Democratic Party (Serbia)
The Democratic Party is a social-democratic and social-liberal political party in Serbia. It is the fifth largest party in the National Assembly; the Democratic Party is a full member of the Socialist International, the Progressive Alliance, is an associate member of the Party of European Socialists. The party was founded on 3 February 1990 by a group of Serbian intellectuals as a revival of the original Yugoslav Democratic Party, it was one of the main opposition parties to the presidency of Slobodan Milošević during the 1990s. Democratic Party joined the Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition in 2000, became part of the new coalition government after the 2000 parliamentary election. Zoran Đinđić president of the Democratic Party, became the Prime Minister of Serbia in January 2001, but was assassinated in 2003, the Party lost the power at the parliamentary election that year. New president of the Democratic Party, Boris Tadić, won the 2004 presidential election, the party returned to power after the 2007 and 2008 parliamentary elections.
Tadić was reelected in 2008, but in 2012 he lost the 2012 presidential and the party lost the parliamentary elections, so it went back into opposition again. Dragan Đilas, then-Mayor of Belgrade was elected as new party president after the loss of the 2012 elections. After more disappointing results in the 2014 election, Bojan Pajtić, then-President of the Government of Vojvodina, replaced Đilas as the party president. In 2016 he was succeeded by Dragan Šutanovac. After Šutanovac resigned in 2018, Zoran Lutovac was elected new president of the Party. On 11 December 1989, a group of Serbian intellectuals held a press conference announcing the revival of the Democratic Party, which had existed in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia before it was banned by the communists following World War II, they included anti-communist dissidents and liberal academics, well-known poets and film and theatre directors, who all came together in December 1989 to begin the process of re-establishing the Democratic Party, to be the first opposition, non-communist political party in Serbia since 1945.
Some were attracted to politics by what they perceived to be the unsatisfactory national position of ethnic Serbs and Serbia as a constituent republic within the Yugoslav federation, while others felt that activity in a political party could help address the perceived deteriorating state of democracy and human rights in SFR Yugoslavia. Up to that point in time, the former acted through the Serbian Writers Association while the latter channeled their activities through the Social Sciences Institute and the Philosophy Club. Sprinkled throughout the newly assembled group were some surviving members of the pre-World War II party. Though the grip of the Communist League, the only constitutionally allowed party in Yugoslavia's one-party political system, was not nearly as strong as it once was, DS members still feared the authorities' reaction to the party's creation; the first public proclamation of the Founding Committee was made on 11 December 1989 at a press conference held in Belgrade where the members publicly declared their intention to re-establish the Democratic Party, banned by the communists in 1945.
The Founding Committee called upon all democratically minded citizens to join them in this endeavour. There were thirteen signatories to the initial proclamation made by the members of the Founding Committee setting out their intention to initiate the re-establishment of the Democratic Party: Kosta Čavoški, Milovan Danojlić, Zoran Đinđić, Gojko Đogo, Vladimir Gligorov, Slobodan Inić, Marko Janković, Vojislav Koštunica, Dragoljub Mićunović, Borislav Pekić, Miodrag Perišić, Radoslav Stojanović, Dušan Vukajlović. Over the following weeks nine other prominent intellectuals joined the thirteen initiators as members of the Founding Committee, they all worked together towards re-establishing the Democratic Party by drafting the first party political program and making preparations for the founding party conference. By the end of December 1989, the Founding Committee included: Vida Ognjenović, Ljubomir Tadić, Mirko Petrović, Đurđe Ninković, Nikola Milošević, Aleksandar-Saša Petrović, Aleksandar Ilić, Vladan Vasilijević, Zvezdana Popović.
In the first two weeks of January the Founding Committee drafted the political program of the soon to be re-established Democratic Party, published on 18 January 1990 as the "Pismo o namerama" to inform the public of the democratic principles and policies which the Democratic Party would pursue. The Letter of Intent was signed by all the 22 Members of the Founding Committee. Throughout January 1990 the Founding Committee worked on publicising the party's proposed political program and its democratic aims, it worked on gathering potential party members to ensure a successful founding conference. It organised the founding conference of the renewed Democratic Party on 3 February 1990 at which the party was formally re-established by several hundred founder members, including former members from the 1940s and a younger generation of new members. At the founding conference the founder members elected the party President, the Executive and General Committees tasked with running the party. Following the founding conference the party started establishing local committees and networks throughout Serbia.
However, the Democratic Party was an illegal organisation until late spring of 1990 when it was given permission to be formally registered as a political party by the Communist regime. At that time the party newspa
Miloš Obrenović
Miloš Obrenović born Miloš Teodorović was Prince of Serbia from 1815 to 1839, again from 1858 to 1860. He participated in the First Serbian Uprising, led Serbs in the Second Serbian Uprising, founded the House of Obrenović. Under his rule, Serbia became an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire. Prince Miloš ruled autocratically. During his rule, he was one of the richest in the Balkans. Miloš Teodorović was the son of Teodor "Teša" Mihailović from Dobrinja, Višnja; this was the second marriage of his mother Višnja, from which sprung Jovan and Jevrem. From Višnja's first marriage, with Obren Martinović from Brusnica, Miloš had half-brothers Jakov and Milan, half-sister Stana. After the death of Obren, Višnja married Teodor in Dobrinja. After the death of his brother Milan, a famed revolutionary with great reputation among the people, Miloš adopted the surname Obrenović. In official documents, his name was sometimes written Miloš Teodorović Obrenović. Miloš fought in the First Serbian Uprising until its end in 1813.
His half-brother Milan took part in the Uprising, rising to become the vojvoda of the Rudnik district, until his death in 1810. After Milan's death, Miloš adopted the surname of his half-brother, Obrenović; this name was the patronymic which his half-brother derived from Obren, the first name of his own father. After the rebellion collapsed, Miloš was among the few of its leaders that remained in Serbia to face the returning Ottomans. In April 1815, Prince Miloš led the Second Serbian Uprising. After defeating the Turks, Napoleon's defeat in Russia, the Turks agreed to the terms of the agreement from 1815. After the killing of Karađorđe Petrović, in 1817, Obrenović became the leader of the Serbs; as a result of the agreement, Serbia remained under Ottoman sovereignty. Miloš Obrenović was left in power as its absolute ruler. Between the end of 1828 and the autumn of 1830, Prince Miloš created a so-called "legislative commission" to translate the Code Napoléon into Serbian and codify the laws and customs of the country.
After discussing the commission, Miloš invited two distinguished legal specialists to come from Hungary to prepare a more suitable criminal and civil code of laws for Serbia. They were Vasilije Lazarević, Bürgermeister of Zemun, Jovan Hadžić, lawyer and member of the municipal senate of Novi Sad. In January 1831, Prince Miloš informed a great national assembly that he had obtained an imperial edict from the Sultan ending all direct obligations of Serbian peasants to their former Turkish lords, guaranteeing Ottoman recognition of Serbian autonomy in most matters of internal administration, offering Serbia the prospect of territorial aggrandizement, as well as the express right to institute schools, a governmental administration of her own; the Sultan's decrees of 1830 and 1833 expanded the same rights to a larger territory, made Serbia a sovereign principality, with Miloš Obrenović as hereditary prince. A Metropolitanate of Serbia was established in Belgrade as an autonomous unit of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Russia's status as the guarantor of Serbia's autonomy was recognized. The supporters of the rule of law rebelled against Miloš's government. Following one such rebellion, he agreed to adopt a constitution, the Sretenje or Candlemas constitution, in 1835; the move was opposed by the ruling Ottoman Empire and Russia. It is believed that the three great empires saw the constitution as a danger to their own autocratic systems of government. Metternich's Austria ridiculed the fact that Serbia had its own flag and foreign ministry. Miloš abolished the constitution at the demand of Russia and Turkey, it was replaced by the "Turkish" Constitution of 1838. Miloš abdicated in 1839 in favor of his sons—Milan, who died a few weeks and Mihailo, who became prince. Mihailo was deposed in 1842, the family was out of power until 1858, when it returned with Miloš restored as prince for the last two years of his life. Miloš Obrenović was given the epithet the Great, he was proclaimed Father of the Fatherland by the National Assembly.
Austria: Order of the Iron Crown, Knight 1st Class Greece: Order of the Redeemer, Grand Cross Ottoman Empire: Nişan-ı Zişan Portrait of the Sultan with Jewels Portrait of the Sultan with Jewels Russia: Order of St. Anna with Crown, 1st Class Order of St. Anna with brilliants, 2nd Class Order of the White Eagle In 1805, Miloš married Ljubica Vukomanović; the couple had eight children. It is speculated that Ljubica had other pregnancies that resulted in miscarriages, stillbirths, or children who died shortly after birth, with some sources giving a number as high as 17 pregnancies. Prince Petar Princess Petrija Princess Savka Prince Milan Prince Mihailo Princess Marija Prince Todor Prince Gabriel Stojančević, Vladimir. "Политички погледи кнеза Милоша Обреновића". Историјски часопис. Научно дело. 9–10: 345–362. Cunibert, Barthélemy Sylvestre. Srpski ustanak i prva vladavina Miloša Obrenovića: 1804–1850. Vol. 96. Štamparija D. Dimitrijevića, 1901. Krestić, Nikola Petrović. Protokol kneza Miloša Obrenov
Tsarigrad Road
The Tsarigrad Road called the Road to Istanbul, Imperial Road, Moravian Road, or Great Road, was one of the most important roads in the Middle Ages on the Balkan Peninsula. Its forerunner was the Roman Via Militaris, prior to that, still older pre-antique traffic that took place along this route. Many passed in both directions along what was to be the Tsarigrad Road: units and military formations came to pillage and kill, or to defend, or to conquer new frontiers; the mission of the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia to Christianize the Slavs passed along the same road. The foundations of the most significant Balkan communication line, the Tsarigrad Road, were laid in Roman times; the Romans made a network of solid roads across their entire empire, so that in 33CE the Via Militaris, was constructed, a military road that led from Singidunum, by the valley of the Margus, through Naissa and Serdica, to Asia Minor. The Roman road was 9 strides wide, surfaced with large polygonal tiles or with sand, ran in straight segments, with stone bridges and milestones.
Along the way were stations for changing horses and staying overnight arranged to be reachable from the last station by a day’s walking. This route was the most natural and the shortest, but during the Byzantine and Slavic epochs it was abandoned and neglected, so that merchant caravans and delegations, for a series of centuries after the fall of the Roman state and before the arrival of the Turks in the area, used a route through Prva Kutina through Radikina Bara and Jagličje, through Preslap beneath Mount Mosor, Toponica, Špaj, Vrgudinac in the direction of modern Bela Palanka. Along the old antique route passed only larger military divisions or travelers and caravans that were defended by a larger armed escort; this variant of the route leading to Istanbul was discovered by the Turks at the end of the fifteenth century or the start of the sixteenth, it led through Banja, Jelašnica, Studen, thereafter through Bancarevo, Popov Šah, Špaj, Vrgudinac to modern Bela Palanka. The road was damaged.
The Turks repaired it for the use of their military forces, but this new road, filled in with gravel and small stones, was torturous and hard for traveling because of mud. Many travel writers described the difficulty of extracting oneself from the mire on the Moravian Road. Besides military forces, caravans most moved along the road, full of various wares, various official delegations, the occasional world traveler. Travel was undertaken on foot, on horses, in carriages, but it was dangerous. From the dense forest hajduks prowled — dangerous were the ones found at Lipar by Jagodina and at Kunovica beyond Niš; the trip from Belgrade to Niš lasted 40 hours, not accounting for sleeping. On some of the more dangerous sections, some villages were tasked with guarding the passages. In some places small fortifications were constructed, sometimes in convenient places, such as Niš, a caravanserai in which travelers could dismount. In some villages and places horses were exchanged or trade was conducted, etc.
Among the natural obstacles on the road were the forests and the hajduks. On that basis, some villages were required to cut trees along the road; the tasks of repair and maintenance of the Tsarigrad Road were given to villages, or, in times of military campaigns, to craftsmen and workers. Guided by the religious and practical needs of the Turks, they raised fountains or built wells by the roadside wherever it was convenient or necessary. On the road oxen, carriages chariots, camels were used for traffic. Besides oxen and horses and mules were used, as riding animals donkeys. For their needs, merchants, military units and ulaks, foreign and Turkish delegations and religious missions and devşirme children, bearers of wares and money, etc. used the Tsarigrad Road. In 1862, Midhat Pasha re-established the antique road through Kunovica on the plateau of Ploče; the road further passed through the southwestern part of the Bela Palanka Basin to Bela Palanka, thence through Ciganski Klanac, past Starčev Han, Kruš, the Hajduk Fountain, through Šumje to Pirot.
Midhat Pasha fortified it with strong watchtowers. A straightened route was used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all the way until 1964, when a part of the old route was introduced in the Sićevo Gorge as the Nišavska Highway. On the basis of projects that were made at the end of the twentieth century, a new highway with more lanes is intended to again return to Ploče; the remnants of the Tsarigrad Road at the end of the twentieth century can be discerned here and there during archaeological work or accidentally. Information about it can be found in toponymy, in scant literature, in legends, in scientific research. Upon the construction of a railroad in 1884 in the Morava valley, the Tsarigrad Road lost its significance, after the construction of a mod
Vehicle registration plates of Serbia
Vehicle registration plates of Serbia are issued using a two-letter region code, followed by three or four-digit numeric and a two-letter alpha license code, separated by a hyphen. The regional code and the license code are separated by the Serbian shield and a Cyrillic letter combination for the region below. A blue field is placed along the left side edge, as in European Union countries, bearing the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code for Serbia. License numeric code contains combination of three digits, while two letter alpha code is made of combination of letters using Serbian Latin alphabet order, with addition of letters X, Y and W; the standard dimensions of a Serbian license plates are 520.5 × 112.9 mm. Issuance of current license plates started on January 1, 2011 and they will be used alongside the old ones during the transitional period until the end of 2011. Following are the license plate codes by region in Serbian Cyrillic alphabetical order: Serbia has numerous special license plates.
Agriculture plates consist of regional code, Serbian shield, two numbers and three serial letters on lower side. Moped plates have two-letter regional code, Serbian shield, numbers. Trailer plates have a reversed format of the civilian license plates with serial letter first, Serbian shield and numbers and regional code at the end. Taxi plates have identical format of the civilian license plates with regional code first, Serbian shield and numbers and TX as serial letters. Military plates have one letter, an emblem of Serbian armed forces, four numbers. Police and fire service plates have letter П, Serbian shield, six numbers. Vehicles operated by foreign embassies, consulates and diplomatic staff and various international organizations have been given plates with a distinguishing format of two numbers, one letter, three numbers, e.g. 12-L-456. Vehicle owned by a diplomat or by accredited non-diplomatic staff carry a plate with characters printed in yellow on a black background while the vehicle owned by a foreign press agency, a foreign cultural representative or by an office of a foreign company and/or its staff, has plates with characters printed in black on a yellow background The first group of three numbers identifies the country or organization to which the plate has been issued, the second group of three numbers is a serial number.
The letter in the middle is denoting the status of the owner. Additionally, plates have vertically orientated two-letter initials in small letters on the left side indicating the city in which they were issued and two numbers on the right side indicating the year for which they are valid. Portal posvećen registraciji vozila Registracija vozila "Nove tablice od 2011, cena 40 evra". B92. Beta, Blic. 2010-09-30. Retrieved 2010-11-10. Pravilnik o registraciji motornih i priključnih vozila Car Transport in Serbia
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm. Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.
Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the borders of the empire evolved over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries; the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, when it lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arab caliphate. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence, its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire; the last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond. The first use of the term "Byzantine" to label the years of the Roman Empire was in 1557, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources.
The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantine's capital. This older name of the city would be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts; the publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world; the Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans", "Romania", the "Roman Republic", as "Rhōmais". The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and as late as the 19th century Greeks referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic." After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was confined to its purely Greek provinces the term'Hellenes' was used instead. While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its predominant Greek element.
The occasional use of the term "Empire of the Greeks" in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Emperor as Imperator Graecorum were used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new kingdoms of the West. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known as Rûm; the name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire
Justinian I
Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was the Eastern Roman emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire. Justinian's rule constitutes a distinct epoch in the history of the Later Roman empire, his reign is marked by the ambitious but only realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire"; because of his restoration activities, Justinian has sometimes been known as the "last Roman" in mid 20th century historiography. This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire, his general, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths; the prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania.
These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empire's annual revenue by over a million solidi. During his reign, Justinian subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before, he engaged the Sasanian Empire in the east during Kavad I's reign, again during Khosrow I's. A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, still the basis of civil law in many modern states, his reign marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia. Justinian was born in Tauresium, around 482. A native speaker of Latin, he came from a peasant family believed to have been of Illyro-Roman or Thraco-Roman origins; the cognomen Iustinianus, which he took is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace, which today is in South East Serbia.
His mother was the sister of Justin. Justin, in the imperial guard before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople, ensured the boy's education; as a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence and Roman history. Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown. Chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, tells of his appearance that he was short, fair skinned, curly haired, round faced and handsome. Another contemporary chronicler, compares Justinian's appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is slander; when Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, with significant help from Justinian. During Justin's reign, Justinian was the emperor's close confidant. Justinian showed much ambition, it has been thought that he was functioning as virtual regent long before Justin made him associate emperor on 1 April 527, although there is no conclusive evidence of this.
As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler. Justinian was appointed consul in 521 and commander of the army of the east. Upon Justin's death on 1 August 527, Justinian became the sole sovereign; as a ruler, Justinian showed great energy. He was known as "the emperor" on account of his work habits, he seems to have been amiable and easy to approach. Around 525, he married Theodora, in Constantinople, she was by some twenty years his junior. In earlier times, Justinian could not have married her owing to her class, but his uncle, Emperor Justin I, had passed a law allowing intermarriage between social classes. Theodora would become influential in the politics of the Empire, emperors would follow Justinian's precedent in marrying outside the aristocratic class; the marriage caused a scandal, but Theodora would prove to be a shrewd judge of character and Justinian's greatest supporter. Other talented individuals included his legal adviser. Justinian's rule was not universally popular.
Justinian recovered. Theodora died in 548 at a young age of cancer. Justinian, who had always had a keen interest in theological matters and participated in debates on Christian doctrine, became more devoted to religion during the years of his life; when he died on 14 November 565, he left no children, though his wife Theodora had given birth to a stillborn son several years into his reign. He was succeeded by Justin II, the son of his sister Vigilantia and married to Sophia, the niece of Empress Theodora. Justinian's body was entombed in a specially built mausoleum in the Church of the
Lešje
Lešje is a village in the municipality of Paraćin, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the village has a population of 422 people
Serbia
Eleftherio-Kordelio, Greece
Murska Sobota, Slovenia
Jablanica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
