Mustafa Golubić (, ; 24 October 1889/24 January 1891 – July 1941) was a Serbian, and later Yugoslav, guerrilla fighter, revolutionary and intelligence agent.
Following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, he joined the Chetniks of Vojislav Tankosić. During World War I, he joined the Royal Serbian Army and later visited Russia to gather recruits for the Balkan Front. After Serbia was overrun in a joint Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian invasion in late 1915, Golubić retreated to the Greek island of Corfu alongside the rest of the Royal Serbian Army, where he began plotting to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm with the apparent blessing of Dragutin Dimitrijević, the head of Serbian military intelligence.
After travelling to France for the purpose of carrying out the plan, Golubić was arrested by the French authorities and deported to Corfu, where he was asked to testify against Dimitrijević, who had since been detained on charges of plotting against the Serbian crown prince, Alexander. Despite undergoing torture, Golubić refused to testify and was released. He subsequently relocated to France, where he spent the rest of the war.
In 1920, after allegedly making death threats against Alexander, he relocated to Vienna, where in 1923, he began writing for a Soviet-linked publication. He was later recruited by the Soviets as an agent and carried out assassinations of Soviet adversaries abroad on behalf of the NKVD. In 1941, Golubić returned to Yugoslavia on a secret assignment. Following the Axis invasion and occupation of the country, he was arrested by the Germans and eventually killed after refusing to disclose sensitive information under torture.
Biography
Balkan Wars and World War I
Mustafa Golubić was born in the town of Stolac, in southwestern Herzegovina. His birth date varies by source. By some accounts, he was born on 24 October 1889. Other sources list his birth date as 24 January 1891. His father, Muhamed, was a craftsman and his mother, Nura, was a homemaker. His family was Bosnian Muslim. Golubić self-identified as a Serb.
Golubić completed his primary education in Stolac, before relocating to Sarajevo to attend high school. In 1908, he moved to Belgrade for post-secondary studies, studying law at the University of Belgrade. Some of Golubić's classmates and contemporaries later recounted that Golubić was recruited by the Russian secret police, the Okhrana, in his youth. The historian Vladimir Dedijer later consulted the records of the Hoover Institution in an attempt to verify this claim, to no avail. Golubić did join Young Bosnia (), a multi-ethnic youth organization agitating for the separation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Austria-Hungary. The organization's membership was around 70 percent Serb, 20 percent Bosnian Muslim and 10 percent Croat. Following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in November 1912, Golubić joined the volunteer Chetnik detachment of Major Vojislav Tankosić. As part of their training, Tankosić ordered that Golubić and the other volunteers jump into the Sava from a railway bridge, "just to see whether you are going to fulfill all my orders."
Once the wars had ended, Golubić left Serbia and moved to Toulouse to continue his studies. There, on 14 January 1914, he met with Young Bosnia members Vladimir Gaćinović and Muhamed Mehmedbašić to plan the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oskar Potiorek, but the plot failed to materialize. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 by the Young Bosnia member Gavrilo Princip, Golubić returned to Serbia, where he again joined the ranks of Tankosić's Chetniks. Shortly thereafter, he was reassigned to the Bosnian Battalion of the Užice Army, which was under the command of General Ilija Gojković and whose chief of staff was Dragutin Dimitrijević, the head of Serbian military intelligence. Golubić arrived with a letter of recommendation signed by the academic Jevto Dedijer. In early 1915, Golubić departed for Russia on a mission to bring back volunteers to join the Royal Serbian Army. He returned to Serbia in September 1915, shortly before Austria-Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria's combined invasion of the country, which forced its military and much of its civilian population to retreat across Albania to the Greek island of Corfu.