Draft:Anta Todorovic

Anta Todorovic

Antonije Todorović-Šarplaninac (Serbian Cyrillic: Антоније „Анта“ Тодоровић; Prizren, Ottoman Empire, 1880 — Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1970), was a Serbian teacher, a national representative of the Serbs in the Ottoman Empire and a member of the Serbian Chetnik Organization in Old Serbia, today's North Macedonia, during the Chetnik campaign at the beginning of the 20th century.

Biography

Anta Todorović was born in Prizren into a family of artisans and merchants. He graduated from a teacher's program at the Prizren Theological Seminary in 1897. In the same year, he became a teacher in the Serbian school in Veles, and from 1902 in Manastir, and in 1904 he became a teacher in the Serbian public school in Kumanovo, a member of the Serbian Chetnik Organization and a leading figure in its board in Kumanovo.

Together with teachers Jovan Cakić, Lazar Božović and priest Atanasije Petrović Taško, he formed the local city board of the Serbian Chetnik organization in Kumanovo in 1904. That board was established in the fall of 1904 and he had the task of informing, supplying and supporting the Serbian troops in Kumanovo. On the exact day of the forty-day commemoration of Taško's demise, Todorović was implicated in organizing a revenge murder of a Bulgarian exarchist priest in response to VMRO's dastardly crime committed 40 days previously in downtown Kumanovo when Taško was shot and killed.

Although he was briefly in danger of being arrested, Todorović escaped imprisonment, but already in 1906 he had to flee to Serbia, because his name was found in the papers of the killed Serbian Chetniks in Čelopek. He returned to Turkey after the Young Turk Revolution and became a deputy for Kriva Palanka and its surroundings in the "First Assembly of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire". After the Young Turk coup until 1912, he was the director of Serbian schools for the Kriva Palanka Kaza. In 1921, he was a member of parliament in the SHS temporary people's representative office. After the First World War, he got the position of school superintendent in Prizren. Todorović continued his political activity as one of the supporters of Jaša Prodanović and the Republican Party. Enumerating the members of the Republican Party who were close to the Ravna Gora movement, Dr. Dragoljub Jovanović added: "A great Serb from Prizren, Anta Todorović, was also connected with Draža." In 1954, he sent an open letter to Miroslav Krleža, for which he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. In that letter he exposed the Croatian writer's Serb xenophobia in so many "costly" words that he never regretted them.

Anta Todorovic died in Belgrade at the age of 91.

First Serb Assembly in the Ottoman Empire 1909

The First Assembly of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire (Serbian: Prva skupština Srba u Osmanskom tsarstvu or Prva skupština Srba u Osmanskom carstvu) met from 2 to 11 February 1909 in Skopje.[1] The assembly adopts resolutions on political, economic, church and school problems. It requires respect for the laws and in particular the liberties and equality of citizens and the protection of Serbia in the Ottoman Empire.[1] The MPs condemn the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another resolution demanded that the Serbian metropolitans obtain the privileges enjoyed by the Greek metropolitans. They want the Serbs to have rights in dioceses where there are no Serbian metropolitans and for the settlements to have the right to accept a Serbian priest as they wish.[1] In a third resolution, it is requested that the property be returned to the Serbs, as well as that the farmsteads be allowed to buy back their property.

References

• Translated from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B5_%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B