page_title: Svetozar Miletić
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Svetozar Miletić / Political career
caption_attribution_description: English: Svetozar Miletic (1826-1901), Serbian journalist, author, politician. Mayor of Novi Sad. Lithographs by Josef Kriehuber, 1867
context_page_description: Svetozar Miletić was a Serbian lawyer, journalist, author, politician, mayor of Novi Sad, and the political leader of Serbs in Vojvodina. Svetozar Miletić was one of the most influential ideological and political leaders of the Serbs living in the Habsburg lands.
context_section_description: These conditions changed after the Austrian defeats at Solferino and Magenta, when Franz Joseph, by the October Diploma of 1860, found it necessary to promise the introduction of constitutional government. As one means of appeasing the Magyars, Franz Joseph ordered the speedy reincorporation of the Serbian Vojvodina in the Kingdom of Hungary. But they were not satisfied with this concession and insisted upon the constitution of 1848, which was only granted after Austria's fresh defeat at Königgrätz in 1866. In the six years during which this trial of strength between Austria and Hungary lasted the attitude of the Serbs and Croats, Romanians and Slovaks assumed very considerable importance. Indeed, if the nationalities had sided with Austria during this period, as they had done in 1848, Hungary would hardly have attained that complete independence from the Austrian monarchy which was embodied in the Compromise, or Ausgleich of 1867. But the absolutist régime of Alexander von Bach had alienated the nationalities, and they flung themselves into the arms of Magyar Liberalism. The Magyars for their part at this time laid greater streets on the Liberal than upon the Magyar side of things.
  And no one did more for this new policy than Svetozar Miletić, as representative of the Hungarian Serbs. He took the role of mediator graciously and the burden of reconciling the traditional animosities between two stubborn nationalities, and dissipating the doubts and suspicions which ten years of reaction had kindled. Miletić had reached the conviction that the Serbian movement in the Vojvodina could be brought into line with the general Serbian aims of liberty and unity, and also with the wider European movement. To this idea, he devoted all his intellectual gifts and highly combative temperament.
  For a certain time, circumstances favored him. Mihailo Obrenović III, Prince of Serbia was in touch with Andrassy and Ferenc Deak, who were at the time willing to help Serbia acquire Bosnia and Herzegovina and liberate her kinsmen under the Turkish yoke; and for this Miletić was ready and eager to render them any possible service in return. The Vojvodina was reincorporated towards the end of 1860, and on 4 January 1861, Miletić published an article which was long to serve as his party's policy, and in which, while not taking exception to Hungary's acceptance of the Vojvodina at the hands of Austria, he announced to the latter that she need no longer reckon upon the Serbs in her quarrels with other nations. In the same year, at a political meeting of Hungarian Serbs, held at Sremski Karlovci in Syrmia, he put forward the idea of seeking guarantees for their nationality, by friendly agreement with the Magyars. In the year 1865, he was elected to the Croatian Sabor and supported a peculiar kind of Dualism under which both Austria and Hungary would be reorganized on a federal basis: he, therefore, joined the party club which passed as Magyarophil.
  Among the older Serbian intellectuals this policy awakened but little response. But for the very reason the younger generation—the intelligentsia, merchants, and artisans alike—gathered all the more eagerly around "the eagle of Novi Sad," wherein 1866 they organized the "United Youth" (Ujedinjena Omladina) as the symbol of political unity. The foremost Serbian poets and writers of that time gave their support to the Omladina movement, which found alike its Achilles Miletić and its Ajax in Laza Kostić, Odysseus in Đura Jakšić, and Homer in Jovan Jovanović Zmaj. This new bourgeoisie was in close contact with the peasantry, and little by little, between 1861 and 1871, the whole Serbian nation in the Vojvodina gave its adherence to the national party of Miletić. When in 1872 elections were held for the autonomous Church Assembly, this party obtained 72 out of a total of 75 seats. Throughout this period all the honors which it was in the power of the Serbs to confer were lavished upon Svetozar Miletić as their recognized leader. From 1865 to 1884 he represented them in the Parliament at Budapest; in 1861 and 186
caption: A 1867 lithograph of Miletić by Josef Kriehuber
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