Naslov
MARSEILLES 1934: The death of the king

Autori
Jareb, Mario

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
A Transnational History of Right-Wing Terrorism: Political Violence and the Far Right in Eastern and Western Europe since 1900

Urednik/ci
Dafinger, Johannes ; Florin, Moritz

Izdavač
Routledge

Grad
Abingdon, Oxon i New York

Godina
2022

Raspon stranica
115-128

ISBN
978-0-367-61336-5

Ključne riječi
king Alexander, Marseilles, October 9, 1934, assassination, Ustaša organization, Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization

Sažetak
The assassination of King Alexander I in Marseilles in October 1934 is one of a series of right-wing terrorist attacks on European government figures in the interwar period. What is more, the death of the King was the result of cooperation between far-right organizations formed by activists of different nationalities and with at least the indirect support of more than one fascist and authoritarian regime. While the Yugoslav authorities tried to convince the public after Alexander’s death that the assassination had been the act of a “terrorist organization based abroad, ” this chapter has shown that it was rather a transnational terrorist attack carried out collaboratively by two far-right nationalist organizations, namely the Croatian Ustaša and the Macedonian VMRO. Although it does not seem likely that representatives of the Italian fascist regime knew of the assassination preparations, they did provide general logistical support for the activities of Ustaša and VMRO. The role of the Hungarian government against which Yugoslavia raised charges before the League of Nations is less certain. Although state support remained ambivalent and clandestine, it should be seen as part of a pattern of the inter-war period, when fascist and authoritarian regimes were constantly involved in undermining other authoritarian and democratic states. The Ustaša organization openly advocated the use of political violence and published several “death sentences” against King Alexander prior to his assassination. Similar to other right-wing terrorist groups, Ustaša did not style itself as a terrorist organization though, but rather defended violent actions as “revolutionary” acts in a fight for “national liberation.” The circumstances in which the UHRO, the VMRO, and other violence-prone nationalist groups such as the OUN operated, as well as their “language” of national liberation and revolution, led Oleksandr Zaitsev to coin the term “ustashism” for these and similar movements and organizations. The concept is of limited explanatory power because of Zaitsev’s somewhat vague definition, which does not clearly illustrate how “ustashist” movements and organizations differed from fascist movements and fails to explain why the Ustaša is seen to have constituted a paradigmatic case. Nevertheless, it might help highlight the fact that many far-right terrorist movements and organizations in the inter-war period were separatist in that they advocated the establishment of independent states for their stateless nations and/or were engaged in a struggle against multi-ethnic states. In this sense, the assassination of Alexander I can be seen as the culmination of right-wing terrorism of an ustashist type in the inter-war period.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Povijest

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