Јован Дучић и Љубомир Стојановић о југословенској идеји 1929. године
Jovan Dučić and Ljubomir Stojanović On the Yugoslav Idea in 1929

Summary/Abstract: The internal crisis of the Yugoslav monarchy reached its height with the assassination that took place in the National Assembly in 1928, after which King Aleksandar Karadjordjević proclaimed a dictatorship and introduced a personal dictatorship on 6th January 1929. At first it was tacitly accepted by a country exhausted by internal political strife but the dictatorship quite quickly betrayed the expectations of the people and leading politicians. However, the King not paying much attention to this fact in October 1929 aiming to strengthen the idea of integral Yugoslavism renamed the country Yugoslavia and divided it into nine banovinas (territorial divisions). Jovan Dučić, one of the greatest Serbian poets, supported the King’s act with an article published in Belgrade’s daily newspaper Politika, convinced, as were several other intellectuals, that it was the best solution for the consolidation and strengthening of the Yugoslav state. Jovan Dučić considered the „Yugoslavs” to be one nation, one being, one race finding confirmation for this idea in the interpretation of the distant past of the Yugoslav peoples, primarily in the history the Serbian people. Since his interpretation of Serbian history greatly differed from authentic historical facts, an answer from the Serbian scholarly community was expected. Ljuba Stojanović, philologist and grammarian wrote a reply to Jovan Dučić, in a highly censored article, pointing out some of the poet’s main mistakes in interpreting historical data. Ljuba Stojanović clearly concluded that history should not be distorted, not just for its sake, but for the sake of the present and the possible future.

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