Serbian Cultural Club

The Serbian Cultural Club (Serbian: Српски културни клуб/Srpski kulturni klub, SKK) was a short-lived but influential grouping of mainly Belgrade-based Serb intellectuals of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the years immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The organization pushed for the advance of Serbian national interest in Yugoslavia, following Croatian autonomy (1939). After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the president of the SKK, Slobodan Jovanović went into exile with the government, but several members remained behind in Yugoslavia and developed a Serb-centric ideological framework for the Chetniks of Draža Mihailović.

The Serbian Cultural Club was founded in 1937 by influential Serb intellectuals of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Its mission was to "work on fostering Serbian culture within Yugoslavism". It explicitly stated that it was not tied to any political ideology and that people of various political directions could participate. The organization pointed out its preferential task as preservation of state unity and solving the Serbian national question, in a way which did not deny any rights of Croats and Slovenes. The pretext for its establishment was, according to the organization itself, "the increasing unequal position of Serbs in the Yugoslav state". Its motto was "a strong Serbian identity — a strong Yugoslavia".

In December 1936, a group of seventy intellectuals gathered in Belgrade and held the preparatory founding assembly of the organization to be known as the "Serbian Cultural Club" (Srpski kulturni klub, SKK). Among the founders were 23 University professors (among whom were Interwar rectors: Slobodan Jovanović, Pavle Popović, Vladimir Ćorović, Dragoslav Jovanović and Petar Mićić), ministers and assistants to ministers (Lujo Bakotić, Risto Jojić, Milan Milojević, Ljubomir Mihajlović, Spasoje Piletić and Mihailo Konstantinović), eight notable industrial and bank executives, the President of the Court of Cassation Rusomir Janković, the President of the Court of Appeal Milan Jovičić, the President of the District Court of Belgrade Miodrag Filipović, two retired generals Živko Pavlović and Ljubomir Pokorni, prominent lawyers and cultural workers Dragiša Vasić, Nikola Stojanović and Mladen Žujović, famous artists, architects, doctors, engineers and tradespeople. Among them were also notable individuals of Serbian national culture, Stevan Jakovljević, Marko Car, Veselin Čajkanović and Vaso Čubrilović. Later, Milan Grol, Aleksandar Belić, Justin Popović and many other within the Serbian intellectual elite joined the organization. The first regular assembly was held on 4 February 1937 in Belgrade, during which Slobodan Jovanović (the founder of the organization) was chosen as the President of the Assembly and Board of Directors. The opening statement read that the SKK would be the meeting place and discussion forum for those interested in questions on Serbian national culture.