СТАНИСЛАВ КРАКОВ У РАТОВИМА ЗА ОСЛОБОЂЕЊЕ И УЈЕДИЊЕЊЕ (1912–1918)
STANISLAV KRAKOW IN THE WARS FOR LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION (1912–1918)

Summary/Abstract: In the paper, we have reconstructed the war experience of Stanislav Krakow – a volunteer in the Balkan Wars, an officer in the First World War, writer and journalist after the war. By all means, Krakow was an outstanding person with extraordinary war experience and almost movielike life. In the six years-long war period Krakow was injured 14 times and honoured with 18 Serbian and foreign decorations for bravery. In many war episodes he played a very prominent role. He was in the unit that was first attacked by Bulgaria in autumn 1915 and participated in all battles at the Thessaloniki front in 1916–1918. When the Serbian and Allied army broke through the frontline, he was leading the unit that liberated Veles. The first unit, which crossed the Sava, liberated Ruma, Novi Sad and the entire Fruška Gora region, was under his command. He was in the division chosen to cross through Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia and finally reach the Adriatic Sea in Istria. With literary talent, Krakow was describing very meticulously the situation in Rijeka, tense relations with Italians and the outcome of that war adventure. Furthermore, he was a representative of the Serbian army within the Rijeka occupation corps under the command of French General Tranié. From Rijeka, he was transferred to Zagreb in the special military mission headed by Colonel Milan Pribićević. When the mission was disbanded in February 1919, he remained in Zagreb but now as part of a new mission under the command of his uncle Colonel Milan Nedić. In Zagreb, Krakow was the witness of a very tight antiYugoslav atmosphere, disappointment of one part of Croats with the new state, their separatist feelings, etc. Retired from the Army in 1922, he turned to a career of a journalist and writer and achieved significant success. Despite the fact that published during one decade even today he is considered one of the most prominent representatives of Expressionism in Yugoslavia. His entire literature relied on the war experience in 1912–1918. The research basis of this paper were documents, war journals and manuscripts stored in the Archive of Yugoslavia and the National Library of Serbia. Immense contributions to the research were Krakow’s novels and shorts stories. His role in the Second World War, mainly close cooperation with Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić, and his unambiguously pro-Nazi beliefs, are not examined in the paper. Krakow fled Yugoslavia in August 1944 and until its death in 1968 lived in France and Switzerland.

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