Stojan Protić

Stojan Protić ( Serbian Cyrillic Стојан Протић; born January 28, 1857 in Kruševac, Serbia, † October 28, 1923 in Belgrade ) was a Yugoslav politician. He served as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 1918-1919 and 1920.

Life

Protić studied history and philology at the University of Belgrade and worked for a short time in the government until he became a journalist and started working for the newspaper of the Serbian Radical Party, the Radical Party of Serbia. Although he was for a short time in prison, he got a job in 1884 at another newspaper. In 1887 he was elected to Parliament in 1888 and was involved in the drafting of the Serbian Constitution. Until 1897 he was re-elected regularly to the Parliament. After an attack on the former king of Serbia, Milan I, who ruled from 1868 to 1889, on July 7, 1899 by a member of the Radical Party, the followers of the Radical Party were persecuted. Protić was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to 20 years in a labor camp. In 1900 he was pardoned and elected the following year, again in parliament.

Policy

After 1903 he was promoted to the management level of the Radical Party, which he led together with Nikola Pašić and Lazar Pacu. Between 1903 and 1918 he spent four terms in office interior minister and two-term finance. After Austria - Hungary had issued an ultimatum in the July crisis in 1914 Serbia, the end of which triggered the First World War, Serbia Protić formulated the answer to this ultimatum.

After the war, a new state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed, became the Prime Minister Protić. His cabinet he recruited from all parts of the new state. Already on August 16, 1919, he resigned from this office, but was a few months later again from February to May 1920 as Prime Minister in the service. From 1920 on, he had also again until 1921 held a ministerial post when he advocated a moderate decentralization. He broke up with Nikola Pašić and left the Radical Party. He founded the Independent Radical Party, for which he took up also in the next parliamentary elections in 1923, but was not elected. He died later that year in Serbia.