Political Circumstances in Croatia at the Beginning of the First World War

Abstract

On the bases of relevant literature, newspaper articles andauthentic documents dating from the beginning of the FirstWorld War, the author made an effort to answer the questionwhether the accusations of the military authorities against theCroat-Serb coalition were justified. In other words, the goalof this work is to establish whether it is right to claim that theeminent members of the Coalition "undoubtedly leanttowards high treason". After the analysis, the authorpresumes that it is accurate to say that most of the eminentmembers of the Coalition were, in the period before thebreakout of the First World War, linked to institutions whichwere based on the Greater-Serbian idea. The author noticesthat the civil authorities in Croatia not only failed to institutelegal proceedings against them, but also ignored to holdthem politically accountable and intervened on their behalf.The author concludes that the above mentioned observationsreflect the conjugation between the Greater-Hungarian andGreater-Serbian idea, which was formerly noticed by theCroatian historian, sociologist and political scientist Ivo Pilar.