First Socialists in Novi Sad

On the First Socialist Men and Women in Novi Sad
(1868–1873)
Gordana Stojaković
Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies,
Volume 30, Numbers 1-2, 2019, pp. 89-134 (Article)
Published by Slavica Publishers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ser.2019.0009
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/771418
[ Access provided at 22 May 2021 20:36 GMT from the University of Connecticut ]
On the First Socialist Men and Women in Novi Sad1
(1868–1873)
Gordana Stojaković
Abstract: This paper analyzes the political-ideological plans of a group of the socialists,
led by Svetozar Marković, who, as refugees in the 1970s in Novi Sad, determined political,
economic, and social changes in the Serbian Corps north and south of the Sava and Dan-
ube. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to analyze less-explored topics in the
historical science through the new reading of selected texts of the first socialists, published
either as separate papers or newspaper articles in Radnik, Mlada Srbadija, Zastava, Mat-
ica, and the Srpski omladinski kalendar za prostu 1869, which present what the refugee
socialists wrote about Novi Sad, its citizens, society, the political situation, and attitudes on
women’s liberation. Also, the aim is to compare, by the method of critical discourse analysis,
the views on women’s liberation held by the liberal political and cultural elite in the Serbian
Vojvodina community at the end of the 19th century with those of the first socialists, but
also of Draga Dejanović, Draga Gavrilović, and Milica Ninković, and to identify whether
Draga Dejanović’s and Draga Gavrilović’s views women’s emancipation can be considered
close to the socialist platform. The results of the research indicate the need for a new evalu-
ation of women’s contribution to the socialist platform among Serbs.
Keywords: Anka Ninković, Draga Dejanović, Draga Gavrilović, Ljuben Karavelov, Novi
Sad, Milica Ninković, socialists, Svetozar Marković, Vasa Pelagić, women’s liberation, fe-
male socialists
Much has been written about the first socialists in Novi Sad, especially about
Svetozar Marković being the most important representation of our early socialist
1
I wish to thank Svetlana Tomić for suggestions and comments which helped this text
read better in terms of content.
Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 30: 89–134,
2019.
90 Gordana Stojaković
thought. Capital works of Jovan Skerlić2 and Slobodan Jovanović3 are a case in
point. Interest in the first socialists in the political history written in Serbian did
not diminish in socialist Yugoslavia, while the research by Kosta Milutinović4 sets
itself apart in terms of the number and diversity of topics.
Historical science here has often studied various aspects of the fact that Novi
Sad was the juncture of Serbian socialists in the 1870s, the majority of whom had
a refugee status. The first socialist theorists and agitators were Ljuben Karavelov,
Vasa Pelagić, Svetozar Marković, Mita Cenić, Sreten Anđelković, Vladimir Ljotić,
Pera Todorović, Pera Velimirović, Manojlo Hrvaćanin, and others, who lived in
Novi Sad, having had escaped the political persecution in the Principality of Ser-
bia.5 Their days of exile in Novi Sad passed in the context of huge political turmoil
in The Principality of Serbia, where states belonged to the crown of Saint Stephen6
and were partly marked by the rise and fall of The United Serbian Youth (1866–71).
The socialist men and women from both Novi Sad and Vojvodina contributed to
the development of Serbian socialist thought, and those who are most often men-
tioned in the literature are Branko (Hranislav) Mihajlović, Đoka Mijatović, Nikola
Marković, Lazar Paču, Laza Nančić, and Milica i Anka Ninković.
2
Jovan Skerlić, Svetozar Marković: Njegov život, rad i ideje, ed. Vladimir Ćorović (Bel-
grade: Izdavačka knjižarnica Napredak, 1922).
3
Slobodan Jovanović, Vlada Milana Obrenovića, book 1 (Belgrade: Štamparski zavod
Orao, 1934).
4
Kosta Milutinović’s works about Svetozar Marković are as follows: “Milica Ninković—
Povodom 70-godišnjice smrti,” Letopis Matice srpske 368 (1951): 453–67; Novi Sad kao
žarište socijalističkog pokreta u 1872, separat (Novi Sad: Rad vojvođanskih muzeja, 1952);
Prvi sukob Svetozara Markovića i Svetozara Miletića, separat (Novi Sad: Matica srpska,
1956); Kosta Milutinović and Milan P. Kostić, eds., Izabrani spisi Đoke Mijatovića (Novi
Sad: Istorijski arhiv Pokrajinskog komiteta SKS za Vojvodinu, 1956); Kosta Milutinović,
ed., Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina: Dokumenta o Pelagićevim vezama sa Vojvodinom (Novi Sad:
Istorijski arhiv Pokrajinskog komiteta SKS za Vojvodinu, 1956); Prvi socijalisti u No-
vosadskoj gimnaziji, separat (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1957); “Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina,”
Putevi—časopis za književnost i kulturu (1960): 242–48; Svetozar Marković u Novom Sadu
(Novi Sad: Institut za izučavanje istorije Vojvodine/Prosveta, 1975); “Đoka Mijatović,
prvi vojvođanski socijalista—povodom 100-godišnjice smrti,” Preštampano iz Zbornika za
istoriju 17 (1978): 43–84; Svetozar Marković i Ujedinjena omladina srpska, separat (Bel-
grade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1982).
5
Vasa Stajić, “Svetozar Marković i socijalisti u Novom Sadu (1872–1880),” Letopis Matice
Srpske 358, no. 1–3 (1946): 105–25.
6
From the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Kingdom of Hungary consisted
of the following states of the Crown Saint Stephen: Hungary, Erdel, Slovakia, and Croatia
with Slavonia (Đorđe Srbulović, Kratka istorija Novog Sada, treće popravljeno i dopunje-
no izdanje [Novi Sad: Prometej & Zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture grada Novog Sada,
2011], 103).
On the First Socialist Men and Women in Novi Sad (1868–1873) 91
The theoretical and political discourse of the first Serbian socialists has so far
been analyzed through several categories, which most often refer to the program of
the socialist movement—that is, the “material wealth, education and freedom”7 of
the Serbian people, as written in the socialist newspaper Radenik/Radnik (Work-
er). 8 In other words, the beginning of socialist thought and activity in the Serbian
corpus to the north and south of the Sava and Danube has been analyzed by rais-
ing the same questions that had already been raised and written about by Svetozar
Marković. As Hermann Wendel rightly observed, there was no social, economic, or
political question in Serbian society which needed to be resolved at the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th—the fate of the working class, wom-
en’s rights, self-rule, collective or collaborative ownership, science about creation or
science about society, literary criticism, education of young people, the republic, or
Balkan Federation9 —which Marković and, in part, other socialists in his circle, had
not already elaborated on from the perspective of socialist thought. That platform
has been consistently researched by many, hence this article does not lay claim to the
familiar analytical formula.
My aim is to analyze less-explored topics by reading anew selected texts of the
first socialists—which were published as separate works or newspaper articles in
the party newspapers Radnik (Worker), Mlada Srbadija (Young Serbians), Zastava
(Flag), Matica, and Srpski omladinski kalendar za prostu 1869 (Serbian Youth Cal-
endar for 1869)—and what the socialist refugees wrote about Novi Sad, its citizens,
society, political situation, and the views about the so-called women’s emancipation.
Both topics are current. The first because it touches on the everyday life of the Ser-
bian community at the end of the 19th century, and in which the following were
taking place: the violence of the ruling block, newspaper censorship, favoritism, de-
nunciation, the pauperization of peasantry, and the ruin of small manufacturing
industries; the second topic is still current because, due to the withdrawal of social-
ist ideology from public discourse in the 21st century, the social scene in Serbia is
seeing the return of the ideological-political ideas which promote that women’s only
calling is her family and home, something which was decidedly rejected by the first
socialists. I have selected these topics from the history of Novi Sad and the develop-
ment of thought about women’s emancipation because the social and historical con-
text in which women’s rights are discussed is always an important fact which must
be first touched upon. This article aspires to verify, among other things, whether the
7
“Program,” Radenik, April 17, 1871, 1.
8
Radenik became Radnik beginning in 1872.
9
“Karlo Kaucki i Herman Vendel o Svetozaru Markoviću,” in Nova Evropa, ed. M. Ćurčin
(Zagreb: Tipografija Grafičkog-Nakladnog Zavoda, 1925), 404.
national problems from the end of the 19th century were the excuse to completely
repress the question of women’s emancipation.
My aim is also to compare the view of the liberal, political, and cultural elite in
Vojvodina’s Serbian community on women’s emancipation with the view of the first
socialists, as well as with the views of Draga Dejanović (1840–71),10 Draga Gavri-
lović (1845–1917),11 and Milica Ninković (1854–81).12 I was interested whether,
apart from Milica Ninković and her sister Anka, who proved her socialist view
by fighting in the socialist ranks, the views held by Draga Dejanović and Draga
Gavrilović about women’s emancipation could be considered related to the socialist
platform. Until now, in the literature one could have found a view by Julka Hla-
pec-Đorđević,13 who saw the feminism of Draga Dejanović as national and that of
Milica and Anka Ninković as socialist feminism. Looking at who the first socialist
women in Serbia were, Dragoslav Ilić14 mentions only the Ninković sisters, which
leads to the question, What can be defined as belonging to the socialist idea or a
political group? Draga Dejanović’s dedication to the financial freedom of women
cannot be related to the conservative view, which did not see women’s emancipation
outside the house, but rather with the socialist views from Marković’s circle. If, on
the other hand, the activity of Draga Dejanović and Draga Gavrilović is examined
above all through their engagement in the United Serbian Youth, where the con-
servatives were the most influential, why is it that the same measure has not been
applied to the socialists, who were also among the founders and members of the
United Serbian Youth? That is why I will attempt to compare the view of Draga De-
janović with that of the socialists and conservatives on the local level, as well as with
selected views of their contemporaries in the surrounding areas—that is, in Europe
of that period. Adherence to the idea or political movement can be also examined by
the choice of a life path. If it is known that Draga Dejanović, Draga Gavrilović, and
Milica Ninković showed in practice that women’s financial freedom is possible, why
would that achievement, realized despite the usual women’s destiny characteristic of
10
Draga Dejanović, writer and actress of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, creat-
ed in theory and practice the first Serbian feminist platform. She left her husband and built
a career as an actress. Later, she decided to return to her husband whom she had abandoned.
She died in childbirth.
11
Draga Gavrilović was the first Serbian female novelist. She wrote about the situation of
women in patriarchal Serbian society and against the oppression which marked every part
of women’s life. She worked as a teacher in her hometown, Srpska Crnja. She never married.
12
Milica Ninković (married name Todorović), studying pedagogy in Zurich with her sister
Anka, went to Kragujevac where, from a socialist position, she actively participated in the
political life of the Principality of Serbia.
13
Julka Chlapec-Đorđević, Studije i eseji o feminizmu (Belgrade: Život i rad, 1935).
14
Dragoslav Ilić, Prve žene socijalisti u Srbiji (Belgrade: Beogradski grafički zavod, 1956).
the end of the 19th century, not be recognized as a part of not only feminism, but
also socialist platform?
I have chosen the historical period from 1868 to 1873 because it overlaps with
the stay of the first socialists-refugees in Novi Sad, and these were Ljuben Kara-
velov, Vasa Pelagić, Svetozar Marković, and, very briefly, Mita Cenić and Sreta
Anđelković. In regards to the first topic, I will analyze the texts of S. Marković,
Lj. Karavelov, V. Pelagić; in regards to the second, I will present the selected views
about women’s emancipation, such as those of the respected representatives of the
Kulturträger platform, whose representatives in Vojvodina’s Serbian community
in 1870s were advocates of national prosperity: Mita Petrović, Antonije Hadžić,
Đorđe Natošević, and Arkadije Varađanin. This is the dominant discourse whose
influence can be followed up to the beginning of the WWI. Then, I will compare
the dominant discourse with the ideas about women’s emancipation, such as those
of Draga Dejanović, Svetozar Marković, Ljuben Karavelov, Vasa Pelagića, Milica
Ninković, Draga Gavrilović, and unknown authors—socialists who were writing
about it in Worker.
In regards to the first topic, I will rely on the texts by Svetozar Marković15
“Notes from Novi-Sad” 1–7, published in Worker during the period of February–
April 1872; on unsigned texts,16 “Social-economic Situation of the Austro-Hungar-
ian Serbs (Društveno-ekonomno stanje kod austro-ugarskih Srba17), published in
Worker in April 1872; and the text by Vasa Pelagić “To all Serbian Municipalities”
(Opštinama svekolikog srpstva), published in Young Serbs at the end of May 1871,
and reprinted in a special publication Attempt at National and Personal Promotion,
written by Arhimandrit Pelagić (1871) (Pokušaj za narodno i lično unapređenje,
napisao Arhimandrit Pelagić). To this, I will also add a description of the Serbian
15
Laza Nančić claims that the texts were written by Svetozar Marković, and that Jovan
Grčić claimed that Svetozar Marković wrote them according to information given to him
by Đoka Mijatović, and that some were even written by Mijatović himself (Kosta Miluti-
nović, Đoka Mijatović, prvi vojvođanski socijalista: Povodom 100-godišnjice smrti [Novi Sad:
Matica srpska, 1978], 65). In “Unpublished letters by Svetozar Marković,” Marković writes,
“I’m going to the cafe to have tea; when I come back I will finish Note III from Novi Sad”
(Idem u kavanu da pijem tej, pa ću doći da završim III Belešku iz Novog Sada), which sug-
gests that Marković wrote his “Notes” on his own, and the information and impressions he
could have gotten from various sides, even the cafe’s audience, which he also described (Pero
Damjanović and Dragić Kačarević, “Neobjavljena pisma Svetozara Marković,” in Prilozi za
istoriju socijalizma, volume 2 [Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1965], 346).
16
Texts are not signed, so it cannot be said with certainty that they were written by Sve-
tozar Marković, but they certainly originated within the framework of Marković’s socialist
circle and under his influence.
17
The text that appears in parentheses completely corresponds with the original text—
meaning that the orthography is also taken from the original.
community in Vojvodina that Ljuben Karavelov gave in his novella Soka: A Story of
a Grocer (Soka: pripovetka novosadske piljarice), which he wrote in Pest’s prison in
1869 and published through the Serbian Youth Calendar for 1869.
In regards to the second topic, I analyze the texts by Draga Dejanović “Eman-
cipation of Serbian Women” (public lecture, 1970) and “To Serbian Mothers”
(public lecture, 1971); the novellas God Has Decreed (1870) by Ljuben Karavelov
and Radinka and Pomodarka or Inclinations and Talks of Model and Detrimental
Serbian Women (1871) by Vasa Pelagić; “To all Serbian Women” (1871), a tract by
Vasa Pelagić; “Emancipation of Women According to Collier” (translation from the
French in 1870); a text by Svetozar Marković called “Is Woman Capable of Having
Equal Rights as Man” (1870); as well as unsigned texts published in the socialist
newspaper Worker: “Woman’s Question” (1872), “Education of Women in Sweden”
(1872), “International Association of Women” (1972), and texts “Russian Female
Students at Zurich’s Universities and Russian Decree Against These Universities”
(1873), which are considered to have been edited by Milica Ninković, and which
were published by Flag in Novi Sad. Apart from the aforementioned, I also rely on
my previous texts on the same topic: “Matica’s Competition: ‘Serbian Woman at
Home and in Society’” (man awarded)18 and “Draga Gavrilović: A Contribution
for the History of the Creation of New Gender Roles in the 19th century Serbian
Society.”19
Timeline: On Serbs in the Habsburg Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, and

the Principality of Serbia in the Second Half of the 19th Century
The autonomy of Serbs in the Habsburg Empire, on the basis of the privileges from
1690, was several times limited by regulations (1770, 1777), declaration (1779), and
the consistorial system (1782) to church-school autonomy, and, in the end, con-
firmed as such by empire rescript.20 The governing of this autonomy was executed by
the representatives of the National Church Assembly, while the responsibility of the
Synod was limited to the questions of religion (liturgy, dogma). Beginning in the
18
Gordana Stojaković, “Na Konkursu: Matice srpske ‘Kakva valja da je Srpkinja u kući i
društvu,’” in Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji: Diskursi i prakse, II tom, ed. Marina Blagojević
(Belgrade: AŽIN, 2005), 117–39.
19
Gordana Stojaković, “Draga Gavrilović: prilog za istoriju stvaranja novih rodnih ulo-
ga u srpskom društvu 19. veka,” in Valorizacija razlika: Zbornik sa naučnog skupa o Dragi
Gavrilović (1854–1917), ed. Svetlana Tomić (Belgrade: Altera i Fondacija multinacionalni
fond kulture, 2013), 56–74.
20
Branislav Vranešević, et. al., “Laza Nančić Izabrani politički spisi,” in Prvi socijalisti u
Vojvodini, ed. Ljubiša Stankov (Novi Sad: Istorijski arhiv Pokrajinskog komiteta SKS za
Vojvodinu, 1961), 126–27.
1870s, the top leaders of Serbian religious hierarchy prevented the representatives of
people from gaining influence over Serbian ecclesiastic-secular possessions. This was
achieved through the efforts of the archimandrite (later the bishop and the patri-
arch) German Anđelić, who prevented the representatives of the people from gain-
ing a decisive influence over the Serbian church and people’s goods by relying on the
Hungarian government and the so-called “Moderates” within the People’s Church
Council.21 The demand for the rights to govern the church-school assets and funds,
for the higher clergy, meant the battle for their own privileged position, while for
the Serbian people in Hungary, it meant its (the people’s) additional atrophy.
With the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), the Habsburg Empire be-
came a dual state. Today’s Vojvodina belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. Al-
ready in 1868, the Nationalities Law came into effect in the Kingdom of Hungary,
which opened the door to the Magyarization and assimilation of all nationalities of
non-Hungarian background—which, at that time, constituted the majority of the
population. Apart from the pressure which the Hungarian government exerted on
both the collective and individual rights of Serbs and other non-Hungarian nation-
alities, a parallel process of transformation of the capitalist system was underway
through strengthened industrialization, free trade freed from the peasant’s depen-
dence on private aristocratic estate, and the demobilization of the Habsburg Empire
borders, which, without any special privileges in relation to other territories, were
included in the social and economic system of the country.
The stratification of the Serbian population in Vojvodina in the second half
of the 19th century happened through the pauperization of a large part of it in the
context of a more intensive investment of the capital out of Austria and the whole
of Hungary, through the strengthened industrialization and commodity-money ex-
change, which caused the ruin of smaller mercantile and artisan jobs. The Serbian
peasantry on small estates in today’s Vojvodina, burdened by taxes, could not sus-
tain the profitable production, so many were pressed to become laborers, servants,
and day laborers (odadžije).22 It was a time of big changes: economic (building of
factories, railway), administrative-governmental (new taxation and government sys-
tem), and societal (the settlement of Hungarians, Germans, and other nationalities).
At the same time, it was a time of big challenges in the life of the Serbian commu-
nity in Vojvodina.
The liberal ideas which were spreading throughout Europe during the second
half of the 19th century were accepted among the middle-class elite to the north
and south of the Sava and Danube. Young people, who were studying at European
universities, promoted individual freedom and democratic rights, which were the
21
Vranešević, “Laza Nančić,” 126.
22
“Društveno-ekonomsko stanje kod austro-ugarskih Srba,” Radnik, March 24, 1872,
133–34.
main demands of the liberals. The ideas of socialism entered political life beginning
in the 1860s, both to the north and south of the Sava and Danube and via the stu-
dents who were educated in Russia and European countries. Under the dominant
influence of Chernyshevsky, Svetozar Marković built the original political program,
and his agitation and political work reached high limits because he relied on the
then-unawakened power of the Serbian peasants, the repressed class which made
up the large part of the population in Serbian society in the municipality of Serbia
in the second half of the 19th century. During his stay in Switzerland, Marković
also collaborated with the German socialists, participated 23 in the work of the First
International,24 and decidedly acted against Bakunin’s anarchist platform. Kautzky
even thinks that Marković saved his country from bacuninism.25
It was a time of vehement political and societal change in Europe, too, when
the people who revolted during the Paris Commune (1871) proclaimed the famous
“land to peasants, tools to workers, but work to everyone” (zemlja seljacima, alat
radnicima, a rad svima).26 In 1871, Belgrade’s Worker—the first socialist newspaper
in the Balkans—appeared, while the Serbian translation of The Communist Mani-
festo by Marx and Engels was published in Pančevo. But the main reformist political
idea in the Serbian corpus to the north and south of the Sava and Danube was not
the socialist but the liberal platform, whose best known agitators in the Principality
of Serbia were the liberals Vladimir Jovanović and Jevrem Grujić, and in Vojvodina,
narodnjaci (populist)27 Svetozara Miletića.
Considered political enemies of the absolutist government of Prince Mihai-
lo—especially in the period of his second rule, 1860–68, after his assassination and
during the government of elected representatives (Namesništvo)—the liberals and
socialists were forced to leave the Principality of Serbia. Many came to Novi Sad.
The Hungarian government did not look favorably on dissidents who were coming
from Serbia to its territory, especially Novi Sad and its surrounds. Despite the fact
that there was more freedom in the Hungarian Monarchy, the political refugees
from the Principality of Serbia in Novi Sad, supported by the larger part of the Ser-
bian population and elite, were being denounced and arrested by the request of the
Principality of Serbia.
23
Slobodan Jovanović informs us that Svetozar Marković was “a corresponding member of
the International’s Russian branch” (Jovanović, Vlada Milana Obrenovića, 256).
24
1864–76.
25
“Karlo Kaucki i Herman Vendel o Svetozaru Markoviću,” 402.
26
Pero Damjanović, “Pariska komuna 1871,” in Priručnik za istoriju međunarodnog rad-
ničkog pokreta, ed. Ljubinka Krešić (Belgrade: Izdavačko preduzeće Rad, 1964), 258.
27
By narodnjaci, I mean members and supporters of the Serbian National Freethinkers’
Party.
The fight for the freedom and rights of Vojvodina’s Serbs was also occurring
in the political life of the Hungarian Monarchy. The publishing of the Tucindan
article by Svetozar Miletić in 1861 and Beckerek’s program in 1869 created a po-
litical platform for Vojvodina’s Serbs, which was to be represented in the political
life of the Hungarian Monarchy, in the period this article considers, by the repre-
sentatives of the Serbian National Freethinkers’ Party, but especially by its leader,
Svetozar Miletić. The party was fighting for the recognition of the national-politi-
cal individuality and equal rights of all peoples in Hungary, the collaboration with
the Hungarian liberal opposition parties, and the autonomy of Serbs, Croats, and
Romanians; it fought against the Austro-Hungarian plan to annex Bosnia and Her-
zegovina, interfering with foreign powers in wars of the Balkan people against the
Turks; it supported the help these powers could offer the Balkan people while lead-
ing the wars of liberation.28 The representatives of Miletić’s narodnjaci fought not
only in the Hungarian Assembly, but also for rule of the cities in which the Serbs
were the majority. Svetozar Miletić was the mayor of Novi Sad in 1861 and 1867,
but the Hungarian government suspended him both times. The Hungarian gov-
ernment unlawfully demanded that the government in Novi Sad be in the hands of
the Hungarian government’s supporters, who were political opponents of Miletić’s
narodnjaci, which happened in 1872.
In 1868, after the assassination of the Prince Mihailo and under the pretext of
looking for the helpers of the conspirators in Novi Sad, the Hungarian government
dismissed Svetozar Miletić and arrested on Vidovdan (licem na Vidovdan)29 the
political refugees Ljuben Karavelov and Vladimir Jovanović. Both dissidents, who
escaped from the Principality of Serbia, were accused by the Hungarian government
of collaborating with the assassins of Prince Mihailo, “only because of two slander-
ers without a soul, who did not fear God nor people, to slander and lie about them”
(samo zbog toga što su se našla dva klevetnika bez duše, koji se ne strašiše ni boga ni
ljudi, da najstrašnije klevete i laži na njih potvore).30
Since there were not conditions for political action in the Principality of Ser-
bia—while in Vojvodina in the sixties of the 19th century, there was “relatively
more political freedom” (relativno više političkih sloboda)31—Novi Sad became the
meeting point of different ideas regarding the emancipation of Serbs dispersed in
several states. Svetozar Miletić and the leaders of the Serbian National Freethinkers’
28
See Srbulović, Kratka istorija Novog Sada, 131–32.
29
“Dopisi,” Zastava, January 17, 1869.
30
Ibid.
31
Kosta Milutinović, Novi Sad kao žarište socijalističkog pokreta u 1872 (separat) (Novi
Sad: Rad vojvođanskih muzeja, 1952), 71; Božidar Kovačević, “Ljuben Karavelov i Svetozar
Marković,” Letopis Matice srpske 358, no. 2–3 (1946): 202–03.
Party approved of and helped the Serbian dissident liberals and socialists. Miletić’s
liberalism was tolerant32 and open to socialist ideas, which were, at that time, trav-
eling around Europe like a boogeyman.
In Novi Sad, the socialists, supporters, and co-fighters of Svetozar Marković,
along with the liberals gathered around Svetozar Miletić, worked on the establish-
ment of a serious and far-reaching revolutionary freedom movement of the oppressed
peoples in the Slavic south.33 Both Svetozar Marković and Svetozar Miletić worked
on this, as well as the national tribune Vasa Pelagić, but also Ljuben Karavelov, and
many other liberals, socialists, and national tribunes in Novi Sad,34 Belgrade, Cet-
inje, Bulgaria, and Romania.
In February 1872, Svetozar Marković wrote from Novi Sad to his brother Je-
vrem Marković about the events, which can clearly be related to the uprising to hap-
pen soon35 in Herzegovina:
I had a long talk with Miletić.… We talked about the way to get ready at
the border.… He suggests that an officer organization be first made up here
in Varadin’s regiment so that it then can be sent from one place to anoth-
er.… Miletić told me that it would be a good idea to publish in Belgrade and
distribute along the border the call to the uprising, just before the first gun
fires…36
The vassal regime of the Principality of Serbia in collaboration with the Hun-
garian government prevented the organization of the general uprising of the Balkan
people.37 When, in 1870, the autonomy had been completely annulled in free cities
such as Novi Sad, the Hungarian government appointed rulers, against the will of
32
Milutinović, Novi Sad kao žarište, 70.
33
Ibid.
34
In Novi Sad’s Assembly, apart from Svetozar Miletić and Svetozar Marković, Kosta Mi-
lutinović names the following people: Novi Sad socialist Đoka Mijatović, and respectable
members of the Serbian National Freethinkers’ Party: Mihajlo Polit-Desančić, Miša Dim-
itrijević, Ilija Vučetić, Jovan Pavlović, and Laza Kostić (Milutinović, Novi Sad kao žarište,
71).
35
The Herzegovina Uprising began in Nevesinje in 1875 and lasted till 1877. The rebels
were helped by the Principality of Knjaževina Crna Gora and the Principality of Serbia,
which led to the war with the Ottoman Empire. The confrontation ended with the 1878
Congress of Berlin, where both principalities gained independence. Based on the decision
of the congress, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austro-Hungary, while its annexation
happened in 1908.
36
Damjanović and Kačarević, “Svetozar Marković,” 345.
37
people, which eased the control of all political activities in the Serbian community
and the use of force on those who were considered potentially dangerous for the
establishment. These political-policing-jurisdictional measures of the Hungarian
government proved an effective method to disperse the political gathering of Serbs
(and other Slavs from the Balkans) in Novi Sad and its environs.
Domestic historiography often treats topics regarding the founding, work, con-
flicts (as is often the case) among members, and the cessation of work of the United
Serbian Youth. Slobodan Jovanović—whose father, Vladimir, participated in the
founding of the United Serbian Youth—wrote that the organization was created
in 1866 by “Serbian liberals and Vojvodina’s narodnjaci,”38 while the Principality
of Serbia was governed by the despotic39 regime of Prince Mihailo. The aims of the
organization were the unification of Serbs and the development of all national po-
tentials—cultural, economic, and political. Within the United Serbian Youth in
1867, a movement called Society for Diligence was termed “the national school of
experience,”40 which gathered students and young tradesmen and merchants.
Disappointed with the foreign policy of Prince Mihailo, the liberals and narod-
njaci tried to unfurl the flag of liberation and unification of people by founding the
United Youth of Serbia. Freedom, for them, was a wholesale value, so one could
not talk about the emancipation from outside tyranny without the freedom of as-
sociation, political activity, public speech, and press. The newspaper Young Serbs
was founded in Novi Sad in 1870, when in January 1871, the editorial board was
moved to Belgrade—which, according to Slobodan Jovanović, was the beginning
of the move of the youth center from Vojvodina to Serbia.41 After the assassination
of Prince Mihailo in 1868, the government in the Principality of Serbia was in the
hands of Vassals Milivoje Petrović Blaznavac and Jovan Ristić. Namesništvo did not
look favorably on the goal of Serbian liberals to transfer the seat of the organization
to Belgrade, fearing the spread of liberal ideas. At the same time, the Hungarian
government wanted to limit the activity of the United Serbian Youth by requesting
that a clause be added in the statute of the organization that only Serbs born on
the territory of the Monarchy of Hungary could become its members. This request
38
Jovanović, Vlada Milana Obrenovića, 229.
39
A political view about this was given in 1865 in verse by Jovan Jovanović Zmaj in his
poem “The National Anthem of Yuthuton” (Jututunska narodna himna), where he writes:
“This nation very well knows that it is created only for the sake of the Prince, to pay him
taxes and praises, to serve him…” (Ovaj narod vrlo dobro znade da je stvoren samo Knjaza
radi, da Mu daje poreze i hvale, da Ga dvori i ponizno kadi). See Vasa Stajić and Mladen
Leskovac, Političke pesme Jovana Jovanovića Zmaja (Novi Sad: Prosvetna izdavačka zadru-
ga “Zmaj,” 1945).
40
41
Jovanović, Vlada Milana Obrenovića, 231.
could not be fulfilled because it went against the main mission of the organization,
so it was forbidden in 1871. The work of the organization stopped when Young Serbs
ceased publication. However, it was not only external causes that ruined the organi-
zation, but also internal tensions and disagreements about the question of the form
of government, the importance of the economic question—that is, the economic
well-being of people as the condition of its emancipation—and the building of po-
litical institutions, which will guarantee such freedom was not possible to bring into
line in such a widely posited national front.42 The goal to have all other interests
and needs of various classes represented in the United Serbian Youth met through
the fight for maintaining national identity was not sustainable. The reason for is
evidenced in the early resignation of Svetozar Marković from the Belgrade board of
the United Serbian Youth, and his view that it had no future.43
Novi Sad, Racka’s Paris, Brussels of a Small World, Serbian Athens, the Hydra
Head of Yugoslavia…
In the second half of the 19th century, Novi Sad was a temporary abode for political
refugees from the Principality of Serbia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria. These were not spo-
radic cases, but rather “a swarm of emigration,”44 to use the phrase Vasa Stajić gave
to the arrival cycles of socialists-refugees. Regarding the fact that Novi Sad became
the destination of Serbs, Louis Leger gave the following view: “Novi Sad is now
Brussels of a small world whose Paris used to be Belgrade,”45 thus drawing a parallel
with the refugee status of Victor Hugo, who, as a Republican, had to leave Paris and
settle in Brussels. For Danilo Medaković, however, Novi Sad was “Racka’s Paris,”46
while for the Austrian chancellor Alexander von Bach, whose rule is known as
Bach’s absolutism, Novi Sad was “the head of the political hydra of Yugoslavia.”47
It is also known that the district’s prefect, Leondard Mate, first considered Novi
Sad as the place that could pose danger for the Hungarian government and nation,
describing it as a nest of “diverse dangerous Serbian rebels and revolutionaries in
Hungary,”48 and then also Kamenica and Sremski Karlovci. On the other hand, we
42
Svetozar Marković, “Naš radnički program,” Radnik, May 17, 1872, 205.
43
“Iz društvenog sveta,” Mlada Srbadija, May 10, 1871, 160.
44
Stajić, “Svetozar Marković,” 116.
45
According to Milutinović, Novi Sad kao žarište, 69.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Kosta Milutinović, “Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina,” Putevi: Časopis za književnost i kulturu
(1960): 242–48.
could assume why Pelagić, describing all Serbian municipalities, included Novi Sad
among the “livlier and busier,” where all jobs given to the ethnic Serbian minority
were better and improving compared to the Austro-Hungarian “fox-hounding.”49
Still, in our historiography and memory, Novi Sad is most commonly compared
with Athens—or, as Svetozar Miletić calls it, Serbian small Athens50 —because it is
here that the Serbian people in Vojvodina became a part of the enlightened Europe.
We know that the cultural regeneration of people is a condition of all other eman-
cipatory processes.
Political refugees saw the Novi Sad environment, either through the analysis of
political and social circumstances, or through observations about everyday life. Such
view of Novi Sad, through the life of the Serbian refugee community, was not often
the subject of historiographic analysis, and one such view is the valuable testimony
which Svetozar Marković left about the favorable and unfavorable circumstances in
Novi Sad. Even within the United Serbian Youth, Svetozar Marković was devoted
to knowledge gained by scientific methods in regards to “how your nation lives in
different areas,”51 what kind of “social and state system”52 it has, the material con-
ditions, and the view toward schooling, education, culture, and church. He proved
this thesis practically by describing the social tissue of Novi Sad and its connection
with national and political conditions of that era, and the economic and class status
of the population and its view toward education, youth, and church. Vasa Pelagić
had similar views on these subjects. In my mind, the analysis of the economic state
of the Serbian community in Novi Sad is often missing in the local historiography,
which has subordinated this segment of the historical perspective of the social es-
tablishment to the political and cultural history of the Serbs in Austro-Hungary.
Economy: There’s No Other Way but to Demolish Everything
The socialists led by Svetozar Marković consistently concerned themselves with the
economic potential of the Serbian Austro-Hungarian community (especially in
Novi Sad). Research about the strata (classes) of the Serbian community, their way
of life, positions on the social ladder, and the related political capacity has produced
valuable insight into the situation of the Serbian people in the second half of the
49
Arhimandrit Pelagić, Pokušaj za narodno i lično unapređenje (Belgrade: Štamparija Ste-
fanovića i družine, 1871), 62.
50
In Kratkoj istoriji Novog Sada by Đorđe Srbulović, Novi Sad is Serbian small Athens
(143).
51
Krešimir Georgijević, “Svetozar Marković i Ujedinjena omladina srpska,” Letopis Matice
srpske 358, no. 1–3 (1946): 166.
52
Ibid.
19th century in Austro-Hungary from the perspective of socialist ideology. One of

the concluding diagnoses of the research reads:
That organism of ours—society—consists of sick and weak arms and legs

—the class of farmers and artisans—of buddying stomach—the merchant
world—and out of a stunted brain—intelligentsia and scientists … such53
organism or society cannot exist … And I claim that it is nothing other than
a monster. That is why our homework is, as Proudhon says, to demolish, and
the one who demolishes, destroys, the most, to him goes all the credit.54
A large collective, as a basic form of the social-economic system of the Serbi-

an community in the Habsburg Monarchy, ceased to exist after the revolutions of
1848–49, and that process of disappearance opened the way to the proletarianiza-
tion of the “farming class.”55 In documenting the poor situation of the peasant,
the author of the analysis first names those who, burdened by taxes, live poorly on
3–4 strips of land without any capital, and are often forced to earn their living else-
where.56 The largest number of farmers were proleterians: wage-earners, servants,
and odadžije; the situation of odadžije is the hardest and the most uncertain because
they earned 200 forints annually—which, if divided among four family members,
does not even amount to fourteen coins (novčića) daily.57 This fact is the evidence
with which the socialists, above all Svetozar Marković, entered into a polemic58 with
those who thought that when there are no factories, there is no working proletariat
among Serbs. Comparing wages and earnings of odadžija and those that Paris or
London workers were getting, the author of the analysis called the opponents myser
(ćifte),59 and asked, What do they have to say to that? But, that was not the only sign
of the desperate situation of the poor that he noticed. Commenting on the scale of
the proletarian status of the farmers without land, he cites in the text the fact that
it sometimes occurred that during the seasonal vineyard works in Srem, there was
53
Orthography taken from the original text.
54
“Društveno-ekonomsko stanje kod austro-ugarskih Srba,” Radnik, March 31, 1872, 142.
55
Ibid., 133.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Svetozar Marković, “Radničko pitanje u Srbiji—posvećeno Vladanu Đorđeviću,” Rad-
nik April 21 and 23, 1872. Polemic about the workers’ question with Vladan Đorđević Mita
Cenić started in March 1872.
59
“Ćifte—velikaši, bogataši, zelenaši, kaišari, fićfirići—sve ćifte” (Đoka Mijatović, accord-
ing to Milutinović, Đoka Mijatović, 68).
such a mass of people looking for jobs that “due to competition wages would fall to
50 novčića.”60
The next population class described in the analysis was artisans, which includ-
ed small industrial manufacturers. The number and type of jobs with which they
met the population needs gave testimony to the lower level of education of Serbian
society during that time. The analysis of the status of the artisans in the Serbian
community showed their backwardness, because these trades met only basic human
needs (shoemakers, furrier) or produced primitive tools (blacksmiths, cartwrights);
modern trades did not exist.
“In that regard we could be considered savages,” concludes the author of the
analysis, given that, analogously to the exchange of the undeveloped communities,
here, too, one’s own produce (most often raw materials) was being exchanged for
the products of modern trades and manufacturers, such as “mirrors, rings and other
luxurious things.”61 Crafts in the Serbian community of the Habsuburg Monar-
chy were on the rise till the advent of the railway, steamship, and mass production
throughout Europe. However, at that same time in the 1870s, the Serbian commu-
nity also saw old crafts disappearing, and those unable to sustain market competi-
tion went bankrupt, leading artisans to associate. According to one system, it was
the capital that was being united which destroyed a part of the local competition,
while the foreign competition would be resisted by the strengthened exploitation
of apprenticeship (kalfi), which was becoming a part of the exploited proleteriat.
That is why the author of the analysis, just like Svetozar Marković, was promoting
the association of work and capital according to the principle of complete equality
and absence of exploitation of others, where “some individuals would not get rich,
while the others would not become poor, but the collective as a whole would move
forward.”62
Merchants, the intermediary class that lives and thrives by exploiting people,
are “useful to the society but are not necessary.”63 Their influence in society is in
proportion to the wealth they posses, and the author of the analysis concludes that
they are “the future financial aristocracy,” whose contribution within the national
organism he sees as the “building up of fat,” or as a consequence of “certain illness”64
of society, where farmers and artisans are ruined while intermediaries flourish.
60
“Društveno-ekonomsko stanje,” 133.
61
62
Ibid., 134. Italics in the original text.
63
“Društveno-ekonomsko stanje kod austro-ugarskih Srba,” Radnik, March 29, 1872, 137.
Italics in the original text.
64
Ibid.
The taxation system of the monarchy of Hungary was also a part of the general
system on which the mentioned strata of Serbian society were based. Svetozar Mar-
ković65 says that this taxation system is such that it “completely skins the people.”66
Among the five types of the direct tax the people of Novi Sad were paying were:
1. Head tax—all men and women older than sixteen years of age.
2. Land tax, which was determined according to the quality of land. As the
land of Novi Sad was of good quality, the tax was five forints per strip of
land.
3. Tax on the house as a separate asset.
4. Tax on the house rent (sixteen forints per 100).
5. Income tax (ten forints per 100).
Direct tax was the percentage which was paid to the state for transactions of
private goods. A special tax was established for municipal goods and national funds
where there was no sale, although there were taxes that were paid for the land, house,
and house rent.
Direct taxes, which the state was receiving from Novi Sad, were 140,000 fo-
rints, while indirect ones (monopoly on salt and tobacco) an additional 160,000
forints per year. If that amount were divided among the city dwellers, at the time of
the analysis, it would turn out that each person had paid fifteen forints annually for
the direct tax. 67
In addition, Novi Sad had “to pay apartments for soldiers while they are stay-
ing with them”68 as a part of the court expenses, which were between 10,000 and
15,000 forints; 5,000 forints for the expenses of collecting tax, which is submitted
to the department of state administration; 160,000 in municipal expenses; and all
other expenses related to schools, roads, hospitals, and libraries. For what was the
tax of 300,000 used? It was used to pay the government, the emperor-king, the royal
court, ministers, and various high officials—or, as Marković writes, it was used to
pay gentlefolk and their jobs, “about which the people had no idea, and if it were ex-
plained to them what exactly these gentlefolk do, they would be flabbergasted.”69 It
was not surprising, as Marković says, that the generators of these statistics of Hun-
65
Svetozar Marković states that he received the information in an “evening walk … with a
friend of mine,” and it is quite possible that it was Ðoka Mijatović.
66
Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada III,” Radnik, March 3, 1872, 99.
67
Marković, “Beleške … III,” 100.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
gary revealed that their roads are “such as they used to be during Atila’s time”70 —
and that the Hungarians themselves admitted that the only university that existed
was “the worst”71 in all Europe, the secondary and primary schools were truly bad,
and that in “the most fertile state-Banat the number of the poor keeps growing and
that in the whole of Hungary stealing and crime are widespread as in Turkey.” In
other words, the situation was such that the state was not helping the national devel-
opment; rather, everything the people earned, the idle governing class ate. Marković
thought that there must come a time when all the people in Hungary will ask them-
selves why they are paying for their own slavery.
Culture and Education: Stupidity, Laziness, Ignorance, and a Few Virtues
Writing about the culture of the Serbian community, an unknown observer of the
circumstances in Novi Sad may conclude that “stupidity, idleness and other quali-
ties have become prevalent among the Serbs,” and that the cause of this is the fact
that “their teachers and priests must have been also stupid, because they were the
only ones who could inform the people.” The causes of this situation are found
in the old-fashioned education of teachers and priests who did not have modern
knowledge of natural sciences or economics, nor the awareness of the sociological
theories from that era. Hence, the author of the mentioned text concluded that
preparatory school (preparandije) and theological seminaries (bogoslovije) must be
reformed in order for the knowledge which teachers and priests spread to be useful
to the people. The priests are, in addition, accused of living “without any morals,”
hiding under their robes the “most repulsive egoism”; the monks are “models of bon
vivants, demoralisation, stupidity, disrespect”—so not only are they “not of any use
to the people but actually cause damage the most,” Serbian clergy has had, according
to the author, complete control of the national goods, and that is why it is “included
together with the worst enemies of the people.”72 That is why it is necessary to take
from their care monastery property and funds and use it for people’s ends—for the
building of workers’ universities, among other things.
Similar to the above-mentioned opinion, Vasa Pelagić saw the poor, evil, and
many human flaws as the consequence of the lack of education and low cultural
development of the Serbian people. That is why Pelagić, too, thought that the condi-
tion for us to be “happy, powerful in all respects and visible among other peoples“73
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
73
Arhimandrit Pelagić, “Opštinama svekolikog srpstva,” Mlada Srbadija, May 31, 1871,
177–83.
is that there be “properly educated”74 teachers and priests who respect the people
more than any other class, because they are “more important for them than minis-
ters75; the condition is also that they they be properly rewarded for their effort. Vasa
Pelagić was devoted to having “prisons transformed into workshops, schools and
institutes” so that prisoners, together with prison guards, could “remain healthy and
gain knowledge about sciences and trades”—so that “the people doesn’t regress for
even if they committed some crime they are still needed by the people.”76 Hence also
the recommendation that “a workshop” be founded “in all larger towns,” where “in-
valids, the blind and the deaf, the mute, the beggars and the homeless” could “knit,
weave, sew, embroider, spin, comb etc.”—where they could find “food and fun” and
not be a burden to others.77
It could be said that the first socialists saw the people’s progress through a re-
formed concept of education, where schools and universities would be opened in (up
to then) unexpected places. But that was not all. The reform of education needed to
affect also the existing educational institutions in the Serbian community, even if
these were the institutions with a long tradition. In “A Note from Novi Sad IV,” Sve-
tozar Marković analyzes the content of the educational program in the context of
the people’s needs at the end of the 19th century. The occasion was the annual report
of the Serbian Orthodox Grammar School in Novi Sad, one of the most important
Serbian educational institutions in the Habsburg Monarchy. The already-known
Marković’ opinion about the manner and conditions of the education of young
people78 is here given in a condensed form: religious education is outdated and has
become “petrified,”79 which, together with natural sciences (still scarcely taught),
means that opposing theories are taught at the same time. The program of the gram-
mar school was such that when young men graduate, they cannot be employed in
any job to support themselves—and that is not an unknown fact; it was also clear
to parents and to the people who supported schools—but changes were not possible
because the state controlled the content and conditions of education. The education
policy, as seen by Marković when analyzing the situation in the Novi Sad grammar
school, is representative of the situation of the Serbian community in the monarchy
74
Ibid.
75
Pelagić, “Opštinama,” 181.
76
Ibid.
77
Ibid., 180.
78
As Svetozar Marković wrote in 1868 in the essay about his own education, “Ispovest jed-
nog praviteljstvenog pitomca.” See “Kako su nas vaspitavali,” in Svetozar Marković, Odab-
rani spisi: Srpska književnost u sto knjiga, book 32 (Novi Sad: Srpska književna zadruga,
1961), 34–62.
79
Svetozar Marković, “Beleška iz Novog Sada IV,” Radnik, March 19, 1872, 127.
of Hungary, a state which “guards against any kind of school reform, which could
convince people that what has lasted 1000 and more years is not the best.”
Did the educated class of the Serbian people in the Hungarian monarchy con-
tribute to the progress and cultural development of the people? That was the next
step of the analysis from the socialist angle. The author of the text “Social-Econom-
ic Conditions of the Austro-Hungarian Serbs,”80 among “scientists,” apart from
“teachers-priests,” included doctors, claiming that they are obligated not only to
cure, but also to enlighten the people by explaining scientific theories and natural
phenomena, which would constitute an effective struggle against prejudices, super-
stitions, etc. The author of the mentioned text saw doctors in the Serbian commu-
nity of that time as apprentices, those who mechanically carry out their job; if there
is any social engagement outside their profession, it usually involves literary work:
writing poetry, novels, and dramas, which, according to the author, was not the ex-
pected suitable contribution toward the betterment of the people.
The last category among “scientists,” according to the author and analyst of the
social-economic conditions, included “writers-solicitors,” “twins of the 19th centu-
ry,” the category which controlled the social and public political life. Solicitors were
not mere lawyers, but leaders of the political life who decided people’s fate, and that
is why the author starts the analysis of their establishment by analyzing the legal
science of that era. He finds that legal education produces knowledge, which sees
paragraphs and codexes as irreplaceable and the only social truths, which most of-
ten hinders serious critical thought about the social progress. Laws and paragraphs,
which are taken as indisputable truth, were creating a dangerous delusion that only
they make possible the building of a society. Here, too, as in previous cases, the
author of the analysis of the conditions of 19th-century Austro-Hungarian Serbs
thinks that solicitors lack broad education, especially in natural and social sciences,
which would ameliorate the one-sided view of man in the legal system—the view
that he “is as a commodity and has to prostrate himself before another human be-
ing; a solider who has to dye for another and a debtor who has to give the hard-
earned money to another who gives him orders and sends him to the battlefield.”81
In addition, the author accuses solicitors of not knowing how to think, and that,
based on all these reasons, their bad influence on the people’s life can be described
with the adage, “We speak more than we work and the cause is simply the fact that
those who keep rhythm do not have scientifically positive foundation for work.”82
The people’s cultural life cannot be imagined without a developed theater cul-
ture. Founded in 1861, the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad was the first Ser-
80
81
Ibid.
82
Ibid.
bian theater. But can theater be “a place for pleasure,” as Svetozar Marković saw
it then, or is it an institution obliged to be a means for the education of people, “a
national tribune”83 from which “a critique of life”84 will be heard, a platform for
new ideas of artistic expression and political solutions? It is a question still valid
today. Marković states that then it was easy (and most acceptable) to represent the
substance of life in the form of liquefied, simple ingredients, which are generalities
within the dichotomy of good and evil. For example, representations of the idyllic
moral were well received:
A girl has to be humble, gentle, to like flowers, to sing in the morning …

then she will easily find a bridegroom … it is not recommended to marry
because of money or vocation, one has to marry out of love, and the reward
will come afterward to the married couple, an inheritance from some uncle
in America…85
In addition, the people knew that everything that is shown on the stage is only pos-
sible to happen on the stage. The repertoire of the Serbian theater at that time was
almost entirely European because it was mostly foreign plays that were showing, and
among that mass of plays there was “ordinary farce,” where “people thoughtlessly
laugh, as one laughs when tickled or as if it were watching a local scandal which
gathers all children around.”86
Plays of local authors were also showing. For example, there were plays in Serbi-
an which amazed the audience, to put it mildly; there were jeers and even protests.
An example could be events concerning students87 of Serbian Orthodox Grammar
School of Novi Sad and Jovan Subotić—who was then, apart from many other im-
portant social roles, “the president of the grammar school’s patronage.”88 It so hap-
pened that the students protested in the theater because they requested, as “genuine
83
Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada V,” Radnik, April 7, 1872, 155.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
87
In his text “Svetozar Marković and Socialists in Novi Sad,” he writes that the influence
of Svetozar Marković on grammar school students was huge—that it was a matter of “so-
cialism infection,” which had openly manifested itself with the “theatre scandal” when
Dobrislav Ružić (fifth grade student) was expelled, and Bogoljub Stanišić (eighth grade
student) was severely punished. Svetozar Marković lived with the family of the punished
student. Several years later, five sixth grade students took off toward Herzegovina to join
Herzegovina’s rebels. The police caught up with them in Zadar, and forced them to return
to Novi Sad (Stajić, “Svetozar Marković,” 109–11).
88
Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada VII,” Radnik, April 23, 1872, 180.
populists,” that a kolo be performed, and not some foreign music that was on the
program. 89 The audience in the theater was divided; there ensued noise and whis-
tling, and everything calmed down when the police arrived. Jovan Subotić’s news-
paper Narod (People) demanded that the students be punished, which represented
for professors an order because it came from the head of the school’s patronage.
In addition, it was not without importance that these students, shortly before the
event, “had demonstrated against Dr Jovan Subotić” in the same theater during the
performance of his play “Cross and Crown,” because Saint Sava “was making ice on
the stage, while the students ridiculed that stupidity at the end shouting ‘More ice!
Ice!’”90 The professors punished the rebels with prison and the leaders with dismiss-
al from school. Surprised by the professor’s superficiality, which he termed “child-
ishness,” Svetozar Marković noted at the same time the difference between Novi
Sad and other areas in Serbia, including Belgrade:
Had this happened in Belgrade or anywhere else in Serbia each “respect-

able” man would have thought that out of “higher” and “political” reasons
the demonstrators need to be found and rooted out as enemies of public
order, but in Novi Sad where such “higher” and “political” Serbian causes
are simply called violence91 such act cannot be explained with neither higher
nor lower political and nonpolitical cause, but is simply an act of professor’s
childishness.92
The criticism of the non-pedagogic methods of the professors of the grammar

school offers, in addition, other interesting facts about the circumstances in Novi
Sad. Such is Marković’s claim that nowhere among Serbs are there so many demon-
strations as in Novi Sad where different groups of people are organized against, or
for, certain aims—so it is not surprising that young people who had the opportunity
to live in such conditions protest “often without any aim but only for the sake of
a varied life.”93 It is also useful to note that Marković observes that the leaders of
similar meaningless and childish protests were “members of the collegium of pro-
fessors.”94
89
Marković, “Beleške … VII,” 180.
90
Ibid.
91
The word is emphasized in the original text.
92
Marković, “Beleške … VII,” 180.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
We learn from Svetozar Marković that, until his arrival to Novi Sad, the yarns,
evening gatherings, public lectures, and patriotic speeches had vanished from the
public sphere.95 Lectures had vanished because no one took care to determine their
order according to subjects and lecturers, so in the end, there was no one who would
have had liked to say something to the people. Speeches and patriotic entertainment
remained without introductory, patriotic, or general-educational parts—so, along
with evening gatherings, they turned into dancing parties, the aim of which was the
following:
People gather, talk, eat, drink, pay for music, lighting and wages to the inn
keeper, but also to the shoemaker, the glovemaker etc in one word they
spend several hundred forints so that some institution gets as many notes of
ten florints and how many notes of hundred florints were waisted (desetica,
koliko je stotina bačeno).96
Social and Political Life, and Popular (Narodni) Jobs
The social and political life of Serbs in Novi Sad at the beginning of 1872 was like
concentric circles, which were an illustration of hypocrisy in relation to political
views, but also in relation to other nationalities97:
Here Jews lead their separate life, Germans lead theirs, and Serbs theirs. It is
worthwhile knowing that they are all separate nationalities, separate parties.
With Serbs, we know where “the popular party” is, and where “Turks” [and]
95
Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada VI,” Radnik, April 12, 1872, 161.
96
Ibid.
97
As a part of pre-election activities, an unsigned article, “Novi Sad,” was published in
Novi Sad’s Flag, whose third part bore the title of “Novi Sad and its Enemies,” where the
author names three “types of enemy”: Hungarian government, “some Germans,” and “some
Serbian renegades in and outside of Novi Sad of Novi Sad”: “Some Germans in Novi Sad,
some we say because not all of them are. Germans are especial enemies of Serbs, this is so in
Vršac, Bela Crkva etc. Among these the fiercest enemies of Serbs are those with ‘a bag’ or the
so-called ‘pintla’ from Reich, who came to Novi Sad. Serbian ancestors spilled a lot of blood
deffending [sic] these lands and dropped an enourmous [sic] amount of sweat to cultivate
these lands gone wild after the Turkish devastation. In spite all of the fact that the ‘pinta’s’
profitted [sic] the most from the Serb labours, they became the swarn archenemies of the
Serbs (dindušmanin). They would like to have authority in Novi Sad like in 1848 despite
the lack of intelligence needed for magistrate. ‘Peace’ is on their lips, but they understand
peace just like the one their school built at public expense: concorida civium posuit that is
where peace only benefits them” (“Novi Sad i njegovi protivnici,” Zastava Novi Sad, April
13, 1869).
“Turkos” are,98 and what is the position of the clergy (kerikalci).99 People
from different parties would not talk with each other, not even want to see
each other people. This is for a genuine Šumadinac a really unusual phenom-
enon. This peculiarity becomes even more peculiar when Šumadinac comes
to Novi Sad, the centre of Serbian education in the Austro-Hungary. It is
here that the national party is especially separated from the opposition! Not
only in a tavern but “everywhere” at the theatre, at the ball, in “working”
and “trade” societies, at Matica and all different committees, in magistrates
and private life; everywhere you know the supporter of national party and
its enemy…100
Svetozar Marković saw “Turkish people” as a venture of “2–3 completely or-

dinary rogues who would not be able to live if there were no one to pay their street
railing.”101 His observation about Jovan Subotić and his moderate party, which had
only Subotić as a member, is also interesting. He does not have nice things to say
about Jovan Subotić: “He is known among people as a skilled man who can be used
in many situations but no one pays any attention to his patriotism.”102
That there was an antagonism between Serbs and Germans is evidenced by
the pamphlet of the “German action committee”103 from Srem in which, among
98
“Turkosi,” or “Turkish sympathizer”—enemies of the Serbian National Freethinkers’
Party. “Serbs were insecure in term of their ethnicity and were not visible as a Serbian party
but as hanger-ons to Germans and Hungarians. Their organ Serbian people would not exist
had it not been supported from the outside … At every election everybody is on the side of
Serbs. The one who votes for a foreigner is a traitor and ‘Turkos,’ are subjected to general
disdain” (Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada I,” Radnik, February 18, 1872, 79).
Among the leading “Turkos” were Đorđe Popović-Daničar, Jovan Grujić, and Aca Popo-
vić-Zub (Stajić and Leskovac, Političke, xxv). The author of the article “Novi Sad and its
Enemies” described them as a “clique”—which is prepared to serve Germans, Hungarians,
and Turks against its own people in return for “good money”—and then accused them of
manipulating people with slanders and lies that Serbs will “be ruined if they do not place
themselves at the mercy of Germans” (“Novi Sad i njegovi protivnici,” April 13, 1869).
99
Klerikalci were the top of church hierarchy: monks and a small number of the Serbian
bourgeoisie (Miloš Jovanović, ed., Izabrani spisi Branka Mihajlovića [Novi Sad: Istorijski
arhiv Pokrajinskog komiteta SKS za Vojvodinu, 1956], 127).
100
Marković, “Beleške … I,” 79.
101
Svetozar Marković, “Beleške iz Novog Sada II,” Radnik, February 20, 1872, 84.
102
Ibid.
103
The pamphlet in question is “Unity makes us stronger” (Jedinstvo nas jača), which was
published as a whole in the book Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina (Josip Mirnić, Vasa Pelagić i Vo-
jvodina: Edicija Prvi socijalisti u Vojvodini, book 2 [Novi Sad: Istorijski arhiv Pokrajinskog
komiteta SKS za Vojvodinu, 1959], 226–32.
other things, the political influence of Vasa Pelagić is mentioned.104 The pamphlet
accuses the Serbian “so-called” “uneducated” intelligentsia of spoiling people, who
were before “good-natured and loyal” and “taught by the Germans how to plow the
earth.”105 The pamphlet further says that a terrain is being prepared for Vasa Pelagić,
who “plans to gain German land, which they had acquired with their hard work and
thriftiness. Pelagić goads uneducated farmers against the wealthy class of interme-
diaries and tries to win over some German workers too…”106 One of the arguments
against Pelagić’s agitation in Srem is also the fact that his “anarchic, atheist and
socialist” texts are printed in Belgrade.107 It is obvious that, according to the con-
tent of the pamphlet, danger lay in the Serbian intelligentsia (no matter how weak
it was), Vasa Pelagić—whose doctrine could find support among the poor German
workers—and Belgrade, out of which dangerous influences were arriving.
In his novella Soka (1869), Ljuben Karavelov describes the social context of
Novi Sad from the perspective of an impoverished grocer, Kata, whose only daugh-
ter, Soka, is cheated by a solider (a Hungarian), speaking not only against marriage
to a German or a Hungarian but also against socializing with them. “Each roost-
er has to sing on its own midden,” says Kata, who “was having a hard life with a
German husband because they did not live according to the same rites.”108 At the
end, through the words of Kata, Karavelov gives the following message as a moral:
“Cursed be each Serbian woman who falls in love with a foreign soldier … who so-
cializes with Hungarians and Germans.”109
Although the majority of people in Vojvodina supported the political pro-
gram of Svetozar Miletić, that did not mean monolithism in all questions of so-
cial progress. Analyzing strengths and weaknesses of the national party,110 the
then-leading political power among the Austro-Hungarian Serbs, Svetozar Mar-
ković noticed that its massiveness and monolithism rests on the fight for national
rights “against Germanisation, Hungarisation, against imposing a foreign language,
foreign government and foreign culture.”111 That political platform of massiveness
and unity is, at the same time, a weakness of the national party, because “people
104
Milutinović, “Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina,” 247.
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
108
Ljuben Karavelov, “Soka,” in Srpski Omladinski Kalendar za prostu 1869 (Novi Sad:
Platonova štamparija, 1869), 104–13.
109
Ibid., 113.
110
Serbian National Freethinkers’ Party, whose leader at that time was Svetozar Marković.
111
Marković, “Beleške … I,” 79.
with different beliefs regarding the social and political system, schools and religion,
agree … that Serbian nationality needs to be defended,”112 but do not agree upon
decisions about internal questions, where the defense of national interest is not a
priority. As Marković notes, the political power of the national party is completely
questionable because, on the one hand, massiveness and unity exist as long as “the
fight against Hungarians” is ongoing,113 while on the other hand, such different
classes of society (writers and clerks, peasants, merchants, priests, craftsmen) cannot
have the same private and class interests, so political platforms cannot be built re-
garding other questions, which would be also accepted en masse.
The proof of this thesis was the confrontation in the Serbian community re-
garding the control of national-church estates and funds in the 1870s. The confron-
tation was happening in the circumstances when the Hungarian government lim-
ited the rights of municipalities, and instead of the elected magistrates, it inducted
those who were politically suitable. At that moment, the fight between clergy and
representatives of Miletić’s populists flared up. The people of Novi Sad, disapprov-
ing of the unlimited control of the national funds and monastery estates by the
church leaders, protested as bishop Anđelić was making his exit out of the Almaška
church.114
On that occasion, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj wrote the poem “For Bon Voyage,”115
which was published in Zmaj’s newspaper, Žiža. The poem was printed “in several
hundred samples, and it was with such flowers that they strew the path of the elect-
ed bishop.”116 In an attempt to enforce with a bludgeon the respect for religion, es-
pecially “its servants,” the Hungarian government arrested three Novi Sad citizens
accused of being leaders of demonstrations which the government characterized as
112
Ibid., 79–80.
113
Ibid., 80.
114
Marković, “Beleške … II,” 83.
115
German Anđelić in the role of the administrator of the Diocese of Bačka, who was in-
vited to the meeting of Serbs—the followers of the Hungarian government. The goal was to
fight against Svetozar Miletić, who was supported by almost the entire Serbian population.
For that occasion, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj wrote the poem “For the Lucky Journey” ( Za sreć-
na puta). The following are the original verses with a free translation: “Pre neg pođeš međ
Mađare, / Skini svete adiđare: / Kamilavku s RUSE glave, / I odelo svetog Save, / Raspetije
skini s grudi. / Međ Mađar’ma ima ljudi / Koji samo tuđe gaze, / Al’ svoj obraz brižno paze,
/ Rado jašu tuđe kljuse / Al’ izdajstva gnušaju se…” (Before you join the Hungarians, / Take
off the holy reliquaries: / Kalimavkion from your head, / And St. Sava’s vestments, / Take
of the cross from your chest. / There are men among the Hungarians. / Who only step on
what is not theirs. / But they guard their honor carefully. / Gladly riding someone else’s nag
/ But they despise the treachery) (Stajić and Leskovac, Političke, xxxi).
116
“sacrilege of religion.”117 People who were arrested were Zmaj’s brother, Kornel Jo-
vanović, Đura Vuković, and Luka Hajdin, at whose house Vasa Pelagić was living
at the time.118
The reason for the dispute was the control of three million forints from the
national funds and 250,000 forints of income from monastery estates. The nation-
al party won at the beginning of the dispute thanks to the unified position of all
church municipalities. Such a decision was made by people through a committee
elected by the Serbian National Church Assembly. At the same time, the assembly
“tidied incomes” of priests, monks, and “snatched from the bishop’s hands some-
time feudal lords control of priesthood and church estates, and left them regular
salaries—“a real tiny sum of 12,00 for the bishops and for the metropolitans 24,00
for!!!”119 But Anđelić, having found some old law that the decisions of the assembly
were not valid if a metropolitan is not present, overruled the decisions of the assem-
bly and requested first the election of a metropolitan—“so they found a new ruse to
make Anđelić a metropolitan in name only.”120
Apart from the mentioned tribulations inside the Serbian community in Vo-
jvodina, Novi Sad was sporadically being shaken by yet another: the excommuni-
cation of the socialists-refugees temporarily based in Novi Sad. Ljuben Karavelov,
who came to Novi Sad in March 1868, was arrested in June of that year for his
connection to the investigation of the assassination of Prince Mihailo, to which he
did not have any “material connection”121 whatsoever. He spent about half a year in
Pesta’s prison. His release (as well as the release of Vladimir Jovanović) from prison
in Pesta at the beginning of January 1869 and his subsequent arrival in Novi Sad
the Serbian people enthusiastically welcomed, which was documented in Novi Sad’s
Flag. He left Novi Sad in the middle of 1869 after constant pressure from the Hun-
garian government and local political opponents.
Mita Cenić and Sreten Anđelković had resided for a very short time in Novi
Sad before they were evicted in summer 1872. It is interesting that Cenić had previ-
ously resided in Zemun, which he was forced to leave despite the fact that socialist
and anarchic writings were not found on his person.122 Svetozar Marković came to
117
Ibid.
118
Mirnić, Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina, 273.
119
120
Ibid.
121
Kovačević, “Ljuben Karavelov i Svetozar Marković,” 204.
122
Josip Mirnić, Kalman Čehak, and Danilo Kecić, Građa za istoriju radničkog i socijalis-
tičkog pokreta u Vojvodini 1868-1890 (Sremski Karlovci: Istorijski arhiv Autonomne pokra-
jine Vojvodine, 1968), 82.
Novi Sad at the beginning of 1872 and was evicted in March 1873.123 He lived at 21
Zlatna greda Street. Vasa Stajić described what the pressure from the government
looked like, for as little an offense as not taking off his hat when expected, and ev-
erything could have finished with Marković’s eviction. It was city captain Radislav
Manojlovicć who reported Svetozar Marković to the district offices because he did
not take off his hat when the Bogojavljenska procession was passing.124 At the hear-
ing in January 1873, other things were also investigated: What was Marković doing
in Novi Sad? If he was engaged in literary writing, why is it that on his travel docu-
ment, it was written that he was a merchant? When did he intend to return to the
homeland? When Svetozar Marković was evicted in March 1873, Svetozar Miletić
on that occasion interpellated,125 but was not offered an answer.
Vasa Pelagić lived in Novi Sad in the first half of 1872. He was evicted in June,
but did not go far, having found a refuge in Sremski Karlovci and Kamenica. The
Hungarian authorities arrested him in November 1872, and were planning to carry
out the order issued by the king’s commissary, László Majtényi, to have him deliv-
ered to the Turks, which was equivalent to a death sentence.126 Svetozar Miletić
sent an interpellation in December 1872 to the minister for internal affairs of the
Hungarian monarchy, asking that Pelagić’s extradition be stopped and that he be
sent to Crna Gora, where he was a citizen, according to the passport. In the end, that
is what happened.127 It must be mentioned that Daniel Irani, a member of the Hun-
garian Assembly, also reacted against the unlawful action in Pelagić’s case by an
interpellation to the president of the government.128 In his interpellation—on the
same occasion the assembly representative Aleksandar Trifunac named the king’s
commissary of Novi Sad, Majtényi, as the culprit for the unlawful act—he men-
tioned the arrest of Vasa Pelagić and the intention to hand him over to the Turks,
the consequence of which would be a death sentence.129 County Vas also distanced
itself from Novi Sad’s governing block with Majtényi at its head. The representatives
of Novi Sad’s magistrate asked this county “to support the Novi Sad petition with
his petition regarding the eviction of Vasa Pelagić.”130 In the end, the Hungarian
monarchy acted according to the regulation on the right to the asylum. It must be
123
Stajić, “Svetozar Marković,” 107.
124
Ibid., 106.
125
Ibid., 107.
126
Mirnić, Vasa Pelagić i Vojvodina, 26, 261.
127
Ibid., 30–31.
128
Ibid., 65.
129
Ibid., 72.
130
Ibid., 74.
said that in the Pelagić case, both Serbain and Hungarian members reacted in favor
of the right to the protection of political refugees.
Emancipation of Women: “Instead of Holding the Finger that was Offered to

Them, They Wish to Get Hold of the Whole Hand…”
In Europe, the models of women’s emancipation were discussed beginning in the

middle of the 19th century, first sporadically, then more often. Starting in the 1860s
with the opening of the first universities for women and their gaining new qualifi-
cations for new jobs, widely spread prejudices about the lower intellectual abilities
of women were shaken.131 It was more and more clear that the situation of women
had to change, but the dominant discourse about it (which was, of course, created by
men) understood the direction and the reach of changes differently. Serbian women
magazines in Austro-Hungary reflected132 the drama of these changes.
From the 1870s, the Serbian community in Vojvodina tried to create its own
answer in relation to the then-controversial subject. It was clear that the current
economic development of society—which consisted of families in which the hus-
band earned a living while the wife found fulfillment exclusively within marriage—
was unsustainable. As an answer to the challenges which were brought on by the
changes in social relations, discussion began in Europe about the desired emancipa-
tion of women. On the one hand, it was a necessity—a consequence of the general
emancipation of western European society and the development of production re-
lations; on the other, there was a need of the governing block133 to direct and limit
the direction and reach of the emancipation. In Letopis Matice srpska, at the end of
the sixties and beginning of the seventies, there were texts which considered some
aspects of the emancipation of women.134 The question was also asked in the United
Serbian Youth, whose members were also women who “both because of their ability
131
Prejudices toward the abilities of educated women remained even after they were qual-
ified with foreign certificates for medical and pedagogical professions. For more on this,
see Gordana Stojaković, “Pioneer Serbian Women Physicians and Their Activist Role in
Women’s Rights,” Serbian Studies 24, no. 1–2 (2010): 109–25; Ljubinka Trgovčević, “The
Professional Emancipation of Women in 19th Century Serbia,” Serbian Studies 25, no. 1
(2011): 7–21.
132
See Gordana Stojaković, “Women’s World (1886–1914): Serbian Women’s Laboratory
as an Entrance into the Public Sphere,” Serbian Studies 25, no. 1 (2011): 21–58.
133
Men who were the intellectual, political, and religious elite of the society.
134
Gordana Stojaković, “Na Konkursu Matice srpske ‘Kakva valja da je Srpkinja u kući
i društvu’—nagradu dobio muškarac,” in Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji: Diskursi i prakse,
volume 2, ed. Marina Blagojević (Belgrade: AŽIN, 2005), 122–23.
and natural situation should help Serbian youth achieve its goals.”135 The prevailing
opinion was, therefore, that Serbian women could be active in public life, but only
in the context of their “natural situation”—which, according to the definition of
patriarchal society, was less worthy compared to men.
At the end of the 19th century, the representatives of the reigning block (con-
servatives, liberals, socialists) also participated in the discussion about the women’s
emancipation. Contribution to the subject was also made by women: for example,
Draga Dejanović, through a theoretical approach to the problem; Draga Gavrilović,
through an analysis of certain problems in society; Milica and Anka Ninković,
through political activism; and all of them through the testimony of their own cho-
sen life path.
Dominant discourse was formed according to the opinions about the eman-
cipation, which were promoted in the public sphere at the end of the 19th century
by the representatives of the intellectual elite, such as Mita Petrović, Antonije-Tona
Hadžić, Ðorđe Natošević, and Arkadije Varadjanin. A little book by Mita Petro-
vić, Girl’s World (1871), and the controversial136 work The Serbian Woman’s Home
Among People and in the World (1883)137 by Antonije Hadžić are evidence of failed
attempts at redefining women’s situation. According to Antonije Hadžić—whose
already-mentioned work won at the Matica Srpska competition “How should the
Serbian Woman Be Like at Home and in Society”—the Serbian woman must “work
on developing its own nation as a woman, mother and housewife.”138 Women are
also seen exclusively as “the foundation upon which Serbian home is built,”139 and
outside that sphere, it is humanitarian and cultural work that suits them. Đorđe
Natošević, an honest propagator of higher education for women, partly stands out
of that matrix because he noticed a phenomenon—admittedly in Germany, where
women were a lot more university-educated and working—that these women were
often not married. Why did the unmarried status merit a special consideration?
Why was there fear that with their overcoming suppression and leaving home, wom-
en would be able to decide on their own about motherhood?
Considering the phenomenon of spinsterhood of educated women above all
in Germany, Natošević understood women’s dedication to work as a consequence
135
“Iz odluka na omladinskim skupštinama,” Mlada Srbadija, January 8, 1872, 2.
136
It is controversial because Antonije Hažić was accused of “compiling” and leaving out
of the literature on which he relied. See Stojaković, “Na Konkursu Matice srpske,” 127, 129.
137
The text came into existence as a result of a series of public lectures, which A. Hadžić
had earlier read.
138
Stojaković, “Na Konkursu Matice srpske,” 130–31.
139
Ibid., 131.
of neglecting housekeeping duties, so educated men preferred to marry “maids”140

rather than women who were their equals in education. According to Natošević,
what remained for educated women (which was then a privilege of girls from
wealthy families) instead of marriage, motherhood, and wifely care for the husband,
was support for their brothers and fathers.
The theses of Antonije Hadžić, Mita Petrović, and other respected members
of the Serbian cultural circle in Vojvodina were not contributions to the search for
the wanted emancipation of women because the views that the woman’s place is
at home—but she could be allowed a better education, if her family could afford
it—already existed in the Serbian community at that time. These beliefs were extant
until the beginning of the WWI. Writing in praise of teacher Zorka Hovorka in
1913, the respected teacher and publicist Arkadije Varađanin pointed out the fact
that Hovorka, a model for young girls, “does not have one bit of that emancipation
which our men and smart women do not like.”141
Women’s Liberation: Do You Know My Sisters… ?
For Draga Dejanović, the emancipation of women is a process which must begin
with education, first in the family, then quality general education so that female
children would be able to do various jobs, acquire financial independence—or at
least some income—and, in that way, free themselves from their fathers’ and hus-
bands’ suppression. This aim was not limited to rich middle-class families, but was
a general plan of educating female children. Dejanović considered that “it was not
husbands who imprisoned us”142 but incorrect upbringing, a consequence of patri-
archal models of behavior beginning in the basic family.143 Draga Dejanović was
devoted to the concept of emancipation, which was current at that time in Europe,
and whose founding principles were:
That woman sees and admits that God endowed her with the same virtues
with which he endowed men. That is why woman should be brought up for
intellectual and bodily work just like man. She has to be prepared for every
140
Gordana Stojaković, “Draga Gavrilović: Prilog za istoriju stvaranja novih rodnih uloga
u srpskom društvu 19. veka,” in Valorizacija razlika—Zbornik sa naučnog skupa o Dragi
Gavrilović (1854–1917), ed. Svetlana Tomić (Belgrade: Altera i Fondacija multinacionalni
fond kulture, 2013), 61.
141
Gordana Stojaković, Znamenite žene Novog Sada, volume 1 (Novi Sad: Futura publik-
acije, 2001), 128.
142
Draga Dejanović, “Emancipacija Srpkinja—javno predavanje,” Matica, January 30,
1870, 56.
143
Ibid.
contingency in life, to fight every difficulty, but at the same time let no wom-
an forget her holy duty, that she is responsible to the people to bear children,
who will inherit the same virtues from her…144
Woman first has to empower herself with knowledge that she has the same
worth as man, and then needs to be brought up and educated according to
the same principle as men are in order to become an educator of her own
children according to the new virtues, and not according to the old-fash-
ioned norms which predict for female children marriage as the only mode
of existence. Mother, on the other hand, who prepares her daughters only
for a marriage because she thinks that “anything else does not suit them”
deserves that the world sees her as the nurse of slaves, deserves that the world
disparages and scorns her, that she experiences shame in her old age.145
In Vojvodina’s Serbian community at the end of the 19th century, there were
too many examples of poor families whose fathers had died or, because of an illness,
were not able to earn a living, while “widows and female orphans,” uneducated and
unprepared for any kind of job, would become “beggars,”146 asking for help from
the funds that were formed for that purpose. There were also too many examples
of ruined families, with several female children expected to have a dowry, clothes,
and everything that goes with it, if they were to be married at all. Marriage as the
only existential aim consequentially had the establishment of a model of “a mon-
key-adorned doll”147—artificiality and idleness of prospective brides and, at the end,
always lamentation and ruin for these women unprepared for life. It was harder and
harder to sustain a family in which “a woman did not think, work and consciously
fight against all troubles in life.”148 There were fewer and fewer prospective grooms
as more and more men avoided marriage, unless it was a matter of a large dowry,
which would come with the bride. This was especially relevant for the commercial,
administrative, and artisan class, while peasant women worked just as tirelessly and
skillfully at the same job as men. That is why dowries were less sought after in a vil-
lage compared to the stamina and health of the girl, who had to do everything that
men did and more: work as a housewife and mother. Still, the existence of a peasant
woman, based on the hard life in the fields, was more certain than that of those
144
Ibid., 58.
145
Ibid., 58–59.
146
Ibid., 61.
147
Ibid., 59.
148
Ibid.
women who had “the worst possible future” waiting for them in the middle class
until they emancipate themselves “job-wise.”149
Draga Dejanović believed that, for men and women both, the following say-
ings relate: “every man builds his own happiness” (svaki čovek svoje sreće kovač)150
and “only work saves man” (samo rad čoveka spasava).151 This would happen only if
women “have enough confidence, intelligence and patience to submit themselves
to work and science” and “secure a life”: have a trade, or any other public job.152 In
that vein, Dejanović believed that Serbian women needed to overcome terrible prej-
udices—that a woman should not go outside the house, and “what will the people
say?”153 Giving positive examples of female work activity in America, England, and
Germany, she suggested that Serbian women, apart from pedagogic and medical
sciences, could have the following trades: tailoring, shoemaking, watchmaking,
baking, weaving, cooking, glazing, etc.
Draga Dejanović suggested “working” emancipation, or a road to financial in-
dependence of women, which is a known foundation of the socialist platform of
women’s emancipation. From this perspective such a plan is self-understood, but
from the perspective of Serbian society in the second half of the 19th century, it
was tantamount to sacrilege. In his story “God Has Decreed,”154 Ljuben Karavelov
writes about how work outside of the family—or any public activity—is unworthy
of women. Upon hearing a suggestion that his daughter, Milka, leave her stepmoth-
er, who beat her every day, and find a job, Karavelov, who did not live with the fam-
ily because of his military job, says:
My daughter, a cook… a Serbian cook and chambermaid! I would rather

see her dead, than allow her to be a cook. You do not speak rightly young
man… God has decreed, not I, sorry.155 Many did not agree with women’s
engagement in the United Serbian Youth. In the mentioned story, Ljuben
Karavelov speaks about this, too, through a dialogue between two Belgrade
women:
149
Ibid., 61.
150
Draga Dejanović, “Emancipacija Srpkinja—Javno predavanje,” Matica, February 10,
1870, 84.
151
Ibid., 85.
152
Ibid., 84.
153
Draga Dejanović, “Emancipacija Srpkinja—Javno predavanje,” Matica, February 20,
1870, 108, 109.
154
Ljuben Karavelov, “Nakazao je Bog,” Mlada Srbadija, April 15, 1870, 28–36.
155
Ibid., 36.
Just imagine, the women in Novi Sad who are supposed to stay in the
kitchen and pamper their husbands—created their own assembly in order
to read there and make fun of the old fashion. Is that for women? They
should all be beaten, you know. They are out of their minds!156
Still, the cutting of the women’s revolt successfully grew because, as Dejanović
affirmed, there already were educated women “whose reason was developed by sci-
ence and whose spiritual circle has been expanded by knowledge,” who could not fit
any more inside the social model tailored for their grandmothers and great-grand-
mothers.157 She believed that apart from the personal fight for a new beginning, that
first echelon of women on the road to emancipation had another task: to prove by
their own example the new position of women, but also not to forget “their sisters
who did not have the strength nor chance to improve together.”158
Writing the platform for the emancipation of Serbian women, Dejanović had
several sources. One of them was the text “Liberation (emancipation) of Women
(according to Culler),” published in Serbian Youth Calender for 1870, which was
translated from French by Jelena Jovanović. Dejanović follows the order of argu-
ments given in the mentioned text, starting with ideas about the wrongly assumed
natural subordination of women, which had been, throughout history, weaved into
social relations, laws, and education; then, the claim that women are brought up to
be slaves; and, lastly, in relation to their qualification for many jobs, she emphasiz-
es that women do not have to renounce motherhood. She follows the structure of
Culler’s text when she distinguishes between the common people and women, who
perpetually work, even immediately after giving birth. Draga Dejanović, therefore,
did not attack marriage and motherhood; rather, she sought redefinition of gender
roles in a society of an expected matrix—because everywhere in the surrounding
areas, the representatives of women’s emancipation sought the right to education
and public activity, first in humanitarian organizations.159 By this, she offered a
hard-to-realize plan for the financially independent woman who, according to De-
janović’s conception, still had to be steeped in patriarchal and national priorities
—above all, to give birth to new, numerous, Serbian offspring.
Still, the depth and breadth of her emancipatory requirements were very brave
attempts which were not benevolently looked upon. Draga Dejanović was a teacher,
actress, and writer. She testified with her own choices about the new woman. She
had the strength to leave her husband, to become a respected actress in the Serbian
156
Ibid., 29.
157
Dejanović, “Emancipacija Srpkinja,” 58.
158
Ibid.
159
Gizela Bok, Žena u istoriji Evrope (Belgrade: Clio, 2005), 198.
National Theatre in Novi Sad, to participate in public and political life, and, in the
end, to return to her husband. She died in childbirth at only thirty-one years of age.
Together with Draga Dejanović, it is important to mention another female voice
which was, until recently, completely suppressed and forgotten. Thanks to Svetlana
Tomić, today we are able to reconstruct the life and work of Draga Gavrilović.160
Studying her texts, especially the analysis of the phenomenon which she would of-
ten encounter at school—the fact that exemplary and smart children did not respect
parents to the degree that the parents expected it from them—I have come across
very important facts about the understanding of marriage and parenthood, about
which Draga Gavrilović wrote.161 Above all, her analysis of the everyday Serbian
middle-class family is very important; she described it truthfully, without pathetic
and patriotic feelings. The husband works and earns a living while the wife gives
birth and looks after the children and the house. Gavrilović describes woman’s work
in the house as an enormous and never-ending job which no one appreciates, not
even the husband, who, displeased, scolds the woman, calling her a slovenly, lazy, ig-
norant person. True, the wife answers back. This is repeated in turn by children who
witness the parents fighting, and so grow up thinking that their mother is useless
and their father abusive—that is, that parents are not behaving as they are supposed
160
For a new reading of the work by Draga Gavrilović, the most credit goes to Vladimir
Milankov and Svetlana Tomić. Svetlana Tomić’s research has contributed to the critical
analysis of the norm’s manipulative strategy. Tomić, too, pointed to the significance of fe-
male teachers and writers, showed types of (emancipatory) progressive gender relations—
which Draga Gavrilović and other female writers created and affirmatively represented, in
contrast to Serbian male writers—and organized an academic conference which, after the
anthology she edited, helped start other research. See Vladimir Milankov, Draga Gavri-
lović: Život i delo (Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde, 1989); Vladimir Milankov, ed.,
Draga Gavrilović: Sabrana dela (Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinda, 1990); Svetlana
Tomić, “Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist: The Old and
New Interpretations,” Serbian Studies 22, no. 2 (2008): 167–89; Svetlana Tomić, “The First
Serbian Female Teachers and Writers: Their Role in Emancipation of Serbian Society,”
Serbian Studies 25, no. 1 (2011): 57–79; Svetlana Tomić, “Tipologija književnih junaka i
junakinja u prozi srpskog realizma iz rodne perspektive” (PhD diss., Alfa University, 2012);
Svetlana Tomić, ed., Valorizacija razlika: Zbornik sa naučnog skupa o Dragi Gavrilović
(1854–1917) (Belgrade: Altera i Fondacija multinacionalni fond kulture, 2013); Svetlana
Tomić, Realizam i stvarnost: Nova tumačenja proze srpskog realizma iz rodne perspektive
(Belgrade: Alfa univerzitet, Fakultet za strane jezike, 2014); Svetlana Tomić, “Dominantna
akademska norma srpskog realizma i njen patrijarhalni obrazac,” in Srpski kulturni obrazac
u svetlu srpske književne kritike, ed. Milan Radulović (Belgrade: Insztitut za književnost i
umetnost, 2014) 421–42.
161
Draga Gavrilović, “Za što deca ne poštuju svoje roditelje onako, kako bi trebalo?”, in
Novi Trebević veliki srpski ilustrovani kalendar u Bosni i Hercegovini za godinu prostu 1893
(Sarajevo: Prva srpska štamparija Riste J. Savića., 1893), 44. This article is also available in
Tomić, Valorizacija razlika (cited above).
to. In child-parent relationships, Draga Gavrilović distinguishes love and respect as

separate categories, where children love parents but do not owe them respect just
because they gave birth to them. As Draga Gavrilović writes, many children would
answer the question of whether they would like their parents to give them life with,
“thanks, it’s not necessary.”162 Marriage, according to Gavrilović, has to be made
between two people who love and respect each other, no matter if they are peasants,
tradespeople, intelligentsia—it should not happen if the two are incapable of sup-
porting a family, or if they are “parents who do not enjoy family happiness,”163 an
expression describing those who do not want children.
Draga Gavrilović, a financially independent woman, was a teacher in her home-
town, Srpska Crnja. She never married nor had any children. Her position was
supported by her well-known, wealthy family; however, Gavrilović was of delicate
health, often ill, so her unmarried status could have been (and can be) interpreted as
a result of that reality.
In historiography, there already exists a general knowledge about the political
activism of Milica and Anka Ninković within the socialist movement. During the
period with which this text is concerned, the Ninković sisters were in Zurich, where
they were studying pedagogy. Among the students, there were mostly Russian girls
who, together with students from Slavic countries, participated in many lectures
and political debates, and attended clubs where discussions were led on many topics
within the socialist, anarchist, and communist platforms. That was the reason for
the Russian government to pass an act in May 1873 which would forbid Russian
students from studying in Zurich. Milica Ninković informed the Serbian public
about it through Novi Sad’s Flag. The text—“Russian students at Zurich’s univer-
sities and the Russian decree against these universities,”164 which could be found in
literature165—consists of two related, already published articles, one in the Swiss
newspaper Bund and the other in Saint Petersburg’s Voice. Milica Ninković’s con-
tribution was that she connected, and prepared for publishing, two views on the
emancipation: one which supported the university education of women, and the
other which denied the possibility that women be widely educated and participate
in debates about key problems of the time. Her courage consisted in giving the pub-
lic both sides of the story, even though she was conscious that the Serbian milieu
162
Gavrilović, “Zašto deca,” 51.
163
Ibid., 52.
164
“Ruskinje na ciriškim višim školama i ruski ukaz protiv tih škola,” Zastava Novi Sad,
June 15, 1873.
165
See Kosta Milutinović, “Milica Ninković: Povodom 70-godišnjice smrti,” Letopis Mati-
ce srpske 368 (1951): 453–67.
would accept the rigid position of the Russian government, which is what happened
in the end.
Here I would like to draw attention to one detail from the Act of the Russian
government, published in the mentioned text, which speaks of the fear of knowl-
edge, which educated women can use once freed from the tutorship of male mas-
ters, and which concerns contraception and abortion. In addition to the political
engagement of Russian female students, the Russian government was also against
the following:
Some of these young girls went so far that they studied separately the field
of mothers and their helpers, which is subject in all countries to criminal
offence and is scorned and loathed by every respectable man.166
The Russian government immediately started to work on opening women’s in-

stitutes, where teachers would be university professors, and special attention would
be given to the education of midwives. At the same time, it accused some Russian
newspapers of “reckless propaganda,”167 that they wrongly understood women’s role
in the family and society, propagating “the misleading power of the idea of the mod-
ern century”; it also accused the leaders of the Russian emigration of “drawing young
girls into the whirlpools of their political agitation.”168 Zurich’s government, via the
Swiss Assembly, answered that it did not have any cause to take action against Rus-
sian students because of their political activities. In regards to the accusation that
Russian students “must listen and learn that which a respectable man should not
learn,” Swiss officials had the following message:
As regards the stigma which the ignorant people put in their lying report
on our institute, we say only that there should have been before such action
some agreement with the official organs; and only after the finished investi-
gation start working…169
The result of the Act of the Russian government was a number of female stu-
dents returning to Russia, while certain repressive measures were imposed on stu-
dents who refused to do so, as well as their families. Everything that came from
166
“Ruskinje na ciriškim višim školama i ruski ukaz protiv tih škola,” Zastava, June 15,
1873.
167
“Ruskinje na ciriškim višim školama i ruski ukaz protiv tih škola,” Zastava, June 20,
1873.
168
Ibid.
169
“Ciriška vlada i ruski ukaz protiv Ruskinja na ciriškim višim školama,” Zastava, August
15, 1873.
Russia was of great importance to Serbs on both sides of the Danube and Sava rivers,
so it is not surprising when these same requirements—the ban on education of Ser-
bian female students in Zurich—appeared in Belgrade newspapers and in Vojvodi-
na. German Anđelić, Backa’s bishop, officially asked in June 1873 that the Ninković
sisters return from Switzerland, and they did.170
If we pause here and try to understand the conditions of dependence and igno-
rance in which many women lived in Serbian society in Vojvodina (but also south of
the Sava and Danube) toward the end of 19th century, then it could be a little clearer
to what extent the expression of views about women’s financial independence, right
to education, decision about marriage, contraception, and abortion instilled fear in
the majority of the members of the governing block. Therefore, the views on wom-
en’s emancipation—which Draga Dejanović, Draga Gavriović, and Milica Ninkov-
ić expressed in public in the form of lectures, texts, or their own life decisions—are a
lot more important and courageous undertakings than those expressed by the most
progressive men, their contemporaries.
Emancipation of Women: Socialist Potpourri
Ljuben Karavelov did not write essays about the emancipation of women, but was
concerned with the position of women in Serbian society and represented some
emancipatory solutions in his stories, especially in the already mentioned “God Has
Decreed.” Ljuben Karavelov’s literary works have not been analyzed in recent years
due to the idea of women’s emancipation from the perspective of early Serbian so-
cialist thought. In the second half of the 19th century, literary forms were a pow-
erful means of spreading different ideas, so they can be understood the same as any
other text with a pedagogic or political purpose. In the introductory part of the
story, Karavelov gives a short sketch of the position of women in Serbian society in
the second half of the 19th century. While the road is open for a man to fight for
his goals, for his ideas, or against difficulties, a woman, on the other hand, “does not
have any goals.” While she is at her parents’ home, a girl
at least has her own will, freedom, although it is often a pitiable will and the
freedom suffers from father’s tirrany [sic] and mother’s caprice, it is a thou-
sand times better to live there, because in that period she can at least think
freely. As soon as she marries, there ensues a prolonged suffering.… A mar-
ried woman works like a slave, belongs with her husband’s things, her duty is
determined by her ruler, which consists in the following: give birth to chil-
dren, put clothes on them, take care of them, wash their nappies, flog them
170
Milutinović, “Milica Ninković,” 458.
with a rod, find them a bride. To do more than this she is not allowed, and
she would not know how due to her limited education and upbringing.171
Karavelov situates Milka, an uneducated main heroine of the story “God Has
Decreed,” in a poor family where she suffers from her stepmother’s daily abuse. The
solution of the situation was the same one that is still valid today: the support of a
confidante and financial independence. Milka receives the support of a young man
who first asks her father to protect her from the stepmother, and then persuades
Milka to find a job. For a girl in Serbian society of that time, work amounted to sac-
rilege, while the abuse in the parent’s home was considered God’s will. In the end,
Milka decides to move to Vojvodina and find a job because her plan will encounter
less resistance there, and in this way, end her suffering; as a reward, Karavelov intro-
duces marriage with the young man who had tried to protect her from violence. The
platform of women’s emancipation in this case was the girl’s decision to leave her
family and find a job despite social norms; the reward was marriage.
Like Karavelov, Vasa Pelagić represented his own view on the supported wom-
en’s role through literary and other forms. In his text Attempts for National and
Personal Promotion (1871), there are two parts: “To All Serbian Women” and a play,
“Radinka and Pomodarka or Inclinations and Talks of Model and Detrimental Ser-
bian Women,” where we find not only his views about the desirable and the harm-
ful in the everyday life of women in the Serbian community of that time, but also
instructive theses about what needs to be done, and how “Serbian women could
have even more beautiful house, social, popular and even government jobs.”172 Vasa
Pelagić starts from the view that the most important women’s roles are “mother,
teacher, educator and guide of the younger generation,” and that the low education
(nisko izobraženje) of Serbian women is harmful to the people as a whole.173 That
is why his first request was to have schools organized where knowledge would be
received based on the modern scientific achievements, and for the education of male
and female teachers, who would be dedicated to studying science, and not instruct-
ed “according to the fashion of the Western civilization where exists a lot of decay,
degeneration, immorality and corruption.”174 Among the virtues which Serbian
women should cherish, Pelagić cites the following:175 looking after their own health,
respect, and moderation; that they follow the instructions from the Book for Moth-
171
Karavelov, “Nakazao je Bog,” 28.
172
Arhimandrit Pelagić, “Srpkinjama celokupnog Srpstva,” in Pokušaji za narodno i lično
unapređenje (Belgrade: Štamparija Stefanovića i družine, 1871), 42.
173
Ibid.
174
Ibid.
175
The order of virtues is given by the schedule established by Pelagić.
ers during pregnancy and labor; that they teach children to maintain both good
health176 and cleanliness; that, apart from Christian teaching, mothers instill in
their children the importance of science, knowledge, and apprenticeship; to awak-
en the spirit of patriotism (da svojoj deci raspale plemeniti duh narodoljublja);177
that they instill “persistance [sic] and industriousness” in children; that they teach
children to strive for justice, truth, and personal freedom, and to value these virtues
like sacred things; that they nourish shame and honor in children (podrane u djeci
čuvstvo stida i častoljublja); that they bring up their children to wish everybody
well and be glad at another’s good fortune; to discourage lying, laziness, revenge,
hate, flattery, and rude words, and portray all these as deadly sins; to encourage
socializing in public, because without meetings and agreements, there can be no
general social progress; that they marry early to save them from immorality; that in
each town, a women’s society be founded; that women fight for the emancipation of
the suffering (stradajućih narodnjaka),178 collect financial help for them, and send
commending and encouraging letters.179
To follow all of the above, Serbian women would have to be very educated in-
dividuals for that time—knowledgeable about medicine, hygiene, pedagogy, chem-
istry, and history. Also, they would have to be righteous, independent, and socially
active, because only such individuals can teach children by example about perse-
verance, justice, truth, and personal freedom. Surprising for that time, Pelagić pro-
motes women’s social activism which, apart from traditional humanitarian work,
enters political discourse through petitions on behalf of disadvantaged populists.
Pelagić is our contemporary according to the primary virtue, which he offered to
Serbian women, and that is concern for women’s health and the health of pregnant
women and children. Despite the fact that he places Christian values first as far as
the “impact of females” on “national business” is concerned, Pelagić opens to the
women, in a surprisingly courageous way, new spheres of activity. 180 To educate the
female educator of future generations is, for Pelagić, a question of justice, truth, per-
sonal freedom, and public activity, which indirectly points to the abandoning of
the ultimate imprisonment of women at home. He also talks about it in his intro-
176
Vasa Pelagić insists here that children should stay outside in fresh air long enough to
play, run, and jump in order to stay healthy, agile, and smart (Pelagić, “Srpkinjama celok-
upnog Srpstva,” 52).
177
Pelagić’s italics.
178
The members of the Serbian Freethinkers’ Party.
179
Pelagić, “Srpkinjama celokupnog Srpstva,” 51–57.
180
Ibid., 42.
duction—that educated women will do not only housework, but “social, popular,
government jobs” better than “our sisters Americans.”181
In the play “Radinka and Pomodarka or Inclinations and Talks of Model and
Detrimental Serbian Women,” Pelagić, among other things, lists what women
should read when they finish all housework: “hardworking host and hostess, a guide
for education and nurturing of children; a guide for excellent household manage-
ment; a guide for field and home economy; models of humanity; blood spilled for the
nation; Serbian woman; compendium of useful sciences; science about maintaining
health; compendium of Serbian literary and popular songs.”182 What they should
not read is: “Parisian secrets; Persian Letters, lonely young men; Serbian songs from
Banat; a great harph; Aca in love, Milan and Milevu; and Danicu for later in life.”183
In the play, such literature was read by Radinka’s sister, Milka, who, because of these
books, attended many balls where she dressed in many gowns, contracted tubercu-
losis, and died. That is why Radinka tore apart all that harmful literature and put it
“where the emperor himself goes on foot.”184
The question of women’s emancipation in the socialist camp is not uniformly
understood. It was a process made up from views which did not always follow the
same thread, but there was, at the same time, an openness to everything being avail-
able to the public, most often through Worker. Examples of consistent openness
in relation to the subject are the invitation to subscribe to John Stuart Mill’s book
Subjection of Women185 and publishing in installments What Is to Be Done?186 by
Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Thus, the Serbian public, wherever it found itself, could
stay informed about modern views of the emancipatory streams in Europe.
181
Ibid.
182
Vasa Pelagić, “Radinka i Pomodarka ili Težnje i razgovori uzoritih i štetnih Srpkin-
ja,” in Pokušaji za narodno i lično unapređenje (Belgrade: Štamparija Stefanovića i družine,
1871), 198.
183
Ibid., 199.
184
Ibid. The expression “to go where the emperor himself goes on foot” means to go to the
toilet.
185
Worker, June 3, 1871.
186
Worker, December 11, 1871. The novel What Is to Be Done? (1863) by Nikolai Cher-
nyshevsky had important influence on several generations of women and men in Serbian
society to the north and south of Sava River and Danube. Its influences in the Serbian com-
munity in Vojvodina at the end of the 19th century are visible in the views of young leftists
who came into the public sphere under Svetozar Marković’s influence. One of them, Hran-
islav Branko Mihajlović, is shown in the novel At Dawn, which Ljubiša Branković wrote
in 1878 under a pseudonym, where one of the heroines, defending the socialist platform of
emancipation, says: “We seek freedom and you are comforting us with poetry; you won’t lis-
ten about complete equality, you fear that woman would become some different creature.”
Among the texts published in Worker—in which the socialists wrote about
women’s emancipation—there are also those in which women’s oppression is not
considered an issue, and is completely suppressed by the class platform. It was not
impossible to criticize John Stuart Mill. This is evidenced by the text (without signa-
ture) “Woman’s Question” (1872),187 whose subtitle, in relation to the main thesis,
could read, in my opinion: “It is important to be called a Worker.” A worker, accord-
ing to the author of the text, is the only social actor, and hence, only his trouble and
grievances deserve attention. Women’s housework from dawn to night is completely
insignificant because it is work for immediate use, work which does not define the
women who undertake it as social actors:
Woman does not have political rights.… Do workers have them? … Woman
is excluded from public calling. And worker? … She cannot have a career, nor
study serious science.—Is this possible for worker? … The larger part of work
is unjustly allocated to her rather than to man.—What about worker? … In
his case, the division of work is even more unjust.... Woman is not the master
of her happiness. Worker’s luck are his two hands; take into account boss’s
caprice and that luck is lost.... Woman is not the master of her children. Is
worker though? … Worker’s wife is in the same situation as worker.… And
woman’s question, the way it is posed now is a bourgeois question.188
Still, in conclusion, the author of the text “Woman’s Question” calls upon “the
women among the bourgeois which realize that their fight is the same as ours,” that
emancipation has to happen “on the basis of work”189 —that is, through economic
independence of women and a change of the socioeconomic system. The problem is
that the majority of women from workers’ and peasants’ families is excluded from
this platform, and does not know in what way (if they are not from the bourgeois
milieu) they can qualify for various jobs and hence participate in the world of work.
It was clear to the author of the platform that, to the majority of women, the social
context (common law, regulations, cultural level, poverty) was stopping them from
stepping out of the family and marriage circle.
The sequence of the previously mentioned text “Education and Economy of
Women in Sweden,”190 where in the introduction, the author, probably the same,
continues with the thesis from the previous article, maintaining that the Principal-
187
“Žensko pitanje,” Radnik, March 1, 1872, 93. The author considers John Stuart Mill’s
view narrow-minded because he was “stirred by the poverty of women.”
188
Ibid.
189
Ibid.
190
“Obrazovanje i privreda ženskinja u Švedskoj,” Radnik, March 12, 1872, 115–16.
ity of Serbia has to imitate the Monarchy of Sweden in terms of opening free and
high-quality schools for girls and young women, where they would receive educa-
tion that would open the doors of some government jobs and independent econom-
ic activities. It was clear to the author of the text that it was impossible to compare
the legal position of women in the Monarchy of Sweden and the Principality of
Serbia, or the ideological or normative matrix. For example, he admits that, in the
local conditions, it is more the question of the practice of “scatterbrain” intelligence,
which “was spouting sweet phrases about the emancipation of women” but on the
sly was hunting for “fat dawry [sic].”191
Some confusion, or even controversy, is offered by the article “International As-
sociation of Women.”192 It was originally published in L’Esperance, and then in the
Russian newspaper Sunday, where an author under a pseudonym “Jel” gave com-
mentary on it. The commentary is related to the causes of prostitutions, such as
the general subjection of women in society, the impossibility of education, being
unqualified for many vocations available to men, and unequal salaries. The author
of the commentary dwells upon the unequal salaries of men and women, that it is
“the result of the sought equality between male and female labour,” which would
jeopardize the position of male workers with the general reduction in wages:
More competitors on the labour market means lower wages. And when we
look at places where it was necessary to employ both women and children in
factories, there is a reduction of wages in general, such that the whole family
(including women and children) earns the same amount which was previ-
ously earned by father of the family alone.193
With his multi-layered interpretation of the necessity of women’s emancipa-

tion in Serbian society at the end of the 19th century, Svetozar Marković stands out
among many who were dealing with the same subject. He agrees with the analysis
of the sorry position of women in Serbian society and Draga Dejanović’s platform
of the working emancipation and high-quality education.194 Svetozar Marković
gives new arguments and claims. First, the emancipation of women concerns, above
191
Ibid., 116. “Masna partija” is a woman with a good dowry.
192
“Međunarodna asocijacija ženskinja,” Radnik, April 2, 1872, 145–46.
193
Ibid., 146.
194
Svetozar Marković mentions that the question of the emancipation of Serbians was
raised in the second assembly of the United Serbian Youth, and that “of late two virtu-
ous Serbian women raised the question again which had started to be neglected” (Svetozar
Marković, “Je li žena sposobna da bude ravnopravna s čovekom,” Mlada Srbadija, May 15,
1870, 88–89). Further in the text, the name of Draga Dejanović is mentioned, but there is
no mention of any other Serbian woman.
all, women who have to “heartily” press on to “win their human rights.”195 At the
same time, Marković thinks that this is also important for “the male half of the
human kind” because it is a social question, the question of general social prog-
ress.196 Thanks to the prejudice that woman is less capable than man, women are
excluded from education and production work, which is a loss for the whole society,
and hence, their emancipation has to be founded on education and qualification for
different vocations, because “woman can be just as big an economic power in society
as man.”197 The working power of women, according to Marković, must not stay
unused in a society which strives toward progress. But women leaving home to enter
the world of production work entails “the right to equal education and the right that
she can freely use her skill and the product of her work—which means the complete
civil equality.”198 Economic independence entails legal independence, about which
Marković writes:
When woman is educated, free person like man,199 then it is logical that she
has the full rights—and this requires a genuine interest of the society—that
she participates in the regulation of all relations in the society, because all of
them concern both her and man, she has to have equal rights when it comes
to establishing all laws of the world.200
Of value is also Svetozar Marković’s testimony in relation to the influences of

the European centers on the south of Hungary, including the Principality of Serbia,
in particular when it comes to the question of the models of women’s emancipation:
In Germany there is one kind of “emancipators” who under the emancipa-

tion understand that woman studies better the natural sciences, learns to
cook better for their stomachs, and to know how to bring up children better
that is that woman becomes a better cook and a wet nurse. Here too there is
sometimes such an emancipator who preaches in newspapers.201
195
Ibid., 88.
196
Ibid., 89.
197
Ibid.
198
Ibid., 90.
199
For Svetozar Marković man is exclusively male.
200
Marković, “Je li žena,” 90.
201
Ibid., 90.
This position about educated mothers and housewives, which were the female
roles supported in patriarchal Serbian society at the end of the 19th century, could
be seen as the prevailing position of the Serbian, liberal/popular, political, and Kul-
turträger elite.
Novi Sad as a Vanished City
Like Berlin, but in much less proportion, Novi Sad is today a vanished city.202 In
contrast to Berlin, it does not have its unique literary and political guide203 based on
the fact that Novi Sad was a place of the cultural and political elite, which, to a large
extent, defined 19th century Serbian cultural history. This text reminds the reader
of an important episode of Serbian cultural and political history in the second half
of the 19th century through a story about the social being of the city in which the
first socialists and female feminists-socialists thought about women’s emancipation.
It is not unimportant to point out the fact—which is not often brought to our at-
tention—that within Serbian society, a new type of emancipated woman (in theory
and practice) was born in Novi Sad and Vojvodina.
It is also not of small significance that this “being” of Novi Sad—the formation
of the idea of women’s emancipation—had already been burdened with the political
fight for the national rights of Serbs and other minorities and confronted with chal-
lenges in relation to the development of technical achievements, industrialization,
and spreading of market and capital. Still, there was enough cultural-educational
and political capacity to make sure that the question of women’s emancipation was
not swept under the carpet, and to hear in the public sphere the voice of women in
relation to the question. For Vojvodina’s popular intellectual elite in Serbian soci-
ety at the end of the 19th century, the emancipation of women was not a primary
question, but it cannot be said that they refused to discuss it, write about it, translate
texts, or even organize competitions on the subject. The Serbian people in the sec-
ond half of the 19th century in Vojvodina lived in complex political and economic
conditions; nevertheless, the discussion about the aspired emancipation of women
was not being overshadowed by important national goals. It could be said that it is a
positive fact that the means and the reach of the emancipation, albeit from different
202
When it comes to Berlin, it is a question of the consequence of war destruction, but also
about the non-reconstruction of the destroyed, which is smaller compared to the one real-
ized in Dresden and Warsaw. In terms of Novi Sad, I mean the destruction of the old town
center: the Armenian church, a part of Jewish street decay of a reed hut, of Kamber’s kuće in
Jovan Subotić Street, the disappearance of the home of Josif Runjanin…
203
The guide to literary Berlin reconstructs that fact that around 700 writers and artists
lived and worked in Berlin. Among them were Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Hein-
rich Mann, Bertold Brecht, Robert Musil, etc. See Paul Sullivan and Maecel Krueger, Ber-
lin: A Literary Guide for Travellers (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2016).
angles, was for all participants in the debate, a question significant for the general
progress of the society. For the majority of patriarchal populists, the question of
women’s emancipation boiled down to better education of female children with the
possibility of a university education for girls from the wealthier class, all in order for
women to be able to better perform the role of partner, mother, and housewife. This
was the dominant position of the cultural and political elite of the Serbian commu-
nity in Hungary until WWI.
From the middle of the 19th century—in the socialist camp in Europe, but
also in Vojvodina—there were no unified position in terms of women’s rights. How
strong the resistance and disagreements were among those recommending various
platforms of emancipation is proven by the following facts: Proudhon was in con-
flict with female feminists and socialists, and Lasal with Bebel. The latter suggested
that the equal legal right of women be part of the socialist party’s program in Ger-
many, but that request was rejected.204 Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism was pub-
lished in 1879, nine years after Marković’s text “Is Woman Capable of Being Equal
to Man,” but both of them thought that women were invited to work on their own
emancipation. In contrast to Marković, Bebel was encouraging the formation of a
separate women’s socialist movement because he thought that it would be difficult
for men as a group to accept the emancipation of women.205 Marković’s platform of
complete civil equality of women was founded on the need of half of the society be-
ing included in the world of production work, which represents a condition for soci-
ety’s progress in general. His platform of women’s emancipation consisted, although
not explicitly developed, of the knowledge that women’s entrance in the world of
work in the capacity allowed to men entails the change of gender power roles, which
in turn entails a woman’s right to freely use her labor and the products of her work.
At the same time, it must be said that with their lucidity, all-inclusiveness, and un-
derstanding of the problem, Svetozar Marković’s views surpass everything that was
written by Serbian socialists at that time on the topic of women’s emancipation.
Draga Dejanović gave a platform of women’s economic or “working” indepen-
dence without the idea that women leaving the family circle means a change in
gender roles within the family. On the other hand, Draga Gavrilović was writing
about the everyday situation of women within the oppressive circle of patriarchy.
The problem is that knowledge about it remained in the background—not known
enough. Draga Gavrilović faithfully described the everyday life of women in the
middle class Serbian family. She was more careful when expressing views about par-
enthood and marriage, views which were extremely rare or, it could be said, revolu-
tionary in some segments. It is an expected perspective because a woman who writes
204
Sheila Rowbotham, Svest žene: Svet muškaraca (Belgrade: Studentski izdavački centar
UKSSO, 1983), 40.
205
Ibid., 40–41.
about marriage and parenthood, as well as concepts which were not necessary nor
acceptable for some groups of people, is not encouraged nor praised. On the con-
trary, Draga Gavrilović was not a part of the famous nepotic circle in the Serbian
elite, which included many women. Her absence from public discourse is best rep-
resented in the book Srpkinja, njezin život i rad, njezin kulturni razvitak i njezina
narodna umjetnost do danas (Serbian Woman: Her Life and Work, Her Cultural
Development and Folk Art till Today) (1913). Here, Draga Gavrilović, the woman
who wrote the first novel in Serbian, is merely mentioned among the number of
women to whom at least a few lines are dedicated in the text.
Can we regard the views of Drage Dejanović and Draga Gavrilović as exclu-
sively feminist, or can we also relate them to the corpus (ununified) of the socialist
camp of that time? I think we can. Draga Dejanović represents the economic inde-
pendence of women, which is a platform that, in our society, flourished to the fullest
in the first years of socialist Yugoslavia, as the essential part of the transformation
of society into socialist society. Dejanović did not deal with the transformation of
gender roles in society, but Gavrilović did. It has to be remembered that their ideas
and life choices appeared within the context of the development of Serbian society
north of the Sava River and the Danube at the end of the 19th century. We have to
take into account, also, the context of the absence of power for women in which De-
janović, Gavrilović, and Ninković were writing and were active. Draga Dejanović’s
published views about women’s emancipation are, in some parts, narrow, because
she does not write about the change of the private sphere—but in her private life,
she was able to win a part of her personal freedom. Draga Gavrilović was writing
about the oppression of patriarchy, and in her private life, she chose the road of a
working, independent, and financially free woman. Looking at the published views
about women’s emancipation and the choices made in their private lives, the works
of Draga Dejanović and Draga Gavrilović can be characterized as close to those so-
cialist platforms which understood the financial freedom of women and the change
of private relations as the key elements of women’s emancipation. I think that it
is our responsibility to include anew into the political and cultural history of the
Serbian people the achievements of the first female reformers of women’s position
in society.
gstojakovic021@gmail.com

First Socialists in Novi Sad

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

First Socialists in Novi Sad

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

On the First Socialist Men and Women in Novi Sad

Published by Slavica Publishers

For additional information about this article

Timeline: On Serbs in the Habsburg Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, and

Economy: There’s No Other Way but to Demolish Everything

19th century in Austro-Hungary from the perspective of socialist ideology. One of

That organism of ours—society—consists of sick and weak arms and legs

A large collective, as a basic form of the social-economic system of the Serbi-

Culture and Education: Stupidity, Laziness, Ignorance, and a Few Virtues

A girl has to be humble, gentle, to like flowers, to sing in the morning …

Had this happened in Belgrade or anywhere else in Serbia each “respect-

The criticism of the non-pedagogic methods of the professors of the grammar

Social and Political Life, and Popular (Narodni) Jobs

Svetozar Marković saw “Turkish people” as a venture of “2–3 completely or-

Emancipation of Women: “Instead of Holding the Finger that was Offered to

In Europe, the models of women’s emancipation were discussed beginning in the

of neglecting housekeeping duties, so educated men preferred to marry “maids”140

Women’s Liberation: Do You Know My Sisters… ?

My daughter, a cook… a Serbian cook and chambermaid! I would rather

to. In child-parent relationships, Draga Gavrilović distinguishes love and respect as

The Russian government immediately started to work on opening women’s in-

Emancipation of Women: Socialist Potpourri

With his multi-layered interpretation of the necessity of women’s emancipa-

Of value is also Svetozar Marković’s testimony in relation to the influences of

In Germany there is one kind of “emancipators” who under the emancipa-

Novi Sad as a Vanished City

You might also like