With regards to the issue about relations between the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee concerning the creation of a single South Slavic state, a disagreement between them over the internal governmental organisation of the new state was the most important problem. As a final settlement, respecting this issue, the Corfu Declaration, signed in July 1917, became the principal document in relation to the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
There were three crucial questions upon the establishment of the new state debated between the Yugoslav Committee and the Serbian government (and separately among the Committee‟s members): 1) the question concerning the internal organisation of the state; 2) the question with regards to the process of unification;
and 3) the question upon the name for the new state. First of them was the most important problem which had to be resolved between the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee before an official proclamation of the state. This problem was solved in different ways by two declarations: the Corfu Declaration and the Geneva Declaration. However, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed in 1918 according to the agreement reached by the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee at Corfu, but not by the Serbian government, the Yugoslav Committee and the National Council in the next year in Geneva. On the one hand, the Yugoslav Committee wanted to resolve the question of internal state organisation before the end of the war; what means before the official proclamation of the new state. On the other hand, the Serbian government was in the opinion that resolving this question exactly
during the war would be very harmful for the process of unification;
what means that solving the problem of the internal state organisation should be done after the war.121
The question of an official name of the new state had historic and national significance to the both sides. Basically, there were two options (regardless on the internal state organisation): Yugoslavia or the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The attitude of the Serbian government, in fact of its Prime Minister, was in favour of the second option because two reasons. Firstly, Pašić wanted to preserve and incorporate the Serbian national name into the name of the state, for the very reason that the Serbs already had their own national state (named after their ethnic name), and for the reason that and Slovenes and Croats, alongside with the Serbs, would better protect their ethnic identities. Pašić had as well a strong reservation to the terms Yugoslavia and Yugoslavs because the Austro–Hungarian propaganda connected both of them with the ideology of the Greater Serbia and the Serbian chauvinism.122 For Pašić (and in fact), the name of Yugoslavia was artificial, created by the Austrian government and referred only to the South Slavic population within the borders of the Habsburg Monarchy. Moreover, he believed that Serbia and the Serbs deserved to preserve their own national name by its inclusion into the name of a common South Slavic state taking into consideration the Serbian national awareness, history, its political role in the process of unification, and the Serbian sacrifices during the war. Generally, the Yugoslav Committee insisted on the “national unionism”, but on the other hand, the Serbian government insisted on the “national pluralism”. A final agreement between the Yugoslav Committee and the Serbian Royal Government with regards to the state name was that the new state would be named as the national state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Thus, the name of the new state was agreed according to the theses that the Yugoslavs are the
“three-names nation”. In effect, both sides recognised only three
121 Pašić‟s instructions sent to the Serbian ambassador in London, Historijski zbornik, Zagreb, 1965, pp.
215–218.
122 Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918–1988, vol. I, Beograd, 1988, p. 17. Croatian historian Dragutin Pavličević claims that all Serbia‟s governments during the last hundred years (with the Pašić‟s war government on the first place) had for the ultimate national goal a creation of a Greater Serbia [Dragutin Pavličević, Povijest Hrvatske. Drugo, izmijenjeno i prošireno izdanje, Zagreb, 2000, p. 307]. The same approach is shared by his colleague Ivo Perić [Ivo Perić, Povijest Hrvata, Zagreb, 1997, pp. 209–232].
Yugoslav ethnic groups as nations (Slovenes, Croats and Serbs) whose ethnic (national) names became parts of offical state name.123 The crucial question, which should be resolved in appropriate way between Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee, before an official proclamation of the new state, was the question of the internal organisation of the new state. There were several members of the Yugoslav Committee who carried out strong policy of regionalism in their public work that also influenced their attitudes toward the question about the internal organisation of the new state. This fact can be understood if we know that the most significant leaders of the Yugoslav Committee were the Croats from Dalmatia, the land that was under a direct threat from the Italian territorial aspirations.
Finally, the historical rights of Croatia (the Triune Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia), the country traditionally with a special (autonomous) status within both Hungary (from 1102 to 1526) and the Habsburg Monarchy (from 1527 to 1918), influenced them as well as.
Frano Supilo was among all members of the Committee the strongest supporter of the idea that Croatia should have a special autonomous status within the new state. On the other hand, he was in a strong opinion that the Yugoslav state should be organised as a federal or confederate state. In contrast to the Serbian Prime Minister, who was a strong supporter of the centralist internal organisation of the new state stressing that any kind of the inner (con)federal arrangement would finally lead to destabilisation of the state structure,124 Supilo was a main leader and supporter of federalism. Really, his attitude towards the internal organisation of the state was anticipated by historical provincialism that he used as a basis for the creation of the following five federal units within the new state: 1) Serbia with Macedonia and Vojvodina; 2) Croatia with Slavonia and Dalmatia; 3) Slovenia; 4) Bosnia and Herzegovina; and 5) Montenegro. Consequently, Yugoslavia would have inner state organisation similar to Austria–Hungary after the Aussgleich
123 Such attitude towards the national identity was adopted during the whole period of the inter-war Yugoslavia in which only the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs have been recognised as separate ethnic identities among the Yugoslav South Slavic. The newly formed the South Slavic nations (after 1945) – the Montenegrins, Macedonians and Muslims have been treated as the Serbs before 1945. The state cultural policy between 1918 and 1941 was put within such identity frame (see [Ljubodrag Dimić, Kulturna politika u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918–1941, I–III, Beograd, 1997]).
124 “Beleške sa sednice Krfske konferencije”, Novi ţivot, vol. IV, Beograd, 1921, June 5th, 1917.
(settlement between Austrians and Hungarians) in 1867, with the leading role in Yugoslav politics played by the Serbs and Croats. A difference between F. Supilo‟s and J. B. Tito‟s arrangement of the inner administrative structure of the country was that the Communist leader (of the Croat and Slovene Roman Catholic origin) created the sixth federal unit – Macedonia, according to the general attitude concerning the national identities at the Balkans by the Commintern.125
The most significant idea, and at the same time a requirement, by the Yugoslav Committee in connection to the internal organisation of the new state was that a new state should be organised as a republic but not as a monarchy; an attitude supported by the Serbian government. Pašić particularly was insisting that the new state would have a form of monarchy with the Serb KaraĊorĊević dynasty on a head of the state. The question of monarchy or republic was the crucial issue of the disputes during the negotiations between the Yugoslav Committee and the Serbian government before and during the Corfu Conference.
The third crucial question in relations between the Yugoslav Committee and the Serbian government, which was debated among them during the war, was in connection with the process (the way) of unification. This question became urgent after the second half of 1915, and was one of the most important problems concerning the creation of the new state until its official proclamation on December 1st, 1918. The general attitude towards the problem of the way of unification by the Yugoslav Committee was that the Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro and the lands populated by the South Slavs in Austria–Hungary should be three equal subjects from a political-territorial point of view with regards to the unification. The Committee‟s members have been in opinion that the Serbian government was a representative institution of the Kingdom of Serbia likewise the Montenegrin government in exile represented the Kingdom of Montenegro, and finally, that the Yugoslav Committee is a representative of all lands populated by all South Slavs in Austria–
Hungary including and those of the Serbian nationality (who have been in majority among all the South Slavs living in Austria–
125 See [Jasper Ridley, Tito. Biografija, Zagreb, 2000].
Hungary). These three (or two in the case of Montenegrin unification with Serbia) representative institutions should be an equal, in legal terms, during the process of unification; a fact which should be legally realised by an agreement signed between the Serbian government, the Montenegrin government (but in the case of Montenegrin unification with Serbia only by the Serbian government as a representative of united Serbia and Montenegro) and the Yugoslav Committee. However, from Serbia‟s point of view, the main lack of such Committee‟s approach was a fact that either the Committee or the Montenegrin Royal Government in exile (in Rome) did not have a single soldier of their own to fight for the unification in comparison with Serbia‟s 150.000 soldiers at Salonika Front. In the other words, the Committee required an equal political position of all three mentioned subjects in the unification process but only one of them – Serbia – had to spill over the blood of its soldiers (and civilians in occupied Serbia). Anyway, the pivotal Serbia‟s argument for the leading role of Serbia in the process of the unification was the fact that an alternative sulution of the Greater Serbia instead of Yugoslavia was still alive as it was supported, even and after the London Agreement of 1915, by the Russian Empire (until the February/March Revolution of 1917). The Serbian side even succeeded finally to beat back the Croatian requirement of the federal type of Yugoslavia by nominally accepting this idea during the negotiations but only under the condition that a great/united Serbian federal unit within Yugoslavia would be created, what means that the Croatian federal-territorial division is going to be composed by only one-third of the required lands by the Croats, who at any case have been well informed that Italy is willing to make an deal with Serbia concerning the territorial division of Dalmatia between Rome and Belgrade.
The Committee‟s standpoint towards the question connected with the process of unification had as the crucial aim to protect the Croatian national interest, as well as the interests of Croatia as a historical land with an autonomous rights. Frano Supilo was the most important “defender” of the Croatian national interests, with regards to the process of union. His main political conception was a “unity of the Croats”, or as he was saying the “western part of our people” (i.e.
the South Slavs), what means that all South Slavic lands eastward from the Alps and westward from the Drina River have to be the parts of Croatia. For that reason Supilo requested a plebiscite about
unification with Serbia and Montenegro not only in Croatia but in all Austro–Hungarian Yugoslav provinces for “particular and political reasons”.126 Supilo was sure that only Baĉka and the southern Banat would opt for Serbia, while the rest of the Yugoslav lands within the Dual Monarchy (Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Slavonia, Istria, Dalmatia) would choose Croatia. The Yugoslav Committee, in contrast to the Serbian Royal Government, launched the issue of a plebiscite as one of the most legitimate, justifiable and proper ways for unification of the South Slavs into a common state. This meant that the Yugoslav people had to be asked to decide upon their own fate.127 For Frano Supilo, an agreement about Croatian confederate status within the future common state with Serbia and Montenegro was a starting point for the making of Yugoslavia. He divided political subjects concerning the unification on two parts: 1) Croatia and 2) Serbia with Montenegro. According to him, Croatia had a leading political role among the Austro-Hungarian South Slavs, while Serbia had the same role among the Yugoslavs outside the Monarchy. His demand, which became as well as the main demand by the most of the committee's members, was that union had to be accomplished on the equal level between the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, because any other way would be a domination of “Serbo-Orthodox exclusivity”.128 The president of the Yugoslav Committee, Dr. Ante Trumbić, summarised the whole issue of the process (the way) of unification into two points: the unification could be realised either with a liberation of the Yugoslav lands in Austria-Hungary and their incorporation into Serbia, or it could be done with the union of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on the equal level. The Yugoslav Committee chose the second option. However, in both options the South Slavic lands within Austria-Hungary had to be liberated by great help of Serbian army.
The standpoint towards the way of union of the Serbian government was different to committee's one. The Serbian
126 Dragovan Šepić, Italija, saveznici i jugoslovensko pitanje 1914–1918, Zagreb, 1970, pp. 141–142, 170–171; Dr. Nikola Stojanović, Jugoslovenski Odbor. Članci i Dokumenti, Zagreb, 1927, pp. 15, 43.
Supilo was also in a strong opinion that Serbia required Croatian and Slovenian territories as a compensation for its lost territories occupied by Bulgaria in 1915 (Macedonia, part of Kosovo and eastern Serbia).
127 H. Hanak, The Government, the Foreign office and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918, New York, 1979, pp. 165–166.
128 Dragovan Šepic, Italija, saveznici i jugoslovensko pitanje 1914–1918, Zagreb, 1970, pp. 106–107.
government never officially recognised the Yugoslav Committee as a representative institution of the South Slavs within Austria-Hungary.
This meant, the Serbian government played a role of representative institution of the whole South Slavic population before the Entente states. Moreover, especially for Pašić, the Yugoslav Committee was not on the equal level with the Serbian government during the process of unification. The crucial request by the main members of the committee that a plebiscite about the unification and state inner organisation had to be organized was decisively rejected by the Serbian government likewise the internal federalist state organisation favoured by the committee. Particularly, Supilo‟s idea of federal Croat province within Yugoslavia was never accepted by Pašić who always was in the opinion that such a Croatia would be constantly a corpus separatum and “a state within the state”. All in all, the crucial aspect of Pašić's attitude toward the question of the process of union was that Serbian politicians should be natural representatives of the whole South Slavic population before the Entente powers until the Peace Conference. He justified this requirement by three facts: 1) Serbia had a legally composed government, 2) Serbia was an internationally recognised state, and 3) Serbia was a member of the Entente block.
The attitude of the Serbian government was that if Yugoslavia was to be created, territorial borders had to be clearly defined between Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.129 This meant, Pašić wanted firstly to unify “all Serbian lands and people” within one political unit and after that to unify such territory with other Yugoslav lands into common state. It is likely that, the Serbian government was not against the federal organisation of the new state. However, for the Serbian government it was unacceptable that if Yugoslavia was to be federation, the Serbian population would be divided into several federal units. In other words, only federal Yugoslavia with three federal units was possible: Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The Serbian federal unit had to embrace all “Serbian people and lands”.130 Nevertheless, at the Corfu Conference the federal organisation based
129 Serbian government had during the whole war much clear picture about the borders of united Serbia towards the Hungarians than towards the Croats. Thus, new Serbian-Hungarian post-war border should run northern from the line of Timisoara-Subotica-Maros-Baja-Pecs [Danilo Kalafatović, “Naša primirja u 1918”, Srpski knjiţevni glasnik, vol. X, № 7, 1. XII 1923, pp. 511–525].
130 Dragoljub Ţivojinović, Dnevnik admirala Ernesta Trubridža, Beograd, 1989, p. 143.
on this principle was given up, taking into account the fact that "...
when we started to make borders we understood that it was impossible", as Pašić explained to the Yugoslav parliament in 1923.131 Even Trumbić understood that in the case of the federal organisation of the new state on the national basis, a Greater Serbia (composed by all Serbs and Serbian lands) would dominate the country, which was finally the crucial reason for him to reject the federal project of Yugoslavia during the Corfu Conference and later.
Many Yugoslav politicians agreed that all differences and disputes between the Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee, in relation to the unification of the South Slavs, should be finally resolved at one common conference by direct negotiations between them. The idea concerning organisation of such a conference was launched in May 1917 by the Serbian Prime Minister when, actually, the Committee‟s President Ante Trumbić was invited by him to come to the Corfu island (where the Serbian government exiled after occupation of Serbia in autumn 1915), with other four members of the Committee in order to make a bilateral agreement upon the most urgent problems concerning the establishment of the new state.
In fact, Pašić by his decision to negotiate with the Yugoslav Committee recognised the Committee as a legal, as well as and an equal political subject and negotiator, in the process of the unification alongside with the Serbian government. Subsequently, Pašić disclaimed the exclusive rights of the Serbian government to be the only representative institution of the whole South Slavic population (except the Bulgarians) before the Entente states, that was required by the Serbia‟s Prime Minister from the very beginning of the war.
The crucial question now became: why did the Serbian government change its attitude towards the role and function of the Yugoslav Committee and decided to negotiate with it, recognising the Yugoslav Committee as one of the competitive sides with the Serbian government in connection to the process of the Yugoslav unification?
There are three most significant reasons which influenced both sides to negotiate to each other and to reach a common settlement concerning the unification at the Corfu Conference in June and July 1917: 1) the Russian February (March) Revolution; 2) a real possibilities for the preservation of Austria–Hungary; and 3) the
131 Spomenica Nikole Pašića 1845–1926, Beograd, 1926, p. 110.
Italian diplomatic and military campaign in Albania and Epirus.
While the first two of them are explained in the Yugoslav historiography, the third one is a new contribution to the solving of the problem of the Yugoslav unification in 1918.
What it has to be noticed is that Pašić did not envisage the
What it has to be noticed is that Pašić did not envisage the