Karantin za ideje. Logori za izolaciju “sumnjivih elemenata“ u Kraljevini Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca (SCS) 1919-1922

Author of Karantin za ideje Goran Miloradovic can be viewed as a member of the middle generation of Serbian historians: he was born in 1965 in Novi Becej (Vojvodina) and since his graduation in history in 1994, he has been working in the Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade. His main fields of interest are in the areas of social history and in the exploration of connections between literature, film and history. For several years he served as head of the History Department in the Petnica Science Centre, where the subfield of social history has been carefully cherished. Currently, Miloradovic is finishing his PhD thesis related to the Bolshevik influences in the art of socialist Yugoslavia, from 1945 to 1955.

The book Karantin za ideje presents a staggering example of the fact that it is still possible, in contemporary Serbian as well as in the whole ex-Yugoslav space, to find frustrating gaps in historical knowledge, i.e. that there are topics and phenomena still untouched by historical science. On the 337 pages of this work, Miloradovic confronts, as the first researcher, one of these gaps, the camps for “suspicious elements” that existed in the Kingdom of SCS from 1919 to 1922.  These forgotten camps served for the temporary isolation, police interrogation as well as medical care of the numerous war prisoners and different types of refugees that were pouring towards the borders of the newly formed Kingdom of SCS, during the first postwar years. There were large numbers of war prisoners from the defeated Austro-Hungarian army in them as well as the members of the Serbian Royal Army who were returning mainly from Russia, but also from a whole range of other countries. In the first place, the camps were formed in order to prevent Bolshevik supporters to infiltrate the Kingdom of SCS. Although this political reason presented the main motive for the creation of the camps, the medical reasons were not much less important. The fears of epidemics and evident poor health conditions of the returnees demanded a more systematic solution.

Miloradovic approaches his topic from various angles and delivers a mixture of “eventful” history as well as history “from below.” In his four chapters Miloradovic deals with the theoretical framework of the topic as well as with the reconstruction of the fates of the internees. Theoretical considerations are often neglected in Serbian historiography, but this book presents a fine exception from this tradition. More than 80 pages of this work are dedicated to terminological and methodological issues relevant for the understanding of the phenomenon of “forced isolation.” At first hearing this might sound like an exceptionally long introduction. Still, confronted with the stereotypes about the prison camps, Miloradovic had good reasons to carefully contextualize the types of camps that existed in the Kingdom of SCS. The term “concentration camp”, sometimes used in the sources, had to be abandoned because of the immense semantic charge it acquired as part of the legacy of the Second World War. Miloradovic approaches the camps for isolation as a phenomenon that evolved historically, and of which its Yugoslav variant presented just one instance. Next to this important terminological clarification Miloradovic explains the phases of mass isolation and pursues relevant questions thoroughly. He argues that camps for isolation did not exist before the French Revolution, as a crucial condition for their emergence was yet missing: there was no such direct connection between the masses  of people and political ideas.

The conception that the fundamental reason for the isolation was the aim of prevention dominates this book. A subversive set of ideas was perceived as a disease that might spread among the masses, and consequently, crimes do not need to be carried out: their mere possibility can prove to be a sufficient reason for the isolation of people. Thus, by underlining the recurrence of medical phrases in the political speeches of the Yugoslav officials, Miloradovic not only contributes to the reconstruction of the "climate of opinion" at the time, but offers a more universal picture of the spread of ideas as an unstoppable and “contagious” occurrence.     

The camps passed through three main stages, according to Miloradovic’s book: the phase of the captivation of foreign civil population, that of the imprisonment of its own population (like in the case of the Austro-Hungary), and the third phase of the extermination camps, where the original goal of prevention can no longer be seen at work. In this, introductory chapter, Miloradovic also points out that various prominent encyclopedias tend to show remarkable selectivity while enumerating the cases of mass isolation throughout history. Last but not least, it should be stressed that this part of the book is abundant with perceptive remarks about prison camps. To take only one example: Miloradovic argues that camps are characteristics of revolutionary or instable periods of other kinds.

The first chapter titled Kraljevina SHS i revolucionarna pretnja (“The Kingdom SCS and the Revolutionary Threat”) contextualizes the topic in terms of internal and external politics. The second chapter Ubitačne klice boljevizma i njihovi nosioci (“Murderous Germs of Bolshevism and their Carriers”) presents arguably the strongest segment of this work. This part of the book offers insights into the characteristics of the returnee population. We can read some biographies of the prisoners, among which several are filled with extraordinary details from the chaos of the Russian revolution and at times they even come close to sounding like an adventure novel. Segments of this chapter, “Physical Appearance of the Returnees” and “Physiological Conditions of the Returnees,” are supported with photo albums of ex-servicemen. Together, these parts provide a vision of the thousands that participated in these post-war migrations underlining the effectiveness of social history and its crucial sobering and humanizing effect (for instance over detached political history), turning "mere numbers" into real people. Miloradovic also describes the suspicions that these men, descending from various boats and trains until the 1930s, had to face. Carefully quoting the documents, the author showed how the interrogation and caution presented one more disappointment for these men, who were already battle-hardened veterans, passed many rounds of tribulations and had few, if any, illusions left. One of them, whose name at this time was recorded as Josip Broz (latter to become worldfamous as Tito), returned from Russia in 1920 and was an ex-Russian war prisoner of the Austro-Hungarian army. This example illustrates that the topic of the isolation camps can be treated both as a study in international policy as well as a classical subject of social history. 

The last two chapters of the book are concrete case studies of the Yugoslav isolation camps, which are titled Logori za internaciju (“The Camps for Internment”) and Prijemni logori(“Entrance Camps”). In these chapters Miloradovic once more underlines the fine distinctions one needs to make when dealing with the emergence of the prison camps. The diversity of kinds discredits any simple stereotyping. The camps for interment were formed prior to the entrance camps and they encompassed most of the “suspicious elements” found in the areas that were taken by the Royal Serbian Army in 1918. Thus, as Miloradovic explains, the number of those belonging to national minorities in the new state was “disproportionately high.” The entrance camps were formed in the border areas of the Kingdom in order to best aim at collecting all the returnees. In both camps the deaths rates were low, as ex-soldiers were merely interrogated and underwent medical checks. There is no evidence that they were beaten or abused, as might be expected under the influence of the isolation and prison camps stereotypes.

In sum, Karantin za ideje presents a comprehensive approach to the intriguing problem of camps for isolation in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The special value of the work is that the phenomenon of the camps is embedded in the longue durée development of Yugoslav history, in line with the fact that ideologically different regimes tended to use some of the same location for their camps. In this sense Miloradovic surpasses the level of pure historical reconstruction, which is narrowly focused on one period of time, and his work can foster further considerations over the phenomenon of prison camps during a wider period of time (from 1919 to 1995). Moreover, as the Yugoslav case of isolation camps is approached here with a theoretical apparatus and with the aim of embedding it in the European context of the interwar years, the study could easily serve as part of a potential future comparative study on this phenomenon to which close parallels can be found in neighboring countries as well. On the other hand, it should be noted that the current disadvantageous position of Belgrade and its historians in terms of the reception of contemporary trends in historiography limited the work of Miloradovic in the two senses that his research was done exclusively in domestic archives and that he could not use some of the latest relevant monographs on related topics that have been published throughout Europe. To finish on a technical note, the book features two foreign-language summaries as well, in English and Russian.