SERBSKI RUCH LUDOWY W POSZUKIWANIU TOŻSAMOŚCI IDEOLOGICZNEJ W OKRESIE MIĘDZYWOJENNYM

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SERBSKI RUCH LUDOWY W POSZUKIWANIU TOŻSAMOŚCI IDEOLOGICZNEJ W OKRESIE MIĘDZYWOJENNYM

Journal Title: Przegląd Wschodni - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 51

Abstract

The growth of the Serbian peasant political movement during the interwar years had both common and unique traits, as compared to similar movements in other Slavic nations. Without a doubt, all these movements were united by the fact that they all recognized peasant as the main social force in their respective countries and the entire region. A certain social messianism drew the peasant movement closer to the labour movement, which at the conception of the former, was already a sufficiently organized, dynamic and a mass movement. What is more, it possessed its own ideology compiled in great detail. The unique character of the Serbian peasant movement was mostly decided by the specificity of the development of Serbian statehood and society at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. This uniqueness was based on regaining statehood by a nation possessing an incomplete social structure. It was decided by the fact that a significant number of peasants supported Nikola Pašić’s People’s Radical Party. Pašić’s views on the prospective for Serbian development, formulated in the last quarter of the 19th century, were rooted in the assumption of the peasant character of the country and the interests of small-holding agricultural producers. The Radical Party’s monopoly on influence in village communities continued until the 1920s, when the nation was transformed (in place of the Kingdom of Serbia, the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenian was created), but also as a result of the creation of a number of new social classes and groups. Serbian peasants inevitably – irrespective of their own will – were torn from their traditional means of existence and pulled into new production and social proportions of a capitalistic nature. During this period, Pašić’s Radical Party – as a result of natural evolutionary growth – was transformed into a traditional bourgeoisie party, and though it continued to operate in villages due to objective reasons, their active representation of small-holder interests was quite limited. Thus, there were a number of attempts to create other peasant parties. In light of such a background, the ideological concept of the People’s Peasant Party was not an accidental, nor isolated, phenomenon and reflected the particular correctness in the growth of peasant parties in Slavic countries during the interwar period, the essence of which was founded on the crystallization of the basis of two quite eclectic and differing agrarian ideologies – bourgeoisie reformism and revolutionary democratism – both aimed at one social group – peasants.

Authors and Affiliations

Giennadij Matwiejew

Keywords

EP ID EP326117
DOI -
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