander and Queen Draga inside the Stari Dvor in Belgrade. The conspirators also killed Prime Minister Dimitrije Cincar-Marković, Army Minister Milovan Pavlović and the king's general-adjutant Lazar Petrović. The coup ended the Obrenović dynasty, and the throne passed to King Peter I of the Karađorđević dynasty. Nikolajević's span of service therefore matches the reign of the last Obrenović king exactly, and by his own account he remained at court until the night it ended. The excerpt contains only his opening statement of service, not his testimony about the coup.
The November 1926 Greek elections and Yugoslav–Greek friction
The elections in the cartoon were the Greek elections of November 1926. On 22 August 1926 General Georgios Kondylis overthrew the dictatorship of Theodoros Pangalos in a bloodless coup, formed a government and proclaimed elections for November, in which his own party did not take part. Belgrade had good reason to watch the vote. During the Pangalos dictatorship of 1925–26, Greece had agreed to a number of Yugoslav demands concerning access to the Aegean; others included a broader zone around the port of Thessaloniki and the classification of Slav-speaking populations as a Yugoslav minority. After Pangalos fell, Greece repealed those commitments to defend its sovereign rights, and friction flared again. The foreign minister's line in the cartoon voices the hope that an elected Greek government would settle the dispute. The actual course was slower. Belgrade answered Greek appeals to resume talks with delaying tactics, dialogue became constructive only when Eleftherios Venizelos governed Greece from 1928, and the two sides finally sealed their agreement with the protocol of 11 October 1928.
Original
СУМРАК ЈЕДНОГ РЕЖИМА...
Последњих дана одигравају се у фашистичкој Италији догађаји, који би могли означавати почетак краха фашистичког режима и фашистичког експеримента уопште. Ови догађаји уједно показују, да је Италија под режимом диктатуре, - па ма тај режим имао и вид реформаторског и национално регенераторског покрета каквим се приказује и означује фашизам - само привидно али не и стварно сређена.
ИЗ УСПОМЕНА МИЛ. Ј. НИКОЛАЈЕВИЋА
Од 22 фебруара 1889, дана абдикације Краља Милана, па све до 29 маја 1903 год., са кратким прекидима, провео сам са службом у Двору, прво као ордонанс официр, затим као ађутант и најзад као Маршал Двора.
ПОСЛЕ ИЗБРОА У ГРЧКОЈ
МИНИСТАР ИНОСТРАНИХ ДЕЛА: Изгледа, да ћемо се после избора у Грчкој моћи њоме споразумети.