National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs
The National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs ( Serbo-Croatian Narodno vijeće Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba ), also known as Agramer National Council , saw itself as "the political representation of the Slovenes , Croats and Serbs who live on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy " and was a kind of government of the short-lived state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs .
history
Preconditions
During the First World War , the southern Slavic regions of Austria-Hungary remained largely calm until the end of 1917. Only a few South Slavic politicians who were dissatisfied with the dualistic system had founded the Yugoslav Committee in exile in London , which represented the ideology of Yugoslavism .
After the October Revolution , however, the signs of fatigue at the front and at home increased and groups of deserters (so-called green cadres ) formed in Slavonia , Syrmia , Bosnia and parts of Croatia .
In 1918 so-called national councils were formed in the provincial capitals of Austria-Hungary, for example a national council in Ljubljana as a provisional government in August 1918 and a national council of this kind in Bosnia and Herzegovina was also founded in late September .
.jpg)
.jpg)
Establishment of the Council and the State
In Zagreb (Agram in German) the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was constituted on October 5th and 6th, 1918 from 73 South Slavic members of the Reichsrat , Reichstag and Landtag . The National Council was chaired by Anton Korošec (Slovene) as President, while Ante Pavelić sr. (Croat, not to be confused with the Ustasha leader of the same name ) and Svetozar Pribičević (Serb). On October 8, 1918, the National Council raised the unification of all southern Slavs of the Habsburg Monarchy in a "free and independent state" to its program.
A Slovenian National Council for Carinthia (Slovene: Narodni svet za Slovensko Koroško ) as a section of the Ljubljana National Council already existed in Klagenfurt on September 19 . In response to his request, the Slovenian National Council in Ljubljana issued a proclamation on October 17, 1918, in which it declared areas in Carinthia to be part of the South Slavic state to be founded. The initial demand for the entire undivided area of Carinthia was, however, tactically motivated and only a short time later was reduced to the Slovene-speaking areas. In contrast, in November 1918, the newly founded Carinthian Landtag proclaimed the annexation of the former Duchy of Carinthia as the Land of Carinthia to Austria .
On October 29, 1918, the Croatian Sabor , who was elected on the basis of a high electoral census before the war, dissolved the constitutional relationship with the Kingdom of Hungary and Austria at its last meeting , transferred the supreme executive power to the National Council and called the state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (not to be confused with the state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , which later became Yugoslavia). The National Council took over the supreme command of the Croatian troops and called them from the front. On 31 October 1918, the Slovenian National Council approved the accession of Slovenia to the new state. In Bosnia and Herzegovina , the Austrian country chief Stephan Sarkotić von Lovćen resigned on November 1, 1918. The National Council also extended its sovereignty to this area and appointed a new Bosnian-Herzegovinian government. The so-called SHS state lacked power, democratic legitimation and international recognition.
Political currents
Within the National Council, the Slovenian People's Party under Anton Korošec and the Croatian Peasant Party under Stjepan Radić campaigned for a republican form of government and federalism . In contrast, the influential Croatian-Serbian coalition under Svetozar Pribičević sought a monarchy under the Serbian Kara Dynorđević dynasty and centralism .
The End
The National Council was under strong domestic and foreign political pressure. Inside because of the exhaustion of the war, the unrest of the land-hungry peasants and deserters. From the outside, especially on the part of the Kingdom of Italy , which began Areas in Istria (except Fiume , today Rijeka ) and the northern and central Dalmatia to occupy the islands, giving it to the Treaty of London (1915) by the Entente Powers had been awarded .
On November 24, 1918, the central committee of the National Council decided to send a delegation to Belgrade to negotiate the immediate unification with the Kingdom of Serbia . Only Stjepan Radić voted against this decision and refused to join the delegation. In his speech to the National Council, Radić said:
“ If I take the floor anyway, it happens with the awareness that I am fulfilling an obligation and exercising my right, but then also to touch your conscience so that you cannot later use the excuse that it is if no one had shown you the abyss into which you are about to plunge all of our people, and especially the Croatian people. [...] Your entire procedure here in the National Council is neither democratic, nor constitutional, nor just. It's also not wise. […] Gentlemen, do not care in the least that our peasant in general, and especially the Croatian peasant, does not want to hear or know anything about the king and emperor or the new state that has been forcibly imposed on him. Our farmer has the necessary maturity to know that the state and the fatherland exist in justice and freedom, in prosperity and culture. If you let this farmer beat up by gendarmes today , if you force him to obey you, to allegedly protect you against the Italians - then he will say or think to himself that you are in no way different from his former Hungarian and German oppressors […] Maybe you can win the Slovenes, I don't know; maybe you can temporarily win over the Serbs. But I know for sure that you won't win the Croatians for it. And that's not because the whole Croatian peasant people are against your centralism , as against militarism , and for the republic as well as for the national understanding with the Serbs. […] Today's meeting proves most clearly that you are completely ignoring the constitutionality, that you are not even keeping up appearances […] so you did not convene the entire National Council, but only this committee. You know very well that not even the full National Council represents the people because it was not elected by the people [...] You did not do that because you know that your actions are incorrect and that one would immediately notice if the hearing were to be held in public and in front of a larger group. But how great is the unconstitutionality that you commit by circumventing our Croatian state sabor! [...] You will go to Belgrade and you will proclaim the unified state there without the Croatian people and against the will of these people ... and maybe you will also govern without laws, only through arbitrariness and based on violence. The people will see from this that you do not belong to them and it will no longer be for you. Wherever you call it, it will refuse to obey you. [...] The whole world recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination . We owe our liberation only to this right. […] But this right belongs to all of our three peoples and especially to us Croats in Croatia, also with regard to the establishment and establishment of our common state. We are three brothers - the Croat, the Slovene and the Serb; but we are not one. […] If you don't believe it, then God let you experience the time - it won't take too long - when the Croatian people, in their sense of humanity, will sweep you all away at the very moment when you will believe that this people, whom you sat on your neck, came to terms with his fate. Long live the republic! Long live Croatia! "
As a result of the negotiations, on December 1, 1918, Prince Regent Alexander Karađor verkević solemnly announced the unification of the SHS state with the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Montenegro to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS Kingdom or today "First Yugoslavia").
literature
- Zlatko Matijević: Narodno vijeće Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba u Zagrebu: Osnutak, djelovanje i nestanak (1918/1919) . In: Hrvatski institut za povijest (ed.): Fontes: izvori za hrvatsku povijest . S. 35-66 (Croatian, srce.hr ).
Web links
- Narodno vijeće SHS. In: Hrvatska enciklopedija. Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, accessed on August 1, 2020 (Croatian).
Individual evidence
- ^ Ferdo Šišić : Dokumenti o postanku kraljevine SHS Zagreb 1920, p. 174 .
- ^ Claudia Fräss-Ehrfeld : History of Carinthia . Heyn, 1984, ISBN 978-3-85366-954-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Lajos Kerekes: From St. Germain to Geneva: Austria and its neighbors, 1918-1922 . Böhlau, 1979, ISBN 978-3-205-00534-6 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ↑ Cilka Broman, Andreas Moritsch: history of Carinthian Slovenes: from 1918 to the present, taking into account the overall Slovenian history . Hermagoras, 1988, ISBN 978-3-85013-090-5 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Renate Tuma: The problem of the territorial integrity of Austria 1945-1947: with special consideration of the demarcation with Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary . WUV-Universitätsverlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 978-3-85114-204-4 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Ferdo Šišić : Dokumenti o postanku kraljevine SHS Zagreb 1920, p. 210 .
- ↑ Ante Pavelić : From the struggle for the independent state of Croatia: some documents and pictures . Croatian correspondence "Grič", Vienna 1931, p. 40 ff .