Писмо једног разочараног чиновника Јовану Ристићу
The Letter of a Dissapointed Bureaucrat to Jovan Ristić

Summary/Abstract: Serious clashes between important social groups of one society, and changes in inner rings of power, often are first obvious signs of new order of values that would prevail in future. In Kingdom of Serbia this phenomena could be reached and better understood trough various and different symptoms in the last quarter of 19 Century. One of most common example was animosity and distrust that was raising high between officials of Serbian state police, and influential and politically connected Belgrade merchants, as typical representatives of new elite of financial magnates. Curiously enough, in direct confrontations between the “old elite” represented by state officials, and powerful Belgrade merchants, police authority was to become a victim of more sophisticated and potent plutocracy of Serbian capital. Those police officials who were unfortunate enough to act strictly by the letter of law, and tried to restrain financial and other misdeeds of economical elite, were usually treated as sacrificial goats. Being sent almost immediately to new positions in the provincial areas, far away from capital, they were deliberately degraded and publicly humiliated, to make an example for the other officials not to follow their steps. The document, published in this volume ofMiscellanea, is a private letter of one of the recently sanctioned police official, Jovan Militchevich, who wanted to clear his god name and to offer his side of a story to the most important political figure in Serbia, Jovan Ristich, in the year 1880. In the same time, the author is associating his personal misfortune with a wider picture of Serbian society, being sure that the rise of political power of wealthy will additionally weaken position of public officials as a group.

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