Nikola Pašić

Nikola Pašić (1919)

Nikola Pašić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Никола Пашић ; born December 18, 1845 in Zaječar , Principality of Serbia , Ottoman Empire ; † December 10, 1926 in Belgrade , Kingdom of Yugoslavia ) was a Serbian politician and statesman . He was five times Prime Minister of Serbia and three times Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . He was the founder of the People's Radical Party(not to be confused with the Serbian Radical Party ).

Life

Baja (his nickname) attended the grammar school in Zaječar, which moved frequently during his school days, so that he also had to travel to Negotin and Kragujevac . He graduated from high school at the age of 21 with success. His performance was rated as excellent.

In 1866 he began studying civil engineering at the Technical University of Belgrade. An excellent student, he was sent to Zurich by the Serbian government in 1868 on a state scholarship . There he studied civil engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and graduated in 1872. During his stay in Switzerland he was close to the Serbian socialist Svetozar Marković , but later turned away from him.

After a year of practical experience building the Budapest - Vienna railway line , he returned to Serbia. Despite his technical training, he hardly worked as an engineer later.

He was considered silent and introverted.

family

Nikola Pašić was married to Đurđina Duković, the daughter of a rich Serbian wheat trader in Trieste . The couple married in the Russian church in Florence and not in the Serbian church in Trieste, because the groom wanted to avoid the numerous Serbs living in Trieste from storming the wedding. The marriage produced son Radomir and daughters Dara and Pava.

Political career

Pašić's political career began in 1878 when he was elected representative in Zaječar . Ideologically he went through several phases : in his youth he was a socialist and revolutionary , in adulthood a fighter for parliamentary democracy , and in advanced age he became a conservative .

The People's Radical Party was founded in 1881, and Pašić became the first president of the party's main committee. Because of his participation in the Timoker uprising of the peasants against the Serbian king Milan I. Obrenović in 1883 he was sentenced to death in absentia. However, he was able to leave for Bulgaria . In the course of the legal proceedings against the insurgents , his Radical People's Party was dissolved. After the king's abdication in 1889, Pašić was given an amnesty , returned to Serbia and again took over the leadership of the newly established Radical People's Party.

mayor

Pašić was mayor of Belgrade twice from 1889 to 1891 and in 1897 . During this time he organized the issuance of bonds for the city and had some main streets paved .

Head of government

Nikola Pašić

Pašić became Serbian head of government on February 11, 1891 and Serbian Foreign Minister from March 21, 1892 to August 9, 1892 . From 1893 to 1894 he was appointed diplomat and representative of Serbia in Saint Petersburg . Due to differences of opinion in domestic and foreign policy , it came during this time to a rift between Pašić and the last king of the Obrenović dynasty, Aleksandar .

After a failed attempt by a radical supporter to assassinate the former king Milan in 1899, Pašić was sentenced to five years in prison as the leader of the radicals . Shortly thereafter, however, he was pardoned and released. The Austro-Hungarian government worked to ensure that the execution of Pašić, imposed by King Alexander, was not carried out. Until the May coup in 1903, he was politically inconspicuous. After the assassination of Aleksandar Obrenović, the Karađorđević dynasty took power in Serbia and Pašić returned to politics.

He became head of government for the second time on November 27, 1904 and remained so until his death . From 1904 to 1918 he was Serbian Prime Minister with three short breaks , from 1921 to 1926 he was head of government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with one break.

He was elected chairman of the Serbian People's Parliament five times and was Serbian Foreign Minister from 1904 to 1905, from 1906 to 1908 and from 1912 to 1918, and in 1921 Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He remained chairman of the People's Radical Party until his death.

He was able to decide the customs war against Austria-Hungary (1906–1911) for Serbia; he was happy to have brought Serbia's agriculture "out of the Balkans into the world market". Politically, he initially cooperated with Russia , and after the October Revolution with France . He used to say: “The Serbs are a small people, but we don't have a bigger one between Vienna and Constantinople ”.

At the beginning of 1915 Pašić sent the Orthodox monk Nikolaj Velimirović to Great Britain and the USA to represent Serbian interests and to fight the Austro-Hungarian propaganda against Serbia.

Pašić successfully led Serbia through two Balkan Wars and the First World War . He was president of the Serbian delegates to the Bucharest Peace Conference in 1913 and chairman and co-signer of the Corfu Declaration in 1917 , in which the course was set for the future common kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He was president of the delegates of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 .

The St. Vitus Constitution

Nikola Pašić's grave in Belgrade

Pašić was instrumental in creating the St. Vitus Constitution in 1921, which established the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a monarchy. However, the Serbian King Aleksandar I. Karađorđević could not make friends with Pašić's personality and removed him from the post of prime minister: at an audience on December 9, 1926, the king criticized some of the actions of Pašić's son and refused to extend his mandate. Pašić died the next day, December 10, 1926, at the age of 81, of a heart attack. He was buried in the Novo Groblje cemetery in Belgrade. Pašić had been politically active for a total of 48 years.

Criticism of Pašić

Domestically, he was criticized as a radical conservative by liberals and socialists.

In terms of foreign policy, he was criticized by Austria-Hungary for his national policy and branded as the leader of " Panserbism ".

According to the Australian historian Christopher Clark, there are indications that Pašić and the Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić were informed in advance of the attacks on Franz Ferdinand.

The political legacy of Pašić

In 1992, the Nikola Pašić Foundation was established in Zaječar. Today in Serbia there is a "Radical Party Nikola Pašić" and the " Serbian Radical Party " of Vojislav Šešelj . Although both parties are more or less in the tradition of the Radical People's Party, they cannot be directly described as their successor parties, because a one-party system prevailed in Yugoslavia from the Second World War until the 1990s , which continued the Radical People's Party in its original form made impossible.

A 4.20 meter high bronze statue of Pašić stands on Nikola Pašić Square in Belgrade.

literature

• Đorđe Radenković: Pašić and Yugoslavia . Official Journal of the SRJ, Belgrade, 1999. ISBN 86-355-0428-3
• Đorđe Đ. Stanković: Pašić and the Croats: 1918–1923 . BIGZ publishing house, Belgrade, 1995. ISBN 86-13-00828-3
• Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Drew into World War I. ISBN 3421043590

Web links

Commons : Nikola Pašić  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Nikola Pašić in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christopher Clark : The Sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into World War I. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2013, p. 41
2. ↑ Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers. How Europe moved into the First World War. Ed .: Publishing House Munich. ISBN 978-3-570-55268-1 .