Boris Milosavljević DOI:10.2298/BALC1041131M Original scholarly work Institute for Balkan Studies Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Belgrade Liberal and Conservative Political Thought in Nineteenth-century Serbia Vladimir Jovanović and Slobodan Jovanović Abstract: Two very influential political philosophers and politicians, Vladimir Jovanović and Slobodan Jovanović, differed considerably in political theory. The father, Vladi- mir, offered an Enlightenment-inspired rationalist critique of the traditional values underpinning his upbringing. The son, Slobodan, having had a non-traditional, lib- eral upbringing, gradually — through analyzing and criticizing the epoch’s prevail- ing ideas, scientism, positivism and materialism — came up with his own synthesis of traditional and liberal, state and liberty, general and individual. Unlike Vladimir Jovanović, who advocated popular sovereignty, central to the political thought of his son Slobodan was the concept of the state. On the other hand, Slobodan shared his father’s conviction that a bicameral system was a prerequisite for the protection of in- dividual liberties and for good governance. Political views based on different political philosophies decisively influenced different understandings of parliamentarianism in nineteenth-century Serbia, which in turn had a direct impact on the domestic politi- cal scene and the manner of government. Keywords: political philosophy, state, liberalism, tradition, parliamentary system, bi- cameralism, political prejudice, morality Introduction: Father and son The lives and works of a father and his son, Vladimir Jovanović and Slobo- dan Jovanović, spanning a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years, are inseparable from the history of Serbia of the period. While their political activity coincided with some of the most important events in the history of modern Serbia and Yugoslavia, some of their most relevant works were first published as late as the 1970s and 1980s. Vladimir Jovanović (1833–1922)1 was an economist and po- litical philosopher. He was the leading ideologist of the United Serbian 1 Vladimir Jovanović, born in 1833 in Šabac – a town in what then was the Principal- ity of Serbia, an autonomous province under Ottoman suzerainty — was grandson of a local Serbian notable (vojvoda), Ostoja Spuž (c. 1770–1808), who had moved there from Spuž in modern-day Montenegro. Ostoja is known to have taken part in the First Serbian Uprising (1804–13) against Ottoman rule, notably in the liberation of Šabac in 1804 and of Belgrade in 1806, and later on was member of the Šabac Magistrate. The Jovanović family was related to several distinguished families in nineteenth-cen- tury Serbia, including those of Jovan Ristić (1831–1899), twice member of the body 132 Balcanica XLI Youth2 and of Serbia’s Liberal Party. He served as Serbia’s minister of fi- nance, president of her National Audit Office, deputy president of the State Council, senator, and member of Parliament. He was president of the Ser- bian Learned Society, honorary member of the Royal Serbian Academy, university professor of political economy. He was a politician with many international connections, founder and editor of newspapers, and author of several books, essays and articles in Serbian, English and French. Slobodan Jovanović (1869–1958),3 his son, was a renowned Serbian scholar and statesman, political philosopher, lawyer, historian, literary critic and writer, professor of public and constitutional law. He was president of the Royal Serbian Academy, rector of Belgrade University, dean of Bel- grade University’s Law School, president of the Serbian Cultural Club.4 of regents, prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, leader of the Liberal Party and a historian, or the family of Dimitrije Matić, a Hegelian philosopher, minister of educa- tion and justice, etc. See V. Jovanović, Uspomene [Memories], ed. V. Krestić (Belgrade: BIGZ, 1988), 19–21. For more on Vladimir Jovanović, see G. Stokes, Legitimacy through Liberalism: Vladimir Jovanović and the Transformation of Serbian Politics (Seattle: University of Washing- ton Press, 1975); A. Pavković, Slobodan Jovanović: An Unsentimental Approach to Poli- tics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 1–4; A. Stojković, Filozofski pogledi Vladimira Jovanovića [Philosophical Views of Vladimir Jovanović] (Novi Sad 1972). Before the publication of V. Jovanović’s Uspomene in 1988, the most extensive manu- script version of his memoirs was in private ownership, see V. Krestić, preface to V. Jovanović, Uspomene, 7–8, and the bibliography therein of the studies and articles on Vladimir Jovanović published until 1988. Of the relevant texts on Jovanović published after 1988, see D. T. Bataković, “Vladimir Jovanović — apostol liberalizma u Srbiji” [Vladimir Jovanović — the apostle of liberalism in Serbia], in Liberalna misao u Srbiji — Prilozi istoriji liberalizma od kraja XVIII veka do sredine XX veka, eds. J. Trkulja and D. Popović (Belgrade: CUPUS, 2001), 148–149; D. Basta, “Liberalni patriota Vladimir Jovanović” [Vladimir Jovanović, a liberal patriot], Samopoštovanje i puzavost 2, Noviji tekstovi s povodom (Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2010), 35–48. 2 A South-Slavic patriotic youth organization inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini and his Young Italy. See S. Jovanović, “Madame, C’est seulement…” [1917], in vol. 3 of Maz- zini’s Letters to an English Family, ed. E. F. Richards (London and New York: J. Lane Comp. Ltd, 1922), 67. 3 On Slobodan Jovanović, see D. Djordjević, “Historians in politics: Slobodan Jovanović”, Journal of Contemporary History 3:1 ( January 1973), 2–40; M. B. Petrovich, “Slobodan Jovanović (1869–1958): The career and fate of a Serbian historian”,Serbian Studies 3:1/2 (1984/85), 3–26; Pavković, Slobodan Jovanović; D. T. Bataković, preface to S. Jovanović (Slobodan Yovanovitch), “Sur l’idée yougoslave: passé et avenir (1939)”, Balcanica XXX- IX[2008] (2009), 285–290. 4 The Serbian Cultural Club was a leading Serbian political and cultural organization in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the eve of the Second World War. For more detail, see Lj. Dimić, “Srpski kulturni klub između kulture i politike” [The Serbian Cultural Club B. Milosavljević, Vladimir Jovanović and Slobodan Jovanović 133 He served as prime minister and deputy prime minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He died in 1958 in London, where he had acted as prime min- ister of the Yugoslav government-in-exile during the Second World War. In post-war Yugoslavia, in a political trial held in 1946, he was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour, confiscation of property and deprivation of civil rights. He was rehabilitated in Serbia in 2007, as a victim of post-war com- munist judiciary. Both Vladimir and Slobodan Jovanović considerably influenced the development of political ideas and political institutions in Serbia and Yu- goslavia of the time, the father mainly as the ideologist of the Liberal Party and the United Serbian Youth, and the son, through an almost fifty years’ long career as university professor, through his prolific writing, as well as through his presidency of the Serbian Culture Club, and subsequently as a senior member of the Yugoslav government both in the country and in exile in London. Even though both shared a commitment to a parliamentary system and political liberty, the theoretical assumptions underlying their political views and convictions differed considerably.5 Theoretical differences in understanding parliamentarianism had their implications for political practices in Serbia, where a parliamentary system was for the first time introduced by the 1888 Constitution.6 The dif- ferences in theoretical positions, of course, were to a greater or lesser extent due to the historical circumstances and to the different needs of political parties. However, what generally distinguished both Vladimir and Slobo- between culture and politics], Kulturna politika Kraljevine Jugoslavije [Cultural Policy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1918–1941] (Belgrade: Stubovi kulture, 1996), 506–561. 5 For a view that the difference between their basic theoretical premises was “unexpect- ed”, see S. Žunjić, Istorija srpske filozofije [The History of Serbian Philosophy] (Belgrade: Plato, 2009), 311. 6 According to S. Jovanović’s periodization of Serbia’s nineteenth-century political his- tory, the period of constitutionalism (1869–89), when “we had a constitution but no parliamentary system”, was followed by a parliamentary period: in 1888, a year before his abdication, King Milan Obrenović and the Constituent Assembly enacted a new constitution, which was aimed at securing the throne for his minor son and provided for a parliamentary system (1889–93). There followed the “period of reaction” (1893–1903) under King Alexander Obrenović, who in 1894 restored the 1869 Constitution, and after that ensued the “period of the restored parliamentary system” (1903–14) under King Peter I Karadjordjević and a Radical cabinet. See S. Jovanović, “The Develop- ment in the Serbian Constitution in the Nineteenth Century”, Yugoslav Documents, (London: Yugoslav Information Department, 1942), 2, 48–54; S. Jovanović, “Periodi srpske ustavne istorije” [Periods of Serbia’s constitutional history] [1929], in vol. 11 of Sabrana dela Slobodana Jovanovića (hereafter SD) [The Collected Works of Slobodan Jovanović], eds. R. Samardžić and Ž. Stojković (Belgrade: BIGZ, Jugoslavijapublik and SKZ, 1991), 468–470. 134 Balcanica XLI dan Jovanović from others was the fact that their political philosophies