Serbian Social Democratic Party Ssdp

Serbian Social Democratic Party (Ssdp) 

a political party formed in Belgrade on Aug. 2, 1903. The founding congress adopted the party rules and a program modeled after the Erfurt Program of the German Social Democratic Party.

In 1903-04 a struggle broke out within the SSDP between Marxists, led by R. Dragović and D. Tucović, and the opportunists, who insisted on the primacy of the economic struggle of the working class over the political struggle and on the hegemony of the trade unions. In December 1904 the opportunists were expelled from the party. In 1909-10 the Marxist wing fought against the anarcho-syndicalists. SSDP deputies were elected to the National Assembly (Skupŝtina) in 1903, in 1905-08, and in 1912-14. The SSDP participated in the conference of the Balkan Social Democratic parties convened in January 1910.

At the outbreak of World War I the Social Democratic deputies to the National Assembly refused to vote for war credits. The mobilization and the Austrian occupation of Serbia from October 1915 weakened the SSDP. During the revolutionary upswing that occurred in Serbia under the influence of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, the SSDP merged with the Socialist Workers’ Party of Yugoslavia (Communists) at the lat-ter’s first (Unification) Congress, held in April 1919.

REFERENCE

Srpska socijaldemokratska partija. Belgrade, 1966.

M. A. BIRMAN