Stjepan Radić (11 June 1871 – 8 August 1928) was a Croat politician and the co-founder of the Croatian People's Peasant Party (HPSS), active in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
He is credited with galvanizing Croatian peasantry into a viable political force. Throughout his career, Radić was opposed to the union and later Serb hegemony in Yugoslavia and became an important political figure in that country. He was shot in parliament by the Serbian People's Radical Party politician Puniša Račić. Radić died several weeks later from the serious stomach wound at the age of 57.Norman M. Naimark, Yugoslavia and its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 105, 127 This assassination further alienated the Croats and the Serbs and initiated the breakdown of the parliamentary system, culminating in the 6 January Dictatorship of 1929.
Biography
Early life Stjepan Radić was born in Desno Trebarjevo, Martinska Ves near Sisak in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within Austria-Hungary as the ninth of eleven children. After being expelled from his gymnasium in Zagreb, he finished at the Higher Real Gymnasium in Karlovac. In 1888, Radić travelled to Đakovo where he met with bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer to request help for a trip to the Russian Empire. Strossmayer recommended Radić to Metropolitan Mihailo of Belgrade who referred him to a Russian teacher in Kiev. Radić travelled to Kiev and was allowed to stay at the city's Monastery of the Caves where he remained for six weeks before returning to Croatia.
In September 1891, he enrolled in law at the University of Zagreb.Branka Boban, Mladi Stjepan Radić o Srbima u Hrvatskoj i odnosima Hrvata i Srba, Radovi Zavod za hrvatsku povijest, Vol 28, Zagreb, 1995. He was selected as a representative of the student body at the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Sisak in 1893. After criticizing the Ban of Croatia Károly Khuen-Héderváry during the ceremony and referring to him as a "Magyar hussar", Radić was sentenced to four months in prison which he served in Petrinja. He was among a group of students who set fire to the Hungarian tricolour on 16 October 1895, during the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph to Zagreb. For this, Radić received a prison sentence and was expelled from the University of Zagreb, as well as barred from all universities in the Monarchy. After spending some time in Russia and, later, Prague where he briefly led the Progressive Youth, Radić continued his studies at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris, where he graduated in 1899.
Lead up to the first Yugoslavia
After World War I he had opposed the merging of Croatia with the Kingdom of Serbia without guarantees of Croatian autonomy. Radić was selected as a member of the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 24 November 1918 he famously urged delegates attending a session that would decide the country's political future not to "rush like geese into fog". He was the lone member of the National Council's central committee to vote against sending a delegation to Belgrade to negotiate with the Kingdom of Serbia.Zlatko Matijević, Narodno vijeće Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba u Zagrebu, Hrvatski institut za povijest. On 26 November, he was removed from the central committee.
After the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established, 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. Radić refused participation which he saw as legitimizing the unification.
Arrest
On 8 March 1919, the central committee passed a resolution penned by Radić that declared "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 included in a Memorandum which was translated into French and sent abroad to be addressed to the Paris Peace Conference.Zlatko Matijević, Prilozi za političku biografiju dr. Ljudevita Kežmana: od "Memoranduma" za Mirovnu konferenciju u Parizu do odlaska u Sjedinjene Američke Države (1919.-1922.), Časopis za suvremenu povijest, God. 38., br. 3., 757.-778. (2006) This act 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 to a Constitutional Assembly which were held on 28 November when he was amnestied. The result of the November election was 230,590 votes, which equaled to 50 seats in the parliament out of 419. On 8 December, before the first sitting of parliament, Radić held a massive rally in front of 100,000 people in Zagreb. Stjepan Radić and the CCPP held a meeting in which a motion was put forward and voted on that the party 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 party was subsequently renamed to the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, highlighting the party's official stance. In December, ban of Croatia Matko Laginja was dismissed by the cabinet of Milenko Radomar Vesnić for allowing the rally to take place.
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). A total of 342 representatives presented their credentials out of a total of 419. On 28 June 1921, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was made law after a vote of 223 representatives out of the present 285, the total number of representatives in the parliament being 419; 35 voted against and 161 abstained or had walked out. The constitution was commonly known as the Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day) Constitution after the anniversary of the Serbian Battle of Kosovo, also the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
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.
Second imprisonment 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. Radić embarked on an unsanctioned overseas trip in 1923 in which he visited England, France, Austria, and the Soviet Union. During this trip he briefly stayed at the home of the writer Richard Hughes, who had been Radić's spokesperson during Hughes's trip to Zagreb in 1922. On 1 July 1924, he proclaimed that his party would join the Krestintern as long as it was without Yugoslav representation and the Communist International denounced Yugoslav Unitarianism. The party congress approved his party's ascension into the Krestintern on 24 August and thereafter, the centralists and monarchists accused him of communism and anti-state activities. On 23 December, the 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. Stjepan Radić was arrested on 5 January, along with several prominent members of his party.
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 seats with a total of 532,872 votes. Even though the vote count was higher than at the previous election, the gerrymandering by the central government ensured that CRPP received fewer parliamentary seats. In order to increase his negotiating power the CRPP entered into a coalition with the Independent Democratic party (Samostalna demokratska stranka), Slovenian People's Party (Slovenska ljudska stranka) and the Yugoslav Muslim Organization (Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija).
Return to 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 power-sharing arrangement was struck, as well as a deal to release the CPP executive from jail. The CPP recognized 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, Nikola Nikić, Benjamin Šuperina, and Ivan Krajač. This powersharing arrangement was cut short after the death of the president of the Peoples Radical Party, Nikola Pašić, on 10 December 1926.
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). As he reached his mid to late 50s, Radić was nearly blind.
Assassination in Parliament
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.