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Abstract
This article examines Yugoslav national programs of ruling political elites and its concrete implementation in education policy in interwar Yugoslavia. It is argued that at the beginning of the period Yugoslavism was not inherently incompatible with or subordinate to Serbian, Croatian or to a lesser degree Slovenian national ideas. However, the concrete ways in which Yugoslavism was formulated and adopted by ruling elites discredited the Yugoslav national idea and resulted in increasing delineation and polarization in the continuum of national ideas available in Yugoslavia. Throughout the three consecutive periods of political rule under scrutiny, ruling elites failed to reach a wider consensus regarding the Yugoslav national idea or to create a framework within which a constructive elaboration of Yugoslav national identity could take place. By the end of the interwar period, the Yugoslav national idea had become linked exclusively to conservatism, centralism, authoritarianism and, for non-Serbian elites at least, Serbian hegemony. Other national ideas gained significance as ideas providing viable alternatives for the regime's Yugoslavism.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The author would like to thank the Nationalities Papers referees for helpful comments on drafts of the article. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 14th Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, 23–25 April 2009.
Notes
See, for example, Gligorijević, “Jugoslovenstvo”; Pavlović; Suppan; Žutić, “Ideologija jugoslovenstva.” This article will not mention Montenegrin, Bosniak or Macedonian national identities, since during the interwar period the ruling political elites I focus on did not consider them constituent parts of the Yugoslav nation. It should, however, be argued that the interwar period was of great importance for the development of these national identities.
Indeed, throughout his book Djokić hints at the dynamic and overlapping character of Yugoslav, Serbian and Croatian national ideas, suggesting that “it is debatable whether Serbian and Croatian nationalisms had been formed by 1918, and whether they remained immune to evolution following the creation of Yugoslavia” (Elusive Compromise 7).
This typology of Yugoslavism draws on that suggested by Dimić (1: 191–395) and later adopted by Bakić (85–86). Bakić has categorized the national ideologies of both the Radicals in the 1920s and the government of Stojadinović as real Yugoslavism. In order to make a clear distinction between both periods, I have opted for the term compromised Yugoslavism for the first period, following Dimić who has termed the national idea of the ruling elites during the 1920s “compromised national unitarism” (1: 213).
In March 1924 a branch of the Democratic Party formed an Independent Democratic Party (SDS, Samostalna demokratska stranka) under the leadership of Svetozar Pribićević. Independent Democrats disagreed with the Democrats' more tolerant position toward a decentralization of Yugoslavia. However, both parties remained advocates of Yugoslavism (Gligorijević, Parlament 159–62).
King Aleksandar's vision on the Yugoslav national question will be discussed in the following section.
The Radical Party was formed in the 1880s in independent Serbia. After the 1903 coup it became the country's dominant party (Gligorijević, Parlament 7–10).
During the interwar period the term “tribe” (pleme) was commonly used to denote the Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian branch of the Yugoslav nation. This makes clear to what extent the notion of a Yugoslav nation was accepted by the political elites of the period. At the same time, however, it clarifies that differences within the Yugoslav nation had to be addressed somehow and could not be simply ignored. Throughout this article, the terms tribe and tribal will be used solely in this meaning.
The quotation is from Samouprava, the official newspaper of the Radicals. All translations in this paper are mine, except when noted otherwise.
This overlap between Yugoslavism and “narrow” national ideas was not only characteristic of the Radicals. There is no place here for a detailed overview of all political parties in Yugoslavia, but suffice it to refer to the examples that Djokić provides of the overlap of Yugoslav and Croatian national ideas in the discourse of Stjepan Radić, the leader of the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party (H(R)SS, Hrvatska (republikanska) seljačka stranka) (Elusive Compromise esp. 29–30, 31–35, 51–53). The same point can be made for two other parties that frequently joined government, the Slovenian People's Party (SLS, Slovenska ljudska stranka) and the Yugoslav Muslim Organization (JMO, Jugoslovenska muslimanska organizacija) (Banac 340–51, 359–77).
Articles 2 and 3 of the 1921 Constitution (Mrđenović 209).
Article 16: “All schools have to provide moral education and develop civic consciousness in the spirit of national unity and religious tolerance” (Mrđenović 211).
A first curriculum was adopted in June 1925, but was never implemented. It was replaced by a new curriculum on 9 August 1926. As a result of severe criticism this curriculum was again replaced by a temporary curriculum in October 1927. However, the differences between these curriculums were actually negligible (Dimić 2: 121; Mayer 72).
See Bakić (298–348, 363–401) and Banac (153–89).
As already mentioned, this point could also be made for other political elites of the period.
For the Yugoslav ideologies of both centralist and decentralist parties during and immediately after the First World War, see Djokić (Elusive Compromise 12–75). For cultural Yugoslavism during the interwar period, see Wachtel (67–127). The decreasing popularity of Yugoslavism during the 1920s was most obvious among non-Serbian elites and was expressed as opposition against Serbian hegemony. Serbian elites remained more favorable toward Yugoslavism, and it was only by the end of the interwar period that disillusionment with Yugoslavism as a national idea grew among Serbian elites too.
The Council of Ministers consisted mostly of dissident politicians affiliated with the formally forbidden Radical and Democratic Party. The king also tried to include representatives of other tribes in his government. SLS leader Anton Korošec became Minister of Traffic until he broke with the regime in 1930. Later, in September 1931, the government was joined by two Slovenian integral Yugoslavists: Albert Kramer, former member of the Democratic Party, and Ivan Pucelj, former leader of the Independent Agrarian Party (SKS, Samostojna kmetijska stranka). Throughout the dictatorship the government also included several Croatian representatives, mostly HSS dissidents, and some Bosnian JMO dissidents. General Petar Živković became the first prime minister (Nielsen 127–32; Stojkov, Opozicija 72–109, 133–43).
Dravska banovina corresponded to Slovenia, Savska and Primorska to Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia, the six other banovine (Dunavska, Vrbaska, Drinska, Moravska, Vardarska and Zetska) had a Serbian majority, again an indication of Serbian dominance. All banovine except Primorska (Coastal) were named after rivers (Djokić, Elusive Compromise 72–74).
Governmental declaration presented by Petar Živković at the XXI session of the Council of Ministers, 4 July 1930 (Dimić, Žutić, and Isailović 193).
Petar Živković at the XXIII session of the Council of Ministers, 3 October 1929 (Dimić, Žutić, and Isailović 100).
The Sokol (Czech, literally “falcon”) was a youth gymnastics movement with a specific tradition in the Slavic world. The first Sokol was founded in 1862 in Prague by Miroslav Tyrš. It was not only a gymnastics movement but also an organization through which the nation was nationally educated. Later, similar movements were established in other Slavic lands, all combining gymnastics with national education. In the Yugoslav lands a Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and Yugoslav Sokol were founded, all of which were disbanded and replaced by the Sokol of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 (Žutić, Sokoli 5–80).
For more details on the consolidation of the dictatorship see Dobrivojević (44–59, 95–122) and Nielsen (123–239).
On 3 September 1931 the king installed a semi-parliamentary system. I deal with this more extensively in the following paragraph.
Petar Živković at the XXIII meeting of the Council of Ministers on 25 August 1930 (Dimić, Žutić, and Isailović 200). Famously, a party rally in Niš in April 1933 ended in complete chaos because of the rain and the very large number of people using the free train tickets the regime offered for the occasion as a unique opportunity to visit Niš rather than to express their support for the regime (Dobrivojević 131–32).
VI session of the Council of Ministers, 14 March 1929 (Dimić, Žutić, and Isailović 35).
Jugoslovenski dnevnik was a daily appearing from 1929 until 1935, first in Subotica and later in Novi Sad, under the redaction of integral Yugoslav publicist and politician Fedor Nikić.
Not surprisingly, religious instruction was closely checked by the state, since religion was considered to be the most important factor of division within the Yugoslav nation. Religion teachers stood under the strict supervision of the authorities at the level of the banovine. Curriculums for religious instruction were issued by the Ministry of Education. In both cases the different religious authorities could only act as advisory organs. Students' organizations could not be based on religious or tribal factors. Outside school, religious organizations were permitted, but only for cherishing religious sentiments (Kingdom of Yugoslavia, “Zakon o verskoj nastavi” passim).
The orthographic instructions stated that “[i]n the Serbo-Croatian literary language both alphabets, Latin and Cyrillic, are equal” (Kingdom of SCS, “Pravopisno uputstvo” 3). Indeed, we see that Yugoslav-oriented publications, such as Jugoslovenski dnevnik or Almanah Kraljevine Jugoslavije [Almanac of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia], used the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet alternately.
Grgur Ninski was bishop in Nin in present-day Croatia in the tenth century. He supported the use of Old Slavonic as the language for liturgy.
Tvrtko I Kotromanić (1353–1391) was the ruler of a kingdom consisting of present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as parts of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.
Mihailo Obrenović was Prince of Serbia between 1839 and 1842 and again between 1860 and 1868, and favored political cooperation between the South Slavs, under his leadership. Bleiweis was a Slovenian publicist who founded a journal favoring South Slavic cooperation in 1843.
It should be mentioned that this Yugoslav interpretation of South Slav historical events was not completely new. The interpretation of the Kosovo myth as a Yugoslav myth, for example, was already well established through the work of Ivan Meštrović at the beginning of the twentieth century (Wachtel 53–59).
These were the 10 figures, with their tribal affiliation: Cyrillus and Methodius (commemorated by Orthodox and Catholics, although through the use of the Cyrillic alphabet and Old Slavonic in liturgy more closely linked with the Serbian tribe), St Sava (Serbian), Prince Marko (Serbian), Prince Lazar (Serbian), Nikola Šubić Zrinjski (Croatian), Karađorđe (Serbian), Strossmayer (Croatian), King Petar (Serbian), King Aleksandar (Serbian).
Bakić applies the term real Yugoslavism for both the Radicals in the 1920s and Stojadinović's government (298–363). I have opted not to do so in order to make a clear distinction between the Radicals in the 1920s, who claimed that tribal differences did not harm Yugoslav national unity, and Stojadinović's government, which held that the Yugoslav national unity could only be fully realized in the future, through mutual respect and cooperation between the Yugoslav tribes. I elaborate on this point in the following paragraphs.
I placed “supra-” in parentheses because it is not clear whether JRZ envisaged a complete assimilation of the three tribes into a Yugoslav nation or harmonic cooperation of three nations within one supranational community. For more examples of how Stojadinović's discourse included both Yugoslav and tribal elements, see Djokić (Elusive Compromise 173–81).
Especially Slovenia (Dravska banovina) was said to form a state within the state under the undisputed leadership of Anton Korošec (Dimić 1: esp. 349–52).
Stojadinović compared his government to a three-legged chair and stated that his government would not be completely stable until a fourth, Croatian leg was included (Stojadinović 318).
Stojadinović and Maček met once in January 1937 but failed to reach a concrete agreement (Stojadinović 465–70). Apparently, Maček preferred to negotiate with Prince Pavle, with whom he met in June 1935 and November 1936 (Djokić, Elusive Compromise 118).
Civil schools could be attended by students who had finished lower elementary school and provided technical education in three specific directions: trade, industry and agriculture.
Dravska banovina comprised largely Slovene lands.
For a stimulating elaboration on the negotiated character of national identities, see Applegate (esp. 1174–79).
Indeed, Serbian politicians dominated Yugoslav governments throughout the interwar period. Consequently, Serbian symbolic resources were overrepresented in their definitions of Yugoslavism and there was insufficient space for non-Serbian views on Yugoslavism. It should be stressed, however, that a majority of the Serbian elites also became disillusioned with Yugoslavism by the end of the interwar period (Bulatović 264–68; Djokić, Elusive Compromise 223–68).