Kozarčanka

Photograph and its subject

During the winter of 1943–44, the travelling troop of the Theatre of National Liberation encountered a column of Partisans from the 11th Krajina Brigade in the region of Knešpolje, in the Kozara area. The head of the theatre's ballet section was Georgij "Žorž" Skrigin, a Yugoslav ballet dancer of Russian origin. Skrigin was also an internationally acclaimed artistic photographer, and had received prestigious awards at a number of photography exhibitions during the late 1930s. Between 1942 and 1945, Skrigin took around 500 war photographs, some of which would become legendary in Socialist Yugoslavia. The commander of the 11th Krajina Brigade was also present in the column, and Skrigin asked him to photograph a female Partisan fighter. The commander selected five young nurses from the column, among whom Skrigin chose seventeen-year-old Milja Toroman. She was a Bosnian Serb from the village of Brekinja near Dubica, at the foot of Mount Kozara, and had previously been detained by the Ustaše at the Sisak concentration camp. Skrigin put a cardigan on her, slung a captured German MP-40 over her shoulder, tilted her red star-emblazoned Titovka cap to the side of her head, smoothed her hair, and told her to smile. He then photographed her with his Rolleiflex camera.

In his war photographs, Skrigin united two divergent principles: harsh realism, content-wise, and pictorialism, form-wise. In 1968, he published a monograph on his war photography, titled Rat i pozornica (War and Stage), in which the photograph of Milja Toroman is titled Kozarčanka (Woman from Kozara). The caption carries a legend, which does not mention her name: "As a young woman she was captured during the First Enemy Offensive. She succeeded in escaping—even from Germany—and reached Kozara, where she became a fighter of the Kozara forces." Author Natascha Vittorelli describes Kozarčanka as follows:

The young woman wears her shoulder-length hair loose, a thick cardigan, a five-pointed [star on her] side cap—and a rifle. She appears healthy, reposed, and good-humored, her clothes are neat and tidy. The glance over her shoulder reinforces the dynamics of her gesture, the bright smile communicates confidence and optimism, even joy and enthusiasm; the dangers and exertions of war seem remote, the victory near. Quite relaxed she seems to go to a war, which promises adventure and gender equality ... The tension between woman and weapon emphasizes the femininity of the young Partisan, but despite the rifle she rather radiates harmlessness than harassment; her girlishness undermines the provocation the female Partisan implies.

Shortly after the war, in 1946, Milja Toroman married Pero Marin, who had fought with the Partisans since the uprising in Kozara in late July 1941. The couple lived in Prijedor, the largest city in the area, and had five children. In an interview she gave in 2007, Milja explained that she did not feel like smiling at the time the photograph was taken because of the war-related hardships that she and her family had endured. Nevertheless, she acquiesced to Skrigin's request and gave a bright smile. Marin also stated that she had never carried a gun before the photograph, nor after. She died on 11 November 2007, at the age of 81.

Legacy

After the war, in which the National Liberation Army was victorious, Kozarčanka became an iconic wartime portrait in Socialist Yugoslavia. It was one of the symbols of the mass participation of women as volunteers in the Partisan struggle, which was thus additionally legitimized as a cause of the whole Yugoslav nation. The official narrative of the Partisan struggle promoted by Yugoslavia's post-war government, led by Tito, served to legitimize the regime and create a common national sentiment in the multi-ethnic country. The female Partisans held a significant place in this narrative. Kozarčanka was featured in widely circulated school textbooks, as well as war monographs and posters. The mass icon glorified the beauty and enthusiasm of a revolutionary. A modified version of Kozarčanka (without the rifle) appeared on the cover of the Yugoslav pop band Merlin's 1986 album Teško meni sa tobom (a još teže bez tebe). The rear of the cover featured a photograph of the actress Marilyn Monroe. For the mythical aura surrounding the heroine represented in Kozarčanka, any exact knowledge about her was unnecessary and could even be damaging. Her identity thus remained mostly unknown to the general public until after the Fall of Communism in Yugoslavia and other European countries, when the photograph's ideological message became irrelevant.