Dragutin "Dragiša" Lapčević ( sr-cyr, Драгутин "Драгиша" Лапчевић; 27 October 1867 – 14 August 1939) was a Serbian politician, journalist, and historian. He was one of the founders, alongside Dimitrije Tucović, of the Serbian Social Democratic Party (existed 1903–1918), that supported a

Balkan Federation The Balkan Federation project was a left-wing political movement to create a country in the Balkans by combining Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. The concept of a Balkan federation emerged in the late 19th century from ...

during the

Kingdom of Serbia The Kingdom of Serbia ( sr-cyr, Краљевина Србија, Kraljevina Srbija) was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Prin ...

Life

Dragiša was born in Užice in 1867. The family moved to Požega when Lapčević was the age of three or four. There he completed his grammar school education, after which he continued to educate himself by attending lectures in political science and economics and reading smuggled socialist material into the Kingdom of Serbia at a time when Anti-Socialist Laws were instituted. Initially, he worked as an unskilled laborer, first in a bakery and in a mechanic shop. Later, he was appointed as a municipal clerk. There he gained a reputation as a brilliant public speaker and was elected as municipal opposition president in 1893, but the Serbian government annulled it. Influenced by

Svetozar Marković Svetozar Marković ( sr-Cyrl, Светозар Марковић, ; 9 September 1846 – 26 February 1875) was a Serbian political activist, literary critic and socialist philosopher. He developed an activistic anthropological philosophy ...

, he supported the ideas of

Karl Kautsky Karl Johann Kautsky (; ; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theorist. Kautsky was one of the most authoritative promulgators of orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels ...

and opposed those of

Georgi Plekhanov Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (; rus, Гео́ргий Валенти́нович Плеха́нов, p=ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj vəlʲɪnˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ plʲɪˈxanəf, a=Ru-Georgi Plekhanov-JermyRei.ogg; – 30 May 1918) was a Russian revoluti ...

. He was considered the most important Serbian theoretician of the Marxist labour movement after the death of its founders, and it may well be said that he was its most representative member as an anti-Bolshevik. In him were very clearly incorporated both the revolutionary and the reactionary aspects of that movement. In polemics with the left wing of the party, headed by Dimitrije Tucović, Lapčević often adopted centrist and right-opportunist positions. From 1905 to 1908 and again from 1912 to 1919, he was a deputy in the Skupština (Assembly), where he won a great international reputation by voting against war budgets ahead of the

Balkan Wars The Balkan Wars refers to a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan States in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan States of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defe ...

of 1912–13 and

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, advocating a

. In the post-war period, he refused to join the Bolsheviks. He was an opponent of Bolshevik influence in the workers' movement of the then Yugoslavia. From 20 to 23 April 1919, delegates from Social democratic parties of Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Vojvodina, Montenegro, Croatia-Slavonia and Macedonia met to found the Socialist Workers' Party of Yugoslavia which immediately joined the

Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

against the advice of Lapčević. At the organization's Second Congress held in

Vukovar Vukovar () ( sr-Cyrl, Вуковар, hu, Vukovár, german: Wukowar) is a city in Croatia, in the eastern region of Slavonia. It contains Croatia's largest river port, located at the confluence of the Vuka and the Danube. Vukovar is the seat of ...

from 20 to 24 June 1920, the less radically inclined centrist faction led by Dragiša Lapčević and Žarko Topalović was expelled. In 1921 Dragiša Lapčević was one of the organizers of the reformist Socialist Party of Yugoslavia. In the early 1920s, Lapčević left politics and withdrew from the workers' movement, not wanting to take further part in the polemics of the opposing parties. He was the author of many works on ethnology and the history of the economy and the workers’ movement in Serbia, among them The History of Socialism in Serbia (1922). He was a staunch opposer of

Greater Serbia The term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia ( sr, Велика Србија, Velika Srbija) describes the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology of the creation of a Serb state which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to ...

Major works

* ''Istorija socijalizma u Srbiji'' (History of Socialism in Serbia, 1922) * ''Rat i srpska socijalna demokratija'' (War and Serbian Social Democracy, 1925) * ''Položaj radničke klase u Srbiji'' (Position of the Working Class in Serbia, 1928)

References

External links

Dragisa Lapcevic
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lapcevic, Dragisa 1867 births 1939 deaths Writers from Užice Politicians from Užice Serbian journalists 20th-century Serbian historians Serbian people of World War I Serbian Marxists Serbian socialists Socialism in the Kingdom of Serbia Socialism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia