The Croatian Issue in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 1918-1929

Abstract

Russian historians, as well as Serbian and Croatian authors, when speaking about the Croatian question in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, refer to the activities of the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party, often awarded the epithet “national movement”. No distinction is made between Serbian-Croatian relations, the “Serbian-Croatian conflict” and its interaction with Serbian parties and, above all, with the People’s Radical Party, which is also called the representative of the entire Serbian people. One cannot help but see the vulnerability of such generalisations. If parties are “national movements,” how should we evaluate their ideological inconsistency and tendency to form unexpected alliances? Did these qualities correspond to a similar inconstancy of the masses, or did the party leaders sometimes not pursue the popular aspirations, which were more or less stable, but their personal motives instead? The vulnerability of identifying party conflicts with interethnic contradictions prompts us to narrow the angle of consideration of the Croatian issue to a phenomenon of political life. This does not mean that it is impossible to trace the connection between what was happening in the political arena and interethnic relations. Politics served as a reflection of the mood of the masses. Unfortunately, our understanding of them is limited by the lack of sociological data, so inter-party struggle can be considered the main indicator of the severity of Serbian-Croatian contradictions, but not the only one. The activities of “people’s” organisations were another influence.