Who was sent from Galicia

Writing for Kosovo Online: Muharem Bazdulj

Galicia is one of those European place names that seems to have come more from a fairy tale than from history or geography. First, there are two Galicias: one in Central Europe and the other in Spain, at the far northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In terms of Serbian and South Slavic history, the first Galicia is more significant. By area, Galicia is slightly smaller than Serbia; Serbia covers about 90,000 square kilometers, while Galicia has roughly 80,000. Today, Galicia is divided between Poland and Ukraine, located at the foothills of the Carpathians, between the upper reaches of the Vistula River and the upper reaches of the Prut River. The key cities are Kraków and Lviv.

In our literature and history, as well as in cultural memory, Galicia is especially connected to World War I. Fierce battles were fought there between Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies. Many Serbs fought on the Austro-Hungarian side, and a notable portion later joined the Russians. Crnjanski wrote some of his most beautiful poems in Galicia, and it also served as the setting for some stories by Miroslav Krleza. Both had personal experiences in Galicia. On the other hand, Ivan Slamnig, though younger, wrote the unforgettable humorous poem “Whom Did They Send to Galicia” inspired by the tradition of writing about Galicia.

Recruits from various regions under Austro-Hungarian rule were sent to Galicia, while decades earlier, colonists from Galicia were sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example. Galicia’s population has long been Slavic, but it was also known for its Unionism. Some historians claim that this Uniate “cultural code” was why a relatively large number of settlers from Galicia came to Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in the Bosnian Krajina region.

With the dissolution of Austro-Hungary, some of these people returned to their original homelands, but others stayed. The Bosnian town of Prnjavor, located between Doboj and Banja Luka, became a symbol of a local community shaped permanently by the arrival of settlers across the former Yugoslavia. Even during the existence of SFR Yugoslavia, Prnjavor was often highlighted in the media as the town with the largest number of different ethnic communities.

At the end of World War I and during the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the Pokusevski family, who had arrived from Galicia, lived in Prnjavor. Three years later, in 1921, they moved to Vrelo, a village near Lipljan. There, in Kosovo and Metohija, they would live for the next nearly eight decades.

At the beginning of the NATO bombing and the escalation of the conflict in Kosovo, the Pokusevski family from Pristina first took refuge in Podgorica. There, in 1999, they had a son whom they named Onjegin. Soon after, they moved again, this time from Podgorica to Belgrade. On December 26, 2001, in Belgrade, they welcomed another son, whom they named Aleksej.
The refugee journey took the Pokusevski family further north. Aleksej spent his childhood in Novi Sad, where he began playing basketball. He started with KK "Kadet," then played for KK "Stars," and eventually joined "Vojvodina." As is often the case in youth sports, a point came when a distinction was made between future potential national team players and those who would later nostalgically recall the "sweet adrenaline of youth sports" over a beer. For Aleksej Pokusevski, it was relatively clear early on that he would be among the former, especially after signing with Greek Olympiacos at the age of just thirteen.

After a few years in Greece, he became a candidate for the NBA draft, where he was selected 17th by the Minnesota Timberwolves. However, they traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder. In the following years, he played in the NBA and the NBA G League, moving from Oklahoma to the Charlotte Hornets and Greensboro Swarm, before, finally, this season donning the Partizan jersey.
Watching Pokusevski these past weeks and months as he plays in the EuroLeague and the regional Adriatic League, I’m often reminded of his Galician and Kosovar roots. These two peripheral European regions—regions whose status shifted with the fall of empires, the Turkish and the Austro-Hungarian—stand as symbols of a particular chapter of European history, one marked by wars and conflicts. However, there are also other chapters in that history, ones where, for instance, major sporting competitions symbolically take on the role of wars. It’s wonderful to see a young man with roots in Galicia and Kosovo contributing to the victories of Partizan and Serbia.