Центробежные и центростремительные тенденции в политических программах национальных движений южных славян Австро-Венгрии 1914-1918 годов

Abstract

The ethnic and political development of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a multinational monarchy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was determined by several groups of contradictions. First, the internal contradictions between the state and ethnic and social communities. Secondly, the interests of the peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose national movements sought national selfdetermination and its political and legal formalization in the form of national statehood, did not coincide completely or permanently with each other. Thirdly, by the constant contradictions between two full-fledged peoples, three peoples ‘in formation, and the rest — non-full-fledged nations. The Poles, Czechs, and Croats, although they were not equal in their political and legal status to the Austrian Germans and Hungarians (Magyars), had their own state law, which made their position ambivalent. Fourthly, the cross-border political influence of neighbouring states on the internal political development of those regions of the Empire, certain peoples of which were in ethnic kinship with the population of adjacent national and multinational states which conflicted with the desire of the dynasty and the central authorities of Cisleithania and Transleithania to limit the problem of strategic minorities exclusively to the imperial space. Three multinational Empires — Austria- Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire — failed to complete the modernization process and to provide their peoples with new legal forms of national selfdetermination within the existing borders. In 1919 — 1920 in Versailles (as well as in Neuill-sur-Seine, in the Saint-Germain Palace, in the Grand Trianon Palace and in Sevres), the victorious powers (the Great Britain, France, the US, and Italy) decided the fate of the countries of Central (Central and Southeastern) Europe.