ЈОВАН ЦВИЈИЋ И ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКА ДЕМОКРАТСКА ЛИГА (1918‒1919)
JOVAN CVIJIĆ AND YUGOSLAV DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE (1918–1919)

Summary/Abstract: Serbian and Yugoslav historiography are rich in works on the history of the Yugoslav idea, its beginnings, fervent followers and sharp critics, its realization at the end of the First World War and a long series of the most diverse questions that accompanied this process: from the first roots to the collapse of the Yugoslav state. Within these studies, short reviews of the short-lived, but not irrelevant, Yugoslav Democratic League, founded in Paris in November 1918 under the presidency of Jovan Cvijić, can be found. Its establishment, however, was prepared much earlier, primarily by those figures – politicians and intellectuals – who were involved in the propaganda of the Yugoslav idea in emigration. Dissatisfied with the policy led by Nikola Pašić, and especially with his efforts that in the process of Yugoslav unification, as well as with the model of state organization, Serbian national interests should be protected in the first place, they demanded to ensure the absolute equality of all constituents of the future Yugoslav state. In addition, worried about the sharp differences between the supporters of centralism and the advocates of federalism, they wanted a broad-concept organization, which would bring together sincere supporters of Yugoslavia, take some sort of pacifist role and contribute to seeking a compromise. For this compromise, Jovan Cvijić gave up his federalist ideas. The most important task of the League was to influence the creation of a unique Yugoslav nation by cultural and political work. Nevertheless, it was understood that the achieved state unity did not imply national unity, and that Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had yet to become one nation. At the same time, this proclaimed goal was the acknowledgment that insisting on a nation with three names or a nation of three tribes, on which the advocacy of the Yugoslav state was based, was merely a pragmatic political formula used in the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Yugoslavia.

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