Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the context of "Creation of Yugoslavia"

South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, Hungary, Romania, and the Black Sea, the South Slavs today include Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes.

In the 20th century, the country of Yugoslavia (from Serbo-Croatian, literally meaning "South Slavia" or "South Slavdom") united a majority of the South Slavic peoples and lands—with the exception of Bulgarians and Bulgaria—into a single state. The Pan-Slavic concept of Yugoslavia emerged in late 17th-century Croatia, at the time part of the Habsburg monarchy, and gained prominence through the 19th-century Illyrian movement. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, was proclaimed on 1 December 1918, following the unification of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, several independent sovereign states were formed.

The Kingdom of Serbia was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Principality was ruled by the Obrenović dynasty (replaced by the Karađorđević dynasty for a short time). The Principality of Serbia, under the suzerainty of the Turkish Empire, de facto achieved full independence when the very last Ottoman troops left Belgrade in 1867. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognized the formal independence of the Principality of Serbia, and in its composition Nišava, Pirot, Toplica and Vranje districts entered the South part of Serbia.

In 1882, Serbia was elevated to the status of a kingdom, initially maintaining a foreign policy friendly to Austria-Hungary before turning to the Russian Empire and France following a coup d'état in 1903. Between 1912 and 1913, Serbia greatly enlarged its territory through engagement in the First and Second Balkan Wars – Sandžak-Raška, Kosovo Vilayet and Vardar Macedonia were annexed. At the end of World War I in 1918 it united with Vojvodina and the Kingdom of Montenegro, and in December 1918 it merged with the newly created State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as Kingdom of Yugoslavia) under the continued rule of the Karađorđević dynasty.

The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (Serbo-Croatian: Država Slovenaca, Hrvata i Srba / Држава Словенаца, Хрвата и Срба; Slovene: Država Slovencev, Hrvatov in Srbov) was a political entity that was constituted in October 1918, at the end of World War I, by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (Prečani) residing in what were the southernmost parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although internationally unrecognised, this was the first incarnation of a Yugoslav state founded on the Pan-Slavic ideology. Thirty-three days after it was proclaimed, the state joined the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Yugoslavia (/ˌjuːɡoʊˈslɑːviə/; lit. 'Land of the South Slavs') was a country in Central Europe and the Balkans that existed from 1918 to 2003. It came into existence following World War I, under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, from the merger of the Kingdom of Serbia with the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and constituted the first union of South Slavic peoples as a sovereign state, following centuries of foreign rule over the region under the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy.

Under the rule of the House of Karađorđević, the kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris and was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929. Peter I was the country's first sovereign. Upon his father's death in 1921, Alexander I went on to rule the country through an extended period of political crisis that culminated in the 6 January Dictatorship and, ultimately, his assassination in 1934. Prince Paul headed the state as a prince regent until Alexander's son Peter II was declared of-age, which happened following the Yugoslav coup d'état in March 1941. Alexander I was the longest reigning of the three Yugoslav monarchs.

The Great People's Assembly of the Serb People in Montenegro (Serbo-Croatian: Велика народна скупштина српског народа у Црној Гори, romanized: Velika narodna skupština srpskog naroda u Crnoj Gori), commonly known as the Podgorica Assembly (Подгоричка скупштина, Podgorička skupština), was an ad hoc popular assembly convened in November 1918, after the end of World War I in the Kingdom of Montenegro. The committee convened the assembly with the aim of facilitating an unconditional union of Montenegro and Serbia and removing Nikola I of Montenegro from the throne. The assembly was organised by a committee supported by and coordinating with the government of the Kingdom of Serbia. The unification was successful and preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a unified state of South Slavs by mere days. The unification was justified by Serbian irredentists by the need to create a single Serbian state for all Serbs, including Montenegro, where a part of the population believed that Montenegro belonged to the Serbian nation and supported the unification.

Nikola I criticised the Podgorica Assembly's elections and resolutions, arguing both were illegitimate and unlawful while his government was in exile in France. Opponents of the unconditional union, known as the Greens for the colour of paper used for pro-independence candidates, supported either full independence of Montenegro or a federation or a confederation with Serbia and other South Slavs where Montenegro would be an equal partner.

The 6 January Dictatorship (Serbian: Шестојануарска диктатура, Šestojanuarska diktatura; Croatian: Šestosiječanjska diktatura; Slovene: Šestojanuarska diktatura) was a royal dictatorship established in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia after 1929) by King Alexander I (r. 1921–34) with the ultimate goal to create a Yugoslav ideology and a single Yugoslav nation. It began on 6 January 1929, when the king prorogued parliament and assumed control of the state, and ended with the 1931 Yugoslav Constitution.

The Yugoslav Committee (Croatian: Jugoslavenski odbor, Slovene: Jugoslovanski odbor, Serbian: Југословенски одбор, romanized: Jugoslovenski odbor) was a World War I-era, unelected, ad-hoc committee. It largely consisted of émigré Croat, Slovene, and Bosnian Serb politicians and political activists whose aim was the detachment of Austro-Hungarian lands inhabited by South Slavs and unification of those lands with the Kingdom of Serbia. The group was formally established in 1915 and last met in 1919, shortly after the breakup of Austria-Hungary and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was later renamed Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Committee was led by its president, the Croat lawyer Ante Trumbić, and, until 1916, by Croat politician Frano Supilo as its vice president.

The members of the Yugoslav Committee had different positions on topics such as the method of unification, the desired system of government, and the constitution of the proposed union state. The bulk of the committee members espoused various forms of Yugoslavism – advocating for either a centralised state or a federation in which lands constituting the new state would preserve a degree of autonomy. The committee was financially supported by donations from the Croatian diaspora, and by the government of the Kingdom of Serbia, led by Nikola Pašić.

The Corfu Declaration (Serbo-Croatian: Krfska deklaracija, Крфска декларација) was an agreement between the prime minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, and the president of the Yugoslav Committee, Ante Trumbić, concluded on the Greek island of Corfu on 20 July 1917. Its purpose was to establish the method of unifying a future common state of the South Slavs living in Serbia, Montenegro and Austria-Hungary after the First World War. Russia's decision to withdraw diplomatic support for Serbia following the February Revolution, as well as the Yugoslav Committee's sidelining by the trialist reform initiatives launched in Austria-Hungary, motivated both sides to attempt to reach an agreement.

Pašić and Trumbić's positions were disparate. Pašić advocated for a centralist government, while Trumbić argued for a federal state, leaving significant powers to federal units and safeguarding national rights. The resulting declaration glossed over the matter of the system of government. As a compromise, it specified only that the common Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes would be a constitutional monarchy ruled by the currently reigning Serbian Karađorđević dynasty, deferring most questions to a future Constitutional Assembly. During the discussions, which lasted 35 days, Trumbić had little support for his view from the other members of the Yugoslav Committee, who were preoccupied with the threat posed by Italy, which had been promised territory under the 1915 Treaty of London.