RADIĆ, STJEPAN. - Croatian politician, brother of Ante, b. at Trebarjevo Desno on 11 June 1871, d. at Zagreb on 8 Aug. 1928. While still a student he was arrested several times and finally expelled from the University of Zagreb (1895) for political reasons.
He then studied in Prague, and from 1897 to 1909 in Paris, where he earned a degree in political science with a thesis on *La Croatie actuelle et les Slaves du Sud* (Paris 1899). He visited the principal European centers (Paris, London, Vienna, Prague, and Moscow) repeatedly, as well as countless villages in Croatia, always propagating his social and political ideas. Together with his brother Ante, he founded the Croatian People’s Peasant Party (1904), which soon became the strongest political force. In 1919 he sent a memorandum to the Peace Conference in Versailles, demanding the right of self-determination also for the Croats. Though a believer, in his relations with the Church he did not refrain from strong anticlerical tendencies. At first in the struggle against the Hungarians and later, after 1918, against Serbian hegemony and centralism, R. established himself as a formidable political adversary, so that on 20 June 1928 he was mortally wounded in the Parliament of Belgrade by the Serbian deputy Puniša Račić. He was also a prolific writer on social and political topics.