On the Question of the Formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes: A Historical and Legal Study

More than a hundred years separate us from the time of the creation of the first Yugoslav state. At the same time, the ideas underlying its creation have even deeper historical roots. They are directly connected with the linguistic and cultural unity of the Yugoslav peoples, their desire to preserve their ethno-national identity in the conditions of the imperial oppression of the enslavers. The purpose of the research conducted in the article was to analyze the final stage of the formation of a common state of the Southern Slavs. The historical method was used as the main one, which allowed the author to trace the process of the formation of a unified Yugoslav state in the context of the historical realities of that time. In addition, the authors used a comparative method, which allowed him to study the specifics of the approaches of each of the peoples-actors of the unification process in a comparative way. According to the results of the study, the authors came to the conclusion that, despite the noble goal and the general aspiration of the Yugoslav peoples to create a common state, the conditions and procedure for its formation, as well as the unsatisfactory solution of the national question in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, became the subject of fundamental differences between the «Yugoslavs». It was these problems that later led to instability and internal conflicts on national grounds, which gradually destroyed the very essence of the unifying ideas.

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Yugoslavism, Corfe Declaration, First World War, Paris Peace Conference, Geneva Agreement