Prof. dr. Josip Vrbosic
lecturer at the School of Law of the
University of Osijek

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION OF BARANJA TO THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA AND THE IMPLICATION OF THE "ADMINISTRATIVE REGION OF SREM AND BARANJA"?
State acts on the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Kingdom of SCS) on December 1, 1918, legalized the fundamental principle according to which all members of the Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian population, regardless of their historical or national borders, must exist in one common state. This program of assimilation resulted in an unavoidable revision of borders from previous historical/national/autonomous provincial entities of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In this context, the borders towards Italy and Hungary provoked the greatest conflict. Despite the fact that Serbia and Italy were on the winning side at the conclusion of World War I, Italy showed no scruples with respect to this, therefore rapidly occupying the territory of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and Istria which was the territory belonging to the united states of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and to the Kingdom of Serbia legalizing the occupation through the Rappal agreements. Contrary to this, Hungary sided was on the side of the defeated after the First World War. On the basis of this, the Hungarian delegation had a weaker starting position at the international peace conference. Partially , due to this, the Kingdom of SCS in the north was expanded by territory in Southern Hungarian and in the west it lost part of Dalmatian territory and Istria.

Along with the Serbian military presence in Southern Hungary and following the armistice between Austro-Hungary and the forces of the Entente, the National Councils of Backa, Banat and Baranja held a congress on November 25, 1918. The congress proclaimed Vojvodina Serbian, in which Backa, Banat and Baranja would enter the union with the Kingdom of Serbs. Given that at that time, anarchy ruled in the entire, already former, Austro-Hungary,  the National Councils undertook all administration, and the Serbian government annexed Backa, Banat and Baranja on December 1, 1918. By the Trianon peace agreement, of June 4, 1920, the borders between the Kingdom of SCS and Hungary were determined which in a great degree resemble the borders even after the Second World War.

Based on the constitutional statutes from the 1921 Constitution, in April 1922, basic laws for the internal organization of the Kingdom of SCS were established. These were:

• Law with respect to general administration.
• Law with respect to regional and district autonomy and the Regulation of the distribution of land into administrative regions.

The entire country was divided into 33 administrative regions and the area of Baranja was annexed to the Backa administrative region. The surface area amounted to 7.173 km2, and was divided into districts: Apatin, Backa Palanka, Backa Topola, Batina, Darda, Kula, Novi Sad, Odzaci and Sombor. Districts then were divided into municipalities.

It is necessary to emphasize that the regional division of land did not consist of territory in its historical and lawful entirety. It was an ordinary administrative management division with the goal of breaking up former provincial and political entities. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia did not allow any lawful reminders of the past. Hence, even today there is no legal basis to attach importance to the affiliation of Baranja to today’s states of Croatia or Serbia. Baranja simply belonged to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as did all its other historical and geographical components.

From the beginning, administrative regions did not have any state-level functions rather a modest local autonomy without any state attributes. It must be stated that today Serbian authors frequently write that Baranja belonged to Vojvodina. Vojvodina as a political, territorial, or autonomous entity is not mentioned until World War II and, not even then, is Baranja a part of Vojvodina. The division of the state into administrative regions was to develop a Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian unity and not the creation of any type of future separate state territories. Namely, historical and state rights are acquired through the long-term execution of independent authority. This did not exist there.

After the declaration of the January 6 Dictatorship, the internal administrative and autonomous organization ( administrative regions and regional autonomy) did not satisfy King Alexander who by abolishing parliamentarianism, abolished the regional representational system (regional assemblies) and introduced commissioners for individual administrative regions. The law "on the title and division of the Kingdom into administrative territories" of October 3, 1929, stated the Kingdom (now Yugoslavia) was divided into nine banovinas (Ban’s dominions). The districts, Batina and Darda, were annexed to the Danube Banovina with its capital in Novi Sad. Their affiliation to the Danube Banovina did not create any political and legal effects given that the banovinas did not sui juris ( by their right ) determine their own organization, nor did they choose their own officials. In these same banovinas, internal self - organization did not exist and they were without any international subjectivity.

The bringing of the Statute with respect to the banovina of Croatia in 1939 brought upon internal territorial changes between banovinas. The creation of the Croatian Banovina represented a new quality in the search for a favorable solution for Croatia. The districts of Darda and Batina did not enter into the union with the Croatia Banovina in 1939. Before examining this problem, it is necessary to focus on the following fact. The creation of the Croatian Banovina was only a first step in an attempt to remove Yugoslavian centralism and introduce federalism based on three national entities. Macek, the president of the Croatian Peasant Party and influential Croatian leader, claimed that by creating the Croatian Banovina "the question of Croatian territory is not definitely answered, as we have added a special clause in the agreement which states that the definite borders of the Croatian Banovina will be established when the entire state is rearranged. And this is quite natural, as the respective territory will appear quite different whether or not the autonomous Vojvodina is included in the new rearranged state; and different whether or not autonomous Bosnia is included. And we have left this question open." Moreover, Baranja, according to a census in 1931, there resided 25,135 Roman Catholics, 5,745 Evangelicals, and 11,314 individuals of the Orthodox faith. Among the Catholics, the vast majority consisted of Croats.

Baranja remained in the composition of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia until 1941, when it became occupied by Hungarian troops. The Hungarian parliament on December 16, 1941, passed legislation regarding the union of the southern regions according to which Baranja and Backa became an integral part of the Hungarian state. On the other hand, the authorities in the Independent State of Croatia passed legislation regarding the eastern borders of the Independent State of Croatia towards occupied Serbia, which included Srijem in its entirety.

Between 1918 and 1941, Baranja i.e. her districts, Darda and Batina, were located in a politically legitimate undivided Yugoslavian space with no particular historical or political essence.

Following the Second World War, the Djilas Commission responsible for the formation of borders in Croatia and the establishment of the autonomous province of Vojvodina (of Serbia) concluded:

"The districts of Batina and Darda, as a whole, have, of all Slav minorities, a relative majority of Croats. Both these districts, economically incline towards the West. Therefore, both economic and national reasons require both of these districts to become a part of Federal Croatia and to leave Vojvodina in which they are now located." The parliament of the Republic of Croatia accepted the drawn up borders as did the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. Due to this action, these became the federal political borders. All supreme legislative bodies passed legislation stating that without approval of the same legislative bodies, the borders of federal units could not be changed. The parliament of the Republic of Croatia did not bring such a decision and the Serbian aggression does not influence any type of change (from the international point of view also) of Croatia’s legal borders.

In a short summary, with complete certainty and justifiability we can conclude the following:

1. Baranja did not have its own legitimate representatives at the Assembly of Novi Sad.

2. At the time, in Baranja, Banat and Backa, there resided approximately 30% Serbian inhabitants and 70% Croatian, Hungarian and German inhabitants. Contrary to this, Serbians had a 75% representation at the Assembly in Novi Sad.

3. Vojvodina, as a political concept, existed a short time mid-way through the nineteenth century and again in FNRJ (Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia), that is, SFRJ (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). At the commencement of the twentieth century, this territory was referred to as Southern Hungary.

4. Political decisions and decisions relating to public law, of the Assembly in Novi Sad in 1918, served to unite all Southern Slavs, rather than the territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Serbia. As a result, Serbian authors provide only short inferences from complete documents which suit their theory of Serbia’s claim to Baranja.

5. Territorial rearrangement of borders in Serbia and Croatia, which took place in 1945, to a great degree respected the historical Croatian borders correcting them on an ethnic principle. This was also the case with Baranja with the so-called, Djilas Commission.

6 Mentioning Baranja today in another context other than Croatian in respect to 1918 would open the unavoidable question of Srijem and Boka kotorska since no other legal decisions exist except those which include them as historical national territory, territory which was indeed lost in 1945 based on ethnic principles, and even more due to political voluntarism of the authorities at the time.

7. In the old Yugoslavia (1918-1941), any type of internal reorganization of borders based on historical or political legitimate criterion was not allowed. In this context, one cannot speak of the Kingdom of Serbia, the State of Croatia, or anything similar.

8. It was not before Socialist Yugoslavia that a  formal rather than a real sovereign republic was established, and the constitution of 1974, to a great degree confederalized SFRJ. The republics became states with fundamental state prerogatives.

9. The Croatian referendum of May 1991 represents, on the most extensive democratic foundation, the declaration of the population of Baranja. At that time, more than 50% voted in favor of the Republic of Croatia.

10. For the international community, Croatian borders from 1945 are at the same time state borders between the republics of former Yugoslavia. It is within these borders that individual states on the territory of former SFRJ are internationally recognized. (Badinter’s opinion).

Thus, all of the claims that Baranja is not a territory belonging to the state of Croatia does not have any historical, ethnic nor international legal basis.

During these days I had the opportunity of hearing that the usage of the name, the so called "Territory of Srijem and Baranja" without Slavonia, means an advantage for Croatia. I believe in the opposite, that Serbia desires a return to 1918, but only partially, consisting only of Baranja and Srijem.

In the preface to the book, "Annexation of Srem, Banat, Backa and Baranja to Serbia in 1918", (Novi Sad, 1993), the author, Drago M. Njegovan, writer of the preface and reviewer, academician Cedomir Popov, wrote the following sentences: "The annexation of the administrative regions of Vojvodina (Banat, Backa, Baranja and Srem) to  the Kingdom of Serbia, that is, their entrance into the State of Yugoslavian nations, which was created from the hell of the First World War, represents an extremely important occurrence, not only in the history of Serbians and other southern Slavs, rather for the entire Balkans and Danube basin region... The European dimension of this phenomenon is comprised of Europe’s concord with the endeavors to apply the principles of national self-determination and the easing (if not the solving) of the national question of this entire continent on the territory of the Balkans and the Central Danube basin area. The removal of the Vojvodina’s administrative regions from the Habsburg Monarchy and their annexation to the Serbian state, contributed to halving the number of members of national minorities in Europe from 60 million (1914) to 30 million (1920)."

I was reminded recently of this book as once again the expression "administrative regions of Srijem and Baranja" is being utilized in the occupied regions of Croatia, and also in Belgrade, for the territory of eastern Croatia (parts of Slavonia, parts of Srijem and parts of Baranja). A reminder is necessary that this area of Croatia was, until "Oluja", in the so-called Serbian Krajina region, also referred to as "Western Serbia" and now finally the "administrative regions of Srijem and Baranja." This is not surprising at all, as I presume that for this region, apart from eventual military preparation on account of defense, a diplomatic battle by the Serbian republic, her diplomacy, politics, probably even sciences, is being led solely for the purpose of preserving the existing situation. I mention sciences because it was from these circles that "Nacertanije" and the "Memorandum" originated. Therefore, I believe that it was there that the actual word "oblast" (administrative region) originated for the occupied territory of Croatia.

In Mazuranic’s,  "Contributions to the Croatian Legal-Historical Dictionary", the word OBLAST (administrative region) is defined as: 1. aucoritas, potestas, dominium, jus, jura et privilegia, authority, right, ancient right, possession, property; 2. provincia, regio, locality district, county, where an owner or authority demonstrates ownership or authority; and 3. the legal competence of the regional prefect or the office in the region’s capital.

In the tradition of the Croatian government, we do not use the terminology -oblast- to define this Croatian territory. This is true for Baranja as well because since the Croatian-Hungarian agreement, and even before, the division into counties of Croatia and Hungary excluded regional organization and the division of any part of the country into administrative regions. The same can be said for the territory of today’s Vojvodina, namely, in December 1860, the Austrian government abolished Serbian Vojvodina as an administrative region belonging to the crown in the Habsburg monarchy (established in 1849) and returned part of the territory to the sovereignty of Hungary (Southern Hungary) and another to the authority of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia. Following 1867 (Austro-Hungarian agreement), the territory of Banat and Backa, as well as a part of Southern Hungary, was divided into three counties: Backo-Bodroska, Torontalska and Tamiska. The entire Srijem was situated within the Srijem County (Kingdom of Slavonia) with its headquarters in Vukovar. Baranja was naturally within the Hungarian Kingdom. This was the constitutional position (according to public law) of parts of the territory of today’s Vojvodina, as well as occupied Croatian state territory prior to the unification of December 1, 1918.

Local administration and self-administration in the Kingdom of SCS, according to the Constitution of 1921, was conceived and legalized on the regional criterion as a specific self-administration and administration which was inaugurated by Serbian radicals already in 1888. The specific character was in the fact that "apart from  self-administrative organs, in every autonomous unit, there was, at its head, a state organ, that is, an organ appointed by the central state authorities (the so-called "double-gauged power") and that this state organ was older and more important (by authority and by control) than the self-administrative organs" (D. Jankovic).

Furthermore, Serbians, at the commencement of this century, called the area of Kosovo and Macedonia administrative regions until they were integrated into the Serbian state territory in 1919 (Old Serbia). Legalizing the administrative regions in 1922, as units of local administration and self-administration in the Kingdom of SCS, was only the first step in erasing the historical and state characteristics of individual nations especially the Croats whose national and political consciousness was at the highest level and all of this with the intention of integrating, with the aid of centralist politics (decentralization was merely an illusion), as soon as possible the entire territory of the Kingdom of SCS according to the models and patterns of the Serbian civil state from the 2nd half of the 19th century.

In this historical tradition, the authorities of Serbia most likely desire to prepare Croatian state territory for a future formal unification with Serbia by calling it a region. Naturally, this is simply another maneuver by which the Belgrade regime wishes to save and retain "little Greater Serbia."

We anticipate and are confident that it is too late for this today.

Dr. sci. Stjepan Srsan: Ethnic Changes in Baranja, 1918-1995