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Zbor (Serbia)

Збор

Flag of Zbor - Image by Tomislav Todorović, 13 April 2013

Presentation of Zbor
Flag of Zbor

See also:

Presentation of Zbor

Zbor is a modern Serbian ultra-rightist group which claims the succession to a pre-WW2 movement.

Yugoslav People's Movement Zbor (Jugoslovenski narodni pokret "Zbor") was founded in 1935, by fusion of several pro-Fascist groups from various parts of the then Yugoslavia. The word Zbor means "rally" in Serbian, as well as in other South Slavic languages, but was also interpretated as the acronym for Združena borbena organizacija rada (United Combative Organization of Labour).
Originally meant to be an all-Yugoslav organization, Zbor soon became such only nominally, for its (never numerous) Croat and Slovene members left during first several years, only Serbs having remained and activities limited to present-day Serbia. The leader and ideologist of the movement was the Serbian lawyer Dimitrije Ljotić, whose anti-democratic views were a blend of authoritarianism, corporatism, monarchism, anti-Communism, anti-freemasonry, Orthodox Christian fundamentalism and anti-Semitism, resulting in demands for an alliance with the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. Although Yugoslav governments of late 1930s generally pursued this goal as well, they were also hostile towards Zbor, which, not founded by them, was not under their control and was eventually banned in 1940.
After the occupation in 1941, Zbor organized the Serbian Volunteer Corps (Srpski dobrovoljački korpus), which actively assisted in the repression by occupational forces (100 executed civilians for a killed German soldier) and in persecution of Jews. In 1945, while retreating via Slovenia, Ljotić was killed in a car accident, while part of his followers who managed to leave the country were extradited, tried and executed. The others mostly settled in Germany, being granted the status equal to that of German soldiers, and managed to maintain their organization for years, although generally rejected by the Serbian diaspora, especially by the Četniks, who, althoughthey often collaborated with the occupiers against the Partisans, consistently claimed to be waiting for "the right movement" to liberate the country and were frequently treated as the guerrilla fighters after their emigration (no background checks due to establishment of Communism in Yugoslavia).

After the collapse of Communism, there were constant efforts of re-introduction of their ideas in Serbia and even a re-foundation attempt in 2000s, this time as the Serbian People's Movement Zbor (Srbski narodni pokret "Zbor"), with a very limited success (might have not outlived the decade), although the ideas are thought to have had a much wider impact on Serbian far right.

Sources:
- Wikipedia (Zbor)
- Wikipedia (Serbian Volunteer Corps)
- Terzić, V. 1982. Slom Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1941. - Uzroci i posledice poraza. Vol. 1, pp. 165-169 (online copy)

Tomislav Todorović, 13 April 2013

Flag of Zbor

Although the original Zbor movement consistently used a number of emblems, it seems to have had no flag of its own. The only flag related to it was that of the Serbian Volunteer Corps.

The re-founded organization uses a red flag (photo, photo) with a white "Kosovo cross" (kosovski krst) between four firesteels, which are shaped so as to form parts of a ring, the whole device resembling a Celtic cross, as well as that of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, from which it might have been derived.

Tomislav Todorović, 13 April 2013