Original scientific paper

STJEPAN RADIC IN THE ELECTION YEAR OF 1920

Hrvoje Matković ; Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Stjepan Radić was undoubtedly one of the most prominent personalities of recent Croat history. Until 1918, he espoused the idea of Austroslavism, i. e., the transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a federation with a Slavic majority. Then he accepted the idea of the Yugoslav union outside of the Monarchy, but he incessantly warned about the need for consensus about the equitable position of the Yugoslav lands in a future Yugoslav community. He did not approve of the way the new South Slavic state was created, and opposed the centralization and Serbian hegemony.
After he was released from prison in 1920, Radić was very much politically active, which brought him another imprisonment and a two-and-a-half-year sentence. The Belgrade government calculated with his imprisonment since it wanted to eliminate Radić from elections scheduled for 1920. The government released him from prison on the eve of elections, believing that Radić was politically innocuous. However, that was the political triumph for Radić's, Croat People's Peasant Party; it gained 50 seats in the Parliament, and thus assumed the leading role in the creation of the Croat politics in the Yugoslav state.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

209821

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/209821

Publication date:

10.1.1993.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 1.972 *