History, The First Yugoslav State

For many centuries most or all of the South Slavs had been divided and ruled by outside powers, in particular Austria, Hungary, Venice, and the Ottoman Empire. In the late 19th century only the Serb states of Serbia and Montenegro were independent. At that time the concept of Yugoslavia (“Land of the South Slavs”) arose among some of the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary. The Yugoslav idea held that the South Slavs, as a single or closely related people, should be free of foreign domination and united in a state of their own. In 1912 and 1913, as a result of the Balkan Wars, Serbia and Montenegro took the largely or partly Slav-inhabited regions of Macedonia, Kosovo, and the sanjak (administrative district) of Novi Pazar from the Ottomans. However, Slovenes, Croats, and the Serbs and Muslim Slavs of Croatia and Bosnia remained under Austro-Hungarian rule. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb who believed in the Yugoslav idea, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo, thus igniting World War I.

The Yugoslav idea gained powerful adherents in Serbia, Britain, and the United States during World War I. At the war’s end in November 1918, Austria-Hungary collapsed, clearing the way for a unified Yugoslav state. Italy seized Croatian and Slovene territory, prompting leaders from those regions to seek a quick union with Serbia, though the seized regions remained under Italian control. On December 1, 1918, Prince Regent Aleksandar of Serbia proclaimed the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Aleksandar’s father, King Petar I Karadjordjevic of Serbia, became king of the new state, although he had retired from government duties in 1914. Delegates from a national council representing the South Slavs of what had been Austria-Hungary and the Croatian parliament were present at the proclamation.

The central problem confronting Yugoslavia was the conflict between the Yugoslav idea and the fact that the country’s diverse peoples had little else in common. Never before joined politically, they shared only the aspiration for unity and similarities of language, myths of origin, and centuries of foreign rule on which that aspiration was based. Separate histories and experiences had endowed the South Slavs with distinct and often conflicting cultures and values. By 1918 far more of them had expressed separate Serb, Croat, or Slovene national identities than had embraced the Yugoslav idea.

Yugoslavia’s western border was in dispute for two years after the country’s founding. Italy claimed Istria, the Julian March (an Alpine borderland), Rijeka (Fiume in Italian), and much of Dalmatia, areas that were all predominantly Croat or Slovene in population. Throughout 1919 Italy’s claims deadlocked the Paris Peace Conference, convened so that the Allied and Central powers could reach a settlement after World War I. Direct Italo-Yugoslav negotiations finally resolved most issues in the Treaty of Rapallo (1920), which assigned Istria and the Julian March to Italy and Dalmatia, except for the town of Zadar (Zara in Italian), to Yugoslavia. In 1924 another Italo-Yugoslav agreement also gave Italy the Free State of Fiume, which had been decreed by the Treaty of Rapallo but was never actually established.

In November 1920, with the major boundary disputes resolved, a constituent assembly was finally elected and convened. With the militantly federalist Croatian Peasant Party’s 50 delegates boycotting it, the assembly adopted a constitution in June 1921 by a vote of 223 to 35, with 161 abstentions. The new kingdom was to be a highly centralized and unitary state ruled by a Serb king and predominantly Serb government, bureaucracy, and army. Aleksandar became king after Petar died in August 1921.

Except for the Communist Party, founded in 1919 and banned in 1922, each political party appealed to only one national or religious community. Serb centralists and Croat federalists clashed in the parliament, and most governments were fragile and short-lived. Nikola Pasic, leader of the Serb Radical Party and prime minister of Serbia before and during World War I, headed or dominated most governments until his death in 1926.

In 1921 and 1922 Yugoslavia became a member, with Czechoslovakia and Romania, of the Little Entente. This alliance was set up to oppose both restoration of the Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled Austria-Hungary, and Hungarian territorial expansion. The members were seeking to ensure the boundaries of their countries, which had been drawn up in accordance with the treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain, and Trianon after World War I. Yugoslavia also allied itself with France to help deter any attempt by Germany to change the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

In June 1928, a Montenegrin Radical Party deputy opened fire on the floor of the parliament. He shot and killed two Croat deputies and fatally wounded Stjepan Radic, head of the Croatian Peasant Party and known as the uncrowned king of Croatia. This action completed the breach between Croats and Serbs. In January 1929 King Aleksandar proclaimed a royal dictatorship, suspended the constitution and parliament, and banned political parties organized along national or religious lines. The king formally renamed the kingdom Yugoslavia and reorganized it on the basis of provinces with boundaries and names designed to break up historic national units. In 1931 he proclaimed a new constitution and set up a new parliament in an attempt to give the dictatorship greater legitimacy. The new constitution guaranteed the king’s ultimate authority, while new electoral laws ensured that his supporters would enjoy a large majority in the parliament.

In October 1934 a Macedonian terrorist working with a Croatian separatist and fascist organization, the Ustase, assassinated Aleksandar in Marseilles, France. A three-man regency headed by Aleksandar’s cousin Prince Paul ruled on behalf of his young son, Petar II. Prince Paul promoted further relaxation of the dictatorship but stopped short of restoring genuinely free elections.

Prime Minister Milan Stojadinovic, who held office from 1935 to 1939, sought the friendship of fascist Italy and showed growing sympathy for fascist forms of government. By 1936 Nazi Germany had become Yugoslavia’s chief trading partner, and relations with France and Britain declined. The Little Entente fell apart after Germany dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1938. In 1939 Prince Paul dismissed Stojadinovic. The regent then encouraged the new prime minister, Dragisa Cvetkovic, to negotiate a solution to the Croatian problem with Vladko Macek, Radic’s successor as head of the Croatian Peasant Party. In August 1939 the Cvetkovic-Macek agreement established an autonomous Croatian banovina (province) that included parts of Bosnia. Paul appointed Macek deputy prime minister. In effect, Yugoslavia became a federation with two units: Croatia and the rest. Serb hopes of achieving similar status were put on hold by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.