engleski

Slušati dobroga ili zlog anđela: Svibanjska deklaracija 1917. i propast srednjoeuropske Monarhije

Before the beginning of WWI, Croats, Slovenes, and other Slav peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy were clearly dissatisfied with its dual organization, which privileged the Germans and Hungarians. Croats were also frustrated because while Dalmatia and Istria administered by the Austrian part of the Monarchy, Croatia-Slavonia were under the Hungarian part of the Monarchy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were under the governance of the common Ministry of finances. It is therefore not surprising that several proposals for the reformation of the Monarchy had been put forward by the South Slav politicians, nor that all of them called for the unification of the Croatian lands. Three years into the war, the Yugoslav Club of the Emperor's Council issued on May 30, 1917 a declaration that requested the formation on the territories inhabited by the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs of an independent state, but under the Hapsburg scepter. The request was made on the basis of the national principle and the Croat state right. The May Declaration initiated controversies among Croatian politicians and political parties, but it also began a movement to accept the program of the Declaration. The most enthusiastic supporters were the leaders and the membership of the Catholic organizations. The author highlights the political situation that led toward the issuing of the Declaration, the controversies that surrounded its promotion, and its political consequences. In the end, he draws two conclusions. First, Bosnia and Herzegovina has always been the critical problem of Croatian politics and the key for resolving the Croatian puzzle. That was the case at the beginning of the 20th century and that is the case today. However, no political problem has caused so much disagreement among Croatian politicians as the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Parties that made up the Croat-Serb Coalition, the leadership of the Croatian Catholic movement, many Catholic bishops, and the Croatian intellectual elite had tended to relinquish the problem of the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina to others – the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Kingdom of Serbia, or some other international actor. The adherence, clerical and secular, to the ideology of the Party of (State) Right, especially its "radical" branch, the Pure Party of Right, had envisaged the unification of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the rest of Croatian lands not only as a solution to the question of the future status of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but to that of Croatia and to the question of the reorganization of the Monarchy as well. Second, a constant thread has run through Croatian politics and ideological controversy for over a century -- a complaint regarding the influence of clericalism. That usually meant either a disproportionately large presence of Catholic clergy was actively involved in Croatian culture and politics or there was a misuse of the (Catholic) faith for political purposes. However, the debate caused by the May Declaration and later by Stadler's Pronouncement demonstrates that the real problem was not whether one was a member of the clergy and, thus, prone to use religion for political gain, but rather whether one was an adherent of the ideology of Yugoslavism or against it. The May Declaration is not the most decisive factor in the crumbling of a great Monarchy and the creation of a first South-Slavic state, but it is decidedly a major contributing factor.

Austro-Ugarska Monarhija; propast; Hrvati; Svibanjska deklaracija; jugoslavenstvo

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