Frankists (Croatia)

Frankists (Croatian: Frankovci)^[1] were followers of a political ideology that bases positions and lines around the thought of Josip Frank, a Croatian nationalist leader at the end of the 19th century who broke away from the Party of Rights to create his own movement.^[2]

In the early 1890s, a faction of the Party of Rights was led by Josip Frank.^[3] In 1895, they split and founded the Pure Party of Rights, who became known by the term "Frankovci".^[4] Frank's program proposed, among other things, a firm cooperation with the Court of Vienna, in order to defend Croatian national interests within the framework of the Habsburg Monarchy, in opposition to the Hungarian ones.^[5] The Frankists identified the Serbs as enemies of the Croatian nation,^[6] promoting an ideological campaign among the Croats against the Kingdom of Serbia and the Yugoslavists, denouncing any cooperation and feeling of unity between the Croatian and Serb parties at that time.^[7][8] Fundamentally, the Frankists deny that Serbs, as a people, can exist outside of Serbia. The Frankists clashed heavily with the Croat-Serb Coalition, which in the period between 1906 and 1918 was the majority force in the Parliament of Croatia-Slavonia.^[9] The Frankists' influence grew following the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and outbreak of World War I as they spoke out against Serbia in the parliament and began to organize anti-Serb protests in Croatian towns and cities.^[7]

After the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the renewed Party of Rights protested against the unification as illegitimate and insisted on the independence of the Croatian state.^[5] In contrast to the old Party of Rights which was a member of the Coalition and played an important role in the creation of the Kingdom, these new rightists began to adopt the Frankist ideology and thought. That party ceased to function after the establishment of the 6 January Dictatorship and its activity was not subsequently renewed.

Ante Pavelić, a leading Frankist would go on to form the ultranationalist Ustaše movement in 1929 and the Ustaše would claim the Frankist heritage.^[3]

Over time, the term "Frankists" came to be used synonymously to refer to all radical Croatian nationalists, including members and supporters of the Ustaše movement.^{[citation needed]} These parties identified as Frankists coincided in the search for an independent Croatia and in hostility towards the Serbs, in contrast to the moderate nationalists who mostly accept the concepts of the Croatian Peasant Party, willing to compromise and reach peaceful agreements, both with Serbs on the territory of Croatia as with the Serb state.

See also

• Croatian Party of Rights
• Anti-Serb sentiment

References

1. "frȁnkovac m 〈G -ōvca, N mn -ōvci〉". Hrvatski jezični portal (in Croatian). Znanje d.o.o. and Srce. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
2. Matković, Stjepan (2001). Čista stranka prava 1895.-1903 [Pure Party of Rights 1895-1903.] (in Croatian). Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History. p. 11. ISBN 953-6491-57-5.
3. Tanner, Marcus (2001). Croatia: A Nation Forged in War. Yale University Press. p. 106. ISBN 9780300091250.
4. Kallis, Aristotle (2008). Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe. Routledge. p. 72. ISBN 9781134300341.
5. Banac, Ivo (2015). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Cornell University Press. pp. 94–95, 261–262. ISBN 9781501701948.
6. Biondich, Mark (2000). Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904-1928. University of Toronto Press. p. 133. ISBN 9780802082947.
7. Newman, John Paul (2015). Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 9781107070769.
8. Bartulin, Nevenko (2012). "From Independence to Trialism: The Croatian Party of Right and the Project for a Liberal "Greater Croatia" within the Habsburg Empire, 1861–1914". In Fitzpatrick, M. (ed.). Liberal Imperialism in Europe. Springer. pp. 120–130. ISBN 9781137019974.
9. Jelavich, Charles (1992). Južnoslavenski nacionalizmi: jugoslavensko ujedinjenje i udžbenici prije 1914 [South Slavic nationalisms: Yugoslav unification and textbooks before 1914] (in Croatian). Zagreb: Globus. p. 39. OCLC 29173137.