Professional paper
The Trade-union Movement in the Social Activity of Croatia between the Two World Wars
Bosiljka Janjatović
Abstract
The trade-union movement in Yugoslavia was fragmentary, heterogenous, and the arena of political and other conflicts caused by its various protagonists and currents: and by those forces which lay behind individual trade-union organisations. Nevertheless it has a significant place in the social development of Croatia. During the period between the wars the trade unions were the only mass workers organisations: operating legally and the working class found in them the possibility to express themselves independently and legally on social and political matters. (This applies above all to the communist oriented unions which were closely connected with the political struggle led by the illegal Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ) so that industrial action was aimed at achieving the remaining class goals.) While the KPJ, as the avante-garde of the working class and the only political force to articulate its interests, rallied the workers, by means of the trade-union movement, to fight against the regime and capitalism, practically all other social forces, whether inside or outside the working class, tried, by means of the unions, to gain the workers for their aims and program. The Socialists, who grew out of the working class but moved further and further away from its real interests in the period between the wars, attempted to direct the action of the workers towards reform and to seeking alleviation of existing social tensions. The middle-class opposition party, known as the Croatian Rural Party, tried, with the help of the Croatian workers’ union, to soften the class struggle of the workers and so to channel industrial action as to harmonise it with the program and ideas of the middle-class forces which stood behind their efforts. Likewise the régime, along with the clergy, endeavoured, by means of the unions, so to influence, the workers as to crush their fighting spirit.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
219063
URI
Publication date:
7.6.1978.
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