OCJENA HRVATSKO-SRPSKE KOALICIJE I SVETOZAR PRIBIĆEVIĆ U DJELU DR. FRANJE TUĐMANA
THE ASSESSMENT OF THE CROAT-SERB COALITION AND SVETOZAR PRIBIĆEVIĆ IN FRANJO TUĐMAN’S WRITINGS

Author(s): Mato Artuković
Subject(s): Diplomatic history, Political history, Government/Political systems, Political behavior, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939)
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Franjo Tuđman; Croat-Serb Coalition; Svetozar Pribićević; centralist and unitarianist unification of the monarchist Yugoslavia;
Summary/Abstract: Franjo Tuđman had not addressed the genesis of «New Course» politics and the establishment and the political activities of the Croat-Serb Coalition in his works in more detail. He only addressed these topics to the extent that was necessary to elucidate the fundamental problems of the interwar period he was studying. His assessment of the Croat-Serb Coalition, the final outcome of its politics, and its principal exponents is, however, precise, scientific, and fully acceptable from the modern point of view. The Coalition did bring about certain positive changes, but it did not provide a long-standing underpinning for effective Croatian politics. The Croat-Serb Coalition and its orientation caused Croatian politicians not only to be marginalized in Croatia, but also to lose their political importance in the eyes of Vienna and Pest. Serbian politicians, on the other hand, increased in importance in the efforts to maintain Hungarian hegemony over Croatia, becoming completely dominant in the fateful years before the World War I, as well as during the war. As the underlying thesis that the Coalition rested on, the thesis about Croatian-Serbian unity and about Croats and Serbs as «a single people with two names» not only proved to be a utopia, it also proved to be a very negative and detrimental idea in the long term. This «guiding idea of the Serbs and the Croats», which was later expanded into the idea about «a single people with three names», developed into a proper apple of discord, since it served as the basis for the establishment of the Yugoslav state in 1918, and persisted almost throughout the 20th century in the service of the Great-Serbian idea. Svetozar Pribićević played a particularly important role in the affirmation of this idea, having masterfully taken advantage of all the weaknesses of the coalitional political option to put into effect Pašić’s recommendation «to make sure that Serbian, and not Croatian politics is the relevant factor in the Southern Slavic territory» in his capacity of the head of the Coalition and Serbian agent in Croatia. The negative consequences of Pribićević’s politics, formally resting on the idea about «a single people with two names» or «a single people with three names», had a devastating effect even after his condemnation of his own politics.

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