David Dimitrijevic

David Dimitrijević (Serbian Cyrillic: Давид Димитријевић; Gnjilane, Macedonia, then Ottoman Empire, 1874 (not 1883) - Skopje, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 23 April 1929) was an educator, national revolutionary and deputy.

Biography

Educational work

He was born in 1873 in Gnjilan, where he finished elementary school. As a fourth grade student at the Prizren Seminary, he was called to Skopje in 1891 by the then Serbian consul of Skopje, Vladimir Karić, because there was an urgent need for a teacher in the newly-opened school in the village of Klinovac in Preševska kaza, on the very border of Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. As a capable and brave teacher, Dimitrijević was sent by the Skopje Consulate and the Skopje Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate to the most sensitive places, where there was a danger for Serbian teachers from assassination by the VMRO committee. Until 1904, he worked as a teacher in Serbian schools in Bašino Selo near Veles, Zletovo and Kriva Palanka.

Participation in the Serbian Chetnik action

Activation of the Serbian Chetnik campaign in 1904/1905. He was the manager of the Serbian Veles schools. He significantly influenced Jovan Babunski, then a teacher in Veles, to defect to the Chetnik company. Due to Babunski's defiance, Dimitrijević was arrested, but he was released after the intervention of Serbian diplomacy. During the Serbian Chetnik campaign, he was one of the most important organizational workers. From 1906, he was publicly the manager of the Serbian schools in Kumanovo, and secretly the president of the Kumanovo committee of the Serbian Chetnik organization, under the code name Ljuborad. Because of his work with the companies, he was arrested in the same year and sentenced to eternal imprisonment, but he was soon pardoned to occupy the Russian diplomacy. In 1908, he became the president of the Central Board of the Serbian Chetnik organization in Skopje.

Cultural-political work

He participated in the work of the First Serbian Conference of Ottoman Serbs, in August 1908 in Skopje, after the Young Turk Revolution. Even before the conference, he was elected as a member of the Provisional Central Committee of the Ottoman Serbs, that is, the Serbian political organization in the Ottoman Empire. After the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire, he founded the Vardar newspaper in 1908, the organ of the Serbian national organization in the Ottoman Empire. Davidović led the paper until it was banned by the Turkish authorities in 1910, when he started the paper Zakonitost. In the same year as Vardar newspaper was being published, he founded the first Serbian printing house and bookstore in Skopje.

Wars and Liberation

He participated in the First World War with the Secretary of National Defense Milan Vasić. After the liberation, he lived in Skopje as a retired teacher. He was elected as a Skopje MP in 1925.

See also

• Serb Democratic League
• Bogdan Radenković,
• Đorđe Hadži-Kostić,
• Aleksandar Bukvic,
• Jovan Šantrić,
• Milan Čemerikić,
• Velimir Prelić,
• Sava Stojanovic
• Vasa Jovanović and
• Gliša Elezović

References

• Translated from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/%D0%94%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4_%D0%94%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B