Marko Došen

Marko Došen (7 July 1859 – 7 September 1944) was a Croatian politician.

Born in Mušaluk (now part of Gospić), Došen finished elementary school in Lika and one grade of gymnasium in Bjelovar. He entered into trade, but in 1890 moved to Russia where he opened a bookstore in Saint Petersburg. Together with a Russian historian he published the book Hrvati i njihova borba s Austrijom (Croats and their battle with Austria). He returned to Gospić in 1893 and the following year started his weekly Hrvat which he edited for ten years. He was a member of Starčević's Party of Rights in the Croatian Parliament from 1913-18.

After 1918 he was a member of the Croatian Republican Peasant Party (HRSS). He was elected into the national assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1920, 1923 and 1925.

After the Pašić - Radić agreement in 1925 he ended his association with Radić's HRSS. After King Alexander declared a royal dictatorship on January 6, 1929, Došen became a member of the Ustaša - Croatian revolutionary organization. He was an organizer of the Velebit Uprising in 1932. After the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia he returned to the country. In 1942 he became the president of the Croatian Parliament. Although the Parliament only met a few times within the first year, he retained his position as its president until his death.

Despite his age and poor health, Došen led a group of Parliament members which submitted a memorandum to Ante Pavelić on 30 November 1942, in which they expressed their critique of foreign and domestic policy of NDH. In a memorandum they criticized the Treaties of Rome and the demographic destruction of the Croatian people in Dalmatia, required the solution of the question of Dalmatia and the Croatian coast, warned on corruption and incompetence in the administration and illegal actions in concentration camps and a general feeling of legal uncertainty.

They demanded a reorganization and new composition of the Parliament, improvement of administration and military, releasing from Concentration camps all of those that were unjustly imprisoned and further imprisonment only on basis of due process. Pavelić reacted with repression and dissolved the Parliament in December of the same year, but Došen still kept title of President of the Parliament. In 1944, he was appointed Croatian knight.

Marko Došen died in September 1944 at the age of 85. He was buried at the Mirogoj cemetery with full military and state honors.