Entangled Paths Toward Modernity: Contextualizing Socialism and Nationalism in the Balkans

19. In power

19. In Power The basic building blocks of radical ideology already underwent­ changes in the 1880s. In Marković’s design, the community was understood as a self-governing, socio-economic unit, guaranteeing economic self-sufficiency and effectiveness. Progressively, the community would come to be treated as a simple administrative unit within a centralized state, and it would later be institutionalized as such. In their economic philosophy, the Radicals underwent a significant mutation. As capitalistic relations became more pronounced and the patriarchal institutions that had served as the core of their doctrine disintegrated, the Radicals progressively abandoned the initial conception of skipping phases of development, and the principle of zadruga socialism, concentrating their efforts rather on transforming the character of the state as an equitable organizer of wealth. To the degree that capitalism prevailed, the Radicals as a ruling party also became carriers of this development. The succeeding generation of Radicals (Mihailo Vujić, Stevan Popović, Kosta Taušanović) would endorse the principle of economic nationalism , expressed through a protectionist economic policy aimed at boosting the national economy.164 Despite these mutations, their rationale in its essence still carried the mark of the original radical preoccupations, in that it acknowledged the primitivism of the local economy, the status of dependency this carried, and the necessity to overcome it. The “new” radical economic philosophy was propelled by strong nationalpolitical considerations. The necessity to escape from the status of a purely agrarian, raw material-producing country by developing an indigenous processing industry, and the realization that Serbia’s constant export of agrarian and import of ready-made commodities was making the country poorer, required an economic course that would allow for growth and the development of industry. Regarding the issues of economic and political independence to be intricately interconnected, the Radicals argued for the impossibility of retaining national freedom without economic independence.165 138 III. The Ambiguities of Modernity Clearly, the most significant modification of the initial radical doctrine concerned the national question. Marković had postulated the indivisibility of Serbian national liberation and unification with the broader social question and had envisioned its solution within a federative Balkan entity. Despite the ambiguities in his federative conception —it is unclear whether he understood this federation to be an association of individuals or as a confederation of ethnic communities— Marković categorically renounced the ethnically homogenous nationstate . On the contrary, the later Radicals carried a nationalist vision of a strong, sovereign and enlarged Serbian state functioning as the Piedmont of the Balkans, and in their conception of national liberation and unification were closer to Garašanin’s initial “Greater Serbia” project . Another long-term process—spread over several decades—would be the reconciliation of the Radicals with the monarchical idea. The political confrontation between the Radicals and the monarchy aimed at restricting to the minimum the political prerogatives of the Crown, a goal achieved effectively in 1903. Reconciliation, a process initiated after the Timok Rebellion, and which cost Pera Todorović his reputation , credibility and membership of the Radical Party, would gradually and eventually develop into a true identification of the Radicals with monarchism. As observed by Gale Stokes, in “the absence of a working class, the Radicals made Serbia’s producers, the peasants, the class basis of their program, and in the absence of a bourgeoisie, they turned their criticism on the state bureaucracy, which they considered the dominant class in Serbia.”166 Moreover, they were instrumental in reconciling the peasant with the state and the etatist idea, transforming the peasantry into a “state-carrying element.” The Radicals frustrated the peasant’s antagonistic relationship towards the state by taking over precisely the mechanism that was considered their instrument of oppression. As commented however by Slobodan Jovanović, the Radicals’ Jacobinism also produced collateral effects, for “it is another question whether this partisanship that reconciled the peasant with the state did not at the same time weaken the state and the state idea.”167 In their effort to mobilize the population, the Radicals appropriated the notion of the nation and changed its content. Most significantly, they reached out for the peasants before the official educational system had inculcated in them the notion of a national subject. “Therefore, many peasants 139 19. In Power learned their sense of what it meant to be a Serb from the Radicals. This association of nationalism and radicalism in the minds of many peasants gave the Radical Party a primacy in Serbian...