ПРИЛОГ ИСТОРИЈИ О НАУЧНОЈ САРАДЊИ СРБА И ХРВАТА
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY ABOUT SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION BETWEEN THE SERBS AND CROATS

Summary/Abstract: Based on unpublished sources, mainly from the Archives of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) in Belgrade, the funds of the Society of Serbian Letters, Serbian Learned Society and Serbian Royal Academy, and based on published material and relevant literature, the authors have elucidated all the most important aspects of the relations and cooperation between Serbian and Croatian scientists since the establishment of the Society of Serbian Letters in 1841 to date. The paper contains information about Croatian scientists who were elected honorary and corresponding members of Serbian scientific societies, and about the Serbs who became members of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (YASA). It has been pointed out that scientific relations between the Serbs and Croats and their respective scientific institutions have often been strained due to tense political circumstances. In such times, rivalry came in place of cooperation and the question was raised as to the leading role in national-political actions between Belgrade and Zagreb, i.e. between the Serbs and Croats. Due to strained political relations, interesting projects did not materialise. For instance, the project launched by the Serbian Learned Society to prepare Opšti naučni rečnik na srpsko-hrvatskom i bugarskom jeziku (General Scientific Dictionary in the Serbian-Croatian and Bulgarian Language) with a joint effort (of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians) failed. For the same reasons, the proposal initiated by the Yugoslav Academy that the Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and Bulgarian scientific and literary societies should occasionally meet and discuss literary, educational and scientific issues of joint interest also failed. Most progress was achieved in cooperation on Jugoslovenska Enciklopedija (Yugoslav Encyclopaedia), whose preparation began in 1910. The job was, however, halted first with the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and later the First World War. After the war, cooperation continued in the joint state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. New joint projects emerged, the most important of which was the establishment of the Institute of Oceanography in Split. In the light of the Yugoslav ideology of the Sixth January Regime, the two academies devoted a part of their cooperation to marking the anniversaries of eminent persons who advocated the Yugoslav idea (Daničić, Rački, Strossmayer). With the same aim, the idea of creation of a single, joint Yugoslav academy was put forward, but it never came to fruition. The links between the two academies, which were severed during the Second World War, were restored in socialist Yugoslavia in entirely different social and political circumstances. The Council of the Academies of Sciences and Arts of Yugoslavia was established, where, apart from the academies of other republics and provinces, the SASA and YASA yielded the strongest influence. The social-political crisis in Yugoslavia during the ’80s and the SASA Memorandum were a prelude to the final termination of long-lasting relations between the two academies, which took place in autumn 1991. Since then, the relations have not been restored, and all the attempts to make this happen have been made futile in the face of numerous contentious issues and due to inappropriate conditioning of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which the SASA has adamantly refused to accept.

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