Stjepan Radić, the Croat Peasant Party, and the politics of mass mobilization, 1904-1928 / Mark Biondich.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In 1904 Radic mobilized the peasantry into the Croatian Peasant Party that fought to reform Yugoslavia's centralist state system until his assassination in 1928 that ended the country's short democratic experience.

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CHOICE Review

This is a solid, well-written political biography of a key figure in the history of 20th-century Croatia. Stjepan Radic was an anomaly for a region where bourgeois intellectuals monopolized political culture. Raised in poverty in a remote rural community, he launched his crusade for peasant rights during the closing decades of the Habsburg empire. But Croatia's incorporation into the first, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia created new challenges that ended abruptly for Radic in 1928, with his assassination on the floor of the Yugoslav parliament. The author paints a nuanced portrait of a pacifist who was simultaneously an incorrigible agitator of a peasant advocate against urban elites who ultimately united the two in forging national unity and a committed nationalist who dreamed of a multiethnic, federal state and fought Serbian hegemony while reserving an equal place for them in Yugoslavia. The text analyzes Radic's every idea and action, but also examines the complexities of Croatian party politics, carefully explaining the position and appeal of various political parties and the men who led them. It is supplemented by helpful tables that break down the demographic and electoral data. Graduate students and faculty. C. Ingrao; Purdue University