MAŠINA SA DUŠOM

MAŠINA SA DUŠOM Koliko je dug prašnjavi drum? Kako kilometar može biti velik, i kako ga želje i snovi pretvaraju u par koraka? Snaga volje i odlučnosti pomeraju mnoge granice.

Rekli su mu, Dunav mora biti sa tvoje desne strane. Ne budi mu ni predaleko, ni previše blizu, da te njegov miris ne opije i vrati u skromni roditelj­ ski dom. Kada imaš 12 godina i metar je duži nego kada si odrastao, a kamoli preko 80 kilometara pred tobom.

Daleke 1932. godine, u Srbiji kao i u celoj Kraljevini Jugoslaviji, deca su rano odrastala. Rane od Prvog svetskog rata bile su još sveže. Svaki treći muška­ rac je položio svoj život na oltaru otažbine i njene ­slobode. Deca su morala da zamene očeve u teškim fizičkim poslovima, ali i da pruže neophodnu pomoć svojim majkama i bakama.

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Na beogradskim ulicama još 1903. godine p ­ ojavili su se prvi automobili marke “Neselsdorf”, češke proizvodnje. Prilikom prve vožnje tadašnjim ­centrom grada, prolaznici su gledali u neverici, a pojedini i upla­šeno bežali u obližnje sokake.

Kada je dečak Radomir krenuo peške u Beograd, na putevima Kraljevine stidljivo počinju da se ­pojavljuju prvi automobili. Naravno, kao i svaki novi­ tet i „čudo tehnike“, automobili su tad bili rezervisani isključivo za političku i ekonomsku elitu. Vremenom i tehnološkim napretkom koje ono donosi, auto­mobili su polako počeli da zamenjuju fijakere u gradu, a ­zaprežna kola i plugove na selima.

Svaka velika tehnološka promena praćena je zahtevima za novim znanjima i novim vešti­nama.

Mašina je proizvod čoveka, ma koliko god delo­ vala savršeno, ona je sklona kvaru, ali i popravci od istog tog čoveka. Popraviti nešto skoro ­s avršeno je ­umetnost. Od prvog motora Henrija Forda pa do danas, sasvim je bilo jasno da je tehnologija mnogo napred­ovala. To je prirodni zakon, evolucija.

Međutim, ova umetnost počiva na istim principima kao i sve druge umetnosti. Radu, želji, odricanju i na kraju krajeva viziji.

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Radomir Bata Rajković rodjen je 2. oktobra 1920. godine u Požarevcu. Njegov otac, Milan, imao je u tom srpskom gradiću mašinsku radionicu, u kojoj je sina od malih nogu učio zanatu.

Razni alati i mašine bile su njegove igračke, čaroban svet u kojem se odrasta kada se mora, a ne zato što je vreme za to.

Nakon dugog, višednevnog hodanja, stigao je u Beograd, grad u kojem je verovao da će ostvariti želje i pronaći mesto koje će mu pružiti šansu za boljim životom. Medjutim, nakon samo dva dana, policija ga je deportovala u rodni Požarevac. Ovaj neuspeh nije srušio njegove snove, naprotiv, probu­ dio je u njemu još veću želju da uspe.

Kao šestogodišnjak ostao je bez oca, pa je njego­ va vredna majka Persa morala da proda radionicu i da se snalazi, kako bi njih dvoje preživeli. U državi između dva rata privreda se sporo razvijala. Hrane i sredstava za život je manjkalo, ali ne i raznih smrto­ nosnih bolesti, poput lepre i tuberkuloze. No, to nije omelo ovog dečaka u želji da nađe posao i način da prežive. I tako se osmelio da sam, peške, krene ka glavnom gradu Kraljevine Jugoslavije.

Par meseci kasnije ponovo je krenuo odlučnim korakom ka Beogradu. Ovoga puta uspeo je da ­ostane, čak i da nađe posao u jednoj od ­električarskih radionica u Sarajevskoj ulici. Njegovo detinjstvo i odrastanje činili su neprekidni rad za krov nad gla­ vom i hranu, učenje zanata i majstorskih veština i po koji sat proveden u spavanju. Radomir je delio sudbi­ nu mnoge dece koja su odrastala u prvoj polovini dvadesetog veka. Život ljudi je često bio za današnje prilike nepojmljivo težak i surov.

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Već sa svojih 16 godina, postao je pripadnik ratne ­ orna­r ice Vojske Jugoslovije. Tokom dve ­godine m prove­denih u Kumboru (Crna Gora), završio je mašinsku školu i stekao zvanje mašinskog tehničara parnih mašina. Po odsluženju vojnog roka, vratio se u Beograd gde se posvetio još jednoj svojoj životnoj ljubavi – boksu.

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Kada je okupacija Jugoslavije bila i više nego i­ zvesna, a Drugi svetski rat pred vratima, Bata je odlučio da se vrati u Požarevac kako bi bio uz majku. Teška i nepredvidiva vremena traže zaje­ dništvo, a Bata je to, iako mlad, veoma dobro znao. Tako je Bata u ratnom vihoru upoznao svoju prvu suprugu Olgu, sa kojom je 1942. godine dobio sina Milana. Kao jedini školovani mašinski tehničar u Požarevcu, bio je primoran da radi na održavanju generatora koji je grad snabdevao strujom.

Tokom rata, u celoj zemlji, pa i u Požarevcu i ­ kolnim mestima, ljudi su se pridruživali oslobodi­ o lačkim četama. Zajedno sa ostalim žiteljima, na razne načine su pokazivali otpor prema okupatorima: ­istorija beleži niz sabotaža na železničkim prugama, paljenja opštinskih arhiva, rušenja mostova, dizanja elektronskih centrala u vazduh, presecanja telefon­ skih veza... Mnogi su zbog toga bili streljani i vešani.

Stradalo je i mnogo onih koji s tim akcijama nisu imali dodirnih tačaka.

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Bata je kao i mnogi mladi ljudi tog vreme­ na učestvo­vao u borbi protiv nacističkog okupa­ tora. Svako je doprineo koliko je i kako mogao.

Bata je učestvovao u onesposobljavanju generato­ ra na kojem je radio. Smatrao je da je to minimum kojim može da doprinese u borbi protiv nemačkog okupa­tora. Nakon uspešne diverzije, kvisliške vlasti krenule su u potragu za učesnicima i organizatorima otpora okupacionim snagama. Bata nije bio izuzet.

Do kraja rata morao je da se skriva, čekajući konačnu pobedu. Trud i žrtva čitavih generacija konačno su se isplatili, agresor je poražen. Nastupilo je novo vreme, noseći sa sobom slobodu, ali i drugačiji oblik okova i teškoća.

Bata je oduvek bio čovek koji je imao jasne ­ rincipe. Nije bio sklon kompromisima i strahovima p i bez problema je izražavao svoja opredeljenja, ne razmišljajući o posledicama. Vredan i uvek spreman na žrtvova­nje da bi bio uspešniji, bolji, kvalitetniji i kao radnik i kao čovek, znao je da sve ima svoju cenu. I na svaku je pristajao osim da bude na bilo

koji način pokoren. U ranoj mladosti prihvatio je levičarske ideje, kao i mnogi mladi pravdoljubivi ljudi. Bio je jedi­nstven i kompletan, čovek čvrstog stava i uverenja. Verovao je u jednakost šansi, soci­ jalnu pravdu i pre svega rad koji će omogućiti rad­ ničkoj klasi bolji život. Ipak, Bata je imao i drugu stranu koja je poštovala tradiciju i srpski indentitet.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Jedan je od osnivača auto moto društva u Požarevcu, i suosnivač požarevačkog prevozničkog udruženja ‘Litas’. Ljudi koji su zajedno sa njim st­ varali ova udruženja delili su isti duh i cilj da je čovek čoveku drug, a ne sluga sistema. Prevrtljiva vremena u kojima je tada živeo zahtevala su žrtvu, ali u isto vreme i hrabrost da se suprotstavi već utemeljin principima tadašnjeg života.

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Po završetku Drugog svetskog rata, postao je član Komunističke partije. U tadašnjoj Federativnoj Narodnoj Republici Jugoslaviji, pominjati veru, crkvu i slaviti verske praznike, nije bilo poželjno. Mnogi su zbog toga proganja­ ni, a istorija beleži da su čak i nestajali. Bata je međutim uvek govorio je da je Srbin, po veroispo­ vesti pravoslavac, ne mareći za posledice. Bilo mu je bitno da ne izda samog sebe i svoja uvere­ nja. Verovao je da čovek ne sme da se menja u skladu sa društvenim i političkim promenama.

Zato je, čak i sa članskom kartom Komunističke partije, odlučio da i dalje slavi porodičnu slavu.

Kod Srba pravoslavaca, dan kada se proslavlja svetac zaštitnik porodice, onaj koji se prenosi s oca na sina, je posle Božića najvažniji praznik.

Na dan Svetog Nikole, 19. decembra, kada je slava porodice Rajković, kao što je red, odneo je u crkvu slavski kolač. Medjutim, u crkvenoj porti su ga dočekali oni koje je poznavao iz partije, „drugovi

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komunisti“. S visine su ga upitali gde je pošao i šta to radi, na šta im je on odgovorio: “Ideologija je ­ideologija, a religija je religija. Ja sam komunista, ali sam Srbin pravoslavne vere i želim da slavim svoju krsnu slavu onako kako su to činili moji otac, deda, pradeda i oni pre njih.“ Naravno, to se nimalo nije svidelo drugovima komu­nistima, toliko samouverenim u svoje članske karte i privrženim drugu Titu. Postavili su mu uslov da bira između članstva u partiji ili poštovanja svoje, pravoslavne vere i običaja.

Bata nije imao dilemu i istog trena pred njima je pocepao svoju partijsku knjižicu. Odlučno im je rekao da se svoje vere ne odriče. Ovim potezom lišio je sebe bilo kakve podrške od strane države i v­ lasti.

Nije ga to promenilo. Bata je bio pošten i vredan, krčio je svoj put mukotrpno i neprekidno, oslanja­ jući se isključivo na sopstvenu inteligenciju, znanje i upornost.

Tih godina, većina ljudi uzdala se u narodnu ­ udrost koja kaže „Ćutanje je zlato“, a Bata je nasta­ m vio da radi suprotno. Dešavalo se da za iznošenje svojih stavova skupo plati.

Tako je u rodnom Požarevcu krajem četrdese­ tih godina prošlog veka održao govor, ni manje ni više nego protiv predsednika države, druga Josipa Broza Tita. I zbog toga je morao da napusti grad na neko vreme.

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U međuvremenu, njegov prvi brak je okončan.

Bata je ubrzo upoznao Gordanu, svoju drugu ženu sa kojom je do kraja života delio svaki trenutak, ­lepotu ali i teškoću življenja. Pored neprekidne brige o poro­dici i domaćinstvu, ona mu je ujedno bila i najveći oslonac i podrška. Iz ove ljubavi, 26. avgusta 1951. godine, rodio se njihov sin Milutin.

Na porodičnom planu Bata je imao mirnu luku, što je prirodno stvorilo zdrave temelje i mogućnosti da se u narednom periodu više posveti poslu i ost­ varenju svog dugogodišnjeg sna.

Nakon Milutinovog rodjenja, Bata je počeo da razmišlja o pokretanju privatnog biznisa. Medjutim, u to vreme privatnik je smatran državnim neprija­ teljem, kao neko ko podriva društvo i sistem.

Protivljenje komunističkom uređenju retko kome je padalo na pamet. Od malih nogu, njegov sin Milutin je često boravio sa njim u radionici. Već kao deseto­ godišnjak je pokazivao interesovanje za motore, mašine i strug koji su se nalazili u očevoj radionici.

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Kad nije bio kraj oca, njegova dečja zabava bila je pravljenje prangija za pucanje na starom strugu kaišaru. Kako situacija u državi nije bila povoljna, Bata je otišao u Nemačku gde je radio sve što je znao i umeo kako bi zaradio za normalan život u d ­ omovini, u kojoj su ostali njegova supruga i sin. Posle neko­ liko godina, 1966. vratio se u Beograd. U to vreme, u drugoj polovini šezdesetih, u zemlji je počeo da se razvija privatan biznis, kada je vlast privrednom ­reformom dozvolila njegov razvoj u sferama zanata i usluga. To je bio dobar trenutak da Radomir krene da ostvaruje svoj san.

Te godine, beogradskim ulicama kretalo se oko 90 hiljada registrovanih putničkih motornih vozila.

Tako se iz porodične kuće u Požarevcu Bata sa sinom uselio u jednu trošnu kuću od dve malene prostorije u Beogradu. Supruga Gordana je ostala na imanju da brine o zemlji i održava je i tako ­pomogne svom mužu.

U Zemunu, u Ugrinovačkoj ulici, otvorio je svoju prvu automehaničarsku radionicu. Znao je da je to tek prvi korak, da će morati mnogo i da radi i da štedi. Medjutim, bio je spreman na to.

Milutin je tada bio učenik osmog razreda osnovne škole. Posle škole, znalo se – pravac radionica, dok se i otac i on ne prelome od umora. Pa na kratak san u hladnu, praznu sobicu.

Kakva je to radost bila kada je, po završetku ­ snovne škole, otac Milutinu kupio novi kaput! Novca o nisu imali dovoljno, a Bata je pokušavao i da stvori ušteđevinu, znajući da će ako bude ulagao, posao rasti pa i zarada biti veća. Usledio je period nepre­ kidnog rada, usavršavanja, razvoja. Svaki dinar koji bi ušao u porodicu trošio se samo ako nije bilo dru­ gog rešenja. Bata je štedljivo ulagao u razvoj posla, čak i ono što bi zaradio obavljajući poljoprivredne radove kombajnom, pa i novac dobijen prodajom svinja koje je njegova žena gajila u Požarevcu.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Milutin je posle osnovne škole odlučio da ide na zanat i stekne zvanje metalostrugara. Tih godina, u srednjim stručnim školama učila se teorija, ali je bila organizovana i, za zanate od presudnog značaja, praktična nastava. Za smer na kojem je Milutin bio, u to vreme u vrlo uspešnoj fabrici „Ivo Lola Ribar“ u beogradskom naselju Železnik.

Radomiru je sin pomagao sve više, posebno u s­ klapanjima motora. Milutin još uvek pamti automo­ bile koji su se tada vozili drumovima i stizali kod njih na popravku: stari automobili marke „Ford“, „Škoda“, i radna vozila „Pobeda“.

Pre tačno pola veka, 1968. godine, u okvi­ ru svoje porodične kuće na Voždovcu osnovao je servis za kamione.

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Bio je to jedan od najvažnijih perioda za Rajkoviće. Radomir je te prve godine u novom prostoru, sada već uz pomoć sina Milutina, servisirao „HANOMAG“ kamione. Tih godina to su bila popularna teretna ­vozila u zemlji, a Radomir ih je dobro upoznao i savla­dao rad na njima upravo u Nemačkoj dok je radio u „HANOMAG“ servisu.

Jedini period kada sin nije bio uz oca bio je kada je otišao na služenje vojnog roka. Živeli su skromno, ali posebno marljivo i iznad svega pošteno. To su pre­ poznali i umeli da cene ljudi iz nemačkih preduzeća „Kern“ i „Stern“, u tolikoj meri da su im robu i alate davali „na obraz“, uz odloženo plaćanje.

Godišnje bi Bata i Milutin po nekoliko puta odlazili u Nemačku, putovali najmanje 18 sati, spavali retko u motelima, uglavnom u automobilu, a dešavalo se da uopšte nisu spavali. Novca i vremena za ­gubljenje nije bilo. Tamo bi kupovali delove za motore, alat, ali i polovne kamione koje su u svojoj radionici popra­ vljali i prodavali.

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Otac i sin su umeli da vide mogućnost za posao i zaradu tamo gde mnogi nisu, i te prilike su znali i hteli da iskoriste. Zbog toga je Milutin grabio svaku poštenu priliku da zaradi novac. Umeo je sam da kupi slupana vozila na carini, popravi ih i proda.

Naime, drug Tito je održao govor posebno usme­ ren protiv privatnih preduzeća u zemlji. Bilo ih je oko 200 hiljada, i ocenjeni su kao glavni u podriva­nju ekonomskih osnova društva. Iz tog razloga vlast je u septembru pokrenula kampanju protiv bogaćenja.

Ono što se u školama ne uči, Milutin je upijao od svog oca, deleći svaki trenutak s njim. Usvojio je njegovo pravilo da se uspeh postiže samo radom i često poput njega ponavljao da su važni rad, rad i samo rad. Naučio je od svog Bate da se može i skromno živeti, bez rasipanja i da je najvažnija od svih vrlina - skromnost. Poštovao ga je onako strogog ali pravičnog, izuzetno vrednog čoveka sa ja­snim ciljem.

Radomir je zbog toga odlučio da po robu ne ode i da traži povraćaj novca. Mudro je procenio da je bolje da sačeka povoljniju klimu u državi.

Alat i mašine su neprekidno obnavljali, posebno 1972. godine kada su kupili veliki broj novih, od maši­ na za mašinsku obradu, do bušilica na tadašnjem sajmu u Beogradu. Mašine su rezervisali i uplatili, ali ne i preuzeli.

Sedamdesetih godina je Milutin upoznao Milesu i odlučio da sa njom gradi porodicu. Polako je preuzi­ mao posao od Radomira, puštajući ga da on bude taj koji daje završnu reč dokle god to želi i može. Kada je nastupilo bolje vreme za novi pokušaj moderni­ zacije njihove radionice, Radomir i Milutin su odlučili da krenu u Italiju. Tamo su 1978. godine kupili lini­ ju polovnih mašina za mašinsku obradu motora. U tom trenutku, takvu opremu u Beogradu imale su samo dve male radionice i četiri velika preduzeća u vlasni­š tvu države. A potreba za mašinskom obra­ dom moto­ra bila je ogromna.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Četiri godine kasnije, pored autoputa od Beograda ka Nišu, otvorili su novu, veću radionicu u koju su preselili svoj posao iz stare kućne radionice, i od tada im je primarni posao postao mašinska obrada delova motora.

U sledećih 7 godina neprekidno su razvijali posao, tako gradeći bazu za razvoj savremene mašinske radi­onice. Povećavali su i broj zaposlenih, susrećući se sa problemom manjka stručnog kadra. Broj speci­ jalizovanih škola i interesovanja za njih se znatno smanjio, pa su radnike sami učili i obučavali.

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Svih tih godina u radionici se mnogo radilo, bez prestanka, i umesto u uživanje i zabavu ulagalo se u razvoj posla. U tom periodu, godine su učinile svoje. Milutin je već uveliko preuzeo posao od oca Radomira, puštajući ga da on i dalje bude taj koji daje završnu reč dokle god to želi i može. Čak i nakon što je, sa punih 69 godina, Radomir doneo odluku da završi radni vek, niko nije mogao zamisliti da je Bata poslednjim danom ubeleženim u radnoj ­knjižici ­zaista i prestao da radi. Naravno da nije. Radomir Bata Rajković je imao svoje ciljeve i nije ni pomislio da ih ne može ostvariti. Njegov život bile su mašine i alati, pa je i poslednje godine i dane svog života proveo, naravno, u sada već porodičnoj radionici.

Poput Radomira, i Milutin je bio strog i prema sebi i prema zaposlenima. Reči „neću“ i „ne mogu“ kod njega nisu postojale. Kao ni radno vreme. Znalo se da se sa poslom kreće tačno u 7 ujutru, svakog dana osim nedeljom, a kući se odlazilo kada bi posao ­završili, često tek sledećeg dana ili usred noći. Cilj

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je bio jedan – da klijenti budu zadovoljni. Kada bi posao bio uspešno i brzo završen, umeo je Milutin radnike i da nagradi, ali bi oni i od klijenata često dobijali povelike bakšiše. Početak i sredina deve­ desetih bili su obeleženi ratom i svim onim što rat neminovno donosi sa sobom.. Neposredno pred sam početak sukoba, u „MR“-u su kupili nove, u to vreme n ­ ajmodernije, polukompjuterske mašine.

Tadašnja država je bila izolovana, pod ­sankcijama, a u zemlji je beležena hiperinflacija, toliko velika da je novac gubio vrednost bukvalno iz minuta u minut.

Ukoliko platu koju dobijete u dinarima, ­gotovo odmah ne zamenite za neku stranu valutu, dinarski iznos ste za nekoliko sati bukvalno mogli da bacite.

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Kako bi se pratio razvoj tehnologije, moralo je da se putuje po svetu. I tako je Milutin 1991. ­godine b ­ oravio u Kanadi gde se po prvi put susreo sa ­digita­lnim mernim instrumentima. Naravno, kupio je ­kompletnu, u njihovoj radionici potrebnu ­garnituru takvih instrumenata.

Milutinu i ostalima u radionici ratni sukobi i v­ elika ekonomska kriza nisu bili alibi za pad u kvalitetu usluga koje su pružali. Naprotiv. Bilo je mnogo starih vozila, a time i posla za njih. Tih devedestih godina oni su u poslu izuzetno napredovali i rasli. Kako je to bilo moguće?

Rajkovići su oduvek znali da se u sredstva za rad mora stalno ulagati, čak i kada izgleda da nemaju ni dinara za to. Kod klijenata su stekli veliko poverenje kvalitetom i odnosom prema njima, ali i ­popularnost kao retki u Beogradu koji su neprekidno nabavlja­ li novu, najsavremeniju tehniku i uvodili novine u radu. Uvek su se trudili da ih kupe čim bi se poja­ vile na tržištu, ne čekajući da se one stare pokvare

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i postanu neupotrebljive. Sredinom devedesetih, posle ratova i cepanja jedne na više manjih drža­ va, u godinama kada su i na ove prostore počela da stižu modernija vozila, prestali su sa ručnom obra­ dom glave motora. Zbog toga su 1997. godine kupi­ li prvu od mašina za obradu siceva, pa još jednu, i još jednu...

Milutin pamti kao značajnu 2007. godinu kada su, kupujući neprekidno nove alate i mašine, ulažući u prostor, ljude, preduzeće, posao doveli do takvog nivoa da im u mašinskoj obradi glave motora niko nije mogao biti konkurencija.

Rajkovići su uvek znali da se uspeh ostvaruje samo planskim, kontinuiranim radom, dogovara­ njem i neprekidnim ulaganjima. To je posebno važno u vremenima koja su bila pred njima. Skoro svako­ dnevno su vozila postajala naprednija, drugačija, a time i alati i mašine kojima ih je moguće popraviti.

One koji nisu ulagali već zarađeno i trošili na druge načine, pregazilo je vreme. Višegošnje ulaganje se

isplatilo, „MR“ je uspeo da postane vodeća firma u svetu mašinske obrade u Srbiji, a i šire. Iako već dugo u statusu penzionera, Radomir je i dalje dolazio u radionicu, sa istim žarom planirao i sanjao kao na samom početku.

Sanjao je do poslednjeg dana. Njegovi unuci pamte da je par puta rekao da, kako je imao već 88 godina, sada čeka samo još da im stigne velika brusi­ lica (Berco) koju su kupili, pa da zauvek sklopi oči.

Tako je i bilo. Brusilica je napokon stigla. Video ju je. Udahnuo poslednji put vazduh u radionici.

Prešao pogledom još jednom po svemu što je stvo­ rio. Blagu koje ostaje iza njega. Motorima. Alatima.

Najmodernijim mašinama. I onom najvrednijem – porodici. I napustio ovaj svet 5. decembra 2008. ­godine mirno. Sve je završio, sve je uspeo, dosan­ jao. Ostavio dubok trag. Pregršt razloga da se o njemu još dugo priča i da se Radomir Bata Rajković dugo pamti.

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Batu ljudi pamte kao iskrenog prijatelja, uvek spremnog da u nevolji pomogne. Za njega kažu da je bio veličina. Ljudina. Čovek velikog životnog iskustva i znanja, koji je umeo često unucima da deli i životne i poslovne savete. One kojih se danas njegovi unuci, strogo pridržavaju jer znaju da su zlata vredni.

Kada je Radomir preminuo, Rajkovići su nasta­ vili da šire i podižu preduzeće do granica koje su ­zami­slili. Godinama unazad su ulagali ogroman trud da izađu na inostrano tržište. Trud se isplatio 2008. godine kad su prvi put dobili posao na međunaro­ dnom tenderu, raspisanom u Siriji. Bio je to ogroman uspeh za malu firmu iz male Srbije, koja je bila bolja od velikih evropskih konkurenata.

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Prvi put su, uz pomoć srpske Agencije za ­strana ulaganja i promociju izvoza (SIEPA), bili u prilici da izlažu na međunarodnom sajmu u Parizu (EQUIP AUTU) 2009. godine i ostvarili prve konkretne kontakte sa inostranim partnerima.

Godinu dana kasnije, na frankfurtskom sajmu ­ sklopili su i prvi posao, i to sa h ­ olandskom firmom.

A zatim krenuli u ostvarivanje sna o r­ emo­ntu motora za kompanije iz Evropske unije, u čemu im je ponovo pomogla SIEPA.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Tako su već 2012. godine postali prvo i još uvek jedino preduzeće za remont motora sa Balkana koja samostalno izlaže na sajmu u Frankfurtu.

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Milutinov ceo radni vek je neraskidivo povezan sa MR-om. Gotovo svaki čovek u Srbiji koji ima dodi­ rne tačke sa motorima ili automobilima poznaje Tranzu ili Mikicu, kako ga poznanici i prijatelji od milošte zovu.

On je sa ocem bio u firmi od prvog dana. Milutin je tad tek izašao iz srednje škole. Kako sam kaže, ­srednja zanatska škola „Ivo Lola Ribar“ bila je usta­ nova sa jakom disciplinom, ali i reputacijom da iz nje izlaze vrhunski majstori. Vrlo dobro se seća i dan danas, kako mu je otac davao najteže zadatke. Sve sa namerom da se očeliči. Roditelji u današnje vreme su vrlo često i previše zaštitnički nastrojeni prema deci. Milutin dolazi iz nekog drugog vremena. Iz vre­ mena kada se rad smatrao vrlinom a svaki primljeni udarac od strane života lekcijom.

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Mikica je prostodušan čovek, u najboljem smislu te reči. On je čovek koji uživa u malim svarima koje život čine smislenijim. Voli da peče rakiju, da sređuje travu u dvorištu svoje vikendice, koju je sam podi­ gao. I u periodu nastajanja ove knjige, on pravi malu hidroelektranu na potoku koji prolazi kroz dvorište njegove vikendice sve sa ciljem da njegov majstorluk nikako ne zarđa! Isto tako, dosta vremena provodi i u radionici. Njegova posebna strast su traktorski i brodski motori, kao i motori velikih industrijskih mašina. Prosto, voli krupne izazove. Vrlo je mogu­ će da mu je teško detinjstvo uticalo na to da bez razmišljnja prihvata teške zadatke. Njegov životni moto je veoma jednostavan. Smatra da je čovek živ dok radi, a čim se prestane sa radom i svakodnevnim obavezama čovek polako počinje da vene. Sa svojom ženom Milesom, izveo je tri sina na isti put na koji je njega izveo njegov otac. Napravio je od njih vredne ljude, željne dokazivanja i uspeha.

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Prvi sin Mulutina i Milese rođen je 4. decembra 1977. godine. Milan je, sasvim očekivano, deti­ njstvo provodio u igri između kamiona, skuplja­ nju šrafova po dvorištvu, večito prljavih ručica.

Voleo je da gleda kako se popravljaju motori i maštao da i on to j­ ednog dana radi.

Kao mali, dane je uglavnom provodio sa majkom zbog čestih očevih i dedinih odlazaka po nove alate i mašine. Za porodičnu radionicu je bio vezan još od malih nogu. Pored dede i oca imao je najbolje pri­mere kako se treba učiti poslu i ispekao zanat zlata vredan.

Nakon što je završio osnovnu školu, Milan je upi­ sao srednju tehničku školu „Petar Drapšin“, u kojoj je posle nekoliko godina stekao zvanje mašinskog tehničara. Početkom devedesetih godina sve životne vrednosti su počela da se gube, a kriminal i razni oblici zla su zavladali ovim prostorima. Novca nije bilo, sve se smatralo luksuzom. Zakoni su postojali samo na papiru.

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Milan je odrastao u turbulentnim i teškim vre­ menima. U periodu odrastanja njegove generacije došlo je do sloma čitavog jednog sistema vrednosti i moralnog kompasa. Linija između dobrog i lošeg, poštenog i nepoštenog više nije postojala. Za deča­ ka njegovih godina takvo okruženje nudilo je pregršt pogrešnih izbora i iskušenja.

Zahvaljujući porodici i vaspitanju koje iz nje nosi zadržao je pravi kurs. Znao je da su pošten rad i odnos prema ljudima jedini ispravan put. Vrlo često je umeo da letnje raspuste i slobodno vreme nakon završenih časova provede u radionici. Već u tom periodu kod njega se rađa jaka ambicija da još više proširi porodičan posao. Milan je u godinama koje su dolazile pokazao liderski duh i hrabrost, osobine koje su svakako neophodne ako želite da bude­te uspešni u bilo kom poslu. Vrlo često se vodi geslom „ko reskira- profitira“, čuvenom rečenicom njego­ vog omiljenog televizijskog junaka. On je čovek sklon kompromisu, svestan da moderna vremena zahtevaju malo drugačiji pogled na svet nego što je

to bilo pre pedeset godina. Milan je i danas prava pokre­t ačka snaga MR-a i svakako osoba koja najviše dopri­nosi daljem razvoju kompanije. Oduvek je bio svestan da je najbolja škola učiti na sopstvenim ali i tuđim greškama, i da je to jedini put ka ličnom i poslovnom napretku i razvoju.

Planirao je da studira na Mašinskom fakultetu, ali su ga u tome sprečili otac i deda objašnjavajući da je studiranje svakako korisno iskustvo, ali i da u njiho­ voj firmi ima mnogo posla međutim ne i vremena i strpljenja da čekaju da završi fakultet.

A Milan, oduvek brzih misli i pregršta ideja i reše­ nja, našao je ono kojim bi ispoštovao reč starijih, ali i svoje želje. Složio se da će odmah početi da radi u „MR“-u, ali predložio i da upiše neki drugi, lakši fakultet, koji je izvodljivo studirati uz rad. No, ono što se na pojedinim fakultetima nudilo nije mu se dopao.

Zato je 1998. godine odlučio da studira van zemlje, sa namerom da upozna i način na koji ljudi razmi­šljaju na „zapadu“ i stekne znanje korisno za porodičnu

50 GODINA SA VAMA firmu Rajkovića. Tako je godinu dana kasni­je upisao koledž „Waterloo“ u Kanadi. Medjutim, Milan je ipak nasledio Radomirove i Milutinove gene. Vratio se u domovinu koja je tih meseci bila bombardovana a ljudi u njoj ginuli u vazdušnim napadima. I ostao.

Odlučio je da se posveti njihovoj mašinskoj radionici.

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Tako je Milan preuzeo administrativne poslove, pregovaranje sa stranim klijentima i saradnicima, traženje novih poslova i osvajanje tržišta.

Odmah je sebi postavio niz ciljeva. Krenuo je od procenjivanja njihovih mogućnosti, odredio pozi­ tivne i negativne aspekte. U tom trenutku „MR“ je bila među vodećim firmama za mašinsku obradu u tadašnjoj državi, Saveznoj Republici Jugoslaviji. Imali su modernu opremu, odličnu ekipu majstora, bili fokusirani na domaće tržište.

Milan je preuzeo u svoje ruke vođenje poslova­ nja. Napravio je strategiju razvoja i isplanirao svaki sledeći korak koji je bio potreban kako bi firma posta­la još veća i uspešnija. Prvi korak je bio obila­zak sličnih evropskih preduzeća kako bi saznao kakve su šanse MR-a u odnosu na strane firme na tada nepoznatom tržištu. Primetio je da njegovoj porodi­ čnoj firmi nedostaje određena oprema kako bi mogli da budu konkurentni na tržištu Evrope.

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Odlučio je: u naredne 4 godine radionicu treba da opreme u tom momentu najsavremenijim mašina­ ma. Tako je i bilo. Kupovinom dve tek proizvedene mašine američkog proizvođača „Rottler“ 2004. ­godine, postali su jedina firma na Balkanu a druga u celoj Evropi koja je posedovala mašine F88S i HP6A. Te godine, 3. decembra i zvanično je osnovao preduzeće „MR Group“ koje je zapravo nasledilo dotadašnju samostalnu zanatsku radionicu čiji je vlasnik bio njegov otac Milutin. I zacrtao kao jedan od najvažnijih ciljeva – izlazak na evropsko tržište.

Deda Bata je Milanu bio i ostao simbol reda, rada i discipline, zauvek kao retko pošten i izuzetno skroman čovek. Njegove priče je još kao mali upijao ne trepćući. Pa mu je i dan danas drago kako ljudi pamte njegovog dedu kao velikog radnika koji je umeo da bude nezgodan i oštar na rečima prema dokoličarima i neradnicima.

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U porodici Rajković 12. aprila 1982. godine rođen je još jedan dečak, drugi od trojice sinova Milutina i Milese. Bata je, ugledavši duge i tanju­ šne prstiće bebe Miloša, glasno primetio da je rođen budući ili izuzetan majstor koji će moći da uhvati svaki šraf ispod auta, ili dobar lopov.

Svako ko poznaje braću Rajković, reći će da je Miloš drugačiji od svog starijeg i mlađeg brata. Razlika je uočljiva i u fizičkom izgledu ali i u karakteru. Za Miloša će vam reći da se više odmetnuo na majku i njenu stranu familije. On je momak koji ima izraženu empatiju, emotivnost, što ljudi u današnje vreme vrlo često umeju da protumače kao slabost. Od sve trojice unuka Radomir je najveći uticaj ostavio na Miloša. Vrlo često, njegovi životni stavovi se razlikuju od stavova njegovih vršanjaka. Miloš veruje u težak rad, u skromnost kao vrlinu i porodicu kao osnovu svega. On uživa u jednostavnim stvarima, čvrsto stojeći na zemlji. Slobodno vreme voli da provodi u prirodi, planinareći i šetajući sa sinom i suprugom.

Njegov uticaj na sam rad firme je ogroman, iako se

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često to ne vidi. On je od onih „diskretnih heroja“, nevidljivih, o kojima se ne priča ali koji su svojim radom i ponašanjem i te kako zaslužili poštovanje.

Već od šeste godine, Miloš je kao i njegov stariji brat, dane provodio u porodičnoj radionici. Odlazio bi sa ocem u radionicu i na starom stolu za sklapanje glava motora na kojem je bila velika stabilna bušilica, čistio ventile. Imao je i svoj detinji posao majstora – u kotlarnici kuće drugarima je menjao delove na njihovim biciklima, popravljao, i nevaljalo one novije prepakivao na svoj bicikl.

Miloš je oca često viđao samo ujutru kada bi se spremao za školu, a Milutin se umoran vraćao sa posla. Bilo je važno što bolje i brže ono što treba završi­ti, a snage za to je imao zato što je bio svestan koliko su uložili u posao, i zašto je važno da ne stanu i ne padnu. Tako je Miloš odmalena, posmatrajući oca, naučio šta znači biti posvećen onome što radiš.

Kada pomisli na svog dedu, Miloš se prvo priseti njegove velike ljubavi prema alatu. A zatim i detinj­ stva tokom osamdesetih, kada se i kod njega razvi­ jala slična ljubav. Pamti kako je, kao dečkić, odlazio sa drugarima u dedinu perionicu. I nižu se u glavi slike: Miloš sa drugarima iz škole i kraja, napolju leto u jeku, unutra probija vrelina, a oni, klinci, peru redom blokove motora, glave radilica, razne delove.

Miloš je, kao i Milan, od malena bio vezan za svog dedu Batu i van radionice. Leti je odlazio na salaš kod Požarevca i pomagao mu u poljoprivrednim rad­ovima. Dešavalo se da tokom vršidbe deda Bata mora nešto da popravi na kombajnu, pa bi mu Miloš u tome pomagao.

A deda, nije bio kao druge dede, da unuke mazi.

Bata je, strog kakvim ga svi pamte, i prema sebi i prema drugima, svoje naslednike učio – životu.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Seća se Miloš kako je jednom, tokom vršidbe, treba­lo dedi da doda šrafciger. Međutim, okliznuo se i pao. Iz sve snage, pravo na rudu između trakto­ ra i prikolice. Kako ga je zabolelo! Deda ga je samo pogledao i rekao da odmah ustane, dodajući: „To nije ništa strašno! I mene su tako udarali dok sam se bavio boksom. Nema kukanja!“ Jer, kod Bate biti bolestan, stati zbog povreda, otoka, mučnine, je bilo nedopustivo i nije smelo biti izgovor za nerad.

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Tako je i Miloš, kao i svi ostali Batini naslednici, naučio da uvek i bez obzira na nevolje i neprijatno­ sti, povrede i slabosti, gura dalje. Naučio je da ne staje, jer život nije lagan i nežan, ali može biti lep i kvalitetan ako znaš šta hoćeš i ne staješ.

Pamti Miloš svog dedu kao čoveka koji nije pokazi­ vao emocije. Međutim, seća se da je kao mali tokom njegovog boravka na salašu kod dede, često znao da pospremi njegov razbacani alat po podu u staroj alatnici blatari. Kada bi deda kasnije ušao i video kako je unuk složio alat i sve pospremio, oči bi mu se napunile suzama od radosti i nežnosti.

Kasnije, primećivao je sreću i zadovoljstvo kod dede svaki put kada bi bilo ko od njih u radionici brzo, precizno, kvalitetno, uz pohvale i zadovoljstvo klijenata, završio neki važan posao. Voleo je da čuje kako hvale njegov i rad ostalih u radionici. A tek kada bi uspeli povoljno i onako kako je zamislio da nabave najnovije mašine…

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Miloš je išao u osnovnu školu i od svih Rajkovića, po ogromnoj ljubavi prema mehanici, motorima, ­ automobilima, pokazivao najvše sličnosti deda Bati. Pa mu i sada, kao nekada dedi, zacakle oči kao malom detetu kada im iz inostranstva stigne komple­t an motor, a on treba celog da ga popravi i vrati stari sjaj.

Tako je Miloš upisao srednju školu „Božidar Adžija“ izabravši mašinski smer. Već po završetku prvog razreda je počeo da radi u „MR“-u, i tako je i danas.

U međuvremenu, završio je školovanje, u stalnom radnom odnosu je bio već sa sedamnaest i po godi­ na. Teoriju koju je savladao godinama kombinuje sa znanjem stečenim praksom i iskustvom.

Radomir je unuku prepričavao jedan od susreta sa svojim šefom, dok je radio u Nemačkoj. U kancela­ riji iznad servisa, kroz ogroman prozor, motrio bi na sve zaposlene radarskim pogledom. Odjednom, spusti se do radnika i podiže zalutali šraf s poda.

Priđe Radomiru, kojeg je zvao Lari i upita, što ga nije on podigao uz komentar: „Gde ćemo mi svi, Lari, ako ova firma propadne?“. Tako i Miloš, naučen da čuva i održava ono što imaju, skuplja i slaže sve, i šrafo­ve i matice. Miloš je završavao osnovnu školu.

Odlučio je, kako se tada govorilo, da „ide na zanat“, i to je rekao roditeljima. Prepoznajući od malena kod Miloša ljubav i sklonost ka mašinama, verujući u ispravnost sinovljevog izbora, oni su ga podržali.

Kao dete radio je u perionici, nastavio je radni vek na prijemnom odeljenju, počeo da se interesuje za servisiranje tada popularnih automobila domaće proizvodnje zvanih „jugići“ (YUGO putnička vozila, proizvođač u Jugoslaviji je bila „Crvena zastava“ iz Kragujevca). Vraćajući „jugiće“ na ulice u voznom stanju, počeo je i da kupuje stara vozila, popravljao ih a zatim dalje prodavao. Danas, zajedno sa svo­ jom braćom, vredno radi na napretku firme sa istim žarom kao kada je prvi put složio alat svom dedi u onoj staroj blatari iz njegovog detinjstva.

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Kada je najstariji sin Milan imao 12 a mlađi Miloš 7 godina, u porodicu Rajković stigao je 25. avgusta 1989. godine još jedan dečak – treći sin Milutina i Milese.

I njemu su dali ime koje počinje slovom „M“. Marko je, svojim interesovanjima i stečenim ­znanjima, doda­tno obogatio i upotpunio priču o snovima porodice Rajković.

Marko je po prirodi svog karaktera izmeđi Milana i Miloša. Doduše, sličniji Milanu ali ipak različit na toliko mnogo nivoa. Sličnost sa njegovim stari­ jim bratom ogleda se pre svega u ambiciji i želji za poslovnim uspehom, dok ga sa srednjim povezuje pedantnost i želja za radom i organizovanošću.

On je, kao i njegova braća, provodio dosta vreme­ na u radionici. Seća se letnjih raspusta tokom kojih je imao zadatak da najmanje jedan ceo mesec radi u radionici, odnosno u perionici u kojoj se u njihovoj firmi zapravo obavljaju najteži poslovi. Zbog toga, i

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danas vrlo poštuje ljude koji rade u tom odeljenju pripreme motora za remont, one koji na kraju dana izgledaju kao da su izašli iz rudnika.

Sva trojica su slobodne dane provodila pomažući u radionici. Sigurni su da su baš te radne nedelje kod njih bile ključne za stvaranje stabilnih radnih navika.

Milan, Miloš i Marko su krenuli iz perionice, preko rasturanja glava motora, pa dalje prema intereso­ vanjima u okviru delatnosti njihove porodične firme, kako je ko osećao i pokazivao.

Naravno da su Marku tokom odrastanja oba brata bila uzori, štošta je naučio i pokupio od njih. I sam kaže da mu je u mnogim stvarima u životu bilo lakše, jer su braća probijala led pre njega i otvarala ona, tokom odrastanja svima teška vrata.

U njegovom odrastanju, i deda Radomir je ostavio dubok trag. Uvek je bio ponosan na svog najmlađeg unuka. Oduševljavao se njegovim znanjem i govo­ rom na engleskom, i često je govorio kako veruje

da će njegov Marko napraviti mnogo u životu, ma šta da je pod tim podrazumevao. A unuku bi te reči davale snage da krene dalje, ulivale energiju. Ne samo zato što je Bata bio njegov deda, već i zato što je to govo­rio čovek koji je stvorio toliko toga svake hvale i pomena vrednog.

Radomir je oduvek bodrio Marka da posle svakog pada ustane. Čak i kada je kao gimnazijalac ponavljao treći razred, i zbog toga bio sasvim slomljen. Deda Radomir mu je tada rekao:“ Sine, ja i dalje verujem u tebe, nepravde su sastavni deo života, moraš iz njih nešto da naučiš i izađeš još jači. Nemam sumnje da ćeš ti biti najškolovaniji Rajković, već sada govoriš engleski kao da ti je maternji jezik. Bila bi šteta da se ne dokažeš u tim školama”. I Marko ga je poslušao.

Došlo je vreme da bira svoj životni put. Kao najmlađi, ali rastući u drugačijim okolnostima u zemlji i svetu, on je različit od svog dede, oca i braće. Ne mnogo, taman koliko treba da bi priča o njihovoj mašinskoj radionici mogla da se proširi i razigra i van sveta struke, motora i automobilizma.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Lako se otisnuo u „beli svet“, na jedno vreme odvo­ jio od porodice i brzo osamostalio. Otišao je znanja radi, da bi učio, sticao razne veštine, ­upoznavao bro­ jne, drugačije ljude.

Po završetku gimnazije, naime, Marko je u ­ pisao osnovne studije na fakultetu Univerziteta „English School of Business“ u Beogradu. Planirao je da kredite od ispita prenese na matični fakultet u Londonu, koji mu je oduvek bio privlačan za studiranje. Kada imaš zamisao i vredno radiš na njoj, onda je i ostvariš.

Posle završene druge godine studija u Beogradu, dobio je stipendiju za londonski Hult Univerzitet (Hult International Business School).

Deda nije dočekao da podeli radost uspeha sa njegovim najmlađim unukom...

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Dok su stariji Rajkovići svaki sekund koristili da „MR Group“ bude još veći, bolji, respektabilniji, ­najmlađi Marko je nastavljao studije u Londonu.

Učio. Davao ispite. Živeo. Osamostalio se. Bio daleko od topline i bezbrišnosti koju je imao u svojoj stabilnoj porodici. Završio osnovne studi­ je ­biznisa i finansijske analitike. Ali, pored drago­ cenog akademskog znanja, stekao i ono životno.

Tokom godi­na u Londonu Marko je naučio da vidi svet druga­čije, da razume različite kulture, pri­ hvata drugačije načine razmišljanja, ljude koji su drugačiji od nas.

Nije Marku bilo nimalo lako, iako s vremenske distance izgleda kao da jeste. Bilo je mnogo prepre­ ka koje je prevazilazio ili sam ili zajedno sa osta­lim Rajkovićima. Desilo se da je njihov, „MR“-ov ­šleper pun motora ukraden u Italiji. Veliki gubitak za poro­ dičnu firmu iz Srbije. Finansijska šteta koja se kao talas prenosila na svaki segment života člano­va porodice Rajković. Pa i na Marka, koji je tada bio u

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Londonu. I kome je taj događaj sa krađom, opasno zaljuljao tlo pod nogama. Kako je gubitak u novcu bio ogroman, zamalo da se Marko vrati u Srbiju. Ionako je i otišao u London jedva, tako što je, bez ičijeg znanja, prodao svoj automobil da bi došao do sume potrebne za prvu ratu školovanja na tom univerzi­ tetu. Ali, predati se nikada nije bila opcija za Marka.

Rajkovići ne odustaju, uvek nađu način i rešenje.

Marka problemi sa nedostatkom novca nisu uplašili, naprotiv, težina situacije u kojoj se našao probudila je želju za dokazivanjem. Bio je potpuno spreman da se upusti u avanturu u koju ga je smes­ tila neprijatna realnost. Upoznavao je ljude, tražio i nalazio razne poslove: prvo kao promoter u jed­ nom klubu, zatim radeći na žurkama, pa i onim koje bi počinjale iza ponoći i završavale tokom kasnog popodneva. Uspevao je da za noć, radeći u šanku, zaradi po 200-300 funti, što je njemu kao studentu bilo i više nego dovoljno za normalan život u papre­ no skupom Londonu.

Često se selio, i tokom tih godina, naučio važne i za život presudne lekcije. Očvrsnuo je, naučio koliko je bitno imati cilj u životu, ali i da ukoliko si uporan i istrajan, ne postoji prepreka koju ne možeš da pre­ skočiš. Sve ono što mu je deda govorio ali na nešto drugačiji način, kasnije i otac, i starija braća.

Zato Marko posle završetka osnovnih studija nije stao. Otišao je u Belgiju, tamo završio master studi­ je iz oblasti digitalnog marketinga, počeo da radi u ­okviru automobilske korporacije „Cummins Inc“.

Ne baš sklonog pokazivanju emocija, Marko se ipak seća dana kada je u očima svog oca Milutina video suze, radosnice. Bilo je to na svečanosti na kojoj je Marku uručena diploma za uspešno završeni master na univerzitetu. Tada je pomislio kako se za takve trenutke živi i koliko je dobar osećaj kada vidi ponos u roditeljskim očima.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Iako je bio svestan da je mnogo postigao, osećao je da mu nešto nedostaje da bi bio sasvim srećan i ispunjen. Ubrzo je shvatio i šta. Jednog dana pozva­ li su ga Milan i Miloš. Predložili mu da rade zaje­ dno. I naprave nešto na šta će svi biti ponosni. Nije se Marko premišljao, setio se u trenu dedinih reči, svega što je naučio od oca i majke, svoje braće.

Odlučio je da je vreme da se vrati kući.

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Kada se osvrnu na istoriju svoje porodice i mašinskog servisa, danas preduzeća „MR Group“, kažu da velike zasluge za uspeh pripadaju i ženama u porodici Rajković. Muškarci često nisu imali vremena, neprekidno radeći. Zato su svoje žene poštovali svesni koliko su važne, koliko i one rade i koliko je u svemu veliki njihov doprinos. Znali su da bez njih nikada ne bi mogli da postignu to što jesu.

Od malih nogu, dečacima je bilo jasno da je njiho­va majka Milesa, kao što je to ranije bila baba Gordana, stub porodice. Milesa je bila i ostala balans, držala konce u rukama, brinula o vaspitanju dečaka, živo­ tnim i školskim rezultatima, svemu. Žena puna ljuba­ vi, strpljiva, stabilna, radna, energična. Da nije takva, Milutin možda ne bi bio toliko uspešan u poslu a sinovi tako snažne i samostalne a složene ličnosti.

Iako je bilo trenutaka u kojima je brinula i oseća­ la strah, to nije pokazivala. Hrabro se uvek nosila sa jakim ličnostima svog supruga i svekra. Nije joj

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bilo svejedno kada su odlazili na daleka, naporna i neizve­sna putovanja, ali je to prihvatila kao neopho­ dnost da bi na trpezi bilo hleba. Svoju dužnost da od trojice sinova napravi dobre ljude ozbiljno je shva­ tala i predano na tome radila. Milesa je uvek bila spremna na kompromise, umela da se bori i u teškim trenucima svesna da postoje neki viši, važni ciljevi.

Kao večita podrška suprugu Milutinu, često je sa njim i putovala u godinama kada je Radomir polako usporavao radni ritam.

Pored Milese, još dve žene igraju veoma važnu ulogu u porodici Rajković. To su Ana, Milanova ­supruga i Milena, Miloševa lepša polovina. Ana i Milan imaju sina Mihaila, dok Milena i Miloš imaju takođe sina, Savu. Ana je po prirodi potpuno druga­ čija od svog muža. Tiha i povučena. Bavi se privatnim poslom, vlasnica je kompanije koja se bavi proizvo­ dnjom garderobe i svih tipova uniformi. Milena je vaspitačica, pa tako svoje znanje i iskustvo iz pedago­gije vešto koristi u vaspitavanju svog sina.

Mihailo je osnovac, interesuju ga kompjuteri i gitara.

Mašta o tome da jednog dana postane svetska rok zvezda. Sava je još mali, ima 3 godine. Kod njega se primećuje interesovanje za mehaniku, barem u do­ menu dečije radoznalosti. Da li će najmlađi Rajkovići nastaviti porodičan posao, ne zna se. Ovi stariji sma­ traju, sa punim pravom, da decu treba ostaviti da nađu svoj put. Geslo je veoma prosto, svako je kovač soptvene sreće.

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Rajkoviće povezuje i ogromna upornost.

Radomira je posebno krasila ta osobina, ­uostalom, da nije bio takav „MR“ bi izgledao danas sasvim drugačije, a možda ga ne bi ni bilo.

Tu osobinu je nasledio i sin Milutin, kao i niz drugih, za posao i pošten život važnih osobina.

Obojica su ostavili trag kao vrhunski majstori, s tim što je Milutin uvek bio nešto blaži. Radomir se nikada nije libio da kaže šta misli, dok bi Milutin znao da ozbiljne reči oboji šaljivim tonom. Otac je često bio bolno direktan i strog, sin je pro­bleme koji su se ukazivali, rešavao taktičnije.

Milutin, Radomirov sin, u mnogo čemu podseća na svoga oca. I sam je rastao u porodici poput one koju je sa Milesom stvorio, okružen ljubavlju i istim životnim i ljudskim vrednostima. Uvek je smatrao da je sve moguće ukoliko se dovoljno potrudiš da to ostvariš.

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Prema drugima, ali nikada i prema sebi – Milutin je i danas, sa 67 godina aktivniji i radi daleko više nego mnogi znatno mlađi od njega. Pa kako onda sinovima, takav kakav je, da ne bude uzor u poslu i radnim navikama!

A unuci? Oni su dostojni naslednici. Nastavljaju da grade i razvijaju san svog dede. svesni su da je danas na ovim prostorima, nažalost, sve manje ljudi koji žele time da se bave.

Bilo je uspona i padova, ali je Milana uvek podi­ zalo saznanje da je deda Bata firmu stvarao i uspeo u mnogo težim vremenima. Pokretala ga je misao koja je danas vodilja kompanije: „Ne postoje teška vremena, postoje samo ljudi koji hoće i žele da rade, i neradnici kojima je svako vreme teško.“

I zato je Milanu kao najstarijem unuku osnovni cilj da izgradi preduzeće poznato i cenjeno i van granica Srbije, jer tako može da ostavi trag vre­ dan poštova ­nja dede Radomira Bate Rajkovića, njihovog osnivača.

50 GODINA SA VAMA Svaki novi dan mu je potvrda da je voditi porodi­ čno preduzeće zahtevnije nego biti na čelu u firmi čiji vlasnik nije tvoj rod. Velika je to odgovornost prema roditeljima, braći, posebno sećanju na dedu.

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Miloš primećuje da ljudi ne vole da budu ­ ajstori, neće da budu masni, prljavi, ­poneki m nemaju ­dovoljno znanja pa se plaše da neće umeti posao da urade kvalitetno i dobro.

I poštenje je izgubilo na značaju – mnogi urade minimalno dobro, tek koliko se mora, i to što brže i površno. U „MR“-u znaju da takav način rada nije dobar izbor. Njihov je cilj da nastave da se ­usavr­š ava­­ju, povećavaju produktivnost, da ­postignu perfekciju u raznim procesima rada, da sve faze sinhronizuju tako da nema zastoja, da posao teče po planu i prema očekivanjima.

Zato i rade čak i na vozilima na kojima mnogi ­majstori ne žele, kako kažu, ni haubu da podignu.

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Miloš to što danas radi sa braćom smatra predno­ šću, jer se svi jednako daju, svaki na svoj način. Kad radi sa najbližima, sve ima drugačiji, slađi smisao i dublje razloge. Medjutim, i da je zaposlen kod nekog drugog, Miloš bi radio na isti način. Gde god da je, trudio bi se da bude jednako i brzo i uspešno, ali i uredno i čisto. I nema problem ni da, ako treba, pokupi svaki zalutali papirić s poda i baci ga. I po toj osobini je pravi naslednik deda Bate.

Od 10 zaposlenih na početku milenijuma stigli su do više od 70 radnika. Kao firma u kojoj su radili deda, sin i trojica unuka, kao porodično preduzeće u kojem su zaposleni radnici koji se ne prezivaju Rajković, zbog odnosa vlasnika prema njima, „MR“ doživljavaju kao svoj drugi dom. Neki od njih tu su počeli da rade odmah po završetku školovanja i danas su nakon više decenija rada i dalje deo tima, tu su ceo radni vek.

Između Milana, Miloša i Marka, postoji neka posebna, bratska veza. Ona koja se sreće među decom u porodicama u kojima možda i nema materi­ jalne ali je uočljiva moralna i emotivna raskoš, u kojima se najviše cene poštenje, rad, doslednost, a iznad svega vrednuju preci, neguje poreklo i nikada ne zaboravlja čiji su naslednici. I na taj način čuvaju obraz i dostojanstvo.

Rade naporno i mnogo, ali im ne pada na pamet da se požale. Nije im teško. Zajedno se raduju i slave, dele i lepe i loše trenutke, niko nikome ništa ne zame­ra, ne krivi, svaki trenutak i dobar i loš ­zajedno lakše prolaze.

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„MR Group“ danas vode Radomirov sin Milutin na poziciji predsednika kompanije, i njegovi ­sinovi: Milan koji je generalni direktor, Miloš je menadžer odeljenja remonta motora, a Marko zamenik genera­lnog direktora.

Njih četvorica, sa sećanjem na dedu, oca i osni­ vača mašinske radionice „MR“, streme visoko. U ovoj jubilarnoj godini za njih, u kojoj slave punih 50 godina od dana kada je Radomir Rajković os­ novao svoju prvu zvaničnu radionicu, oni su otvorili još jedan pogon.

Pored postojećeg na Voždovcu, koji je sa prvobi­ tnih 80 „porastao“ na 1.600 kvadratnih metara, 2018. godine su podigli i proizvodni pogon u mestu Malo Crniće, nadomak Požarevca.

Tragali su za njim skoro deceniju, budući da su za njihove usluge postali zainteresovani mnogi ­ evropski klijenti, a postojeće postrojenje ­postalo ­neadekva­tno za širenje poslovanja.

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Konačno, pronašli su objekat nekadašnje fabrike testenina u Malom Crniću. Prilikom prve posete, Rajkovići su znali da su pronašli pravo mesto za nas­ tavak njihove životne priče.

Kada su na čelu opštine zatekli ljude koji se prema njoj odnose domaćinski, one koji se razumeju u privredu i znaju koliko je važno da se ona razvija, dogovor su postigli brzo.

Tako je sredinom 2017. godine, „MR Group“ uzeo u zakup novih četiri hiljade kvadratnih metara prostora. Valjalo je svakodnevno sređivati objekat nekadašnje fabrike i prilagoditi ga potrebama jednog modernog remontnog centra.

Isplatilo se, sav umor i nespavanje, rekonstru­ kcije, putovanja na relaciji Beograd – Malo Crniće tokom osam meseci. Pogon u Malom Crniću je počeo sa radom i remontom motora namenjenih inostranom tržištu.

S proleća 2018. godine svečano su otvorili pogon u Malom Crniću, moderan i opremljen najnovijom tehnologijom remontni centar, po svim najvišim svetskim standardima. Malo Crniće je siromašna sredina. Sa druge strane u Malom Crniću i okolini postoji dosta mladih ljudi željnih da rade i stvaraju, koji do skoro nisu imali prilike za tim. Ključni krite­ rijum prilikom odabira kanditata za rad u novom pogonu nije bio njihovo tehničko znanje i pozna­ vanje tehnologije motora. Osnovni kriterijum je bio njihova želja za učenjem i ljudske osobine. Zaposleni u novom pogonu polako, ali ­sigurno postaju deo­ velike „MR“ porodice.

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Tu nije kraj. Već sada imaju nove ideje i planove. Stajanja nema. Zato je „MR Group“ danas tako ­veliko i ­posebno preduzeće, ali i više od toga. To je lekcija o životu, porodici, škola ostva­renja ­nemogućih snova. „MR“ je porodi­ čno preduzeće satkano od nepreki­dnog rada, poštovanja reda i discipline. Priča o tome kako se palata gradi strpljivo i ­neprekidno, slaže zrno po zrno peska. O tome kako se ako se padne ne plače nad sudbinom, nego odmah ustaje i kreće dalje.

Ova priča koja traje 50 godina nije priča o radu.

Ovo je priča o viziji, jasnom fokusu i ostvarivanju cilja kroz rad. Milijarde ljudi svako jutro ustanu i idu na posao. Završe smenu i više ne razmišalju o poslu do sutrašnjeg dana. Za uspeh je potrebna vera, jer vera u pobedu je pola pobede. Barem tako kažu. Da biste napredovali treba konstantno da verujete u sebe i ljude oko vas, da budete uporni i da se odričete malih i velikih zadovoljstava zarad višeg cilja. Čovek koji je započeo ovu, za sad pedestogodišnju priču,

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upravo je imao takav životni stav. Stav koji bi trebalo da inspiriše sve mlade ljude. Stav koji bi trebalo da im da snagu da se izbore sa t­ renutnim preprekama.

Skromnost je veoma bitna osobina u ovoj priči.

Direktno je povezana sa odricanjem. Nema skromno­ sti bez odricanja, niti odricanja bez skromnosti. Vrlo često na ovim prostorima možete videti ljude koji čim im se ukaže prilika kupuju skupe satove, odela, automobile... Takav stil i životna filozofija vrlo često budu pogubni. Verovatno je svima vama pozna­ ta priča o cvrčku i mravu. Naizgled dečija priča, koja u sebi krije, ako se malo zamislite, jednu veliku životnu istinu. Rad i odricanje se na kraju isplate.

Kad tad. Onaj koji je živeo od danas do sutra, vrlo verovatno prekosutra ostaje bez svega. U kulturi nekih naroda Zapadne Evrope, poput Holanđana ili Nemaca, duboko je ukorenjena ideja štednje, život­ na filozofija koja se ekonomskim rečnikom jednosta­ vno zove akumulacija. Upravo zbog ovakve svoje poslovne filozofije, MR je privukao veliki broj klije­ nata iz čitavog sveta, između ostalog klijente iz gore

pomenutih zemalja. Porodici Rajković ljudi su oduvek bili najvažniji. Današnji poslodavci vrlo često na svoje radnike gledaju kao na broj. Kao lako zamenjive. U takvoj atmosferi običan čovek se oseća kao manje vredan, nebitan. Za razliku od takvih, Rajkovići se vode suprotnim načelima. Radnici su za njih drugari iz škole, iz vojske, ulice, pa čak i kumovi. Mnogi od tih radnika su dobili posao tako što su jednostavno ušli u prostorije firme i pitali da li mogu da se pridruže njihovoj priči. Mnogi od njih su sa MR-om proživlja­ vali i lepe i ne tako lepe trenutke. Mnogi od njih su rasli i napredovali zajedno sa MR-om. Takav odnos se ne može nazvati radnim odnosom, on svakako predstavlja nešto mnogo više od toga.

Rajkovići nisu niti superheroji niti likovi iz nekog holivudskog filma. Oni su obični ljudi. Sa vrlinama i manama, kao i svako od nas. Ljude poput njih srećete svaki dan. U pošti, školi, na ulici, prodavni­ ci ili fudbalskoj utakmici. Vode se prostim životnim principima. Dele ljude na dobre i loše, na one koji hoće da rade i na one koji bi radije da kukaju nad

50 GODINA SA VAMA sudbinom. Primeri ovakvih ljudi i ovakvih porodica postoje svuda oko nas. U današnjoj trci za novcem, koji je svakako neophodan za život ali ne i za sreću, ljudi često zanemaraju porodicu i svoje okruženje. Ni jedna jedina bitka ni rat se ne mogu dobiti od strane pojedinca, već je za to potrebna vojska. Nebitna je brojčana veličina vojske, već da li se ti vojnici među­ sobno podržavaju i čuvaju leđa jedan drugom. Čovek bez koga ova priča ne bi postojala je preži­ veo brojne ratove i bitke. Neki su bili veliki, a neki mali. U nekima je izašao kao pobednik, a u neki­ ma, sa druge strane je barem u tom momentu bio pobe­đen. Pobede ga nisu opile, kao što ga ni porazi nisu slomili. Vremenom je stvorio vojsku, sa kojom je takođe delio lepe i ne tako lepe stvari. Veličina pobede ili poraza ogleda se u inspiraciji koja ostaje iza nje, kao i u motivu generacijama koje te pobede ne pamte. Ovo je jedna takva pobeda, satkana od brojnih manjih poraza i pobeda.

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“NE POSTOJE TEŠKA VREMENA, POSTOJE SAMO LJUDI KOJI VOLE I HOĆE DA RADE I NERADNICI KOJIMA JE SVAKO VREME TEŠKO” Radomir Bata Rajković

MRGROUP How long is a dusty road? How long can a kilometre be, and how can wishes and dreams transform it into a few steps? The willpower and determination move lots of boundaries.

He was told, ’The Danube has to be on your righthand side. Don’t be too far away from it, nor too close, so as not to get intoxicated by its smell and brought back to your parents’ humble home.’ When you’re twelve years old, a metre seems longer than when you’re an adult, let alone eighty-something kilometres ahead.

Back in 1932, in Serbia, as in the whole of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, children used to grow up fast. The wounds which World War I left were still fresh. One out of three men had laid their lives at the altar of their fatherland and freedom. Given their situation, the children had to take the place of their fathers doing hard manual work, which was done by the fathers only a short time before, as well as provide their mothers and grandmothers with the

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necessary help. In 1903, the first cars of the Czech brand ’Nesselsdorf’ appeared on the streets of Belgrade. During the first ride through the Belgrade city centre of that time, some passers-by looked in disbelief, while others, frightened, even ran away to the nearby alleys.

When a boy called Radomir headed towards Belgrade on foot, the first cars diffidently started to appear on the roads of the Kingdom. Surely, as every innovation and ’the wonder of technology’ usually is, at that time cars were reserved solely for the political and economic elite. In time and with the technological advancement that followed, cars slowly started to replace the carriages in the cities and the carts and ploughs in the country.

Every great technological advancement is followed by a need for new knowledge and skill. A machine is a product of man, and however perfect it seemed, it is prone to breaking down, but can be mended by that same man. To repair something that is practically perfect is art. It is perfectly clear that technology has advanced immensely since Henry Ford’s first engine. It is a law of nature, an evolution.

However, this art is based upon the same principles as any other kind of art – work, desire, self-sacrifice and, finally, vision.

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MRGROUP Radomir Bata Rajković was born on October 2nd, 1920 in Požarevac. His father Milan ran a machine shop in this small Serbian town and he was learning the trade from an early age. Various tools and machines were his toys, a magical world in which one grows up when necessary, not when the time is right.

Radomir lost his father at the age of six, so his hard-working mother Persa had to sell the shop and find ways to provide for the two of them, so they could survive. Yugoslavia between the two wars had a slow economic growth. While food and other supplies were lacking, various lethal diseases such as leprosy and tuberculosis were abundant. But this didn’t prevent the boy from finding work and a way to survive. And so he plucked up the courage to go to the capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, alone and on foot.

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After several days of walking, he arrived in Belgrade, a city in which he believed he would make his wishes come true and find a place that would give him a chance for a better life. However, only two days later, he was apprehended by the police and deported to his hometown. He didn’t let this failure break his dreams. On the contrary, it fueled an even greater desire to succeed in his endeavours.

A couple of months later, he was determined to get to Belgrade again. This time he managed to stay and even to find a job in an electrician’s shop in Sarajevska Street. Throughout his childhood and growing up he had to work incessantly to buy food and keep a roof over his head. He spent his time learning the trade and perfecting his skills, getting only a couple of hours of sleep. Radomir suffered the same fate as many children growing up during the first half of the 20th century. People often lived lives that would nowadays be considered inconceivably difficult and harsh.

As soon as he turned sixteen, he became a member of the Yugoslav Navy. During the two years he spent in Kumbor (Montenegro), he graduated from a secondary school of mechanical engineering and got a title of Steam Engine Mechanical Technician.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY Having completed his military service, he went back to Belgrade and devoted himself to his lifelong love – boxing.

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MRGROUP As the occupation of Yugoslavia was more than certain, and World War II on its very brink, Bata decided to go back to Požarevac to be close to his mother. Hard and unpredictable times call for unity, and Bata, although young, knew this very well. And so Bata, in the vortex of war, met his first wife Olga, with whom he welcomed a son named Milan in 1942. As the only certified mechanical technician in Požarevac, he had to take charge of the maintenance of the generator supplying electric power to the town.

During the war, throughout the country, as well as in Požarevac and neighbouring towns, people started joining the liberation forces. With their fellow countrymen, they put up resistance against the invaders in various ways: there is historical evidence of people sabotaging railway tracks, setting municipal archives on fire, blowing up power stations, cutting telephone lines... Many faced death by firing squad or hanging. A lot of innocent bystanders lost their lives, as well.

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Bata, just like many of his contemporaries, took part in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Everyone contributed as much as they could and however they could. Bata took part in the sabotaging the generator he was operating. He believed it to be the least he could do to contribute to the fight against the German invader. After the success of the sabotage, the Quisling regime started pursuing the participants and organisers of all the anti-Nazi activities. Bata was no exception. He lived in hiding until the end of the war, waiting for the final victory.

The effort and sacrifice of the whole generation of people in these regions were finally awarded, the aggressor was defeated. A new era began, bringing freedom, but also a different form of constraints and hardships.

Bata lived by a clear set of principles. He wasn’t likely to make any compromises or to be afraid and he freely expressed his beliefs, without thinking about the consequences. Hard-working and ready to make sacrifices in order to succeed, to better

himself, to become a better worker and a person, he knew there was always a price to be paid. And he always paid his, unless it meant letting himself be defeated. In his early youth, Bata adopted leftwing ideas, just like many righteous young men. He was a unique and complete person, a man of strong stance and conviction.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY He believed in the equality of opportunity, social justice and, above all, work that would bring the working class a better life. On the other hand, there was another side of him, one which honoured the tradition and Serbian identity.

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MRGROUP When World War II ended, he joined the Communist Party. In the country which had changed its name from a kingdom into the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, it was deemed undesirable to bring up religion, church or celebrate religious holidays. As a consequence, many people were arrested on various creative charges, and there are even documented cases of missing people. Bata, however, always stated he was a Serb of Orthodox persuasion, not thinking about the consequences. It was important to him not to betray himself and his beliefs. He believed a man mustn’t change according to social and political change, but stay true to himself.

Therefore, even as a member of the Communist Party, he made a decision to continue celebrating the Slava.

Besides Christmas, the most important religious holiday among Serbian people of Orthodox Christian persuasion is the celebration of one’s family’s patron saint, passed on to them by their fathers (the Slava).

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On December 19th, Saint Nicholas’ Day, the Rajković family’s Slava, he took the kolač (a ritual bread) to the church, as it was the custom. However, at the church door, he was greeted by those he knew from the Party, his ’comrades’. They asked, looking down on him, where he was going and what he was doing, to which he replied, ’Ideology is ideology, and religion is religion. I am a Communist, but I am also an Orthodox Serb and I want to celebrate my family’s Slava the same way my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, as well as those before them, used to celebrate it.’

Of course, his comrades didn’t like that, they were so secure with their Party membership cards and their devotion to Tito. He was made to choose between the Party membership and his Orthodox Christian faith and tradition.

Bata had no qualms about it and he immediately took out his membership card and tore it apart. He decidedly told them he wouldn’t give up his faith, thus denying himself any form of governmental support. This didn’t change him. Honest and hardworking, he was arduously and incessantly making his own path in life, relying solely on his intelligence, knowledge and persistence.

In those years, most people were living by an old adage, ’Silence is golden’, and Bata continued doing the exact opposite. He commonly paid a high price for expressing his opinion.

And so he delivered a speech in his native Požarevac in the late 1940s, a speech against, who other than the president-for-life, comrade Josip Broz Tito. As a result, he had to leave town for a while.

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MRGROUP In the meantime, his first marriage ended.

Soon after, Bata met his second wife Gordana, whom he married and with whom he shared every moment of his life, the beauty of it, as well as the hardships, for the rest of his days.

She was not only taking care of the family and the household constantly, but she was also her husband’s greatest support and aid. As a fruit of this love, on August 26th, 1951, their son Milutin was born.

As for his family life, the things were ideal for Bata and this, naturally, created a strong foundation and possibility for him to dedicate himself more to his work and to the realisation of his lifelong dream.

After Milutin was born, Bata began to consider starting his own business. However, at the time, a private firm owner was considered a public enemy, an individual subverting the society and the system.

There were few people at the time who dared resist the Communist regime.

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Since he was a child, Bata’s son Milutin spent time at the workshop with his father. As early as a ten-year-old boy, he became interested in engines, machines and especially the lathe, all of which were stored in his father’s workshop. When he wasn’t by his father’s side, his childhood pastime was making a mortar for shooting on an old belt-driven lathe.

Since the state of the country wasn’t favourable, Bata went to Germany, where he did every job he could and knew how to so as to earn enough for his wife and son to live a normal life in his home country.

A few years later, in 1966, he got back to Belgrade.

At that time, in the late 1960s, private businesses started to emerge throughout the country, when, by introducing an economic reform, the authorities allowed their development in the field of trades and services. It was a great moment for Radomir to start realising his dream.

That year, there were 90 thousand registered ­passenger motor vehicles on the streets of Belgrade.

This was when Bata, together with his son, moved out of his family home in Požarevac, into a dilapidated house in Belgrade, which consisted of only two tiny rooms. His wife Gordana stayed at their estate to take care of the land and to cultivate it and help her husband in this way.

In Zemun, in Ugrinovačka Street, he opened his first auto mechanic shop. He knew it was just a first step and that he would have to work hard, as well as to save money. However, he was ready for it.

At the time, Milutin was an eighth-grade student in a primary school. It was a routine – after school, Milutin went straight to the workshop and stayed there until both he and his father were nearly dead with fatigue. And right after, just a short period of sleep in a cold empty room.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY What a joy it was when, after finishing primary school, Milutin got a new coat from his father!

There wasn’t enough money, yet Bata was trying to lay aside some, knowing that, if he invested, the business would grow and the profit would be greater.

A period of incessant work, improvement and development ensued. The money that the family earned was spent only if there were no other options.

Bata invested the savings into the development of his business, even the money he earned by doing agricultural work with his combine harvester as well as the money earned by selling pigs that his wife raised in Požarevac.

After finishing primary school, Milutin decided to go to trade school and become a metal-turner. At the time, in vocational secondary schools theory was taught, but practical teaching was also organised and it was crucial for the trades. The practical teaching for metal-turners was organised in a then very

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successful factory ’Ivo Lola Ribar’, located in one of Belgrade’s suburbs, Železnik. Radomir’s son helped his father more and more, especially in assembling the engines. Milutin still remembers the cars that were driven on the roads of that time and brought to them to be repaired: old cars of the brands ’Ford’, ’Škoda’ and work vehicles ’Pobeda’.

They prospered slowly. By saving, Bata succeeded in buying a house in Voždovac. He rebuilt and renovated it and, apart from his family, he managed to place his workshop in one of its parts.

MRGROUP It was one of the most important periods in time for the Rajković family and Radomir, with the help of his son Milutin, serviced ‘HANOMAG’ lorries during that first year in his new space. At the time they were the popular cargo-carrying motor vehicles in the country, and Radomir got to know them quite well and mastered the skills of repairing them while he was working in a ‘HANOMAG’ repair shop in Germany.

The only period in time Milutin wasn’t by his father’s side was when he left to do national army service. They lived a modest life, but quite hardworking and above all an honest one. The people from German firms ’Kern’ and ’Stern’ really thought highly of this, and they even gave them the goods and tools on credit.

Milutin and Bata used to go to Germany a few times a year. They would travel for 18 hours, they rarely slept in motels, they usually slept in the car and on occasion they didn’t even sleep at all. The

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money and time could not be wasted. They would buy engine parts there, tools, and even used lorries, which they repaired in their shop and sold later.

The father and son could see the possibility of doing a business and making a profit where others couldn’t, and they knew how and wanted to seize the opportunity. This is the reason why Milutin took advantage of every fair opportunity to earn money.

He used to buy crashed cars at the customs all by himself, repair them and sell them.

What they don’t teach at school Milutin took in from his father, sharing every moment with him.

He internalised his father’s rule that we can reach success only by working and he often said, just like his father, that the only thing that matters is work, work, and work yet again. He learnt from his Bata that one can live a modest life, without squandering and that the most important virtue of all is – modesty. He respected him because he was firm but fair, an extremely hard-working man with

a clear goal. They renewed the tools and machines constantly, especially in 1972, when they bought a great number of new ones, ranging from machines for metal processing to the cylinder drills, at the Belgrade Fair. They reserved the machines and paid for them, but they were never taken over.

Namely, comrade Tito gave a speech specifically directed against the private businesses in the country. There were around 200 thousand of them, and they were judged as the lead figures in subverting the economic foundations of the society.

That is the reason why in September the authorities launched a campaign against growing rich.

Given the circumstances, Radomir decided not to go to take the goods, but ask for a refund. Smartly, he estimated that it would be better to wait for a more convenient climate in the country.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY In the seventies, Milutin met Milesa and started to grow a family with her. He slowly started to take over the business from Radomir, allowing him to have the last say as long as he wanted and was able to.

When a more convenient time came for a new attempt to modernise their repair shop, Radomir and Milutin decided to head to Italy. There, in 1978, they purchased a line of used machines for the mechanical processing of engines. At that moment, in Belgrade, only two small workshops and four strong firms owned by the state had this kind of equipment. And the need for the mechanical processing of engines was great.

Four years later, right next to the Beograd – Niť motorway, a new, bigger repair shop was opened and the business from their old home workshop was moved here. From this moment forward, the mechanical processing of engine parts became their primary line of work.

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Over the next seven years, they were developing their business incessantly and in that way, they laid foundations for the development of a modern mechanic repair shop. The number of the employees was increasing, as they were encountering the issue of a lack of skilled personnel. The number of specialised schools and the interest for them decreased significantly, so they taught and trained the workers themselves.

MRGROUP Throughout all these years, they worked really hard at the shop, nonstop, and, the money was being invested into the development of the business, instead of pleasure or amusement.

During that time, the old age had taken its toll.

Milutin had taken over the business from his father Radomir, letting him have the last say as long as he wanted and could. Even after Radomir, who was 69 at the time, made the decision to officially retire, no one could imagine that the last working day written in his employment booklet would be the day he’d really stop working. Of course, he didn’t. Radomir Bata Rajković had his goals and he never thought he wouldn’t be able to attain them. The machines and tools were his life, so, naturally, he spent his last years and days in, what was at that moment already considered, a family shop.

Like Radomir, Milutin was strict both with himself and the employees. He never said he couldn’t or wouldn’t do something, nor did he have working

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hours. It was known that they started work at exactly 7 in the morning, every day except on Sundays, and they went home only after the work had been done, often the following day or in the middle of the night.

They had a sole goal – to please the customers.

When the work was finished successfully and fast, Milutin often rewarded his workers, even though they would already get too generous tips from the customers.

The start and the middle of the 1990s were marked by the war and all that the war inevitably brings. Right before the beginning of the conflict, they bought new, state-of-the-art, semi-computerised machines.

Sanctions, almost unprecedented in modern history, were imposed against the state of the time. Also, hyperinflation, which is nowadays being studied as an economic phenomenon, should be mentioned.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY The inflation was so rampant that the value of the money was decreasing literally every minute.

If you got paid in ‘dinars’ and didn’t exchange the money for a foreign currency, in a few hours you could literally throw away the sum paid in ‘dinars’.

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MRGROUP In order to keep up with the technological advancements, one had to travel the world.

This is why Milutin stayed in Canada in 1991, where, for the first time, he encountered digital measuring instruments. Surely, he bought a complete, in their shop much needed, set of such instruments.

For Milutin and the rest of the people at the shop, the armed conflicts and grave economic crisis were not an excuse to reduce the quality of the services they provided. On the contrary. There were lots of old vehicles, and that meant a lot of work for them.

During the nineties, their business advanced and grew rapidly. How was this possible?

The Rajković family always knew that one constantly had to invest money in the working tools, even when it seemed they didn’t have any money left for it. They gained not only great trust from their clients with the good quality of their services and with the way they treated them, but they were

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also popular as one of the few in Belgrade who constantly acquired new state-of-the-art technology and introduced innovations in the way they worked.

They always worked hard to buy them, as soon as they appeared on the market, never waiting for the old ones to break down and become useless.

In the mid-nineties, after the war and the breaking of the country into several small countries, when modern vehicles started to appear in this region, they stopped processing engine heads manually.

That’s why, in 1997, they purchased their first SIC machine, then another, and yet another.

Milutin considers the year of 2007 a significant one, when they, constantly buying new tools and machines, investing in the facilities, people, and the company itself, raised the quality of the work to a level where no one could compete with them in the engine head machining.

The Rajković family had always known that one could attain success only through planned, continuous work, making arrangements and constant investments. This was particularly important in the years that lay ahead. As cars improved and changed practically every day, so did the tools and machines that were used to repair them. Those who did not invest the money they earned, but spent it in other ways, became obsolete. Years of investing paid off – MR succeeded in becoming a leading company in the world of machining not only in Serbia but wider.

Although a pensioner for a long time now, Radomir came to the shop, planned and dreamed as eagerly as ever.

He dreamed till his last day. His grandsons remember him say a few times that, since he was 88 years old, he was now only waiting for the big crankshaft processing machine they’d bought to arrive (Berco) and then he could close his eyes for the last time.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY And that’s what happened. The machine arrived.

He saw it. He took one last breath at the workshop.

He inspected everything he created for the last time. The treasure that was going to stay after he was gone. The engines. The tools. The high-tech machinery. And the most valuable thing – his family.

He peacefully left this world on December 5th, 2008.

He finished everything, succeeded in everything and realised his dreams. He left an indelible trace.

Numerous reasons for him to be talked about for a long time and for Radomir Bata Rajković to be long remembered.

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MRGROUP Bata is remembered as an honest friend, who was always ready to lend a hand. He is said to have been a great man. A striking and extraordinary person. A man of vast life experience and knowledge, who often gave advice about life and business to his grandsons. Advice which, today, his grandsons follow strictly, because they know it is worth its weight in gold.

When Radomir passed away, the Rajković family continued to expand and develop their company to the limits they had imagined. For years they had been devoting a lot of effort to entering a foreign market. The effort paid off in 2008 when they got a job in an international call for tenders for the first time, which was published in Syria. It was a great success for a small company based in a country as small as Serbia to outdo its big European competing companies.

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For the first time, with the help of Serbian Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA), they exhibited at the International trade show in Paris (EQUIP AUTO) in 2009, where they established first contacts with foreign partners.

A year later, at the Frankfurt trade show, they made their first business deal, with a Dutch company.

Then, they started realising their dream of repairing engines for the EU companies, and again the help was provided by SIEPA. In this way, in 2012, they became the first company, and are still the only one, repairing the engines in the Balkans, which exhibits independently at the trade show in Frankfurt.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

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MRGROUP Milutin’s whole working life is inextricably connected to MR. Almost everyone in Serbia who has anything to do with engines or automobiles knows Tranza or Mikica, as his acquaintances and friends call him an act of endearment.

With his father, he was at the company since the beginning.

Milutin had just finished secondary school. As he says, secondary school of trades ‘Ivo Lola Ribar’ was an institution where strict discipline was practised, but it was also known for making world-class tradesmen. Even today he still vividly remembers his father giving him the most difficult tasks, with the intention of steeling him. Nowadays, parents are often over-protective towards their children.

Milutin lived in a different world. He lived in a time when working was considered a virtue, and every hardship that life presented to you was considered a lesson. Mikica is a simple-hearted man, in the best way possible. He is a man who enjoys small things that make our lives more meaningful. He likes to

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make brandy, to trim the grass in the garden of his holiday home, that he built himself. As this book is being written, he is building a small hydropower plant on a stream that goes through the garden of his holiday home, with the aim of not letting his craftsmanship get rusty! He also spends a lot of time in his workshop. He is extremely passionate about tractor and boat engines, as well as the engines of big industrial machines. He simply loves great challenges. It is quite likely that his difficult childhood affected him in a way that he took on difficult tasks without hesitation.

His life motto is a rather simple one. He believes that a man lives as long as he works, and as soon as one quits working and has no day-to-day obligations, one starts to fade away slowly. Together with his wife Milesa he raised three sons in the same fashion his father raised him. They were brought up to be diligent, eager to prove themselves and strive for success.

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MRGROUP Milutin and Milesa welcomed their first son on December 4th, 1977. Naturally, Milan spent his childhood days playing around lorries, finding screws in the garden, with hands ever so dirty.

He loved watching engines being repaired and fantasised about doing the same thing one day.

As a child, he mostly spent his days with his mother, as his father and grandfather were often away buying new tools and machines. The family shop meant a lot to him even at an early age. His grandfather and his father were excellent at showing him the ropes of the trade and soon he mastered this invaluable skill.

After he had finished primary school, he enrolled in ’Petar Drapšin’ secondary technical school where he acquired a title of Mechanical Technician a couple of years later. The beginning of the nineties brought about the collapse of the value system and the explosion of criminal activity and various forms of evil. There was no money,

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necessities were considered a luxury. The law was easily bent. Milan grew up in turbulent and tough times. While he was growing up, the entire value system collapsed and people’s moral compass got broken. The line separating the good and the evil, the honest and the dishonest disappeared. A boy his age saw this environment as an abundance of wrong choices and temptations.

times impose a slightly different outlook than that of fifty years ago. Milan is still MR’s driving force and the person who contributes to the business expansion the most. He has always understood that the best school is to learn from one’s mistakes, but also from other people’s mistakes and that this is the only way towards personal and career advancement and development.

Owing to his family and the upbringing they had given him, he stayed exactly on course. He knew that hard work and an honest relationship with people were the only right path for him. He often spent his summer holidays and free time after classes in the shop. And even then he showed a great ambition to expand the family business. In the following years, it became apparent that Milan possessed leadership skills and courage, qualities necessary for any successful career. He usually lives by the motto ’profits come from taking risks’, his favourite TV character’s famous line. He is a man who makes compromises, aware that modern

He had plans to go to university and study Mechanical Engineering, but was stopped by his father and grandfather who explained that studying, useful as it may be, would mean waiting for several years for him to graduate, and there was a lot of work to be done in the family company, and little time and patience.

And Milan, ever a quick-thinker, full of ideas and solutions, found one to take his elders’ advice, but meet his needs as well. He agreed to immediately start working at MR but suggested he should enrol in another, less demanding university, which

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY was possible to finish while working. However, he didn’t like the courses they had to offer. Therefore, in the year 1998, he decided to study abroad, eager to get to know the way people think in the West and acquire knowledge the Rajković family business could use.

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MRGROUP A year later he enrolled in Waterloo College in Canada. However, Milan took after his father and grandfather. He returned to his homeland which was being bombed at the time and people killed in air strikes. And he stayed, deciding to devote himself to their machine shop.

Thus Milan took over the administrative work and negotiations with foreign clients and associates, attracting new business deals and conquering new markets. He immediately set several goals. He started with assessing their potentials, identifying all the negative and positive aspects. At that point, MR was a leading machining company in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They had modern equipment, an excellent team of skilled workmen, and they were focused on the domestic market. Milan took over the management of the company. He built a development strategy and planned every necessary step to make the business grow and prosper. The first step meant visiting similar Europian companies in order to assess MR’s chances of success in the

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new market. He realised their business lacked the certain equipment to be able to compete in the European market.

He made a decision to equip the shop with then state-of-the-art machines within the next four years.

And so he did. In 2004, having bought the two latest American manufacturers ‘Rottler’ models, they became the only company in the Balkans and the second in Europe to own F88S and HP6A machines.

That same year, on December 3rd, he officially founded MR Group, a firm replacing his father Milutin’s independent workshop. He set out to reach one of his main goals – breaking into the European market. Milan saw his grandfather Bata as a symbol of order, hard work and discipline, and as an uncommonly honest and incredibly modest man.

Even as a child, he readily absorbed his stories. He is still glad to hear people remember his grandfather as a hard worker who was sometimes difficult and sharp-tongued when it came to idlers and slackers.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

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MRGROUP The Rajković family welcomed another boy on April 12th, 1982. He was Milutin and Milesa’s second out of three sons. Bata, having seen baby Miloš’s long tiny fingers, declared the boy was going to be an excellent tradesman, able to pick up every screw from under the car, or a good thief.

Anyone who knows the Rajković brothers says Miloš is different from his elder and younger brothers. They differ both in their appearance and personality. Miloš is said to take after his mother and her side of the family. He is a very empathetic, emotional young man, which is often seen as a weakness. Of all three grandsons, Radomir made the strongest impression on Miloš. Miloš usually has different views than his friends. He believes in hard work, sees modesty as a virtue and family as the base of everything. He enjoys simple things, keeping both legs firmly on the ground. He likes spending his free time in nature, hiking and walking with his wife and son. He has a great impact on the family

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business, although barely noticeable. He is one of the ’silent heroes’, invisible, rarely talked about, but whose hard work and demeanour earn them respect. As soon as he turned six, Miloš, just like his brother, started spending his days in the family workshop. He would go to the shop with his father and clean the valves on an old engine assembly table with a stable drill. He ran his own child’s shop in the furnace room – he would change parts on his friends’ bicycles, repair them and naughtily replace his old parts with the newer ones.

Miloš often saw his father only in the morning while he was getting ready for school, and Milutin was coming back from work. What needed to be done was done as good and as fast as it could be.

The thought of how much they had invested in the business and why it was important not to bend or break, gave him the strength to do it. Watching his father live this way, Miloš understood from an early age the meaning of being dedicated to one’s work.

When he thinks of his grandfather, Miloš recalls his great fascination for tools. Then he recalls his childhood during the 1980s when he started developing a similar fascination. He remembers going to his grandfather’s engine part washing department with his friends as a boy. A rush of memories – Miloš with his classmates and neighbourhood friends, the peak of summer outside, increasing heat inside, and they, boys, washing engine blocks, crankshafts and various parts, one by one.

Miloš, just like Milan, spent time with his grandfather Bata away from the shop, too. In the summer, he would go to the family farm near Požarevac and he helped him with seasonal work.

During the harvest grandfather Bata occasionally had to fix the combine harvester, and Miloš would help. His grandfather was not like other grandfathers who spoil their grandchildren. Bata remembered as a man hard on himself and on other people, taught his grandsons about life.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

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MRGROUP Miloš can recall an incident that happened during a harvest. He was trying to give a screwdriver to his grandfather, but he slipped and fell right on the tow bar between the tractor and the trailer. It hurt like hell! His grandfather just looked over at him and told him to get up, adding, ’It’s not a big deal! I used to get hit like that when I was boxing. No crying!’

In Bata’s opinion, it was unacceptable to stop work due to an illness, injury, being sick or swollen.

There was no excuse for idleness.

Miloš, as well as the rest of Bata’s successors, learnt to keep going forward, irrespective of the troubles and inconveniences, injuries or weaknesses.

He learnt not to stop because life is not easy, nor gentle, but it can be nice and of good quality, if you know what you want and you don’t stop.

Miloš remembers his grandfather as a man who did not show emotions. However, he remembers that, as a child, during his stay on his grandfather’s

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farm, he used to put in order the grandfather’s tools scattered on the floor of his old tool shed.

His grandfather would later come in and see that the grandson had organised the tools and tidied everything. His eyes would fill with tears of joy and kindness.

Later, he used to notice joy and contentment in his grandfather every time someone at the shop did an important job fast, with precision, well, and was being praised by the satisfied clients. He was glad to hear his and the work of the others at the shop be commended. Was he glad when they succeeded in purchasing the newest machines inexpensively the way he planned it.

Miloš went to primary school and, of all the members of the Rajković family, he was the one who looked like his grandfather Bata the most, in that he showed great love towards mechanics, engines, and cars. You can still see the childlike glow in his eyes when a whole engine arrives from abroad, and he

has to fix it and give it back its old shine. The same as his grandfather. Radomir told his grandson about an encounter with his boss, while he was working in Germany. From an office above the repair shop, through an enormous window, he used to monitor all the employees with his radar-like eyes. Suddenly, he went down to some worker and picked up a stray screw off the floor. He came up to Radomir, whom he called Lari, and asked him why he hadn’t picked up the screw. He commented, ’Where will we all go if this company is ruined?’ In the same way, Miloš taught to care for and look after the things they have, also picks up and arranges everything, both screws and nuts. Miloš was about to finish primary school. He decided to go to a vocational secondary school, to learn a trade, as they used to say at the time. And he told that to his parents. Noticing in Miloš, since an early age, the love and inclination towards machines, believing in the rightfulness of their son’s choice, they supported him. This is how Miloš entered secondary school ’Božidar Adžija’, choosing to study machining.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY As soon as he finished his first grade, he started working at MR, and he still is today. In the meantime, he finished his formal education and obtained permanent employment when he was seventeen and a half. For years he’s combined the theoretical knowledge he got at school with the knowledge acquired through practical work and experience.

Starting by working at the engine part washing department as a child, he continued his career at the reception department. He became interested in servicing then popular automobiles produced in Serbia, called ‘yugo’ (YUGO passenger vehicles, which were manufactured in Yugoslavia by ‘Crvena Zastava’ in Kragujevac). He put ‘yugo’ back on the streets in drivable condition, he started buying used vehicles, he repaired them and then sold. Today, alongside his brothers, he is working really hard to improve the company, as ardently as when he organised his grandfather’s tools in that old mud house from his childhood.

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MRGROUP When the eldest son Milan was 12 and the youngest Miloš was 7, on August 25th, 1989, another boy came into the family Rajković – Milutin and Milesa’s third son.

He was also given a name that started with an ’M’.

With his interests and the knowledge he acquired, he additionally enriched and rounded the story of the dreams of the family Rajković.

As for the aspects of his personality, Marko is somewhere in between Milan and Miloš. Admittedly, he is more like Milan, but at the same time, he is different from him on numerous levels. Principally, the resemblance to his older brother can be seen in his ambition and his desire to achieve professional success, whereas meticulousness and the desire to work and be organised connects him to his other brother.

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Like his brothers, he spent a lot of time at the shop. He remembers summer holidays when he was given a task to work, at least for a month, at the shop or at the engine part washing department where, actually, the hardest jobs in the company are being done. This is the reason why, even now, he has great respect for the people who work at the department for the preparation of engines for the repair, the people who, when their working day is over, look as if they had just come out of a mine.

The three of them spent their days off school helping at the shop. They are certain that precisely these working Sundays were crucial for developing a strong work ethic. Milan, Miloš, and Marko started at the engine part washing department, then moved on to the disassembling the cylinder heads, and later went on to do other things within the range of services their family business provided, based on their interests and affinities.

Surely, while he was growing up, Marko considered both of his brothers his role models.

He learnt and picked up quite a few things from them. He admits that a lot of things in life he found easier because his brothers blazed a trail for him and opened that door that everyone finds difficult to open during growing up.

Marko’s grandfather was another person to leave a deep mark during his growing years. He was always proud of his youngest grandson. He was astonished by his knowledge and his ability to speak English, and he often said that he believed his Marko would achieve a lot in life, no matter what’s implied by this. These words gave the grandson the strength to move forward, they provided him with energy, not only because of the fact that Bata was his grandfather but because these were the words said by a man who created so many things, worthy of praise and mentioning.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY Radomir always encouraged Marko to stand up after a fall. Even when, while a student in grammar school, he failed third grade and was completely broken. At that moment his grandfather Radomir said to him, ‘Son, I still believe in you. Injustice is a part of life. You must learn something out of it and come out stronger than before. There is no doubt in my mind that you are going to be the best educated Rajković in the family. You already speak English as if it were your mother tongue. It would be a shame if you didn’t prove yourself in those schools’.

Marko took his advice.

The time came for Marko to choose his path in life. As the youngest one in the family and since he grew up in the changed circumstances, both in the country and worldwide, he was different from his grandfather, his father, as well as his brothers. Not too different. The exact amount that was needed for the story of their mechanic workshop to grow and play beyond the world of their profession, engines, and automobilism.

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MRGROUP He easily went into the world. He was separated from his family for a time and became independent quite fast. He went away to gain knowledge, to study, to acquire different skills and meet numerous, different people.

Namely, having finished grammar school, Marko started his bachelor studies at ‘The English School of Business’ in Belgrade. His plan was to transfer the earned credits to the main university in London, which he always found appealing. When you’ve got an idea and you work hard, you succeed in realising it. After he had completed the second year of his studies in Belgrade, he gained a scholarship for ’Hult International Business School’ in London.

The grandfather did not live to share the joy of success with his youngest grandson...

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While these three members of the Rajković family spent every second making ’MR Group’ even greater, better, and more respectable, the youngest Marko continued his studies in London.

He studied. Passed exams. Lived. Became independent. He was far away from the warmth and peace he had in his stable family. He completed his business and financial analysis studies. However, besides valuable academic knowledge, he acquired the knowledge of life. During the years Marko spent in London, he came to see the world differently, to understand different cultures, accept different ways of thinking, as well as people who are different from us. The things were not easy for Marko, whatsoever, even though, in retrospect, they seem so. There were lots of obstacles he had to overcome, either himself or with the rest of the Rajković family. At one point, one of MR’s load lorries full of engines got stolen in Italy. It was a great loss for the family business in Serbia. Like a wave, this financial loss spread across every aspect of the lives of the

Rajković family members, including Marko, who was in London at the time. This event concerning a theft really rocked Marko’s life to its foundations.

As the financial loss was immense, Marko almost came back to Serbia. He could barely afford to go to London in the first place. In order to provide the sum of money needed for the first instalment of his tuition fee at the university, he secretly sold his car.

However, Marko never thought of giving up. The family Rajković never gives up, they always find a way and come up with a solution.

Marko was not frightened by the problems caused by the lack of money. On the contrary, the difficulty of the situation he found himself in, sparked in him a desire to prove himself. He was completely prepared to engage in an adventure in which these unpleasant circumstances had put him. He met people. He looked for and found various jobs: first, he worked as a nightclub promoter, then he worked at parties, even the ones that started after midnight

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and ended late in the afternoon. For a night, he could earn around 200 or 300 pounds. This was more than enough for a student to live an ordinary life in London, which is extremely expensive.

when Marko received his university master’s diploma. He realised that those were the moments one lived for and how good of a feeling it was to see the pride in your parents’ eyes.

He moved frequently, and during these years, he learnt importantly and some crucial life lessons.

He grew stronger, he learnt how important it is to have a goal in life. But he also learnt that, if one is determined and persistent, there are no obstacles one cannot overcome. These were the things his grandfather used to tell him about, although slightly differently, and later both his father and his older brothers. This is why Marko, having completed his bachelor’s studies, did not stop. He went to Belgium, where he received his master’s degree in digital marketing, and started to work with automobile corporation ‘Cummins Inc’.

Although he was aware of the fact that he had achieved so much, he felt that he was missing something which would make him completely happy and fulfilled. He realised soon what it was.

Marko remembers the day when he saw tears of joy in his father Milutin’s eyes, who was not prone to showing emotions. It happened at the ceremony

One day, Milan and Miloš phoned him. They suggested that they start working together and create something that would make all of them proud. Without thinking twice, Marko instantly remembered his grandfather’s words, all that he had learnt from his mother and father and his brothers.

He decided it was time that he returned home.

MRGROUP When they look back at the history of their family and the machine engineering repair shop, which is now ’MR Group’ company, they say that the women in the Rajković family take great credit for the success. Men were usually busy, constantly at work. They respected their wives, aware of how important they were, how much they were working and how much they were contributing. They knew that without them, they would not have been able to achieve the things they had achieved.

Since early childhood, boys understood clearly that their mother Milesa, as their grandmother Gordana had previously been, was the backbone of the family. Milesa was and still is the balancing point, she held all the threads in her hands, took care of the boys’ upbringing, their school results and life achievements took care of everything. A woman full of love, patient, stable, hard-working, energetic. If she was not like that, Milutin might not have been so successful, and the sons might

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not have become such strong, independent and complex individuals. Although there were moments when she was worried and afraid, she did not show it. She stood toe to toe with the strong personalities of her husband and father-in-law. She felt unease when they were travelling far away, weary of their journey, but she understood it was necessary to put bread on the table. Her duty was to make good men out of her sons, and she took it seriously, working diligently to accomplish this.

Milesa was always ready for compromises, able to fight and at difficult moments aware that there were some higher, more important goals. As a permanent support to her husband Milutin, she would often travel with him in the years when Radomir was slowing down his work rhythm.

Apart from Milesa, there are two other women who play very important roles in the Rajković family.

They are Ana, Milan’s wife and Milena, Miloš’s better half. Ana and Milan have a son, Mihailo, while Milena

and Miloš also have a son, Sava. By her nature, Ana is completely different from her husband. She is quiet and reserved. She does her private work, owns a company that produces clothes and all types of uniforms. Milena is a nursery governess and skillfully uses her knowledge and experience to educate her son. Mihailo is a primary school student, interested in computers and guitars. He dreams of becoming a world famous rock star one day. Sava is still very young, he is 3 years old. He displays a certain interest in mechanics, as far as childish curiosity goes. Whether the youngest Rajković boys will continue the family business, is still unknown.

The older family members, completely right in their belief, think that children should be left to find their own way. The motto is very simple, each person is the architect of their own fortune.

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MRGROUP The thing that also connects the Rajković family members is great persistence. This was especially true of Radomir, if he had not been like that, MR would look completely different today, and maybe it would not even exist. His son Milutin inherited this trait, and a host of other traits, important for work and honest life. Both of them left a mark as outstanding repairmen, Milutin being more softspoken. While Radomir was never afraid to express his opinion, Milutin knew how to present serious words in a humorous tone. The father was often painfully direct and strict, but the son solved the emerging problems in a more tactful manner.

Milutin, Radomir’s son, resembles his father in a lot of ways. He also grew up in a family similar to the one he created with Milesa, surrounded with love and the same values needed to develop one’s personality and lead an honest life. He always thought that anything was possible if you worked hard enough to achieve that.

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According to others, not according to himself, Milutin is still, while 67 years old, more active and works much more than many who are much younger than him. Being the person that he is, how can he not be a role model to his sons, when it comes to work and working habits!

And the grandchildren? They are worthy successors. They continue to build and develop their grandfather’s dream. Unfortunately, they are aware of the fact that, there are less and less people here, that want to continue with this work.

There were ups and downs, but Milan was always encouraged by the knowledge that grandfather Bata started the company and succeeded in much more difficult times. He was driven by the thought that is now the motto of the company: ’There is no such thing as hard times, only people who love what they do, and idlers who always find excuses to make a change.’

This is why Milan, being the oldest grandson, has the goal of building a company known and renowned even outside the Serbian border, and in this way, he can leave a mark worthy of grandfather Radomir Bata Rajković’s respect, who was their founder.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY Every new day is a confirmation that leading a family company is more demanding than being the head of a company whose owner is not your kin. This is a great responsibility towards the parents, brothers, especially towards the memory of grandfather Radomir.

MACHINE WITH A SOUL

MRGROUP Miloš notices that people do not like to be repairmen, they do not want to be greasy, dirty, some of them do not have enough knowledge and are afraid that they will not be able to do the work well and with enough quality.

Even honesty has lost its importance – many people perform work with just enough quality, barely above the minimum requirements, as fast as possible and superficially. At MR they know that this way of work is not a good choice. Their goal is to continue to improve, increase productivity, achieve perfection in various work processes, to synchronise all phases so there is no delay, so that the work can proceed as planned and according to expectations. This is why they work even on vehicles which many repairmen do not want to work on, even do not want to lift the hood.

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Miloš considers an advantage the fact that he is working with his brothers, because each of them contributes equally, each in their own way. When he is working with his kindred, everything has a different, sweeter, sense and deeper reasons. But, even if he was employed with somebody else, Miloš would work the same way. Wherever he was, he would strive to do work successfully and with the same speed, but also in a clean and tidy manner.

And, if needed, he has no problem to pick up any piece of paper that is on the floor and throw it in the bin. This also makes him a true heir of grandpa Bata.

There is a special, brotherly bond, between Milan, Miloš and Marko. It is the type of bond that you find in families where maybe there is not financial abundance, but moral and emotional abundance exist, where honesty, work, consistency are valued, but above all, the ancestors are respected and origin is cherished, and people never forget whose heirs they are. In this way, they protect their good name and dignity.

Starting with 10 employees at the beginning of the millennium, they have now reached more than 70 workers. This is a family company and its owners appreciate every employee as they were of their own kin. They want their people to think of MR as a second home. Some of them started to work there immediately after finishing school, and today, having worked for several decades, they are still part of the team.

They work a lot, diligently, but complaining is the furthest thing on their mind. This is not difficult for them. Together, they rejoice and celebrate, share good and bad moments, nobody finds fault with the other person, nobody blames the other person, they go through every moment, be it good or bad, together.

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MRGROUP Today ‘MR GROUP’ is led by Radomir’s son Milutin who is the president of the company, and his sons: Milan, managing director, Miloš, manager of engine repair department, and Marko, as Deputy General Manager.

The four of them aim high, always bearing in mind their grandfather, who founded the machine workshop MR. In this jubilee year for them, when they celebrate years from the day Radomir Rajković founded his first official workshop, they opened another plant.

Apart from the existing one in Voždovac, which grew from the original 80m2 to 1600m2, they built a production plant in Malo Crniće, a small town near Požarevac, in 2018.

They were looking for an appropriate location for almost a decade, since many European clients became interested in their services, and the existing plant became inadequate for business expansion.

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Finally, they found a building of a former pasta factory in Malo Crniće. On their first visit, the Rajković family knew that they had found the right place to continue their life story.

The people who ran the municipality treated it with care and they knew a lot about the economy and realised how important it is to develop it, and they reached an agreement quickly.

By the middle of last year, 2017, ’MR GROUP’ leased new four thousand square metres of space.

It was necessary to clean the facility of a former factory on a day-to-day basis and adapt it to the needs of a modern refurbishment centre.

All the tiredness, sleepless nights, reconstructions and journeys on the route Belgrade – Malo Crniće for the period of eight months paid off. The plant in Malo Crniće began working and repairing engines designed for foreign markets.

In the spring of 2018, they ceremoniously opened a facility in Malo Crniće, a modern refurbishment centre equipped with the latest technology, in compliance with all the highest world standards.

Malo Crniće is a poor environment, economically speaking. On the other hand, there are many young people in Malo Crniće willing to work and create, who didn’t have a chance to do so until recently.

The key criterion when selecting candidates to work in a new plant was not their technical knowledge and familiarity with engine technology. The basic criterion was their willingness to learn and their personal characteristics. The employees in the new plant have slowly but steadily become a part of the big MR family.

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MRGROUP This is not the end. They already have some new ideas and plans. They are not planning to stop. That’s why ‘MR GROUP’ has grown into a big and special company, and even more than that. It is a lesson about life, family, schools, and making impossible dreams come true. MR is a familyowned company preserved by continuous work and respect for order and discipline. It is a story of building a palace patiently and incessantly, lining up grain by grain. The story of not giving up and crying over your fate when you fall, but standing up and moving on.

This story which has lasted for 50 years is not the story about work. It is a story of vision, clear focus and reaching goals through work. Billions of people get up every morning and go to work.

They finish their shift and don’t think about the work until tomorrow. To succeed, you need faith, because when you believe that you will succeed, it’s half the success, or at least that’s what people say. To prosper, you need to constantly believe in

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yourself and the people around you, to be persistent and to deny yourself some small or big pleasures in favour of a higher goal. The man who has started this 50-year-long story (for the time being) had just the same attitude. It is the attitude which should inspire young people and give them the strength to cope with their current obstacles.

Modesty is a very important aspect of this story.

It is directly linked to renunciation. You cannot be modest without denying yourself something, and vice versa. You can often see people in this region who buy expensive watches, suits and cars as soon as they get some chance. That lifestyle and life philosophy can frequently be destructive. Probably everyone knows the fable of a cricket and an ant. It is seemingly a story for children, which, if you think about it, hides a big truth. Working and refraining from things pay off in the end. The one who lives from day to day will very likely lose everything he has. In the culture of some nations of Western Europe, like the Dutch or the Germans, the idea of

saving money is deeply rooted; it is a life philosophy which is called accumulation, speaking economically.

Just because of this philosophy of theirs, MR attracted a large number of clients from the whole world, with the clients from the above-mentioned countries among them.

The Rajković family has always considered the relationship with their workers highly important.

The employers of today usually consider their workers just a number and easily replaceable. In such an atmosphere, an ordinary man feels less worthy and insignificant. Unlike such employers, the members of Rajković family are guided by opposite principles. Their workers are their friends from school, the army, or even godparents. Many of these employees got the job just by walking into their premises and asked to join their story.

Many of them have experienced both good and bad days with MR. Such a relationship cannot be called just an employment, because it is certainly much more than that.

50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY The Rajković family are neither superheroes nor characters from some Hollywood movie. They are ordinary people with virtues and flaws, just like the rest of us. They are the kind of people you meet every day in the post office or school, in the street, shop or at a football match. They are guided by simple life principles. In their opinion, there are only good and bad people, those who want to work and those who prefer to lament over destiny. The examples of such people and families exist everywhere around us.

In today’s race for money, which is certainly necessary for life, but not for happiness, people often neglect their family and environment. Not one battle nor war can be won by individuals, you need the whole army. The total number of soldiers is irrelevant; what matters is whether those soldiers support one another and keep each other’s backs.

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The man without whom this story wouldn’t exist survived numerous wars and battles. Some of them were big and some were small. He came out a winner in some of them and, on the other hand, in others, he was defeated, at least at that moment.

Victories didn’t enchant him, just as defeats didn’t break his spirit. He created an army over time, with whom he also shared beautiful and not so beautiful things. The size of a victory or a defeat is reflected in the inspiration that stays behind it, as well as in the motive for the future generations who will forget these victories. This is one of these victories, composed of numerous small victories and defeats.

“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HARD TIMES, ONLY PEOPLE WHO LOVE WHAT THEY DO, AND IDLERS WHO ALWAYS FIND EXCUSES TO MAKE A CHANGE.” Radomir Bata Rajković