"After One Hundred Years": The Yugoslav Idea in Historical Perspective

1 8 Historically Speaking · November 2003 "After One Hundred Years": The Yugoslav Idea in Historical Perspective Dejan Djoldc In 1911 the Serbian historian and poUtician Stojan Novakovic gave a lecture entitled "After One Hundred Years: Belgrade , May 15, 201 1." A year later the "Six Year War" started in the Balkans, as a result of which Serbia would first double its territory and then eventually emerge as the core ofthe united Serb-Croat-Slovene Kingdom. In his lecture, which was published in the Croatian-SerbianAlmanac (1911), Novakovic imagined Belgrade as the capital ofa future Yugoslavia, a land of united South Slav provinces, most ofwhich were still under Habsburgor Ottoman rule. The significance ofNovakovic's lecture was that it clearlyiUustrated the expectations of even the most prominent advocates ofYugoslavunity—its supporters regarded a united Yugoslav state as a distant ideal that would be eventually achieved, perhaps in a hundred years. Novakovic was not alone in believing that the Yugoslavs would unite one day; nor did only Yugoslavs believe in the inevitabiUty, ifstill a distant one, of their unity. The same year Novakovic published his lecture, the foremost British expert on South Slav history and politics, R. W. Seton-Watson, wrote that Serbs and Croats belonged to a Yugoslav "race" which would eventually unite, just like the Italian and German "races" had done in the 19th century. In the 1910 census carried outinAustria-Hungary, Serbs and Croats were often listed as a single group: the "Serbo-Croats." In the end, however, itwas perhaps more due to the revolutionary zeal ofYugoslavism's fanatical supporters and the changeswrought byWorldWar I (sparkedwhen ofthese supporters , a member of the Young Bosnia group, assassinated the Habsburg Archduke in Sarajevo onJune 28, 1914) that Yugoslavia came into being. The Habsburg Empire collapsed atthe end ofthewar, while several successor states emerged, Yugoslavia among them. Italy's claim on the eastern Adriatic accelerated the unification. As Italian troops entered from the north, Dalmatian Croats threatened to unite Dalmatia with Serbia if the Zagreb-based National Council of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs hesitated to do the same. The Yugoslav state was proclaimed by Yugoslavs themselves on December 1, 1918, after the Prince Regent Alexander of Serbia received a delegation from the National Council. The act ofunification was not recognized by the AlUes for another six months. The United States was the first great power to recognize the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, as the countrywas officially known until 1929—it did so in February 1919, while Britain and France waited until earlyJune. Therefore, Yugoslavia was not imposed by the victorious AlUes, as it is sometimes fashionably but wrongly claimed. Without the Allies' consent Yugoslavia would not have survived , but it should be remembered that it was proclaimed by Serb, Croat, and Slovene leaders, in spite of rather than because of the Allies. Yugoslavia as an idea had preceded Yugoslavia as a state by almost one hundred years. The idea of Yugoslav unity, or Yugoslavism, originated in the 183Os when a group ofCroat intellectuals began promoting cultural unity among Croats and Serbs. It was a reaction to a growing threat of Magyarization , and its most immediate result was the cultural integration ofthe Croats, who had been divided not onlyterritoriaUywithin the complex Habsburg structure, but also linguistically . The proto-Yugoslavs, better known as the "Dlyrians," promoted the stokavian , one of the three dialects spoken by November 2003 · Historically Speaking1 9 Croats, because itwas also spoken by Serbs, even though most "Illyrian" intellectuals spoke the kajkavian, which was closer to Slovene. The Yugoslavidea survived the 19th century , and its updatedversion formed the basis ofthe program ofthe Croat-Serb CoaUtion, which dominated Croatian politics in the years preceding the First World War. At the same time, Serbia's inteUectuals and, increasingly , its politicians came to accept Yugolslavism . Proponents of Yugoslavism at the beginning of the 20th century beUeved that Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were "tribes" of one ethnic nation with three names. Many Slovenes, whose language differed from Serbo-Croat, also became enthusiastic supporters ofYugoslavism, and some even argued that they should sacrifice their linguistic autonomy for the sake ofthe nation's unity, not unUke the "IUyrians" once did. The history, idea...