“Yugoslavia has Nothing. Yugoslavia has No Bread. But Hungary Gives Us Bread”: Access to Food and (Dis)loyalty in a “Redeemed” Yugoslav Borderland

Abstract

This article illustrates the socioeconomic background of rural political discontent in the post-imperial Yugoslav border region Prekmurje. The author argues that during the post-Habsburg political transition and ensuing social transformation, the fundamental lack of loyalty to the Yugoslav state among an important segment of the rural population of Prekmurje was rooted in insufficient access to food. Documents of court proceedings, official state reports, and findings of individuals with deep understandings of the situation on the ground reveal that this rural political mobilization was not so much a reflection of Hungarian propaganda or a “lack of appropriate national identification” among the local population—although, of course, these two factors cannot be ignored in a contested and linguistically and ethnically diverse region—but rather an outcome of the impoverishment of large sections of the peasant population.