Interwar Yugoslav state-building and the changing social position of the Sokol gymnastics movement

Abstract

The Sokol gymnastics movement was both in numbers and in spatial range one of the largest voluntary associations in interwar Yugoslavia. It was very active and visible, through numerous public activities at the local, regional, national and even international level, prestigious new halls and regular publications and media presence. In giving a historical overview of the Sokol movement against the background of interwar Yugoslav state-building, this article focusses on the politicisation and state incorporation of the association. During the 1920s, the Sokol served as a proxy for local and regional political struggles between centralist and decentralist parties in the Croatian part of the country. Under the Royal Dictatorship, the Sokol movement developed into a compulsory and state-controlled institution for physical and national education. This article argues that the incorporation of the Sokol movement in the state-controlled civil sphere was not a one-directional development. The Sokol movement itself made use of the central state’s predisposition towards state control over associative culture for internal institutional purposes. In the process, however, the social position of the Sokol movement transformed from a voluntary association that could mediate between state and society into an exclusive marker of loyalty to nation and state.