engleski

Loyal Soldiers - Disloyal Citizens? Croatian First World War Veterans in Decade after the Great War

When the dream of unified Yugoslav state finally came true (December 1918), Croatia, formerly part of the Habsburg Monarchy, has found itself in a delicate position as defeated nation submerged in newly developed culture of victory. Although the idea of South Slav/Yugoslav state was conceived on tradition of Slavism by Croatian political and cultural elite (Juraj Križanić, Pavao Ritter Vitezović, Josip Juraj Strossmayer), and gradually became commonly accepted, the stark reality in the aftermath of the unification hit the very tender spot of the Croatian national tissue. The Croatian (disabled) veterans, former Austro-Hungarian soldiers were among those who would acutely feel this stark reality since they were, alongside war orphans and widows, the most sensitive part of this newly formed political society. In the proposed paper author is dealing with the position of the Croatian First World War (disabled) veterans in Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and developed relations between veterans and government. Their position and relations are studied based on the analysis of ethno-national discourse of citizenship, according to which ethnic belonging is supposed to be the primary criterion for membership in a political community. In the paper it is argued that in multi ethnic society such as Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the distribution of rights, duties and privileges was not (and was not supposed to be) equal in practice (Peled, Lewin-Epstein, Mundlok and Cohen, 2011). Also, the paper examines whether war veteran’s commemorative practices or its absence has influenced the nation-state building process whose aim was to create new loyal subjects and/or citizens.

Croatian WWI veterans, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, citizens, commemorative practices, veterans associations

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