Dobrica Ćosić | |
|---|---|
Добрица Ћосић | |
 Ćosić in 1961 | |
| 1stPresident of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia | |
| In office 15 June 1992 – 1 June 1993 | |
| Prime Minister | Aleksandar Mitrović(acting) Milan Panić Radoje Kontić |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Zoran Lilić |
| 15thChairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement | |
| In office 15 June 1992 – 7 September 1992 | |
| Preceded by | Branko Kostić |
| Succeeded by | Suharto |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Dobrosav Ćosić (1921-12-29)29 December 1921 |
| Died | 18 May 2014(2014-05-18) (aged 92) Belgrade, Serbia |
| Resting place | Belgrade New Cemetery |
| Nationality | Serbian |
| Political party | SKJ (until 1968) |
| Awards | Order of Bravery Order of Merits for the People Order of Brotherhood and Unity NIN Award (1954, 1961) Pushkin Medal (2010) |
Dobrica Ćosić (Serbian Cyrillic:Добрица Ћосић,pronounced[dǒbritsatɕôːsitɕ]; 29 December 1921 – 18 May 2014) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician, writer, and political theorist.
Ćosić was twice awarded the prestigiousNIN award for literature andMedal of Pushkin for his writing. His books have been translated into 30 languages.[1]
He was the firstPresident of theFederal Republic of Yugoslavia with his tenure lasting from 1992 to 1993. Admirers sometimes refer to him as theFather of the Nation due to his influence on modern Serbian politics and the national revival movement in the late 1980s[2] while his opponents use that term in an ironic manner.[3]
Ćosić was born asDobrosav Ćosić on 29 December 1921 in the Serbian village ofVelika Drenova nearTrstenik to parents father Žika and mother Milka (d. 15 October 1984).[2] Some sources have incorrectly stated his date of birth as 4 January 1922.[2]
Before theSecond World War he was able to attend vocational agriculture school inValjevo. He joined the communist youth organization inNegotin in 1939. When the Second World War reachedYugoslavia in 1941, he joined the communistPartisans.[4] After the liberation ofBelgrade in October 1944, he remained active in communist leadership positions, including work in the Serbian republican Agitation and Propaganda commission and then as a people's representative from his home region. In the early 1950s, he visited theGoli otok political prison, where the Yugoslav authorities imprisoned political opponents of the Communist Party.[5] Ćosić maintained that he did so in order to better understand the Communist system.[6] Ćosić wrote his first novelDaleko je sunce (The Sun is Far Away) in 1951. The novel was a success and made him popular, launching him into a literary career where he could express his revolutionary ideals.[7] By that time, he had quit working professionally for the Communist Party.[7]
In 1956 he found himself inBudapest during theHungarian revolt.[7] He arrived there for the meeting of the editors of literary magazines in socialist countries on the day when the revolution started and remained there until October 31 when he was transported back to Belgrade on a plane that brought in Yugoslav Red Cross help. It remains unclear whether this was purely a coincidence or he was sent there as a Yugoslavsecret agent. Nevertheless, he even held political speeches in favor of a revolution in Budapest and upon his return he wrote a detailed report on the matter which, by some opinions, greatly affected and shaped firm official Yugoslav view on the whole situation. Parts of his memories and thoughts on the circumstances later will be published under the nameSeven Days in Budapest.[8]
In late 1956 Ćosić was chosen to participate in the formation of a new program for the Communist Party. Tito andEdvard Kardelj both picked Ćosić to sit on the committee along with other prominent Yugoslav communists. When it was completed in 1958, Ćosić had claimed that he himself wrote parts of it, including the chapter on "Social-Economic System".[9] Ćosić was concerned about the program's neglect of culture and pressed for more attention to be given to the role of culture in socialism but Kardelj, who was the final arbiter, was unresponsive to these concerns.[9]
Until the early 1960s, Ćosić was devoted toMarshal Tito andhis vision of a harmonious Yugoslavia. In 1961, he joined Tito on a 72-day tour by presidential yacht (theGaleb) to visit eight African non-aligned countries.[10] The trip aboard the Galeb highlighted the close, affirmative relationship that Ćosić had with the administration until the early 1960s.
Between 1961 and 1962, Ćosić got involved in a lengthy polemic with the Slovenian intellectualDušan Pirjevec regarding the relationship betweenautonomy,nationalism andcentralism in Yugoslavia.[11] Pirjevec voiced the opinions of theCommunist Party of Slovenia which supported a more decentralized development of Yugoslavia with respect for local autonomies, while Ćosić argued for a stronger role of the Federal authorities, warning against the rise of peripheral nationalisms. The polemic, which was the first public and open confrontation of different visions within the Yugoslav Communist Party after World War II, ended with Tito's support of Ćosić's arguments. Nevertheless, actual political measures undertaken after 1962 actually followed the positions voiced by Pirjevec and the Slovenian Communist leadership.[11] Precipitated by a slow economy, opposing sides came to use Ćosić and Pirjevec as proxies in their battles for a competing vision of Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1960s.[6]
As the government gradually decentralized administration of Yugoslavia after 1963, Ćosić grew convinced that theSerbian population of the state was imperiled. In May 1968, he gave a celebrated speech to the Fourteenth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Serbian League of Communists, in which he condemned the then-current nationalities policy in Yugoslavia. He was especially upset at the regime's inclination to grant greater autonomy toKosovo andVojvodina. Thereafter he acted as a dissident. In the 1980s, following the death of Tito, Ćosić helped organize and lead a movement whose original goal was to gain equality for Serbia in the Yugoslav federation, but which rapidly became intense and aggressive. He was especially enthusiastic in his advocacy of the rights of the Serb and Montenegrin populations of Kosovo.[11]
Ćosić was a member of theSerbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and is considered by many to have been its most influential member. While Ćosić has been credited with writing theMemorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which appeared in unfinished fashion in the Serbian public in 1986, he in fact was not responsible for its writing. In 1989 he endorsed the leadership ofSlobodan Milošević, and two years later he helped raiseRadovan Karadžić to theleadership of theBosnian Serbs.[12][13] When war broke out in 1991, he supported the Serbian effort.[11] In 1992, Ćosić wrote that Bosnia and Herzegovina was a "historical freak" and he considered that with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the Serbs were forced to find a state-political form of resolving their national question and he supported the idea that allSerbian ethnic areas should become part of the federation of Serbian lands.[14]
In 1992, he became the president ofFederal Republic of Yugoslavia, which consisted of Serbia and Montenegro. On Eastern Orthodox Christmas Eve of January 1993, Ćosić appeared on Serbian television to warn of demands for “national capitulation” from the West: "If we don't accept, we are going to be put in a concentration camp and face an attack by the most powerful armies of the world". These outside forces, he said, are determined to subordinate "the Serbian people to Muslim hegemony."[15] His support was important in the rise to power of Serbian nationalist leaderSlobodan Milošević. Liberal Serbs saw Ćosić as one of the key people behind theGreater Serbia project, an idea pushed forward by Serbian nationalists who wanted to unite Serbia with Serb-populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia.[16] Later, Ćosić turned against Milošević, and was removed from his position for that reason.
In 2000, Ćosić publicly joinedOtpor!, an underground anti-Milošević organization.[17]
In 1947, he married his wife Božica (née Đulaković) (1929–2006), with whom he had a daughter named Dr Ana Ćosić Vukić.[18][19]
In 2006, Ćosić received support for his proposal for apartition ofKosovo byNoam Chomsky. In a Serbian television interview, Chomsky was asked what the best solution for Kosovo's final status is. He responded:
My feeling has been for a long time that the only realistic solution is one that in fact was offered by the President of Serbia [i.e. Dobrica Ćosić, then President of Yugoslavia] I think back round 1993, namely some kind of partition, with the Serbian, by now very few Serbs left but the, what were the Serbian areas being part of Serbia and the rest be what they called "independent" which means it'll join Albania. I just don't see…I didn't see any other feasible solution ten years ago.[20]
Dobrica Ćosić died on 18 May 2014 in his home in Belgrade at the age of 92.[21] He was interred in a family plot at theBelgrade New Cemetery next to his wife on 20 May 2014.[22]
In March 2019, a street in Belgrade was named after him.[23]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by New title | President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1992–1993 | Succeeded by |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | Chairperson of the Non-Aligned Movement 1992 | Succeeded by |
.svg) | ||
| ||
