Review article
Vrsi before World War II
Marjan Diklić
Abstract
The introductory part summarily deals with the origins, the location and the name of the village of Vrsi; after this the author discusses its setting and climate, the boundaries and surface area of the cadastral district and the number of inhabitants between the two world wars. After these introductory remarks, the first part deals in more detail with the economic, social and political condition within the village and in the county of Nin during the thirties of the twentieth century, especially during the government of Bogoljub Jevtić and Milan Stojadinović as well as during the period of the Autonomous Banovina of Croatia. The author thoroughly explains how already during the thirties two powerful and mutually opposed political options (groups) appeared in Vrsi: the Croatian nationalist and the Yugoslav unitarianist groups which particularly came to the surface before and during the parliamentary and county elections. The first was led by the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) with local leaders and a numerous following, while the other was headed by the Yugoslav National Party (JNS) and later by the Yugoslav Radical Union (JRZ) with its rare followers who in the village were called “repaši” (“tail followers”). The leader of the first political group in Vrsi was the president of the local organization of the Croatian Peasant Party Marko Velčić, while Krste Predovan, a representative in the Assembly of the Yugoslav Kingdom, headed the second. After the parliamentary elections in 1935 and 1938, district elections were held in 1936 and 1940 which were won by the Croatian Peasant Party who chose Frane Glavan, a party member, to be the head of Nin district. It was at the local elections in 1936 in Vrsi that the Yugo-unitarianist group – “tail followers” – were utterly defeated and this was repeated at the next district elections in 1940, so that the administration of the village was wholly in the hands of the Croatian Peasant Party which, in agreement with the new head of the district and the district leadership in Nin, appointed Marko Maraš Šordov the head of the village. He retained this position from the autumn of 1936 to the Italian occupation in April 1941. Thusly, he administered the village of Vrsi during the period of the waning of Serbian dictatorship, the rise of the local Croatian Peasant Party, the building of the pier on Mulo, the division of village “commons” and the establishment of the government of the Autonomous Banovina of Croatia in the village of Vrsi and in the Nin district. All of this was taking place before and at the beginning of WWII which soon engulfed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Keywords
Vrsi; Nin; northern Dalmatia; the Yugoslav Radical Union; the Croatian Peasant Party; the Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Autonomous Banovina of Croatia; WWII
Hrčak ID:
8718
URI
Publication date:
1.11.2005.
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