Serbian People's Radical Party
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The People's Radical Party of Serbia was a political party formed on January 8th, 1881, which was active in the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1881, the party published its program in the paper Samouprava.
The founding of the party was related to the circle of Serbian youth followers of Svetozar Marković and Nikola Pašić. The leaders of this group formed a political programme in which they called for:
- a change in constitution
- free press and open politics
- judicial independence
- reform of the education system
- local self-government
The first chief assembly of the People's Radical Party was in July 1882 in Kragujevac. At this assembly, the Radical's program was formed, and for the president of the head committee Nikola Pašić was selected. At this point the party had its own publication which was critical of the ruling monarchy.
In September of 1883, the Timok rebellion broke out when king Milan Obrenović that peasants' arms should be confiscated by the army. The king charged the radicals that with their article Disarmament of the peoples' army in Samouprava, they had encouraged the peasants to refuse to give up their weapons.
The rebellion was set down in ten days. Most of the People's Radical Party's head committee were captured in the aftermath, apart from Pašić himself and a few others who escaped to Bulgaria. The regime sentenced many of these Radicals to death, including those who were in absentia. However, after some time, an amnesty was given to certain Radicals who made an agreement to enter into his government in 1887.
The Radicals formed their own constitution in 1888 which carried on with their originally established programme. Parliamentary rule was introduced, rights were guaranteed as well as the freedom of citizens and local self-government.
From the People's Radical Party separated the Independent Radical Party led by Ljubomir Stojanović which later became the Democratic Party.
After the Karađorđević's came to the throne, a single national assembly was introduced. Serbia became a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. Pašić formed a government and began the Radicals' reforms of the nation.
The Radical government led Serbia through the First World War. A small dissident group calling themselves the Yugoslav Committee signed the Corfu Declaration in 1917 with Pašić, which called for the formation of a "Yugoslav" state. After the war, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was formed from lands previously part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Croatian Parliament and others. However, the State did not last long as Prince Alexander, citing the Corfu Declaration, declared the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Croatian Parliament, which never voted on the move, was soon banned.
While nominally a multi-ethnic state, the Kingdom's presidents from 1918 to 1928 were exclusively Serbian with the People's Radical Party holding the presidency for eight of those years. In the National Assembly, outdated electoral rules favoured the Radical Party. For example, in the 1923 elections the party received a quarter of the kingdom's vote, but due to census results dating from 1910, Serbia was assigned a greater representation and the Radical Party took just over a third of the Assembly's seats.
After Pašić's death in 1926, Aca Stanojević became the party's president. In 1929, king Alexander declared a dictatorship banning the People's Radical Party and others. One part of the party entered into Alexander's government, while Stanojević called for the end of the dictatorship and the return to parliamentary and local self-government.
The party was restored in the 1930s.
