Милован Миловановић - човек који је створио Балкански савез
Milovan Milovanovic – The Man Who Created the Balkan Alliance

Summary/Abstract: Milovan Milovanovic, today, a completely forgotten great Serbian statesman, radical champion and extraordinary diplomat, was born in Belgrade in 1863, into a fine, respected family. He did many useful things for his people and the state, but mainly the fact that he practically realized the almost impossible endeavor of creating the Balkan Alliance which brought Serbia significant territorial expansion in the Balkan wars, as well as freedom for a large number of Serbs and other people, requires his work to be studied and his name preserved in memory. Imagination, refinement and insisting on the implementation of political agreements and plans both secret and public, as a characteristic of his political style, did not enable him in the Serbia of that time to attain a large political arena, or to have a large number of collaborators reflecting the same views and qualities. That is why he made his career with reference to important political issues within a surprisingly narrow circle of people, regardless of their importance. Generally speaking, his methods of political activities were far more oriented to external diplomacy than to internal politics. Therefore Milovan Milovanovic made the right move when he first moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1891, and then, in 1894 he definitely turned his back on internal politics and dedicated himself fully to foreign affairs. Assessing the foreign policy plans and interests of all three major, and soon dying empires, ascertaining so- me interests as realistic, and some as unrealistic, Milovan Milovanovic searched not only to match the interests of Serbia with some of these, but he also sought the realistic possibility of actualizing these interests. The most compatible foreign-policy interest of one of these great powers with respect to Serbia was surely the interest of Russia to form several anti- Austro-Hungarian and anti- Turkish oriented states in the Balkans, which would be sufficiently cooperative, with Russia`s support, to gradually, but completely, to void the influence of Austro- Hungary and Turkey on strategic developments in South- East Europe. A relativism of ethics and actions in politics was for Milovanovic, as we can see from his political biography, not only something which was a “natural matter” from the aspect of theory, but also something very close to him. Positioning himself thus in the service of the people and the state he truly brought them many benefits, but if he had been, by an unfortunate stroke of luck, against them, it could be that he would have inflicted them as much evil. This was, in fact, what also aroused within his party associates constant suspicions concerning him and his patriotism. However, his writings and acts confirm exactly the opposite- that is, that he was a great and honest Serbian patriot, although perhaps dishonest with respect to certain political plans. For instance, he was dishonest in his „Yugoslav“ feeling, which he approached exclusively from the aspect of a momentary beneficial value, „for the benefit of Serbia“. Even when he opposed the conflict between Serbs and Croats, he did so because Serbs got nothing useful from this quarrel, and when he was advocating their unity it was because of the benefits, not because of „brotherly feelings“. His work „Serbs and Croats“ written in 1895 is characterized by real politics. In order for Serbs and Croats to unite, Austro- Hungary must dissolve first, concluded Milovan Milovanovic, but he immediately asked - can Serbia achieve this? And why Serbia at that? Why didn’t Croats start an uprising? If this wasn’t realistic, and it was not, why would it be realistic for small Serbia to wage a war with large Austro-Hungary and for what? What would its real interest be in doing this? What could both Serbs and Croats possibly gain at all from this „so- called uniting“, Milovan Milovanovic coldly calculated? Deprived of personalized political emotions, he also asked- how can that which is not the same be fully united? And if it is not fully united then it is loose- therefore the question arises, how long could this last at all? His next calculation follows from this- does it pay then, at the cost of a war with Austro-Hungary, to risk making something that does not have a permanent value? This and other considerations raised by Milovanovic, which more tended to quench rather than to stimulate in others the will for unification, were rightfully felt by sympathizers of „Yugoslavship“ as destructive to the idea and even dangerous.His attitude toward Russia was more than rational and sometimes even Macchiavelian. However, immediately after he started to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia he started to permanently view Russia as a potential defender of Serbia, but without any personal emotions – this starting from the fact that Russia always had an interest in supporting Bulgaria in the Balkans, while she supported Serbia only occassionally. In general, Milovan Milovanovic always put at the center of his political doctrine the „category of interests“, believing it the principal driving force of political actions both of individuals and states, while he thought emotions in politics superfluous, even dangerous, and he himself behaved in accordance with his political principles. For him the path to the Russian heart lead through an alliance with Bulgaria, and here he did not want to compete with Bulgaria for first place with the Russians, which in fact was attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, by numerous Serbian politicians, both before and after him, like Jovan Ristic, of whom he especially disapproved. Realizing that objectively Russia’s biggest interest was to support Bulgaria and that this could not be changed by the pure will of Serbia, he calmly asked the fervent Serbian Russophiles: „Is it so bad to be in second place with the Russians, especially if no other great power supports you?“ To be truthful though, Serbia was in third place of that imaginary list, since Montenegro had traditionally enjoyed the greatest sympathies of Russia in the Balkans, but Milovan Milovanovic knew that it did not have a geo- strategic importance for Russia such as Bulgaria had, and even as did Serbia, so that was probably why he never mentioned Montenegro in this context. A careful analysis of his attitudes on the Balkan Alliance will confirm that Milovanovic always treated and explained the alliance of Serbia with Bulgaria as a defensive alliance. That is why it is not strange that fearing the apetites of Austro-Hungary, Milovanovic in his study from 1898, „Serbs and Bulgarians“ saw the Serbian-Bulgarian agreement as only a protective means for the realization of Serbia`s goals in the south and south- east Balkans, and that he offered convincing arguments in favour of this thesis. Only when he became prime minister of the Serbian government in June 1911 was Milovanovic finally able to fulfill his goals, with some help from Russia. Connecting with Bulgaria established an alliance that was a powerful mechanism for breaking Turkey in the 1912 war, and therefore Milovanovic’s longterm political engagement in this field was one of the key factors for Serbian success in the First Balkan War.

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