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The 6 January Dictatorship (Serbian: Шестојануарска диктатура, Šestojanuarska diktatura; Croatian: Šestosiječanjska diktatura; Slovene: Šestojanuarska diktatura) was a royal dictatorship established in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia after 1929) by King Alexander I (r. 1921–34) with the ultimate goal to create a Yugoslav ideology and a single Yugoslav nation. It began on 6 January 1929, when the king prorogued parliament and assumed control of the state, and ended with the 1931 Yugoslav Constitution.
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Transcription
Male: In the last video we left off in 1922 in October where you have several hundreds of thousands of fascists march on Rome, which causes the King to put Benito Mussolini in power and this picture right over here is from Mussolini coming to power from the march on Rome and not only does he get appointed as Prime Minister, but he has dictatorial powers for one year. Those dictatorial powers are also backed up with the Blackshirts,this loose band, kind of a paramillitary group. So he uses his powers and the fact that he has his own force so to speak to continue to just secure more and more power under him over the next few years. By 1923 he makes the Blackshirts actually become a formal national militia, essentially the volunteer militia for national security. In Italian the acronym is the MVSN. So, the Blackshirts become formalized as the MVSN. He also gets Parliament or gets the legislature to pass what's known as the Acerbo Law or Acerbo Law. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. Acerbo Law. This is an interesting one because this is a law that allowed whichever majority party, whatever the largest party in the Deputy of Ministers, whatever the largest party in Parliament is that party, as long as they get more than 25% of the vote, they will get 2/3s of the seats in Parliament. This is strange because traditionally in a Parliamentary system if you got ... Let's say you were the largest party and you got 26% of the vote, you still would not have enough seats to govern properly. You would have to form a coalition with several other parties so that you could essentially form a government. But this is saying whoever gets the plurality of votes, whoever gets the most votes without necessarily being a majority, they will be by default become a majority. And you could imagine why the fascists wanted this to happen. They felt that they could get 25% of the votes, one maybe through popular support but also with the help of the coercive tactics of the Blackshirts and then that would give them stronger control in the legislature. Now, the big question is is why would the legislature pass this? Because at this point the fascists were not the dominant party. They did not have a majority in the legislature. In fact, this was why they wanted to pass a law because they didn't have a majority. And once again it's one of those questions of history. Some would say that people were enamored with the fascists. They were enamored with Mussolini. They were eager to have strong leadership. They didn't want this government of coalitions. They wanted one government to be able to take action. On the other side when the votes were happening you actually had Blackshirts in the room. One argument is that there was also an element of pure intimidation. But needless to say the Acerbo Law actually passed. There is irony here because it was unnecessary. In 1924 when you actually have elections you have the fascists getting 2/3s of the vote. Fascists get 2/3 of the vote. Now, many today and many in Italy at the time felt that this was a fraudulent election. They felt the reason why the fascists were able to get so many votes is because they were able to intimidate folks. They were able to commit fraud during the election. They were able to kind of throw other votes out, and one of the most outspoken individuals when it came to criticizing the fascists and their tactics of coming to power was Giacomo Matteotti. He wrote a book about the fascists. He gave two really strong speeches in the Deputy of Ministers where he talks about or the Chamber of Deputies I should say, where he talks about the corruption and the violence of the fascists. A few days after giving those speeches he gets killed by Blackshirts. So, he gets actually quite violently murdered by Blackshirts, and this puts Mussolini at least initially in a bit of a bind. He doesn't want to look like a thug, someone who goes out and just murders people. It's not clear that he actually, Mussolini, was involved in this in any way, but his followers had committed this act. To protest against the murder of Giacomo Matteotti you actually have the entire socialist party boycotts Parliament. This was known as the Aventine Secession or at least the 20th century Aventine Secession. Aventine Secession. It's called the Aventine Secession because if you go back to Roman times 2500 years ago you had the Plebeians secede out of protest from harsh rule and they go to the Aventine Hill. So, it was named after that same idea. The whole reason why the socialists did this is they hoped that by boycotting Parliament that that would convince the King to get rid of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, as I say, he's also in a bind. He doesn't know quite what to do, and on top of all of this the Blackshirts are telling him, "Look, if you don't take control of the situation, if you don't become a strong ruler we're going to do it without you. We might even overthrow you Mr. Mussolini." In 1925, early 1925, Mussolini makes his famous January speech. 1925, his famous January speech. This is normally viewed as the formal start of his absolute dictatorship. In this Mussolini, instead of the Aventine Secession somehow undermining Mussolini's power because the King did not dismiss Mussolini it actually strengthened Mussolini's power. He used that as a pretext. He said, "Look, all of these deputies they've decided not to show up at Parliament. They've essentially given up their seats, and he bans, he bans the Italian Socialist party. He embraces the Blackshirts. He takes responsibility for them. He doesn't take responsibility directly for Giacomo Matteotti's murder, but he takes responsibility for the Blackshirts, and he gives in kind of classic Mussolini style a somewhat convoluted argument about how strength and violence is going to give stability to the Italian people. Obviously he is an amazing orator. He's very charismatic. This essentially gives him the control he needs, and by the end of 1925 you have the Christmas Eve Law that's passed by Parliament that esentially puts no checks on Mussolini's power, and as you go then into 1926 they more, and more, the fascists under Mussolini take absolute control, absolute power of Italy. So in 1926 they're banning other parties. So, other parties are banned. They're starting to force people to become members of the fascist party if they want roles in the government or even in any type of institution. They're starting to take control of the press. They're starting to have a very strong state police architecture. If this looks familiar based on what we studied about the Nazis it's not a coincidence. Hitler, he admired Mussolini. In fact, Mussolini's march on Rome inspired Hitler to attempt his Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. A lot of these tactics that brought Mussolini to power you see kind of a parallel in what brought Hitler to power only about seven years later.
History
In 1928, Croatian Peasant Party leader Stjepan Radić was assassinated in the Parliament of Yugoslavia by a Montenegrin Serb leader and People's Radical Party politician Puniša Račić, during a tense argument.[1]
On 6 January 1929, using as a pretext the political crisis triggered by the shooting, King Alexander abolished the Vidovdan Constitution, prorogued the Parliament and assumed dictatorial powers.[2] He appointed a cabinet solely responsible to him, and imposed tight censorship on the press. Initially, he claimed that this was only a temporary situation that would allow him to unify the country.[3] with the aim of establishing the Yugoslav ideology and single Yugoslav nation.[4][5][6] He changed the name of the country to "Kingdom of Yugoslavia", and changed the internal divisions from the 33 oblasts to nine new banovinas on 3 October. This decision was made following a proposal by the British ambassador to better decentralize the country, modeled on Czechoslovakia.[7] A Court for the Protection of the State was soon established to act as the new regime's tool for putting down any dissent. Opposition politicians Vladko Maček and Svetozar Pribićević were arrested under charges by the court. Pribićević later went into exile, whereas over the course of the 1930s Maček would become the leader of the entire opposition bloc.
Immediately after the dictatorship was proclaimed, Croatian deputy Ante Pavelić left for exile from the country. The following years Pavelić worked to establish a revolutionary organization, the Ustaše, allied with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) against the state.
In 1931, Alexander decreed a new Constitution which vested the King with executive power. Elections were to be by universal male suffrage. The provision for a secret ballot was dropped, and pressure on public employees to vote for the governing party was to be a feature of all elections held under Alexander's constitution. Further, half the upper house was directly appointed by the King, and legislation could become law with the approval of one of the houses alone if also approved by the King.
That same year, Croatian historian and anti-Yugoslavist intellectual[8] Milan Šufflay was assassinated in Zagreb. As a response, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann sent an appeal to the International League of Human Rights in Paris condemning the murder, accusing the Yugoslav government. The letter states of a "horrible brutality which is being practiced upon the Croatian People". The appeal was addressed to the Paris-based Ligue des droits de l'homme[9] (Human Rights League).[10] In their letter Einstein and Mann held the Yugoslav king Aleksandar explicitly responsible for these circumstances.[10][11][12]
Croat opposition to the new régime was strong and, in late 1932, the Croatian Peasant Party issued the Zagreb Manifesto, which sought an end to Serb hegemony and dictatorship. The government reacted by imprisoning many political opponents including the new Croatian Peasant Party leader Vladko Maček. Despite these measures, opposition to the dictatorship continued, with Croats calling for a solution to what was called the "Croatian question". In late 1934, the King planned to release Maček from prison, introduce democratic reforms, and attempt find common ground between Serbs and Croats.
However, on 9 October 1934, the king was assassinated in Marseille, France, by the Bulgarian Veličko Kerin (also known by his revolutionary pseudonym Vlado Chernozemski), an activist of IMRO, in a conspiracy with Yugoslav exiles and radical members of banned political parties in cooperation with the Croatian extreme nationalist Ustaše organisation.
Notes
- ^ Newman 2017.
- ^ Graham, Malbone W. (1929). "The "Dictatorship" in Yugoslavia". American Political Science Review. 23 (2): 449–459. doi:10.2307/1945227. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1945227. S2CID 144843360.
- ^ Edwin Leland James (7 January 1929). "King of Yugoslavia Assumes All Power". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
- ^ Troch 2017.
- ^ Grgić 2018.
- ^ Nielsen 2009.
- ^ Pavlović 2012, pp. 512.
- ^ Bartulin, Nevenko (2013). The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory. Brill Publishers. p. 124. ISBN 9789004262829.
- ^ Realite sur l'attentat de Marseille contre le roi Alexandre Archived 26 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Einstein accuses Yugoslavian rulers in savant's murder. New York Times. 6 May 1931. Mirror.
- ^ "Raditch left tale of Yugoslav plot". New York Times. 23 August 1931. p. N2. Retrieved 6 December 2008. Mirror.
- ^ "Nevada Labor. Yesterday, today and tomorrow". Nevadalabor.com. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
Sources
- Mrđenović, Dušan (1988). Ustavi i vlade Kneževine Srbije, Kraljevine Srbije, Kraljevine SHS i Kraljevine Jugoslavije, 1835-1941. Nova knj. ISBN 9788673350660.
- Vucinich, Wayne S.; Tomasevich, Jozo (1969). Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist Experiment. University of California Press. pp. 22–. GGKEY:5JR74ERLNET.
- Yeomans, Rory S (2012). Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945. University of Pittsburgh Pre. ISBN 9780822977933.
- Newman, John Paul (2017). "War Veterans, Fascism, and Para-Fascist Departures in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941". Fascism. 6: 63. doi:10.1163/22116257-00601003.
- Troch, Pieter (2017). "Yugoslavism between the world wars: indecisive nation building". Fascism. 38 (2): 227–244. doi:10.1080/00905990903517819. hdl:1854/LU-839236. S2CID 153840603.
- Grgić, Stipica (2018). "Pantheon on a tablecloth: Yugoslav dictatorship and the confrontation of national symbols in Croatia (1929–1935)". The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity. 46 (3): 458–470. doi:10.1080/00905992.2017.1357029. S2CID 158362422.
- Nielsen, Christian Axboe (2009). "Policing Yugoslavism: Surveillance, Denunciations, and Ideology during King Aleksandar's Dictatorship, 1929-1934". East European Politics and Societies. 23 (1): 34–62. doi:10.1177/0888325408326789. S2CID 145765948.
- Dragnich, Alex N. (1991). "The Anatomy of a Myth: Serbian Hegemony". Slavic Review. 50 (3): 659–662. doi:10.2307/2499861. JSTOR 2499861. S2CID 159922741.
- Pavlović, Marko (2012). Časlav Ocić (ed.). "Jugoslovenska kraljevina prva evropska regionalna država" (PDF). Zbornik Matice srpske za društvene nauke. 141. Novi Sad: Matica srpska: 503–521. ISSN 0352-5732. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
Further reading
- Stojkov, Todor. Opozicija u vreme šestojanuarske diktature 1929-1935. Prosveta, 1969.
- Gašparič, Jure. SLS pod kraljevo diktaturo: diktatura kralja Aleksandra in politika Slovenske ljudske stranke v letih 1929-1935. Modrijan, 2007.
- Imamović, Mustafa. Pravni položaj verskih zajednica za vreme šestojanuarske diktature. 1991
- Janjatović, Bosiljka. "O progonima hrvatskih političara u Zagrebu za vrijeme karađorđevićevske šestojanuarske diktature." Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest 26.1 (1993): 161-176.
- Janjatović, Bosiljka, and Petar Strčić. "Nekoliko spisa organa vlasti o komunistima na otoku Krku za šestojanuarske diktature." Vjesnik historijskih arhiva u Rijeci i Pazinu 16.1971) (1971): 91-126.
- Jerotijevic, Zoran. "Економски и политички узроци увођења Шестојануарског режима (Economic and Political Causes of the Introduction of the January Sixth Regime)." Ekonomika 60.2 (2014): 227-238.
- Kaučič, Domen. Odnos Slovencev do kralja Aleksandra I. Karađorđevića: odziv na politične poteze kraljevega dvora v času šestojanuarske diktature: diplomsko delo. Diss. D. Kaučič, 2015.
- Drakić, Gordana. "Arising of the Legal System in the Yugoslav State between the Two World Wars." Proceedings of Novi Sad Faculty of Law 42 (2008).
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