Panserbism

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Pan- Serbism is a term used by critics to designate a Serbian , nationalist- oriented special form of Pan-Slavism . It was coined in 1903 by Croatian students of Strossmayer based on the term pan-Russianism and compared to the Serbian-Croatian action alliance Frano Supilos , the Yugoslavism and Illyrism of Strossmayer and the neo-Slavism of the young Czech Masaryk and the Russian Miljukow .

According to this description, instead of a democratic federation of South Slavic republics , Pan-Serb nationalists and monarchists sought a South Slavic empire under Serb leadership. Her first success was the establishment of Serbo-Croatism , which has meanwhile been adopted by Western Europe, and the Serbo-Croatian language . This linguistically cloaked Serbianity ( srpstvo ) take over Croatians and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) without further ado as Catholic Serbo- Croats or Muslim Serbo- Croats , Orthodox Macedonians or Montenegrins even as southern Serbs and the Bulgarians who lived in the southeast of the country as Serbs. In this context, the western Bulgarian dialects were also seen as part of the Serbian language and a Serb minority was proclaimed in western Bulgaria.

Panserbism had its opponents in the Croatian nationalist movement and in Yugoslavism. Critics consider Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić to be an important representative of “panserbism” at the beginning of the 20th century . More recently, the Serbian-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević has been viewed by some as a continuer of panserbist politics, although the term “panserbism” is rarely used in this context.

In Serbian sources the term “panserbism” is hardly used. There it is regarded as a propagandistic and blanket catchphrase created by Austria-Hungary or, on behalf of the Roman Catholic Croat opposition in Austria-Hungary , which primarily has the defamation of Orthodox Serbs for the purpose and the actions of Serbian politicians in one of national- cultural delusion and superpower fantasies dominated historical context agitatorisch performing. Serbian nationalists only use the similarly controversial term Greater Serbian . A particularly frequent mention of the term “panserbism” can therefore be found in Austro-Hungarian sources.

Vojislav Šešelj , former chairman of the Serbian Radical Party , quoted in his work Ideology of Serbian Nationalism a book by the French Slavist and historian Ernest Denis entitled La grande Serbie , published in 1915 , in which Denis used panserbism as an expression of Serbian brought about by foreign powers Striving for a cultural and territorial union clearly characterized positively. Šešelj's book is an outline of the work of the Serbian statistician, lawyer, historian and university professor Lazo M. Kostić (1897–1979) (not to be confused with the Serbian poet Laza Kostić), who after the Second World War because of alleged collaboration with the Axis powers from the Country had to flee. Kostić, who is considered an important ideologue of Serbian nationalism, lived in exile in Switzerland after 1945 and left behind an extensive work that is edited by Šešelj. Official historiographical circles ignore Kostić's work; he himself is not mentioned in the ten-volume “History of the Serbian People” of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts .

See also

literature

  • Wolf Dietrich Behschnitt: Nationalism among Serbs and Croats 1830-1914. 1830-1914; Analysis and typology of the national ideology . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-49831-2 (also dissertation, University of Cologne 1970).
  • Paul N. Hehn: The Origins of Modern Pan-Serbism . In: East European Quarterly 9, 1975, 2, ISSN  0012-8449 , pp. 153-171.
  • Leften S. Stavrianos: The Balkans Since 1453 . With a new Introduction by Traian Stoianovich. Hurst, London 2000, ISBN 1-85065-550-2 , p. 397.
  • Vojislav Šešelj : Ideologija srpskog nacionalizma . Velika Srbija, Belgrade 2002, ISBN 86-83451-22-4 ( srpskinacionalisti.com [PDF; accessed November 10, 2013]).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef I of July 5, 1914 to the German Emperor Wilhelm II.
  2. ↑ Vojislav Šešelj: Ideologija srpskog nacionalizma . Velika Srbija, Belgrade 2002. ISBN 86-83451-22-4 , p. 980.