Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs: The History of a National Idea

By Božidar Jezernik

The term “Yugoslavia” first appeared in an article in the newspaper Slovenija in Ljubljana on Friday, October 19, 1849. The author of the article declared that he was not interested in politics, but only in the literary unification of Yugoslavs within the Austro-Hungary Empire. With ongoing conflicts and disparate forms of nationalism in and around historical Yugoslavia as its backdrop, Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs for the first time addresses the history and idea of a united Yugoslavia in and during which a true “Yugoslav” identity never really came into being . Following a series of wars and uprisings from 1875 onwards, the first nation-state of Southern Slavs, established after World War I, became the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes” — a competing nationalistic blender that would go through failure, revival and transformation of the concept of “Yugoslavia”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Jul 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805390442

Božidar Jezernik

Božidar Jezernik is full professor at the University of Ljubljana. He teaches Ethnology of the Balkans, Anthropology of Globalisation and Social Memory and Cultural Heritage. He was head of Department, from 1988–1992 and 1998–2003, and dean of Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, from 2003–7.  He has been the leader of a program research group called Slovenian Identities in European and Global Contextsince 2004.

Book preview

YUGOSLAVIA WITHOUT YUGOSLAVS

YUGOSLAVIA WITHOUT YUGOSLAVS

The History of a National Idea

Božidar Jezernik

Original Serbian Text Translated by Lucy Stevens and Vuk Šećerović, with New and Revised Text from the Author

Published in 2023 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

English-language edition

© 2023 Božidar Jezernik

Serbian-language edition

© 2018 Božidar Jezernik

This book is a revised and supplemented version of Jugoslavija, zemlja snova by Biblioteka XX vek (2018)

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jezernik, Božidar, author, translator.

Title: Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs: the history of a national idea / Božidar Jezernik ; translated from the Serbian by Božidar Jezernik [and two others].

Other titles: Jugoslavija, zemlja snova. English

Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2023. | Originally published as Jugoslavija, zemlja snova by Biblioteka XX vek (2018). | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023000715 (print) | LCCN 2023000716 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390435 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390442 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Yugoslavs—Ethnic identity. | Yugoslavia—History—Philosophy. | Nationalism—Yugoslavia—History. | National characteristics, Yugoslav. | Group identity—Yugoslavia. | Balkan Peninsula—Ethnic relations—History—20th century.

Classification: LCC DR1248 .J4913 2023 (print) | LCC DR1248 (ebook) | DDC 305.8918/204971—dc23/eng/20230118

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000715

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000716

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80539-043-5 hardback

ISBN 978-1-80539-044-2 ebook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390435

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction. The Naming and Origins of the Yugoslav Idea

Chapter 1. In Search of a Path to Yugoslav Unification

Chapter 2. Marko Kraljević in the Age of Capitalism

Chapter 3. Turning the Austro-Hungarian Yugoslavs against the Serbs

Chapter 4. The Memory of Fallen Soldiers as a Seed of Discord

Chapter 5. The Father of the Modern Yugoslav Idea

Chapter 6. Creating the New Nation-State

Chapter 7. Celebrating the Unity of the Nation with Three Names

Chapter 8. The Yugoslav Nation-State as a Mosaic, Not a Melting Pot of Peoples

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Figure 0.1. Ethnographic Map of the Yugoslavs (1918). Serbs, Croats, Slovenes—Yugoslavs—are one people. For this reason, they seek the unification of all their lands into one free nation-state. Unknown author and publisher. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 0.2. Miroslav Hubmajer as an insurgent in Herzegovina. Published in the Humoristische Blätter, October 10, 1875. Drawn by Karel Klíč. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 2.1. Yugoslav rally after the Serbian victory in the First Balkan War. Dubrovnik, November 24, 1912. Photographer unknown. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 2.2. The Smile of a Fallen (Serbian) Soldier. It is sweet to die for the fatherland! Photo from the Great War Album, by Major Andre Popović (1918–20). Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 2.3. The famous event of two Slovene volunteers. Caricature from the publication Balkanska vojna v karikaturi in sliki (The Balkan War in Caricature and Picture), April 12, 1913. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 2.4. Gosposvetsko polje—Slovensko Kosovo (Zollfeld—Slovenian Kosovo). In Slovene history, Zollfeld was important as it was where the Princely Stone stood. It was at the Princely Stone that the Dukes of Carantania were installed. Published by Umetniška propaganda, Ljubljana, 1918. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 3.1. Hurray, to Belgrade / Serbia must be ours! Austro-Hungarian propaganda postcard. Published in 1914 by Ludwig Mayer, Munich. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 3.2. On the graves of our enemy. Unknown photographer. The photo was taken in eastern Serbia in early 1915 and sent as a postcard to Ljubljana. Source: private collection of Milan Škrabec. Used with permission.

Figure 3.3. Avgust Jenko, a Slovene volunteer from Austria-Hungary in the Serbian army. Killed in action on August 16/17, 1914. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 4.1. The Kosovo Temple (or Vidovdan Temple), model (1918). Designed by Ivan Meštrović. The temple was never realized. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 4.2. Monument to the fallen (Serbian) soldiers in Mladenovac. Postcard published by the bookshop of Jele Ilić (1918). Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 4.3. Unveiling of the monument to the fallen soldiers, Kranjski Janez (John of Carniola). Dovje, May 24, 1925. Photographer unknown. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 4.4. For the heroes of our homeland, for our compatriots. Monument to fallen (Slovene) soldiers in Trebnje, unveiled in September 1933. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 5.1. Minister without portfolio Dr. Niko Županić, the Spiritual Father of Yugoslavia. Photo published by Ilustrirani Slovenec, February 7, 1925. Ilustrirani Slovenec commented on the photo that it was not known who the spiritual mother of Yugoslavia was, adding ironically that this was apparently not Zupanić’s party colleagues Lazica Marković or Velizar Janković. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 6.1. Scene from the play The Empress of the Balkans by Knjaz Nikola and the Knjaz’s family. Postcard published by N. S. Bjeladinović, Kotor. Published before 1910. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 6.2. Commemoration of the fifth slet (literary flocking of birds, used for mass gymnastic festivals) of the župa (union) of Svetozar Miletić. Sombor, June 5, 1927. Unknown publisher. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 7.1. The Founding of Yugoslavia. A manifestation that took place in Ljubljana, October 29, 1918. Photo by Fr. Grabietz. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 7.2. Vera Bojničić, October 29, 1918. Published by Rudolf Polaček, Zagreb. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 8.1. On the World Stage. Published by Umetniška propaganda, Ljubljana, 1918. Source: private collection of the author.

Figure 8.2. Do you want good for your country? Vote for the Radicals! Pašić and the National Radical Party defend the Vidovdan Constitution against Stjepan Radić, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, the communists, and envious foreign powers. National Radical Party leaflet published before the elections in the 1920s. Source: private collection of the author.

Preface

It has been a hundred years since Yugoslavia emerged as a child of World War I, dubbed the Third Balkan War by some, and more than a quarter of a century since it disappeared from the geopolitical map of the world. Nonetheless, it lingers in the public imagination as a fascinating mystery, a persistent source of conflicting mythologies. Indeed, contemporary narratives about Yugoslavia recall the Indian parable of the five blind men and the elephant: each put his hand on a different part of the elephant’s body, and so one—after feeling its leg—claimed that it resembled a tree, another—after grasping its tail—claimed that it resembled a snake, and so on. In some versions of the story, the men came to suspect that the others were being dishonest, and they clashed, for each of them claimed absolute truth on the basis of his subjective experience, while at the same time ignoring the subjective experiences of the others.

The process of Yugoslavia’s collapse in the 1990s yielded horrific images and caused large amounts of bloodshed, from which one usually concludes that the tragedy of its sudden dissolution offers proof that it was built on unreliable foundations, that it contained too many contradictions to survive. Four wars that broke out in the short span of the first half of the 1990s were interpreted as evidence that this country was burdened with a surplus of history, with too much internal strife, too many intolerant nationalisms.

This, however, was not the case. In fact, the fundamental difference between Yugoslavia and the other nation-states of the time was not an excess of history or an overwhelming social and political weight that the young nation could not throw off, nor were Yugoslavia’s nationalisms too vicious for its disputes to be settled at the ballot box. Closer examination reveals that the story of surplus history lacks any foundation, that Yugoslavia’s problem lay not in a surplus but rather in an absence of nationalism.

Yugoslavia first appeared as an idea in the Habsburg Empire, in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848, also known as the Springtime of Nations, as a romantic icon of modernization and progress. Yugoslavia was imagined in the early days as a bridge over which people pass from slavery to freedom,¹ from the here and now to the Land of Dreams where all South Slavs, regardless of differences in language, former affiliations, and beliefs, would live happily together as a single nation, large and strong enough to compete successfully under the conditions of a new, capitalist system.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Revolutions of 1848 awakened national consciousness in the Slavic South. Sima Marković, for instance, had little trouble proving that the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes had independently developed into three distinct nations.² At the time of the formation of these three nations, however, the name Jugoslavija appeared, denoting an imagined community of all Slavs in Southeastern Europe. Thus, the Yugoslav idea, which imagined a common nation-state of all Yugoslavs, was not a singular and coherent one from the beginning. Rather, several versions of the idea existed simultaneously, and their proponents, competing for the hearts and minds of the people, variously cooperated with each other, counteracted each other, and fought against each other.³

Since hopes for the establishment of an independent state within Austria-Hungary were rather unrealistic, such hopes were instead channeled into the Yugoslav idea, which was disseminated as a specifically cultural association that could exist within the imperial framework. And although the Yugoslav idea was presented as an essentially cultural concept, the nascent Yugoslav nationalism that inevitably emerged from this ideology was, like all nationalisms, charged with clear political tendencies. As a contemporary Swiss politician and jurist, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, wrote, it was a zeitgeist shaped by the general conviction that the world should be divided into as many states as there were nations: Each nation, one state. Each state, one national entity.⁴ Nations, then, sought political unions that included all people of common ethnicity and language as equal citizens and sovereign peoples.

Yugoslavia, however, was always more than just a name. Although clashing views about the past and the future led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century, that does not mean that the dreams of a better future from which it was born have lost their appeal. Indeed, we can use the words of Walter Bagehot and say that Yugoslavia was the product of men who were regarded by their contemporaries as dreamers who, as the saying goes, walked into a well from looking at the stars.⁵ It is one of the aims of this book to rescue these dreamers, as E. P. Thompson put it, from the enormous condescension of posterity.⁶

That the dreams of Yugoslavia were in harmony with the spirit of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the aspirations of the Yugoslavs is best illustrated by the fact that, in its short history, it was founded not once but twice. Moreover, although it disintegrated twice, it never died a natural death;⁷ first, it was crushed by external enemies, and in the end it disintegrated due to internal rivalries.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nationalisms flourished most during the bloody tragedies of wartime, as if they drew their vitality from the bloodshed of the people: the more blood that was spilled, the stronger the national pride. Gathering under opposing banners instilled patriotism in people, who felt the urge to rally around a common cause and take action; it fostered and celebrated courage, self-sacrifice and heroism, ambition and greed, but also fear and hatred. This book, therefore, examines how the Yugoslav idea grew and changed, from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to the end of World War I, when the victory of the Entente and the legitimization of the principle of the self-determination of nations gave birth to the nation-state of the Yugoslavs.

The Yugoslav state could not have existed without the principle of self-determination proposed by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points for the Paris Peace Conference. But it would not have come into being if the Yugoslav political leadership had not credibly represented, on the international stage, the idea that the Yugoslavs wanted to unite as a single nation in a common nation-state, and if, at the same time, the Yugoslav people had not accepted this idea as their own. When Yugoslavia was founded, it united within its borders, for the first time in history, almost all Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, as well as Montenegrins, Bosniaks, and Macedonians, who had been separated by geography and history for centuries and had had almost no contact with each other, yet had never been completely isolated from each other. It was conceived as a nation-state of a single nation; nevertheless, it was not christened with one name, but rather as a nation-state of three tribes, one nation with three names.

Although the people of Yugoslavia enthusiastically cheered the founding of the state, a dispute soon broke out between the political parties over the question of whether the Yugoslavs were one nation or two or three nations—or perhaps even more—which eventually determined the entire political life of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. For five years, this question was debated; the political parties were concerned exclusively with the interests and problems of the nation to which they belonged. A deep gulf formed between the peoples, giving rise to mistrust, which made any common identity impossible. After just five years in the common country, in the elections of March 18, 1923, the people rallied behind the Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene national flags, and abandoned the Yugoslav one. In short, each part of the single nation with three names voted for itself and for its particular interests: the Serbs for the centralist system, the Croats and Slovenes for autonomy.

The Yugoslav idea was thus practically dead long before King Aleksandar gave his kingdom a single name to preserve national and state unity and integrity. By christening the state with a single name, the king sought to emphasize not only the unitary form of government, but also the homogeneity of that government and the unity of the nation that formed it, with a view to balancing the existing tribal diversity and division.⁸ The poet and diplomat Jovan Dučić was enthusiastic about this bold and cheerful cutting of the Gordian knot created by the name that emphasized the difference between the three tribes rather than the identity of the blood of the nation and the ideal of the nation.⁹

One blood and one state! One nation and one name! One destiny and one formula for life! One homeland and one patriotism! One future and one duty! One language and one national culture! One tradition and one history!¹⁰

King Aleksandar was held in such high esteem by his subjects that he might have succeeded in creating the Yugoslav identity.¹¹ But it was not to be, for the fear that the king might succeed guided the hand of the assassin who shot him in Marseille on October 9, 1934.

My analysis is not based on the common practice of deciphering the past specifically through documents, treaties, and proclamations. Indeed, it is obvious that many contracts containing false promises were signed and numerous documents were written with secret intentions that cannot be discerned between the lines. A vivid example is the Corfu Declaration, which served as the legal basis for the newly established nation-state of the Yugoslavs: it was signed by Ante Trumbić on behalf of the Yugoslav Committee and by Nikola Pašić on behalf of the government of the Kingdom of Serbia. They put their pens to paper after weeks of negotiations during which the content of the declaration had been thoroughly discussed, and yet each left with his own distinct impressions of the words and their meanings, and his own motives, which led to immediate discrepancies in the implementation of the declaration.¹² The same was true of the other participants in the Corfu Conference of July 1917.

The stated aim of the Corfu negotiations was to unite the South Slav citizens of the Dual Monarchy with the citizens of the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro in a single nation-state, and yet the oldest Yugoslav state (Montenegro) is not even mentioned by name in this document¹³—a telling omission that speaks volumes about the fickle nature of political documents and their trustworthiness as communicators of social reality.

Like any other product of historical development, the idea of the Yugoslav nation-state was subject to dissent and change; however, this does not mean that, from today’s perspective, we can fully understand the motivations and emotions of those who identified themselves as Yugoslavs. Now that the belief in an afterlife held by those buried in the ancient Egyptian pyramids has disappeared, we might consider the pyramids monumentally absurd. However, as Andrzej Mencwel (2013) has reminded us, such a view does not tell us much about what the pyramids meant to those who worked to build these massive architectural marvels. The same is true of those who worked hard to build the Temple of Vid, as Ivan Meštrović called it, and make the Yugoslav dreams come true. If we exclusively look at the hostile attitudes of the different Yugoslav nationalities toward each other, which led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, we cannot see that those who invented the Yugoslav idea envisioned the Yugoslavs as a single nation along the lines of Italy and Germany.

It would be unusual for a story that begins in the wrong place to end with the right explanations, especially if that story begins with a tragic ending and seeks an explanation for why a happy beginning was impossible. This is the case with the history of the Yugoslav idea, typically examined through the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and usually interpreted by projecting the present onto the past. The bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia and the establishment of seven nation-states on its former territory is taken as the ultimate confirmation of the impossibility of the Yugoslav idea. It is not that those who use this method of interpretation are ignorant of the basic facts; rather, they isolate them, omit them, or simply ignore them when they do not fit into their story. In this way, they have constructed a story that is now taken for granted, with the result that any effort to find a more viable interpretation seems superfluous.

Today, decades after Yugoslavia’s disintegration, it is easy to argue that such an outcome was inevitable; however, Yugoslavia could have survived the 1990s if the nation-state had succeeded in turning peasants into Yugoslavs after its founding in 1918, and if all the special circumstances had not converged in a widening and ultimately unstoppable stream. Politicians and journalists may be the main culprits responsible for this state of affairs, but they are not solely to blame. Historians also do their part. In order to find a way out of the labyrinth they have erected, we must look at the history of the Yugoslav idea from the beginning and trace its increasing popularity over time, taking into account its strengths and weaknesses. This is the aim of the present book: to examine the period in which the Yugoslav idea received its name, what gave it strength over the years, and what went wrong after it successfully led to the creation of the Yugoslav nation-state.

Notes

1. Proroković, 1902, 2.

2. Marković, 1923a, 108.

3. See, for example, Malin, 1925, 5; Gross, 1968–69, 140.

4. Bluntschli, 1870, 23.

5. Bagehot, 1872, 187.

6. Thompson, 1963, 12.

7. Magaš, 1993, xiv.

8. Kostić, 1934, 2.

9. Dučić, 1929, 1.

10. Ibid.

11. See, for example, Dobrivojević, 2006, 51–54, 324.

12. See, for example, Jedan koji zna, 1919, 1; Paulová, 1924, 497.

13. See, for example, Popović, 1919, 20–21.

Introduction

The Naming and Origins of the Yugoslav Idea

If we wish to understand the concept of a nation and its great power, both creative and destructive, we must examine its history. And what do we find there? First of all, we find that the concept of národnost (nationality) is a fruit of modern times,¹ and that the idea of the nation was a novelty in the nineteenth century, without a historical precedent.² Previously, all that counted was belonging to a town, a village, a state, or a religion—not belonging to a nation. Political group consciousness only emerged with the notion of a sovereign political community, communitas regni. Almost simultaneously, we encounter the political concept of patria (otadžbina in Serbian, Vaterland in German), which was primarily an expression of a class-based state patriotism closely linked to the concept of fidelitas (political loyalty). Thus, although people were aware, to some extent, that they belonged to a particular nationality as early as the Middle Ages and early modernity, this nationality did not signify a political community for them, nor was it central to their political loyalty.³

In the nineteenth century, the idea of the nation was still unknown and unimaginable to most Central Europeans. Thus, in the period between 1844 and 1851, the editors of Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (Agriculture and Handicraft News) felt compelled to explain to their readers the difference between the words narodno (vernacular) and nerodno (awkward).⁴ People in other Central European countries had similar difficulties in understanding the concept of the nation.⁵ As things began to change across the continent and all of Europe was being reshaped and influenced by the concept of nationhood, the Yugoslavs did not want to be left behind; they too wanted to develop and prosper.⁶

The nation is an idea that was conceived by a few national awakeners—that is, poets, philosophers, historians, and philologists—who constructed the collective spirit of their nation by employing emotionally charged language, evocative symbols, and powerful rituals to inspire the people and to nationalize their non-national community.⁷ As used to be said, a nation does not fully awaken from its long slumber until it can freely develop all of its potential and participate in the general competition for social progress. In a relatively short time, the idea of the nation proved to be a powerful galvanizing force that was historically unprecedented and stronger than dynastic loyalty or religious affiliation.

In the mid-nineteenth century, as the idea of the nation became increasingly dominant, there was a geopolitical reshaping of the European continent according to the new principles of nationality. Thus, the Count of Cavour argued that Italy was not just a geographical designation, as Prince Metternich used to say, but also a political fact. Austrian chancellor Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, on the other hand, resentfully said that he no longer saw Europe (Ich sehe kein Europa mehr).⁸

In order for the imagined kingdom of South Slavs to come into being, it first needed a name. Today, there are three theories about the origins of its name. Some believe that the name was coined in Croatia by Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who was the uncrowned king of Yugoslav intellectuals for more than half a century.⁹ Some think it was conceived in Belgrade.¹⁰ Still others claim that Yugoslavia was invented by Petar II Petrović Njegoš, Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, whose epic poem Lažni car Šćepan Mali (The False Tsar Stephen the Little) was published in Zagreb in 1851, with an inscription on the title page that read, in Yugoslavia.¹¹ None of these theories, however, is correct. The name Jugoslavija (Yugoslavia) first appeared in an article in the newspaper Slovenija in Ljubljana on Friday, October 19, 1849.¹²

The author of the article declared that he was interested not in politics, but only in the literary unification of Yugoslavs within the Austro-Hungary Empire. For this reason, he referred to the language they spoke as the common Yugoslav language and said that he was not calling for arms, but only for spiritual, literary union, and argued for the assertion of the one and only Yugoslav literary language.¹³ In his opinion, the Yugoslav language and the attachment to the Yugoslav national tree should also be accepted by the Slovenes, who were a small nation with many enemies and therefore needed a strong ally, which—according to Bukovšek—they already had because they were a branch on the great, strong Yugoslav tree:

Our task is only to take care that this branch does not break off, lest it should dry up naturally, which would damage the whole tree. If a limb is cut off, the flesh will soon rot and decay, and the rest of the body will lose strength and hardly be able to perform its functions. If the Slovenes were to separate themselves from the rest of Jugoslavija, they would lose strength and in time perish, as unfortunately happened to so many neighboring peoples in Carinthia and Styria who were Germanized, and the rest of Jugoslavija would become weaker.¹⁴

In the mid-nineteenth century, many Slavs, hoping for Yugoslav unity, also looked to the Habsburg Empire in hopes of Yugoslav unity—first in culture, then in politics. Among the Slovenes, the most active organization in this regard was the Slovenija Society from Graz. In 1848, Matija Majar, a member of this society, wrote a paper in which he explained the necessity of unification with Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. A good example of cooperation between the highest representatives of the Yugoslav peoples was the proclamation of Count Josip Jelačić as Ban of Croatia. He was enthroned by Patriarch Josif Rajačić and warmly congratulated by Vladika Petar II Petrović Njegoš: Here everyone, young and old, prays to God for your health and well-being. In his speech, Ban Jelačić told those present, We are all one people; we have left behind both Serbs and Croats.¹⁵ In 1849, Bishop Strossmayer wrote that the most important task that lies before the Yugoslavs is to come together, to unite, and to unify. In 1850, at the invitation of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Slovene, Croatian, and Serbian scholars and writers met in Vienna, where they agreed on a common literary language. Similar meetings took place in Zagreb and Ljubljana, where, in addition to literary topics, unity to the end was discussed.¹⁶

Celebrating a Glorious Past

The new idea of a single, permanent, and indivisible nation required the firm foundation of a homogeneous, coherent historical perspective, free from doubt and uncertainty, which signified a predestined continuity that justified and vindicated the nation for all time.¹⁷ A common name and language were a sine qua non in the process of nation-building, but knowledge of the glorious national past was also necessary in the creation of a common path that would lead to a bright future through modernization and progress. If a nation does not know where it has come from, it will never know where it is going. Remembering the glorious past was a way of encouraging the members of the nation to overcome the trials and tribulations in the present by looking toward a better future. This was probably what the Slovene politician Lovro Toman meant when he said: The future is the offspring of the present and the past.¹⁸

Figure 0.1. Ethnographic Map of the Yugoslavs (1918). Serbs, Croats, Slovenes—Yugoslavs—are one people. For this reason, they seek the unification of all their lands into one free nation-state. Unknown author and publisher. Source: private collection of the author.

Through legends about famous historical events and figures from their past, members of the nation constructed a sense of self-worth in relation to members of other nations, learned to stand in solidarity with one another, and thus contributed to cultural homogenization within their nation and drew a line of demarcation between Us and Them. These legends were carefully selected for the writing of history. The awakeners of the nation created a fabulous national past by emphasizing the great, the noble, and the admirable, and leaving out all that was inglorious and shameful. The selection of historical events and personalities to be remembered by society had far-reaching significance. Although it was not made explicit, this selection showed that national leaders propagated certain political and ideological beliefs and social, political, and cultural values. They used the past as a kind of storehouse from which they selectively chose events and personalities they wanted members of their nation to either remember or forget. Memory, James Young wrote, is never shaped in a vacuum; the motives of memory are never pure.¹⁹ In 1882, the French philosopher and linguist Ernest Renan said in his much-cited lecture at Paris Sorbonne that forgetting is an important aspect of the process of nation-building. Every nation must have its history, its collective memory. However, the preference for certain historical figures and past events that members of a particular nation must know necessarily means that there are others that have been selectively consigned to collective oblivion.²⁰ Where the service of the past has been urgently needed, truth has ever been at a discount.²¹ In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many enthusiasts eager to discover new information about their historical ancestors; all nations wanted to reconstruct their history and assumed that they had a glorious past. This spurred many researchers to eagerly search for forgotten information about literature, art, music, and folklore.²²

Knowledge of a nation’s history and traditions helped its members better understand themselves and their nation’s status in the international community. In this way, an active and living connection was established between the present and the past; doubts and ambiguities were effectively abandoned and hope was aroused among the nation’s members. Indeed, everything was done with the aim of making one’s nation, its culture, and its past admirable, worthy of all the hard work and care of the nation’s members, and even worthy of fighting for.²³ The nationalists constructed the national past according to their ideas and beliefs, thus determining the path of the nation’s future progress and development.²⁴ Given that the Slavic lands in the nineteenth century were backward, underdeveloped, and inactive, and that their societies were still in their infancy and lacked modern institutions, such as industry, railways, and educational systems, the nation’s emancipators, impressed by the zeitgeist of the century of miracles,²⁵ saw history as a ladder on which one moved from lower to higher stages of development.²⁶ The Germans, the Bohemian poet sings, have reached their day, the English their midday, the French their afternoon, the Italians their evening, the Spaniards their night, but the Slavs stand on the threshold of the morning.²⁷

The patriots who worked diligently and selflessly for the spiritual and physical well-being of the nation were aware of the importance of history to national identity, for it was historical consciousness, in their view, that gave legitimacy to the new political communities (nations). In their efforts, they also received ample support from academia,²⁸ which described new political groups (nations) as entities that had always existed as such. The romantic historicism that patriots resorted to in the study of their nations’ pasts provided evidence for their view that national feeling and identification existed continuously. Thus, the idealists and dreamers tended to attach great importance to the evidence they found without being critical of their sources, leading one Hungarian scholar, for example, to claim that he had proved that Adam was Hungarian.²⁹ Historians made it their business to interpret what was authentic folk history; ethnographers, in particular, strove to discover authentic—that is, characteristic—elements of material folk culture, ethnic traditions and customs, folk songs, and art. Thanks to the press, the facts discovered by scholars were made accessible to a wide audience, while exhibitions in galleries and museums presented these as self-evident and permanent.

Since the present did not support the glory of the newly awakened idea of Slavic nationality, the (South) Slavs established themselves historically through a utopian projection.³⁰ According to this conception, the Slavs were the most glorious of all peoples in the world; this was confirmed by the most popular interpretation of the etymological origin of their name, derived from the word slava (glory).³¹ However, slava implied that the ancient Slavs were warlike and some found it unacceptable that as peace-loving a people as the Slavs would choose such a name for themselves, so another interpretation of their name was proposed, according to which the original word contained the vowel o (slovo) instead of the vowel a (slava). Slovene Catholic priest Franc Serafin Metelko held, for instance, that the ancient Slavs called their Latin neighbors Vlachs, a name denoting those who chatter or babble, derived from the verb vlachovati, meaning to babble, while they called their Germanic neighbors Nemci, viz., those who are mute or dumb, as opposed to a person who spoke the language of the Slavs, who would have been called a Sloven or Slovan (Slav), that is, a speaking person.³²

As sources of national pride were not easily found either in the present or in the known past, the most ardent enthusiasts endeavored to find them in unknown past ages. In their emancipatory zeal, they followed in the footsteps of nationalists throughout Europe, claiming that their language was the oldest language in the world and had once been spoken by Adam and Eve. The veracity of this claim was bolstered by the fact that Adam, the first man, supposedly received his name when God called out, Od-amo! (Come here!), and when asked where his wife was, Adam replied, Evo je! (Here she is!).³³ After the first man and woman, there were many other famous Slavs. Among the most glorious were Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, whose Slavic ethnicity was confirmed by his name, supposedly spelled Ne buhod no tsar (Not God, but King),³⁴ and Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, who supposedly received his name in a manner similar to how the first woman received hers: Na pole on (He is in the field).³⁵ The glory that the Slavic peoples enjoyed in those ancient times, and the national pride that they felt, are illustrated by the fact that the city of Vienna was called Viden, according to such interpretations, because the city was then a Vendo-Serbian village. In those ancient times, the city of Berlin was their brlog (den), where they kept and fed their cattle, and what is now Leipzig was Lipiska, their altar, where they prayed and worshipped under the branching linden trees to Perun, their supreme god who rules the heavens and the thunder, while the Germans worshipped the frog as their Mother Hulda.³⁶

These illustrious names and the glorious past of the Slavic people made a great impression not only on the Slavs themselves, but also on many foreigners, causing the Slavs to forget that historically they were still in their early youth, and lulling them into dreams of instant modernization and progress. The eyes of the national emancipators were fixed on the West, which they all admired; at the same time, they were aware that their traditional society was backward and underdeveloped. Modernization was a very popular, albeit noble and difficult, goal that could not be achieved by clinging to the old traditions. By definition, it is a form of development in which traditional social norms and values are abandoned in order to achieve progress that runs counter to tradition and traditionalism.³⁷ The national emancipators were aware of the difficult task ahead of them and realized that the goal of modernization could only be achieved with the help of heroes with superhuman powers, and folklore was teeming with such figures. If Marko Kraljević had not been late for the Battle of Kosovo on that fateful day of Vidovdan, history would have taken a very different course! If Kralj Matjaž³⁸ wakes up, woe betide anyone who does evil to the Slovenes!

The Emancipatory Power of Yugoslav Nationalism

Despite defeats at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 and the Battle of Hradec Králové (Königgrätz) in 1866, which led to the creation of the new nation-states of Italy and Germany, the Habsburg Monarchy made great efforts to turn the tide. As a result of these battles, the Habsburg Empire lost its territories on the western and northern borders, paving the way for widespread nationalist ideology in the multi-ethnic monarchy. Chancellor Count von Beust persuaded Emperor Franz Joseph to accept the Compromise that led to the creation of the Dual Monarchy. By the end of 1867, dualism was officially accepted, despite strong Slavic opposition; Slovene politicians Luka Svetec and Lovro Toman commented that dualism meant the grave of our [national] life.³⁹ The newly established Empire and Kingdom of the Double-Headed Black Eagle had a common ruler, His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, who had power over the army, navy, foreign affairs, etc., but the Austrian government in Vienna and the Hungarian government in Budapest enjoyed roughly equal status in their respective parts of the monarchy. By drawing the border between the German and Hungarian parts of the monarchy, the Compromise divided the Slavs, separated the Czechs from the Slovaks, and left the Slovenes and Dalmatians on one side of the border and the Croats on the other. In an editorial published on October 15, 1870, Josip Jurčič, the editor of the first Slovene daily newspaper Slovenski Narod, explained the impact that the state structure based on dualism had on the national cohesion of the Yugoslav people in the following words:

They invented this dualism, and since then it is as if a rock had been put between us and our southern brothers; we are cis-, they are trans-, but we are both ausland