Constitutional experimentation and the national question in Interwar Yugoslavia

In 1993 the Hungarian-born historian John Lukacs wrote that the twentieth century was, by then, over.1 In his opinion it started with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and ended with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1989. Lukacs’ ‘short century’ was also the period which saw the emergence and demise of Yugoslavia. The forces unleashed by the outbreak of World War I led to the birth of Yugoslavia in 1918. Similarly, the forces unleashed by the end of the Cold War contributed significantly to the wars that, from 1991 onwards, destroyed Yugoslavia. The historical forces that dominated the twentieth century – war or the threat of war and nationalism – also dominated Yugoslavia’s history.