The all-important about-turn in the national and political life of the Serbs in Croatia occurred after the downfall of Bach's absolutism, which came in the wake of Austria's defeat in the war against France and Italy. Military Frontier units from the Lika, Otocac and the 2nd Banski Regiments, which numbered both Serbs and Croats, also took part in some of the bloody encounters of that war of 1859, at Magenta, Solferino, Montebello and other places.

When after the collapse of absolutism it became possible to engage in politics throughout the Monarchy, including Croatia, the Serbs lost no time in taking an active part in political life. In the transitional period from the absolutist to a constitutional system of rule, which was marked by sharp and open denunciations of the foundered regime, of Germanization and centralization, the Serbs and the Croats were of the same mind. Dissatisfied with Bach's government, which was generally thought to have only brought them increased taxes, numerous levies and suppression of freedom, in the middle of 1859, the Serbs and the Croats formed a secret society to fight for those rights and freedoms which had already been granted to the Hungarian state. The society had its seal, featuring a crescent moon and star, and was named the "Croato-Illyrian-Serbian General Assembly."² At that time, throughout Croatia and especially in the Military March, through the press, through merchants, and through professional propagandists, Russian influence started spreading from Belgrade at the expense of the former Austrian predominance.³ For a while it looked as though the Serbian and Croatian movements would develop side by side and that their policies would move in the same direction in view of their many similar interests and objectives. However, Vienna took care that it should not be so. By abolishing the Serbian Vojvodina on December 27, 1860, by splitting its territory and giving one part to Hungary and the other to Croatia, Austria managed to disrupt relations between the Croats and Serbs completely. Many years had to pass before these relations were normalized, before the heated newspaper polemics, mutual recriminations and accusations were, at least temporarily, forgotten and suppressed by their need to work for a common national and political cause. Even then, considerable antagonism persisted between the Serbian and Croatian bourgeois societies, which could not be easily and quickly overcome and for a long time thereafter bedeviled their mutual relations.

The key issue around which the debate raged was the question of who the county of Srem belonged to. Anxious to round off their territory and preserve Srem as a part of Croatia, Croatian politicians based their claims on historic and state rights.⁴ Hoping to invigorate and adjust to their national and political needs the separate autonomous territory in southern Hungary to which they wanted to join the Srem county, Serbian politicians gave less prominence to their historical rights, although they did not neglect this argument, putting more emphasis on the fact that the Serbs in that county accounted for an overwhelming majority of the population.⁵

Taking different points of departure in their struggle for Srem, the Croats claiming state and historical rights, and the Serbs their natural and ethnic rights, the first clinging to the old and outdated feudal order and the others committed to the bourgeois society and its more modern conceptions, Croatian and Serbian politicians locked horns in an irreconcilable conflict. Started over Srem, the Serb-Croat dispute was to widen and deepen on this and some other questions, from one year to the next, through several subsequent decades.⁶

Closely linked with the question of Srem was also the question of the Croatian Sabor's support for the resolutions of the Serbian Annunciation Congress. These resolutions called for the setting up of a separate Serbian autonomous territory in the area of Banat, Backa, Srem, and the Military Frontier. There were some in the Croatian Sabor, such as Ivan Kukuljevic, who realized that the Serbian question in Croatia was "the most important vital question of our nation, on whom will perhaps depend the future of the Yugoslav idea," and agreed to support the demands of the Serbs from Hungary, which were also supported by the Serbs from Croatia. However, the majority in the Croatian Sabor were not prepared to meet the Serbian demands, and the impression was gained that the entire Sabor was anti-Serbian.⁷

How large the question of Srem loomed in relations between the Serbs and Croats is best demonstrated by what the grand zupan of the Srem county, Svetozar Kusevic, wrote to the grand zupan of the Zagreb county, Ivan Kukuljevic. After the Zagreb county assembly, meeting in December 1862, had denounced the demand of the Srem county to send a delegation to the emperor to request him to confirm the conclusions of the Annunciation Congress, Kusevic wrote to Kukuljevic as follows: "This act, my Brother, has confirmed all the doubts which the enemies of our accord had expressed; your explanations have generated a great mistrust of Zagreb and extreme bitterness against the Croats; the opinion is now rife that our Croat brothers are the worst enemies of the Serbs, that they hate them because of their nationality and their religion, that they wish them the same as the Hungarians, to strangle their national consciousness and on this basis to spread their glory and might. These and similar occurrences are the most lamentable result of your debates, which rejoice all our and your opponents of national progress and political independence and historical rights." Kusevic continued: "I know that there are men among you who cast all kinds of aspersions upon us and who will denounce us for the effects which your acts have produced, but, my brother, judge yourself whether the Serbs as an equal people with the Croats can look on impassively while you deny their existence, trying to prove that they are not entitled to the Vojvodina, that they have no right to a political existence.... Finally, my brother, could you not have achieved the aim of withholding support by saying nothing or simply saying no, instead of doing what the Hungarians are doing to us? This is why the opinion prevails that this time you have been their supporters.

"But you might say that you were right to act in this manner in order to secure the integrity of the Triune Kingdom and assure a future for the Croatian people's development!

"If this is so, then my opinion is quite the contrary: I believe that the Triune Kingdom will be more secure if it has another body, political and moral, to strengthen and assist it, than if it brings ruin upon at least half a million people of the same kin, people who have much more moral fibre and national consciousness than those living within the borders of the Triune Kingdom, the people who in 1848 worked miracles and probably contributed most to the present condition of the Triune Kingdom, without whose participation Croatia certainly would not speak with the same pride about its historical rights and its merits for the Empire; the people who have branched out throughout Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia and which will never fail us, the people who are a part of the Serbian nation and as such are the Croats' brothers. This is something that should never be forgotten, nor should anyone be blinded by the idea that only the Croatian people live in the Triune Kingdom! If you have historical evidence for it, we have live witnesses, who will tell who waged wars for the Krajina, who cleansed Slavonia of the Turks, who settled it, and how these people afterwards, as a reward, were trampled upon, persecuted, and oppressed, mostly because of the religion of their forefathers, and how those who were forced to change their religion had to conceal their name and origin, to prove to Mr. Veber⁸ that if there are Croats of Orthodox religion, there must be a lot more Serbs of Roman religion, as was established by Dnevnik serbski⁹ of this year in issue No. 22. And yet it did not occur to anybody, least of all to a Catholic priest, that Serbs can be of other than Orthodox religion! We don't mean to force this upon anyone; we are happy if you leave alone those who have not alienated themselves through conversion.

"As regards Srem, you are adducing historic data, but rest assured that such data are also possessed by the Serbs, to the effect that Srem used to be a Serbian despotovina, that there are national and ecclesiastical monuments sacred to the Serbs, which no power on this earth can make disappear, nor will anybody ever prove that the people living in Srem are of Croatian origin, that the language they speak is Croatian, and that, by doing away with the Serbian population and name, a Croatian state will be founded here. My brother, to want this is to carry things to extremes, eventually bringing ruin upon oneself. My view is that this is unnecessary, because if you over there truly believe that the Croats and Serbs are two twin brothers, and if as Veber says, they speak an identical language, then why should one want to prevail against the other? Is it not beneficial for both when anybody within his area does something for the people? Is the advancement of the Serbs not going to strengthen the Croats? Would it not be wise and useful for one's own sake to strengthen the Serbs with all one's might, or if necessary even to bear a sacrifice for that purpose? Or is it more useful to turn our mutual pledge of 1848 into hatred, to prevent development of the Serbs, to stifle the Serbian population in Croatia altogether, for the so-called Triune Kingdom to remain in its present status, ceaselessly invoking its historical and other rights? Are the historic rights of all peoples worth more than the Serbian rights, are the Croatian Sabors of 1848 and 1861 more constitutional than the Serbian National Congresses of 1848 and 1861? Do the Croats believe that it is right not to acknowledge the promises to the Serbian people and their services rendered in blood? These are all questions which in my opinion should be thoroughly studied before striking against Srem so arbitrarily, because what might happen is that accidentally, the Croats might receive a fatal blow with their own weapons from those who will never willingly allow the Croats and the Serbs to develop and progress."

Ending his letter, Kusevic told Kukuljevic: "Accept these words as a token of friendship and hope that our mutual love may grow stronger instead of being destroyed. I beseech you to endeavour to prevent hatred from taking over, for this is where our downfall will come. See what concessions you can make over there, for you are in a better position, nor would any concession do you much harm. Try to put out the fire which is being inflamed from Zagreb, to allay the fears over here that the Croats will destroy the Serbs and spread Catholicism. Otherwise, believe me, there will be great bitterness with unforeseeable consequences, and history will curse him who was able to but did not prevent the evil."

Croat-Serb relations were embittered over the issue of the ownership of Srem and over Croatia's agreement or disagreement with the decisions of the Annunciation Congress. As can be seen from Kusevic's letter, the disagreement over Srem and Vojvodina grew into a dispute over whether the Serb national and political identity in Croatia should or should not be recognized. The entire policy of the Croats and Serbs in Croatia, until the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918, and more especially until the creation of the Croato-Serbian Coalition in 1905, pivoted on this issue. Debates about it were initiated in the Croatian Sabor in 1861, when Ivan Kukuljevic said that the Military Frontier was "inhabited by our own people." Patriarch Josif Rajacic interpreted Kukuljevic's reference to "our people" as meaning the "Croatian people," in deliberate contempt of the Serbian people, and sent the Sabor a protest against the Croatization of the Serbs. Kukuljevic's subsequent explanations in the Sabor clearly showed that even he, who on many occasions demonstrated broad-mindedness, did not want to admit that there were two peoples living in Croatia, Serbs and Croats, but made them the same. According to this stance of Ivan Kukuljevic, which was only a preview of what a year or two later would be adopted by most of the Croat politicians, the Serbs had no choice but to accept that they were part and parcel of the Croatian "body politic" and that they did not exist in Croatia in their own right; as a result, in the near or distant future, they were either to merge with the Croats or enter into political struggle with those who wanted to assimilate them. Since the denial of their national and political identity would inevitably lead to their disappearance, the Serbs had no other choice than to accept the fight which they did not want but could not avoid. As it happens, the fight did not take place in the Sabor in 1861, for a conciliatory solution was found, as we shall see later, but it did begin soon after the dissolution of the Sabor, as witnessed in Kusevic's letter.

The Serbs from Hungary had been in close touch with the Serbs from Croatia after the collapse of Bach's absolutism. When Srem entered the Triune state, this link became even closer, and the Serbian policies, conducted from Novi Sad, were almost wholly accepted by the Serbs in Croatia centred on Zagreb. In addition to the already mentioned Serb-Croat dissensions, there was yet another very significant result of the abolition of the Vojvodina and the annexation of the Srem county to Croatia. Namely, by virtue of the large Serbian population in Srem and thanks to such highly prominent Serbian politicians as Jovan Subotic, Svetozar Miletic, Mihailo Polit-Desancic, Jovan Zivkovic and others, who represented it in the Croatian Sabor, together with some Orthodox bishops from the Croatian territory as ex-officio members, the policies of the Serbs from Hungary, supported by the Serbs from Civil Croatia and the Military Frontier, became an important component in the overall Croatian policy of this period and even more so at a later date.

The strong political influence of the Hungarian Serbs upon the public opinion of the Serbs in Croatia and upon their policies was exerted through the newspapers Srbski dnevnik, Napredak, and Srbobran, later particularly through Zastava. In the absence of party mouthpieces, these Novi Sad newspapers, representing the interests of all the Serbs in the Monarchy, became interpreters of the Serbian policy in Croatia. Thus it happened, through a set of a number of circumstances, that the Serbs from Hungary became the protagonists and interpreters of Serbian national interests throughout Austria. This was due partly to the highly developed spiritual unity of the Serbs wherever they lived, and partly to the fact that the Serbs in southern Hungary were the best organized and had the longest tradition and experience in the conduct of public affairs.

Biblioteka | Disagreements over the Solution of the Eastern Question and Reorganization of the Monarchy

Copyright © 1997 by Vasilije Krestic
Copyright © 1997 by BIGZ , Beograd
Copyright © 1998 by Serbian Unity Congress