The state and historical rights of Croatia has been an important question both in the past and at present, strongly affecting mutual relations between the Serbs and Croats. Because of the insufficiently studied Croato-Serbian relations, because of wrong and tendentious presentations of these relations which, after both the First and the Second World War, were embellished and gilded in accordance with immediate political needs, the question of the state and historical rights of Croatia, which was at the bottom of all the Croatian and Serbian disagreements, conflicts, genocide or sufferings of Serbs, and even of war which took place between them in 1991, was not presented in a scientifically credible manner. Without a better understanding of this issue, at least where it affected the life of the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, neither the past nor the present in Serbo-Croatian relations can be objectively assessed and understood. Therefore I shall attempt to shed light upon it as briefly as possible.

The entire history of the Croats within the state of Hungary (since 1102) and Austria (since 1557) was interlaced with ceaseless arguments about Croatia's legal status. The aim of these arguments was to point out and prove that Croatia, even within the statal limits of Hungary and Austria, had preserved its independence, that by melting into the new state it did not lose its own individuality. The more tenuous, in practical life, was Croatian statehood, the more it was insisted on in debates conducted by the Croats. After carrying a legal struggle against Hungarians for centuries, the Croats have become real experts in this field. Even when their statehood was reduced to very thin threads, and even when these threads were broken off, when Croatia became a mere province of Hungary, Croat politicians with an amazing stubbornness pointed out that distinction should be made between the actual and the legal position. They tried to prove something that was difficult and impossible to prove, that in a legal sense there had never been a discontinuity of the Croatian statehood.

Thanks to these debates with Hungarians lasting over centuries, the Croatian history and politics are interspersed with state right and historicism. This affliction did not vanish when Croatia stepped out of Austria-Hungary and found itself a part of the first and second Yugoslavia. It is interesting that its political leaders even today, as if time has come to a standstill, as if nothing in the world has changed, operate with the arguments which their predecessors from the far distant past, the time of feudal society, had used.

The Croatian policy at the time of feudalism, inspired with state right and historicism, was defensive in relation to Hungary and Austria up to the revolution of 1848-49. After the 1848-49 revolution it remained defensive, but it increasingly acquired aggressive features. In this sense the Croat policy in the centuries long legal battle against Hungary and against Austria, have become similar to the Hungarian aggressive policy of conquest. Just as the Hungarians for centuries harried the Croats, so the Croats, but much more brutally, harried the Serbs. In the defence of the "historical right of the Croatian people", which was designed to "revive the Croatian state right", i.e. to form a great and independent Croatian state, in the second half of the 19th century an ideology was created of an uncompromising, heavily biased Croatian nationalism, which has frequently, from the earliest day to this day, turned the edge of its intolerance against the Serbs. Furthermore, taking as a model the Hungarian policy launched at the end of the 18th century and expressed in the slogan that on the soil of Hungary there is only one people - Hungarian, the majority of Croat politicians believed, as they do today, that in the territory of Croatia there is only one "diplomatic" or "political", or in today's parlance, "constitutive" people, which are the Croatian people.

The question of the "political" or "diplomatic" people of Croatia merits additional explanation because many disagreements between the Croats and the Serbs, not only in the earlier decades but also today, are the fruit of Croatian national ideology which was based upon the idea of the existence of a single Croatian "political" people. Explanation is needed because it is precisely the struggle for and against the policy founded on the idea of the Croatian "political" or "diplomatic" people, which created differences in views between the Serbs and Croats, which were and are to this day virtually unbridgeable. Because of them there was a continual strife and intolerance which in certain Croatian bourgeois and petit bourgeois circles acquired features of anti-Serbian genocide. There are numerous reliable indices which suggest that the crisis in relations between the Croats and Serbs in Croatia, on the eve of the collapse of second Yugoslavia, was due to the prevalence in that republic of those political parties and persons which were favouring nationalist ideology based on the idea that in the Croat state territory there can exist only one nation, which is the Croatian constitutive nation.

At the time when the idea of a Croatian "political" people, early in the 1860s, gained a considerable following in Croatia, Imbro Ignjatijevic Tkalac, a sincere and loyal Yugoslav, resolutely rose against it. He realised all its harmfulness and destructiveness as he wrote: "The idea of a political and national unification of all Southern Slavs is all well and good, but to found upon obsolete and mouldy papers and quasi-historical inventions the pretensions of the Croatian people and the Roman church to hegemony over all South Slav peoples, may be wishful thinking born of fiery patriotism, but is proof of so much arrogance and so much ignorance of people's nature that not only it could not achieve the desired success but it has increased the rift between the two most progressive and hardiest South Slav peoples, the Croats and the Serbs, and virtually turned it into national hatred." (Underlined by V.K.) Tkalac's message went on: "The future and the states are not built on old papers and 'virtual' territorial demands no matter how well founded and convincing they may be, but upon a strong desire, upon the vigour and efficiency of the living people, who want and know how to create a state in which to live according to their own ligths and fulfil their national objective. If the Serbs in their present principality had confronted the Turks, were motivated by Dusan's and Lazar's empire and upon their old papers and I know not what other historical rights, they would certainly have remained Turkish slaves as are the Bosnians and Herzegovinians to this day."

Like Tkalac, Andrija Torkvat Brlic believed that it is not only senseless but also dangerous to grant the Croats and to deprive the Serbs and other peoples in Croatia of the status of "political" people. In opposition to those who follow the policies of Franja Racki, Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, Antun Jakic, Ante Starcevic and Eugen Kvaternik, Brlic claimed that "the Croats have no state rights whatever! The Triune Kingdom has state rights on paper, but the Croats (Croatia, natio Croatica) have no state rights anywhere, any more than the Hungarians in Hungary. The Croats emulated Hungary, and without any basis whatever, out of the blue, like a deus ex machina, appropriated for themselves the rights of the Triune Kingdom, as if the Serbs of the Roman and Greek churches in the Triune Kingdom did not have the same right in the Triune Kingdom, and as if it would be senseless to say: the state rights of the Serbs in the Triune Kingdom! The inhabitants of the Triune Kingdom are not only Croats, and yet all of them - Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Klements - have the state rights of the Triune Kingdom". Realising how reactionary and dangerous was for the two peoples the Croat policy based upon the state right of Croatia, Broilc told those who supported it: "You shot at a pigeon and killed a crow, because you have completely forgotten the natural rights of nationality and of freedom out of your zeal for history not of the Croats but of the Triune Kingdom of many nations. The Serbs are not undermining the foundations of the Triune Kingdom or the state rights of the Triune Kingdom, but they do want these rights to be monopolised by the Croats. Do Croatia and the Serbs in it have rights which Slavonia and the Serbs in it do not have? Who among the Serbs wants to see the Triune Kingdom lose its autonomy? This is what the hotheads Jakic, Racki et al, are trying to bring about, but not the Serbs!" A.T. Brlic's condemnation was not directed only at individual political personalities and existing political parties but also at the newspaper Pozor, an influential mouthpiece of Strossmayer's National Party which, in his opinion, had become despicable because "it started croatomania in its articles".

Tkalac and Brlic were joined by young August Senoa. Although a contributor to Pozor, he did not write in a "croatomaniac" manner. Asked to answer the question whether the Serbian people were a "political" people, Senoa answered: "Yes, because they have concluded a treaty with a crowned Hungarian king."

The fiery champions of the policy based on Croatian state right were aware that this right was one of the prime upsetting factors in relations between the Serbs and Croats. Despite this, and perhaps because of it, they firmly held to this right, believing that it was more important than agreement and accord with Serbs. The most convincing evidence of it is found in the draft agreement on joint political actions of the Croatian National Peasant Party and the Party of Right, so-called Milinovac. The draft was written by Stjepan Radic and early in August 1909 was sent to Mile Starcevic. Article 2 of the draft states: "Both parties are imbued with Croatian state law and the idea of the Croatian state and they never depart from it even for the sake of the necessary and desirable popular accord with that portion of our people who for various reasons call themselves Serbs."

The foregoing shows that among the Croats there was no unified attitude towards the state law of Croatia and the ensuing political ideology which concerned the institution of the "political" people and territorial pretensions. At the time when political parties were formed in the early 1860s, most of the Croatian public personalities based their policies on state right, and only a small number were prepared to build into this policy more up-to-date principles of natural and national rights. Conflict between the two groups, one conservative and reactionary, the other progressive and modern, lasted for a long time, to the collapse of second Yugoslavia. The situation of the Serbs in Croatia indeed depended on the strength of either. The conservative and reactionary portion of the Croatian society never wanted voluntarily to recognise Serbs in Croatia as a "political" people. It did so only when it was forced, by a concurrence of political and other circumstances. The more progressive portion of the Croatian society, which managed to emancipate itself from the class policy and feudal state right, accepted the Serbs as equal national and political partners. Consequently, the status of the Serbs in Croatia and relations between the Serbs and Croats depended on the victory of the ones or the others.

It is not by chance that the conservative and reactionary society in Croatia for a long time dominated its progressive civic circles. After the revolution of 1848-49, when the feudal system was brought down, throughout the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Croatia preserved both in social and political aspect its semi-feudal character. The former feudalists, particularly the rich landowner families, a good many of them of foreign extraction, continued to play an important role with their capital, influential links and prestige. As a result, many principles which were valid in the feudalist society were in force again in the bourgeois period. This alone can explain why the state and historical right of Croatia was the starting basis in the programmes of all the Croat bourgeois political parties, until the beginning of the 20th century. Living for centuries according to the rules of this law the Croatian society nurtured a feeling which penetrated into the consciousness of the majority of thinking Croats. This feeling which still today prevails in their consciousness, so with the majority of Croats engaged in politics, state and historical right is the starting point for every one of their public actions.

If the Croat political doctrine, based on state and historical right back in the 19th century, was regarded by progressive and far-seeing men as reactionary, harmful and destructive for relations between the Serbs and Croats, it is understandable why this idea cannot receive a better assessment today. On the contrary, it is a residue of the feudal society which by its nature is hostile to all civic and democratic ideas. Because the contemporary Croatian politics is not very much different from the one prevailing in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, because it is entirely resting upon the state and historic right of Croatia and on the institution of a "political" people, it could not be different from what it is now: undemocratic, chauvinistically Croat and rigidly anti-Serbian. The essence of Croato-Serbian relations, both in the past and today, cannot be understood unless the fact is realised that the Croatian politics was and is today a hangover of the feudal society and its views on the state, nation, nationality relations, civic rights and freedoms.

One of the more important hangovers, which was extremely harmful for relations between the Serbs and the Croats, and which stimulated ever new and more and more violent conflicts which grew into unconcealed anti-Serbian genocidal excesses, was the institution of the "political" or "diplomatic" people.

When the revolution of 1848-49 overthrew feudalism, whereby the feudalists lost many of their prerogatives, deep changes took place as regards the "political" people. Earlier, in the feudalist society, it was only the feudal gentry that made up the "political" people. Now, in the bourgeois system, all the Croats and all the inhabitants of Croatia, irrespective of their national appurtenance, constituted the Croatian "political" people. According to this principle, the Serbs in Croatia were a part of the Croatian "political" people. They were given all civic rights, but not right to national individuality or constitutiveness. On the contrary, everywhere it was denied.

With a few examples we shall show how some very prominent Croatian politicians and scientists treated Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, how they believed that all the inhabitants of the so-called Triune Kingdom are Croats, irrespective of their ethnic origin, by the fact alone that they were born on the territory of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. Soon after the 1848-49 revolution, colonel Josif Maroicic, commandant of the Third Ogulin Regiment, later general and privy counsellor, wrote on March 19, 1850, that in Croatia there is only one "Slavonic tribe" which is Croatian. It has two religions, one language and the same customs and laws. In the Military Frontier and Civil Croatia, according to Maroicic, there are no Serbs because only the Croats live there. Don Mihovil Pavlinovic, a well known Croatian rightist leader in Dalmatia, wrote: "In Croatia, whatever religion one wants to be, whatever name one calls himself, everyone is born a Croat." Vjekoslav Klaic, eminent Croatian historian and Zagreb University professor, giving a quasi-scientific explanation what the names Croat and Serb mean in the paper Vienac in 1893, wrote that the true national name for the people between Istria and the Balkan Mountain is a Croat, and tribal Serb, meaning that the Serbs are a species of the Croatian genus. Every Serb is a Croat, but a Croat is not a Serb." Frano Supilo, well known Croatian politician, in his rightist newspaper Crvena Hrvatska (Red Croatia), which was published in Dubrovnik, wrote in 1895: "Every honest Croat must be quite clear about the so-called Serbian question. Admittedly, there are Serbs, but in our lands (i.e. in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia) there are no Serbs. Those in the Banovina (i.e. in Croatia and Slavonia - V.K.) and Dalmatia who call themselves Serbs, are not Serbs but Orthodox Croats." A whole anthology could be made of similar statements, but this is for the time being sufficient as an illustration of the denial of the Serbian national and political individuality in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia.

Embracing the Hungarian feudal ideology and the rights deriving therefrom, the Croatian burgher society adhered, within its state, to the same principles which, within Hungary, in its post-absolutist (after 1860) and especially in its dualist period (after 1867) were observed by the Hungarian government. According to them, all inhabitants of Hungary born within its frontiers, were members of the Hungarian "political" people, irrespective of their nationality. By analogy, all the citizens of Croatia, born on its state territory, regardless of their national and religious affiliation, are part of the Croatian "political" people. If we remember the principles observed in feudal society, which said: Whose country, his religion, then, bearing in mind how they were applied in Hungary and Croatia, we can easily conclude that the old feudal and religious principle was only refashioned to read: Whose country, his nation. In accordance with this catchword, when the Hungaro-Croatian Nagodba was concluded in 1868, its Article 59 stated that "the kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia are political people". Thereby, in fact, the country was identified with the people, because if the country is Croat, the people must be Croat, too.

According to this principle, which was built into the law on Nagodba, there were no Serbs in Croatia, because they formed part of the Croatian "political people" and politically speaking were Croats. In order to consummate this political fiction - that there are no Serbs in Croatia - and realise it in practice, many administrative-political and cultural-educational measures were taken. With this design and intent, in many statistical indices the Serbs were not identified by their national affiliation, as was done with the incomparably fewer Gypsies and Armenians. They were designated according to their religious confession, as Croats of the Greco-Eastern religion. As the intent was to create a homogenous Croatian "political" people, which implied an ethnically pure Croatia, the Serbian name was systematically omitted wherever it could be omitted. Thus, for example, the Serbian Orthodox Church was invariably described as "Greco-Eastern" and "Greco-non-uniate". In certain circles the Serbs were never called by their national names but were referred to by various derogatory nicknames such as Vlachs, Gypsies, Greco-Easterners, Shqiptars, "self-styled Serbs", Byzantines, brood, Vlach brood, brood of the orthodox religion, those who are found where they are not wanted, etc. Ante Starcevic called them: "dirty dogs", "loathsome flunky creatures", "brood ready for the axe", "Austrian dogs", "dogs off the chain", "thrash", etc. The language was hardly ever identified as Serbian: it was called Croato-Serbian, Croatian or Serbian. As a rule, it was avoided and was described as: Croatian, popular language, our language, Croato-Slavonian-Dalmatian, Yugoslav language. For the same reason, for the purpose of creating a single Croatian "political" people and an ethnically pure Croatia, the entire school system, since 1874, was in the service of croatization. The Cyrillic script, being Serbian, was in various ways, sometimes even brutally, repressed and thrown out of use. The Serbian flag and the Serbian coat of arms, as national symbols, were banned.

An expert on Croatia, Dr. M. Grba, wrote that in that country the general catchword was that the Serbs are Orthodox Croats, "and if they do not want to be that, they should still be regarded as such". Further on he said: "Among the Croatian intelligentsia there was such a mental discipline that the Croat who would recognize the Serbs would be regarded as a traitor. The moral tormenting of the Serbs through the media was done with a relentless tenaciousness which would be worthy of admiration if it had served a better purpose." Because of this attitude to the Serbs, Jagic wrote to Franjo Racki on June 15, 1882: "It seems that in Zagreb there are very many people who would like everyone to be called Croat, as if it were so important how a person is called." How hated was the Serbian name will be illustrated by the words of the well known Croat musicologist and composer, Franjo Kuhac, addressed to a friend on October 30, 1879. Kuhac wrote: "I am also enclosing herewith a few of my compositions: six pieces of choral music and a "Serbian dance" for four pianos. Would you kindly pass them on to some choral society. If the word 'Serbian' bothers you, you can also call it folk dance."

It is common knowledge that everywhere in the world, wherever the name of a nation is deliberately being destroyed, it is a signal for the physical attack against that nation, it is a public stigma against those who are regarded as disturbing factor and who should be removed by all possible means from the community in which they are undesirable. The disparagement of the Serbian name in Croatia was always attended by public accusations to the effect that the Serbs were traitors, disturbing factor in Croatian society and Croatian politics, "public trouble", national bandits, that they are known for their Byzantine cunning and that the "Serbs are dangerous because of their thoughts and their racial composition", because "a penchant for conspiracies, revolutions and rebellions is in their blood." This is how Serbs were cursed and demonised in the past, and are being even more demonised today under the rule of Dr. Franjo Tudjman. An editor of the Croatian television, Jerko Tomic, in a broadcast entitled "In the Wake of the Serbian Hords", broadcast on August 20, 1996, said about the Serbs that they are subhumans who were not at all helped by St. Sava's education; that they are pig sellers, chetnik vermin, worse than animals, dirty paws, devil drummers, a civilisation of spit and plum brandy, toothless monsters, dirty furhats, miserable wretches, thrash, Serbo-chetnik vampires, human evil, hords, creatures, sickness, plague, inglorious Jovans (Serb for John), rabid unbridled chetnik beasts, carpet for nazis, that they came to Croatia a hundred years ago, that they were in cahoots with the Turks, that they massacred the Jews even before Hitler's army's arrival in Belgrade." If a community, Croatian in this case, is systematically, deliberately and over a long period fed similar assessments, it is quite natural that, so indoctrinated, it should easily come to conclusion that the Serbs must be destroyed at all costs.

Despite all repression and non-recognition of the Serbian name, the Serbian political individuality and the Serbian symbols, the Serbs as citizens did enjoy full equality. However, because they were regarded not as a separate "diplomatic" people, but as a component part of the Croatian "political" nation, they were dissatisfied and not only denounced the Croatian policy but opposed it openly whenever they found it necessary to do so.

The policy of non-recognition of Serbs in Croatia was pursued in various ways, according to Svetozar Miletic, a Serbian political leader from Hungary, giving rise to unfortunate developments "because the seed of discord has fallen on the injured feelings of the Serbian people". The Serbs, in order to assure their survival in Croatia and preserve themselves as a nation, demanded in mid-1860s the passing of a law on political equality of Serbs with the Croats; that people's equality should be recognised in legislation and administration; that in districts and communes in which the Serbs had a majority, Cyrillic writing should be in official use; that the Serbs in all organs of government should be represented proportionately; that superintendence over the Serbian church and religious schools should be entrusted by the state to the Serbs, and that the Serbs should be entitled to a proportionate government aid like the Croats.

Adhering to the principle of the Swiss theoretician of state law, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, that "a nation is as large as its state", sugggesting that all the citizens of Croatia constitute one single nation of Croats, Strossmayer's newspaper Pozor, organ of the Croatian National Party, rejected all of Miletic's demands on behalf of the Serbs in Croatia. The Pozor correspondent who launched Bluntschli's idea that "a nation is as large as its state", went so far as to threaten the Serbs that should they insist on their national individuality, the Croats would "drive them out of the west against their will; we shall destroy all the boundaries which they might erect; we shall remove all the obstacles which they might put to the unity of the people whom God has created to be one; if need be, we shall change our name, the quintessence of the state; we shall shape a different policy all in the spirit of western civilisation; but by then we shall be one single people"... Croatian, of course.

In step with such aspirations and threats, Pozor denounced all Serbian endeavours to preserve their national individuality. According to Dr. Lazar Tomanovic, well known Serbian journalist, politician and lawyer, made in 1879: "Today the greatest sin in the eyes of the Croats" is committed by those Serbs who will not renounce their Serbian name.29a When the Serbs publicly vented their fear of assimilation and croatization, Pozor saw it as a "product of crude Byzantism".

Strossmayer's National Party was in favour of the unity of the Croatian and Serbian people only on condition that the Serbs eventually merge with the Croats. To achieve this more easily and quickly, Pozor raised its voice against the setting up of any separate Serbian institutions and societies in Croatia. Characteristic in this respect is the setting up of the society of the United Serbian Youth in Zagreb, under the name of Zvezda. When the society was constituted early in 1867, the National Party took offence. Pozor complained: "For such a society to be set up in Budapest, Vienna, Munich or anywhere in foreign parts is quite natural; young people in a foreign world like to get together and remember their homeland. For the Serbs, even if they were born in Serbia - not to speak of Orthodox Croats - to feel in Zagreb as if they were abroad, this is something we did not know or expect."

This clearly shows that Pozor and the party which published it did not recognise the Serbs in Croatia. They denied the Serbs their national individuality by calling them not Serbs but Orthodox Croats. In the hope of preventing the spread of the Serbian national consequence in Croatia and of promoting Croatian national sentiment, the nationalists tried to forestall the foundation of any Serbian institutions, societies or organisations.

It should be remembered that the Croatian communists, under various pretexts which are very reminiscent of the Pozor writing in 1867, after the Second World War suppressed all the Serbian national institutions which had grown up during the war 1943-1945. After the abolition of the Serbian cultural society Prosveta, on May 23, 1980, the Republican Conference of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Croatia issued an explanation in which it is accepted as perfectly natural and fair that "our nationalities", i.e. national minorities in Croatia, "should independently develop their institutions and clubs", but that "it is not fair that such institutions should be opened by the members of nations anywhere in Yugoslavia, particularly not by the Serbs in Croatia or Croats in Serbia." (Underlined V.K.) It is hardly necessary to point out that the Serbs were denied this right just in order to remove all obstacles standing in the way of their rapid assimilation and croatization.

To what extent the Serbian name and the Serbian political individuality in Croatia were denied is exemplified by the debate in the Sabor of Croatia, conducted early in 1866, when Jovan Subotic, well known Serbian writer, lawyer, politician and journalist, demanded that in the Sabor address to the ruler, the expression "our people" should be replaced by "Croato-Serbian people". Subotic's proposal was supported by several Serbian deputies, including Svetozar Miletic, Stevan Nikolajevic, Mihailo Polit-Desancic and Svetozar Kusevic. They defended the policy of full political individuality of the Croatian and Serbian peoples in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. However, their demand and their policies were strongly opposed, stigmatised and denounced by influential Croatian deputies. Against the proposal to replace the word "our people" by the word "Croatian-Serbian people", were Ivan Perkovac, Antun Jakic, Josip Vranicani, Matija Mrazovic and baron Dragojlo Kuslan. The Serbs who were in favour of altering the address were denounced of sowing discord, contention, provocation, splitting of the Sabor, halting progress, abusing Croatian patience, spreading discord among the people who are one but whom they want to make two. Croatian deputies believed that the adoption of Subotic's proposal would spell greatest injustice "to the Croatian name", that the Serbs are conducting "an aggressive policy in the Triune Kingdom of intending to conquer land, carry out the serbization of Croatia which was begun by Vuk Karadzic."

Adhering to the doctrine that Croatia is the land of the Croats, and identifying the country with the people, all the Croat deputies from Strossmayer's National Party believed that in the Triune Kingdom there is only one, namely, Croatian political people. In accordance with that, they treated the Serbs in the Triune Kingdom as a part of the Croat political people and not as a separate diplomatic, what is today known as constitutive people. For this reason they opposed Subotic's proposal, not wanting to share state sovereignty with the Serbs and, even indirectly, by introducing the Serbian name in the Sabor's address, recognise that the Serbs have their political individuality. The most determined stand was taken by Dragojlo baron Kuslan: "This state of ours, which is known to our ruler and to the rest of the diplomatic world exclusively as Croatian, nor can it be called any other way, we cannot share with anybody in the world for the sake of any accord. Therefore, our Serbian brothers should not ask us for it, because thereby they will ask our death." Because of the hard line adopted by the majority of the Croat deputies, particularly those from the ranks of the National Party which was led by Strossmayer and Racki, Subotic's motion was voted down and the expression "our people", proposed in the draft of the address, remained in its final version.

The whole case in the Sabor of Croatia, in January 1866, in connection with the address to the ruler, was a sad sign of the times which witnessed a painful evolution of relations between the Serbs and the Croats, but also of the Yugoslav idea and the life in common in the South Slav state. Historians who dealt with this time and these problems were not at the level of their professional and scholarly duties. Instead of unmasking the evil, they paid no heed to it and even embellished it. Thus they nurtured the evil in the conviction that it would not do much harm to historiography, and would be useful to politics and the Yugoslav idea. Time has shown that both scholars and politicians, both the people and the state, suffered much harm owing to such a behaviour. They glorified the Yugoslav idea of the Strossmayer type, which was not Yugoslav but greater Croatian idea, wrapped up in Yugoslav packaging. The state created on the basis of an apocryphal Yugoslavism could not be stable or long lived. Founded upon wrong ideological basis, from the moment it was created, it was condemned to disappear.

As regards the institution of the so-called political people, there is merit in mentioning the standpoint of Svetozar Markovic, a young and lucid Serbian politician of socialist orientation. Better than many subsequent and even contemporary Serbian historians and politicians, Markovic realised that this institution, both in Hungary and in Croatia, was designed to create from a multinational Hungary and a similar Croatia a nationally homogenous and unified Hungary and Croatia. He fearlessly wrote that the Hungarian politicians, Deak, Etves and Andrassi, are wishing and trying "to create a 'greater Hungary', in which there would be one political people - Hungarian". Noting the same aspirations in Croatia, Markovic wrote: "The Croats have been trying for a long time to create a 'greater Croatia' under the sponsorship of Budapest and Vienna, which would incorporate some parts of the Turkish Empire. In his opinion, both the Hungarians and Croats pursued policies of tyranny and conquest. "The Zagreb gentlemen", he thought, "wanted to expand their nationality at the expense of the Serbian nationality." What many others overlooked, Markovic realised that Strossmayer's National Party was rabidly chauvinistic and that the Croats wanted at all costs to obtain their own state. To achieve this aim, Markovic pointed out, the Croats would sacrifice everything, including "district and communal freedom" and "all our progressive principles", "and there is no doubt that they would consent to many other sacrifices to the Austrian monarch if he were to help them incorporate Bosnia and Krajina into the Croatian state, just as they discussed it in 1868."

Dissatisfied with the policies of the Croat National Party on the eve of the revision of the Croato-Hungarian Nagodba of 1873 and its readiness to assist the Hungarian government "with all its forces" to win power, Markovic saw a rift and conflict between the Croats and Serbs looming ahead not only in the territory of Croatia but in the whole of Austria-Hungary. He correctly concluded that Strossmayer's party followers whose mouthpiece was Obzor, were prepared to betray the Serbs, their erstwhile allies in the struggle between this same Hungarian government which they were now wanting to assist "with all their forces". Eschewing sharp words and rash conclusions, and despite his attentiveness and tact, Markovic sharply denounced the policy of the Croatian National Party. He claimed that the principles of that Party were extremely loose, that in respect of morals it merits no praise and that its behaviour is much too strange. He, therefore, published in Radenik of January 1872 a critically intoned article entitled "The Croatian National Party's Bungling".

It is a great pity that our historiography has altogether neglected Markovic's assessment of the Croatian policies, particularly those about the National Party. I would not be far wrong to claim that this did not happen accidentally. This is another fumble by the short-sighted Serbian politics which had undertaken the task of cementing the so-called brotherhood and unity with the Croats. This cement, as time has shown, did not bind properly. Our historiography's evalauation of the Croatian historical right, Croatian political people, Croatian aspirations, loose principles and morals of Croatian policy, which is certainly not to be praised, has fully confirmed Markovic's judgement, but was one hundred years late. Markovic's views on greater Serbia, greater Serbian policies and greater Serbian aspirations are well known to everyone and they have been exploited in all occasions, both in historiography and in politics. It is so much more interesting that his articles and views on Croatian policies were rejected, neglected and forgotten. The consequences of this deliberate and conscious snub, which was politically motivated, are enormous and tragic. It is yet another proof that those who do not respect Clio and her principles, who are not prepared to draw lessons from the past, are bound to be punished sooner or later.

Because they wanted to see in Croatia and Slavonia only one, Croatian "political" people, because they denied the Serbs in Croatia their national individuality, because they held that there were no Serbs in Croatia, since they form part of the Croatian "diplomatic" people, Strossmayer's populists, less consistent in ostracising the Serbs than the rightists, nevertheless refrained from using the adjective Serbian in the official denomination of the language. In order not to betray the presence of Serbs in Croatia through the description of the official language, in order not to contradict the theory of the existence of only one, Croatian "political" people, the populists and latter day obzorites, did not want to call the language Croato-Serbian, Croatian or Serbian, but, for reasons which I explained elsewhere, opted in favour of Yugoslav. They preferred to say "popular language" or "our language", rather than use the word "Serbian".

Without intending to compare the attitudes of the populists and obzorites towards the Serbs with the policies of the Croatian Chancellery headed by Mazuranic, it is interesting, while we are on the subject of the language, to hear an assessment by Vatroslav Jagic. In a letter to the well-known Serbian writer and editor of "Letopis" (Almanac) of Matica Srpska, Antonije Hadzic, written in 1864, Jagic states: "I am sending you herewith the fourth and most recent copy of Knjizevnik and I request you, if it is in line with the editorial policy of your esteemed magazine, to make mention of it... At the same time it would not be amiss to say that it is unworthy of the Croatian Chancellery, instead of concerning itself with more important things, to worry about its obsolete orthography, which no one uses any more except possibly two or three people. It is wrong to threaten those people who sacrifice themselves for a cause which is for the benefit and enlightenment of the people... wanting to impose on others what is known to be worthless, and what furthermore causes a rift between the Croats and the Serbs!"

The well-known Croat politician from Dalmatia, Miho Klaic, was well acquainted with Croatian policy and relations between the Croats and Serbs in the Banovina. After the debate in the Dalmatian Sabor whether the language was to be called only Croatian or Croato-Serbian, he denounced the Zagreb newspaper Obzor because its editor Dinko Politeo offered open support to those Croatian politicians from Dalmatia who, in accordance with the policy based on the Croatian state right and the theory of the existence of a Croatian "political" people, denied the national identity of the Serbs in Dalmatia. In a letter written in Zadar on April 6, 1892, addressed to Sime Mazzura, Klaic said: "I am writing to complain about Obzor attitude towards what happened in our Sabor at the last sitting. Obzor has resolutely taken Bianchini's side and is attacking us, because we voted for Pugliese's amendment. It should be noted first that Bianchini's proposal was unfair and unjustified... It was nothing other than an attack on and disavowal of the Serbs. After that we had to vote for Pugliese lest we should inflame the hatred between brothers of the same blood even more and show ourselves to be real barbarians before the enlightened world. In an attempt to denigrate us, Obzor invokes state right and some theories about the political nation and differences between a people and nationality which we can make neither head nor tail of. Obzor has so far been known as a champion of accord between the Serbs and Croats and for this reason was frequently attacked by the rightists." Ending his letter, and bearing in mind the attitude of the obzorites towards the Serbs and their support for the theory of the Croatian "political" people, Klaic, on behalf of a group of deputies in the Dalmatian Sabor hostile to the policy of the rightists and obzorites, wrote: "In view of Obzor's stand towards us, we really do not know what difference there is between the rightists and the obzorites." (Underlined by V.K.)

If a Croatian politician of such a rank as Klaic's, and with such knowledge about Croatian politics as he had, could ask what difference there was between rightists and obzorites in their attitudes towards the Serbs and towards the theory of Croatian "political" people, then it is hardly necessary to quote other, otherwise numerous, proofs that all the Croatian bourgeois opposition parties, each in its own way, showing various degrees of resolve and consistency, denied the national individuality of the Serbs in Croatia and pressed for a practical realisation of the idea of the Croatian "political" people. In other words, the whole of the second half of the 19th century, particularly the last 25 years of that century, were marked by continuous struggles between the Croats and the Serbs, struggles which in the last resort were reduced to the question of success or failure of the Croatian bourgeois opposition policy, i.e. the question of disappearance or survival of the Serbian national and political individuality in the Triune Kingdom.

Under the government of Ban Ivan Mazuranic, there was a brutal showdown with the Serbs from Pakrac and other places, who did not hide their national feelings, who sympathised with the movement of the United Serbian Youth, who sent contributions to Zastava, a newspaper of Novi Sad, who formed a society for the collection of donations for that newspaper, who in Pakrac founded the cooperative of Serbian artisans, on suitable occasions used the Serbian coat of arms and the Serbian flag, and in the Serbian teaching college in Pakrac had the Serbian language in the curriculum. Ban Ivan Mazuranic thought that all these activities tended to propagate the Serbian ideas, bringing hatred and strife "between the Catholic and Greek-Eastern populations". Mazuranic furthermore came to the conclusion that the Serbs with those acts sought "to obtain for the Serbian element an unfair advantage and political supremacy in Croatian Slavonia". In order to prevent all this, the suspects from Pakrac, Karlovac, Osijek and Daruvar were arrested and those who were employed were dismissed without the right of being reemployed in the state territory of Croatia and Slavonia.

Mazuranic's anti-Serbian action gave notice of the direction which the Croatian policy, relying on the Croatian state and historical right and the institute of "political" people, would take. Very soon it transpired that even the Serbian name in Croatia was a "political offence", and that everything that is Serbian was to be uprooted in order to create an ethnically pure, religiously unified, great Catholic Croatian state. Attitude to the Serbs on the part of the supporters of the policy of the Croatian state and historic right, is revealed by the Political History of the Croatian People by Dr. Pero Gavranic. He wrote: "There is for certain nowhere in Europe more animosity between peoples of different tongues than here in this country between the Croats and the Serbs, who speak the same language. This animosity is, of course, lamentable, but it is quite understandable. The respective Croatian and Serbian ambitions are not fighting one another arms in hand, for such a struggle would not be permitted by our present masters, but the struggle does exist, an underhanded, secret, dirty struggle of one existence against another, of one individual against another, a struggle without respite, without an end. Before we the Croats might have an independent statelet like the Serbs and live free from fear, there would have to be a war between the Croats and the Serbs, which war would certainly be very popular."

Historical events which took place in 1941-1945 and 1991-1993, fully confirmed Pero Gavranic's assessment pronounced in 1895. Both times, when the Croats acquired their "independent statelet", there was, just as predicted by Gavranic, a bloodshed in which the victims were the Serbs. Hatred against them was shown in a most brutal manner, but with the clear aim: to create an ethnically pure and as large as possible Croatian state.

A similar testimony to rightist intolerance is found in a letter by Dragutin Jagic of 1901 in which, following the burial of King Milan in the Monastery of Krusedol, he wrote: "If we had our way we would have shipped dead Milan even farther from Belgrade, because even the dead Serbs are causing bother and quarrels here in Croatia." This to a sane mind incomprehensible hatred, which had overtaken a considerable portion of the Croatian society in the second half of the 19th century, was commented upon by the well-meaning and humane Miss Adeline Pauline Irby, who as a foreigner, had no reason whatever to make a difference between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Following the mass arrest of the Serbs in Pakrac, Karlovac, Osijek, Daruvar and other towns in Croatia and Slavonia, which took place during the uprising in Bosnia and Hercegovina 1875-1878, Miss Irby wrote: "The only motivation for this persecution is an inhuman hatred of the Serbs on the part of the Croats. Just as Catholics in Bosnia are aiding the Turks against the Serbs, so the Croats in Slavonia are aiding the Hungarians, again against the Serbs." The greatest sowers of hatred, those who moulded it in their national and political programmes, who gave it the features of a struggle between different races, Eugen Kvaternik and Ante Starcevic were welcomed in the Croatian society as the greatest patriots. The rift between the Croats and the Serbs became deeply embedded in their minds: while ones were wanting to glorify and follow the mentioned leaders, others were justly uneasy about them as they felt the terrible consequences of their harmful action.

Bearing in mind the aforesaid, it is clear that the national integration of Croats after the revolution of 1848-49 went in the opposite direction from that taken by the Illyrian movement. Namely, their national integrational processes acquired all the characteristics of the greater Croatian politics, those within the rightist movement and those within the movement which developed under the Yugoslav appellation. Based entirely on the Croatian state and historical right, the greater Croatian policy was bound to come into conflict with the Serbian and the greater Serbian policy on a whole number of issues. Thus it happened that the contradictions and conflicts between the Serbs and Croats, arising from unbridgeable differences on the policy of the Croatian "political" people, multiplied and mutual relations reached boiling point.