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3. Modernization and Its Antecedents The Radicals’ response to modernization cannot be considered independently from the commensurate attempts of their predecessors and contemporaries. The radical reply was partially inspired, and to a great extent was spurred, as a reaction to the modernizing visions and efforts of the political elite en place. In the second half of the nineteenth century the political landscape was just starting to take shape, and it was precisely this period that was to witness the major struggle for the locus of sovereignty in Serbia from the preeminent claim of the prince to be the prime and sole political authority in the country to the rise and eventual institutionalization of various political groupings claiming authority and legitimacy in the name of a constitutional arrangement. Chronologically, the Liberals constituted the first Serbian political elite (1860s) to embark on a modernization course modeled on Western European concepts, including the notions of political and economic freedom , national liberation and unification, and the demand for a constitutional parliamentary monarchy. The Liberals were instrumental in putting together an ideology of liberal nationalism prescribing representative government—at least in theory—as the authentic expression of the sovereign people, and were the first elite to introduce a programmatic political platform, informed by ideas rather than personalities.23 In their effort to validate their program they resorted to the past, to a theory of history that would allow for the legitimization of their modernizing project as evolving naturally out of the Serbian past. Wishing to limit the prerogatives of the Crown, and aiming at the introduction of a constitutional political system, the Liberals were keen to demonstrate that the “primordial Serbian spirit was essentially liberal.”24 As is often the case with newly introduced modernizing designs, the more radical the rupture with tradition in practice, the more urgent the need to resort to a historical model that can justify and legitimize adequately the needs of the present via past experience; so too was the case with the Serbian Liberals.25 What would appear to be a contradiction is only a seeming paradox; a forceful appeal is made to the past only in order 71 3. Modernization and Its Antecedents to break with it.26 Aiming at a synthesis between tradition and modernity , the Liberals presented their modernizing attempt as a natural revival of traditional Serbian political institutions, which, suppressed in the past, needed only be re-established as part of the inherent democratic heritage of the Serbian people. “Backward” as Serbia might have been, went the liberal argument, the “Serbs were uniquely suited by their history to become constitutional democrats.”27 As a consequence of this national romanticism, the Liberals were the first to draw attention to the traditional Serbian institutions (communal self-government, zadruga, etc.) as core moral and ethical properties of the Serbs, but did not consider them a viable foundation for further development either in political or in economic terms. The Liberals envisioned a Serbian state advancing along the lines of modern European civilization, whereby constitutionalism and representative government were to guarantee political and economic progress. In terms of constitutional reform, the liberal project envisioned the curtailment of the prince’s authority by means of a national legislature, and despite the fact that both the St Andrew Skupština (parliament) of 1858 and the 1869 constitution did not have the desired far-reaching effects of the original liberal design, these nevertheless introduced the idea of political diversity, established the Skupština as a regular body, regularizing elections and formalizing the cabinet system.28 While identifying and legitimizing their political program as the will of the nation, the Liberals made no serious effort either to mobilize the population or involve it in the decision-making process. Having experienced persecution in the 1860s, the Liberals were convinced that they had demonstrated, beyond further obligation, their devotion to the people’s cause. Rather, once in power, they tended to rely on the mechanics of the bureaucratic state to ensure the continuity of their rule, partially restricting civic freedoms and outmaneuvering the opposition. As successful as the Liberals may have been in the cultural sphere— they created the Ujedinjena Omladina Srspka (United Serbian Youth), a youth organization promoting the cooperation of all Serbs from the kingdom and the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires—they did not cash this in for increased influence in the political sphere. It was, however, to their credit that a modern political system was established in Serbia, and they were instrumental in transforming...

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