Prilozi za politički životopis Ive Franka i evoluciju pravaštva
CONTRIBUTIONS FOR A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF IVO FRANK AND EVOLUTION OF THE PARTY OF RIGHT’S IDEOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: The Frank family played a very prominent role in Croatian political history. The most imporant figure among them was Josip Frank, one of the Party of Right's leaders whose name became a synonym for political radicalism. His son, Ivo Frank, followed father's political path. Until 1918, Ivo Frank supported a solution of the Croatian question within the framework of Austria-Hungary, believing that the specific national interests of Croats and other national communities within that historical union would best be solved under the Habsburg dynasty. From the beginning he was an ardent opponent of the Yugoslav national ideology and of any connections with Serbian politicians. That view was based on an assessment that it was impossible to establish any kind of Croat-Serbian political alliance due to interwoven interersts and the aims of two very different national ideas. The dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy gave rise to an evolution of the Party of Right's ideology. After the First World War, Ivo Frank emigrated to Budapest because the new Yugoslav government tried to eliminate him from public life by repressive measures. Despite his parliamentary immunity, he was arrested and soon lost the right to continue his law practice. During the first phase of his emigration he contacted Gabrielle D'Annunzio in Rijeka/Fiume, kept in touch with the representatives of the socalled malcontent peoples under the new Monarchy headed by Karagjorgjeviæ dynasty (Slovenes, Moslems, Kosovars, Montenegrins, and Hungarians in Vojvodina region), and participated in the formation of a paramilitary Croat legion along the Yugoslav-Hungarian border. Nevertheless, he did not succeded in organizing a strong group of Croat émigrés living in different parts of former Austria-Hungary, which might have gathered all who were not content with the situation in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Hence, he left the émigré leadership in the late 1920s, but he did not retire. He continued to lean on contacts with officials in the Hungarian and Italian governments. The causes of Frank's failure lay in the domination of Stjepan Radić's peasant movement of the internal political scene, international relations, internal disputes among Croat émigrés, and the appearance of a new émigré group under Ante Pavelić's authoritarian guidance. An analysis of the later period of Frank's political life could lead one to conclude that he inclined to some sort of revival of the Danubian Monarchy in order to achieve a certain degree of independence for the Croatian state and create more effective government in the zone between German and Russian influences.

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