ACADEMICIAN VOJISLAV MAKSIMOVIĆ - GREAT INTELLECTUAL AND PATRIOT

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 30 /SRNA/ - Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik has said that academician and senator of Srpska Vojislav Maksimović will be remembered by his people and throughout Republika Srpska as a man who was honored to read the Declaration on the Proclamation of the Serbian Republic of BiH at the ceremonial session of the Assembly of the Serbian People in BiH on January 9, 1992, in Sarajevo.

"Previously, on December 21, 1991, it was Professor Maksimović who, in the same hall of the Holiday Inn Hotel in Sarajevo, read the proposal on behalf of the Serbian Caucus to declare the Serbian Republic of BiH by Serbian New Year, January 14, 1992," Dodik told SRNA. The President of Srpska emphasized that it is an honor to have witnessed those historic events for Republika Srpska with such an intellectual and patriot as Vojislav Maksimović, who dedicated his life and destiny to Republika Srpska. "Professor Maksimović was one of the greatest intellectuals in the modern history of the Serbian people. He was a university professor, academician, literary historian, prose writer, member of parliament, initiator of the establishment of the University of East Sarajevo and its first rector from 1992 to 2000, as well as the president of the Committee for the establishment of the Spiritual Academy of Saint Basil of Ostrog in what was then Srbinje, now Foča," Dodik said. Vojislav Maksimović, with a group of Serbian intellectuals in Sarajevo, revived the Serbian Enlightenment and Cultural Society "Prosvjeta," on St. Vitus' Day in 1990, Dodik said, which had been dissolved in 1947, and was elected as the first president of the Main Board and the Society after its revival. He emphasized that Professor Vojislav Maksimović's contributions to the creation and preservation of Republika Srpska are immense and must never be forgotten, as he is a person whose name will be inscribed in the history of the Serbian people and whose work and achievements must be studied by younger generations. "We, his contemporaries, know what kind of man, Serb, patriot, and intellectual he was, but younger generations must not forget his name, or his contributions to what we have today – Republika Srpska," emphasized the President of Srpska on the occasion of Professor Maksimović's death. Academician and Senator Vojislav Maksimović, who passed away in Belgrade at the age of 89, will be buried tomorrow at the cemetery in Jošanica near Foča.