'native' national sentiment that Kočić claimed as his position." In the fall of 1899, Kočić enrolled into the University of Vienna's Department of Slavistics and began writing prose. His first short story appeared in the publication Bosanska vila (Bosnian Fairy) in 1899. Soon, Kočić began taking part in South Slavic student demonstrations on campus, demanding freedom of the press and assembly in Bosnia. Despite living in the city and being well educated, Kočić took up the cause of the Bosnian Serb peasants. Most peasants were kmets, or serfs, and did not own the land they tilled. Though they were no longer legally referred to as serfs from 1878 onwards, their farmland remained the property of the Muslim landowning class, which emerged from the Ottoman withdrawal largely unscathed. Kočić helped produce memoranda outlining the protesters' demands, which attracted the attention of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Kočić understood that his political views could lead to restrictions being imposed on his liberty, as demonstrated in a letter he wrote Vukmanović in 1901: "I shall spend perhaps the greater part of my life in jails and prisons, because all us students are going to begin a struggle against the [Austrians], who plunder our nation, deprive it of its freedom, and destroy its happiness." During his stay in Vienna, Kočić joined the Serbian academic society Zora (Dawn). It was here that he met Pavle Lagarić, another aspiring writer. Lagarić recognized Kočić’s literary talents and introduced him to realism, moving him away from the romanticism of Veselinović. Petar adapted to the new style with ease, publishing his first collection of short stories, S planine i ispod planine (From the Mountain and Below the Mountain) in 1902. Kočić first read the drafts of his stories to members of Zora, took note of their comments and concerns, and made changes accordingly. Between 1902 and 1905, Kočić published three volumes of short stories, all under the same title, S planine i ispod planine. Notable among these was Jazavac pred sudom (The Badger on Trial), in which a farmer attempts to sue a badger for eating his crops. Kočić subsequently adapted the story into a one-act play. It premiered at Belgrade's National Theatre on 26 November 1905. Anti-government tracts and imprisonment Upon graduating, Kočić left Vienna in April 1904 and returned to northern Bosnia, where he and Vukmanović eloped on 18 September. In February 1905, the two relocated to Skopje, in