Pašić, Nikola

Pašić, Nikola (1845-1926), Prime Minister of Serbia (1891-1892, 1904-1908, 1910-1918, 1921-1926). Pašić was born in Zaječar, on the border between Serbia and Bulgaria, and began writing for a socialist newspaper in 1875. He was elected to the Skupština (Serbian parliament) in 1878, and was a founder of the Radical Party, which had broadly socialist and nationalist perspectives. He became a leading opponent of the Obrenović dynasty that ruled Serbia at the time (see Aleksandar Obrenović), and was forced into exile in Bulgaria in 1883 for complicity in an uprising against it. Pašić returned from exile in 1889 and served his first term as prime minister from 1891 to 1892.

After the Obrenović dynasty was overthrown in 1903, Pašić returned to office as prime minister, and oversaw the restoration of the Karadjordjević dynasty (see Petar I Karadjordjević). He pursued a nationalist, pro-Russia, anti-Austria line in his diplomacy. In 1904 he signed an agreement to form a customs union with Bulgaria, and developed an armaments programme with French weapons, both of which provoked Austria to blockade Serbian imports (the “Pig War” of 1905 to 1907, so called because Serbia’s main export was livestock). Pašić then successfully developed alternative markets for Serbian products, and led the country into the Balkan Wars that saw Serbia successfully defeat first the Ottoman Empire and then Bulgaria, and gain territory in Macedonia.

Pašić, although a nationalist, was hostile to the activities of the extreme nationalist Black Hand group in Bosnia (annexed by Austria in 1908), which culminated in the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. He led the Serbian government in exile during World War I, and on July 20, 1917, signed the Corfu Declaration with the Yugoslav Committee, which stated that southern Slavs should be united in one state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the forerunner of Yugoslavia). Pašić became the prime minister of the new country when it was established in 1918, but was perceived as following Serb centralist policies against the interest of the state as a whole. This contributed to the tensions that would destabilize the country in the years before World War II.