Bogdan Radenković

Bogdan Radenković (Serbian Cyrillic: Богдан Раденковић; Srbovac, Ottoman Empire, 1874 – Thessaloniki, Greece, 30 July 1917) was a Serb activist, an organizer of the Serbian Chetnik Organization and one of the founders of the Black Hand. He was a leading civilian activist of the Pan-Serb movement in the early 20th century. In a letter to the Serbian government, dated 27 October 1909, he tells about the dangers faced by the population of Kičevo and Prilep because of Arnaut incursions, and asks for approval of the troops of Gligor Sokolović and Dane Stojanović to solve the problem.

Born in 1874 in Srbovac, a village in the municipality of Zvečan, then part of the Ottoman Empire (and now Kosovo, still a contentious international political zone to this day). As a university graduate and a tonsured monk with a chosen name Vasilije, he became a secretary to the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Skopje. In this influential post he had numerous contacts with his people and consulates of Serbia, Russia and France. Among the clergy he was known as Vasilije (Radenković) and among the laity simply Bogdan Radenković.

Bogdan Radenković was a member of the Serbian Committee of Skopje and the main organizer of the Serbian Chetnik action in the Ottoman Empire. He was an intermediary between the Serbian consulate and the Chetnik organization and their supporters. During 1905 the Turkish authorities caught a farmer who after being tortured revealed that Radenković was the president of the Serbian Committee in Skopje. At the Skopje trial the farmer recanted citing that his testimony was extracted by force and Radenkovic was ultimately acquitted. Radenković was a friend of Milan Rakić, then Serbia's vice-consul in Skopje, with whom he conferred confidential operational plans of the Chetnik organization. Milan Rakić at the time began writing a poem called "On Gazimestan" that became popular even before the Balkan War of 1912.

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