Stjepan Radić (June 11th, 1871 Trebarjevo Desno near Sisak - August 8th, 1928 Zagreb) was interested in politics from youth. Due to political reasons he was even excluded from the seventh grade of the Zagreb Gymnasium and had to graduate at a private school in Karlovac.
In the year 1891 he began attending the Zagreb Faculty of Law, but was once again expelled in 1893 because of the public attack on Vice-Roy Khuen Hedervary and was sentenced to four months in prison. Two years later he was again convicted, this time to six month prison sentence. The reason for his imprisonment was the burning of the Hungarian flag during the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I to Zagreb in October 1895.
He studied in Paris, Prague, Budapest and Moscow, learning foreign languages and getting acquainted with the political culture and reality. Together with his brother Antun he founded the Hrvatska pučka seljačka stranka (the Croatian People’s Peasant Party), whose political goal was to have the future state based on the federal principle.
The representative of the Serbian Radical Party Puniša Račić fired shots at the members of the Croatian People’s Peasant Party in the Assembly on June 20th 1920 and seriously wounded Stjepan Radić and killed his nephew Pavle Radić and Đuro Basariček. Radić soon died of wounds sustained in the attack and his funeral turned into a protest against the regime.