Kratkotrajna suradnja Slovenske ljudske stranke sa Stjepanom Radićem – Blok narodnog sporazuma i seljačke demokracije
THE BRIEF COOPERATION BETWEEN THE SLOVENE PEOPLE’S PARTY AND STJEPAN RADIĆ – THE BLOC OF NATIONAL UNDERSTANDING AND PEASANT DEMOCRACY

Summary/Abstract: Starting in January 1924, the Slovene People’s Party, the Yugoslav Muslim Organization, and the Democratic Party formed an Opposition Bloc calling for the achievement of national understanding and the revision of the ‘Vidovdan’ Constitution. The Bloc considered its fall from government as a crisis in the concept of national understanding and in October 1924 it confirmed its continuation of common political goals. In November 1924 Nikola Pašiæ formed a new government, while the king set elections for the National Assembly for 8 February 1925. The government directed its efforts toward the destruction of the Opposition Bloc, using whatever tools of repression it had at its disposal to disable the electoral campaigns of the Bloc’s member parties. Alongside the National Radical Party which placed first in terms of absolute numbers of votes state-wide, the Slovene People’s Party had a successful campaign. In Slovenia, it received 56.3% of the votes, which preserved its position as the preeminent Slovene political party and the fourth largest party in the state. After the fall of the Davidoviæ government, Anton Korošec was in open conflict with Stjepan Radiæ, who he blamed for destabilizing the government and weakening the relations between the members of the Opposition Bloc before the elections to the National Assembly. Despite this, he believed that the parties’ demands for an autonomist programme had the greatest chance of success within a framework of cooperation among the parties of the opposition, supported by the political might of the Croat Republican Peasant Party. The leaders of the opposition parties formed the Bloc of National Understanding and Peasant Democracy in Belgrade in February 1925. The participation of the Slovene People’s Party in this Bloc was tied to the party leadership’s desire to improve its bargaining position relative to the National Radical Party and gain entry into the government. The key points of the Bloc’s programme were the demand to revise state organization and to establish a parliamentary monarchy of the English type. The President of the Croatian Peasant Club, Pavle Radiæ, in the March 1925 session of the National Assembly read a proclamation from the leadership of the Croat Republican Peasant Party announcing the party's renaming as the Croat Peasant Party and its recognition of the legitimacy of the Vidovdan Constitution and the Karađorđević dynasty. The common interests of the leaders of the politics of national understanding, which from the time of the national elections in 1923 was embodied by the cooperation of their parties in first the Federalist Bloc, then the Opposition Bloc, and finally the Bloc of National Understanding and Peasant Democracy, was closely tied to the political might of the Croat Peasant Party and cooperation with it. This was negatively affected by the immediate distancing of the Slovene People's

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