Socialist Republic of Croatia
The Socialist Republic of Croatia, commonly abbreviated as SR Croatia and referred to as simply Croatia, was a constituent republic and federated state of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. By its constitution, modern-day Croatia is its direct continuation.
Along with five other Yugoslav republics, Croatia was formed during World War II and became a socialist republic after the war. It had four full official names during its 48-year existence. By territory and population, it was the second largest republic in Yugoslavia, after the Socialist Republic of Serbia.
In 1990, the government dismantled the single-party system of government – installed by the League of Communists – and adopted a multi-party democracy. The newly elected government of Franjo Tuđman moved the republic towards independence, formally seceding from Yugoslavia in 1991 and thereby contributing to its dissolution.
Names
Croatia became part of the Yugoslav federation in 1943 after the Second Session of the AVNOJ and through the resolutions of the ZAVNOH, Croatia's wartime deliberative body. It was officially founded as the Federal State of Croatia on May 9, 1944, at the 3rd session of the ZAVNOH. Yugoslavia, then called Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, was not a constitutionally socialist state, or even a republic, in anticipation of the conclusion of the war, when these issues were settled. On November 29, 1945, Democratic Federal Yugoslavia became the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, a socialist People's Republic. Accordingly, the Federal State of Croatia became the People's Republic of Croatia.On April 7, 1963, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia gradually abandoned Stalinism after the Tito–Stalin split in 1948. In 1963 the People's Republic of Croatia also accordingly became the Socialist Republic of Croatia.
On December 22, 1990, a new Constitution was adopted, under which the Socialist Republic of Croatia was simply renamed as the Republic of Croatia. It was under this constitution that Croatia became independent on June 25, 1991.
The republic is commonly referred to simply as Croatia.
Establishment
World War II
In the first years of the war, the Yugoslav Partisans in Croatia did not have considerable support from Croats, with an exception of the Croats in the Croatian region of Dalmatia. The majority of partisans on the territory of Croatia were Croatian Serbs. However, in 1943 Croats started to join the partisans in larger numbers. In 1943, the number of Croat partisans in Croatia increased, so in 1944 they made up 61% of the partisans in the territory of Independent State of Croatia, while Serbs made up 28%; all other ethnicities made up the remaining 11%.On 13 June 1943 in Otočac, Lika, Croatian partisans founded the ZAVNOH, a legislative body of the future Croatian republic within Yugoslavia. Its first president was Vladimir Nazor. Croatian partisans had autonomy along with the Slovene and Macedonian partisans. However, on 1 March 1945 they were put under the command of the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Army, thus losing their autonomy. Partisans of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have such autonomy.
Because of partisan victories and increased territory held by partisans, AVNOJ decided to hold the second session in Jajce at the end of November 1943. At that session, the Yugoslav communist leadership decided to reestablish Yugoslavia as federal state.
Creation
On November 29, 1945, the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly held a session where it was decided that Croatia would be joined by five other republics in Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia. Not long after, the Communist Party started to prosecute those who opposed the communist one-party system. On January 30, 1946, the Constituent Assembly ratified the Constitution of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Croatia was the last of the republics to make its own constitution, which was mostly the same as the federal and other republic constitutions. The Constitution of the People's Republic of Croatia was adopted by the Constituent Parliament of the People's Republic of Croatia on January 18, 1947. In their constitutions, all republics were deprived of gaining independence.Republics had only formal autonomy; initially, communist Yugoslavia was a highly centralized state, based on the Soviet model. The Communist Party's officials were, at the same time, state officials, while the Party's Central Committee was de jure, the highest organ of the party; however, main decisions were made by the Politburo. The governments of the republics were only part of the mechanism which executed the Politburo's decisions.
Election
In post-war Yugoslavia, communists had a struggle for power with the opposition that supported King Peter. Milan Grol was the leader of the opposition; as the leading figure of the opposition he opposed the idea of a federal state, denied the right for Montenegrins and Macedonians to have their republics, and held that an agreement between Tito and Ivan Šubašić guaranteed that the opposition needed to have half of the ministers in the new government. The Croatian Peasant Party, part of the opposition, had divided into three branches: one supporting the Ustaše, the other supporting the communists and the third supporting Vladko Maček. However, communists had the majority in parliament and control over the army, leaving the opposition without any real power. Šubašić had his own supporters within the HSS and he tried to unite the party once again, believing that, once united, it would be a major political factor in the country. The Croatian Republican Peasant Party, a party split from the HSS, wanted to enter the People's Front, a suprapolitical organization controlled by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Šubašić knew that this would put the HSS under control of the communists and ended the negotiations about unification.In the election campaign, the opposition parties wanted to unite with the Serbian Radical Party and other parties; however, communist activities, using various wiles, ruined their plan. On August 20, 1945, Grol resigned and accused the communists of breaking the Tito–Šubašić agreement. Šubašić himself was also soon forced to resign at the end of October as he also disassociated himself from Tito. Soon, the communists won the election. They won an absolute majority in the parliament which enabled them to create their own form of Yugoslavia.
Politics and government
The People's Republic of Croatia adopted its first Constitution in 1947. In 1953 followed "The Constitutional Law on the Basics of Social and Political Organization and on Republican Organs of Authority", actually a completely new constitution. The second Constitution was adopted in 1963; it changed the name of the People's Republic of Croatia into the Socialist Republic of Croatia. Major constitutional amendments were approved in 1971, and in 1974 followed a new Constitution of the SR Croatia which emphasized Croatian statehood as a constituent republic of the SFRY. All the constitutions and amendments were adopted by the Parliament of Croatia. After the first multi-party parliamentary elections held in April 1990, the Parliament made various constitutional changes and dropped the prefix "socialist" from the official name, so the "Socialist Republic of Croatia" became simply the "Republic of Croatia". On 22 December 1990, the Parliament rejected the communist one-party system and adopted a liberal democracy through the Constitution of Croatia. It was under this Constitution that independence would be proclaimed on 25 June 1991.According to the Art. 1.2 of the 1974 Croatian Constitution, the Socialist Republic of Croatia was defined as "a national state of the Croatian people, the state of the Serbian people in Croatia and the state of other nationalities living in it".
Tito period
The first post-war head of state of the Socialist Republic of Croatia was Vladimir Nazor, who was, during the war, Chairman of the State Antifascist Council of the People's Liberation of Croatia, while the first head of government was Vladimir Bakarić. Ironically, even though communists promoted federalism, post-war Yugoslavia was strictly centralized. The main organ was the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia made of around ten persons. Its members were assigned to certain fields: one controlled the armed forces, another the development of the state, a third the economy etc. Ostensibly, the system of government was representative democracy: people would elect councillors and members of parliaments. However, the real power was in the hands of executive organs. Representative organs only served to give legitimacy to their decisions. The party that ruled the SR Croatia was the branch of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Croatia. Even though the party had a Croatian name, its membership was only 57% Croats, along with 43% Serb. The majority of members were peasants and the majority was half-educated.Soon after they gained power, the Communists started to persecute former officials of the Independent State of Croatia in order to compromise them to the general public. On 6 June 1946, the Supreme Court of the SR Croatia sentenced some of the leading officials of the NDH, including Slavko Kvaternik, Vladimir Košak, Miroslav Navratil, Ivan Perčević, Mehmed Alajbegović, Osman Kulenović and others. Communists also had a number of major and minor show trials in order to deal with the fascist regime of the NDH. Also, local leaders of the civic parties would often "disappear" without any witness. Communists not only cleansed the officials who were working for the NDH, but also those who supported the Croatian Peasant Party and the Catholic Church.
The only major civic party in Croatia, the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, was active only a few years after the election, but as a satellite of the Communist Party. The clash with the civic anti-communist forces stimulated the Communist Party's centralism and authoritarianism.
When he took power, Tito knew that the greatest threat to the development of communism in Yugoslavia was nationalism. Because of that, the communists would crush even the slightest form of nationalism by repression. The communists made the most effort to crush nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and tried to suppress the hatred between Croats, Serbs and Muslims, but even so, their greatest supporters in this process were local Serbs. Soon, the Serbs were overrepresented in the Croatian and Bosnian state and party leadership.