Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats & Slovenes
With the defeat of Austria-Hungary in WWI and the subsequent dissolution of the Habs-
burg dynasty in 1918, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs banded together and declared the inde-
pendent Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, under Serbian King Peter I. Post-war
peace treaties had given large amounts of Slovenian and Croatian territory to Italy
(Primorska and Istria), Austria (Koroška) and Hungary (part of Prekmurje), and almost
half a million Slovenes now lived outside the borders.
The kingdom was dominated by Serbian
control, imperialistic pressure from Italy and
the notion of Yugoslav unity. Slovenia was re-
duced to little more than a province in this
centralist kingdom, although it did enjoy cul-
tural and linguistic autonomy, and economic
progress was rapid.
In 1929 Peter I's son King Alexander seized power, abolished the constitution and pro-
claimed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. But he was assassinated five years later during an of-
ficial visit to France, and his cousin, Prince Paul, was named regent. The political climate
changed in Slovenia when the conservative Clerical Party joined the new centralist gov-
ernment in 1935, proving hollow that party's calls for Slovenian autonomy. Splinter
groups began to seek closer contacts with the workers' movements; in 1937 the Commun-
ist Party of Slovenia (KPS) was formed under the tutelage of Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980)
and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ).
Neil Barnett's relatively slim biography
Tito,
an en-
tertaining and timely read, offers a new assessment
of the limits of holding a state like Yugoslavia to-
gether by sheer force of personality.
WWII & the Partisan Struggle
Yugoslavia stayed out of WWII until April 1941 when the German army invaded and oc-
cupied the country. Slovenia was split up among Germany (Štajerska, Gorenjska and
Koroška), Italy (Ljubljana, Primorska, Notranjska, Dolenjska and Bela Krajina) and Hun-
gary (Prekmurje). To counter this, the Slovenian Communists and other left-wing groups
formed a Liberation Front (Osvobodilne Fronte, or OF), and the people took up arms for
the first time since the peasant uprisings. The OF, dedicated to the principles of a united
Slovenia in a Yugoslav republic, joined the all-Yugoslav Partisan army of the KPJ, which
received assistance from the Allies and was the most organised - and successful - of any
resistance movement during WWII.
