One hundred years of Yugoslavia: the vision of Stojan Novaković revisited

Abstract

This article examines a text written 100 years ago by Stojan Novaković, a leading Serbian scholar and president of its Academy of Science. Written in a political science fiction genre, it foresees a country of united South Slavs in 2011. Yugoslavia, in the enlightened vision of Novaković, will appear and strengthen due to scientific and economic development on one hand and common culture based on a common vernacular on the other. Elite-driven unification is the only mode for South Slavs to survive facing the challenges of modernization and the territorial threats of their neighbors. Accurate in some and grossly naïve in other aspects, this text is a testimony of Yugoslav ideas preceding the actual creation of the state, as shared by the most prestigious among the Serbian intellectual elites.

Keywords:

• Stojan Novaković
• Yugoslavism
• intellectual elites
• creation of Yugoslavia

Notes

As this article aims at an English-reading audience, it will refer to English-language studies for further reading, with a few exceptions only. The classic study that delves into the origins of the Yugoslav idea is Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia. More focused on culture is Wachtel. Another recent collection, Djokic's Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea highlights the origins in few contributions. For precursors of the Yugoslav idea see Despalatović. For Serb response, see the two monographs of MacKenzie. On the key promoter of the Yugoslav idea in the nineteenth century, Croatian Bishop Strossmayer, in English there is only Sivric and a couple of articles by Ante Kadić and Robin Okey on his attempts to introduce a Slavonic liturgy and oppose Vatican I. For biographies of two key persons involved in the creation of Yugoslavia, see Djokić, Elusive Compromise, Pašić & Trumbić and earlier Dragnich. Among other recent studies that provide context for the creation of Yugoslavia see Okey, Nicholas J. Miller (based on his dissertation actually titled Between Great Serbianism and Yugoslavism: Serbian Politics in Croatia, 1903–1914), Stokes, Politics as Development, and Jelavich.

This lack is in complete contrast to an abundance of works on the role of Serbian elites, especially intellectuals, in the final years and dissolution of Yugoslavia. Some recent ones are Budding, Dragović-Soso (two works), Nick Miller, Stefanov, and a special edition of the journal Contemporary European History 13.2 (2004).

The principal study on the role of Serbian scholarly elites in the creation of Yugoslavia is that of Trgovčević, Naučnici Srbije. It covers war-times and the participation of scholars at the Paris Peace Conference, elucidating their concepts about the future state and detailing conflicts between those advocating Great Serbian and Yugoslav or federal solution. A segment of it is available in English in Trgovčević, “South Slav Intellectuals and the Creation of Yugoslavia.” Ljubinka Trgovčević is also the author of “Jovan Cvijić u Prvom svetskom ratu,” Istorijski časopis 22 (1975): 173-231 and “Jovan Cvijić i ujedinjenje Jugoslovena 1914–1915,” in Naučno delo Jovana Cvijića, Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1982, 257–463. The bibliography in Serbian on Cvijić and the key Serbian linguist and the longest-serving president of its Academy of Arts and Sciences, Aleksandar Belić, is too extensive to be presented here. The ideas of Jovan Skerlić were recently elaborated in Čolović. For Skerlić and some other figures among Serbia's turn-of-the-century artists and scholars see also Milojkovic-Djuric, “The Roles” and more extensively in Milojkovic-Djuric, Tradition and Avant-Garde.

While there are numerous studies about Novaković's personality and oeuvre in Serbian, there is only one article in English by Djordjevic. It evokes all relevant literature in Serbian with the exception of works published after, such as Ćirković and Mihaljčić.

During the peak of the nationalist craze in the second half of the nineteenth century, many Serbian political activists, writers and artists changed, that is Serbianized, their names. Among them were another future prime minister, Vladan Đorđević, born as Ipokrat; famous linguist and Stojan Novaković's teacher, Đura Daničić, baptized Đoka Popović; the leader of Serbs in Hungary, Svetozar Miletić, baptized Avram. It was also a way to hide one's foreign, mostly Vlach or Bulgarian, ancestry. For these and many more cases see Miličević.

His first major study on historic geography, published in 1877, covered the reign of Stefan Nemanja (Zemljište radnje Nemanjine), followed by a monograph on the late Nemanjić period (Serbs and Turks in 14th and 15th centuries), the study of pronoia (Pronijari i baštinici), a comprehensive social and historical study of village life in the medieval epoch (Selo), as well as a study on medieval Serbian capitals in Rascia and Kosovo (Nemanjićke prestonice: Ras, Pauni, Nerodimlje). His comprehensive volume of medieval documents under the title Legal Documents of Serbian Medieval States (Zakonski spomenici srpskih država srednjeg veka), from 1912, still stands as one of the main sources on the subject of medieval Serbia (Rascia), Bosnia, and Dioclea (Zeta). Another major volume is his edition of the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan's Code (Zakonik Stefana Dušana cara srpskog), based on the manuscript found in Prizren, and a work on the Byzantine legal sources of Serbian medieval law (Matije Vlastara Sintagmat). Novaković also authored several works on the Serbian insurrection against the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the modern Serbian state in the nineteenth century, wrote studies on contemporary politics, ethnographic questions, religious strife and national propaganda of various Balkan states, and recorded his travels and diplomatic stays in Constantinople, Bursa and elsewhere.

Novaković used his diplomatic role in Istanbul and St. Petersburg to put his ideas into practice, especially through his support of The Association of Serb-Macedonians in Istanbul, The Macedonian Scientific and Literary Society in St. Petersburg and “Macedonistic” intellectuals such as Grupchevic, Evrovic, Misirkov and Chupovski (Angelov 411–417; Džambazovski, “Stojan Novaković i Makedonizam”).

Except for geographer Cvijić, who was the most prominent Serbian scholar at the time, the others are less known outside Serbia. Jovan Žujović was a geologist and like Novaković he served twice as Minister of Education and once as Foreign Minister of Serbia. Žujović also inherited Novaković at the post of the President of the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences. Ljubomir Stojanović, philologist, was also Minister of Education in several mandates and briefly Prime Minister of Serbia.

Stojan Novaković, “Nakon sto godina,” Hrvatskosrpski almanah (1911): 9–19. The same year, it was re-published in the memorial volume Spomenica Dositeja Obradovića which the Serbian Literary Society published on the centenary of his death in Belgrade. It also appeared in Viktor Novak's Anthology of Yugoslav idea from 1930, cited above, and yet another anthology the Serbian Literary Society published in 1962, testifying to its appeal in both Yugoslavias.

Fischer's dissertation, Dositej Obradović im Kontext des 18. Jahrhunderts und seine Rezeption bei den serbischen Eliten im frühen 19. Jahrhundert (U. Wien, 2002) was published in an updated version as Fischer, Dositej Obradović als bürgerlicher Kulturheld. A short summary in English is available as Fischer, “Self-representation.”

For Dositej, see Obradović's The Life and Adventures of Dimitrije Obradović. Fischer translated several paragraphs of Novaković's text, which appear in Fischer, “The Role of Dositej Obradovic” and which I also used in my translation below.

Novaković was a contemporary of heated Serbo-Croatian conflicts though he maintained amicable relations with his Croatian colleagues. For more on the conflicts in the last decades of the nineteenth century, see the works listed under Note 1, especially Nicholas J. Miller, as well as Aleksov, Artuković, Bogdanov, Ekmečić, Gross, and Krestić.

For more on language policy in the former Yugoslavia, see Bugarski and Hawkesworth, Cvetkovic-Sander (the most recent), Franolić, Gröschel, and Okuka.

See Bulatović, Djokić (Elusive Compromise), and Nielsen. The number of works in South Slavic languages is too extensive to mention here.

That Yugoslavia was the creation of the most progressive South Slavs was also an official line of the Communist party justifying its second foundation. See Tito's report to the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in 1948, quoted in Banac, “Yugoslavia,” 1085.

The term pleme used at the time now translates as tribe. It connoted ethnic group (ethnicity, or ethnie as chosen in this translation) but subordinate to narod, that is people. South Slavic ethnies (Serbs/Croats/Slovenes) made up the Yugoslav people. The terminology is a testimony to the vagueness of the Yugoslav “national” idea at the time.

For Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrians, see Despalatović.

For the Serbian-Croatian vernacular translation of the Bible and the resistance it encountered by spiritual and secular elites, see Kuzmič.

On Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, the language reformer and early nation-builder, see Wilson.

Together with Mountain Wreath by Montenegrin poet bishop Petar Petrović Njegoš, the epic Death of Smail-Aga Čengić (Smrt Smail Age Čengića) was the canonic piece of South Slavic literature. The Homeric style of their poetry transformed their rather prosaic and questionable plots into hymns celebrating the struggle for freedom. Its author, Ivan Mažuranić (1814–1890), Croatian poet and linguist, also served as the Ban (governor) of Croatia-Slavonia (1873–1880). The most recent translation of Death of Smail-Aga Čengić is that of Charles A. Ward in a Yugoslav journal called The Bridge 17 (1969): 5–34.