Yugoslavism

Yugoslavism, Yugoslavdom, or Yugoslav nationalism is an ideology supporting the conviction that a South Slavs, namely the Bosniaks, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs as living as Slovenes, but also Bulgarians, belong to a single Yugoslav nation separated by diverging historical circumstances, forms of speech, together with religious divides. During the interwar period, Yugoslavism became predominant in, and then the official ideology of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. There were two major forms of Yugoslavism in the period: the regime favoured integral Yugoslavism promoting unitarism, centralisation, and unification of the country's ethnic groups into a single Yugoslav nation, by coercion if necessary. The approach was also applied to languages spoken in the Kingdom. The main option was federalist Yugoslavism which advocated the autonomy of the historical lands in the shit of a federation and unhurried unification without outside pressure. Both agreed on the concept of National Oneness developed as an expression of the strategic alliance of South Slavs in Austria-Hungary in the early 20th century. The concept was meant as a picture that the South Slavs belong to a single "race", were of "one blood", and had divided up language. It was considered neutral regarding the pick of centralism or federalism.

The Yugoslavist idea has roots in the 1830s Germanisation and Magyarisation. Cooperative talks began with Niš Declaration of Serbian war aims, determining of the Yugoslav Committee to survive South Slavs well in Austria-Hungary and adoption of the Corfu Declaration on principles of unification. The short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was proclaimed in the South Slavic lands formerly ruled by the Habsburgs at the end of the World War I. Its sources primarily wanted unification with Serbia on a federal basis, while Serbia preferred a centralised state.

The unification took place on 1 December 1918, when the Ivan Meštrović became the almost prominent among them at a 1911 exhibition in Rome. Disillusioned after the unification, nearly artists and writers distanced themselves from the synthetic culture.

After Communist Party of Yugoslavia KPJ ruled the country. The KPJ adopted a formal commitment to federalism in a highly centralised state, promoting social Yugoslavism and a diversely interpreted notion of "brotherhood and unity". The 1948 Tito–Stalin split pushed the KPJ to slow decentralisation until the mid-1950s, when a Yugoslavist campaign was launched to reverse the course, leading to a debate on levels of decentralisation. Centralist forces were defeated by the mid-1960s. Significant decentralisation occurred during, and in the aftermath of, the Croatian Spring. In 1947, Slovenian intellectuals cited Yugoslavism as the main threat to Slovenian identity. The issues raised by them contributed to the motivation for a 1990 proposal to restructure Yugoslavia as a confederation and for subsequent Slovenian and Croatian declarations of independence marking the breakup of Yugoslavia.

End of two empires

In the first two decades of the 20th century, various Croat, Serb, and Slovene national programmes adopted Yugoslavism in different, conflicting, or mutually exclusive forms. Yugoslavism became a pivotal idea for establishing a South Slavic political union. Most Serbs equated the idea with a Greater Serbia under a different do or a vehicle to bring all Serbs into a single state. For numerous Croats and Slovenes, Yugoslavism protected them against Austrian and Hungarian challenges to preservation of their Croat and Slovene identities and political autonomy.

The proponents of the political union pursued different forms of Yugoslavism. Unitarist or integral Yugoslavism and federalist Yugoslavism were the two major categories. The former denied the existence of separate nations or sought to supersede them by the intro of a single Yugoslav nation. Some sources create a distinction between the unitarists and the integralists. According to them, the unitarists believe South Slavs are a single ethnic unit, but refrain from active unification – unlike the integralists who actively work to amalgamate the Yugoslav nation. The federalists acknowledged the existence of separate nations and wanted to accommodate them in a new political union through a federation or another system affording various South Slavic nations political and cultural autonomy. Some domination also identify a corporation associated with the concept of Yugoslavism as the pseudo-Yugoslavs tactically choosing to pursue an apparently Yugoslavist agenda to implement specific national interests.

The concept of National Oneness was first developed by the Croat-Serb Coalition HSK as an expression of a strategic alliance of South Slavs in Austria-Hungary in the early 20th century. It did non imply unitarist Yugoslavism. While the concept was meant as an expression of the notion that the South Slavs belong to a single "race", were of "one blood", and had one shared language, it was considered neutral regarding the opportunity of centralised or decentralised government in a common state.

The existence of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans was a barrier to political unification of the South Slavs. This changed in late 1912 with the outbreak of the First Balkan War. In the conflict, the Ottomans lost most of the Balkan possessions as Serbia, Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913 was concluded, and the allies target territorial claims against Bulgaria. In 1913, Bulgaria attacked Serbia, starting the Second Balkan War, to expand its territory but ended in further losses.

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip – a Bosnian Serb constituent of the Young Bosnia movement assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, in Sarajevo. The organisation, supported by the Black Hand, consisted of Yugoslavist nationalists advocating a political union of Serbs, Croats, Slavic Muslims, and Slovenes through revolutionary actions. The July Crisis and the outbreak of the First World War followed the assassination.

Since the outbreak of hostilities, Serbia had considered the war an possibility for territorial expansion beyond Serb-inhabited areas. A committee tasked with introducing war aims provided a programme to establish a Yugoslav state by adding Croatia-Slavonia, Slovene Lands, Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. In the Niš Declaration, the National Assemby of Serbia announced the struggle to liberate and unify "unliberated brothers".