ELEMENTI REPRESIJE U RADU NARODNOG VIJEĆA SLOVENACA, HRVATA I SRBA ZA BOSNU I HERCEGOVINU I NARODNE VLADE ZA BOSNU I HERCEGOVINU
ELEMENTS OF REPRESSION IN THE FUNCTIONING OF THE PEOPLE΄S COUNCIL OF SLOVENIANS, CROATS AND SERBS FOR BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Summary/Abstract: By the end of October and the beginning of November 1918, the Peoples’ Council of Slovenians, Croats and Serbs and the People’s Government for Bosnia and Herzegovina became operational. During their short tenure, these new bodies of governance undertook various measures aimed at establishing law and order and maintenance of the newly established state and its social order. These measures included re-organisation of the country’s repressive apparatus – i.e. police and gendarmerie, the National Guard, military, courts, and prosecutorial offices – in order to ensure the respect of law and the authority of state. Numerous laws, decrees and orders, adjusted to the newly established circumstances, in order to enable the state and its bodies to protect themselves within the framework of law. Such an activity of the People’s Council of SHS for BiH and the People’s Government for BiH led to the re-introduction of censorship of press, letters, telegrams and telephone communications, as well as the introduction of police surveillance over all the suspicious elements, their arrests and detentions as well as the sanctioning of political delicts – in a nutshell, these measures were taken by the governmental bodies in order to impose restrictions on individual and political freedoms of the population, all with the pretext of protection of the state and its newly established order. In addition to this planned and organised repressive actions, there were numberless instances which indicate that these repressive measures were the consequence of local mentality and arbitrariness and abuse of official position and powers by the representatives of Government, primarily executed by the members of police, gendarmerie, the National Guard and military. In this brief period one detects the elements of repressive actions in the functioning of the People’s Council of SHS for BiH and the People’s Government for BiH, while the repressive system, for which foundations were laid in this period, continued to be built only to reach its culmination in the era of dictatorship.

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