It was elitist - only members of the
officer corps and government officials could join. But the two
shared an ethos and methods of operation. The IMRO sought to
liberate the parts of Macedonia which were under Greek and Serb
control - and the Black Hand (official name: "Union or Death")
sought to do the same for Serbs under Ottoman or Habsburg rule. The
Black Hand was the precursor of the Great Serbia dream. But whereas
the IMRO - at least until 1913 - did not enjoy the support of the
state and its mechanisms, the Black Hand was, for a long time, the
long arm of the Serb government and the Serb state. To the
generation of post-Yugoslavia It is a familiar story. In human
affairs, the dream of a Greater Serbia is no less a recurrent
nightmare than the numerable German Reichs and Serbia erupted upon
the world stage no less frequently and regularly than its northern
equivalent.
Serbia, Montenegro and Russia fought a war against Turkey in an
effort to capitalize on a Serb peasants' revolt in Bosnia in 1875.
The latter were mightily and rather inhumanly oppressed by the local
Moslem nobility (enmity has long roots in the Balkans). It was a
holy war for the protection of holy (Orthodox) mother church. It was
this conflict that led to the Turkish capitulation embedded in the
San Stefano Treaty of 1878.
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