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Chapter II deals with immediate post-war situation in countries that are a focus of the study and the repercussions of their newly acquired status of either vanquished or victorious. It shows how in practical terms most of the Balkan paramilitaries didn’t step out from the war but remain ‘mobilized’ for future engagement. While Serbian chetniks were the first summoned to answer to numerous security challenges, komitajis of the IMRO and Albanian kachaks led by the Kosovo Committee didn’t want to accept new order and new realities so visible in creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the fact that Macedonia and Kosovo and Metohija became integral part of new South Slav state. While old actors and organizations continued their struggle, new one appeared as well, such as Military or Officers League—secret organizations of Bulgarian officers who were discharged from active duty after Bulgaria as other defeated countries had to drastically reduce its armed forces and abolish conscription. As others they refused to accept new realities and were ready to work in favour of revision of existing order. Balkans also witnessed arrival of thousands of Russian emigrants as well as their former adversaries who fought on the side of the Bolsheviks. Both groups were ready to continue the struggle and immediately upon arrival they started either creating their own paramilitary structures—like communists—either wanted to preserve existing military organizations—like ‘White’ Russians.

This essay examines cinematic representations of the Russian diaspora within Manchukuo and the Japanese empire, through an analysis of the relation of sound, singing, and music to movement and affect in the film My Nightingale (1943), directed by Shimazu Yasujiro. This story of Russian exiles is set within architectural spaces that have intimate connections with sound and music and that, because they are marked as culturally different, take on racialized meanings. With the focus on sonic, sensory, and vocal elements as “cinematic affect,” the film’s images are rendered as pure potential and indeterminacy—particularly in scenes where there are disjunctions between those images and the sources of sound, speech acts, and subtitles. Such disjunctions create resonances that go beyond the ideological and pedagogical apparatus of film production to establish a new unbounded hermeneutic space without a definite and stable center.

Chapter V is dedicated to several coup d’états as well as counter coups and unsuccessful attempts that happened in investigated period in Albania and Bulgaria. In Albania coups were integral part of struggle for stability in this country while in Bulgaria coup was a mean for undoing changes that occurred after the Great War. In almost all of them paramilitaries had their peace of action. In the same time Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, despite numerous difficulties and overall diversity, was never endangered by prospect of violent overturn. On the contrary, it often served as safe haven for those actors from Albania and Bulgaria who lost and were forced to leave the country or served as basis for counter-coup providing assistance, resources and even experienced paramilitaries. However, in both Albanian and Bulgarian examples of overturn it showed how for successful outcome good organization, determination, focus, and precise plans both for the execution and ‘the day after’ showed to be far more important than overall numbers.

Chapter I presents the story of origins of modern Balkan paramilitaries which was shaped during the late 19th—early 20th century nation and state building processes in the Balkans. Existing traditions of guerrilla warfare were used during the struggle between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia over Ottoman Macedonia when all three countries initiated sending of small armed bands to Macedonia in order to protect their own and intimidate rivals followers. It also describes appearance of Albanian national movement and how Balkan countries used their respective paramilitaries during the Balkan Wars 1912-1913 and the First World War. It also shows how during the Toplica uprising in 1917 against Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian occupation regimes in Serbia happened yet another bloody encounter of Serbian, Bulgarian and Albanian paramilitaries. Situation after the First World War was characterised by adjusting to new realities, by creation of new organizations and by arrival of non-Balkan actors—‘White’ Russians émigrés and former participants in Russian revolutions. Both groups brought their own experiences, visions and rivalries.

When MGM hired J. E. Williamson for a follow-up to Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea to be titled The Mysterious Island, filmed in Technicolor, the production took four years to complete. Verne’s own plot was abandoned, but many of the new movie’s motifs would reappear in later Verne films beginning in the 1950s, The Mysterious Island proving to be a classic of early science fiction. At the time, however, it was a commercial failure, and there was to be no more Verne science fiction for two decades; other Verne films remade stories already brought to the screen during the silent era with narratives familiar from the stage. The most ambitious was a remake of Michael Strogoff incorporating battle footage from two recent European versions, but in the wake of the Russian Revolution, audiences in the United States lost interest in heroism during czarist Russia, and the result was another commercial failure. Similarly, the range of Verne titles in print declined precipitously, and only the appearance of the first Verne societies and biographies in English pointed to a possible revival.