Most Croat politicians, particularly Strossmayer's Nationalists and the still few in number Rightists of Starcevic and Kvaternik, were firmly committed to the state and historical rights on which the idea of the "political" people rested. On the model of the Hungarian feudal policy initiated at the end of the 18th century, which was expressed in the slogan that on Hungary's soil there was only one nation - the Hungarian nation,³⁹ the majority of Croat politicians believed that in the territory of Croatia there was only one "diplomatic" nation, and that was the Croatian nation.⁴⁰

Some explanation is necessary regarding the terms "political" or "diplomatic" people of Croatia, because the numerous subsequent misunderstandings between the Croatian and Serbian political leaderships, involving even the public at large, were due to the Croatian national and political ideology based upon the idea of a single Croatian "political" or "diplomatic" people. An explanation is necessary because precisely in the struggle for and against the policy based upon this ideology, differences between the Serbs and Croats were irreconcilable, resulting in confrontations and animosities which in certain Croatian bourgeois, particularly petty-bourgeois circles, gradually assumed genocidal aspects.

Because it was based on feudal state rights, the idea of a "political" people applied only to feudalists and not to burghers and peasants. Since Croatia, even in its bourgeois period following the 1848/49 revolution, retained its semi-feudal character, especially in a social and political sense, as the former feudal land-owners and noblemen continued to play an important role, many principles appropriate to the feudal period were in force in the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. For example, the basis of the programmes of all Croatian bourgeois political parties, until the turn of the century, was the Croatian state and historic rights. In this Croatia was no exception in the Habsburg Monarchy. Much more significant are the consequences arising from the relapse to the feudal society. This relapse, which did much harm to relations between the Croats and Serbs, provoking new and more violent conflicts that gradually assumed genocidal proportions, is the idea of the "political" or "diplomatic" people of Croatia.

When the 1848/49 revolution dismantled feudalism and the feudalists lost many of their prerogatives, some crucial changes came about which affected the "political" people. In feudal class society, only feudalists made up the "political" people. As the bourgeois order took over it was all the Croats and all inhabitants of Croatia, irrespective of their nationality, who constituted the Croatian "political" people. According to this principle, Serbs in Croatia were part of the Croatian "political" people. They were granted all civil rights but not their national and political individuality. On the contrary, it was everywhere vehemently denied.

Embracing the Hungarian feudal ideology and the rights deriving therefrom, the Croatian burgher society adhered, within its state, to the same principles which, within Hungary, in its post-absolutist and particularly its dualist periods, were observed by the Hungarian governments. According to them, all inhabitants of Hungary born within its frontiers, were members of the Hungarian "political" people, irrespective of their nationality. By analogy, all the citizens of Croatia, born on its state territory, regardless of their national and religious affiliation, were part of the Croatian "political" people. If we remember the principles observed in feudal society, which said: whose country, his religion, then, bearing in mind how they were applied in in Hungary and Croatia, we can easily conclude that the old feudal and religious principle was only refashioned to read: whose country, his nation.

Since the Serbs were supposed to be part of the Croatian "political" people and politically speaking were Croats, many administrative and political or cultural and educational measures were taken to consummate a political fiction - that there were no Serbs in Croatia.⁴² With this design and intent, in the catalogue of the first Dalmatian-Croatian-Slavonian exhibition, Serbs were not identified by their national affiliation, which was the case with the incomparably fewer Gypsies and Armenians.⁴³ They were designated according to their religious confession, as Croats of the Greco-eastern, i.e., Orthodox religion.⁴⁴ As the intent was to create a homogeneous Croatian "political" people, which implied an ethnically pure Croatia, the Serbian name was systematically omitted wherever it could be omitted.⁴⁵ For example, the Serbian Orthodox Church was invariably described as "Greco-eastern" and "Greco-non-Uniate." In certain circles the Serbs were never called by their national name but were referred to by various derogatory nicknames, such as Vlachs, Gypsies, Greco-easterners, Shqiptars, "self-styled Serbs," "so-called Serbs," etc. For the same reason, the entire school system from 1874 onwards was in the service of Croatization. Use of the Cyrillic alphabet, being Serbian, was curbed in various ways, and the Serbian flag and Serbian coat of arms, as national symbols, were prohibited.

And yet, the Serbs as citizens did enjoy full equality. However, because they were regarded not as a separate "diplomatic" people, but as a component part of the Croatian "political" nation,⁴⁶ they were dissatisfied and not only denounced the Croatian policy but opposed it openly whenever they found it necessary to do so.⁴⁷

The policy of non-recognition of Serbs in Croatia had been in evidence in various ways both before and after the exhibition catalogue,⁴⁸ giving rise, according to Svetozar Miletic, to unfortunate developments, "because the seed of discord has fallen on the injured feelings of the Serbian people." Disunited, quarrelling, and in any case weaker than their opponents, mindful only of their own narrow national interests, the Croat and Serb politicians had not yet overcome their mutual antagonisms in the face of the common danger threatening from Vienna and Budapest. Furthermore, at the Croatian Sabor sitting held in the early months of 1866, during the debate on the text of the address which was to be sent to the reigning monarch, disagreements again broke out over the recognition of the Serbs in Croatia. In the hope of winning over the Serbian deputies for the policy of their party, whose ranks they wanted to strengthen with Serbs, the Unionists did mention the Serbs in the address which they proposed to the Sabor, implying that they were willing to recognize them.⁴⁹ This, however, was not the case with the address of the National Party, which was drafted by Franjo Racki. Bearing this in mind and wanting to turn the Serbs away from the Unionists, Jovan Subotic, a member of the Independent Party, which was the most inclined to meet Serbian demands, proposed certain changes and additions to the text of the Nationalists' address which would clearly show that the National Party also recognized the Serbs in the Triune Kingdom.⁵⁰ The Serbian deputies with Miletic at their head defended the thesis of the complete individuality of the Croatian and Serbian peoples in the Triune state. In contrast, the Croatian deputies, mainly from the ranks of the National Party, while assenting to full civil equality for the two peoples, did not acknowledge the Serbs the status of a "diplomatic" people. They considered that such recognition would deprive the Croatian state of its national distinctions and "obscure the legal source," thereby weakening "the strength of national rights." The Croats would then share the state with the Serbs, which they would not agree to "for the sake of harmony with anybody in the world."

Embittered by this decision of the Sabor, many Serbian communities in Croatia demanded of their deputies to arrange for collective petitions among the Serbs and thus persuade the Sabor to recognize them. The major changes in the reorganization of the Monarchy, which were then engaging the attention of the Croatian Sabor, were what prevented the Serbs from implementing this action and for a while delayed the solution of their question.⁵²

It was then that Svetozar Miletic set out in the columns of Zastava the specific demands of the Serbs in Croatia: that the Sabor should pass a law on political equality of the Serbs and Croats, to be enforced by legal and administrative methods; that in the counties, districts, and communes where the Serbs had a majority, the Cyrillic alphabet should be in official use; that the Serbs should be represented proportionately in all the organs of government; that the state should entrust the Serbs with supervision over the Serbian Church and religious schools; and that the Serbs should be entitled to proportionate state assistance for all the institutions which the Croats also have.⁵³

Invoking the principle of the Swiss theoretician of state law, Johann Bluntschli, that "a nation is as large as its state,"⁵⁴ which would mean that all the citizens of Croatia constitute one single nation of Croats, Pozor, the organ of the National Party, rejected all of Miletic's demands for the Serbs in Croatia.⁵⁵ It even threatened the Serbs that should they insist on their national individuality, the Croats would "drive them out of the West against their will; we shall destroy all the boundaries which they might erect; we shall remove all the obstacles which they might put to the unity of the people whom God has created to be one. If need be, we shall change our name, the quintessence of the state; we shall replace the old history with a new one, change institutions, shape a different policy, all in the spirit of western civilization; but by then we shall be one single people."⁵⁶ When Zastava published a reportage from the Military Frontier, stating that there were many schools along the March but that they were mostly German and Croatian; that there were no Serbian schools; that children occasionally came by a Serbian primer and learned to read and write in Cyrillic, but that in their schools, "there is no Serbian spirit nor is their name acknowledged," because almost all the teachers were Roman Catholics, Pozor described this complaint of Miletic's newspaper about the "ill fate of the Serbian people in Croatian lands," which reflected a fear of Croatization, as a "product of true Byzantinism."⁵⁷ So it transpired that the Serbs' endeavours to preserve their national individuality and not allow themselves to be assimilated by the majority people, were "true Byzantinism."

Similar to this conception of Croatian and Serbian unity, whereby the Serbs willy-nilly have to merge with the Croats, was Pozor's view on the setting up of separate Serbian institutions and societies in Croatia. This is attested to by the case concerning the Society of the United Serbian Youth in Zagreb, under the name of Zvezda. When the society was constituted early in 1867, the National Party took offence. Pozor complained: "For such societies to be set up in Budapest, Vienna, Munich or anywhere in foreign parts is quite natural; young people in a foreign world like to get together and remember their homeland. For the Serbs, even if they are born in Serbia - not to speak of Orthodox Croats - to feel in Zagreb as if they were abroad, this is something we did not know or expect."⁵⁸

This clearly shows that Pozor and the party which published it did not recognize the Serbs in Croatia. They openly denied the Serbs their national individuality by calling them not Serbs but "Orthodox Croats." In the hope of preventing the spread of the Serbian national consciousness in Croatia and of promoting Croatian national sentiment, the Nationalists tried to forestall the foundation of any Serbian institutions, societies, or organizations.

Biblioteka | Recognition of Serbs in Croatia,Harmony and Cooperation

Copyright © 1997 by Vasilije Krestic
Copyright © 1997 by BIGZ , Beograd
Copyright © 1998 by Serbian Unity Congress