Jovan Rašković

Jovan Rašković
Rašković in Chicago, September 1990
1st President of the Serb Democratic Party
In office 17 February 1990 – December 1990
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Milan Babić
Personal details
Born	5 July 1929 Knin, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Died	29 July 1992 (aged 63) Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
Political party	Serb Democratic Party in Croatia
Children	Sanda Rašković Ivić
Alma mater	University of Zagreb
Profession	Psychiatrist
Religion	Serbian Orthodox Christian

Jovan Rašković (Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [jǒʋan râʃkoʋit͡ɕ], Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Рашковић; 5 July 1929 – 29 July 1992) was a Croatian Serb psychiatrist, academic and politician.

Biography

Rašković was born in Knin in 1929. During World War II, after an Ustaše pogrom which resulted in the deaths of his relatives, he was exiled to Kistanje in the Italian-occupied Dalmatia. He passed his secondary school exams in Šibenik, and graduated in Zagreb. He then studied electrical engineering and medicine at the University of Zagreb, where he obtained his diploma and a PhD from the university's medical school.

In the 1960s, he served as director of Šibenik city hospital and later director of the medical center. He was one of the founders of the Medical Research Institute of Neurophysiology in Ljubljana. Rašković was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Academy of Medical Sciences of Croatia, as well as a member of a number of psychiatry associations in the United States, the former Czechoslovakia, and Italy. He was a university professor in Zagreb and Ljubljana, and a visiting professor at the universities of Pavia, Rome, Houston and London. In early 1990, Rašković went into politics and founded the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), which took part in first democratic elections. He noticed that there was no equivalent party in Bosnia and Herzegovina and contacted Radovan Karadžić, a colleague, to suggest he establish one.

Although the SDS won relatively few seats in the 1990 elections, it quickly began to increase its power and Rašković was soon perceived as a leader of Serbs by Franjo Tuđman and his new government. This led to direct negotiations between the two about the future of Serb minority in Croatia. During one of those negotiations Rašković remarked that the "Serbs were crazy people". Tuđman's chief political advisor Slaven Letica had those words secretly taped and leaked the transcript to Croatian media in a hope to discredit Rašković among his people and thus replace him with someone more acceptable to Croatian government. This proved to be disastrous miscalculation - instead of rejecting Rašković, many Croatian Serbs lost any trust in Croatian government and embraced extremism that would ultimately lead to armed conflict. Later in 1990, Rašković was removed from power by "more radical, hard-line Serb nationalists" who went on to create the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Rašković retired from politics in 1991, following the Plitvice Lakes incident.^[1]

Death

Rašković died in Belgrade from a heart attack on 29 July 1992 at the age of 63, and is buried in Belgrade's Alley of Distinguished Citizens.^[1]

References

1. Jovan Rašković profile, by Jovan Keser, Večernje novosti, 5–19 September 2007.

External links

• Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts biography (Serbian)