ECHOES OF THE GREAT WAR: MEMOIRS AND LITERARY EXPERIENCE ON THE PHENOMENON OF ZELENI KADER AND MILITARY DESERTION IN CROATIA
ECHOES OF THE GREAT WAR: MEMOIRS AND LITERARY EXPERIENCE ON THE PHENOMENON OF ZELENI KADER AND MILITARY DESERTION IN CROATIA

Summary/Abstract: Military collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the end of World War I, which accelerated during the last months of the 1918, resulted in widespread military desertion and a situation in which the deserters, returnees from military captivity and a large part of peasantry, which was weary of war-related hardships, formed a phenomenon marked by contemporaries as the Zeleni kader. In general chaos which ensued, the experience of war and anarchy was brought from the frontlines to the hinterland of Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia. This paper puts to the foreground the memories of war veterans connected to these events at the end of 1918 in form of memoires, and literary expressions of the participants of the Great War, which supplement the image of general discontent, horrors of war and the collapse of the existing system. Contrary to often faceless documentation of the official authorities, memoires and literary works, treated methodologically as historical sources and with employment of interdisciplinary approach, which considers the cognitions of literary theory, can elucidate the events linked to the Zeleni kader and its forms. Furthermore, this body of works presents us with an insight to soldiers’ attitudes, their experiences of the war and motives for desertion, but also the subtle traces of mentality of all participants in these events at the end of the First World War.

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