Suchergebnisse

After the assassination of king Alexander (1934) the Kingdom of Yugoslavia witnessed a revival of the party and political life and confrontation between the regime and opposing forces. The new president of the government Milan Stojadinovic recognized again the existence of the Croatian question. At all political meetings the followers of Vladko Macek and of the Croatian Peasant Party all over Croatia asked the prince Pavle and the government to abolish the dictatorship. The same happened also at the meeting of Croatian Peasant Party in Sisak (1936), when one of the Party leaders, Ljudevit Tomasic, criticized the political situation in the country. Facing 12000 citizens of Sisak and peasants from the Sisak region, he asked for full sovereignty of Croatian people, Croatian Parliament in Zagreb, and said that Croats had never been nor would ever be Yugoslavs "because Yugoslavism is no nation at all". Because of this speech a criminal proceedings against Tomasic were instituted. It was a political process which included a series of state-run institutions. After the agreement between the new president of the government Dragisa Cvetkovic and Vladko Macek and after the establishment of Banovina Croatia, the procedure against Tomasic was stopped. (SOI : CSP: S. 296)

This article uses archival and newspaper sources along with basic secondary literature to examine legal proceedings conducted against Stjepan Radic', the leader of Croatia's strongest opposition party - The Croatian People's Peasant Party (HPSS). During 1919 and 1920, Radic was held in custody without trial, released, then rearrested and given a harsh sentence for politically opposing the creation of a unitaristic and centralized state under the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty. Radic wanted the distinctiveness of the Croatian nation to be recognized, so he sought automony for Croatia as the basis for its economic, political, and cultural development. Radic's trial, carried out inspite of the fact that some jurists felt it was unlawful, revealed the crux of the conflict between the regime and the HPSS, in effect, the Croatian opposition. Radic worked to ensure that the internal organization of the state would be based on national self-determination. For him, the upcoming election of a Constituent Assembly was all-important because it would determine the nature a Slovene-Croat-Serb state. Contrary to this, the Karadjordjevic regime assumed all the main national and constitutional questions had been settled on December 1, 1918, when a common kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes had been proclaimed. As far as the government was concerned, only the formality of writing a constitution had to be handled by the Constituent Assembly. Even though he was released on the very day of the election, Radic's trial showed that the Karadjordjevic' regime intended to solve political problems by the use of force, and not according to the rule of law. (SOI : CSP: S. 126f.)

The author publishes an unknown document of Janko Tortic (1902-1962), Croatian Peasant Party member of the parliament. Since 1927 Tortic was the leader of the Intelligence Office of the Main Secretariate of the Croatian Peasant Party and the editor of the Party newspaper. After the putsch of general Simovic he participated in creating the independent Croatian state. During the war he collaborated with the Independent State of Croatia's authorities. Owing to his activity, many followers of the Croatian Peasant Party joined the Ustasha movement, and Tortic himself became a member of the government. After World War Two he emigrated to the USA, where he died. Tortic's document is important for the research work on the activity of the Croatian Peasant Party, especially the events which occurred immediately before the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. The document is provided with an introduction and notes. (SOI : CSP: S. 367)

The author presents the basic directives, policy of and the situation in the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) during the Independent State of Croatia. He deals with the most important questions from the history of the wartime HSS: separation of the pro-Ustasha wing from HSS, activities of the group around Farolli, Jancikovic and Tomasic, central leadership around Kolutic, the attitude towards the partisan movement, the attitude towards the Tito-Subasic agreement, HSS at the end of the war and emigrating of some of its officials, among them their leader Macek. (SOI : CSP: S. 459)