Democratic Party in the Early Years of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. “The Only Party of All Tribes, All Religions and All Classes”

The article deals with the Democratic Party, founded in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1919. The party existed until the early years after the Second World War. However, despite more than 30 years of history, in the first half of the 1920s the inability of the party to fulfill its original mission, as its founders saw it, was manifested. That predetermined the split of the Democratic Party in 1924. One after another, the founders of the party abandoned the fundamentalist Yugoslavism that characterized the first program of the party and its activities in the early 1920s. Not only did the democrats show a utilitarian approach to their own Yugoslavist credo, but so did almost everyone who hoped to occupy certain positions of power in the 1920s. Politicians had to balance the need to swear allegiance to the supranational ideology that laid the foundation of Yugoslavia with the desire to match the marginalized “narrow tribal” sentiments of voters. What happened to the democrats in the period under review is of particular interest, because it clearly demonstrates how quickly Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian leaders lost their barely acquired faith in the idea of the national unity of the Yugoslavians — an idea that turned out to be incapable of ensuring political mobilization of the masses.