Croatia in the first Yugoslavia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Yugoslav Committee

The basis of Croatia and Serbia forming a union in 1918 is to be found in the complex history of the Yugoslav Committee. The Yugoslav Committee

Yugoslav Committee

Yugoslav Committee was a political interest group formed by South Slavs from Austria-Hungary during World War I aimed at joining the existing south Slavic nations in an independent state.Founding members included:* Frano Supilo* Ante Trumbić...

was formed by exiles living outside the Croatian homeland during World War I. The Committee was led by Frano Supilo

Frano Supilo

Frano Supilo was a Croatian politician and journalist. He was a major political figure in the twenty years preceding World War I....

and Ante Trumbić

Ante Trumbic

Ante Trumbić was a Croatian politician in the early 20th century. He was one of the key politicians in the creation of a Yugoslav state....

and included the famous Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

n sculptor Ivan Meštrović

Ivan Meštrovic

Ivan Meštrović was a Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor and architect born in Vrpolje, Croatia...

. Each repudiated the Committee within a few years of the founding of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

. "Yugoslavs" were Serbian

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

, Croatian

Croats

Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...

and Slovene people who identified themselves with the movement toward a single South Slavic state. Exiled Yugoslavs

Yugoslavs

Yugoslavs is a national designation used by a minority of South Slavs across the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the diaspora...

living in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

and Britain were the primary supporters of the Yugoslav Committee

Yugoslav Committee

. Having established offices in London and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

as early as 1915, the Yugoslav Committee became an active lobby for the cause of a united South Slav state during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

The concept of a unified South Slavic state had been discussed by Croatian and Slovene intellectuals since the mid-nineteenth century. However, the "Yugoslav Idea" did not mature from the conceptual to practical state of planning. Few of those promoting such an entity had given any serious consideration to what form the new state should take,. Nevertheless, the Yugoslav Committee

Yugoslav Committee

issued a manifesto calling for the formation of such a South Slavic

South Slavs

The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...

state on May 12, 1915. The document, like the rhetoric of those who produced it, was vague concerning the form and system of government. It received little official recognition.

At the same time Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

, led by Nikola Pašić

Nikola Pašic

Nikola P. Pašić was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and diplomat, the most important Serbian political figure for almost 40 years, leader of the People's Radical Party who, among other posts, was twice a mayor of Belgrade...

's People's Radical Party

People's Radical Party

The People's Radical Party of Serbia was a political party formed on January 8, 1881, which was active in the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes...

, saw the "Yugoslav" concept as a useful tool in the long sought development of a "Greater Serbia

Greater Serbia

The term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia applies to the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology directed towards the creation of a Serbian land which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to the Serbian nation...

." As the War dragged on, the Allies began to think of the concept of Yugoslavia as a blocking force in the Balkans to counter future German expansionism. Although no formal agreement was announced until July 1917, the Yugoslav Committee and the Serbian Government-in-Exile worked hand-in-hand from November 1916 onward. On July 20, 1917 the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee issued the text of an agreement known as the Corfu Declaration

Corfu Declaration

The Corfu Declaration is the agreement that made the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia possible. In 1916, the Serbian Parliament in exile decided the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at a meeting inside the Municipal Theatre of Corfu, Greece...

which called for the formation of a multi-national state. The document was deliberately mute as to whether the government would take the form of Western-oriented Croatia or of the Eastern-oriented Serbia. The vast majority of the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene people had no knowledge of the declaration made by a small group of exiled intellectuals and the Serbian Government-in-Exile. Nonetheless, the signers claimed to speak for all South Slavic peoples and the Corfu Declaration became the justification claimed by Serbia for the forced unification of Croatians and Slovenes under the Serbian crown.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

As the War drew to a close, the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to disintegrate. The Croatian Sabor or Parliament met in Zagreb on October 29, 1918 to declare "the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia" to be a free and independent state. The Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

Crown recognized Croatia and transferred the Austro-Hungarian fleet to the Croatian government on October 31. The Croatian government in Zagreb was fully formed before the fall of Austria on November 3, Germany on November 11, and Hungary on November 13. The Yugoslav National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was organized in Zagreb on October 15, 1918. This twenty-eight member Council was self-appointed, not elected. Although its president was a Slovene, the Council was dominated by Svetozar Pribićević

Svetozar Pribicevic

Svetozar Pribićević was an ethnic Serb politician from Croatia who worked hard for creation of unitaristic Yugoslavia. However, he later became a bitter opponent of the same policy and of the dictatorship of king Aleksandar Karađorđević...

, a Serb. On November 24 this self-appointed group called for a common state with Serbia. This is the body so often cited as having "asked" to join Yugoslavia.

Overlooked was Congress held just blocks away on the very next day. This was the Congress of Stjepan Radić

Stjepan Radic

Stjepan Radić was a Croatian politician and the founder of the Croatian Peasant Party in 1905. Radić is credited with galvanizing the peasantry of Croatia into a viable political force...

's Croatian Peasant Party

Croatian Peasant Party

The Croatian Peasant Party is a center and socially conservative political party in Croatia.-Austria-Hungary:The Croatian People's Peasant Party was formed on December 22, 1904 by Antun Radić along with his brother Stjepan Radić. The party contested elections for the first time in the Kingdom of...

attended by almost three thousand elected delegates from every part of Croatia. The Peasant Party was the largest and most popular party in Croatia at that time and would remain so during the period between the Wars. It won absolute majorities in every subsequent election. This Congress assailed the National Council as arbitrary and unconstitutional and unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a "Neutral and Peasant Republic of Croatia." Following this Congress, there were huge demonstrations in the streets of Zagreb supporting independence.

Zagreb's brief jubilation quickly changed to the sober realization that Croatia would again be ruled from a foreign capital as Italian, French and French African forces invaded from the west and Serbian troops invaded from the east.

On December 1, 1918, Serbian Prince Alexander announced the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with a Serbian King ruling from the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Despite the neutral sounding name, the country was called Yugoslavia by the diplomatic community almost from the beginning. Ironically, at the Paris Peace Conference the Yugoslav delegation openly insisted that it be known as the "Serbian Delegation."

The period of Croatia within ex-Yugoslavia (1918–1941)

The greatest promoters of creating a state of the Southern Slavs, i.e. the idea of Yugoslavia, were the Croats (Josip Juraj Strossmayer

Josip Juraj Strossmayer

Josip Juraj Strossmayer was a Croatian politician, Roman Catholic bishop and benefactor.-Early life and rise as a cleric:...

on the first place), but they did not conceive of it as a centralized, Serb-dominated state. Their aim was to preserve the Croatian national identity and the sovereignty of Croatia and to organize the new state of South Slavs on a confederative

Confederation

A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...

basis.

That is why the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, established in 1918, did not obtain the confirmation and permission of the Croatian Parliament. This state, created in 1918 from Austro-Hungarian part, (Slovenia, Croatia, Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Serbia and Montenegro, which were opposing sides during the First World War (1914–1918), contained a germ of numerous future conflicts. It was composed of different traditions, religions, nations, languages and scripts.

At that time, the region of Vojvodina did not include Srijem (the territory between rivers Sava and Danube), that before 1918 belonged to Croatia (though it had belonged to Serbia, earlier).

The idea of Yugoslavia was the best opportunity for extreme Serbian nationalists to create the Greater Serbia

Greater Serbia

, but this was not realised because King Alexander I

Alexander I of Yugoslavia

Alexander I , also known as Alexander the Unifier was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .-Childhood:...

banned national political parties in 1929 – a regime met by opposition from Croatia.

The Serbian legislature, juridical and military 19th century law was simply implemented into the new state without changes and without consultations with the Croats. It resulted in unbearable terror and persecutions of Croatian peasants and intellectuals. Croatian teachers were retired and persecuted.

Equally difficult was the economic terror of the Belgrade government. The Croats were not proportionally represented in the government and diplomatic corps. The old currencies – Serbian dinars and Croatian (Austrian) crowns, which in 1918 had the same value – were in 1919 changed for the new dinar in the following ratio: 1 dinar = 4 crowns

On the other hand,

taxes were lower in Serbia,
the major part of foreign loans was spent in Serbia,
high administrative posts were filled exclusively with the Serbs,
civil servants in Croatia were appointed by the central administration in Belgrade.

In 1918. Croatia and Vojvodina had much better economic situation than Central Serbia

Central Serbia

Central Serbia , also referred to as Serbia proper , was the region of Serbia from 1945 to 2009. It included central parts of Serbia outside of the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. The region of Central Serbia was not an administrative division of Serbia as such; it was under the...

. In 1920 only 20% of adults in Central Serbia

Central Serbia

were literate

Literacy

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...

compared to 88% ,52% and 36% in Slovenia, Croatia-Slavonia

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia or Croatia Slavonia was an autonomous kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was part of the Hungarian Kingdom within the dual Austro-Hungarian state, being within the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen or Transleithania...

and Dalmatia

Kingdom of Dalmatia

The Kingdom of Dalmatia was an administrative division of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1815 to 1918. Its capital was Zadar.-History:...

respectively. Their rate of literacy

Literacy

has been 2.5 times higher. Croatia had double more elementary schools than Serbia. Croatian and Vojvodina had 4910 km of railway track compared to 1187 km in Central Serbia

Central Serbia

.

Persecutions of the Muslims by the Serbs resulted in their massive emigration to Turkey soon after the foundation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, where Serbia was the leading and privileged nation. The same happened to several hundred thousand Muslims soon after the Second World War.

On November 28, 1920 elections to the Constitutional Assembly were held

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes Constitutional Assembly election, 1920

The 1920 Constitutional Assembly election of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes for the National Assembly took place on 28 November 1920....

. The Assembly was to be charged with adopting a constitution for the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Croatian People's Peasant Party

Croatian Peasant Party

emerged as the largest Croatian party in the assembly, with 50 seats. The party subsequently held a congress in Zagreb on December 8 where it was renamed to the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, and a republican platform for the new constitution was adopted. In response to this, King Peter removed Matko Laginja

Matko Laginja

Matko Laginja , was a Croatian lawyer and politician.He earned a doctorate in law in Graz...

from the position of ban

Ban of Croatia

Ban of Croatia was the title of local rulers and after 1102 viceroys of Croatia. From earliest periods of Croatian state, some provinces were ruled by Bans as a rulers representative and supreme military commander. In the 18th century, Croatian bans eventually become chief government officials in...

on December 11. In turn, the Croatian Republican Peasant Party boycotted the assembly.

The concept of “Greater Serbia” in Yugoslavia was put in practice during the early 1920s, under the Yugoslav premiership of Nikola Pasic

Nikola Pašic

. Using tactics of police intimidation and vote rigging, he diminished the role of the oppositions (mainly those loyal to his Croatian rival, Stjepan Radic

Stjepan Radic

Stjepan Radić was a Croatian politician and the founder of the Croatian Peasant Party in 1905. Radić is credited with galvanizing the peasantry of Croatia into a viable political force...

) to his government in parliament, creating an environment to centralization of power in the hands of the Serbs in general and Serbian politicians in particular.

One of the most significant personalities in the Croatian political history was Stjepan Radić

Stjepan Radic

Stjepan Radić was a Croatian politician and the founder of the Croatian Peasant Party in 1905. Radić is credited with galvanizing the peasantry of Croatia into a viable political force...

(1871–1928), the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party

Croatian Peasant Party

, assassinated in the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

in 1928 together with his colleagues. Radić strived to renew the Croatian sovereignty and the economic and cultural emancipation of Croatia. He wanted the state of the Southern Slavs to be reorganized on confederative basis, without Serbian hegemony

Hegemony

Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...

.

The culmination of the Serbian police terror took place during the personal dictatorship of king Aleksandar Karađorđević

Alexander I of Yugoslavia

Alexander I , also known as Alexander the Unifier was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .-Childhood:...

since 1929. One of the historical documents from that period, showing "methods" of the Serbian police and administration, is a bill on 13 dinars and 15 paras charged to a Croatian family in 1934 for five bullets fired at the father, who was sentenced to death. The families were persuaded even to pay the "expenses" of the execution within eight days, under the threat of confiscation of their property. Croatian archbishop Alojzije Stepinac reported about this event to the French diplomat Ernest Pezet in 1935. Belgrade also made use of the world economic crises in 1929 to destroy the Croatian banking system, which had been the strongest in Yugoslavia.

Croatian scientists were also victims of the Serbian terror. Milan Šufflay

Milan Šufflay

Milan pl. Šufflay was a Croatian historian and politician. He was one of the founders of albanology and the author of the first Croatian science fiction novel.-Life:...

, historian of international reputation known by his numerous scientific contributions, especially in the field of albanology, was assassinated by a steel rod on a street in the center of Zagreb in 1931. After the dramatic events that followed, Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

and Heinrich Mann

Heinrich Mann

Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...

sent an appeal to the International League of Human Rights in Paris to protect Croats from the terror and persecutions of the Serbian police. It was also published in the New York Times (6 May 1931). As is learned from this letter, the newspapers in Zagreb were not allowed to report about Sufflay's activity; it was not allowed to attach a half-mast flag on the main building of the University of Zagreb in his honour; the time of the funeral could not be announced publicly, and even condolence messages were not allowed to be telegraphed. In their letter Einstein and Mann hold the Yugoslav king Aleksandar explicitly responsible for the state terror over the Croats. The letter concludes that it should not be tolerated that killings be allowed as a means to achieve political goals. "We should not allow killers to be promoted as national heroes." The king himself was assassinated by a Macedonian

Macedonians (ethnic group)

The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...

patriot in Marseille in 1934 (there are indications that there was a collaboration of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the Ustasha organization).

An extremely valuable account on the terrorist methods of the Pan-Serbs in Yugoslavia between the two World Wars has been written by Henri Pozzi

Henri Pozzi

Henry Pozzi was a French politician, diplomat and author who worked for the French and British secret services in the Balkans and Eastern Europe....

, a French diplomat (his mother was English) and a close witness, in his book Black Hand over Europe, London, 1935. "The Black Hand" is the name of the Pan-Serbian secret terrorist organization, very close to the Royal court in Belgrade. It was the "Black hand" that organized the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which meant the beginning of the First World War.

All the best posts in Croatia were occupied by the Serbs. Around 1930 the situation in Croatia was to following:

at the Croatian Ministry of the Interior 113 out of 125 officials were Serbs,
at the Foreign Office 180 out of 219,
at the Presidency of the Council 13 out of 13,
at the Ministry of Justice 113 out of 136,
at the Securities Bank 196 out of 200,
at the Court 30 out of 31.
Croatia had to keep about sixty thousand Serb gendarmes, police and soldiers.

The tendency of administrative parcelization of Croatia that started in 1922 was revised by the establishment of the autonomous Croatia - Banovina of Croatia

Banovina of Croatia

The Banovina of Croatia or Banate of Croatia was a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1939 and 1943 . Its capital was at Zagreb and it included most of present-day Croatia along with portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia...

- in 1939. It also included parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

Aftermath

All this led to the formation of the Croatian separatist group called Ustasha, which gathered around Ante Pavelić

Ante Pavelic

Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...

(1889–1959). It had been supported by the fascist Italy. Croatia after the first Yugoslavia would be called the Independent State of Croatia

Independent State of Croatia

The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...

(NDH, Nezavisna drzava Hrvatska, 1941–1945).

The actions of King Alexander Karadjordjevic and the state terror in the First Yugoslavia has also contributed to the Ustasa's method of revenge of genocide against the Serbs in World War Two-era puppet state of the Independent State of Croatia.

However, Serbian hegemony would be severely restricted in Tito's Yugoslavia, with the five out of the nine Prime Ministers of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...

of Croat descent.

External links

Black Hand Over Europe - The Croat Problem, by Henri Pozzi, 1935
The period of Croatia within ex-Yugoslavia
Croatia: Myth and Reality, by C. Michael McAdams

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

The Yugoslav Committee

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

The period of Croatia within ex-Yugoslavia (1918–1941)

Aftermath

See also

External links