SOCIALISM AND MULTI-NATIONAL STATE IN EASTERN EUROPE

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This study explored how was depressing Yugoslav politics during 1920s and 1930s. Among others, right before the World War II, the agreement was settled between Serb and Croat politician. However, the agreement still lacked the moral legitimacy of a convincing public ratification, and the regime still appeared as the "private property" of a gang of politicians. These people did not trouble to enact the socioeconomic and political reforms that had been expected by the agreement.Hence, the state of public moral was fragile when the war finally struck Yugoslavia with the Axis invasion of April 6,1941. The Croatian troops widely shirked mobilization, mutinied sporadically, and scarcely fought at all, while the Serbs' performance was flabby in comparison to their tenacity in World War I. Though Yugoslavia's ultimate defeat was inevitable, yet the feeble resistance of her Army was nevertheless a reflection on her people's sentiment toward the regime and its system. A decade of repressive yet irresolute misgovernment, in the name of national unity, had squandered the confidence of all ethnic communities, even of the Serbs, while the agreement had not purchased even the elementary loyalty of the Croats. The opposition constellation and parties had reciprocated the regime's failures with their own inconstancy, opportunism and frivolity.Finally, what was most ironic was that the war struck Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941 despite, or perhaps, because of the desperate diplomatic efforts of Prince Paul's government to keep it away. Aware of Yugoslavia's military weakness and economic vulnerability, which were in some part their own fault, and of the current European balance, or lack of it, Prince Paul and his ministers cautiously eased their way toward the Nazis Germany and finally adhered to the Tripartite Pact on March 25, 1941.