Politika
- Parliamentarism or Dictatorship?
- Archpriest Milan Đ. Đurić
- MINISTERIAL PROLETARIAT
This partial reading of Politika's page for 6 November 1926 covers three items. In a signed column, the socialist writer Dragiša Lapčević rejected a Mr. Kojić's claim that "in every dictatorship the first prisoner is the crown", arguing from the Obrenović rulers' coups that Serbian monarchs had kept the whole situation in their own hands and swapped cabinets at will. A tribute to Prota Milan Đ. Đurić recalled the priest charging the Turks with a cross and a rifle, his medals and Takovo Cross for bravery, and his later, costly networks among Serbs of both faiths in Ras, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A cartoon titled "Ministerial Proletariat" joked that the country could breathe easier once several ministries were abolished.
This reading covers three passages from the 6 November 1926 page: part of Lapčević's lead column, part of the Đurić tribute and the cartoon caption. The OCR candidates were heavily garbled, text at the tile edges is cut off and the end of the Đurić column is faint, so only visibly legible text was transcribed, without inferring names or numbers. The background pages consulted do not identify Kojić's article, and they do not name the ministries slated for abolition in late 1926.
Translation
Parliamentarism or Dictatorship?
In any case, I followed very diligently what Stojan M. Protić and Dr. Milovan Đ. Milovanović, and later Mr. Slobodan Jovanović, wrote on this subject; but an unassailable point of view could be worked out only if one had also read the principal European works on parliamentarism and had viewed parliamentarism through the prism of historical materialism. That is why — to move straight on to the matter on account of which Mr. Kojić wrote his article — it is completely untrue "that in every dictatorship the first prisoner is the crown." For, not to stray far from our recent history: whenever they carried out coups d'état and dispersed genuine parliamentary majorities, the talented Obrenovićs were never prisoners in anyone's clutches; on the contrary, they truly held the whole situation in their own hands. They changed cabinets the way post-riders changed horses, and used them as mere tools for carrying out either their own policy or even their whim!
Archpriest Milan Đ. Đurić
he would take a cross in one hand and a rifle in the other and charge the Turks at the head of the troops. For this he was decorated with the silver and the gold medal and the Takovo Cross for bravery! It was then that the name of Pop Milan became known among the people of Užice, never again to be forgotten... And when the fighting was over, there began another, different kind of national work by the priest and archpriest Đurić: he built wide-ranging connections with Serbs of both faiths in Ras, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and out of his desperate poverty spent his last penny on those connections; through them he kept alive among the people there the hope of liberation and unification, and he himself was always informed of what was being done and where.
MINISTERIAL PROLETARIAT
— Thank God, now the country will get a little breathing room, since several ministries are going to be abolished.
Context
Dragiša Lapčević, a Marxist veteran outside party politics
The column is signed by Dragiša Lapčević, and his insistence on viewing parliamentarism "through the prism of historical materialism" fits his career. He was one of the founders, with Dimitrije Tucović, of the Serbian Social Democratic Party, which existed from 1903 to 1918. After the First World War he refused to join the Bolsheviks; at the 1920 Vukovar congress of the new Yugoslav workers' party he led the less radical centrist faction together with Žarko Topalović, and in 1921 he was one of the organizers of the reformist Socialist Party of Yugoslavia. In the early 1920s he left politics and withdrew from the workers' movement. When he wrote this piece in 1926, he was therefore writing as a Marxist publicist and historian without a party post, setting his own view against what Protić, Milovanović and Jovanović had written on the subject.
Crown, parliament and the coming royal dictatorship
Lapčević's column rejects the thesis, attributed in the paper to Mr. Kojić, that "in every dictatorship the first prisoner is the crown," and cites the Obrenović rulers' coups as proof that a Serbian monarch kept the whole situation in his own hands. The column appeared during a period of governmental instability: in April 1926 Nikola Pašić was forced to resign amid corruption scandals, and his successor Nikola Uzunović faced internal conflict within the Radical Party and a succession of short-term governments. The question of whether the crown or parliament would dominate was resolved a little more than two years later, when on 6 January 1929 King Alexander I dissolved the Yugoslav parliament and abolished the constitution. That later turn shows that the exchange between Kojić and Lapčević concerned a live question about the kingdom's constitutional order rather than an abstract point of theory.
Prota Milan Đurić: priest, volunteer organizer and Radical deputy
The tribute's image of a priest with a cross in one hand and a rifle in the other matches the career recorded for Milan Đurić. When the Herzegovina uprising broke out in 1875, he gave fiery speeches, mobilized men into volunteer companies and sent them to Herzegovina, and he was decorated twice for bravery in the Serbian-Turkish war of 1876–1878; his recorded decorations include the Order of the Takovo Cross with swords. He was equally a political figure: from the founding of the People's Radical Party in 1881/82 until his death he sat on its Main Committee and presided over its parliamentary club. That commitment brought persecution: after the Ivanjdan assassination attempt on King Milan in 1899 he was sentenced to 20 years in heavy chains and defrocked in the Ružica church. The account of his networks among Serbs of both faiths in Ras, Bosnia and Herzegovina rests on the paper's own telling.
Why the tribute appeared in early November 1926
The timing of the tribute is explained by Đurić's reburial. During the First World War he retreated with the army across Albania, went on to Italy and died in Rome on 30 April 1917. His remains were brought back to Serbia and buried in Užice on 8 November 1926 with the highest state honours. Politika itself had reported on 3 November 1926 that the remains would be sent to Belgrade that day. The 6 November tribute thus appeared between the repatriation and the funeral in Užice, the town where, as the paper put it, the name of "Pop Milan" became known never to be forgotten.
The cabinet behind the "Ministerial Proletariat" cartoon
The cartoon's quip about abolishing "several ministries" was aimed at the government of the day, Nikola Uzunović's second cabinet, which governed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from 15 April to 24 December 1926. Its list of portfolios was long and included posts such as a minister for preparation for the Constituent Assembly and the unification of laws. Uzunović had become prime minister after Pašić's forced resignation and presided over conflict inside the Radical Party and a run of short-lived governments. The cartoon's title, "Ministerial Proletariat," casts the ministers who would lose their portfolios as a new class of the dispossessed, while the speaker greets the cuts as relief for the country.
Original
Парламентаризам или диктатура?
Свакојако сам врло марљиво пратио писање о томе и Стојана М. Протића и др. Милована Ђ. Миловановића, као и доцније г. Слободана Јовановића; али се могло израдити једно недоступно гледиште само тако, ако су прочитана била и главна дела јевропска о парламентаризму и ако се парламентаризам био посматрао кроз призму историског материјализма. Зато је, - одмах да пређем на ствар ради које је г. Којић писао свој чланак, - савршено нетачно: " да је у свакој диктатури први заробљеник круна ". Јер да не идемо далеко од наше скорашње историје: кад су год вршили државне ударе и разгонили праве парламентарне већине, талентирани Обреновићи нигда нису били заробљеници ни у чијим шакама, већ су, одиста, сву ситуацију држали у својим рукама; они су мењали кабинете као што су суруџије мењали коње и служили се њима као простим оруђима за извођење или своје политике или и свога каприца!
Прота Милан Ђ. Ђурић
узимао у једну руку крст а у другу пушку и пред војском јуришао на Турке. За то је био одликован сребрном и златном медаљом и таковским крстом за храброст! Тада се код Ужичана прочуло име попа Милана, да се више нигда не заборави... А кад је свршено ратовање, онда настаје други и друкчији национални рад попа и проте Ђурића: он ствара разгранате везе са Србима обе вере у Расу, Босни и Херцеговини, и од своје очајне сиротиње троши на те везе и последњу пару; преко тих веза одржава код тамошњега народа наду на ослобођење и уједињење, а сâм је увек био обавештен где се шта ради.
МИНИСТАРСКИ ПРОЛЕТАРИЈАТ
- Фала Богу, сад ће земља мало одахнути, пошто ће бити укинуто неколико министарстава.