Croatia in the first Yugoslavia
Croatia in the first Yugoslavia means the period from 1918 to 1941 in which Croatia was part of the monarchist central state of Yugoslavia , which was ruled by the Serbian dynasty Karađorđević .
history
Until the end of the First World War (1914-1918) the ununified Croatian countries were part of Austria-Hungary . After the death of Franz Joseph I in November 1916, South Slav politicians increasingly made demands for an autonomous Croatian nation-state. The escalation of the war, the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy contributed to the radicalization of the internal situation and to the formation of a national collective movement, the goal of which was now increasingly an independent South Slav state.
South Slavic politicians who emigrated from Austria-Hungary founded the Yugoslav Committee and agreed in 1917 with the government-in-exile of the Kingdom of Serbia in the Corfu Declaration to establish a common state for Serbs , Croats and Slovenes .
After the defeat of the Central Powers , the collapse of the fronts and the advance of Serbian troops to Belgrade and beyond, delegates from Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian parties demanding an independent South Slav state formed the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in early October 1918 . On October 29, 1918, the Croatian Sabor in Zagreb broke off relations with Austria-Hungary and proclaimed the unification and independence of the Croatian countries of Croatia , Slavonia , Dalmatia and Rijeka . Likewise, the Sabor decided that this newly formed Croatian state should immediately merge into a new independent state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and transferred its powers to the National Council. This initially formed the state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs . However, the National Council was unable to enforce its authority; rather, there was practically anarchy over large parts of its theoretical territory. In anticipation of the Italy in the Treaty of London in 1915 large by the Allies promised annexation parts of Dalmatia, also Italian troops began with the occupation of areas along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea . In view of this, the National Council decided at the end of November 1918 to unite with the Kingdom of Serbia immediately.
Aleksandar I. Karađorđević , heir to the throne and Prince Regent of Serbia, then proclaimed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on December 1, 1918 ( Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca , also SHS state for short ).
In the peace negotiations, the first foreign minister of the new state, the former chairman of the South Slavic Committee from Dalmatia , Ante Trumbić , succeeded in preventing Dalmatia from joining Italy. Only the city of Zadar and the former Austrian coastal country (which also included Istria ) came to Italy. Rijeka was initially declared a free city, but was then occupied by irregular Italian troops. The dispute about the city's membership was only settled in 1924 by a treaty that left Rijeka with Italy, while the city of Sušak , immediately to the east , was awarded to the SHS Kingdom.
In the elections to the Constituent Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , in which universal suffrage was for men for the first time in Croatia, the Croatian Peasant Party founded in 1904 under Stjepan Radić won in Croatia-Slavonia , which played only a minor role before the war had an absolute majority of the vote. In Dalmatia, on the other hand, bourgeois groups from the environment of the former South Slavic Committee initially retained the majority.
Monetary union
The first big disappointment of the Croatians and Slovenes in the newly formed state was the currency conversion. In the new state, the krone (previous currency from the Danube monarchy ) had to be exchanged for the Yugoslav (formerly Serbian) dinar.
Although the purchasing power of both currencies was almost the same towards the end of the war, they were exchanged at a ratio of four kroner for one Yugoslav dinar. In the inflation that followed later, the owners of the crowns suffered additional economic damage.
Many Croatians rejected the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the present form. The Croatian Peasant Party, for example, citing the right of peoples to self-determination proclaimed by American President Woodrow Wilson , demanded the recognition of a separate right of self-determination for Croatia and also for the other South Slav peoples. In addition, she rejected the monarchical form of government and demanded the establishment of a republic for Croatia .
Since in the procedure of the Constituent Assembly a veto right of the individual peoples was not recognized and also the monarchical form of government could not be questioned, the members of the Croatian Peasant Party boycotted it and instead worked out a constitution for a peasant republic of Croatia , part of a future confederation of South Slavic peasant republics should be. However, due to the real balance of power, this remained mere paper.
Without the deputies of the Croatian Peasant Party and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia , which had been banned as "subversive" shortly after the elections , the Constituent Assembly passed a constitution with a narrow majority in 1921, which provided for a centralized state organization and the dissolution of the historic areas (Slovenia, Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Vojvodina) , which de facto ensured dominance for the Serbs as the numerically largest people.
The Croatian Peasants' Party subsequently gained popularity and became the strongest party in Dalmatia and among the Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina . In view of the failure of the boycott policy, it gave up the boycott of the central parliament and the rejection of the monarchy and at times also took part in the central government. However, there was no permanent agreement between the various political forces on the future state order of the South Slav kingdom.
On June 20, 1928, a Montenegrin member of parliament shot and killed four members of the Croatian Peasant Party, including its leader Stjepan Radić .
Three years later, the Yugoslav secret service murdered another Croatian politician: Milan Šufflay .
For the deep rift and hatred that developed in the interwar period between the Serb majority on the one hand - 32 percent of the approximately fourteen million inhabitants (with Macedonians and Montenegrins just over 36 percent) of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were Serbs - and the Croats on the other , is also characterized by the fact that the most important ministries (excluding trade and industry) were in Serbian hands. Serbian ministers accounted for over 92 percent of the 673 months in office between 1919 and 1928 . After the introduction of the royal dictatorship in 1929 and the creation of a new territorial administrative structure, which divided the historically grown regions into nine, six of which were Serb-dominated banks (Croatian banovina ), this proportion grew to almost 93.5 percent by 1938 . In the monarchical Yugoslav army, the dominance of the traditionally Francophile Serbian officers was overwhelming.
literature
- Srećko M. Džaja: The Political Reality of Yugoslavism (1918–1991): With special consideration Bosnia-Herzegovina . Munich 2002.
- Aleksandar Jakir: Dalmatia between the world wars: Agrarian and urban living environment and the failure of Yugoslav integration . Phil. Diss. Univ. Erlangen 1998 (= Southeast European works . Volume 104 ). Munich 2000.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ivo Banac: Yugoslavia 1918-1941 . In: Dunja Melčić (Hrsg.): Der Yugoslavienkrieg: Handbook on the prehistory, course and consequences . 2nd updated and expanded edition. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , p. 157 .