The chief parties which in the new State's first two years evolved
themselves out of those that previously existed in the various parts of
Yugoslavia were:
(_a_) the Pa[vs]i['c] party, consisting chiefly of the Serbian
Old Radical party, together with Serbian parties from the
Voivodina and Bosnia.
(_b_) the Pribi[vc]evi['c] party, consisting chiefly of the
Croatian Coalition party, together with the Slovene Liberal
party and the Serbian parties in opposition to Pa[vs]i['c].
(_c_) the Christian Socialist party, under Koro[vs]ec,
consisting chiefly of Slovenes, together with a young group in
Croatia and other Clerical groups that are forming in Dalmatia
and Bosnia.
(_d_) the Star[vc]evi['c] party, under Paveli['c], consisting
of decentralizing parties in Croatia and Slavonia, and some
Croats in Bosnia.
(_e_) Socialists:
(1) the Slovene non-communistic Socialists.
(2) Korac's party, chiefly from Slavonia and Serbia.
This remarkable man, whose mind floats serenely in a body
that is paralysed, has twice been included in the Cabinet.
By many he is looked upon as too subversive, but he
believes that a revolution will come unless his department
acts in a revolutionary fashion. His programme includes
old-age pensions from the age of sixty--the people being
now enfeebled by the wars--and obligatory insurance with
regard to all those, including State employees in the
railway service and the post office, who do not enjoy an
independent existence, half the insurance being paid by
the employer and half by the employee, while with regard
to accidents the whole would be paid by the employer. He
has also very firm ideas for the safeguarding of the human
dignity of the pensioners.
(3) Dr. Rado[vs]evi['c]'s party. This gentleman was said
to adore Lenin, on whom he lectured. His party had no
strength except such as it derived as a protest against
any forced centralization.
(_f_) Republican party, consisting of 90,000 Croat peasants
under Radi['c].
Of these by far the most important were the first two. In Serbian
political parties the personal question used to be nearly always
uppermost, and now, in the case of parties (_a_) and (_b_), it was most
difficult to understand what aims the one had which the other did not
share. One may say that each of them was a group under a wily politician
who was able, not only to forge out of various elements a homogeneous
group, but to persuade them that there was a fundamental difference
between their group and any other. Here one has not so much the Western
system, under which a man enters a Cabinet as the exponent of party
principles, but the Eastern system under which a Minister uses his
influence to found a party, which is based inevitably on the
disappearing relics of the past. In the spring of 1919 many foreign
observers fancied that new parties were surging up like mushrooms and
proving, no doubt, that the people's vitality was strong, although one
would have waited willingly for this evidence until the country's
external and internal affairs were more settled. As a matter of fact
these rather numerous parties, of which the outside world now heard for
the first time, had been in existence or semi-existence for years. There
was, however, a certain bewildering vacillation on the part of some of
the deputies. The Bosnian Moslems, for instance, could not make up their
minds whether they would be Serbs or Croats and belong to (_a_) or
(_b_). Finally most of them settled down in (_b_), while two others
formed an independent group. It must be remembered that they, like all
the other deputies, were not really deputies but delegates, since it was
not yet possible to hold elections. There would naturally be many
changes after the first General Election; for one thing, the Moslems
intend to join in one group with their brethren from Macedonia and Novi
Bazar.... As we shall see, later on, the changes produced by the first
General Election--which was the election held in November 1920, for the
Constituent Assembly--were extremely sweeping. While the Radicals and
Democrats returned with close on one hundred members each, the
Koro[vs]e['c] party met with comparative disaster, and the Star[vc]evic
group was overwhelmed. With about fifty members apiece, the Communist
and the Radi['c] parties gave expression, roughly speaking, to the
discontent produced by the unsettled conditions--unavoidable and
avoidable--of the new State's first two years. The Moslems came back
with nearly thirty members, and a healthy phenomenon for a country in
which the peasant so largely predominates was the success, apart from
the Radi['c] Peasant party, of the Agrarians with some thirty deputies,
and the Independent Peasant party with eight.
The Italian Press disposed in five lines of the historical Act of Union
which occurred when the delegates of the Yugoslav National Council were
received by the Prince at Belgrade on December 1, 1918. In the address,
which was read by Dr. Paveli['c], it is recorded that "the National
Council desires to join with Serbia and Montenegro in forming a United
National State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which would embrace the
whole inseparable ethnographical territory of the South Slavs.... In
the period of transition, in our opinion, the conditions should be
created for the final organization of our United State." And there is a
dignified protest against the Treaty of London and the Italian
encroachments which even went beyond that which the treaty gave them. In
his reply the Prince, among other remarks, said that "in the name of His
Majesty King Peter I now declare the union of Serbia with the provinces
of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in an indivisible kingdom. This great
moment should be a reward for the efforts of yourselves and your
brothers, whereby you have cast off the alien yoke. This celebration
should form a wreath for the officers and men who have fallen in the
cause of freedom.... I assure you and the National Council that I shall
always reign over my brothers and yours, and what constitutes the Serbs
and their people, in a spirit of brotherly love.... The first task of
the Government will be to arrange with your help and that of the whole
people that the frontiers should comprise the whole nation. In
conjunction with you I may well hope that our powerful friends and
Allies will be able justly to appreciate our standpoint, because it
corresponds with the principles which they themselves have proclaimed
and for the achievement of which streams of their precious blood have
been poured out...." The Prince spoke of Italy in phrases to which we
have already alluded.[30] He reminded her of the Risorgimento and of the
principles with which her great sons had then been inspired. But the
Italian Press preferred to moralize in column after column on the
variety of the political groups of Yugoslavia, with the object of
showing to the world that they were a people of no cohesive capacities
and of no real national consciousness.