Original article (in Serbian) was published on 18/3/2026; Author: Teodora Koledin
The Kurir portal published news about the “only voice recording” of King Peter I of Serbia. Along with the message “listen to the words that every Serb needs to hear”, a clip from the Instagram post of the “amateur historian” Uroš Delovski was transmitted, on which King Peter I can allegedly be heard addressing Serbian officers. The user states in the description that “the speech is believed to have been recorded in 1910”. On the other hand, we discovered that it is actually an audio recording that originates from a series of skits by the former actor, director, and playwright Petar Krstonošić, and not an authentic recording of the voice of King Petar I of Serbia.
In previous years, the same news spread on other portals, and some of them led to an audio from the “History of Serbia” YouTube channel. At the time of analysis, it had more than 58,000 views, and the description contains the same information: “audio recording of King Peter I Karađorđević’s speech to Serbian officers.”
The grandson of the American expatriate, Steven Kozobarić, who digitized a large number of records from the period before the Second World War and made them available to the public, in his commentary draws attention to the fact that “the actor who plays King Peter I” can actually be heard on the recording. He also adds that the tape comes from a record from his collection, “The army goes into battle” authored by Petar Krstonošić. Although it is no longer possible to find Petr Krstonošić’s works on Kozobarić’s YouTube channel, some of them were also published by Nikola Predragov Zekić, master of ethnomusicology.
In the description of the video titled “Petar Krstonošić – Bulgarian man’s attack on the Serbian army”, Zekić explains that the previous issue of the record contained the skit “The army goes into battle”, but also that it was once on the Kozobarića channel. After certain persons downloaded the disputed recording, shortened it, and began to present it to the public as a “real recording of the king’s voice”, Kozobarić removed the digitized record from his channel.
However, we got in touch with Zekić, who sent us the original and complete recording of this skit.
“The actor who plays King Peter here, in another skit (which I posted on YouTube) plays a Bulgarian, etc. The voices are clearly recognizable, who knows how to listen” explains Zekić.
He explained to us that Petar Krstonošić created the aforementioned skits as “a kind of propaganda, and in a way also informative material for the people”. Due to the situation of that time and the sale of records, these materials were created “very quickly after the events described in them happened”, says Zekić. As he adds, the actors in them were part of the so-called academic youth.
This misinformation has been published in recent years by other media, such as the RED portal and Kraljevina.rs.
