Svetozar Marković (, ; 9 September 1846 – 26 February 1875) was a Serbian political activist, literary critic and socialist philosopher. He developed an activistic anthropological philosophy with a definite program of social change.

Early life

Marković was born in the town of Zaječar 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 in 1856. He reached adolescence at about the time Mihailo Obrenović became the Prince of Serbia. In 1860 he began to study at the gymnasium in Belgrade 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 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, 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.

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, 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. 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 with Marković as editor. Although critical of the regime, it was less bombastic than Radenik. On 8 January 1874 however, the government arrested Marković.

Trial

Marković had been in ill health for some time and being kept in a damp, poorly heated cell in a Požarevac gaol made matters worse. His trial for "press crimes" began on 19 February 1874.

He was charged with defaming the prince and insulting the national assembly for several articles he wrote. 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. 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 and stated that he had been talking in the abstract.

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. 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 a small but vocal group, advocating Marković's ideas, was formed around 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.

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 steamer for Vienna. Here the doctors told him that there was little hope for him, and they recommended he go to Dalmatia where the climate was warmer. He reached 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 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'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.

The 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").

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 party. For the Yugoslav communists, Marković was merely a Utopian. 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." He is regarded as the greatest Serbian socialist of the 19th century.

A Yugoslav film on his life, Svetozar Marković, directed by Eduard Galić, was released 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

  • Jovan Skerlić, Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti (Belgrade, 1921), pages 427–430.