Arsenije "Arso" Radivojev Jovanović (; 24 March 1907 – 12 August 1948) was a Yugoslav partisan general and one of the country's foremost military commanders during World War II in Yugoslavia, serving as Chief of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army.

Educated through the Royal Yugoslav Army academies, Jovanović was one of the best-educated generals among the partisan forces in Yugoslavia, speaking French, Russian and English. His military reports distinguished him, sometimes running to as many as ten pages, and he stayed close to the partisan High Command, lecturing in the first partisan officer school in Drvar, 1944. After the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, Jovanović openly sided with the Soviet Union. He was killed by Yugoslav border guards while trying to escape to Romania with two other Montenegrin dissidents, Vlado Dapčević and Branko Petričević, who were captured alive.

Biography

Arso Jovanović was born in the village of Zavala, Đurkovići, near Podgorica, Principality of Montenegro on March 24, 1907, into a family belonging to the Piperi clan. His blood relative Blažo Jovanović was a prominent Montenegrin communist.

His father was, until 1910, an officer of the Royal Serbian Army, stationed with the artillery regiment in Topčider, a suburb of Belgrade, capital of the Kingdom of Serbia. Jovanović went to school in Podgorica, and then progressed to the Yugoslav Royal Army's Military Academy in Belgrade in 1925. There he was a contemporary of Velimir Terzić and Petar Ćetković, who would later also become significant commanders in the partisan forces during World War II. He graduated near the top of his class, and was appointed sergeant (platoon commander) in the 10th Infantry Regiment "Takovski", stationed in Sarajevo. He returned to Sarajevo where he became a commander of the cadet company at the School for Reserve Infantry Officers, until the Nazi German Invasion of Yugoslavia.

After the unsuccessful battle for Pljevlja, which was intended to connect the communist-controlled territory in Sandžak and Montenegro, Jovanović was called up to supreme command. He thought that he would be relieved of duty, but (instead of Captain Branko Poljanac) Jovanović was appointed on December 12, 1941, as head of the Supreme Command of Yugoslavia's partisan forces. He held this post until the end of the war. Jovanović wrote an extensive report on the uprising in Montenegro and the reasons for the unsuccessful attempt on Pljevlja. In this report he described the shortcomings of the partisan forces.

After the war

When Joseph Stalin broke with Josip Broz Tito in 1948, Jovanović, along with other political and military personnel sided with the Soviet Union. According to the statement of the Interior Ministry on August 18, 1948, he was killed by Yugoslav border guards while trying to escape to Romania with Vlado Dapčević and Branko Petričević. His death is still a contested topic, with 29 possible versions. Most notably, in a Ljubljana court in 2000, the head of UDBA in the Yugoslav General Staff testified that he was at the meeting where the Chief of KOS in the Yugoslav Army, Jefto Šašić, killed Jovanović during an argument in Belgrade, and that he was personally involved in staging the Yugoslav-Romanian border incident.

According to the scholars Vlatka Vukelić and Vladimir Šumanović, in the initial years after the war Jovanović was "one of the most influential and most quoted figures of the restored Yugoslav state" but that after accepting the informbiro resolution in favor of the Soviet Union, he was declared an "enemy of the state" and "was literally cut out of the official Yugoslav account of World War II".

See also

  • Titoism
  • Informbiro period
  • Yugoslav Partisans

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Matović, Ivan (2001). Vojskovođa s oreolom mučenika: povest o generalu Arsu R. Jovanoviću načelniku Vrhovnog štaba NOVJ i njegovoj tragičnoj sudbini. Beograd: Vojnoistorijski institut. ISBN 86-7430-027-1.
  • Matović, Ivan (2025). Commander with a Halo of a Martyr: The Story of General Arso R. Jovanović, Chief of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army and His Tragic Fate. Toronto: Sava Press. ISBN 978-1-997536-08-6.