SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Serbia

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Serbian Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Serbian Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Dragutin Dimitrijević (1876 - 1917)

With an HPI of 63.41, Dragutin Dimitrijević is the most famous Serbian Social Activist.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages on wikipedia.

Dragutin Dimitrijević (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгутин Димитријевић; 17 August 1876 – 24 June 1917), better known by his nickname Apis, was a Serbian army officer and chief of the military intelligence section of the general staff in 1913. He is best known as the most prominent member of the Black Hand, a secret military society that organised the 1903 overthrow of the Serbian government and assassination of King Alexander I of Serbia and Queen Draga. Some scholars believe that he also initiated the plot to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. In 1916, the government in exile of Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, who considered Dimitrijević a threat, filed charges of high treason against the leadership of Unification or Death. Dimitrijević was tried at Salonika before a court martial arraigned by his opponents within the Serbian government. He was found guilty of conspiring to assassinate Prince Regent Alexander Karadjordjević and executed by firing squad, along with two other members, on 26 June 1917.

2. Vesna Vulović (1950 - 2016)

With an HPI of 61.07, Vesna Vulović is the 2nd most famous Serbian Social Activist.  Her biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић, pronounced [ʋêsna ʋûːloʋitɕ]; 3 January 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who survived the highest fall without a parachute: 10.16 kilometres (6.31 miles) or 33,330 feet. She was the sole survivor after an explosion tore through the baggage compartment of JAT Flight 367 on 26 January 1972, causing it to crash near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia (now part of the Czech Republic). Air safety investigators attributed the explosion to a briefcase bomb. The Yugoslav authorities suspected that émigré Croatian nationalists were to blame, but no one was ever arrested. Following the bombing, Vulović spent days in a coma and was hospitalized for several months. She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp. She had little to no memory of the incident and had no qualms about flying in the aftermath of the crash. Despite her willingness to resume work as a flight attendant, Jat Airways (JAT) gave her a desk job negotiating freight contracts, feeling her presence on flights would attract too much publicity. Vulović became a celebrity in Yugoslavia and was deemed a national hero. Vulović was fired from JAT in the early 1990s after taking part in anti-government protests during the breakup of Yugoslavia, but avoided arrest as the government was concerned about the negative publicity that her imprisonment would bring. She continued her work as a pro-democracy activist until the Socialist Party of Serbia was ousted from power during the Bulldozer Revolution of October 2000. Vulović later campaigned on behalf of the Democratic Party, advocating Serbia's entry into the European Union. Her final years were spent in seclusion, and she struggled with survivor guilt. Having divorced, Vulović lived alone in her Belgrade apartment on a small pension until her death in 2016.