Publication details
T. G. Masarik i nastanak Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca
| Title in English | T. G. Masaryk and the Creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Srbija 1918 : oslobođenje domovine, povratak ratnika, život u novoj državi / Serbia 1918: Liberation of the Homeland, Return of the Warrior, Life in the New State |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | T. G. Masaryk; The Great War; Czech-Serbian Cooperation; Southern Slavs; Kingdom of Serbs and Croats and Slovenes; Czechoslovakia |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Tomaš Garik Masaryk (March 7, 1850 – September 14, 1937) was a man regarded as one of the most significant and influential political figures during World War I and between the two wars. However, he was also a politician of a distinctly Slavic orientation. As such, he had very close relations with many Serbian and Croatian cultural and political figures from the Habsburg monarchy in the 1890s. He taught national tolerance to his Croatian and Serbian students from Prague University and instilled in them the ideas of cooperation between South Slavs. The prestige in the highest Serbian political circles in the Kingdom of Serbia Masaryk gained especially by his participation in the so-called Zagreb Trial in 1909 and in the Friedjung trial led by the Croat-Serb coalition in December 1909 against Dr. Heinrich Friedung. Therefore, it is not surprising, that during his wartime exile, filled with work to gain support for the breaking of the Monarchy and the establishment of a separate state of Czech and Slovak people, he worked very closely with the south Slavic emigration, with Serbian government and Serbian cultural and scientific representatives abroad and he also advocated the creation of a common South Slavic state. Masaryk certainly contributed to the founding of Yugoslavia. First, with the ideas, by calling for South Slav unity before the Great War and then in the war years through his opinion and influence. Secondly, politically, especially considering Masaryk’s influence on President Wilson, not only for the Czechoslovak cause, but also for the cause of the South Slavs. |