ABSTRACT
The Yugoslav state had been created after the First World War. Its core, Serbia, was a victor state in that war; it had emerged as an independent political entity after a revolt against Ottoman rule in 1804, though full recognition of that independence had not been granted by the international community until the treaty of Berlin in 1878. Yugoslavia's other main component areas were Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Vojvodina. They had experienced widely differing forms of social and political evolution and this, together with significant ethnic and religious differences, made cohesion within the new unit after the First World War difficult. The process was hindered by a widespread feeling outside Serbia that the new state was little more than an extended Serbia, as its dynasty was Serbian and Serbs dominated the critical institutions of the state, the administration and above all the army. Resentment at what was perceived as Serbian domination was most strongly felt and articulated in Croatia and it was to a large degree the Serbian-Croatian divide which crippled parliamentary democracy in the 1920s.
