RJEŠAVANJE AGRARNOG PITANJA U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI 1918-1921.
SOLUTION OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION IN BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA 1918-1921

Summary/Abstract: Over a long period of time the agrarian question, i. e. the question of the elimination of feudal relationships, received considerable attention as the most difficult socioeconomic as well as national and political problem for the majority of the population of Bosnia and Hercegovina. This question did not appear for the first time after the First World War, but had already existed since the mid-19th century. The prolonged war troubles, the resulting poverty, the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dissolution of old power, the ideas of the October Revolution along with a general increase of revolutionary spirit in Europe at the time of the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (KSCS) brought about a straining of class relations in -the rural areas where a feudal system was still in existence, especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina. In 1918-1919, the peasants of Bosnia and Hercegovina tried to solve the agrarian question on their own, by revolutionary methods. They destroyed everything which represented symbols of the feudal system: they refused to pay taxes, they burned the homes of the nobility, and plundered and destroyed the property of the beys. At the same time, national and religious intolerance came to the surface, with the result that not only the propertied nobility but also the destitute Moslem peasants suffered such attacks. Immediately after the formation of the first government of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in December of 1918, agrarian disturbances in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Slavonia and Vojvodina forced the regent and the government from the outset to recognize the question of agrarian reform as an urgent problem of general state policy. In order to suppress the .revolutionary peasant movements which were creating a state of anarchy in areas where the new government was not yet organized, regent Alexander, with the Manifesto of January 6, 1919 promised the peasants that agrarian reform would be started forthwith and called upon them to peacefully await the legal distribution of the land by the state. On February 25th, 1919, the government issued PrelimFnary Regulations for the preparation of agrarian reform abolishing serfdom in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Sandzak, Kosovo and Macedonia and putting an end to similar social conditions in Dalmatia. The Regulations also foresaw the distribution of large estates. From the beginning of the execution of agrarian reform in the KSCS, priority was given to solution of the problem in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Since the agrarian question was, after W. W. I, the central socioeconomic and national-political problem which for a time dominated all other unsolved problems, the execution of agrarian reform in Bosnia and Hercegovina was not •to go smoothly and it was to be complicated and exposed to political influences. It was not to be solved in one blow but, as a result of various influences, was to be allowed to enter a phase of solution. In the political and social turmoil after the unification in Bosnia and Hercegovina the agrarian reform was to be connected with the Moslem question, i. e. the question of the situation and treatment of Moslems in general. Due to the fact that 91.15% of the landowners were Moslem and 95.410/o of the serfs were Christian (73.92% Serbs, 21.49% Croats), two diametrically opposed camps formed in the battle for and against the radical solution of the agrarian question in Bosnia and Hercegovina: on the one side the Serbian free and bound peasantry, and with them the young intelligencia and political parties and groups who counted on this •peasantry as their constituency in the upcoming elections, and on the other side the Moslem feudal landowners and the YMO, including most all of the Moslem population includ4ng the Moslem peasants. In the course of the work of the Constitutional Assembly of the KSCS, and on the basis of an agreement between the radical-democratic government of N. Pasic and the YMO on March 15, 1921, serfdom was finally abolished in Bosnia and Hercegovina and a partial solution was set for the distribution of land. In accordance with this agreement, on May 12, 1921 the government issued the law on the financial liquidation of agrarian relations in Bosnia and Hercegovina according to which the state was to pay the feudal landowners 255 million dinars for the land taken from them and 25 million dinars for the land taken from the beys. At the same time a law was put into effect concerning the handling of the beys' land .in Bosnia and Hercegovina by which only that land which had been permanently settled by the serfs and upon which they were dependent for their existence, as well as that land which had been regularly tilled by the serfs for •the previous 10 years, was to be handed over to the serfs. By these ordinances about 100.000 serf families in Bosnia and Hercegovina obtained full ownership of about 7 million dunums of land and about 50.000 families who had worked on beys' land received about 1.5 million dunums of land. Since the peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina were not satisfied w1th the solution of the beys' land problem, the struggle for a solution to that problem continued.

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