Description
Momčilo Đurić’s book The Formation of the Multinational State of Yugoslavia (1918-1921) offers an analysis of the emerging years of the first Yugoslav state. Originally published by Moscow State University in 1970 as a result of his graduate research, it takes an invariably Marxist view of events. Forged amidst the background of the First World War and the struggle of the South Slavs for independence and unity, the author takes the reader through his evalulation of the negotiations that resulted in the Corfu Declaration, the proclamation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the elections to the Constitutent Assembly, the infamous banning of the communists via the Obznana and the nature of the 1921 Vidovdan Constitution. Đurić’s analysis lends him to the view that were it not for the Russian October Revolution and the general world situation it created, the unity of the South Slavs in one state in 1918, an historically progressive accomplishment, could not have been achieved. He argues both that it inspired the militancy and organisation of the people, as well as forced the Croat-Slovene Prečen bourgeoisie to reach an agreement with the royal Serbian bourgeoisie to subdue the proletariat.
Đurić blends both an analysis of the legal proclamations themselves, socio-economic facts and the reality of everyday political life. This is why, for example, the Vidovdan Constitution constitutes the bulk of this work. While seeming to include provisions that were positive in the situation of the year 1921, according to the author, their implementation was thoroughly limited by both other repressive and contradictory laws, as well as the nature of the crown’s ability to override parliament, bring about the rise and fall of governments and engender a massive bureaucracy to ensure the dictatorship of the highest apparatuses. This is all, of course, presented in conjunction with the first Yugoslavia’s dependence on American, French and British patronage. Đurić’s work, though perhaps considered in a different light today, offers a substantive alternative explanation for the emergence of the first Yugoslavia.