Nationalism and Yugoslavia by Troch Pieter

Author:Troch, Pieter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857737687
Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Conclusion

The Yugoslav national programme of the interwar Yugoslav state assumed two mutually complementary levels of national identity, the ‘national’ Yugoslav level and the ‘tribal’ level of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian identity. It left room for articulations of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian identity but required the mobilisation of such elicitations of ‘tribal’ identity in the direction of Yugoslav national identity. The success of the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom, the indifference to Yugoslav nationhood in the Zrinski–Frankopan commemoration, and even the competition between Croatian and Yugoslav Sokols over the right to represent Yugoslav nationhood indicate the viability of this approach.

In an attempt to push through the domination of the Yugoslav level of national identification, the cultural policy of the Royal Dictatorship of King Alexander banned all political and cultural associations that were based on ‘tribal’ grounds. Such a policy perpetuated measures taken by the (Independent) Democrats in the first half of the 1920s in the battle for political domination against the decentralist opposition. The Croatian Sokol was dissolved and replaced by the Sokol of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was a continuation of the Yugoslav Sokol in all but name. Seljačka sloga was not formally banned, but almost all its activities were suspended as a result of the ban of the Croatian Peasant Party. Napredak continued its activities, but it was clearly dissociated from the national sphere.

With regard to commemorations of Serbian symbolic resources very little changed; these remained in place as concurring Serb–Yugoslav national commemorations, indicating the irrelevance of the boundary between Serbian and Yugoslav nationhood in the nationalities policy of the hegemonic pre-war Serbian centres of authority. The well-established grassroots commemorations in Croatia, however, were excluded from Yugoslav nationhood and were replaced by Croat–Yugoslav commemorations initiated from above, such as the annual commemoration of Strossmayer's Day in schools. This policy concurred with the increasing dissociation between Croatian and Yugoslav nationhood in the national language of the Croatian Peasant Party.

However, Croatian loyalty and indifference to Yugoslav nationhood did not necessarily imply the negation of Yugoslav nationhood. In fact, dissociation from the Yugoslav nation carried very little meaning with it in Croatian historical commemorations during the 1920s. Sigismund Čajkovac, who was a prominent representative of the Croatian Peasant Party, authored the most successful Yugoslav nationalising textbooks of the 1920s. Although it was being denounced as anti-Yugoslav by the Yugoslav Sokol, the Croatian Sokol was not averse to a complementary sense of Yugoslav national unity, as demonstrated in the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom in 1925 and its participation in the Yugoslav commemoration of Strossmayer. By dismissing these potential grassroots vehicles for a concurring sense of Yugoslav nationhood, the state's nationalities policy considerably narrowed the opportunities for Yugoslav national identification in the Croatian part of the country. Additionally, the state itself abandoned attempts to provide viable alternatives or incentives for complementary mediations between Croatian and Yugoslav national identity, as exemplified by the absence of the Yugoslav state and nation in the commemoration of the centenary of the Illyrian Movement in 1935.

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