DEMOKRATSKA STRANKA I JUGOSLOVENSKA IDEJA
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE CONCEPT OF YUGOSLAV UNITY

Summary/Abstract: Serbian Independents, who later became Democrats, believed, from the beginning of the century and their own independent political existence, in the idea of Yugoslav unity. It was their conviction that Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians were a single people bearing three names, whose unification was both logical and necessary for the full national progress of all three. The First World War gave birth to a common state shared by Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians and with it to the first crisis of the idea of Yugoslav unity. Having overcome this crisis, the Democrats »admitted« the existence of three separate national and political entities but kept their conviction that the creation of a single Yugoslav nation should be their common goal. They supported the notion of an agreement between Serbs and Croatians, believing it to be the essential prerequisite for the continuation of Yugoslavia whose existence was, according to them,, the form in which the national interests of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians would best be protected. The Second World War and the slaughters of the Serbs by the Ustasha shook the very basis of the Democrats’ beliefs. Even then, however, they still maintained that the breaking up of the Yugoslav state would most dearly be paid by the Serbs who would once again be faced with the need to defend their territory in Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia.

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