Politika
- European and Our Housing Policy
- The Definitive Departure of King Milan Abroad.
Politika's page of 21 October 1926 carried a signed column by the engineer Drag. M. Branković, "European and Our Housing Policy", which argued that since the war the housing question had shifted from a matter of quality to a sheer shortage of buildings. He blamed returning soldiers, prisoners and refugees, émigrés from revolutionary Russia, resettlement after border changes and new marriages, set against weak post-war building, and cited Vienna, where vacant flats fell from 1.39 percent in 1914 to none in 1923 while 50,000 people sought housing. The same page ran an instalment of a memoir whose second section, on King Milan's final departure abroad, argued that Milan had begun breaking with his earlier political convictions long before the Ivanjdan assassination attempt, with the change already visible at his abdication.
This reading covers two passages from the page. The first is the opening of Branković's housing column, which breaks off just as it begins the Berlin figures. The second is the start of the memoir's section on King Milan's final departure, which ends mid-sentence at an illegible point. The OCR is badly garbled and was not used for transcription. The opening of the memoir and its section on the Ivanjdan assassination attempt are not transcribed, because line ends and beginnings are cut off at tile boundaries. Some text near the bottom of one column is faint and crossed by a fold or tear.
Translation
European and Our Housing Policy
The housing question is not new. It existed before the war as well, only it has grown much worse over the last 10 years. And one thing more: before the war, at least in modern states, it had a more qualitative character, whereas after the war this character was entirely pushed aside by a quantitative shortage of residential buildings. This will become fully clear to us if we mention a few of the causes that created this state of affairs: "The return of refugees to their ruined homes, the return of combatants from the front, as well as of prisoners of war and interned citizens from abroad. Then the arrival of refugees from Russia because of the revolution there, ethnic resettlements under the influence of territorial changes, then also the beginning of regeneration and the contracting of new marriages, etc...." All of this meant, on the one hand, that the demand for flats had reached an incredible figure, while on the other hand building after the war was so weak that it did not even keep pace with the normal growth of the population. The relation of supply and demand, then, was completely upset. That this is so, let just these examples confirm for us: in Vienna in 1914 vacant flats, expressed as a percentage, stood at 1.39, and not a single one was being sought, whereas in 1923 there was no percentage of vacant flats at all, and the number of persons seeking them came to 50,000. In Berlin in 1913 the number
The Definitive Departure of King Milan Abroad.
the conversation went on, now livelier, now slower, for two whole hours more, in a more conciliatory tone. II The Definitive Departure of King Milan Abroad. Judging by many signs, King Milan, even at a time long before the Ivanjdan assassination attempt, must already have been well into a phase of breaking with his earlier views and convictions about the internal political life of the country, for such changes had already set in with him at the time of his abdication, and somewhat later, when it was already late, to some extent [?]
Context
Vienna's post-war housing shortage and tenant protection
Branković's list of causes and his Vienna example match what is recorded for that city. In Vienna, returning soldiers and refugees from the dissolved Habsburg Empire swelled the population after 1918. At the beginning of 1918 only 245 of the city's dwellings were vacant, and by September 1919 the number had fallen to 105. Tenant protection began as a wartime measure: in January 1917 the authorities brought in rent regulation and limits on evictions, and the Rent Restriction Act of 7 December 1922 made these controls permanent. New building stayed weak, which supports the columnist's point that construction failed to keep pace. Only 2,624 dwellings were built in Vienna from 1919 to 1923, most of them by the city. By the time the column appeared, the city's large municipal programme was under way, and from 1925 to 1934 it supplied 60,000 public housing units in new municipal buildings. Branković's own figures, a 1.39 percent vacancy rate in 1914 and 50,000 house-seekers in 1923, are measured differently from these dwelling counts, so the two sets of figures cannot be compared directly, although both describe the same collapse in vacancies.
The State Mortgage Bank and building credit in the Kingdom
The "our" in Branković's title refers to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where a leading state lender for construction was the State Mortgage Bank (Državna hipotekarna banka). Legislation of August 1922 established it, and it took over the business of the old Serbian Funds Administration (Uprava Fondova) and several regional banks. It became a major financier of construction and infrastructure in interwar Yugoslavia, and from 1922 to 1932 it was the largest bank not only in Yugoslavia but in all of Southeastern Europe. Its predecessor's record raises the question of who gained from state credit. The Uprava Fondova had been founded to give peasants cheap credit, but in practice most of its loans went to a limited number of rural and urban landlords, who then lent to peasants at higher interest. The sources available here document that skew only for the predecessor institution. They do not show which borrowers received the bank's construction loans in 1920s Belgrade.
The 1899 Ivanjdan attempt and the reckoning with the Radicals
The memoirist claims that Milan's break with his old political convictions began long before the Ivanjdan attempt, and traces it back to his abdication. Milan abdicated suddenly on 6 March 1889 in favour of his son, and no satisfactory reason was given for the step. After returning in 1897 he was made Supreme Commander of the Active Army, and his growing role in daily politics, especially his anti-Radical policy, formed the background to the attempt. On 24 June 1899 an unemployed worker tried to assassinate him, and Milan then began a reckoning with the Radicals in every way. Radicals accused of backing the attempt were imprisoned, and King Alexander later released them. The established record therefore shows the attempt deepening Milan's conflict with the Radical Party. The view that Milan had already been turning away from his earlier convictions is the memoir writer's own interpretation.
Milan's last departure and the road to the May Coup of 1903
Milan's "definitive departure" was tied to his son's wish to marry. King Alexander needed to get his father out of the way so that he could marry Draga Mašin, and he sent Milan to Karlsbad and Prime Minister Đorđević to Marienbad. Milan did not approve of the marriage, left Serbia again in 1900 and died in exile in 1901. The circle around Milan did not disappear with him. General Dimitrije Cincar-Marković, one of Milan's closest associates from 1897 to 1900, was installed by Alexander as head of government through a new coup in November 1902. On 11 June 1903 (29 May Old Style), officers killed Cincar-Marković together with the royal couple in the May Coup, which ended the Obrenović dynasty. The memoir's account of Milan's last departure therefore describes the start of the sequence that ended with the fall of his dynasty.
Original
ЕВРОПСКА И НАША СТАНБЕНА ПОЛИТИКА
Станбено питање није ново. Оно је постојало и пре рата, само што се за последњих 10 година јако погоршало. И још нешто, оно је бар у модерним државама пре рата имало више квалитативан карактер, док је после рата овај карактер потпуно потиснут од квантитативне оскудице у зградама за становање. Ово ће нам бити потпуно јасно, ако напоменемо неколико узрока, који су створили овакво стање: " Повратак бегунаца порушеним домовима, повратак бораца са фронта као и заробљеника и интернираних грађана из иностранства. Затим, придолазак избеглица из Русије због тамошње револуције, етничка премештања под утицајем територијалних преиначења, по том и почетак регенерације и склапање нових бракова и т. д.... ", све је то утицало с једне стране, да је тражња станова била достигла невероватну цифру, а с друге стране, грађевинарство после рата је било толико слабо, да није одговарало ни нормалноме прираштају становиштва. Дакле, однос понуде и тражње потпуно поремећен. Да је тако, нека нам потврде само ови примери: у Бечу, године 1914 било је празних станова, изражено у процентима, 1, 39, а тражен није ни један, док у 1923 години није био никакав проценат празних станова, а број лица који их је тражио износио је 50. 000. У Берлину је био године 1913 број
Дефинитиван одлазак краља Милана у иностранство.
разговор је продужио кад живљи кад спорији, још читавих два часа, у помирљивијем тону. II Дефинитиван одлазак краља Милана у иностранство. Краљ Милан је по многим знацима судећи још у времену много пре ивањданског атентата, у велико морао бити у фази кидања са дотадашњим гледиштима и уверењима на унутрашњи политички живот земље, јер су још приликом абдикације код њега такве промене наступиле, па су нешто доцније, кад је већ настало касно, у неколико [?]