Petar Kočić (; 29 June 1877 – 27 August 1916) was a Bosnian Serb writer, activist and politician. Born in rural northwestern Bosnia in the final days of Ottoman rule, Kočić began writing around the turn of the twentieth century, first poetry and then prose. While a university student, he became politically active and began agitating for agrarian reforms within Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been occupied by Austria-Hungary following the Ottomans' withdrawal in 1878. Other reforms that Kočić demanded were freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, which were denied under Austria-Hungary.
In 1902, Kočić published his first short story collection. He published two more short story collections in 1904 and 1905, and subsequently adapted one of his most successful short stories, The Badger on Trial, for the stage. Kočić subsequently led several demonstrations in Sarajevo and was imprisoned on three occasions for publishing newspaper tracts critical of Habsburg rule. He spent the majority of his imprisonment in solitary confinement, which contributed to his development of depression. In 1909, Kočić was released as part of a general amnesty. The following year, he published his third and final short story collection, and won a seat in the newly created Diet of Bosnia (Sabor), where he became the leader of a faction of anti-Austrian Serb nationalists. He lobbied for increased concessions to Bosnian Serb peasants and farmers, agitating against the Austro-Hungarians as well as the Bosnian Muslim landowning class. He left the Sabor in 1913, citing mental exhaustion. In January 1914, Kočić was admitted into a Belgrade mental hospital, where he died two years later.
Kočić was one of the most important Bosnian Serb politicians of the Austro-Hungarian era, as well as one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's most important twentieth-century playwrights. He was noted for his fiery temperament and sharp wit, which he frequently deployed against the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Kočić's works not only influenced an entire generation of Bosnian intellectuals, such as the future Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić, but also the Serbian and Yugoslav nationalist movements, as well as the Bosnian autonomist and Yugoslav communist movements. Numerous streets in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia carry his name and his likeness has appeared on Bosnian 100 KM banknotes since 1998.
Early life and education
Petar Kočić was born into a Bosnian Serb family on 29 June 1877 in the hamlet of Stričići, in the Zmijanje region, near Banja Luka in northern Bosnia. His father, Jovan, was an Eastern Orthodox priest and his mother, Mara, was a housewife. Within a year of his birth, the Bosnia Vilayet was occupied by Austria-Hungary, bringing more than four centuries of Ottoman rule to a sudden end. Kočić's father had taken his priestly vows in 1873. In 1879, Kočić's mother died while giving birth to his younger brother Ilija, and his father decided to become a monk at the Gomionica Monastery, where he adopted the monastic name Gerasim.
Following his mother's death, Kočić and his siblings, Milica and Ilija, were sent to live with their extended family in a peasant zadruga. Each member of the zadruga was assigned a particular role. Kočić was tasked with herding livestock. At the time, ninety percent of Bosnia's population was illiterate, and storytelling took on a predominantly oral character, as exemplified by the tradition of the gusle, a one-stringed instrument used to accompany the recitation of epic poetry, which was the primary form of entertainment in Serb peasant communities. Kočić remained illiterate until the age of eleven, when he was dispatched to Gomionica, where his father had since become abbot, to receive basic schooling. Kočić's stay at the monastery, during which he was taught the history of the Serbs and became acquainted with Serbian tradition and lore, left an indelible impression on him, and was to influence his future writing. In 1888, around the time Kočić arrived at Gomionica, his father was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian police for leading a demonstration against Crown Prince Rudolph during a state visit to Banja Luka, and sentenced to seven months' imprisonment.
Kočić left Gomionica after two years and completed his primary education at the Eastern Orthodox religious school in Banja Luka, though he returned to the monastery every summer in order to spend time with his father. Kočić was the best student in his class at the religious school, and upon graduating in 1891, he departed for Sarajevo to attend high school at the First Sarajevo Gymnasium. During his first three years, he excelled in subjects such as mathematics, as well as Greek, Latin, German and Serbo-Croatian, which the Austro-Hungarians deemed the "language of the land" (zemaljski jezik), so as not to become entangled in local ethnolinguistic disputes. Kočić experienced a violent fit in his fourth year, swearing at a theology teacher and throwing a textbook at him over a poor grade. He was dismissed from the classroom and subjected to a monetary fine. According to a classmate, the outburst changed Kočić, "turning him from an ambitious, disciplined student, into a truant and frequenter of kafanas and bars." Following an incident in which a visibly intoxicated Kočić and his friends verbally abused Muslim students in a hotel bar, Kočić was expelled from the Gymnasium. He found himself unable to enroll into any of the high schools in Bosnia, having apparently drawn the ire of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Kočić was forced to continue his education in neighbouring Serbia and enrolled into a Belgrade high school, from which he graduated in 1899.
Career Early writing and activism
While in Belgrade, Kočić met the writer Janko Veselinović, whose popular short stories and novels romanticized Serbian peasant life. Kočić shared several of his poems with Veselinović, who recommended that he focus on prose instead. Kočić's time in Belgrade was marked by dire poverty. "Although Serbian," he wrote, the city was "a foreign world." Kočić's behaviour became extremely volatile, as exemplified in a letter he wrote his childhood friend and future wife Milka Vukmanović, threatening to kill her and then himself if she married another man. Letters to his father, pressing for money, also struck an abusive and manipulative tone. The notion of suicide began to appear more frequently in his notes. "I will kill myself," he wrote, "to put an end once and for all to all the sufferings and torments that have pursued me from my birth. My life in Banja Luka was hard and dark, in Sarajevo still worse, and in Belgrade, it reached the very climax of suffering." The historian Robin Okey describes such passages as "a reminder of the stresses on young students in this first transition from patriarchalism, particularly without funding when illness and hunger were recurrent."
Frequently homeless, Kočić took to sleeping on the street. One evening, he was woken by a kick to the gut. A policeman stood overhead, swearing and threatening to arrest him. Kočić fled but later recounted that he forgave the policeman because the kick had been administered by "the same soldier who will, sooner or later, carry victorious banners" into Bosnia. Historian Edin Hajdarpašić believes Kočić's response to this incident is emblematic of his nationalist philosophy. "Some roughness from one's co-nationals was understandable," Hajdarpašić writes, "but an 'alien' rule of law was intolerable since it violated, by default, the 'native' national sentiment that Kočić claimed as his position."
In the fall of 1899, Kočić enrolled into the University of Vienna's Department of Slavistics and began writing prose. His first short story appeared in the publication Bosanska vila (Bosnian Fairy) in 1899. Soon, Kočić began taking part in South Slavic student demonstrations on campus, demanding freedom of the press and assembly in Bosnia. Despite living in the city and being well educated, Kočić took up the cause of the Bosnian Serb peasants. Most peasants were kmets, or serfs, and did not own the land they tilled. Though they were no longer legally referred to as serfs from 1878 onwards, their farmland remained the property of the Muslim landowning class, which emerged from the Ottoman withdrawal largely unscathed. Kočić helped produce memoranda outlining the protesters' demands, which attracted the attention of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Kočić understood that his political views could lead to restrictions being imposed on his liberty, as demonstrated in a letter he wrote Vukmanović in 1901: "I shall spend perhaps the greater part of my life in jails and prisons, because all us students are going to begin a struggle against the [Austrians], who plunder our nation, deprive it of its freedom, and destroy its happiness."
During his stay in Vienna, Kočić joined the Serbian academic society Zora (Dawn). It was here that he met Pavle Lagarić, another aspiring writer. Lagarić recognized Kočić’s literary talents and introduced him to realism, moving him away from the romanticism of Veselinović. Petar adapted to the new style with ease, publishing his first collection of short stories, S planine i ispod planine (From the Mountain and Below the Mountain) in 1902. Kočić first read the drafts of his stories to members of Zora, took note of their comments and concerns, and made changes accordingly. Between 1902 and 1905, Kočić published three volumes of short stories, all under the same title, S planine i ispod planine. Notable among these was Jazavac pred sudom (The Badger on Trial), in which a farmer attempts to sue a badger for eating his crops. Kočić subsequently adapted the story into a one-act play. It premiered at Belgrade's National Theatre on 26 November 1905.
Anti-government tracts and imprisonment
Upon graduating, Kočić left Vienna in April 1904 and returned to northern Bosnia, where he and Vukmanović eloped on 18 September. In February 1905, the two relocated to Skopje, in Ottoman-controlled Macedonia, where Kočić worked as a teacher at a local Serbian-language high school. Upon arriving in Skopje, Kočić was shaken by the news that his father had died. During his stay, he staged the first theatrical performance in the city's history, a stage production of Jazavac pred sudom. Kočić remained in Skopje for less than a year. He made the mistake of writing an article for the Belgrade daily Politika that was critical of the local Serbian archimandrite, prompting his superiors to arrange a transfer to Bitola, which he declined. Kočić and his wife moved back to Vienna, but their stay there proved to be shortlived. Within a year, the couple relocated to Sarajevo, where Kočić became the general secretary of Prosveta (Enlightment), a Serb cultural society. In May 1906, he took part in a province-wide general strike. In his speeches, he drew parallels between the grievances of workers and those of peasants, whose discontent continued to fester, as the average size of their plots had decreased by 11 percent between 1895 and 1910.