Hit Him! Violence in the Belgrade Parliament between the World Wars

Abstract

Interventions by the Speaker, calls for order, warnings to the deputies, interrupted speeches, expulsions and interrupted meetings etc. All of these were the kinds of procedural events that frequently characterized parliamentary debates and in general the functioning of the National Assembly of the first Yugoslav state. Regardless of their gravity, polemical nature and argumentation, speeches by the Members of Parliament were too often disrespectful and so were responses to them. Political passion, an essential ingredient of every good political system, grew beyond the limits of decency. Namecalling with “non-parliamentary expressions”, noise andgeneral rows frequently escalated into real brawls and otherphysical encounters. Turbulent meetings even suggest that occasional brawls were something normal, a phenomenon that was part of the general image of Yugoslav parliamentarianism. The elected national deputies, who comprised former senior officials, functionaries, lawyers and farmers, professors, clergymen and veterinarians, occasionally had to underline their arguments in a direct and personalized way.