() is a World War II photograph that became iconic in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Shot by Yugoslav artistic photographer Georgij "à ½orà ¾" Skrigin in northern Bosnia during the winter of 1943âÂÂ44, it shows a smiling female Partisan wearing a Titovka cap and with an MP-40 slung over her shoulder.
The subject of the portrait was Milja Marin, a Bosnian Serb from a village at the foot of Mount Kozara. KozarÃÂanka was featured in widely circulated school textbooks, war monographs and posters, as well as on the cover of Merlin's 1986 album Teà ¡ko meni sa tobom (a joà ¡ teà ¾e bez tebe). Milja's identity as the subject of the photograph was not widely known in Socialist Yugoslavia.
In April 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded, occupied and dismembered by the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany. A fascist puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna drà ¾ava Hrvatska or NDH) was proclaimed on 10 April, and included almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of modern-day Serbia. Led by the Croatian nationalist Ustaà ¡e movement, one of the NDH's policies was to eliminate the state's ethnic Serb population with mass killings, expulsions and forced assimilation. Resistance movements were soon created in response to the occupation, one of which was organised by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Headed by Josip Broz Tito, the Party decided on 4 July to launch a nationwide armed uprising and the members of the forces under its leadership became known as Partisans; they were also referred to as the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. In December 1943 and January 1944, the 11th Krajina Brigade of the National Liberation Army was attacking the Germans and Ustaà ¡e in the area of Mount Kozara, in northern Bosnia, to relieve pressure from the Partisans in Banija and eastern Bosnia, where the Axis were conducting major anti-Partisan offensives.
During the winter of 1943âÂÂ44, the travelling troop of the Theatre of National Liberation encountered a column of Partisans from the 11th Krajina Brigade in the region of Kneà ¡polje, in the Kozara area. The head of the theatre's ballet section was Georgij "à ½orà ¾" 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 Ustaà ¡e 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 KozarÃÂanka (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 escapingâÂÂeven from GermanyâÂÂand reached Kozara, where she became a fighter of the Kozara forces." Author Natascha Vittorelli describes KozarÃÂanka as follows:
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.
After the war, in which the National Liberation Army was victorious, KozarÃÂanka 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. KozarÃÂanka 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 KozarÃÂanka (without the rifle) appeared on the cover of the Yugoslav pop band Merlin's 1986 album Teà ¡ko meni sa tobom (a joà ¡ teà ¾e bez tebe). The rear of the cover featured a photograph of the actress Marilyn Monroe. For the mythical aura surrounding the heroine represented in KozarÃÂanka, 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.