Yugoslavism
Yugoslavism, Yugoslavdom, or Yugoslav nationalism is an ideology supporting the notion that the South Slavs, namely the Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes, belong to a single Yugoslav nation separated by diverging historical circumstances, forms of speech, and religious divides. During the interwar period, Yugoslavism became predominant in, and then the official ideology of, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. There were two major forms of Yugoslavism in the period, the first of which is the regime-favoured integral Yugoslavism, promoting unitarism, centralisation, and unification of the country's ethnic groups into a single Yugoslav nation, by coercion if necessary. The approach was also applied to languages spoken in the Kingdom. The main alternative was federalist Yugoslavism, which advocated the autonomy of the historical lands in the form of a federation and gradual unification without outside pressure. Both agreed on the concept of National Oneness developed as an expression of the strategic alliance of South Slavs in Austria-Hungary in the early 20th century. The concept was meant as a notion that the South Slavs belong to a single "race", were of "one blood", and had shared language. It was considered neutral regarding the choice of centralism or federalism.
The Yugoslavist idea has roots in the 1830s Illyrian movement in Habsburg Croatia, where a group of intellectuals saw the unity of South Slavs within the Austrian Empire or outside of it as a protection against Germanisation and Magyarisation. Cooperative talks began with Serbian politicians and working to standardise Serbo-Croatian as a common language with orthographer Vuk Karadžić, with limited success. Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the concept was rivalled by Trialism. Control of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary prevented practical implementation of Yugoslavist ideas until the Ottomans were pushed out of the Balkans in the 1912 First Balkan War and Austria-Hungary disintegrated in the final days of the First World War. During the war, preparations for unification began in the form of the Niš Declaration of Serbian war aims, the establishment of the Yugoslav Committee to represent South Slavs living in Austria-Hungary, and the adoption of the Corfu Declaration on principles of unification. The short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was proclaimed in the South Slavic lands formerly ruled by the Habsburgs at the end of the First World War. Its leadership primarily wanted unification with Serbia on a federal basis, while Serbia preferred a centralised state.
The unification took place on 1 December 1918, when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed. In the first years of the new kingdom, politics became increasingly ethnic as individual political parties became identified with particular nations within the country. Similarly, integral Yugoslavism became associated with the regime, and the political struggle against the government was increasingly equated with the ethnic struggle between the Serbs and various ethnic groups – most often the Croats as the most vocal political opposition to the regime. Alliances shifted over time and were not always ethnic-based. They depended largely on the form of Yugoslavism adopted by those concerned. The outcome of the political debates of the first few years of the new country resulted in the Vidovdan Constitution – deemed illegitimate by many – and in regime- and opposition-sponsored violence. The state abandoned integral Yugoslavism in 1939 when a settlement was reached with the Croat opposition leader Vladko Maček with the Cvetković–Maček Agreement. The regime attempted to unify the common language. Lack of standardisation of Serbo-Croatian brought about the practice of publication of official documents in the Ekavian speech favoured in Serbia, often in Cyrillic script not normally used by the Croats or the Slovenes to write. The Serbian Orthodox Church was given preference by the regime. The regime tried reducing the power of the Catholic Church in the Kingdom, promoting conversions and rival churches, and refraining from ratification of the Concordat with the Holy See over Serbian Orthodox Church protests. Before the First World War, a synthetic Yugoslavist culture was largely confined to Croat artists and writers. Ivan Meštrović became the most prominent among them at a 1911 exhibition in Rome. Disillusioned after the unification, most artists and writers distanced themselves from the synthetic culture.
After the Second World War, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ruled the country. The KPJ adopted a formal commitment to federalism in a highly centralised state, promoting social Yugoslavism and a diversely interpreted notion of "brotherhood and unity". The 1948 Tito–Stalin split pushed the KPJ to gradual decentralisation until the mid-1950s, when a Yugoslavist campaign was launched to reverse the course, leading to a debate on levels of decentralisation. Centralist forces were defeated by the mid-1960s. Significant decentralisation occurred during, and in the aftermath of, the Croatian Spring. In 1987, Slovenian intellectuals cited Yugoslavism as the main threat to Slovenian identity. The issues raised by them contributed to the motivation for a 1990 proposal to restructure Yugoslavia as a confederation and for subsequent Slovenian and Croatian declarations of independence marking the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Background
The South Slavs are a subgroup of Slavic peoples comprising the Bulgarians, Croats, and Serbs whose national identity developed long before modern nationalism through collective memory of their mediaeval states. Furthermore, the South Slavs also include the Bosniaks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Slovenes.In the early 19th century, the Balkans were divided between the Austrian and the Ottoman empires. The Austrian Empire comprised the Slovene Lands, the Kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia with significant Croat populations, and Vojvodina, containing a substantial Serb population. The Hofkriegsrat-controlled Military Frontier separated the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia from each other and Ottoman territory. Substantial Croat and Slovene populations lived in Istria, organised as the Kingdom of Illyria. In the Ottoman Empire, the semi-independent Principality of Serbia developed in the early 19th century. The empire included the Bosnia Eyalet as its westernmost part between Serbia and the Austrian realms. There was also the unrecognised Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro.
Before Yugoslavia
Illyrian movement
The idea of South Slavic unity predates the creation of Yugoslavia by nearly a century. First developed in Habsburg Croatia by a group of Croat intellectuals led by Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s, the concept developed through diverse forms of the proposed unity from varying levels of cultural and political cooperation or integration. Members of the Illyrian movement held that the South Slavs could unite around a shared origin, variants of a shared language, and the natural right to live in their own polity. They argued Croatian history is a part of a wider history of the South Slavs and that Croats and Serbs, as well as potentially Slovenes and Bulgarians, were parts of a single 'Illyrian' nation. The movement began as a cultural one, promoting Croatian national identity and integration of all Croatian provinces within the Austrian Empire. The reference to "Croatian provinces" was normally interpreted as a reference to the Kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, and sometimes a part of or the entirety of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A wider aim was to gather all South Slavs, or Jugo-Slaveni for short, in a commonwealth within or outside of the Empire. The movement's two directions became known as Croatianism and Yugoslavism, respectively, meant to counter Germanisation and Magyarisation. In the 1830s and 1840s, there were very few proponents of the Illyrian idea. Virtually all of them were Croats from the ranks of intellectuals – clergy, officials, artists, students, and soldiers. By 1910, they rallied around the People's Party but accounted for barely one per cent of the population.In mid-19th-century Slovene Lands, early Slovenian nationalists felt closer to Czechs or Russians than other South Slavs, seeking solutions within a reformed framework of the Habsburg empire. Support for Serbo-Croat cooperation grew as a reaction to ongoing Germanisation, but most Slovene intellectuals rejected the Illyrian ideas.
Illyrian contribution to linguistic unity
Since the Middle Ages, Croats spoke three supradialects – named after forms of the word "what" – Chakavian, Kajkavian, and western Shtokavian. The Serbs spoke two – eastern Shtokavian and the Prizren–Timok dialect. From the 12th century, the two Shtokavian dialects grew increasingly mutually similar and more distinct from the other dialects.Gaj supported the idea proposed by Serbian orthographer Vuk Karadžić that a common language was the foundation of a nation. Karadžić held that Serbs and Croats could be united by a common orthography. To support this aim, the Illyrian movement chose to promote Shtokavian as the standard literary language because nearly all Serbs spoke it. This represented a sacrifice made on purpose – most prominent Illyrians spoke Kajkavian, normally used in Zagreb. This led to the Vienna Literary Agreement on the standardisation of the Serbo-Croatian language as the common language. This also produced nationalist claims that Serbs were Eastern Orthodox Croats and that Croats were Roman Catholic Serbs, as well as that the Slavic Muslims were Islamised Serbs or Croats – denying the existence of the "rival" ethnic groups. Despite the agreement, the Illyrians did not adopt the standard proposed by Karadžić for another four decades.
Croats did not universally accept Gaj's linguistic determination of a nation. The founder of the Party of Rights, Ante Starčević, held that the existence of states gives rise to the existence of nations. Starčević cited France and England as examples of such nation building. He applied the idea of a state as the foundation of a nation to the Croats by advocating the concept of the Croatian state right. Josip Frank, Starčević's successor at the helm of the SP, argued that nations had different racial traits, assuming an anti-Serbian stance.
The Illyrians found little support among Serbs in Habsburg lands, as they viewed Serbia as a nucleus of South Slavic unification, ascribing to it the role played by Piedmont-Sardinia in Italian unification. Most Serb intellectuals dismissed the modified Shtokavian as a threat to the liturgical Church Slavonic and Gaj's Latin alphabet, recommending Croats use the Cyrillic script as a truly Slavic alphabet. In 1913, there was an attempt to create a Serbo-Croatian standard by Serbian literary critic Jovan Skerlić. He proposed Croats accept the "Eastern dialect" while Serbs would abandon the Cyrillic script. The plan had a mixed reception in Croatia and was abandoned at the outbreak of the war.