Стојан Новаковић о Берлинском конгресу
Stojan Novaković about the Congress of Berlin

Summary/Abstract: Stojan Novaković adhered to his interpretations of the Congress of Berlin and the future of Serbia and Serbian people, until the beginning of the First World War. In some speeches in the Assembly, on the eve of the Balkan wars, as well as in some of his articles, he, daringly looking ahead and full of youthful zeal, explained his visions and defended his convictions about the future of Serbia and the Serbian people. It could be concluded all he wanted was to free Serbia from the damnation of the Congress of Berlin. He was turned to the future, but constantly looking in the past decades. He was still aware of the Golgotha of Serbia and the Serbian people from 1875, but he considered it an unavoidable experience and, at the first place, a serious warning. Liberation and unification of the Serbian people seemed to be finished, but it came out in a different way. Congress primarily fulfilled aspirations of the great powers, while Serbia had the worst possible times. Although Serbs thought only of revision of the Congress of Berlin, to correct the injustice, it came out that in 1908, they were the farthest from it than ever. The Great Powers solved the Bosnian question on the account of the Serbs. Annexation refuted all hopes that the powers could change. Novaković wrote these words on one occasion in 1908: ìIf anyone knew what awaited Serbs after the war for liberation 1876- 1878, they would never have started the uprisings in Bosnia in 1875, and a war with Turkey in 1876. Such a feeling only strengthened their conviction that another forms of solution of Serbian question should be sought. It was supported by more and more frequent voices saying that Austria-Hungary was to hold strongly spheres of the interest in the Western part of the Balkans and that the powers would not allow Serbia, nor any other Balkan state to widen its territories on the account of a possible dissolution of Turkey. Moreover, ItalianTurkish war of 1911 showed that the division of Turkey was to be completed excluding the Balkan states. It was on that very occasion when he addressed the National Assembly and spoke in favor of the Balkan Union, and thus solving of the Eastern question, and include a considerable part of the Serbian people into the Serbian state. On the eve of the Balkan war, in October 1912, Novaković would from the Assemblyís speakersí platform show the belief that the new alliance will take Serbia and the Serbian people to the ìbetter futureì. He was deeply convinced that it would correct a great injustice made by the Congress of Berlin to Serbia and the Serbian people.

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