Durham E-Theses The royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia, 1929-1934: as seen from British sources Shepherd, David How to cite: Shepherd, David (1975) The royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia, 1929-1934: as seen from British sources, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9788/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Abstract of Thesis In January 1929, King Alexander of Yugoslavia proclaimed a Royal Dictatorship over his country. He believed that such strong action was necessary because there was a very real danger of civil war, for the animosity and disagreement which had existed between the Serbs and the Croats since the inception of the Kingdom had reached the point of open murder with the killing of the Croat leader and two of his colleagues in the Yugoslav Parliaments Alexander believed that national unity was his chief responsibility and he hoped that, by removing the party political system, he might inspire his people to think of themselves as Yugoslavs rather than as Serbs or Croats. But despite his efforts to improve the quality of government, to streamline the methods of administration and to eliminate corruption, he failed - not only because of an entrenched hostility towards absolutism amongst an intensely democratic people, but also because of the dearth of men with any capacity for sound government or inspired leadership. During the course of his Dictatorship, he came to realize .that even if he secured a viable settlement between his people at home, there could be no sure future for his Kingdom unless he took steps to secure its international position. To this end, he attempted to come to terms with Mussolini recognizing these men as Yugoslavia's most immediate opponents. (Only when his efforts failed - through no fault of his own - did he seek to strengthen Yugoslavia's existing treaties with the Little Entente and to complement this alliance in the north with a similar Entente in the Balkan peninsula. It was precisely becauserjof his successes abroad, rather than his failures at home, that his enemies arranged his assassination. His death united the Yugoslav nation but greatly weakened its position abroad. -THE ROYAL DICTATORSHIP I N YUGOSLAVIA, 1929-1934 Seen jporv\ SvitisA SourceS ) by DAVID SHEPHERD A Thesis submitted for the Degree of Master of Letters in History in the University .of Durham. April 1975 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. (i) Foreword. This dissertation has been prepared under the supervision of Dr. A. Orde to whom I owe a very special debt of gratitude for her comments and criticisms which have been invaluable in the presentation of arguments and in the interpretation of events. I should also like to thank the staffs of the Public Records Office, the British Museum Library, the National Library of Scotland and the library of the University of Dundee for their help and assistance in the collation of material for this thesis. Finally, 1 should like to express my thanks to my wife but for whose constant prodding and tender ministrations, this manuscript would never have been completed. David Shepherd. April 1975. (ii) Preface. It would be fair to say that in the last sixty years, Yugoslavia has twice been born. In 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established to bring together the large number.of South Slavs living in the Balkan peninsula and, of them, to make one nation; in 1945, the state was revived and reconstituted as a Federal Peoples* Republic. But both as a Kingdom and as a Rep• ublic, the great problem facing all Yugoslav leaders, statesmen and politicians, has been to make that unity a reality and, at the same time, to protect their country from all those who seek to promote - or profit by — national disunity. The history of Royal Yugoslavia in the years 1918-1941 falls into three clearly defined periods. At first, there was a period of constitutional monarchy when the nation was governed by a Government responsible to a democratically-elected Parliament (1918-28). Follow• ing this, there were six years of .;royal dictatorship under King Alexander (1929-34). Finally, there was the Regency of Prince Paul (1934-41). Each of these periods was brought to an end by some violent act - murder in the SkupStina, assassination in Marseilles, a coup d*etat and the German invasion. To obtain a composite and balanced picture of Royal Yugoslavia, - it would be necessary to consider all these periods together in a single work, but in a thesis of this size, such a task is clearly impossible. I have therefore confined myself to the central portion of Yugoslavia1s inter-war history - that of the royal dictatorship - and I have endeavoured to show not only how it came about and what it sought to do, but also to offer some critical appreciation of one manTs attempt to solve an apparently intractable problem which has faced all Yugoslav leaders since their country was born. (iii) But, unfortunately, this period of Yugoslav history presents •considerable difficulties for the historian. Immediately the royal dictatorship was proclaimed, strong laws were imposed to ensure that - in newspapers, books, statistics and agency reports - only the official view would be heard. At that time, 76$ of the population were peasants and the illiteracy rate for those over the age of 10 was 44.6l#; It will therefore be seen that there exist very few personal records of life under the Dictatorship. Of those who wrote freely about conditions in Yugoslavia, some (such as Pribicevic and Adamicywere highly critical, whilst others (such as foreign diplomats and responsible journalists) were prepared to give the King a chance and therefore retained open - if somewhat pessimistic - minds. Most of the books and memoirs which have been written about the royal dictatorship were written after Alexanderfs death and their accounts are to some extent coloured by that event (Graham, Patterson, Armstrong). Other books (notably by French authors such as Faure-Biquet, Novak, Eylan, Augarde and Sicard) are so obviously hagiographs that they are of no use at all. Very few of the actual participants in the events of 1929-34 survived the Second World War in a position - or with the opportunity - to write their memoirs (Djilas, Macek, Stojadinovic and Henderson being the exceptions) and, for many years, the history of pre-war Yugoslavia has been eclipsed by the more epic confrontations between the Partisans and the Axis and Tito and Stalin. It would perhaps not be fair to say that research into the documents and records of the. royal era have been officially discouraged in Yugoslaviai^but it is a fact that only recently have' Yugoslav historians (Culinovic, Stojkov) begun to publish their own studies of the inter-war period. In order to produce this study of the royal dictatorship, I have therefore had to re3y somewhat heavily on the one substantial body of material available to me which provides a continuous record of day-to-day political activity during the regime - namely the despatches and general correspondence of the British Legation in Belgrade and its Ministers, Sir Howard William Kennard and Sir Nevile Henderson. These are contained in the Public Records Office in London, (iv) under' the series F.O. 371, volumes 12978-87 (1928); 13705-12 (1929); 14438-48 (1930); 15269-74 (1931); 15994-97 (1932); 16827-32 (1933) and 18452-64 (1934). I was well aware of the disadvantages of using such a source - the narrow scope of the diplomatic world in Belgrade, the absence of any real comment as to what difference government decisions made to individual people at grass-roots level, and the detached acceptance of the status quo. But, on the other hand, there were certain advan• tages. Both Sir Howard Kennard and Sir Nevile Henderson had easy access to King Alexander and both men were able to see the architect of the Dictatorship at close quarters, to hear his policies expounded at first hand (not through distant rumour) and to see precisely what King Alexander was trying to do. They were also able to witness the problems that faced the King, the shifts in power and could pinpoint the regime's faults and failings. They were also in close contact with many of the regime's leading men (Marinkovic, Srskic, Svrljuga) and, from time to time, they had private conversations with opponents of the Dictatorship, with the pre-Dictatorship politicians who - although pensioned-off - still managed to keep close to opinion in the capital and feeling in the country. In the foreign field, the British Minister was sometimes privy to aspects of royal diplomacy, unknown to the Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs, and occasionally, he was instrumental in changing the King's mind. It will therefore be appreciated that, by using these despatches and general correspondence from the British Legation - together with such other books, memoirs, articles and reports as do exist - I have been able to obtain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the royal Dictatorship.