Stjepan Radić, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization,1904-1928

359 Pages·2000·18.905 MB·English

by  Mark Biondich

STJEPAN RADIC, THE CROAT PEASANT PARTY, AND
THE POLITICS OF MASS MOBILIZATION, 1904-1928
The Croatian nationalist leader Stjepan Radic is generally considered one
of the most important politicians in Yugoslavian history. In 1904 Radic
mobilized the peasantry to form a populist movement that resulted in the
Croat Peasant Party. The CPP fought to reform Yugoslavia's centralist state
system and to amend the structural flaws of the parliamentary system. His
assassination in 1928 marked the end of the country's short democratic
experience; a royalist dictatorship immediately followed. Croatia failed to
achieve statehood or autonomy within Yugoslavia, but Radic's indisputably
dominant role in the formation of Croatian national consciousness is widely
celebrated among Croatians today.
The story of this charismatic, ideologically eclectic politician and his role in
nation-building makes for fascinating reading. In North America, with our
increasing involvement in the political conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, we
cannot afford to remain ignorant of the major historical forces involved in the
early Serb/Croat struggles for power and identity. This is an essential work for
political scientists, historians, and other specialists in the area.
MARK BIONDICH was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute on East
Central Europe, Columbia University, while working on this book. He is
currently with the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. He also holds a position at
the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.
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MARK BIONDICH
Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant
Party, and the Politics of Mass
Mobilization, 1904-1928
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4727-0 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8294-0 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Biondich, Mark
Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant Party, and the politics of mass
mobilization, 1904-1928
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4727-0 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8294-7 (pbk.)
1. Radic, Stjepan, 1871-1928. 2. Hrvatska seljacka stranka - History.
3. Croatia-Politics and government- 1800-1918. 4. Croatia -
Politics and government - 1918-1945. I. Title.
DR1589.R33B56 1999 949.7201'092 C99-932733-X
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council and
the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and
Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing
activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP).
Canada
Contents
PREFACE Vll
ABBREVIATIONS xili
1 Introduction and Historical Background 3
2 Stjepan Radic: The Formative Years, 1871-1904 27
3 Agrarianism and National Integration: The Ideology and Organization of
Croat Peasantism 62
4 Stjepan Radic, Croatianism, Yugoslavism, and the Habsburg
Monarchy 91
5 The Revolt of the Masses: Stjepan Radic, the HPSS, and the Great War,
1914-1918 120
6 The Neutral Croat Peasant Republic and the Politics of National Mobiliza-
tion, 1918l925 149
r
7 Stjepan Radic and the Croat Question, 1925-1928 207
8 Conclusion 245
NOTES 255
BIBLIOGRAPHY 311
INDEX 329
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Preface
When the noted Scottish historian R.W. Seton-Watson set out to write a com-
prehensive history of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the first
years of this century, he bemoaned the fact that 'the vital question of National-
ity met me at every turn and clamoured for a solution.' In the last years of this
century, with polyglot states like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslo-
vakia succumbing to the pressures of nationalism, scholars and politicians
alike are still attempting to come to terms with 'the vital question of National-
ity.' Of all the ideologies that have had an impact on the course of the twentieth
century, nationalism has endured most successfully, and appears to be thriving
at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
This study deals with one important aspect of 'the vital question of Nation-
ality,' the process of national integration. More specifically, it deals with
nationalism and nation-building among the Croats. National integration was
completed in the Croat case in the 1920s under the aegis of Stjepan Radic's
Croat Peasant Party. Consequently, the primary task of this study is to exam-
ine the agrarian-national ideology and program of the Croat Peasant Party.
The central axis around which the work revolves is the relationship between
Stjepan Radic, his party, and the Croat intelligentsia. One might naturally ask,
why the Croat Peasant Party and the intelligentsia? In Croatia, as in most other
parts of East Central Europe, the numerically small intelligentsia held a cen-
tral place in the national movement. The absence of a large native middle or
working class meant that the intelligentsia played the dominant role in politi-
cal and cultural life. The peasantry tended to identify the educated elite with
the city and the bureaucracy - that is, with exploitation of the peasant and vil-
lage. By the turn of the century, Croatian society, like many other predomi-
nantly agrarian societies, was permeated by an immense social and cultural
divide between the city and intelligentsia, on the one hand, and the peasantry,
viii Preface
on the other. This was one of the major obstacles to the completion of the pro-
cess of national integration.
This urban-rural divide was confronted in the 1890s by Stjepan Radic and
his generation of the Croat intelligentsia. They hoped to bridge the chasm
between peasant and intellectual in order to bring national integration to its
completion. They consciously saw themselves as following in the footsteps of
the Illyrianists, who had initiated the Croat national awakening at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century. At the same time, they endeavoured to bring to
an end the growing Croat-Serb antagonism in Croatia, which began manifest-
ing itself in the 1870s. Radic eventually broke, however, not only with the
older generation of the intelligentsia, but with his colleagues as well.
With the creation of the Croat Peasant Party in 1904, Radic became the first
politician in Croatia to place politics on a peasant foundation. In the post-1918
period he emerged as one of the most important politicians in the first Yugo-
slav state and as the leader of the only significant party in Croatia. The other
task of this study, therefore, is to shed light on the national question in Yugo-
slavia during the first decade of that state's existence (1918-28). To under-
stand the national question in Yugoslavia, one needs not only a proper
understanding of the competing (primarily Croat and Serb) nationalist ideolo-
gies, but also a comprehension of the eminent political personalities who
shaped the Yugoslav state in its formative period. Radic was among the most
important politicians of the first Yugoslavia, and yet hitherto not a single
monograph has appeared about Radic in a major Western language. The inter-
war Yugoslav literature is abundant, but often it is either of a panegyrical or
disparaging nature. There is some good literature from the post-1945 period,
but much of it is ideologically skewed.
Many important questions pertaining to Radic and his 'peasantism' still
remain unresolved. How was the Croat Peasant Party able to establish the basis
of a national movement? What were the concepts that Stjepan Radic and his
brother Antun articulated to win peasants over to the national cause? What role
did the Yugoslav state, which denied the national individuality of the Croats,
play in strengthening Croat national consciousness and thus in furthering Croat
national integration? What was and remains Stjepan Radic's legacy in Yugo-
slav politics and Croatian history? One can legitimately say that we still lack a
comprehensive understanding of Radic's peasantist ideology, its relation to the
modernization process in Croatia, and his political tactics and role in Yugoslav
politics. Nor has the issue of the troubled relationship between Radic and the
intelligentsia been sufficiently addressed in the historiography.
The chapters of this study combine a thematic and a chronological approach.
Within a chronological sequence of events, I have attempted to deal themati-
Preface ix
cally with the issues that separated Radic and the peasant party-movement and
Croatia's (and subsequently Yugoslavia's) very diverse intellectual elite. By
examining their relationship over a range of political, socioeconomic, and
ideological issues I have tried to provide a nuanced discussion of Radic's
peasantism while addressing the issues posed above. This study consists of
eight chapters. Chapter 1, an introduction, offers historical background about
nationalism, the Croat national movement, the character of the Croat-Serb
antagonism, and the nature of Croatian society to the turn of the century. I have
also tried to shed light on the character of the chasm between the city and the
village and the consequences this had on the process of national integration.
Chapter 2 examines Radic's early years and the formation of his Weltan-
schauung, and assesses the causes of the split between himself and both the
older and younger generations of the intelligentsia. Chapter 3 deals with
the Croat Peasant Party's agrarian-peasantist ideology and how it relates to the
process of national integration and modernization. In the course of researching
this topic, it became evident to me that particular emphasis had to be placed on
Stjepan and Antun Radic's concepts of 'peasant right' and 'peasant state.'
Chapter 4 examines Radic's national ideology and the party's national program
as well as Radic's relationship with the Croato-Serb Coalition, the political
group most representative of the majority of Croatia's intelligentsia, both Croat
and Serb. A significant segment of the Croat intelligentsia adopted Yugoslavist
ideology, and by 1918 most Croat intellectuals supported unification with Ser-
bia. Radic long opposed this course of action, and it is therefore imperative to
examine his national ideology, especially since he became the only Croat
leader of significance after 1918. The issue of Yugoslavism, one of the main
questions dividing Radic and the intelligentsia, is of great significance in rela-
tion to the process of national integration. In its evolution among the Croats,
Yugoslav ideology had many variants, and few were unitarist. The purpose of
this ideology in the vast majority of cases was to affirm Croat national individ-
uality and statehood in cooperation with the other Southern Slavs. Radic falls
into this tradition, which was increasingly challenged by unitarist Yugoslavism
in the pre-1914 period. A much shorter version of this chapter has appeared as
an article in volume 27 of Austrian History Yearbook (1996). In Chapter 5 I
examine Radic's wartime policies. By 1918 the Croatian countryside was in
revolt against the city and the urban elite. The Croat Peasant Party's agrarian
and national ideologies, as well as its organization, placed it in an excellent
position to tap into the peasantry's new radicalism.
In the aftermath of the Great War, the Croat Peasant Party became the only
significant political force in Croatia. In Chapter 6 I examine Radic's policy
vis-d-vis Belgrade and his attempt to create a neutral Croat peasant republic. It