Svetozar Marković ( sr-Cyrl, Светозар Марковић, ; 9 September 1846 – 26 February 1875) was a
Serbian political activist,
literary critic
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
and socialist
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
. He developed an activistic
anthropological
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...
philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
with a definite program of social change.
Early life
Marković was born in the town of
Zaječar
Zaječar ( sr-Cyrl, Зајечар, ; or ) is a city and the administrative center of the Zaječar District in eastern Serbia. According to the 2022 census, the city administrative area had a population of 48,621 inhabitants.
Zaječar is widely ...
on 9 September 1846, the son of a police clerk. He claimed to partially be of
Albanian origin.
Marković's childhood was spent in the village of
Rekovac and then the town of
Jagodina. The family moved to
Kragujevac
Kragujevac ( sr-Cyrl, Крагујевац, ) is the List of cities in Serbia, fourth largest city in Serbia and the administrative centre of the Šumadija District. It is the historical centre of the geographical region of Šumadija in central Se ...
in 1856. He reached adolescence at about the time
Mihailo Obrenović
Mihailo ( sr-cyr, Михаило) is a South Slavic masculine given name. It is a variant of the Hebrew name ''Michael'', and its cognates include Mihajlo and Mijailo. Common as a given name among Serbs, it is an uncommon surname.
Notable peopl ...
became the Prince of Serbia. In 1860 he began to study at the
gymnasium in
Belgrade
Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...
and in 1863 at the
''Velika škola'' of Belgrade, the highest educational body in Serbia at that time, founded in 1808.
While at the ''
Velika škola'' he became interested in literature and politics, falling under the influences of
Vuk Karadžić
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the moder ...
and
Vladimir Jovanović, a leading Serbian Liberal.
Because of his outstanding record as a student at the Belgrade college, his professors unanimously nominated him for a post-graduate scholarship to study abroad. He chose to study in
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, in St. Petersburg in particular,
at the Alexander I Institute of Communication Engineers.
Study abroad
For the next three years, he lived in Russia and came under the influence of Russian radicals of the 1860s.
These were followers of the agrarian socialist
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote and edited
Nikolay Nekrasov's ''The Contemporary'' magazine. There he also met
Dmitry Pisarev and
Lyuben Karavelov, who in the autumn of 1876 took part as a volunteer in the
Serbian–Ottoman War, and subsequently joined the
Bulgarian irregular contingent with the Russian army in the
war of 1877–78. Together with a few other men of birth and education,
Mikhail Katkov,
Konstantin Pobedonostsev, and
Aleksey Suvorin, Marković began secretly to sow the sentiments of democracy among the peasants. His sympathetic nature was influenced by indignation against the brutal methods adopted towards activists, especially political prisoners, and by the stern measures which the authorities felt compelled to adopt in order to repress the revolutionary movement. His indignation carried him into accord for a time with those who advocated the acceptance of constitutional methods. In consequence, he exposed himself to danger by remaining in Russia for fear of being arrested by the Russian authorities for his socialist sympathies with the revolutionaries. He then left for Zurich, Switzerland to pursue political activity.
He settled for a time in Switzerland, then known as the haven of revolutionary leaders, such as
Johann Philipp Becker and others. At the ''
ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...
'', a STEM university in the City of Zurich, Marković resumed his interrupted studies and in his spare time continued to write articles on social and political issues.
There too, politics got in the way of his studies. His scholarship was rescinded after the publication of his article entitled "Our Delusions" (''naše obmane'') in the newspaper ''Zastava'' in 1869, which criticized the Serbian constitution and political regime.
When his scholarship was suspended, he returned to Belgrade with new ideas. He met journalist
Pera Todorović, one of the future founders of the '
People's Radical Party and his wife journalist Milica Ninković, and other young intellectuals who wanted to make a change. Marković immediately began attracting attention and from 1868 until his early death, became one of the leading figures in Serbia's quest to reclaim its lost ancestral territories and enter into the
comity
In law, comity is "a principle or practice among political entities such as countries, states, or courts of different jurisdictions, whereby legislative, executive, and judicial acts are mutually recognized." It is an informal and non-mandatory c ...
of nations.
Back to the Balkans
Shortly after he arrived, he gathered a small group of students, which included the future Radical leader
Nikola Pašić. At the time, Serbia was ruled by a regency on behalf of
Prince Milan, in place since 1868. In the spring of 1869, the Serbian Liberal Party signed an accord with the Regency and a constitution with a toothless assembly was set up. Marković denounced this deal as a sellout and formed a minuscule radical party.
Marković now sought to wrest control of the youth wing ''Omladina'' from the Liberal Party. The Congress of Omladina met in late August 1870 in the Serbian city of
Novi Sad
Novi Sad ( sr-Cyrl, Нови Сад, ; #Name, see below for other names) is the List of cities in Serbia, second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pannoni ...
, which in those days was in the hands of Austria-Hungary yet close to the then Serbian border. Marković and his fellow radicals proposed a resolution calling for decentralization and a number of social measures which began with: "The solution of the nationality problem in
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...
, and the
Eastern Question, on the principle of 'free humanity'."
Vladimir Jovanović's liberal supporters countered with a call for an aggressive foreign policy saying that domestic policies had to take second place to unification of the South Slavs. A compromise was reached calling for decentralization and an expansionist foreign policy.
On 1 June 1871, Marković launched Serbia's first socialist newspaper with
Đura Ljočić as editor. The paper, ''Radenik'' ("The Worker") struck a careful balance between outspokenness while avoiding printing anything that would get it banned. The paper proved very successful. It was soon being denounced by the establishment as the first socialist paper in the Balkans. A group of deputies of the Serbian National Assembly accused ''Radenik'' of propagating communism "thus striking at the very foundations of the state; faith morals and property."
In March 1872, the government decided to arrest Marković however, warned in advance, he escaped across the
Sava
The Sava, is a river in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, a right-bank and the longest tributary of the Danube. From its source in Slovenia it flows through Croatia and along its border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and finally reac ...
into Hungarian territory. Finally ''Radenik'' overstepped the mark once too often when it published an article in which Christ was described as a communist and a revolutionary. Using that as a pretext, the government banned the paper in May 1872 for blasphemy and treason.
''Serbia in the East''
He opened his literary career in June 1872 by a work on ''Srbija na istoku'' ("Serbia in the East"), published in Novi Sad, wherein he analyses the history of Serbia, interpreting the Serbian society before the
First Serbian Uprising
The First Serbian Uprising (; sr-Cyrl, Први српски устанак; ) was an uprising of Serbs in Orašac (Aranđelovac), Orašac against the Ottoman Empire from 14 February 1804 to 7 October 1813. The uprising began as a local revolt ...
of 1804 as a society divided not so much on religious lines as by class. Marković argued that the
Serbian revolt against the Ottomans had a social character rather than a religious one. He saw the social organization of the Serbian peasants who played the leading role in eventual successful overthrow of Ottoman rule as insufficient to prevent the new state becoming a despotism which soon brought to life a parasitic bureaucracy.
Marković argued that growth of Serbia while this bureaucracy was in control would not lead to greater freedom, but merely strengthen the power of that bureaucracy. As an alternative to this Marković advocated democratic federalism. Marković idealized the old Balkan family structure, the
zadruga, and believed that the state should merely serve to coordinate the activities of ''opštine'', or small communities organized on the ''zadruga'' principle. In fact, he preferred a federal and revolutionary Serbia:
At the time Marković was making an intensive study of socialism. And, from this framework for an analyses of Serbia came the basis for the growth of a movement of which Marković became the spiritual father and which years later, according to some, would become the Serbian Democratic Party under the leadership of
Dimitrije Tucović
Dimitrije "Mita" Tucović ( sr-Cyrl, Димитрије Туцовић, ; 13 May 1881 – November 1914) was a Serbian theorist of the socialist movement, politician, writer and publisher. He was founder of the Serbian Social Democratic Par ...
.
Return to Serbia
As an exile, Marković had carried on his former line of thought and activity. Owing to his political activities in
Novi Sad
Novi Sad ( sr-Cyrl, Нови Сад, ; #Name, see below for other names) is the List of cities in Serbia, second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pannoni ...
, Marković was expelled by the Hungarian authorities, but was promptly arrested upon his arrival in Serbia. He was already known in Eastern Europe by his book, ''Serbia in the East'', which had been published recently (1872). The new Prime Minister,
Jovan Ristić, immediately released him. Ristić owed his position to the whim of Prince Milan, and as a result, was opposed by both the liberals and the conservatives. Ristić hoped that releasing Marković would keep the socialists off his back.
On 8 November 1873, a new newspaper, ''Javnost'' ("The Public") began publication in
Kragujevac
Kragujevac ( sr-Cyrl, Крагујевац, ) is the List of cities in Serbia, fourth largest city in Serbia and the administrative centre of the Šumadija District. It is the historical centre of the geographical region of Šumadija in central Se ...
with Marković as editor. Marković was initially quite gentle on the new conservative government that had come to power only a few weeks before ''Javnost'' began publication.
''Javnosts criticism quickly became more strident. The government lost patience and on 8 January 1874, Marković was arrested, even though he had handed over editorship by then. In the meanwhile, his supporters were running another newspaper, ''Glas Javnosti'', which was started in anticipation of ''Javnost'' being banned.
Trial
Marković had been in ill health for some time and being kept in a damp, poorly heated cell in a
Požarevac
Požarevac ( sr-cyr, Пожаревац, ) is a list of cities in Serbia, city and the administrative centre of the Braničevo District in eastern Serbia. It is located between three rivers: Danube, Great Morava and Mlava and below the hill Čač ...
gaol
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are imprisoned under the authority of the state, usually as punishment for various cri ...
made matters worse. His trial for "press crimes" began on 19 February 1874.
Defending himself against the charges that he had "insulted" the National Assembly by dismissing it as a mere debating society, Marković answered that he had written the truth. He then launched into a defense of the
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic Media (communication), media, especially publication, published materials, shoul ...
. On the charge that he had defended the right of the people "to overthrow a prince who does them evil and replace him with a good one", he denied that this was a call for revolution. He had been talking in the abstract.
16 years before the Marković trial, the Serbian people and the National Assembly exercised this right and in 1858 deposed
Prince Alexander Karađorđević and recalled
the reigning prince's father,
Miloš Obrenović to the throne.
The trial attracted a large audience, including many of the local peasants. As a result of the trial Marković became a symbol of the growing discontent against the government. Marković's conviction was a foregone conclusion but the sentence, 18 months in prison, was relatively light. However, by now his general health problems had developed into full blown
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
. The sentence was further reduced to nine months; it was far from certain that he would survive his term in prison. He was released on 16 November 1874, and went to
Jagodina to convalesce.
Socialist success
During Marković's imprisonment and building on the publicity created by Marković's trial, for the first time socialists succeed in getting elected to the National Assembly and small but vocal group, advocating Marković's ideas, formed round the Serbian politician, Adam Bogosavljević. Ignoring warnings that he needed to recover his health first, Marković was unable to stay in the background. On 1 January 1875 ''Oslobođenje'' (''Liberation'') came out, with Marković at the helm. He was as outspoken as ever at a time when harassment of socialists was in full swing.
When, however, the police told him he had the choice either to submit to arrest or leave Serbia, he chose the latter. This time he had no illusions that prison would be anything other than a death sentence.
Death
Marković caught a
Danube
The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...
steamer for
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
. Here the doctors told him that there was little hope for him, and they recommended he go to
Dalmatia
Dalmatia (; ; ) is a historical region located in modern-day Croatia and Montenegro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. Through time it formed part of several historical states, most notably the Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Croatia (925 ...
where the climate was warmer. He reached
Trieste
Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...
but collapsed in his hotel. He did not recover and died on 26 February 1875, at the age of 28. He is buried in
Jagodina where he spent most of his youth.
Literature and politics
A major literary critic of this time was Svetozar Marković, who was also the first to introduce the doctrine of social reform among the Serbs. In contrast to previous trends, he believed that literature should actively serve the needs of the majority of the people and deal with the basic problems of everyday life. The acknowledged catalyst of the new trend, Svetozar Marković's influence was an indirect one; he was primarily a social and political thinker and publicist. In the 1870s Marković in Serbia and
Vaso Pelagić in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia were what their teachers Chernishevsky, Dobrolyubov, and Pisarev were in Russia in the 1860s.
Immediately after the war and
revolution of 1870–71, the nonviolent antistatism of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, ; ; 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to ca ...
reasserted its appeal to a new and chastened generation of social revolutionaries, this movement gained a new following in agrarian southern and eastern Europe. Seminal protagonists of populism like Russia's
Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Serbia's Svetozar Marković translated the works of Proudhon. Marković in particular exerted tremendous influence on his contemporaries recommending them to be positivists in science, republicans in politics, and realists or rather utiliterians in literature. He proudly subscribed to the realistic novels of
Jakov Ignjatović. Practically all the new writers —
Milovan Glišić,
Laza Lazarević,
Janko Veselinović, and
Simo Matavulj, to name only the best, were in one way or another under the influence of realism, including
Jaša Tomić and poet
Vladimir M. Jovanović (1859–1898). Under Marković's influence, Glišić undertook to translate
Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works " The Nose", " Viy", "The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prosp ...
's ''
Dead Souls'' and
Tolstoy's ''
War and Peace''.
In the elections of 1875 the socialist-radicals made significant gains and were for a time a significant force in Serbian politics. It was not however able to stay united in the long term. In 1881
Nikola Pašić and other followers of Marković founded a new radical party.
Socialist ideas of Svetozar Marković lived after him. For example,
Jovan Skerlić began to work for various socialist and opposition newspapers, such as ''Socijaldemokrat'' ("Social Democrat"), ''Radničke novine'' ("Worker's Herald"), and ''Delo'' ("Work").
Altogether, Marković ought to be seen as a thinker of depth and originality, independence and earnestness, whose short and difficult life did much towards the knowledge and appreciation of Serbian thought. Many Serbian traditionalists regard him as the heretic and a dangerous modernist. There is no doubt that when he treats more purely theological questions he sometimes lays himself open to a charge of that kind. Marković is at his best and surest in the philosophy of history and in ethics. He is the chief representative of an important philosophical school of which many members whose thought is largely occupied with the nature and destiny of man and society—a school which is not without a certain influence on Christians.
Legacy
The Socialism of the new radical party did not survive the failure of the 1883–1884 Timok uprising, after which the radicals repackaged themselves as a
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...
party. For the Yugoslav communists, Marković was merely a
Utopian
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', which describes a fictional island soci ...
. Nevertheless, his writings (extensive considering how young he died) remained influential even though no political party claimed to follow in his footsteps. Anarchist
Krsta Cicvarić, speaking in 1920, said "all of us in Serbia who are democrats or socialists learned the political ABC's from Marković."
A Yugoslav film on his life, ''Svetozar Marković'', directed by Eduard Galić, was first shown in 1980. The
Belgrade University Library is named after Svetozar Marković, along with numerous institutions in Serbia. He is included in
The 100 most prominent Serbs.
Selected works
*Pevanja i mišljenja (1869.)
*Realnost u poeziji (1870.)
*Srbija na Istoku (1872.)
*Načela narodne ekonomije (1874.)
See also
*
Jovan Došenović
*
Vladimir Jovanović
*
Božidar Knežević
*
Dimitrije Matić
*
Konstantin Cukić
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
*
*
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*
*
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*
*
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*
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*
*
Jovan Skerlić, ''Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti'' (Belgrade, 1921), pages 427–430.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Markovic, Svetozar
1846 births
1875 deaths
Serbian politicians
Serbian socialists
19th-century Serbian philosophers
Serbian political philosophers
Serbian literary critics
Literary critics of Serbian
Academic staff of Belgrade Higher School
People from Zaječar
People from the Principality of Serbia
19th-century Serbian people
Socialism in the Principality of Serbia