Nenad Ninković
JAŠA TOMIĆ – POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY
For the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy, Jaša Tomić was one of the most significant political representatives in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. His political concepts, ideas and activities were of the essential significance to the understanding of the Serbian question in the Habsburg Monarchy. An uncompromising fighter, eloquent, sharp with his pen and his expression, Tomić did not spare his political opponents and rivals. From mid-1880s up to the Annexation in 1918, we can analyze hundreds of his political texts on the position of the Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Hungary, during the Hungarian Assembly, or texts about the Serbian National assembly as the most significant institution of the church-school autonomy. His relations towards the Church are especially significant. Having an uncompromising anticlerical view and being a convicted socialist, he caused a lot of damage to the reputation of the Metropolitanate in Sremski Karlovci which is proved by numerous pieces of evidence. His Serbian political concept that had been fully expressed during the Balkan wars, where he reported on daily basis, gave new spirit to the Serbs of the Habsburg Monarchy and awakened them again. The political Union/National Unity of the Serbs from the Habsburg Monarchy to the Kingdom of Serbia is the crown of his political career, which gained a symbolical meaning at that point – the fulfilling of the Serbian sacred thought that had been dreamed of for decades by the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy.
