page_title: Mladen Stojanović
section_title: Grmeč area
hierarchical_section_title: Mladen Stojanović / Yugoslav Partisan / Grmeč area
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Pravoslavna ikona Miloša Obilića kao svetog ratnika, u manastiru Hilandar.
context_page_description: Mladen Stojanović was a Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav physician who led a detachment of Partisans on and around Mount Kozara in northwestern Bosnia during World War II in Yugoslavia. He was posthumously bestowed the Order of the People's Hero.
  At the age of fifteen, Stojanović became an activist in a group of student organizations called Young Bosnia, which strongly opposed Austria-Hungary's occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1912, Stojanović was inducted into Narodna Odbrana, an association founded in Serbia with the goal of organizing guerrilla resistance to Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation by Austria-Hungary. Stojanović was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian authorities in July 1914, and although he was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment, he was pardoned in 1917. He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine after World War I, and in 1929, opened a private practice in the town of Prijedor. In September 1940, he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
  Following the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and their creation of the Independent State of Croatia, Stojanović was arrested at the behest of the Ustaše, Croatia's fascist ruling party.
context_section_description: On 29 or 30 December 1941, Stojanović arrived in the area of Grmeč in western Bosanska Krajina, which was in the zone of responsibility of the 1st Krajina National Liberation Partisan Detachment. This zone also included Drvar, where the uprising in Bosnia-Herzegovina began. The military activities of the Partisans there diminished after the capture of Drvar by Italian troops on 25 September 1941. In the Italians' propaganda, they presented themselves as protectors of the Serbian people against the Ustaše. Groups of Serbs collaborated with the Italians. According to Karabegović, the Partisans of the 1st Krajina Detachment became more active after Pucar held a conference with their commanders on 15 December 1941, but this activity was still weak in northern parts of Grmeč. Stojanović went there to counter the Italian propaganda and to mobilise the Partisans against the Italians and their collaborators; he was accompanied by Karabegović.
  According to the writer Branko Ćopić, who was a Partisan in Grmeč, Stojanović was greeted by a crowd of villagers and welcomed with the traditional bread and salt ceremony when he crossed the Sana River. Prominent villagers shook hands with him, and they compared him with Miloš Obilić—a famous Serbian epic hero from the medieval Battle of Kosovo. Several women approached Stojanović to kiss his hands; he declined this mark of respect, saying that he was not a priest but a communist.
  Stojanović visited the villages in the area, inspecting individual companies and platoons of the 1st Krajina Detachment. His visits were accompanied by parades of Partisan units and by mass gatherings. Partisan songs were sung, slogans were shouted, and banners were waved. Stojanović gave speeches to the villagers and soldiers. He said that the Italian troops in the area were not protectors of the Serbs, but occupiers and enemies. He branded those who collaborated with the Italians as traitors to the Serbian people. Stojanović's speeches were not well received by some people, who spread rumours that he was not Mladen Stojanović, but a "Turk" (Muslim) impersonator. According to them, Stojanović had been killed by the Ustaše in August 1941 and the communists were using an impersonator to deceive the people. Few people gave credence to these rumours.
  On 22 January 1942, at the headquarters of the 1st Krajina Detachment in the village of Majkić Japra, Stojanović presided over a conference of the detachment staff and political activists of Grmeč. He criticised the detachment headquarters because it had no division of functions and there was no personal accountability among its members. He also stated the headquarters had no communication with the companies of the detachment, did not act as a military-political leadership, and there were no designated couriers available at all times at the headquarters. Stojanović was generally pleased with the Grmeč Partisans, describing them as courageous, enthusiastic, firm, and trustworthy but somewhat inexperienced. However, he said that the platoons of the detachment were dispersed in villages and had no contact with each other. In this way, according to Stojanović, the Partisans were losing their soldierly characteristics and becoming more like peasants. Stojanović criticised the views of some Partisans that political commissars should be abolished. He warned that the Partisans who wore emblems other than the red star would be punished for indiscipline.
  At the conference, Stojanović installed Milorad Mijatović—a Partisan from Kozara—as the new commander of the 1st Krajina and Petar Vojnović as deputy commander, while Velimir Stojnić and Salamon "Moni" Levi remained as commissar and deputy commissar, respectively. Levi was an acquaintance of Stojanović's from his visits to Vienna in 1921 and 1922. During his tour of Grmeč, Stojanović met the young writer Branko Ćopić, and encouraged him to write poetry about the fight of the Partisans. Stojanović said poetry was more acceptable for the Partisans than prose. "Poetry and revolution," he remarked, "always go hand in hand." He stayed
caption: Serbian epic hero Miloš Obilić, with whom Stojanović was compared by villagers in Grmeč
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