Croatian-Serbian coalition

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The Croatian-Serbian coalition was a party alliance that was formed in 1905 in the Habsburg crown lands of Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia . In perspective, the participating political groups wanted to enforce the formation of a common member state for all southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary , which would have meant the abolition of the dualistic state structure agreed in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 .

From 1906 to 1913 the alliance won five state elections in Croatia-Slavonia. When the disintegration of the Habsburg monarchy became apparent in the course of the First World War , many coalition politicians decided to work with Serbia to establish a Yugoslav state.

prehistory

Since the Hungarian-Croatian Compromise of 1868, four political directions have been of importance in the Croatian countries: First, the national-Croatian, which, on the basis of the historical constitutional law of the Croatians, aimed for a unification of all the countries inhabited by the Croats. This line was mainly, but not only, represented by the Croatian Right Party under its leader Ante Starčević . Second, the Yugoslavists , headed by Bishop Strossmayer for a long time. There were also members of the Serbian minority in their ranks. This direction saw Croats and Serbs as parts of a common South Slav nation and wanted to establish a common partial state within the Danube monarchy on the basis of equal rights for all nationalities. Her future plans for Bosnia were vague and there was no closer agreement with Serbia. Third, the so-called Magyarons . This small group, consisting of influential nobles, relied on cooperation with the Hungarian government under the constitutional conditions created by the settlement. Fourth, the Serbian nationalists, whose long-term goal was the creation of a Greater Serbian state. In daily politics they were alternately in conflict with the Croatian nationalists and the Hungarian government. In Dalmatia they were at times allied with the Italians against the Croatian majority.

The affiliations of individual politicians and the smaller parties to the various camps were in constant flux and in the course of time there were different front positions as well as tactically motivated temporary phases of cooperation. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, there was a generation change among the South Slavic politicians. Young men entered the political arena, many of whom had studied in Prague and were influenced there by the critical realism and Czechoslovak program of the future President Tomáš Masaryk . At home they urged the South Slav peoples to work together effectively so that they could prevail against Hungarians and Germans. This gave the idea of ​​Yugoslavism a new impetus.

In 1903/04 a political movement Narodni pokret (dt. National movement) had developed in Croatia-Slavonia in opposition to the Hungarian government. It was about a redefinition of the Hungarian-Croatian relationship. In order to achieve greater autonomy for Croatia and the unification of all Croatian countries, an alliance with the Hungarian national opposition was sought, which at the same time sought the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian dualism.

Croatian-Serbian Coalition 1905 to 1914

At the initiative of Frano Supilo , parliamentarians from Croatia-Slavonia , Dalmatia and Istria met in Rijeka on October 3, 1905 , to coordinate their future politics. They drafted a resolution in which they expressed their support for Hungarian independence if this would also lead to the unification of the Croatian countries. The Serbian politicians from Croatia and Dalmatia joined the new course two weeks later at a meeting in Zadar, on the condition that the Serbs would enjoy national equality in the Croatian state.

Shortly thereafter, a Croatian and a Serbian party began working together in Dalmatia. On November 14, 1905, the two sides submitted a resolution to the state parliament in which it said: The clubs of the Croatian party and the Serbian national party insist on the principle that Croats and Serbs are one nation.

In Croatia-Slavonia, five Croatian and Serbian parties formed the Croatian-Serbian coalition, which committed itself to the so-called policy of the new course with the adoption of its manifesto in December 1905 . The Croatian Right Party, the Croatian Progressive Party, the Social Democrats, the Serbian Independent Party and the Serbian Radical Party were involved.

The Pure Right Party, with its extremely Croatian-nationalist and tactically pro-Austrian course, as well as the Croatian Peasant Party of Antun and Stjepan Radić, which emerged in 1904 and was oriented towards national-Croatian and social reforms, were against this policy . Both groups therefore stayed away from the coalition.

The Croatian-Serbian coalition won the state elections in Croatia-Slavonia five times between 1906 and 1913 . Between 1905 and 1909, the Croatian Frano Supilo and the Serbian Svetozar Pribićević were the leading figures in the politics of the new course . Their hope of a fruitful cooperation with the Magyars was soon disappointed; therefore the Croatian-Serbian coalition withdrew from the Hungarian parliament in 1907. At the same time, the Serbian radicals left the coalition and henceforth collaborated with the Budapest government.

There were also differences of opinion internally, which led to difficult conflicts. During the annexation crisis in 1908 , the coalition failed to comment on the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina because this would have split the alliance. The following year, Pribićević worked towards a compromise with the Hungarian government. Supilo was against negotiations and so he left the coalition in 1910, in which the Serbs increasingly gained the upper hand.

The coalition parties had no social program that could appeal to the majority of the rural population. Their political thought and action was focused solely on national issues. Nevertheless, these bourgeois clientele parties were able to secure the election victory several times due to the restrictive census voting rights. The Croatian Social Democrats, however, left the alliance a year after it was founded because of the lack of a social program.

Aftermath

In the coalition that was formed in 1905, Croatians and Serbs worked together for the first time on a permanent basis in politics. Numerous conflicts between the partners were postponed in a pragmatic way in order to be able to maintain the alliance in principle. Many members of the Croatian-Serbian coalition took part in the establishment of the Yugoslav state after 1918 . However, with the introduction of universal suffrage, your parties sank into insignificance or dissolved.

literature

  • Wolf Dietrich Behschnitt: Nationalism among Serbs and Croats, 1830–1914. Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-49831-2 .
  • Mirjana Gross: Vladavina hrvatsko-srpske koalicije (1906–1907.) Belgrade 1960.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L. v. Südland [= Ivo Pilar]: The South Slavic question and the world war . 2nd Edition. Zagreb 1944, p. 678.