Slovenian Federalist Ideas and the Attitude towards the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party from 1923 to 1928

Abstract

The article presents the positioning of Slovenian parties after the elections in 1923, changes in their political tactics and the parties’ internal fragmentations. The author analyses the implications of these modifications on the attitude of Slovenian political groups towards the federalist Yugoslav idea, towards the strongest Croatian political group, the Croatian (Republican) Peasant Party (HRSS), and its president Stjepan Radić. Slovenian political groups were not united on these issues. Slovenian conservatives attempted to strengthen their position through a more moderate approach towards Serbian parties. After 1923, due to the loss of confidence in the People's Radical Party and the weak performance of its Croatian affiliate, the Croatian People's Party, they sought to redefine their political partnerships. However, cooperation with the H(R)SS never reached an appreciable level. The reasons for this lie less in the ideological foundations and more in the incompatibility of the characters of their leaders. On the other hand, Slovenian liberals, despite their ideologically sincere unitarist principles, found a cohesive factor with Radić in anti-Greater Serbian sentiment, which marked their collaboration until the summer of 1928. The communists, due to their own worldviews and the open conflict with the state authorities, vehemently opposed the unitarist doctrine and sympathized with the H(R)SS. Within this context, they were willing to confront even the Serbian faction of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY).