Assassination Figure, History Scholar. Vaso Cubrilovic received notoriety for being the last surviving participant in the plot to assassinate the Austrian-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. As a seventeen-year-old, he was part of a zealous political paramilitary group called “Young Bosnians,” which may have been linked with the Black Hand, a secret group of Bosnian military officers. A school teacher, Danilo Ilic, recruited him. His older brother Veljko Cubrlovic was also an active member. On Sunday, June 28, 1914, the Archduke and his wife were touring the city of Sarajevo in an opened-top car of a six-car motorcade, making them easy targets. The first attempt was a grenade being thrown by Nedeljko Cabrinovic at the royal couple's car but it hit the car behind them. Cabrinovic was soon captured by the police. Later that day, a second assassination attempt was successful when Gavrilo Princip pulled a hand gun, shooting and killing the Archduke and his wife. Cubrilovic was given a bomb to throw, yet he did not act but stood on the sidewalk with the others and watched the assassination. After Ilic was arrested, he named all the participants in the plot to the assassination. A total of 25 men were arrested for being involved in the assassination conspiracy and brought to trial, 16 were found guilty of treason and murder, with 3 of the older men being hung. Following the law, those under the age of twenty were sentenced to prison and not hung. Nine were acquitted. Years later, three members of the Black Hand were arrested as the masterminds of the plot and hung. Some historians consider this group as terrorists while others as patriots. They had but one goal: Bosnia and Herzegovina achieving independence from Austria-Hungary, who had recently annexed their country without the citizens' permission. The trial was held in October of 1914. For his part of the conspiracy, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison serving in Zenica Prison and in Möllersdorf Military prison, near Vienna, yet was released after World War I in November of 1917. His older brother was sentence to death by hanging, which was executed on February 3, 1915 along with the hanging of Danilo Ilic and Mihajlo Jovanović. Of the thirteen sentenced to prison, only five survived, yet three were dying with tuberculous before their sentencing. After World War I, the Austria-Hungarian Empire was dissolved with a union of all Slavic states forming the new country of Yugoslavia. In his later years, he expressed in lectures that it was a mistake to have gotten involved with the “Young Bosnians.” After this ordeal, he attended classes at the University of Zagreb and Belgrade, receiving a Bachelor's degree in history in 1922. In 1929, he obtained his PhD at the University of Belgrade with a thesis titled "The Bosnian Uprising 1875 to 1878". On March 7, 1937 he presented “The Expulsion of the Albanians” to government officials. He taught high school while in college but in 1939 he became a professor at the University of Belgrade. During World War II, Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Forces in April of 1941. Attempting to flee the country, he was arrested at the coastline by the Nazi Forces and sent to Banjica Concentration Camp in Serbia for the rest of the war. In Belgrade on November 17, 1944, he presented to Communist officials a memorandum titled "The Minority Problem in the New Yugoslavia." He became a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Before the war and after the war, he expressed to Yugoslavian authorities the need to expel ethic minorities from the country. Many aliens, some were in his country illegally, called him “evil” for his firm stand on this subject. Upon becoming the Minister of Agriculture, he pushed reforms by implementing the Law on State Agricultural Farms, emphasizing the need to undertake economic measures, which would rebuild and strengthen the country's agricultural sector. Later, he was appointed the Minister of Forestry. Dr. Vaso Cubrilovic had become a respected scholar on the subject of Bosnia history as a philosopher and Serb nationalist and often lecturing on the subject. In 1970 he became the Director of the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. For this interest in history, he became a correspondent of the Yugoslavian and Bosnian Academies of Science and Arts, a regular member of the Serbian and Montenegrin Academies of Science and Arts, and in 1976 an honorary member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He and his brother came from a well-to-do family with a proud heritage. He was a descendant of Vaso Vidović, a leader of the 1875 to 1877 Herzegovina Uprising who attended the Congress of Berlin. He was an excellent student and a member of the national literary club. When he was in high school, he was expelled because he refused to stand for the Austria-Hungarian Empire National Anthem, after his country had been forcefully annexed in 1908 into that empire. Soon after that incident, Danilo Ilic recruited him, changing his life forever. With a lucid mind at an elderly age, he lived to witness the dawn of the downfall of Yugoslavia, with each of the eight Slavic republics becoming an independent country by the 21st century. In 1987, he was the recipient of the Order of the Yugoslav Star, which was the highest national order of merit awarded in Yugoslavia.