Cvetko Rajović

Cvetko Rajović (; 1793 – 4 May 1873) was a Serbian cavalry officer, judge, and politician who served as the 17th Prime Minister of Serbia from 1858 to 1860. An Obrenović loyalist and frequent conspirator against the rival Karađorđević dynasty, he also held the posts of Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance.

Biography

Rajović was born into a Serbian Orthodox family in Vukovići, near Trebinje, in 1793. When he was a young boy, the family home was attacked by the local ağa and his henchmen. Rajović's father killed the ağan and his men in the ensuing fight, thus forcing the family to flee across the mountains to the Bay of Kotor for fear of retribution. From there, Rajović was sent to Rijeka, in the Habsburg realm, where his brother was a merchant. His brother paid for him to be educated in Otočac and Senj, during which time he learned German and Italian. Due to the War of the Fifth Coalition, Rajović and his brother relocated to Zemun, where he continued his education and learned to speak Greek, which was widely spoken among the large Greek merchant class in the city.

In 1811, Rajović, who was then living in Belgrade, entered into military service in the army of Revolutionary Serbia. Following the failure of the First Serbian Uprising, Rajović traveled to Srem, Trieste, Venice, Vienna, and finally Odessa, at which point he entered into the food trade, until the global financial crisis of 1818 caused prices to collapse. Rajović then returned to Belgrade, in the newly autonomous Principality of Serbia, where he opened a grain trading firm. The fledgling principality was in great need of educated Serbs from abroad who began moving into the territory, and Rajović was quickly noticed by Jevrem Obrenović, who was then Prime Minister of Serbia and brother of Prince Miloš. Obrenović invited Rajović to be his secretary, and he soon found himself in service of the prince himself. A valuable asset to the prince, Rajović served the principality in a number of capacities, including that of a diplomat, a lawmaker, military commissar, and chief of police. He went on a mission with Avram Petronijević to Saint Petersburg in 1830 to purchase a new state printing press, which led to publishing of the official newspaper Novine Serbske edited by Dimitrije Davidović in early 1834. In 1837, Rajović was made adjutant to the prince, and was made Minister of Internal Affairs in 1840, a position he held until 1842. Rajović retired from public service in 1869.