Omladina

(1) The Serbian Omladina, Vjedinjena Omladina Srpska (United Serbian Youth), a cultural and sociopolitical organization founded in August 1866 at a conference of representatives of literary and cultural clubs of students and intelligentsia of Vojvodina and Serbia in Novi Sad. Soon after the Omladina proclaimed itself the representative body of all the South Slavic peoples of Southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Through L. Karavelov, the Omladina established ties with the Bulgarian national liberation movement; it also maintained contacts with cultural figures in Bohemia, Slovakia and Russia.

At first the liberals’ influence prevailed in the Omladina, but in 1870 a revolutionary-democratic wing headed by S. Marko-vić, who sought to turn the Omladina into a revolutionary political party, took shape within the organization. In 1871, the Omladina was outlawed by the Austrian and Serbian authorities, after which it existed illegally for a period. On the basis of the Omladina, a number of new organizations, called omladinas, were later founded in Serbia and Vojvodina.

(2) The Czech Omladina, a radical Czech youth group, whose members were tried in 1894 in Prague on a charge of creating a secret antigovernment Omladina organization. Although the charge was not proved, most of the accused members of the group were sentenced to prison terms of varying length. Subsequently, the entire movement of radical-minded Czech youth of the early 1890’s was called the Omladina. The movement did not have a clear political platform and its participants sympathized with different parties (from the Young Czechs to the Social Democrats), but they were all united in their opposition to the reactionary regime of the Hapsburgs and in their struggle for universal suffrage. In 1919, the political club Omladina Members of the Nineties was founded.