Miloš Trifunović (politician)

Miloš Trifunović (Serbian Cyrillic: Милош Трифуновић; 30 October 1871[1] – 19 February 1957), also known as Miša Trifunović,[1] was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician who held several important offices in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and briefly served as the prime minister of the Yugoslav government-in-exile during World War II.

When King Alexander established a royal dictatorship in 1929, Trifunović was one of the leaders of the Radical Party who opposed the new regime.

During World War II, Trifunović served as the minister of education of the Yugoslav government-in-exile between March 1941 and June 1943.

He returned to Yugoslavia in 1945, where he planned to run on a joint opposition ticket with Milan Grol, but they ended up boycotting the elections that year.

[2] On 6 January 1929, Alexander, King of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, abolished the constitution and instituted a royal dictatorship.

[5] Trifunović was at the time one of the leaders of the People's Radical Party (Serbo-Croatian: Narodna radikalna stranka, NRS) who opposed the dictatorship.

[6] Following the passage of the constitution, a new ruling party named the Yugoslav Radical Peasants' Democracy was created, and while some veterans of the NRS chose to join it,[7] Trifunović remained in the opposition.

[9] Two months later, while Maček's trial was still ongoing, Democratic Party leaders proposed that opposition politicians issue a joint condemnation of the regime.

[10] In order to protest Maček's trial and issue this condemnation more generally,[8] a committee of the representatives of the Agrarian Union, the Radical and the Democratic parties was formed.

In May, the three opposition parties finally made a joint statement committing themselves to the struggle to restore civic liberties, free parliamentarianism, and the reform of the constitutional order.

Knežević was appointed as chargé d'affaires at the Yugoslav legation in Lisbon while a professional diplomat, Niko Mirošević, assumed his previous position.

That August, Grol – who was the Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia – resigned in protest against the communist regime's undemocratic actions.

[15] In December 1946, Trifunović and seven others were brought to trial for having allegedly furnished military and political information to the American embassy in Belgrade.