Stjepan Radić (11 June 1871 – 8 August 1928) was a
Croatian politician
and the founder of the
Croatian
Peasant Party (CPP,
Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka) in
1905.
Radić is credited with galvanizing the
peasantry of Croatia
into a
viable political force. Throughout his entire career, he was opposed
to the union and, later, Serb hegemony in the first Yugoslavia
and became an important political figure in that
country. He was assassinated by a Montenegrin Serb
politician,
Puniša Račić
(who represented a Montenegrin constituency) in the parliament: an
act which further alienated the Croats and the Serbs.
Biography
Lead up to the first Yugoslavia
Stjepan
was born in Trebarjevo Desno, near Sisak
, Croatia (then
Austria-Hungary).
After
World War I he rose to political
prominence among Croats for his opposition to
merging Croatia with the Kingdom of Serbia
without
guarantees for Croatian autonomy. On 24 November 1918 he
famously urged delegates attending a session that would decide the
country's political future not to "rush like drunken
geese into
fog" — he feared that
Croatia would become at best a minor partner within a
Serb-dominated state.
Under the
pressure from the Great powers
(British Empire, France
, United States
), as well as honouring the secret deals that were
struck between the Entente and the
Kingdom of
Serbia
, the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
was established and two representatives of Radić's
party (by then named the Croatian Common-people Peasant Party) were
appointed to the Provisional Representation which served as a
parliament until elections for the
Constituent could be held. The parties representatives,
however, decided not to take their seats.
Arrest
On 8 March
1919 the central committee passed a resolution that declared that
"Croatian citizens do not recognize the so called Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes under the Karađorđević dynasty because
this kingdom was proclaimed other than by the Croatian Sabor
and without
any mandate of the Croatian People." The full statement
was translated into French and sent abroad and provoked a decision
by the government to arrest Radić along with several other party
members.
He was to be held some 11 months until February 1920, just before
the first parliamentary elections of the Kingdom of SHS, which were
held in November. The result of the November was 230,590 votes,
which equaled to 50 seats in the parliament out of 419.
Before the
first sitting of parliament, after a massive rally held in front of 100,000 people
in Zagreb
, Stjepan
Radić and the CCPP (which after the rally changed the party's name
to CRPP - Croatian Republican Peasant Party) held and extraordinary
meeting, in which a motion was put forward and voted on that the
CRPP will not be part of parliamentary discussions before matters
are first resolved with Serbia on the matters of governance, the
most sticking issues being the minorisation of the Croatian people
and the overt powers of the King with the central government in
Belgrade
.
The new Constitution
On 12 December 1920, the Parliament of SHS had their first sitting,
without the representatives of CPP (50 representatives) and the
Croatian Party of Rights (2 representatives). On the 28th of June
1921, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
(
Vidovdanski ustav, or
Vidovdan Constitution)was made law after a vote of
223 representatives out of the present 285, the total number
representatives in the parliament being 419, which is only 53.2% of
the possible votes, or if looked at the number of present
representatives it is a more impressive 78.24%. The representatives
turnout and subsequent vote is quite poor considering that it was a
constitutive parliament, which was supposed to have created the new
constitution.
In the next parliamentary elections, which were held in March 1923,
the stance of Stjepan Radić and the CPP against the central
government managed to turn into extra votes. The results of the
election were, 70 seats or 473.733 votes, which represented the
majority of the Croatian vote in Northern and Southern parts of
Croatia, as well as the Croatian votes in Bosnia, as well as
Herzegovina.
Again imprisoned
Radić still held on to the idea of an
independent Croatia, and kept the party
out of parliament in protest. This in effect afforded Serbian prime
minister
Nikola Pašić the
opportunity to consolidate power and strengthen his Serb-dominated
government.
Returning from an
unsanctioned overseas trip in 1923 in which Stjepan Radić visited
England (for 5 months), Austria
(5 months)
and the Soviet
Union
(2 months). upon his return in 1924, Radić was
arrested in Zagreb and sentenced for associating with Soviet
Communists and imprisoned. The trip
was used for the purpose of internationalising the plight of
Croatians in the Kingdom of SHS.
After his release, Stjepan Radić soon reentered politics, but this
was not without problems. On 23 December, the Serb dominated
central government declared that the political party CRPP was in
contravention of the Internal security law of 1921 in the infamous
Obznana declaration, and this was confirmed
by King Alexander on 1 January 1924, thus arresting the CRPP
executive on 2 January 1925, and finally arresting Stjepan Radić on
5 January.
After the parliamentary elections in February 1925, the CRPP even
with its whole executive team behind bars, and with only Stjepan
Radić at its helm, CRPP managed to win 67 parliamentary with at
total of 532,872 votes. Even though the vote count was higher than
the previous election, the
gerrymandering by the central government
ensured that CRPP received less parliamentary seats. In order to
increase his negotiating power the CRPP entered into a
coalition with the Democratic party (Demokratska
stranka), Slovenian peoples party (Slovenska ljudska stranka) and
the Yugoslav
Muslim Organisation
(Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija).
Return to the parliament
Immediately after the parliamentary elections in March 1925, the
CRPP changed the party name to
Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska
seljačka stranka). With the backing of the coalition partners, the
CPP made an agreement with the major conservative Serbian party -
the
People's Radical Party
(Narodna radikalna stranka), in which a powersharing arrangement
was struck, as well as a deal to release the CPP executive from
jail. The CPP had to make certain concessions like recognising the
central government and the rule of the monarch, as well as the
Vidovdan constitution in front of the full parliament on 27 March
1925. Stjepan Radić was made the
Minister for Education, whereas other
CPP party members obtained ministerial posts:
Pavle Radić, dr.
Nikola Nikić, dr.
Benjamin Šuperina and dr.
Ivan Krajač. This powersharing arrangement
was cut short after the passing away of the president of the
Peoples Radical Party,
Nikola
Pašić, on 10 December 1925.
Radić soon resigned his ministerial post in 1926 and returned to
the opposition, and in 1927 entered into a coalition with
Svetozar Pribićević, president
of the
Independent
Democratic Party, a leading party of the Serbs in Croatia. The
Peasant-Democrat coalition had a real chance to end the Radicals'
long-time stranglehold control of the Parliament. Previously they
had long been opponents, but the Democrats became disillusioned
with the Belgrade
bureaucracy and
restored good relations with the Peasant Party with which they were
allies in the time of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. With this
arrangement, Stjepan Radić managed to obtain a parliamentary
majority in 1928. However, he was not able to form a government.
The
Peasant-Democrat coalition was opposed by some of the Croatian elite, like Ivo Andrić,
who even regarded the followers of the CPP as "...fools
following a blind dog..." (the blind dog being Stjepan
Radić).
Assassination in the parliament
With the power of the Radical Party now weakened, and the
Peasant-Democratic coalition not being able to form a government,
the environment in the parliament had become increasingly unstable,
contentious and provocational on ethnic lines. Provocations and
accusations flew on both sides, in one such session Radić answered
one of the provocations with the following:
"
Our Serbian friends are always reminding us of the price they
paid in the war. I would like to invite them to tabulate
the costs, so we may square accounts and be on our way.".
Death threats and threats of violent
beatings were made against Stjepan Radić in parliament, without any
intervention by the president of the Assembly (
Parliamentary speaker). On the morning
of 20 June 1928, Radić was warned of the danger of an
assassination attempt against him and was
begged to stay away from the Assembly for that day. He replied that
he was like a soldier in war, in the trenches and as such it was
his duty to go but he nevertheless promised not to utter a single
word.
In the
Assembly, Puniša Račić, a member of
Serbian People's Radical
Party from Montenegro
, got up and made a provocative speech which
produced a stormy reaction from the opposition but Radić himself
stayed completely silent. Finally,
Ivan Pernar shouted, "
thou plundered
beys" (referring to accusations of
corruption related to him). At this,
Puniša Račić drew out a
revolver, shot
Pernar and went on to shoot Radić and several other CPP delegates.
Radić was left for dead and indeed had such a serious
stomach wound that he died several weeks later at
the age of 57. His burial was massively attended and his death was
seen as causing a permanent rift in Croat-Serb relations in the old
Yugoslavia.
Assasination in Belgrade
What exactly happened to Puniša Račić is still contested. One
version states that he was sentenced to 20 years of house arrest
and later pardoned by the Serb authorities while another contends
that he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour and freed by the
invading Nazis in WWII. He led a low-profile life during the Nazi
occupation of Serbia and was captured tried and sentenced to death
by Serb partisans in 1945.
Following the political crisis triggered by the shooting, in
January 1929, King
Aleksandar
Karađorđević abolished the
constitution, dissolved parliament, and
declared a royal
dictatorship, changing
the country into the first Yugoslavia and oppressing national
sentiments.
Radić is
buried in the Mirogoj
cemetery in Zagreb.
Legacy
Radić's violent death turned him into a martyr and he was turned
into an icon of political struggle for the peasantry and the
working class, as well as an icon of Croatian patriots. The
iconography of Stjepan Radić was later used not only by his
successor
Vladko Maček, but also
by other political options in Croatia: right wing or left
wing.
The
Ustaše used the death of Stjepan
Radić as proof of Serbian hegemony, and as an excuse for their
treatment of Serbs, however many leading CPP figures were
imprisoned or killed by the Ustashe to whome they were political
opponents.
The Partisans on the other hand, used
this as a recruiting point with CPP members who were disillusioned
with the Independent State of Croatia
, and latter had one brigade named after Antun and
Stjepan Radić in 1943.
The image of Stjepan Radić was used extensively during the
Croatian Spring movement in the early 1970s.
There are many folk groups, clubs, primary and secondary schools
which bear the name of Stjepan Radić. Many Croatian cities have
streets, squares in his name and statues of Stjepan Radić are
common. His portrait is depicted on the
obverse of the Croatian 200
kuna banknote, issued in 1993 and 2002.
In 1997, a poll in Croatian weekly
Nacional named Stjepan Radić as the most
admired Croatian historic personality.
References
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