THE EVOLUTION OF SERBIA INTO JUGOSLAVIA
The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the
suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its
resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war
with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to
the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the
Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to
exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to
Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman
Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had
successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared
independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk
revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly
doubling her territory and adding 50 per cent to her population at the
expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory,
however, contained a non-Serbian majority.
Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably
more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the
World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before
the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the
most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the
Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:
Old Serbia 3,000,000
New Serbia 1,000,000
Montenegro 500,000
Croatia and Slavonia 2,600,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina 2,000,000
Dalmatia 1,000,000
Slovenia 1,500,000
Istria 400,000
Banat of Temesvár 250,000
Other parts of Hungary 1,000,000
We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous
difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon. Greater
Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated
Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent
kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater
Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the
half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent
Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem.
If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed
brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.
But there is a still wider divergence between the problems of Greater
Rumania and Greater Serbia than is shown by the figures. The redeemed
Rumanians could be assimilated with those of the kingdom into one
nation. They had a common interest in standing together against alien
elements formidable in number. In Greater Serbia the Serbian-speaking
elements had been separated for centuries. With radically different
social and political, religious and cultural backgrounds, amalgamation
was a complicated problem. Many Serbians have attempted to draw a
parallel between the unification of the Italians and that of the
Jugoslavs. The analogy does not hold, because the Italians were all of
the same religion, they were a product of the same Occidental culture,
and their social and political experience had not, in modern times,
at least, been dissimilar. The Jugoslavs, on the other hand, had been
separated since the Middle Ages by formidable barriers.
Serbs and Montenegrins are Orthodox; Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and a
portion of the inhabitants of what is known as New Serbia are Orthodox,
Catholic, and Mohammedan; while most of the Croats, Dalmatians, and
Slovenes are Catholic. The Jugoslavs of the Hapsburg Empire are
Occidentals, and have always been under the influence of Rome. Most of
them escaped wholly the Ottoman yoke. They have evolved a high degree
of civilization, as we Westerners understand that term, and have little
except language in common with the Serbians, a people that lived for
hundreds of years under the shadow of the Crescent. It was impossible
to expect that the more cultivated Serbian-speaking peoples of the
Hapsburg Empire should be willing to play second fiddle to a Balkan
people whose manner of life and habits of mind were semi-Oriental.
When the fortunes of war began to point to an Entente victory in
1918, it would have been possible to secure the recognition of a
Jugoslav state, to be formed by the union of the Jugoslav portions of
Austria and Hungary with Serbia. But the Serbian Government failed to
recognize the barriers of which we have just spoken, and aimed to use
the victory as a means of aggrandizing Serbia. The new territories
were to come into the existing kingdom without conditions. Premier
Pashitch tried to get the Entente Powers and the United States to
agree to the annexation of Bosnia by Serbia when the Austro-Hungarian
armies withdrew. In the summer of 1918, when the Czechoslovak National
Council was officially recognized as trustee of the future Czechoslovak
Government, it was intimated that a similar step would be taken on
behalf of the Jugoslavs if only Serbia agreed to throw in her lot with
the proposed Jugoslavia. Rumania and Greece joined the Entente Powers
in urging this course upon the Belgrade Government. Premier Pashitch
refused. The golden opportunity was lost; for in October Italy declared
that she would countenance no such move. When, with the break-up of the
Dual Monarchy, Agram proclaimed the independence of Croatia on October
28, 1918, it was too late to arrange what would have been feasible in
the summer. On November 9 the Belgrade and Agram Governments issued
at Geneva a joint declaration to work together until a constituent
assembly, elected by universal suffrage, should adopt a constitution
for the new states, whose boundaries were as yet indefinite.
This _modus vivendi_, accepted at the eleventh hour by Pashitch, might
have lasted throughout the Peace Conference had it not been for the
fear of Italian aggression, which prompted the Agram Government to beg
for the assistance of the Serbian army to save Laibach and Fiume from
Italian occupation. In taking over the territories assigned to them by
the armistice of November 3, the Italian armies acted with a high hand,
suppressing the Jugoslav national movement promptly and ruthlessly.
Italian nationalism was being worked up to fever heat by the propaganda
to make the Adriatic an Italian lake. The Dalmatian League at Rome
declared that Dalmatia was to be Italian. D’Annunzio issued an
impassioned appeal for Fiume, the words of which he soon afterward
proved himself able to translate into actions.
The Agram National Council’s hand was forced. Instead of waiting
to arrange on equal terms with the Belgrade Government the details
of union, as the Declaration of Geneva had provided, the Council
proclaimed, on November 23, the union of the territories under its
control with the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. Three days later
a national assembly at Podgoritza deposed King Nicholas and his
dynasty and voted for the union of Montenegro with the new state.
Prince Alexander, as regent, announced the birth of “free and united
Jugoslavia” at Belgrade on December 1, 1918.
When the Jugoslavs appeared with a united delegation at the Peace
Conference, Italy insisted that its members be acknowledged only as
Serbians, acting in the name of the Belgrade Government. The union of
the Jugoslav portions of the Hapsburg Empire with the Kingdom of Serbia
had not been recognized by Italy, or by the other Entente Powers, for
that matter;[14] and, as such an event was a thing of the future, to
be decided by the Peace Conference, Italy declared that she would not
consent to have decisions anticipated or prejudiced by acceptance
of the union as a _fait accompli_. Throughout the Conference Italy
maintained this uncompromising attitude.
It was after issuing from a conference in which the future of the
Jugoslavs was the principal topic that Mr. Lloyd George said that
the peace treaties threatened “to Balkanize Europe.” The full
significance of this remark is grasped when we realize that the
Jugoslav cause at Paris was not advanced by delegates who presented
a solid front and followed a consistent policy in pressing their
national claims. Pashitch and his colleagues from Belgrade, dismayed
by Italian opposition at times and at others more interested in the
Banat of Temesvár and Macedonia than in the Adriatic, held back from
whole-hearted support of Croat and Slovene claims. In their attitude
toward their “redeemed brethren” the Serbs displayed curiously mixed
sentiments. If one were rash enough to attempt to express the Serbian
feeling in one sentence, he might put it in this way, that the Serbs
possessed, in relation to the Hapsburg Jugoslavs, a superior military
complex and an inferior cultural complex.
But to be fair to the Serbs one must remember their recent military
achievements and the martyrdom of the World War. They had put the
Serbian race in a position of commanding the respect of the world and
of being listened to at Paris because of their exploits and their
sufferings. Then, too, they had fought for the Entente Powers while
the rest of the Jugoslavs had fought for the Central Empires. It meant
a great deal to them to renounce the historic name of their country
and the flag under which they had fought, and to lose their identity
in a new “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” The change of
the red-blue-white flag to a blue-white-red flag was even more of a
renunciation. On the practical side of the question, Premier Pashitch
had to think of two other considerations: Serbia, bled white, risked a
new war with Italy in championing the Croat side of the Fiume question
and the Slovene side of the Istrian question; and the Serbians, with
a hundred years of independent existence behind them, risked being
submerged in the new state with its Occidental and more highly educated
Croato-Slovene majority. What leader, under these circumstances,
would not have paused to weigh the alternatives of Greater Serbia and
Jugoslavia? The dilemma was all the more distressing because Pashitch
realized that at the best he would have to sacrifice half a million
Slovenes to Italy and would thereby incur their enmity for himself and
for the Belgrade Government as well!
In the midst of currents and counter-currents of sentiment and sound
diplomatic common sense, the Jugoslavs whirled through the mad year of
1919, avoiding a decision as to the precise form the new state should
take. Until the treaties with Austria and Hungary were signed, the
Jugoslavs concentrated upon the problems demanding attention at Paris,
which were (1) resisting the pretensions of Italy in Dalmatia and at
the head of the Adriatic; (2) getting as much territory as possible
from Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and (3) trying to prevent the
award of the Banat of Temesvár to Rumania.
Two problems of minor importance came up: (1) the repudiation by
influential Montenegrins of the union voted by the Podgoritza assembly;
and (2) fixing a frontier with the Albanians.
The Banat question with Rumania was compromised by a Solomonic
division of the disputed territory. As we have seen elsewhere,
Jugoslav ambitions in regard to Albania were thwarted by the Albanians
themselves, whose success in defending their independence was followed
by the intervention of the League of Nations. The Montenegrin revolt
was suppressed. Serbian claims at the expense of Bulgaria were allowed
in the Treaty of Neuilly. The Treaty of Trianon gave the new state
generous frontiers at the expense of Hungary. The Treaty of St.-Germain
provided for a plebiscite in the Klagenfurt district of Carinthia,
which resulted in a victory for the Austrians. But the Paris Conference
left to direct negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes the fixing of the frontier with Italy.
For eighteen months it looked as if war would break out between
Italians and Jugoslavs. But the latter were not sufficiently united
to make possible an uncompromising attitude toward the Italians. In
violation of President Wilson’s ninth point in the famous Fourteen,
the Jugoslavs finally agreed to sacrifice a large portion of the
Slovenes, to renounce their claim to Fiume, and to agree to the
incorporation of the Zara district and some of the Dalmatian islands
in Italy. This compromise, called the Treaty of Rapallo, was signed
on November 28, 1920. Like other compromise frontiers in the general
settlement after the World War, the Rapallo arrangement created an
irredentist problem more complicated and dangerous than the one it was
supposed to solve. Italy was confirmed in the possession of Istria
and secured a frontier in the hinterland of Trieste and the Isonzo
Valley more advantageous than the frontier of the 1915 secret Treaty
of London. Fiume was made a free state “in perpetuo.” Zara and its
hinterland became an Italian _enclave_ in Dalmatia. The islands of
Cherso and Lussin, with “minor islands and rocks” off the Istrian
Peninsula, went to Italy. Former Austro-Hungarian subjects were allowed
to opt for Italian nationality, without the obligation to transfer
their domicile outside Jugoslav territory. Reciprocity for Jugoslavs
residing within the new limits of the Kingdom of Italy was denied.
A glance at the map will show how great a blow to the prosperity of
the Slovenes and the Croats was the creation of the Free State of
Fiume. The loss of Trieste was serious enough to the Slovenes; that of
Fiume cut them off entirely from the sea; while Fiume, where the Julian
and Dinaric Alps meet, is the logical outlet for Croatia, Hungary,
and Slavonia. Italy justified her seizure of Fiume (the fiction of
a free state is transparent) on the ground that the majority of the
port’s inhabitants were Italians. If the suburb of Susak be counted
as part of the city, even this claim was debatable. But the fact that
Danzig’s population was over 90 per cent pure German did not weigh at
Versailles against the decision to detach Danzig from Germany to make
it an outlet for Poland. Memel was similarly taken from German to be
later awarded to Lithuania. Here we see the application of two weights
and two measures, in the case of Fiume against a state created by the
Peace Conference itself! The moral of most of the decisions made since
1918 is that the supreme argument in international relations is the
possession of force. Taken as a whole, the map of Europe, as redrawn
since 1918, has been more influenced by the possession of superior
force by its beneficiaries than any of the territorial readjustments of
the nineteenth century.
Advantageous as it was, there was a loud outcry in Italy against the
Treaty of Rapallo, and it has not yet been fully put into force. As I
write these lines the Jugoslavs are vainly endeavoring in a conference
at Abbazia to secure loyal fulfilment of Italian promises and to make
conditions tolerable for the foreign trade of Jugoslavia.
The frontier disputes, entailing the possibility of war with Italy,
Rumania, or Albania, made necessary the postponement of elections
to the Constituent Assembly until November, 1920. During the two
transitional years a provisional parliament of an extraordinary
character had met at Belgrade. Its Serbian members were those of the
Skupshtina elected in June, 1914, and the Croatian members were of
the Diet elected under Hungarian rule in January, 1914; while the
Montenegrin deputies were chosen by the revolutionary assembly of
Podgoritza in November, 1918. The other representatives belonged to
haphazard local organizations of non-official character and doubtful
legality.
Internal politics singularly aided the Italians in holding out for the
terms eventually embodied in the Treaty of Rapallo; and none can study
the political intrigues of this period without becoming convinced that
many of the Serbians, had it not been for outside pressure, would have
united successfully to throw overboard the program of a Jugoslavia for
Pashitch’s dream of a Greater Serbia, with an outlet to the sea at
Scutari at the expense of Albania. Thanks largely to the skill and
devotion of M. Vesnitch (Serbian minister at Paris during the World War
and the Peace Conference), who assumed the premiership at a critical
moment, the various elements among the Jugoslavs were brought finally
to an agreement by which the election for a Constituent Assembly could
be held. It was a sign of the weakness of the new state, however, that
the non-Slavic populations were not allowed to vote, although they
were about 20 per cent of the electorate. Premier Vesnitch realized
that it was going to be difficult enough to form a working assembly of
Jugoslavs alone, without the added confusion of alien elements!
In Croatia, the peasant leader Raditch, who had been in prison for
advocating a republican and federal form of government, was elected
with fifty of his followers; while the Croat and Slovene Clericals were
equally opposed to centralization. The Communists, also for a republic
and decentralization, returned fifty-eight members. In the confusion
of many parties, none holding a majority, the veteran Pashitch became
premier once more and began to rule with a heavy hand and by skilful
intrigues. He was confronted with the passive resistance of the great
majority of Croats and Slovenes. The fifty members of Raditch’s
Croatian party followed the Irish Nationalist example and refused to
take their seats at Belgrade. Pashitch got rid of the fifty-eight
Communists by expelling them.
The attempt of ex-Emperor Karl to regain the Hungarian throne at the
end of March, 1921, the failure of all efforts from outside and inside
to overthrow the Soviet Government in Russia, and the recrudescence of
Mohammedan strength through the successes of the Turkish Nationalist
movement acted as a sobering influence upon the Jugoslavs, who realized
that their newly won liberties would be jeopardized if there were
political anarchy at home. Dangers from abroad gave Premier Pashitch
the temporary support of the most influential elements, who preferred
a centralized Serbia to disintegration or Communism. The constitution,
providing for a single chamber, was finally adopted on June 28, 1921,
which was supported by all the Jugoslavs with the exception of the
Croatians and Slovenes.
King Peter died in August, 1921, and was succeeded by Alexander, who
had been acting as regent during all the period of internal confusion
since 1914. A marriage was arranged for Alexander with Princess
Marie of Rumania, whose older sister had married the Crown Prince of
Greece. The wedding took place in June, 1922, and was the occasion of
a demonstration of friendship with Rumania and a strengthening of the
defensive alliance of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia
against any revision of the treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.
King Alexander played a rôle during the World War that endeared him to
his people, and he has entered upon a task of uniting the Jugoslavia
peoples with a great deal of personal prestige. The Rumanian marriage
alliance is popular, because the Jugoslavs see in it a guarantee
against a new war in the Balkans. For all that, the Monarchy will be a
really constructive force only if Croatians and Slovenes are regarded
as equal partners in the new country, held together (as Austria was
held together) by common attachment to the crown. When the people
amalgamate in such a way as to form one country, Jugoslavia may become
a republic. The attitude toward the monarchy is one of personal
affection and esteem for the present sovereign, and of conviction
that the monarchy has still a useful part to fulfil in developing and
consolidating the political life of the country. But the ideal of the
Jugoslavs outside the old kingdom is a republic. One might hazard the
opinion that republicanism is the inevitable tendency in all Balkan
countries. I had the privilege of being present at the marriage
festivities in Belgrade, and found that other observers of contemporary
Balkan history shared my feeling that the King and Queen of Serbia are
simply convenient symbols, internally and internationally, of the
period of transition and amalgamation through which the new Jugoslavia
is passing.
The General Election in April, 1923, however, indicated that the
danger of internal disruption has not yet passed, and that some form
of federalism will have to be worked out if Jugoslavia is to hope to
become a country with representative institutions. The new Chamber
contains thirteen parties, several of which are divided by personal
antagonism among their leaders. The Radicals, who represent national
Serbian traditions and whose policy is centralization held ninety-two
seats out of 417 in 1920, and in the recent election secured 109 seats
in the reduced Chamber of 313. They are the largest single party, but
even if the Serbian Democrats united with them they would still be in
a minority. The Democrats are divided among themselves on the issue
of centralization versus federation. Neither Radicals nor Democrats
obtained a single seat in Croatia or Slovenia. The most remarkable gain
was that of Raditch’s Croatian peasant party. In 1920 Raditch had fifty
seats out of 417; in 1923 he has seventy out of 313. The twenty-two
Slovene Clericals and the two Montenegrins are also Federalists. The
disappearance of the Communists and Republicans and the remarkable
shrinking of Agrarians indicate that social and economic questions
are, for the time being, subordinated to that of the question whether
the country can be molded into a homogeneous whole or whether there
shall be three autonomous states united in a triune kingdom. The issue
is squarely before the country; for when the Chamber assembled Premier
Pashitch discovered that by no combination could he secure a working
majority over the Croatian, Slovenian, and other Federalists.
The situation is by no means desperate. Much that one sees now to
condemn will disappear with a little more experience and the mellowing
influence of time. It took the United States six years for the thirteen
original units to agree upon a _modus vivendi_, and from 1789 to 1865
to work out the problem of national unity. In sizing up the Kingdom
of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, we must distinguish between
inherent weaknesses and those that are the result of lack of time or
experience. Most of the difficulties in administration and politics
arise from newness of the association and the inability to find trained
men for governmental posts. Local antagonisms must be overcome, and
conflicting local interests reconciled. As soon as railways and ports
are constructed and the first shock of marriage overcome, there is no
reason to believe that these peoples, occupying rich territories and
bound together by the ties of blood and language, cannot bridge the
cultural gulf that separates them and work out together a better future
than they enjoyed separately in the past. But there can be no question
of assimilation of one element by the other; there must be amalgamation.
The external dangers and difficulties are of another order and will not
easily be overcome unless the Jugoslavic peoples are allowed to work
out their own destiny.
Now that Bulgaria is completely disarmed, that Greece has her hands
full for years to come, and that Rumania manifests strikingly her
intention of remaining on friendly terms with Serbia, the large
standing army and the alliance with the other Succession States of the
Hapsburg Empire can only mean that the unity of the territories now
included in Jugoslavia has not been achieved by the will of the peoples
included within the frontiers of this new state. It is an indication
of the fundamental weakness of the new Europe of the Paris treaties.
The new states were given the advantage every time when it was a
question of strategic or economic frontiers; and while the principle of
self-determination was invoked to create the new states, it was denied
when the new states demanded frontiers to suit their convenience or
when they were encouraged by the interests of one or the other of the
Entente Powers to ask for frontier districts to which they had not
aspired. Jugoslavia suffered at the hands of Italy, which, being a big
power, made her frontiers as she chose. But Jugoslavia was allowed to
treat the vanquished states as she herself had been treated by Italy.
The frontiers of Jugoslavia are a source of weakness and danger, like
those of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. If the real interests
of these peoples had been considered, and not the policies of great
powers, more permanent frontier lines could have been traced. But
the rôles of Austria and Hungary have simply been reversed. The four
Succession States are compelled to guard their frontiers arms in hand,
and are saddled with alien border populations by the million, which
can be governed only by military intimidation. Thus the old European
evils of irredentist agitation, of harsh treatment of minorities, of
government by military force, have not been done away with.
The Treaty of Neuilly increased materially the already large number of
Bulgarians under Serbian rule. Macedonian mountaineers, _comitadjis_
by profession, have not accepted Serbian overlordship and are waging
against the Serbs the guerrilla warfare that baffled the Turks and
proved so costly to them. The Macedonian League is giving the Serbs
much trouble and anxiety. In a comminatory note on this subject, one
finds M. Nintchitch, the minister of foreign affairs, using to Bulgaria
the same argument and employing the same threats Austria used and
employed against Serbia, when it was a question of the activities of
the Narodny Obrana in Bosnia. We remember that Austria asserted that
these activities were engineered from Serbian territory, and it was a
summons to stop them that led to the World War. And now Jugoslavia,
alarmed over the spirit of rebellion among her Bulgarian subjects in
Macedonia, talked to Bulgaria as Serbia used to object to Austria
talking to her!
After four years of anxious effort Jugoslav statesmen began to see
the danger of having hostile neighbors and constant frontier disputes
when internal questions were still far from being settled. A sensible
attitude was adopted toward Italy and Bulgaria. Stubbornness in the
west and intimidation in the east were abandoned as profitless. In the
spring of 1923 the Jugoslavs got together with the Italians at Abbazia
(and later Rome) and with the Bulgarians at Nish. Moot questions were
frankly thrashed out. With Italy the problem of Porto Baros, on the
coast near the frontier with the Free State of Fiume, was solved by
mutual compromise. With Bulgaria it was decided that practical measures
should be taken by both states to minimize the inconveniences and
political agitation of _comitadji_ raids. Bulgaria was to be allowed to
conscript frontier guards, and Serbia was granted the right to pursue
_comitadjis_ on Bulgarian territory.
The debacle of Greece in Asia Minor, the dramatic return of the Turks
to Thrace, and the sudden overthrow of the Stambulisky régime in
Bulgaria compelled the new Jugoslav Government to make a military
demonstration in Macedonia in June, 1923. From Nish to Strumnitza
troops were concentrated. The Serbians intimated at Lausanne to
the Turks and at Sofia to the Bulgarians that no move to modify or
upset the Treaty of Neuilly would be tolerated. In view of what has
happened at Lausanne, however, it is doubtful if this attitude can be
maintained. When the Turks successfully resisted the Treaty of Sèvres,
they made a precedent and set an example for the other conquered
nations. The Bulgarian revolution is the logical result of the success
of the Angora Nationalist movement. Jugoslavia is not yet secure, in so
far as the Balkans are concerned, in her fruits of victory.