Main Board for Serb Liberation
| Formation | December 1871–January 1872 |
|---|---|
| Type | secret revolutionary organization |
| Purpose | Liberation and unification of Serb-inhabited territories in the Ottoman Empire to the Principality of Serbia. |
| Location | |
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Key people
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Jevrem Marković |
The Main Board for Serb Liberation (Serbian: Главни одбор за српско ослобођење/Glavni odbor za srpsko oslobođenje) was a Serb revolutionary organization, a secret society, founded in 1871, based in Kragujevac, Principality of Serbia. It sought the liberation and unification of Serb-inhabited territory in the Ottoman Empire.
In 1871, the Association for Serb Liberation and Unification was founded by members of the United Serbian Youth and other patriots from all over the Yugoslav lands. The "Association" established boards in Cetinje, Novi Sad, and Belgrade. Parallelly, the "Main Board" (Glavni odbor) existed in Kragujevac. This organization was founded in 1871, and was active from the beginning of 1872. It was specially established for Šumadija to work on plans for an uprising. Kragujevac was the most sophisticated of the provincial Serbian cities, and had an intelligentsia second only to Belgrade. The city was also a center of opposition, and in the early 1870s a group of oppositionists gathered around socialist Jevrem Marković. Among notable members of the Main Board for Serb Liberation were artillerist Sava Grujić, artillerist Pavle Šafarik, officer Radomir Putnik, merchant Jaša Marković, Jevrem Marković (the main initiator), and others.
Milivoje Blaznavac, the leader of the Serbian Regency, a legitimist and political conservatist, decidedly refused proposals and plans of the United Serbian Youth, regarding the organization's project unrealistic and impracticable; that Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) was still strong and that Russia was against an uprising in the Balkans, and that the organization also had subversive intent against the regency. Blaznavac and Jovan Ristić were alarmed by the establishment of the revolutionary organizations in Cetinje and Belgrade. The statute of the Main Board for Serb Liberation was made in the second half of December 1871, likely after the meeting between Jevrem Marković and Blaznavac. The members of the Main Board were chosen in January 1872.
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