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Notorious Lives

Radovan Karadžić

Slobodan Milošević

Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives

Puniša Račić

by John K. Cox

Serbian nationalist politician

Major offense: Assassination of Yugoslav assembly member Stjepan Radić

Active: June 20, 1928

Locale: Parliament building, Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia)

Sentence: Twenty years of house arrest to be served in Poźarevac, Serbia

Early Life

Puniša Račić (POO-nee-shah RAH-cheech) was a Montenegrin from the town of Berane. It is impossible to understand his political goals without examining the relationship of his nationality with the rest of Yugoslavia. Serbia dominated Yugoslavia, which was officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes for more than a decade after its founding in 1918; the new state had been assembled, reflecting a variety of local and great power interests, from territory from the former Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, as well as from the independent Serbian and Montenegrin monarchies. In addition to Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the country contained significant numbers of other nationalities. Montenegrins and Serbs are closely related peoples in terms of language, culture, history, and religion; some consider them to be first cousins, and others consider them the same people with two different names. Montenegro had also given up its independence and its royal family to merge with Serbia in 1918, further evidence of the way in which key sectors of its society were fully committed to Serbia at the time.

Interwar, or royal, Yugoslavia had many problems. Throughout the 1920’s, fiery debates raged about the 1921 Vidovdan Constitution, which established the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as a unitary state. The strongest opposition to the Karađjorđjević royal family—led at the time by King Alexander I—and the Radical Party emerged in Croatia. There, the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), led by Stjepan Radić, alternated between boycotting the government and participating in it. Radić was a fiery and mercurial figure who sought international assistance from various sources to curb Serbian power; in the late 1920’s, he even formed an alliance with the opposition.

Political Career

At the time of Račić’s political activity, a party called the Radicals predominated in both Montenegro and Serbia; Račić was a member of this party and also had connections to nationalist paramilitary organizations. On June 20, 1928, Račić, who had been elected to the Yugoslav assembly, or Skupština, the year before, pulled out a revolver in the middle of a heated political and personal exchange during a parliamentary session in Belgrade and began firing. He killed two members of the Croatian Peasant Party, including Radić’s nephew; he wounded two other people; and he fatally wounded Radić, who died on August 8. Račić fled the building but was later arrested and sentenced to house arrest in a nearby city.

Questions about Račić’s motives remain. He was close to the Serbian king and court, so some have speculated, though it is not proven, that he was acting under orders to kill Radić. Some wonder if he did so to provide an excuse for the king to shut down the democratic system; others wonder if it was his goal simply to remove Belgrade’s strongest opponent. Some radical Croats even believed that the killing of the three parliamentarians was proof of the regime’s intention to kill off the Croats as a people.

Impact

Račić’s act of assassination was significant in two ways. First, it punctuated the end of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes by paving the way for King Alexander to form a royal dictatorship, abrogate the constitution, and thoroughly reorganize the country’s ethnoterritorial units to perpetuate Serb rule. A more moderate leader named Vlatko Maček replaced Radić at the helm of the HSS, which remained strong but did not regain power until 1939. Second, the assassination reflected the turbulent nature of politics in the kingdom throughout the 1920’s. The level of mistrust between parties and nationalities had grown incredibly high, and conspiracy theories and actual plots and personal altercations in Parliament abounded. Amid the postassassination despair, the Croatian fascist organization known as the Ustaše was founded. The violence of the Ustaše and related groups would claim the life of King Alexander in 1934 and, aided by the Axis Powers after 1941, of hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs.

Račić was found during World War II by a military unit of the Partisans. Led by the communist Tito, the Partisans were the most effective resistance force in the Balkans and set up a new postwar Yugoslav state. The Partisans executed Račić as a terrorist of the old regime, and they then set about rehabilitating the idea of “brotherhood and unity” among the South Slavic peoples.

Further Reading

1 

Banac, Ivo. The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origin, History, Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. The magisterial work on the development of competing nationalist ideologies among the South Slavs, especially Serbs and Croats.

2 

Biondich, Mark. Stjepan Radić, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904-1928. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 2000. This political biography of Račić’s most famous victim explores the chaotic nature of interwar politics in Yugoslavia.

3 

Cox, John K. The History of Serbia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. This history of Serbia places the actions of Račić in long-range historical perspective by tracing the growth of the conflict between Serbs and Croats.

4 

Kulundžić, Zvonimir. Atentat na Stjepana Radića. Zagreb: Stvarnost, 1967. This exhaustive study is the main historical work in Serbo-Croatian on the assassinations carried out by Račić.

5 

Pavelić, Ante. “Adventures II: Ten Years of Struggle in the Homeland, 1918-1929.” Translation available online at http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/pavelic/ap0047.html. These self-serving memoirs by the founder of Croatia’s fascist movement (the Ustaše) are not reliable as history, but they do impart the tension, animosity, and paranoia that gripped Yugoslavia before and after Račić’s deed.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Cox, John K. "Puniša Račić." Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2007. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLN_1491.
APA 7th
Cox, J. K. (2007). Puniša Račić. In C. L. Bankston III (Ed.), Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Cox, John K. "Puniša Račić." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2007. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.