Ivan Lorković (Croatian pronunciation:[ǐʋanlǒːrkoʋit͡ɕ]; 17 June 1876 – 24 February 1926)[1] was a Croatianpolitician from Zagreb who was a prominent member of the Croat-Serb coalition, a supporter of the Republican organization, and a member of the United Croatian and Serbian academic youth organization. He was the leader of the Croatian Federalist Peasant Party from 1926 to 1929.
Biography
Between 1902 and 1905, Ivan Lorković was the editor of the Osijek opposition newspaper, National Defense (Croatian: Narodna Obrana).[1][2] The paper's goal was to help the middle class and youth of the Osijek region to think politically. In 1905, he became one of the co-founders of the Croatian National Progressive Party (Hrvatska narodna napredna stranka, NNS).[citation needed]
In 1914, Lorković visited Rome to attend a meeting that included politicians from all South Slavic lands within the Monarchy. He arrived with a controversial memorandum on how to break the Austro-Hungarian Empire and preserve the continuation of Croatian statehood. [citation needed] His proposal met with opposition, most notably from Thomas G. Masaryk (founder and first president of the State of Czechoslovakia), who was skeptical of the plan since he did not believe that Britain and France would accept the idea of the total abrogation of the Empire, and therefore was in favor of a confederation.[3]
In 1918, due to disagreements over the Yugoslav issue, Lorković left the Croatia-Serb coalition and joined the newly founded Croatian Union political party in 1919. Along with Stjepan Radić and others, he entered the Croatian Bloc (Croatian: Hrvatski blok), formed on 14 January 1922, when the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, the Croatian Union, and the Party of Rights formed a coalition. It existed until November of that year.
On 13 September 1925, at a conference of Croatian Union representatives and dissidents from the Croatian Peasant Party in Split, the Croatian People's Federalist Union was founded. On 11 January 1926, the Croatian Federalist Peasant Party was founded in Zagreb and Lorković became the head of its Presidency.[4] Following the 1928 assassination of Stjepan Radić, the party started to support the opposition Peasant-Democratic Coalition.[5] As part of the 6 January Dictatorship, the party was formally banned on 20 January 1929.[6]