How Yugoslavia Was Created: The 1917 Corfu Declaration (IV)

Part I, Part II, Part III

Opposite conceptions about the process of the Yugoslav unification and the internal political organization of the new state

It is very important to notice that during the Corfu Conference the opposite conceptions about the solving of the Yugoslav Question did not exist. Namely, there is an opinion at the Yugoslav historiography that during the Corfu Conference one conception was advocated by N. Pašić in a form of a Greater Serbia, i.e., Yugoslavia without Slovenes and Croats while the opposite conception was advocated by the Yugoslav Committee as the unification of all Yugoslav lands into a single state. However, Serbia’s Prime Minister concluded already before the Corfu Conference that liberation and unification of all Yugoslav people and their lands into a single state should be realized at the end of the war on a form of Yugoslavia but not in a form of a Greater Serbia. He finally accepted the idea of Yugoslavia instead of a Greater Serbia under both the new international circumstances after the 1917 February (March) Russian Revolution and the pressure by Serbia’s parliamentary opposition. Therefore, the process of unification of the South Slavic people into a single state and political form of it have been the topics on the agenda of the Corfu Conference in June−July 1920.

One of the basic problems during the Corfu negotiations between the Yugoslav Committee and the Royal Government of Serbia was a question about the name of a new state of the South-Slavs. The final agreement upon this question was to be the state of the “Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”,[i] but not “Yugoslavia” for two reasons:

• Firstly, such name of the state was an expression of a commonly accepted thesis by both negotiating sides, but mainly for political reason, that the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes are the “three-names nation” (the same nation just with three different names).
• Secondly, N. Pašić was extremely reserved towards the terms “Yugoslavia”, “Yugoslavs”, and “Yugoslav” as it was originally the ethnic name for the South Slavs of the Dual Monarchy used by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, but also and a propaganda terminology misused by Vienna and Budapest as a synonym for a Greater Serbia to be established at the ruins of the Dual Monarchy.[ii]

Pašić himself did not insist on the concept of national pluralism, as an opposite to the national unitary state favored by the Yugoslav Committee as he wanted to preserve Serbian national name included as such into the name of a new state. He did not want to replace a name of the Serbs by some “artificial” one like the South Slavs, Yugoslavia or the Yugoslavs. A fact was that only the Serbs had at that time in independent states (Serbia and Montenegro)[iii] among all Yugoslavs and exactly the Serbs have been the most historic nation among all of those who wanted to create Yugoslavia after the war. Up to that time (and later as well as), Serbia as the country mostly suffered during the First World War among all states involved in the conflict taking into consideration material damage and the loss of population in per cents.[iv] For these reasons, N. Pašić was in strong opinion that Serbia and the Serbs deserved to preserve their own national name within the official name of the new state after the war taking into consideration and the fact that Serbia had the crucial political role in the process of the unification as the “Yugoslav Piedmont”.

The Royal Government of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee had opposite attitudes and about much more important issue that was the question of the internal political form and organization of the new state as the Yugoslav Committee was in favor of the republic and federation, while N. Pašić insisted on the monarchy with the Karađorđević dynasty and centralized internal political administration of the state. Without any doubt, the question about republic or monarchy and federalization or centralization of the future state of the Yugoslavs was the crucial problem to be solved not only during the negotiations between the Yugoslav Committee and the Royal Serbian Government in Corfu in 1917 but even during the first years of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (up to June 1921). With regard to this problem, it is important to present a letter written by Giulio Gazzari, a member of the Yugoslav Committee, to the President of the Yugoslav Committee, on April 20^th, 1917. In the letter G. Gazzari emphasized that some Serbian politicians, like Protić, Nešić, and Jovanović, have opinion that the federal principle was the best political form for the future Yugoslav state. According to the letter, even N. Pašić himself was more and more inclining to an idea of the federal form of the common state instead of the centralized one, but the heir to the throne (regent Alexander I) under the influence of the court’s camarilla preferred the centralization of the state. G. Gazzari wrote that it was the crucial reason for the heir to the throne to support the centralized form of the state during the Corfu negotiations.[v] Therefore, it comes that the strongest opponent to the federal concept of the future common Yugoslav state was a regent of Serbia, Alexander I, but not her Prime Minister Nikola Pašić.[vi]

Frano Supilo was among all members of the Yugoslav Committee the strongest supporter of the idea that Croatia should have a special autonomous status within a new state. On the other hand, he was in a strong opinion that the Yugoslav state should be organized as a federal or confederate state. In contrast to the Prime Minister of Serbia, who was a strong supporter of the centralist internal organisation of the new state arguing that any kind of the inner (con)federal arrangement would finally lead to destabilization of the state structure,[vii] F. Supilo became a main supporter of the idea of federalization of the country after the unification. His idea of federalism was anticipated by historical provincialism that he used as a basis for the creation of the following five federal units within a new state of Yugoslavia: 1) Serbia with Vardar Macedonia and Vojvodina; 2) Croatia with Slavonia and Dalmatia; 3) Slovenia; 4) Bosnia and Herzegovina; and 5) Montenegro. Consequently, Yugoslavia would have the inner administrative organization similar to the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary after the Aussgleich (the settlement between the Austrians and the Hungarians) in 1867, with the leading role in Yugoslav politics played by the Serbs and the Croats.[viii]

The Yugoslav Committee’s standpoint on the process of the unification of the Yugoslavs had as its crucial political aim to protect the Croatian national interest, as well as the interests of Croatia as a historical land with autonomous rights. F. Supilo was the most important “defender” of the Croatian national interests during the process of the unification. 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 meant that all South Slavic lands eastward from Slovenian Alps and westward from the Drina River have to be included into Croatia within Yugoslavia. For that reason, F. Supilo requested a plebiscite about the unification with Serbia and Montenegro not only in Croatia but in all Austro–Hungarian Yugoslav provinces for “particular and political reasons”.[ix] He was sure that only Bačka and South Banat would opt for Serbia, while the rest of the Yugoslav lands within the Dual Monarchy (Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Slavonia, Istria, and Dalmatia) would choose Croatia. The Yugoslav Committee, in contrast to the Royal Government of Serbia, supported an idea of the plebiscite as one of the most legitimate, justifiable and proper ways for the unification of the South Slavs into a common state. It meant that the Yugoslav people had to be asked to decide upon their own fate after the war.[x] For F. Supilo, an agreement about the Croatian confederate status within the future common state with Serbia and Montenegro was a starting point in the process of the creation of Yugoslavia.[xi] He divided political subjects concerning the unification into two camps: 1) Croatia and 2) Serbia with Montenegro. According to him, Croatia had to have a leading political role among the Austro-Hungarian South Slavs, while Serbia had to have the same role among the Yugoslavs outside the Dual Monarchy. His demand, which became as well as the main demand by the most of the Yugoslav Committee’s members, was that the unification had to be accomplished on the equal level between Serbia’s Royal Government and the Yugoslav Committee, because, according to him, any other way of the creation of Yugoslavia would be, in fact, a domination of “the Serbo-Orthodox exclusivity”.[xii] The President of the Yugoslav Committee, Dr. A. Trumbić, summarized the whole issue of the process (the way) of the unification into two points: 1) the unification could be realized either with a liberation of the Yugoslav lands in Austria-Hungary and their incorporation into Serbia, or 2) 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 the Serbian army.

However, from Serbia’s point of view, the main lack of such approach by the Yugoslav Committee was a very fact that either the Yugoslav 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 to Serbia’s 150,000 soldiers at the Macedonian Front in North Greece. In other words, the Yugoslav Committee required for itself an equal political position in the unification process but only Serbia had to spill over the blood of her soldiers (and civilians in occupied Serbia) for the creation of a single Yugoslav state. Serbia even succeeded finally to beat back the Croatian requirement for the federal type of Yugoslavia by nominally accepting this idea during the negotiations at Corfu but only under the condition that united Serbian federal unit within Yugoslavia would be created, that meant that the Croatian federal-territorial part was 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 was willing to make a deal with Serbia about the territorial division of Dalmatia between Rome and Belgrade.

The standpoint about the way of the unification of the Royal Government of Serbia was different in comparison to the Yugoslav Committee’s one. Serbia never officially recognized the Yugoslav Committee as a representative institution of the South Slavs from Austria-Hungary. Therefore, Serbia played the role of the only representative actor of all Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes before the Entente states. Moreover, especially for N. Pašić, the Yugoslav Committee could not be an equal partner with Serbia’s Royal Government in the process of the unification because of political, moral, and military reasons. The crucial request by the members of the Yugoslav Committee that a plebiscite about the unification and state’s inner organization had to be organized was rejected by Serbia likewise the internal federalist state’s organization which was favored by the Yugoslav Committee. Particularly, F. Supilo’s idea of federal Croat province within Yugoslavia was never accepted by N. Pašić who always was in the opinion that such Croatia would be constantly a corpus separatum and “state within the state”. The crucial aspect of N. Pašić’s policy about the process of the unification was that Serbia’s politicians should be natural representatives of all Yugoslavs before the Entente powers until the time of the final peace conference. He justified this requirement by three facts: 1) Serbia had legal Government, 2) Serbia was internationally recognized state, and 3) Serbia was allied member of the Entente bloc.

The attitude of Serbia was that if Yugoslavia was to be created, territorial borders had to be clearly defined between Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia[xiii] as N. 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 a single state. It is likely that the Royal Government of Serbia was not in principle against the federal organization of the new state but for Serbia, it was unacceptable that if Yugoslavia was to be federation, the Serbian population would be divided into several federal units. In other words, only a federal Yugoslavia with three federal units was possible: Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. The Serbian federal unit had to include all “Serbian people and lands”.[xiv] Nevertheless, at the Corfu Conference, the idea of federal organization was given up, taking into account the fact that “…when we started to make borders we understood that it was impossible”, as N. Pašić explained to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1923.[xv] Even A. Trumbić understood that in the case of the federal organization of the new state on the national basis, a Greater Serbia (composed by all Serbs and the Serbian lands) would dominate the country that became finally the crucial reason for him to reject the federal project of Yugoslavia during the Corfu Conference.    

The Corfu Declaration (July 20^th, 1917) as a political compromise

The Corfu Conference was held from June 15^th to July 20^th, 1917 that means for more than a month. It shows both how much the conference was important and how many political solutions proposed by both sides have been different. From the side of the Yugoslav Committee as the negotiators arrived A. Trumbić, D. Vasiljević, B. Bosniak, H. Hinković, F. Potočnjak, and D. Trinajestić. At the same time, the Kingdom of Serbia was represented by N. Pašić, M. Ninčić, A. Nikolić, Lj. Davidović, S. Protić, V. Marinković, M. Đuričić, and M. Drašković.[xvi] The basis for discussion under the official title Provisional State until Constitutional Organization was prepared by the Close Board composed of five members who worked out drafts about the basic problems upon the creation and organization of the future state to be solved.

After very laborious negotiations of more than a month, both sides signed a common declaration in a form of the basic agreement upon a political form of a new state to be proclaimed at the very end of the war. The joint Corfu Declaration is the most significant legal document about the creation of a single Yugoslav state, signed on July 20^th, 1917 by two representatives of the Royal Serbian Government and the Yugoslav Committee: Nikola Pašić and Ante Trumbić.[xvii] The declaration was composed of twelve points based on two principles: 1) the principle of national unity of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and 2) the principle of self-determination of the people. Nevertheless, the Corfu Declaration did not have constitutional character as it just regulated only some of the most important questions of the future state. It was only “the joint statement (declaration) of the representatives of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee with regard to the foundations of the common state and about some of its fundamental principles”.[xviii]

In regard to the question of the internal political-administrative organization of the future state, the most important point was that the state of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes will be a constitutional, democratic and parliamentary monarchy under the Karađorđević dynasty, “which has always shared the feelings of the nation and has placed the national will above all else”.[xix] This point of the declaration was a great political victory of the Royal Government of Serbia as the idea of a republic was finally rejected. Therefore, the Yugoslav Committee accepted the new state as a monarchy. Instead of federalization of the country, the local autonomies were guaranteed and based on natural, social, and economic conditions but not on historical or ethnic principles. The two alphabets, Cyrillic and Latin, have been proclaimed as an equal in public use in the whole country likewise the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim creeds were proclaimed to be equal and their believers will have the same rights. It was proclaimed as well as that “The territory of the Kingdom will include all territory in which our people forms the continuous population, and cannot be mutilated without endangering the vital interests of the community. Our nation demands nothing that belongs to others, but only what is its own. It desires freedom and unity. Therefore it consciously and firmly refuses all partial solutions of the propositions of the deliverance from Austro-Hungarian domination, and its union with Serbia and Montenegro in one sole State forming an indivisible whole” (the 8^th point).[xx] Obviously, this point of the declaration was, in fact, a great diplomatic victory of the Yugoslav Committee and pointed out against the articles of the secret London Treaty which was signed on April 26^th, 1915. Presumably, the army of Serbia at the end of the war had to protect the South Slavic (i.e., Croat and Slovenian) lands in Dalmatia and Istria against the Italian territorial aspirations (irredenta). Finally, the deputies to the national Parliament of the new state will be elected by universal, direct, and secret suffrage. The Constituent Assembly would accept a Constitution with numerically qualified majority. The Constitution of the Yugoslav state was going to be accepted after the conclusion of the peace treaties and it will come into force after receiving the royal sanction. “The nation thus unified will form a State of some 12,000,000 inhabitants, which will be a powerful bulwark against German aggression and an inseparable ally of all civilised States and peoples” (the 12^th point).[xxi]

The most important victory of the Yugoslav Committee (i.e., the Croat and Slovene politicians as the representatives of the South Slavs from the Dual Monarchy) against the Royal Government of Serbia at the Corfu Conference was the fact that Serbia did not get any privileged position or the veto rights in the new state as it was, for instance, the case with Prussia in unified Germany after 1871. The Kingdom of Serbia even, for the sake of the creation of a single Yugoslav state, canceled its own internationally recognized independence, denied her democratic Constitution, national flag, and other national symbols.[xxii] N. Pašić denied “liberating” role of Serbia during the war and succeeded only to impose the monarchical type of the state with the Karađorđević’s dynasty[xxiii], i.e., under the realm of the Regent-King Alexander I from Montenegro.

Nevertheless, it is a false interpretation of the Corfu Declaration by some Yugoslav and international historiographers that by this declaration Serbia received rights to annex Austro-Hungarian territories settled by the South Slavs (the Yugoslavs): Slavonia, Banat, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia.[xxiv] However, according to the text of the Corfu Declaration, the ethnic Serbs from the Dual Monarchy were de facto left to be united with Serbia and Montenegro into a single Yugoslav state by Zagreb as a political center of the Yugoslav lands of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Therefore, on October 29^th, 1918 it was proclaimed in Zagreb the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs pretending to have a legal competence over all Yugoslav lands of the Dual Monarchy. This state was proclaimed de facto as a Greater Croatia with a Croat national and historic flag as the state’s symbol (red-white-blue horizontal tricolor). However, the ethnic Serbs were a simple majority in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the capital in Zagreb – a state declared to exist on the Croat ethnic and historic rights formulated by the Croatian Party of Rights in the mid-19^th century. Nevertheless, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were internationally recognized only by the Kingdom of Serbia in the spirit of the Corfu Declaration when Serbia’s Regent Alexander I read in Belgrade on December 1^st, 1918 a letter of answer to the official delegation which came from Zagreb to the act of Proclamation by the National Council in Zagreb of the unification of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with “the Kingdom of Serbia and Montenegro”.[xxv]

Finally, the Corfu Declaration accepted an idea of “compromised national unitary state of the three-names nation: the Serbs, Croats, and  Slovenes”.[xxvi]  It was the main reason why the name of Yugoslavia was rejected and instead of it the official name of the new state was proclaimed to be the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.[xxvii]

Conclusions

1. The 1917 Corfu Declaration was a joint pact between the Royal Government of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee for the sake of the creation of a single Yugoslav national state under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Corfu Declaration was a basis for proclamation of such state at the end of the First World War and for its first Constitution in 1921.
2. The crucial problems in relation to the internal state’s organization have not been solved by the Corfu Declaration. They were left to be finally solved for the time after the war, by the Constituent Assembly, which should be elected by the universal suffrage.
3. All Constituent Assembly’s decisions should get the royal sanction in order to be verified. This meant that the monarch had the right of the veto.
4. For both the Yugoslav Committee and the Royal Government of Serbia the most urgent aim was to issue a common declaration concerning the creation of a single (unified) South Slavic state in order to try to protect the Yugoslav (mainly Croatian and Slovenian) lands from the Italian territorial aspirations. Therefore, some of the most significant questions with regards to the internal state’s organization could wait to be resolved after the war and especially during the Peace Conference when the state’s borders would be finally fixed.
5. The Italian territorial aspirations at the Balkans during the First World War were the most important reason for a convocation of the Corfu Conference. It can be seen from the telegram sent by J. M. Jovanović to the Regent Alexander I Karađorđević just after the publishing of the declaration, in which Jovanović noticed that the time for its issuing was chosen accurately – when the Italians came to the conferences convoked in Paris and London.[xxviii]
6. Division over opposing views between the Royal Serbian Government and the Yugoslav Committee on the unitary or federalist form of the internal-administrative constitutional arrangements reflected, in fact, opposite views about the national question.
7. Since it was impossible to overcome different standpoints during the conference, an agreement was reached on the necessity for the state’s unification in the form of a monarchy and on the compromise variation of unitarianism, whereas the question of the internal-administrative organization of the state was put off for the future.[xxix]
8. The Corfu Declaration professed the right of free self-determination as the focal war-goal and requested, at the same time, in the name of such right that the Yugoslav nation be free of any foreign occupation and unified in a single national, free, and independent state. It meant that all territories inhabited by the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians had to be subject the principle of nationality what implied two focal facts: 1) that Yugoslavia would be founded on the free will of national representatives of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians; and 2) that it did not imply the annexation of the Yugoslav territories from Austria-Hungary by Serbia.

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Endnotes:

[i] For instance, state’s cultural policy between 1918 and 1941 was put within such identity frame (see: Љ. Димић, Културна политика у Краљевини Југославији 1918–1941, I–III, Beograd: Стубови културе, 1997).

[ii] B. Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918−1988, I, Beograd: NOLIT, 1988, p. 17. The Croatian historians Dragutin Pavličević and Ivo Perić claim that all Serbia’s Governments during the last hundred years (with N. Pašić’s war-time Government on the first place) had for their ultimate national goal a creation of a Greater Serbia (D. Pavličević, Povijest Hrvatske. Drugo, izmijenjeno i prošireno izdanje, Zagreb, 2000, p. 307; I. Perić, Povijest Hrvata, Zagreb, 1997, pp. 209–232).

[iii] At that time the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Montenegro were declaring themselves as ethnolinguistic Serbs. About the ethnic and national identity of the Montenegrins, see: M. Glomazić, Etničko i nacionalno biće Crnogoraca, Beograd: Panpublik, 1988.

[iv] During the war, Serbia lost more than ¼ of her pre-war population [М. Радојевић, Љ. Димић, Србија у Великом рату 1914−1918, Београд: Српска књижевна задруга−Београдски форум за свет равноправних, 2014, p. 285].

[v] Arhiv JAZU, Zagreb, Fond Jugoslavenskog Odbora, fasc. 30, doc. No. 29.

[vi] However, for the federal form of a new state did not exist a great interest even among many members of the Yugoslav Committee for the very reason to avoid the clash between two opposite concepts of Yugoslavia’s federalization: a Greater Croatia vs. a Greater Serbia. Therefore, according to A. Trumbić’s biographer, Ante Smith-Pavelitch, even A. Trumbić was not so ardent advocate of the federalization of the Yugoslav state during the war-time for the very reason that N. Pašić could use this idea in order to promote and finally create a Greater Serbia as a single and the biggest federal unit (out of three) of Yugoslavia. Subsequently, a Greater Serbia, as one of three federal units of Yugoslavia, would be a dominant political factor in the country [Ђ. Ђ. Станковић, Никола Пашић и југословенско питање, I, Београд: БИГЗ, 1985, p. 213].

[vii] “Белешке са седнице Крфске конференције”, Нови живот, IV, 5. јун 1917. г., Београд (June 5th, 1917, Belgrade), 1921.

[viii] 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 additional sixth federal unit – Macedonia, according to the general attitude concerning the national identities at the Balkans by the Comintern in Moscow. In J. B. Tito’s post-1945 Serbia, there were living 73,7% of the Yugoslav Serbs as 1,7 million of the Serbs were left to live in other Yugoslav republics. However, at the same time, there were 80% of the Yugoslav Croats who were living in Croatia [П. Симић, Тито и Срби. Књига 2 (1945−1972), Београд: Laguna, 1918, p. 75].

[ix] D. Šepić, Italija, saveznici i jugoslovensko pitanje 1914–1918, Zagreb, 1970, pp. 141–142, 170–171; N. Stojanović, Jugoslovenski Odbor. Članci i dokumenti, Zagreb, 1927, pp. 15, 43. F. Supilo was in the strong opinion that Serbia required Croatian and Slovenian territories as a compensation for her lost territories to Bulgaria in 1915 (Vardar Macedonia, part of Kosovo-Metochia and East Serbia).

[x] H. Hanak, The Government, the Foreign Office and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918, New York, 1979, pp. 165–166.

[xi] On this issue, see more in [H. Baerlein, The Birth of Yugoslavia, I−II, London: Leonard Parsons Ltd., 1922].

[xii] D. Šepić, Italija, saveznici i jugoslovensko pitanje 1914–1918, Zagreb, 1970, pp. 106–107.

[xiii] Serbia had during the whole war much clear picture about the borders of united Serbia towards the Hungarians than towards the Croats. Thus, a new Serbian-Hungarian post-war border should run northern from the line of Timişoara-Subotica-Maros-Baja-Pecs [Д. Калафатовић, “Наша примирја у 1918”, Српски књижевни гласник, X, № 7, 1. XII 1923, pp. 511–525].

[xiv] Д. Живојиновић, Дневник адмирала Ернеста Трубриџа, Београд, 1989, p. 143. On the British policy with regards to the creation of Yugoslavia, see in [J. Evans, Great Britain and the Creation of Yugoslavia: Negotiating Balkan Nationality and Identity, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008].

[xv] Споменица Николе Пашића 1845–1926, Београд, 1926, p. 110.

[xvi] The national structure of the conference on its second session, when it had the greatest number of the participants was: the Serbs 11, the Croats 4, and Slovene 1 [Д. Јанковић, Југословенско питање и Крфска декларација, Београд, 1967, pp. 201−206].

[xvii] According to the Croatian historian Ferdo Šišić, N. Pašić signed the document as „Serbian Prime Minister and Minister for the Foreign Affairs“, while A. Trumbić did the same as „President of the Southern Slav Committee“ [F. Sisic, Abridged Political History of Rijeka, Fiume, 1919, Appendix, p. LXXV].

[xviii] Д. Јанковић, Југословенско питање и Крфска декларација, Београд, 1967, pp. 228−292.

[xix] S. Trifunovska (ed.), Yugoslavia Through Documents: From its creation to its dissolution, Dordrecht−Boston−London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994, p. 141.

[xx] Ibid., pp. 141−142.

[xxi] Ibid., p. 142.

[xxii] Jugoslavenski Odbor u Londonu, Zagreb: JAZU, 1966, p. 129.

[xxiii] Ђ. Ђ. Станковић, Никола Пашић и југословенско питање, II, Београд: БИГЗ, 1985, p. 182; A. Писарев, Oбразование Југославского государства, Москва, 1975, pp. 198, 206–208.

[xxiv] For instance [К. Елан, Живот и смрт Александра I краља Југославије, Београд: Ново дело, 1988, p. 27].

[xxv] S. Trifunovska (ed.), Yugoslavia Through Documents: From its creation to its dissolution, Dordrecht−Boston−London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994, pp. 147−160. The general attitude of the Croatian historiography is that Belgrade was carrying on an anti-Croat politics during the whole period of the modern history for the sake to establish the Serbian Orthodox dominance over the region and to exploit both the “Roman-Catholic” and “Muslim” Croats (for instance [J. Jareb, Pola stoljeća hrvatske politike, 1895–1945, Zagreb: Institut za suvremenu povijest, 1995]. However, contrary to the idea of a Greater Serbia, the Croatian dream during the last two centuries was nothing else than a creation of a Greater Croatia [M. Marjanović, Hrvatski Pokret. Opažanja i misli na pragu novoga narodnoga preporoda g. 1903, Dubrovnik, vol. I, 1903, p. 48.].

[xxvi] Jugoslavenski Odbor u Londonu, Zagreb: JAZU, 1966, pp. 178−179.

[xxvii] Nevertheless, the official name of the state became from January 6^th, 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

[xxviii] Aрхив Југославије, Београд, Канцеларија Њ. В. Краља, Ф-2.

[xxix] B. Petranović, M. Zečević, Jugoslovenski federalizam. Ideje i stvarnost, I, Beograd, 1987, pp. 36−38.