Prompted by Mr Novak Vuco, descendant of a Yugoslav general Veljko Kovacevic, who was a famed Second World War partisan leader and a fighter in the international brigades during the Spanish civil war, the Innovation Center is investigating the possibility of creating a digital archive devoted to Yugoslav participation in fighting for the Spanish Republic. Mr Vuco offered his grandfather’s personal library and documentation as a starting point. Innovation Center obliged to get in touch with the author of recent book about the Yugoslav “Spaniards”, professor Vjeran Pavlakovic of University of Rijeka, as well as with Dr Olga Manojlovic Pintar from Institute for Recent History of Serbia, who investigated their “last battle“, which was the initiatives of Yugoslav veterans of the Spanish Civil War during the 1980s to overturn the growing crisis of Socialist Yugoslavia. The concept of this digital archive is supposed to be transnational, mirroring the very commitments of the Spanish war internationalists. It could also be expanded into multimedia direction, linking it to activities of another grandson of Veljko Kovacevic, a documentary film producer Mr Srdja Vuco, who also works on this topic. Innovation Center of Institute for Contemporary History would be delighted to host such a digital collection which would link conventional historiography with the new media.
Veljko Kovačević was born on 19 December 1912 in Grahovo, near Nikšić. After completing primary school in his hometown and four years of grammar school in Nikšić, he continued his education at the Teacher Training School in Cetinje, graduating in 1937. That same year, he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb, where he became active in the revolutionary student movement and took part in its political actions.
In 1937, driven by strong antifascist convictions, Kovačević joined a group of Yugoslav volunteers travelling to Spain to defend the Spanish Republic. Serving within the Đaković Battalion of the 129th International Brigade of the Republican Army, where he roused to the rank of squad commander/ sergeant, he took part in battles across multiple Spanish fronts from 1937 to 1939. In summer if 1938, during fighting near Castellano, he sustained severe wounds. He joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that same year.
Following the withdrawal of the International Brigades, Kovačević was interned in a series of French Prison camps — Saint-Cyprien, Gurs, Vernet, and Camp de Mille. He escaped Following the fall of France in World War II and the brief dissolution of the camp, he returned to occupied Yugoslavia to lead the Partisan uprising in the Gorski Kotar and Primorje regions (modern day Croatia), where he rose to command the 13th Primorsko-Goranska Division of the Partisan forces. Throughout the entire war, Kovačević was also a member of the Main Staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Croatia.
After the war, he continued his career in the military, attaining the rank of Colonel General, and became an author. Among other works, he wrote the novel In the Trenches of Spain (1958), based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Second edition of this book, prefaced by Santigo Carillo, was issued in 1976 to commemorate four decades from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War,
He passed away in Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia in 1994.
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