Први боравак Сибета Миличића у Русији (1915. године)
Sibe Miličić’s First Sojourn in Russia (1915)

Summary/Abstract: After the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian offensive on Serbia and during the period of the fragile peace in November and December 1914, as the Serbian army and people were trying to recover from war atrocities, the Serbian government was aware that new battles against an even stronger enemy lay ahead. Most of all, the army needed recovery and strengthening and needed to be filled up with manpower. The experience the Serbian army had already had with the volunteers from Austria-Hungary (mainly from Vojvodina, Bosnia and Dalmacija) inspired the idea to carry out a draft among the Austro-Hungarian war prisoners of our origin interned in Russia. This was, in fact, to a large extent initiated by the then Serbian ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Miroslav Spalajković, who in late November 1914 informed the Serbian government that a number of war prisoners were pleading with our embassy to be allowed to go and fight for Serbia and that the embassy had received almost 20,000 of such pleas! When the permission was granted by the Serbian government at the beginning of 1915, Spalajković acted upon it. Under his supervision, the action was led by Dušan Jovanović Semiz. Accordingly, as early as the beginning of August 1915 several representatives from Serbia came to Russia and Semiz was given the task to organize them and send them to the prisoner camps so that they could agitate among the imprisoned Serbs and Croats. Hence, all the representatives of the Serbian government were from the then Austria-Hungary. One of them was Mustafa Golubić. Along with Golubić to Russia came Josip Sibe Miličić, as well, as a confidant of the Prime Minister Nikola Pašić. Miličić arrived in Russia in late July 1915, and together with Semiz and Golubić commenced the mission in the middle of August 1915. Miličić, however, had a serious conflict with Golubić, so Golubić and Semiz went to Kharkov, while Miličić went to Kazan. At the same time, he asked Pašić to retrieve him back to Serbia, which Pašić did in early September 1915. In the meantime, however, the Austro-German-Bulgarian offensive started, and the army, government and part of civilian population fled the country. Miličić met Pašić no sooner than the beginning of 1916 in Corfu. It wasn’t long before he embarked on another long and difficult journey to Russia to arrange another assembling of the so-called Yugoslav volunteers, but this time the outcome was much more favorable.

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