Svetozar Delic
Encyclopedia
Svetozar Delić was the first communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 mayor of Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

. Although he is known for his work in the early Yugoslav communist organization "Napred," Delić is mostly recognized for being the mayor with the shortest term in the history of Zagreb. His term lasted only three days before Delić was fired and another three days before he was expelled from city hall
City hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall or a municipal building or civic centre, is the chief administrative building of a city...

.

Personal life

Svetozar Delić was born to Tomo and Franciska Delić née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...

 Hula. He attended a realschule
Realschule
The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...

 in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

 and graduated in 1905. He was not accepted to the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

 so he became a clerk
White-collar worker
The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...

 at the Zagreb County
Zagreb County
Zagreb County is a county in central Croatia. It surrounds – but does not contain – the nation's capital Zagreb, which is a separate territorial unit. For that reason, it is often nicknamed "Zagreb ring"...

 Workers' Insurance Fund. This job motivated him to become a communist as he noticed the social stratification
Social stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...

 in favor of the wealthy.

Delić was married on May 11, 1913 to Paulina Wallner, an Evangelical Catholic from Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. He had two children, one of whom, Dr. Svetozar Delić, fought in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 for the partisans
Partisans (Yugoslavia)
The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...

.

Work in "Napred"

Upon becoming a resident of Zagreb in 1910, Delić, together with Josip Cimermančić, became involved in the work of the recently formed communist organization, "Napred," becoming one of its first 50 members. During this time, the organization started to flourish and became more involved in Zagreb politics, increasing the number of its members 18-fold and its financial capital
Financial capital
Financial capital can refer to money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or provide their services or to that sector of the economy based on its operation, i.e. retail, corporate, investment banking, etc....

 by almost 200 times between 1914 and 1919. This advance is astonishing, because it occurred during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 in an area heavily influenced by famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

, bombardment
Bombardment
A bombardment is an attack by artillery fire directed against fortifications, troops or towns and buildings.Prior to World War I the term term was only applied to the bombardment of defenceless or undefended objects, houses, public buildings, it was only loosely employed to describe artillery...

, and other war-time problems. Delić rose to a high-ranking position in the organization, becoming heavily involved in its marketing in the Zagreb newspapers Novosti
Novosti
Russian International News Agency ' is a Russian state-owned news agency based in the capital Moscow.-Overview:The agency publishes news and information about social-political, economic, scientific and financial subjects on the Internet and via e-mail in the main European languages, as well as in...

and Sloboda
Sloboda
Sloboda was a kind of settlement in the history of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be vaguely translated as "free settlement"....

to attract new members. He also took loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....

s to increase the stability and capital of the organization. Contrary to the trend toward recession then present in the aftermath of the war, organization "Napred" had bought over 36 million krone
Austro-Hungarian krone
The Krone or korona was the official currency of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1892 until the dissolution of the empire in 1918...

s worth of various products.

The three-day mayor

On March 21, 1920, city council
City council
A city council or town council is the legislative body that governs a city, town, municipality or local government area.-Australia & NZ:Because of the differences in legislation between the States, the exact definition of a City Council varies...

 elections were held. The emerging Socialist Workers' Party of Yugoslavia (communists), SRPJ(k) (renamed the very next year to become the Communist Party of Yugoslavia), attracted votes all over Croatia and the rest of Yugoslavia. In Zagreb the party received 7,011 out of 17,852 votes cast. Although the voters constituted less than a sixth of Zagreb's population, SRPJ(k) won 20 seats in the city council and was entitled to elect the city mayor. A large crowd of more than 50,000 people from Zagreb and its surroundings gathered on the Ban Jelačić Square
Ban Jelacic Square
Ban Jelačić Square is the central square of the city of Zagreb, Croatia, named after ban Josip Jelačić. The official name is Trg bana Jelačića...

 and Saint Mark's Square
St. Mark's Square, Zagreb
St. Mark's Square is a square located in the old part of Zagreb, Croatia, called Gradec or Gornji grad .In the center of square is located St. Mark's Church. The square also sports important governmental buildings: Banski dvori , Croatian Parliament and Constitutional Court of Croatia. On the...

 to find out the result of the elections and later celebrate the win of SRPJ(k).

The next day, Svetozar Delić was chosen as president of the SRPJ(k) delegates in the city council. Two weeks later, in early April, Delić gave a speech directed against the opponents of communism, accusing them of restricting the freedoms of the general population. The mayoral elections were conducted on April 16, 1920 by the two-round voting system
Two-round system
The two-round system is a voting system used to elect a single winner where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate...

. Svetozar Delić and Stjepan Srkulj, the mayor whose term just ended, each failed to get more than 50%, but managed to get into the second round. The second round was won by Delić with 27 votes against Srkulj's 14.

The ruling Serbian Karađorđević dynasty perceived rising communism and the elections of numerous communist mayors such as Delić all over the country as a threat to the monarchy and ordered measures to be taken to prevent them from gaining influence in politics. The following day, on April 17, the ban
Ban (title)
Ban was a title used in several states in central and south-eastern Europe between the 7th century and the 20th century.-Etymology:The word ban has entered the English language probably as a borrowing from South Slavic ban, meaning "lord, master; ruler". The Slavic word is probably borrowed from...

 Matko Laginja
Matko Laginja
Matko Laginja , was a Croatian lawyer and politician.He earned a doctorate in law in Graz...

 barred all public and city hall meetings according to an old 1875 law. At 9 a.m. on April 18, Delić received a phone call from the ban's advisor Dragutin Tončić, relieving him of his duty and disbanding the city council. Delić requested a written notification in an attempt to make his term longer, although his fate was already sealed. Later that day the Regional Government sent Delić a written notice of Tončić's takeover. Delić refused to cooperate.

Termination

The next day, Delić was relieved of duties and his pay was suspended. A criminal procedure was started against him and other SRPJ(k) delegates, but that did not convince him to leave the city hall. His first act that day was to notify other delegates of the dismissal of the scheduled April 22 meeting, which was supposed to be the first meeting of the newly formed city council. However, Delić later re-scheduled and held the meeting on April 22. The meeting was held under a siege by gendarmerie
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

 and army troops surrounding the building, as Delić locked himself and 27 present councilmen inside, trying to perform mayoral duties while under suspension. The quorum
Quorum
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly necessary to conduct the business of that group...

 was confirmed to be met and the minutes
Minutes
Minutes, also known as protocols, are the instant written record of a meeting or hearing. They typically describe the events of the meeting, starting with a list of attendees, a statement of the issues considered by the participants, and related responses or decisions for the issues.Minutes may be...

 were signed, but nothing else could have been accomplished before officer VragovićIncidentally, vrag in Croatian language
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

 means "devil".
and his 30 men broke into the city hall and arrested Delić and all attending councilmen. Even at six days, Delić's term is the shortest term in the history of Zagreb mayors.

On the following day, April 23, public protests were held to convince the government to return Delić, but they failed and Dragutin Tončić became the new mayor. A few months later, Tončić yielded power to a new, politically neutral, mayor, Vjekoslav Heinzel
Vjekoslav Heinzel
Vjekoslav Heinzel was the Mayor of Zagreb from 1920 to 1928. He is best remembered for great development projects of the 1920s that significantly expanded the city....

, who would retain office for the following eight years.

See also

  • Ban of the Communist party of Yugoslavia
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