Conference paper
The Attitude of Socialists – Members of the National Croatian Union towards the Need for Maintaining Ethnic and Class Consciousness
Tihomir Telišman
; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The National Croatian Union (NCU), a Croatian emigrant benefit organization, was founded in Pittsburgh at the end of 1894. Its individual members were the first to support openly political parties in Croatia and in the United States of America, and so did – from 1912 – the political groupings of narodnjaci (i.e. men of the people), »socialists«, trovilaši (i.e. schemers), izjavaši (i.e. declarationists), and auštrijaki (i.e. Austriacs). Unlike the narodnjaci who had made the ethnic function part of the NCU ac-tivity up to 1921, the socialists represented a political grouping that would after 1918, together with the communists, make efforts to strengthen the class-based or worker-orientated function of the Union, while disregarding its ethnic function. As a progressive political grouping, they contributed to the strengthening of Zajedničar, the official NCU paper, as a Workers' paper, and to several Croatian national benefit organizations' uniting into a new Croatian Fraternal Union (CFU) in 1926, as well as to changes in the NCU regulations on a class basis. Since the socialists had failed to understand the need for the NCU's ethnic function and the ethnic identification of its members in American conditions, they – unfortunately – also contributed to conflicts and cleavages in the ranks of Croatian emigration. The outcome was the foundation of the Croatian Catholic Union (CCU), after the 14th NCU convention that was held in 1921 under the leadership of one of the political groupings of narodnjaci, called izjavaši. The remaining groups of narodnjaci got together to form a unified political grouping after the 15th NCU convention that was held in 1924, and they took control over the new CFU in the first half of 1926.
Keywords
Croatian immigration; socialists; ethnic consciousness; United States of America
Hrčak ID:
128174
URI
Publication date:
31.5.1988.
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