ЕКОНОМСКО-ФИНАНСИЈСКА ПОЗАДИНА ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКОГ НЕПОТПИСИВАЊА УГОВОРА О МИРУ СА АУСТРИЈОМ У СЕПТЕМБРУ И НОВЕМБРУ 1919.
ECONOMIC-FINANCIAL BACKROUND OF YUGOSLAVIA’S DECISION NOT TO SIGN THE PEACE TREATY WITH AUSTRIA IN SEPTEMBER AND NOVEMBER 1919

Summary/Abstract: The decision of great victorious powers of World War I that only Hungary and Austria of the entire former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy would bear all the financial burden arising from the war, opened the question of their ability to pay. To mitigate this problem, the peace conference imposed an obligation on the countries successors of Austria-Hungary to purchase its property on the territories they took over, and to pay “the contributions to the cost of liberation” in the amount of 1.5 billion francs to the great powers. These contributions were paid to the joint reparation fund. In the case of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the estimated value of the Austro-Hungarian state-owned possessions in the annexed western Yugoslav territories was proposed to be deducted from the war indemnity of the Kingdom of Serbia. This was supposed to be considered as an advance payment for the war indemnity, resulting in the loss of right to reparations, until the other affected countries had received their indemnity in the same percentage. Given that this meant no financial indemnity for the Kingdom of SCS for an unknown number of years, with incalculable consequences, the Kingdom of SCS rejected this solution, initiated its amendment, and thus missed, two times, the deadlines for signing the peace treaty with Austria. Only after many months of negotiations with representatives of Britain and France, with Prince-Regent Aleksandar Karađorđević participating in the final stage, the Kingdom of SCS reached an agreement on “the integral reparation of Serbia and Montenegro, independently of the debts of new territories”, which created conditions for the Kingdom of SCS to sign the peace treaty with Austria.

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