page_title: Kosovo Myth
section_title: World War I and Yugoslavia
hierarchical_section_title: Kosovo Myth / Political use / World War I and Yugoslavia
caption_attribution_description: English: Petar Lubarda Kosovski boj 1953 Svecana Sala Novi Dvor Beograd
context_page_description: The Kosovo Myth, also known as the Kosovo Cult and the Kosovo Legend, is a myth based on legends about events related to the Battle of Kosovo. It has been a subject in Serbian folklore and literary tradition and has been cultivated oral epic poetry and guslar poems. The final form of the legend was not created immediately after the battle but evolved from different originators into various versions. In its modern form as a political and historical narrative it emerged in 19th-century Serbia and served as an important constitutive element of the national identity of modern Serbia and its politics. The Kosovo Myth served as an important constitutive element of the Serbian national identity since that time.
  The Serbian ruler Lazar was challenged by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I to the battle on the Kosovo Polje. According to the Myth, Lazar chose to die as a martyr, with the aim of providing Serbs with a place in the Kingdom of Heaven, instead of the “earthly kingdom” and victory in the battle. Vuk Branković withdrew his troops at crucial moments, thus becoming a symbol of a betrayal, while Miloš Obilić assassinated the Sultan Murad I and then was executed.
context_section_description: On Vidovdan in 1914, Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb member of Young Bosnia, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria which initiated the July Crisis and led to the outbreak of World War I. Princip, Nedeljko Čabrinović and other members of the Young Bosnia were inspired by the heroism of Miloš Obilić, reenacting the Kosovo Myth. Princip knew the entire Njegoš's The Mountain Wreath. 
  In 1916, the Yugoslav Committee declared Vidovdan as a national holiday of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.   The Myth was used by main advocates of the Yugoslav ideology as a pan-Yugoslav myth in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1920, Vidovdan became one of the three public holidays called “St. Vitus’ Day Heroes”, aimg to the symbolic integration of the member of the ‘nation with three names’, while on 28 June 1921, the Vidovdan Constitution was adopted. 
  The Kosovo Myth was used by Serbian nationalists before WWI as an ideological tool in order to argue for a Serbian-led Yugoslavia instead of Yugoslavia as state of all South Slavs equally. After the great losses during World War I which the Serbian army suffered, these ideas further led to confusion among Serbian nationalists between support for a Serbian-led Yugoslavia and Yugoslavia as a state of all South Slavs. In this context, this was the period in which Serbian nationalists began to advance ideas about Serbian ethnic superiority over other South Slavs."
  The Kosovo Myth also played a role and ideologically shaped the coup d'état (27 March 1941) provoked by the Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact. Gavrilo V, the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who strongly opposed the signing, used the motives of the Kosovo Myth in his radio speech. Milan Nedić and his puppet government of the German-occupied territory of Serbia also evoked the Myth, insisting that what the Yugoslav resistance movements are direct opponents of the values and legacy of Kosovo heroes. The Ustaše used Vidovdan as an excuse for the massacre during the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, stating that the Serbs would start a rebellion on that holiday.
  Following the SFR Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform on Vidovdan in 1948, a government minister Milovan Đilas commented that the expelling resolution “cut into the minds and hearts of all us Serbs” and noted “the coincidence in dates between ancient calamities and living threats and onslaughts”. Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia (1804–1813), made little use of the Kosovo Cult, focusing more on self-serving heroic narrative.
caption: The Battle of Kosovo (1953) by Petar Lubarda in the New Palace, the former seat of the Executive Council of SR Serbia and the current seat of the Serbian President
exif: {}