Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States

Draga Dejanović: To Serbian mothers

DRAGA DEJANOVIĆ: TO SERBIAN MOTHERS Title: Srpskim majkama (To Serbian mothers) Originally published: Matica, 1871, 6–7 Language: Serbian The excerpts used are from Pro Femina No. 13–14, 1998, pp. 174–184. About the author Draga Dejanović [1840, Stara Kanjiža (Hun. Magyarkanizsa), Vojvodina – 1871, Óbecse (Srb. Stari Bečej)]: actress and writer. She was born into an upper middle class family. Her father Živojin Dimitrijević was a lawyer, while her mother Sofia came from the aristocratic Međanski family. Draga attended secondary school in Temesvár (Rom. Timişoara), but due to serious health problems she was forced to withdraw from school. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Óbecse (Srb. Stari Bečej). She was briefly married to a teacher named Dejanović. Accompanying her sister to Pest, she met the prominent activists of the ‘United Serbian Youth,’ an event that would significantly influence her future work and life. She was politically engaged in the ‘United Serbian Youth,’ and promoted ideas about the liberation and emancipation of women. She cooperated with young poets and intellectuals who were gathered in the 1860s around the magazine Preodnica (Predecessor) in Pest. Draga Dejanović was also an actress, performing in Újvidék (Srb. Novi Sad) and in Belgrade. She died during childbirth at the age of 31. Still today she represents an important point of reference for any attempt to write and interpret the history of women’s movements and feminist thought in Serbia. She is appreciated both in feminist academic circles and in the field of feminist and gender oriented activism, with full critical awareness of her specific position between emancipation and nationalism . Main works: Emancipacija ženskinja [The emancipation of women] (1869); Dve tri reči Srpkinjama [A few words to Serbian women] (1870); Srpskim majkama [To Serbian mothers] (1871). 120 SELF-DETERMINATION, DEMOCRATIZATION, AND THE HOMOGENIZING STATE Context The end of the 1860s and the beginning of the 1870s were times of particular national and cultural fermentation in Serbia and among the Serbs in Vojvodina. Both in Újvidék, then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Belgrade , circles of enthusiastic young people, students and intellectuals were organizing themselves, with the aim of promoting Serbian national culture as well as the liberation and unification of all Serbs. Thus on 27 August 1866 in Újvidék, grown out of the alliance of 16 student, high school and cultural groups, the ‘United Serbian Youth’ (Ujedinjena omladina srpska, or simply Omladina) was established (see Jevrem Grujić and Milovan Janković, South Slavs, or the Serbian nation with the Croats and the Bulgarians). Omladina was formed in the wake of the reconstitution of the Habsburg Empire into Austria-Hungary (1867), which was followed by the Hungarian– Croatian Compromise of 1868. The Serbian political elite in Hungary felt that the new political arrangement did not promise a successful solution to the minority question of Slavic peoples, which included the Serbs. Svetozar Miletić was the main political figure opposing the policy of the Hungarian– Croatian Compromise, and was actively engaged both in Omladina and in his own political party, the ‘Serbian People’s Freeminded Party’ (Srpska narodna slobodnoumna stranka). Miletić and other prominent members of Omladina (Vladimir Jovanović, Jevrem Grujić, Svetozar Marković) articulated and promoted ideas related to the liberation and unification of all Serbs, therefore creating a political platform that combined liberalism and nationalism . The motto of Omladina was Srbi svi i svuda (The Serbs—altogether and everywhere), and the organization became the strongest and most influential romantic national movement in the history of modern Serbia. According to Jovan Skerlić, Omladina’s main goal was to “awaken national life in its many aspects and to teach the people the ways in which life conditions of the Serbian people could be improved.” Nevertheless, Omladina’s role was more extensive than that, including a political program that promoted the liberation and unification of all Serbs. What it proposed was a nationalist program that proved to be long-lasting in Serbian political history, even informing the modes of political organization and rising territorial claims at the end of the twentieth century. Eventually Omladina split into conflicting groups with diverse ideological backgrounds and influences (Western liberal democracy versus Russian narodnik socialism), holding on to different visions of democracy and its institutions ,. The line of division was set between the liberalism of Jovanović DRAGA DEJANOVIĆ: TO SERBIAN MOTHERS 121 and Grujić and the socialism of Marković. Exhausted by internal strife and...