– Ivan Matović –
Born on March 24, 1907 in the village of Zavala near Podgorica; valedictorian of the Podgorica Gymnasium; ranked among the top cadets of the 53rd class of the Lower Military Academy (1925-1928); began his officer career in the Takovo Regiment; author of the noted publication Tactics of the Infantry Battalion; the April War interrupted his preparations for a General Staff career.
In July 1941, he became the commander of the insurgent troops in Montenegro, Boka and the Sandžak, and as of December 12 that same year, Chief of the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ), a position he held continuously until Victory Day. He was the first to hold the rank of Major General in the NOVJ (May 1, 1943). During the National Liberation War — in addition to carrying out key staff duties — he successfully completed several diplomatic missions: he was a member of Broz’s team[1] at the negotiations in Caserta (Italy) with the Supreme Allied Commander for the Mediterranean, General H.M. Wilson (August 6-12, 1944); he headed the NOVJ[2] delegation in Moscow (January 3-February 14, 1945) where, in a three-hour conversation with Stalin, he secured an agreement on arming another 20 infantry and 2 air divisions; he led the “Generals’ Commission,”[3] which, on behalf of the new Yugoslavia, conducted difficult negotiations in Belgrade and Trieste in May and June 1945 on the fate of Istria, Trieste and the Julian March. He also played a prominent role in cooperating with the heads of Allied military missions — General N.V. Korneyev and Brigadier F. Maclean — as well as in talks with Air Vice-Marshal V. Elliot (December 1944), Field Marshal H. Alexander (February 1945) and Air Force General I. Eaker (March 1945), along with other leading figures from the top Allied commands.
For his proven contributions in the anti-fascist war, he received all the highest military decorations of the “second Yugoslavia.” He is the only professional Allied officer to be awarded both the Order of Kutuzov (September 5, 1944) and the Order of Suvorov (October 15, 1945), First Class, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Because he was slated — along with 16 other generals and colonels of the Yugoslav Army — to study at the “Voroshilov” Higher Military Academy in Moscow, he handed over the duties of Chief of the General Staff on September 15, 1945 to Lieutenant General Konstantin “Koča” A. Popović.[4] Devoted to his profession, trained to work expertly, responsibly and with discipline, Arso used the six-month period before departure for language studies in Russian,[5] wrote editorials for Narodna armija and Borba, and authored special publications on the Battle of Pljevlja, the Belgrade Operation and an Overview of the National Liberation War.[6] On several occasions, he was assigned as an envoy of the Supreme Commander.
Along with a group of influential generals — “former officers” still active in the General Staff — he worked to secure military or civilian posts for as many returning officers and generals as possible, whose patriotic and anti-fascist conduct in German camps had earned them respect. With General M. Apostolski, who was in charge of military education in the General Staff, he developed a five-year professional education plan for the then 42,286 officers and military administrators, which he entrusted to General Koča.[7]
After several postponements,[8] the “Voroshilovists” finally departed for Moscow on March 15, 1946, together with students from five other Soviet Army academies.[9] Well housed and supplied for the conditions of the first postwar year, they studied intensively, focusing on map-based operational planning at corps and army levels in offensive campaigns across Western and Central Europe. The instructors — generals and senior officers — were highly competent and personally courteous and well-meaning. As far as anyone could tell, none of the students were recruited by the NKVD, and it is questionable what secrets the Yugoslav Army even held for Soviet intelligence, given that 472 Soviet instructors or advisors — with ranks ranging from warrant officer to general — operated openly, under contract and with full authority, from division staffs to the military leadership.
They were free to go into the city and receive visitors, toured battlefields from the 1812 Napoleonic campaign and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, and — as young and good-looking men — often socialized with women from Moscow. Arso was no exception. Although known as a devoted husband and caring father, he was often seen in the company of the attractive Marusya, rumoured to be the daughter of a Red Army general. He claimed it was to improve his Russian. That relationship, apparently innocent, would later — following Arso’s liquidation in August 1948 — give rise to at least two vicious rumours: the first, that it was a spy affair, which some powerful figures immediately found “clear and convincing,” leaving behind written records to that effect; the second, that in August 1948, he “turned his back on the homeland” and fled across the Romanian border into Marusya’s arms.
Everyone struggled with the separation from their families and friends back home, whom they could visit only once a year. They also faced — with open discomfort — not only Moscow’s material shortages but also the flood of invalids, beggars, con artists and all kinds of lost souls on its streets. For many Yugoslavs, this was the source of deep incomprehension and even disillusionment with Soviet reality.[10] Encounters between the “Voroshilovists” and official Yugoslav representatives in Moscow (ambassador, military envoy and CC of the CPY representative) were extremely rare, but they were more frequent with numerous state, military and party delegations arriving from Yugoslavia. The heads of these delegations would summon the “Voroshilovists” and other academy students to gatherings hosted by the ambassador or military envoy, especially including the party organization secretaries appointed by the representative of the CC. One of the earliest delegations arrived on May 27, 1946, led by Marshal Broz, who stayed in Moscow until June 10. The delegation included Generals A. Ranković and K. Popović. After touring several military academies where Yugoslav officers were studying, the Supreme Commander hosted a formal lunch on June 2 at the FPRY embassy villa for the “Voroshilovists” and other selected attendees. At the very beginning of the lunch, he raised a toast to his “chief military associate, General Arso Jovanović,” as he called him, “the initiator and planner of major operations.” He continued at length, using the strongest terms his limited vocabulary could offer, showing no restraint in giving praise. The Marshal’s words sounded like the highest commendation a Supreme Commander could bestow on his Chief of Staff — and only the pragmatic leader, as B. Petranović would say, a “master of applied dialectics,” still a guest in Moscow, truly knew their real meaning. In any case, Arso, taken aback and overwhelmed by the eulogy, stood up, came to attention and said, “Comrade Marshal, I was just an ordinary soldier carrying out your orders!” Without hesitation, Tito stood up and replied, “And I was an ordinary soldier carrying out Comrade Stalin’s orders! And tomorrow, if needed, our army will lead the Red Army to the English Channel!” The hall erupted in applause, and when Tito mentioned the possibility of an offensive to the Channel, his closest associates lifted him into the air and tossed him toward the ceiling.
In January 1948, a military-state delegation arrived among the “Voroshilovists”: Political Bureau member M. Đilas and generals K. Popović, S. Vukmanović-Tempo and I. Rukavina. The meeting at the ambassador’s residence was remembered in particular for Arso’s sharp criticism of Koča, questioning why the General Staff had structured a division’s organization after modern, heavily motorized and mechanized armies, disregarding Yugoslavia’s own poverty, wartime experience and the traditions of the Serbian army — where horses and oxen had borne much of the burden in the past four liberation wars. He added that although the conditions of warfare were changing radically and the future must be considered, these experiences should not be neglected when forming peacetime and wartime units — even less should Yugoslavia copy modern armies, as it would not be able to afford such equipment and weaponry for a long time, nor to establish the envisioned mechanized corps and fronts. Koča, visibly uncomfortable in his chair, stayed silent for a long time, prompting Arso — in a rather tense atmosphere — to continue criticizing the work of the Chief of the General Staff and his 364 associates. Understandably, Koča “accepted the challenge” and, visibly irritated, responded sharply — not just about the “Serbian horses and oxen.” The discussion was cut short, but it left the impression among those present that the wartime Chief of the Supreme Headquarters had publicly questioned the professional competence of the current Chief of the General Staff at a moment in time that was clearly growing more complex.
Đilas informed the group: “In a few days, Albania will officially join the union with Yugoslavia,” and authorized — even tasked — the party organization secretaries to relay this to their comrades.[11]
The “Voroshilovists” took their final exams at the end of May 1948, and all received certificates showing they had completed their studies on time, “with good marks” (successful).[12] The occasion was marked by a ceremony at the residence of the Yugoslav ambassador. The mood — at least outwardly — was as celebratory as in the best of times: there was food and drink, with toasts made mostly to Stalin and Tito, to the Yugoslav and Soviet armies, to victory and peace, to the homeland and communism, to alliance and brotherhood in arms, and finally to each general at the table. Although known for his dislike of alcohol, Arso was compelled to respond to these toasts until he was overcome by drink, repeatedly shouting, “Long live the Soviet Army!” This exclamation would later be used by some of his critics as further proof that he had “sold his soul” to the NKVD.
Their hosts saw them off to Belgrade without openly lobbying for or pressuring any of them to stay in Moscow.[13] None of the men — at least publicly — expressed any desire to remain, and to be fair, they did not know enough, let alone the essential facts, about the real nature, scale and intensity of the rift between the Central Committees of the CPY and the CPSU(B), or between Tito and Stalin — especially following the withdrawal of 472 Soviet military advisors and instructors.[14] Nor were they aware of the true reasons behind the CC of the CPY’s decision on May 20 not to send the general secretary or his representatives to the Cominform meeting in Bucharest. In fact, what was really happening in those relations was communicated to the “Voroshilovists” in Moscow only “selectively” by Ambassador Vlado Popović, CC representative Puniša Perović and Military Attaché General Niko Jovićević. Still, being far removed from the centre of decision-making, they knew little.
Grouped together in Miločer and Bled, through representatives of the Main Political Administration, they were informed within the frameworks of party cells and official publications from the CC of the CPY and the Ministry of National Defence — Borba and Narodna armija. During those 20 “rest” days, most felt like “a kind of detainees,” or at least senior generals set aside “for purification,” meant to be freed from any possible pro-Soviet leanings or loyalties. In any case, they were excluded from the highly intense political life of the Party and the Yugoslav Army[15] during a period of fierce struggle to achieve ambitious defence goals — especially the development of Yugoslavia’s own military industry, through which the country aimed to grow rapidly into a regional military power by strengthening all three branches of its armed forces. This radically focused defence policy, according to some of the “Voroshilovists” in Miločer, could irritate neighbouring countries — particularly Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — pushing them to reinforce their (limited) military and police contingents, and provoke imperialist circles to target Yugoslavia from Greece and Italy, with potential U.S. support from sea and air. A significant number of senior military officers and confirmed patriots were concerned about escalating tensions with the West — and now also the outcome of the evidently deep discord with the East. Some “Voroshilovists” — taught by the Party to speak freely and believe that truth is the supreme standard of practice — expressed these concerns in conversations with their wartime and academic comrades. They said it was necessary to attend the Cominform meeting and defend the truth there. Some added that the Red Army’s military aid to the NOVJ had been invaluable, even decisive for final victory; that the decision to send two divisions of the Yugoslav Army to Albania[16] was open to legitimate criticism; that military industry development costs were excessive and the Army too large and expensive.
As a sort of test, they were made to discuss the content and message of the Soviet film In the Mountains of Yugoslavia, which, according to the Agitprop department, portrayed the National Liberation Movement in an “oversimplified, rather inaccurate and certainly unfair” way — showing small, poorly clothed and lightly armed partisan units whose salvation supposedly lay in Soviet assistance. Provoked, some “Voroshilovists” did not judge the film so harshly, nor did they see such malice in the Russian filmmakers’ intent — especially since they recalled how, in August 1944, some elite Proletarian divisions had fewer than 2,000 fighters, and the newer units were armed almost entirely with light infantry weapons either captured from the enemy or supplied by the Allies. The Soviets had, between September 1944 and Victory Day, supplied them with artillery and aircraft “by the truckload,” which was now being described in the press as “so-called fraternal aid,” with claims that “everything had been well paid for.” On some of these matters, Arso also voiced opinions — including details that, in those heavy-handed times, were still “under review” but could have been used to counter the CC of the CPY’s harsh assessments. At the same time, Arso and all the other “Voroshilovists” fully supported the key message conveyed in a letter sent by the CC of the CPY to Stalin and Molotov on April 13 — that “no matter how much one of us may love the land of socialism, the USSR, one must not, under any circumstances, love it more than our own country, which is also building socialism.”
In Belgrade, Arso had “informational” conversations with generals Tempo and Gošnjak, followed by a meeting with Ranković, and ultimately, Broz spoke with “the six hardest-liners” at Brdo near Kranj. During the discussions in Belgrade, it became clear that most of the “Voroshilovists” were deeply troubled — torn by concerns, doubts and suspicions about the country’s fate under potential economic and military pressure, international isolation and even aggression. They sensed how early ideological and inter-party disputes were evolving into inter-state confrontations. They had thoroughly studied the wartime doctrine of the world’s most powerful military force — one that held all the “people’s democracies” under “a single helmet.” They were familiar with new strategic realities brought by the introduction (at the beginning of 1947) of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, which, in effect, formed the backbone of the “strategic containment of the USSR.” Those without access to information about the Western powers’ stance — not allowing Tito to fall in a conflict with Stalin — reasoned as follows: if 280 million people from the “people’s democracies” turned against 16 million Yugoslavs, the country would face total and dangerous isolation, especially at a time when Yugoslavia had diplomatic relations with only 26 countries. This was no longer a matter of ideology, but of arithmetic — of precise military science, in which the balance of forces was always a critical premise for Arso. In the days that followed came the Cominform Resolution and the CC of the CPY’s response — both lengthy, harsh in tone and bitter in assessments. Their messages helped the “Voroshilovists” navigate the political whirlwind only to a limited degree. Then came the seven-day 5th Congress of the CPY, marked by staged, aggressive and enforced unity. Some began to see things more clearly, others withdrew, and a few considered it a patriotic duty to mourn the truth. One might say that things seemed to end well — with a telegram of support sent by the “Voroshilovists” to the CC of the CPY, published on July 8 on the front page of Narodna armija, in which they stated their belief that “the Cominform Resolution is a grave insult, a serious historical injustice,” expressing hope that its authors would realize it was “the result of being misled by false information and a lack of understanding of the situation within the CPY.”
Another telegram of support for the Party came from 200 Yugoslav Army officers — students of academies and cadet schools in the Soviet Union — sent while travelling through Romania. They returned to Yugoslavia during the 5th Congress (July 21-28), and their message was published in Narodna armija on July 24 as an expression of “support for that historic gathering.”
Meanwhile, all the “Voroshilovists” were reassigned to posts within the Yugoslav Army.[17] Arso was appointed head of the newly founded Higher Military Academy (VVA), whose first class included 82 students, among them 12 generals and 19 colonels. The program was to begin on October 1 — a tight deadline given that nothing had yet been prepared. Under Arso’s leadership, teams worked to define the objectives, content and schedule of instruction, determine the optimal structure, ensure the basic conditions for work and select faculty for the 12 departments. The first group of students consisted of the Army’s top generals, reflecting the importance placed on the academy’s founding and the choice of its head as a figure of authority among the General Staff elite. There is no original record suggesting that Arso felt sidelined for not being reinstated as Chief of the General Staff. However, in his memoirs, General P. Jakšić recounts that after returning from training in the USSR, Arso burst — somewhat agitated — into a generals’ meeting in the War Room of the General Staff building, where organizational issues were being discussed, including the structure of the Supreme Command. He took the floor and said, “Tito needs an authoritative general and a strong figure beside him” (clearly referring to himself) — and after that, he was “gone for good.” V. Dedijer would later recall in New Contributions that Arso was “a victim of his own immature and unrealized ambitions,” and that Broz confided in him that “a plan existed along the Moscow-Bucharest line for Arso to escape from Belgrade on Ana Pauker’s plane.”[18]
Still, Arso did not hide his dissatisfaction for other reasons: that two generals — I. Gošnjak and K. Popović — lacking essential qualifications and unwilling to sit through even one lecture on strategy or operations, had been appointed to two of the most important positions in the armed forces he had dedicated his life to; that the Chief of the General Staff had formally been “demoted” to the role of third assistant to the Minister of National Defence; that political power had completely overridden military professionalism in the Army…
In July, despite his other duties, Arso worked on four papers he held in high regard: an inaugural address to the first class of the VVA; a study of Brusilov’s 1916 offensive as an example of troop offensiveness; a study on the 1943 Battle of Kursk as the largest clash of military technology in modern history; and a lecture titled “Support of Aviation and the Navy to the Army on the Coastal Strategic Wing,” based on operations by the 4th Army of the Yugoslav Army. General Terzić recalled that Arso had completed these works “in draft form,” giving each in turn to him, as a “former officer,” and to fellow “Russian students” Generals Božo Božović and Dušan Kveder — not seeking praise, but requesting constructive feedback.[19] However, from October 1, the VVA would be led not by Arso but by General V. Terzić, joined by two other “Voroshilovists”: General M. Morača as deputy and S. Urošević as head of the Department of Tactics. Of the original 17, Arso was already dead, and Moma Đurić would fall victim to the wave of Cominformist purges.[20] The others would survive — likely having learned from Arso’s tragic example — and even the pragmatic Broz, under the storm of Soviet propaganda surrounding the “case,” came to understand that in increasingly complex military-political relations with Moscow, it was unwise to target generals of the “Russian school.”[21] This does not mean they were not “fully monitored by security.” Yet, even their ranks would begin to thin, and by the late 1950s, not a single one remained in the Army.[22]
In 1985, with Arso’s fellow countrymen, classmates, service colleagues and close friends — General V. Terzić and Colonel Milutin Šušović — I compiled a “list of possible grievances” that tormented him in the summer of 1948, in Terzić’s home in Miločer. These included: the overtly arrogant behaviour of the security services; the Party’s overwhelming role in the Yugoslav Army’s personnel policy; the amateurish work on defining wartime doctrine; the prioritization of “class background” in evaluating officer competence; the dominance of titles, honours and idol worship; the brutal crackdown on political dissenters (especially S. Žujović, with whom he had a close wartime bond). He was also a witness who knew too much: about the Supreme Headquarters’ negotiations with the Germans in March 1943 — brought up by Stalin and Molotov to Broz, who denied them; about the demolition of the bridges over the Neretva in March 1943, now celebrated as “proof of the Supreme Commander’s operational genius”; about the conduct of Broz and Kardelj in the Drvar cave, while Žujović, Ranković and he risked their lives to defend them — a moment Broz later claimed as one of his own heroic deeds. As a delegate to the 5th Congress, Arso did not share the views of those who, from podiums, rallies and newspapers, thundered that Tito was a “brilliant military leader” responsible for all victories. He believed that the National Liberation War — with its mix of guerrilla and operational warfare — was very specific, but also that the partisan method of combat, as Stalin and V.M. Molotov “reminded” Tito, was in fact more than 140 years old. He found unacceptable the crude denial of the extent and importance of Soviet military aid to Yugoslavia, particularly in armaments.[23] He held in high regard the fact that, in a three-hour conversation on January 9, 1945, Stalin had promised him weapons for 20 more divisions — and kept that promise. But he could not forgive Stalin for placing the NOVJ fighters behind the Bulgarians. At the same time, he could not accept the belittling of the true value and advantages of Soviet military doctrine. He feared that “the baby would be thrown out with the bathwater” — that the current bitter conflict might sever the deep spiritual ties between the Serbian and Russian peoples, whose importance the “Western-trained” officers now at the top of the Yugoslav Army failed to grasp.
In short, Arso — as a leading military figure — knew a great deal and could have been an uncomfortable witness, even a strict judge in someone’s eyes. In the ruthless ideological showdowns of the time, he would not have been easily silenced or removed — at least not as easily as Political Bureau members Žujović and Hebrang had been. Yet he — politically inexperienced and unaware of others’ power games — was determined neither to flatter nor yield to Broz, but instead to remain, as they say in his homeland, “clean before God and men,” naively believing that such integrity was advantage enough. While he was a member of the CPY — a requirement for survival in the liberation army and his top-level staff role — he was never a communist in the Comintern or conspiratorial sense. Never a sectarian, he always seemed “artificially stitched” to the small circle of five or six people who made up the army’s top leadership. He was Chief of Staff under the Supreme Commander — a Comintern student and political resident, a believer and captive to the ideology — with whom Arso showed solidarity and, as a subordinate, loyalty. But he was never a like-minded ally in the execution of the revolutionary course, especially the radical politicization of the army and the struggle for power. He never understood the visible discord and disunity among top communists — their compulsion to belittle and fight one another, even to destroy each other within national and international arenas. As a result, much about the conflict between the Yugoslav and Soviet party leaderships, especially the clash between Tito and Stalin, was incomprehensible to him. He struggled to understand the contradictions in the mind of the General Secretary: during the National Liberation War, Tito would report to Moscow four times a day and demand from his subordinates to die on the bunkers shouting Stalin’s name; in 1946, right in Moscow, he was announcing the Yugoslav Army as the vanguard of Stalin’s advance to the English Channel; and then, in 1948, in an effort to protect his own prestige, turned against Stalin.
Arso’s mother, Zorka, remembered how “two men in trench coats” came for him, supposedly “on the orders of Comrade Marshal.” From the doorstep, dressed in uniform, he told her he was going to Avala and would be back shortly. The wait for his return would stretch into days. The evening before he was taken, he had dinner with General V. Velebit, a man of Tito’s utmost trust. At that dinner, he objected to Tito’s decision to send two Yugoslav Army divisions to Albania (where a Yugoslav air regiment was already based), without even informing the Kremlin, which had significant strategic interests at the far edge of the “community of people’s democracies.” He argued that this reality should have been taken into account in the decision-making and said that Yugoslavia should have gone to Bucharest.
Most likely after Arso’s detention, Broz — walking around the White Palace complex and Brdo near Kranj — was seen several times engaging in heated arguments with his first general. They would wave their arms, stop and pause, and then Broz, irritated, would walk off for coffee, leaving Arso alone on the path. At least three of Broz’s guards — officers, one of them his nephew Branko — recalled these incidents. Today, Broz’s concern is understandable: to have, at least in his own mind, an unreliable top military figure in an army with 85 per cent of its officers who — according to Political Bureau assessments after the 5th Congress — still might not raise their rifles against the Soviet Army, posed a major risk in the anticipated harsh ideological and even state-level conflicts. This was especially true in a context where, in Bucharest, political émigrés were beginning to gather around the resigning ambassador R. Golubović and the defector General P. Popivoda — forming the nucleus of the “healthy forces.” Later, in his deeply controversial New Contributions, Dedijer wrote that during those days at Brdo near Kranj, between two extended Political Bureau sessions, Broz spoke with six of the “hardline Voroshilovists,” among whom only Arso “stood there like a drenched hen.” Shortly afterward, Arso disappeared. Then, on August 18, Borba published an official statement from the Ministry of the Interior: that during the night of August 11-12, generals Jovanović and Petričević and Colonel Dapčević had attempted to cross the state border illegally and armed, near the village of Sočica by Vršac, during which Jovanović was killed.
The first to deliver the grim news to the family — on the morning of August 12 — was General Koča Popović, sincerely shaken by the brutality of it.[24] Repressive measures followed immediately: the family was evicted from their villa and placed in substandard housing, cut off from phone communication and contact with former friends. His wife, Senka, was fired from her job and told she could quickly resolve all issues of livelihood for herself and their daughters if she would only “renounce her traitor husband.”
Following the Borba report on August 18, which described his death as occurring “in an attempted escape across the border,” a wave of public condemnation against Arso erupted. Among the first to speak out were generals Tempo and P. Dapčević and others, linking “this shameful act of treason against the country and the people” to his “class background” and time spent in the USSR, where he was allegedly “recruited by the NKVD.” Waves of arrests followed: his sister Miluša, a wartime fighter, his brother-in-law Major Luka Stojanović, and his neighbour Colonel Dukljan Vukotić. In the next two years, until the trial of those allegedly involved in the “case” and up until Stalin’s death — whether related to Arso’s fate or not — thousands of his wartime comrades, officers, were imprisoned, accused of “crimes against the state and the people,” and sentenced to long prison terms[25] or stripped of their ranks in disciplinary proceedings.[26]
Broz also issued a ban on mentioning Arso’s name “except in a negative context,” which is why his name does not appear in encyclopedias, in the two-volume Liberation War of the Peoples of Yugoslavia (1965), in Vojo Todorović’s monograph The Podgorica District in the July 13 Uprising (1952), in any of the 18,323 chronological entries across the 1,265 pages of Chronology of the Liberation War (1964), nor in the Military Lexicon (1982), the VVA monograph (1982) or similar works. Where he is mentioned, a footnote about treason is always attached. In accordance with Broz’s (belated) decision from 1977 — three years before his death — that nothing about him or his comrades be altered in official documents (!?), Arso is referenced in more than 260 places across the 20 wartime volumes of Collected Works (published from 1982 to 1988), but always with the note: “Accepted the Cominform resolution, became an enemy of socialist Yugoslavia; died on the border while attempting to flee the country, August 1948.”
At the trial of Arso’s alleged companions at the border — General B. Petričević and Colonel V. Dapčević, held nearly two years later (June 1-4, 1950) — loudspeakers announced that “appropriate expert analyses were conducted at the scene of death,” yet there was no record of any testimony besides the two accused and the already condemned Kovačević. There was no trace of any findings from doctors, legal experts, ballistics analysts or other specialists, which would be essential in such an investigation. Furthermore, the “Arso Jovanović File” — according to those who would be expected to know — “was not preserved.” And so it happened, as Dr. Branko Petranović told me in February 1995 when I asked whether a book should be written about the life of General Arso Jovanović: “Write it — of course! He was the most prominent soldier of the National Liberation War, ‘the number one man in the General Staff,’ as old Smodlaka put it. But remember: if it had been possible to write that book earlier, they wouldn’t have left it to you — not with all of us historians around. It’s a subject that cannot be brought to a close until the archives of KOS and UDBA on one side, and the NKVD on the other, are opened.” Those were the words of a scholar who, in his testamentary work The Historian and the Contemporary Epoch (1994), concluded his brilliant essay An Epistolary Exchange of Views with three questions: “Is Arso Jovanović the only one condemned to eternal silence? What are the powers that fear the graves of their opponents? Is the graveyard silence over his ‘case’ more fruitful than the analysis of the drama of a man crucified by the storm of old faith and betrayal by former high priests?”
It took me four years to realize that Petranović, in the end, was right. In my search for relevant material in the archives and through conversations with hundreds of people who had suggested they could help clarify the “case” of this important figure of the National Liberation War — I came across 29 different versions of how his life ended. Realizing that not one of them was grounded in verifiable facts to the extent that it could be believed without reservation, I gave up, deciding to set aside the 800-page manuscript — the result of meticulous research — as a legacy for the future. What those former UDBA and KOS officers, drivers, party officials, border guards, generals, couriers, ambassadors and others — almost all unwilling to speak publicly — claim to remember does not, individually or collectively, fully answer the question of when and how Arso was killed, or where his grave is. But it does provide compelling testimony to a brutal era that, along with its victims, cannot avoid the judgement of history. This means that sooner or later, we will learn where the mortal remains of General Arso R. Jovanović lie: near the state border at Vršac, or beneath Avala, under the foundations of a house in Banjica, at the bottom of the Danube, beneath the paths of the White Palace or on the hills of Brdo near Kranj.
After all this, I remain firmly convinced of only one thing: this was a political liquidation, carried out on the orders — or at least with the approval — of a leading figure in the party, the state and the military. It was neither the first nor the last victim of the lust for power and despotism. In any case, not one of the “Voroshilovists” I asked, none of his close wartime comrades, none of his personal friends, family or kin — and almost without exception, not even the citizens who followed the newspapers 50 years ago or the younger generation who heard or read about him — believes the official statement regarding his death. One of them, academic Milan Milutinović, head of the Department of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, was asked in 1995 to analyse the official report and verdict from a scholarly standpoint. His conclusion: they “don’t hold up in any aspect.” It was never proven that Arso died. Key witnesses V. Dapčević and V. Kovačević contradict each other — the first said a burst of fire hit Arso in the forehead, the second claimed he fired a rifle, single shots, and discharged four bullets while a fifth misfired. There are no accompanying documents: no forensic reports, no ballistics investigations, no findings from the joint border incident commission that is, in such cases, legally required in all circumstances. The name of his supposed guide, Svetolik Rabaljac, is entered in the official death registry, and his grave is known — while Arso’s name appears nowhere in that mandatory document. There is no trace of his grave either — arguably the most glaring failure in this entire “case.”
Official Moscow not only wrote about Arso as a talented and distinguished commander of an Allied army and requested exhumation of his body in pursuit of the truth, but — surely also guided by political motives — made a chivalrous gesture: upon receiving news of Arso’s death, and by order of Generalissimo Stalin himself, the entire armed force of the Slavic empire (five million soldiers from Sakhalin to Berlin) stood at attention and honoured him with a minute of silence. This, according to academic Branko Pavićević, is a fact — and it should be trusted, along with the rational conclusion that a great power does not pay such respects to a spy, an informant, a sellout, a coward or a traitor to his homeland. Even less would it bestow, during his lifetime, its highest military decorations — the Orders of Kutuzov and Suvorov, First Class — on such a man. And those honours were stripped away only by those who never awarded them in the first place.[27]
Even though it is understood that Arso was not “one of them” — he was neither a Goli Otok prisoner nor a Cominform supporter — he was nonetheless clearly a victim of the wave of “Stalinist anti-Stalinism,” of ideological dogmatism and sectarian practice.[28] On June 12, 1994, the Goli Otok Association for Montenegro — recognizing that the state would not reveal his grave, despite repeated requests — mounted a commemorative plaque on the wall of his birth house in Zavala. At the gathering of National Liberation War veterans and youth, including a company of soldiers, the atmosphere was one of deep emotion — as such an occasion deserves. Among the speakers were intelligent and heartfelt words from his younger daughter, Dr. Zoja. We will close this account with her final sentence: “As the daughter of General Arso Jovanović, I have the right to say publicly that my father’s bones should no longer lie in the weeds, and that even today, we must fear those people who themselves do not fear sin.”
Notes
[1] The delegation also included: Generals S. Žujović, G. Nikoliš and I. Rukavina, and Colonels V. Klišanić and K. Levičnik.
[2] Members of the delegation: Generals R. Hamović, G. Nikoliš, B. Obradović and S. Manola, and Colonel Z. Ulepič.
[3] Alongside the Chief of the General Staff, the following generals were present: K. Popović, J. Avšič, V. Velebit and S. Manola.
[4] Order of the Ministry of National Defence, reference no. 401, dated September 11, 1945.
[5] He spoke French fluently and had working knowledge of English, German and Russian.
[6] In bibliographies, his name is listed alongside the titles of 17 contributions published during the National Liberation War and 14 about the war.
[7] A 1951 report from the Personnel Department of the Ministry of National Defence assessed that one in nine officers was “insufficiently trained” and as many as 10,793 were “completely untrained.”
[8] Training was initially scheduled to begin on October 1, 1945, but started on March 15, 1946. The group included generals Arso Jovanović, Peko Dapčević, Radovan Vukanović, Dušan Kveder, Božo Božović, Milutin Morača, Đoko Jovanić, Male Jerković, Colonels Sredoje Urošević, Moma Đurić and others.
[9] The academies: Frunze, Dzerzhinsky, Lenin, Stalin and Kuibyshev. At that time, 3,740 Yugoslav Army officers were undergoing training in the USSR.
[10] In a letter to Đilas written during the waiting period for “Arso’s group” to depart for training, B. Ziherl, President of the CC of the CPY in Moscow, suggested that “politically reliable people should be sent to Moscow — those who will not become demoralized at the first encounter with the everyday difficulties here, but who will understand what the Soviet Union sacrificed in this war and will not ask for too much.”
[11] That statement — clearly an expression of official policy — is not found in any party documents or in Đilas’ books. Military historian Colonel Radomir “Ljaka” Vujošević, then a major and secretary of the CPY organization at the “Stalin” Tank Academy, preserved it in his notebook.
[12] All diplomas were registered under number 200, dated May 28, 1948.
[13] According to data from the Personnel Department of the Ministry of National Defence, at the time the Cominform Resolution “broke out,” 1,424 Yugoslav Army officers were in training in the Soviet Union. Of those, 1,082 would return to Yugoslavia, while 342 remained. Earlier, from April 1945 to the end of 1947, 5,135 had been trained in the USSR.
[14] They were withdrawn on the basis of a letter from Marshal N. Bulganin dated March 18, 1945, with the explanation that they were “surrounded by distrust and hostility.”
[15] At that time, the Yugoslav Army, with 128 generals, had around 100,000 officers and non-commissioned officers, along with 700 aircraft and 600 artillery pieces.
[16] By Broz’s decision, announced at the Political Bureau session on January 21, 1948, two divisions of the Yugoslav Army were to be sent to Albania — for its defence, relying on the Yugoslav military base in Korča — against the monarcho-fascists from the southeast, from neighbouring Greece. Of the two, the 2nd Proletarian Division, stationed in Bitola, was ready to depart, while another, sent for preparations to Manjača, was expected to be ready by February 15. Confronted with the backlash from the all-powerful Generalissimo, Broz rescinded the decision at the Political Bureau session on March 1, 1948.
[17] According to the order of the Ministry of National Defence, reference no. 764, dated July 1, 1948.
[18] A member of the Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania — already publicly aligned with the call to the “healthy forces” to overthrow the leadership of the CPY — stayed in Belgrade from July 28 to August 18 during the sessions of the Danube Conference.
[19] Those “papers” would soon share the fate of his other manuscripts — they were confiscated, both from his home and office, by KOS agents.
[20] A two-metre-tall prewar national shot put champion, he was brutally tortured in the infamous Petrova Rupa on Goli Otok, his body weight dropping to 42 kilograms. In his Goli Otok Trilogy, Milinko Stojanović — himself among the first punished in Petrova Rupa — names, alongside generals B. Poljanac, Đ. Mirašević, V. Žižić and B. Petričević, a total of 23 colonels (including the two brothers of P. Dapčević, Vlado and Milutin), 3 lieutenant colonels, 6 majors and 5 captains of the Yugoslav Army.
[21] The political leadership also classified V. Terzić among the “Russian students” — who, despite serving 20 wartime months as the head of the NOVJ mission in Moscow, was labelled “unsuitable” and forced into retirement at the age of 50.
[22] In April 1949, S. Rodić died suddenly. In the early 1950s, P. Dapčević and D. Lekić — and later D. Kveder — were assigned to diplomatic posts in Western capitals; R. Vukanović was forced into early retirement, and S. Urošević was “transferred to the reserves” at the age of 40; Milutin Morača was “reassigned” to a civilian post.
[23] According to Military-Historical Journal no. 5 from 1978, pp. 67-72, during the war the NOVJ — later the Yugoslav Army — received from the Red Army: 96,515 rifles, 68,423 light and heavy machine guns, 4,430 artillery pieces and mortars of all calibres, 65 tanks, 491 aircraft, 1,329 radio stations, 11 field hospitals and more.
[24] In his home on Lackovićeva Street in Dedinje, Koča told me in 1986 that he had passed on to Arso’s wife, Senka, what Broz had told him. Later, in the 1960s, as Vice President of the Republic and under pressure from various versions about the fate of the “sinful Arsenije,” he initiated the formation of a state commission to establish the truth — but it “did not pass” in the Federal Assembly.
[25] According to the archive of the Personnel Department of the Federal Secretariat for National Defence, military courts sentenced 2,345 Yugoslav Army officers of all ranks as “Cominformists” for “acts against the state and the people.” The Goli Otok Association cites a figure of 3,319, providing ranks as well, while M. Đilas, in his memoirs, claims the number reached as high as 7,000.
[26] Around 16,500 officers and non-commissioned officers were, between 1948 and 1953, punished with loss of rank in disciplinary proceedings within units and institutions due to “mild disagreement” with the practices of CPY bodies.
[27] In internal material on personnel policy and practice from 1945 to 1985, authored by Colonel General Dr. Drago Nikolić, it is stated that Arso was, “by decision of the competent authorities,” stripped of his rank, decorations and honourable rights — but neither the authorities nor their decision are disclosed.
[28] Uncertain which (of the many and controversial) versions of Arso R. Jovanović’s death is accurate, the editorial board of the publication The Revolutionary Movement of the Municipality of Titograd 1919–1945 (1975) lists, next to his name in the register of participants, “died after the war.” The previously mandatory designation as a Cominformist killed while attempting to flee across the border is also absent from Milija Stanišić’s book Leading Cadres of the National Liberation War in Montenegro (1995).
(Translated from Jugoslovensko-Sovjetski sukob 1948. godine, Institut za savremenu istoriju, Beograd 1999, pp. 183-194.)