No abstract

This article examines Yugoslav national programs of ruling political elites and its concrete implementation in education policy in interwar Yugoslavia. It is argued that at the beginning of the period Yugoslavism was not inherently incompatible with or subordinate to Serbian, Croatian or to a lesser degree Slovenian national ideas. However, the concrete ways in which Yugoslavism was formulated and adopted by ruling elites discredited the Yugoslav national idea and resulted in increasing delineation and polarization in the continuum of national ideas available in Yugoslavia. Throughout the three consecutive periods of political rule under scrutiny, ruling elites failed to reach a wider consensus regarding the Yugoslav national idea or to create a framework within which a constructive elaboration of Yugoslav national identity could take place. By the end of the interwar period, the Yugoslav national idea had become linked exclusively to conservatism, centralism, authoritarianism and, for non-Serbian elites at least, Serbian hegemony. Other national ideas gained significance as ideas providing viable alternatives for the regime's Yugoslavism.

The Sokol gymnastics movement was both in numbers and in spatial range one of the largest voluntary associations in interwar Yugoslavia. It was very active and visible, through numerous public activities at the local, regional, national and even international level, prestigious new halls and regular publications and media presence. In giving a historical overview of the Sokol movement against the background of interwar Yugoslav state-building, this article focusses on the politicisation and state incorporation of the association. During the 1920s, the Sokol served as a proxy for local and regional political struggles between centralist and decentralist parties in the Croatian part of the country. Under the Royal Dictatorship, the Sokol movement developed into a compulsory and state-controlled institution for physical and national education. This article argues that the incorporation of the Sokol movement in the statecontrolled civil sphere was not a one-directional development. The Sokol movement itself made use of the central state's predisposition towards state control over associative culture for internal institutional purposes. In the process, however, the social position of the Sokol movement transformed from a voluntary association that could mediate between state and society into an exclusive marker of loyalty to nation and state.

Croatian and Yugoslav national identity have been closely connected throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. This article questions the assumption that Croatian national identification inherently opposed the Yugoslav nationalising efforts of the interwar Yugoslav state by means of a study of commemorative activities. In the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom in 1925, the Yugoslav level of national identity was activated as a complement to Croatian national identity. During the 1930s, commemorations of Matija Gubec and the Illyrian movement conveyed a mutually exclusive relation between Croatian and Yugoslav national identity. I argue that the dismissal of grassroots Croatian historical commemorations that were indifferent but not averse to Yugoslav nationhood in the integral Yugoslav policy of the authoritarian state during the 1930s curtailed the potential of these commemorations as vehicles for Yugoslav national identification and complicated the concurrence of Croatian and Yugoslav nationhood.

The politicized polarization of Montenegrin society around the question of Montenegrin statehood in the context of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, finally leading to Montenegrin independence in 2006, is accompanied by a remarkable identity change toward a clear division between Serbian and Montenegrin nationhood. I situate this development within the long-term interference between Montenegrin and Serbian categories of identification in elite articulations of national identity in Montenegro during the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the Montenegrin and Serbian categories were concurrently available for national identification in the context of political modernization in the country. Reflecting the lasting political and broader societal relevance of nationhood during the Yugoslav twentieth century, diverging interpretations of the relation between both categories of nationhood have continuously substantiated political divides in Montenegro. One part of the political spectrum subordinated Montenegrin regional identity to Serbian nationhood, the other part attached increasingly far-reaching political demands to Montenegrin national identity while maintaining a sense of Serbian national identity in the domain of culture and ethnicity. In the course of the Yugoslav twentieth century, the complementary relation between both categories of nationhood was challenged by exclusive definitions of Serbian and Montenegrin nationhood, a development which has to be related to the continuous questioning of relations between various concurring categories of national identity available in Yugoslavia. The current institutionalization of Montenegrin nationhood in independent Montenegro and the development toward clear-cut Serbian and Montenegrin mono-national identities is leading to the regression of multiple nationhood among the broader population.