Vladko Maček (1871–1964) became the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the assassination of Stjepan Radić (1871–1928). In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in Croatian and Yugoslav politics during the critical years 1928–41, when the clouds of war were gathering over Europe, and during the first phase of World War Two. Today he is best remembered for having negotiated the Cvetković-Maček Sporazum (agreement) in August 1939; the Sporazum created a so-called banovina (province) of Croatia with considerable autonomy, and was intended to contribute to the calming of Serb–Croat frictions in royal Yugoslavia. The Banovina comprised 26.6 per cent of the territory of Yugoslavia and had some 4.4 million inhabitants, 28.6 per cent of the total population of the kingdom.Footnote ¹ However, it lasted only until April 1941, when an Axis invasion resulted in the occupation and partition of Yugoslavia.

Maček was flexible about the means he used in pursuit of his goals. He used both licit and illicit methods to advance and protect the interests of Croats. Examples of illegal methods include his creation in 1936 of an armed militia, the Croatian Peasant Defence (HSZ), and his dispatch of emissaries to engage in secret negotiations with Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, in 1939. In the course of his career he was imprisoned twice by the authorities of the interwar kingdom, but showed courage by signing the famous ‘Zagreb Points’ (Zagrebačke punktacije) which enumerated the sundry ways in which Croatia had been unfairly treated in interwar Yugoslavia. He also built bridges with leading Serb oppositionists and championed democratic principles, and, under the aforementioned Sporazum which he negotiated with Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković, Croats gained substantial autonomy within an area larger than historic Croatia (or, for that matter, today's Croatia). These are no mean achievements, and yet, neither in contemporary Croatia nor in English-language historiography has much attention been paid to Maček. The sole notable exception is Maček's memoirs.Footnote ²

This is a pity – not only for the reasons already given but also because, when compared with his more charismatic predecessor as head of the Croatian Peasant Party, Stjepan Radić, Maček was more skilled in building coalitions, more practical in the measures he adopted and, I would argue, overall more effective as a champion of the interests of Croatian peasants.

Maček has, to be sure, attracted the attention of historians in his native Croatia. Here one may first mention the works of Ljubo Boban,Footnote ³ Jere JarebFootnote ⁴ and Ivo Perić,Footnote ⁵ though Maček also looms large in Hrvoje Matković's history of the Croatian Peasant Party.Footnote ⁶ But the absence of a monograph-length study of Maček in English is striking. So too is the amnesia among ordinary Croats, for whom he is at best a blur. Today, for many Croats, like many in the West, if they remember anything about Maček, it is likely to be that, as Ante Pavelić and his Croatian Ustaša fascists took power in Croatia in April 1941, the Croatian Peasant Party leader advised his followers to co-operate with the new authorities and that, for the duration of the war, he slipped into passivity and obscurity. They are less likely to remember that he was so distrusted by the Ustaša party that he was temporarily incarcerated in the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp, before being remanded to house arrest in his native village. They are equally unlikely to remember that, after the war, Maček made contact with fellow anti-communists among the Serbs and Slovenes and, giving up notions of Croatian independence, declared in 1952 that there were ‘no insoluble differences between Serbs and Croats’.Footnote ⁷ Indeed, in spite of his interwar contacts with the Italians,Footnote ⁸ and in spite of his establishment of the Croatian Peasant Defence, it is arguable that, on the whole, Maček's championing of Croatian independence was offset by his contributions to building inter-ethnic consensus as well as by his apparent readiness to work within the Yugoslav framework, on condition that the discrimination against Croats end and that the kingdom become a state respecting the rule of law. But Maček's readiness to work within the Yugoslav framework may, in turn, provide the explanation of ordinary Croats’ amnesia when it comes to Vladko Maček. Still, from Maček's perspective, tactics seemingly at odds with each other were all directed towards the goal of improving the situation of Croats.

The articles here probe diverse aspects of Maček's career. Mark Biondich surveys it after 1929, from the perspective of relations between the Croatian Peasant Party and Pavelić's Ustaša movement. As he notes, these rival groupings subscribed to different and competing concepts of Croatian nationhood. Given this circumstance, as Biondich points out, it comes as no surprise that the Ustaše were highly critical of the agreement which Maček reached with Cvetković in August 1939. As the Ustaše realised, the agreement held the prospect of saving Yugoslavia, a state which the Croatian fascists were determined to destroy or see destroyed. The Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina were angered by the assignment of lands which they considered to have been historically integral parts of their homeland, and organised public meetings at which they demanded the establishment of an ‘autonomous unit of Bosnia-Herzegovina within its historic borders’.Footnote ⁹ They even formed an action committee to work for Bosnian autonomy. But the Ustaše claimed, on the contrary, that Maček had sold out some 1 million Croats who, allegedly, remained outside the autonomous Croatian unit created by the Sporazum and that he had given up the dream of Croatian independence.

My contribution looks at the largely neglected topic of Maček's role in connection with the Croatian Peasant Defence. Various armed militias operated outside the law in the interwar kingdom, variously representing royal interests and the interests of various nationality groups. The formation of the HSZ thus came as a response to the failure to create a system based on the rule of law and to the threat posed by those armed militias already in existence, most especially the Chetniks. During the years 1929–34 Maček had remained in contact with the exiled Pavelić, but already by 1932, as I note in the article, there began to be friction between the two men. The creation of the HSZ served, among other things, to give Maček his own military resources with which to compete with Pavelić's Ustaša units. By early 1937, HSZ strength stood at 13,915 members. The HSZ continued to operate even after the establishment of the Banovina. The HSZ as such was disarmed and dissolved by the Ustaša authorities in June 1941, soon after they took power in Zagreb, although some members of the HSZ were incorporated into the new military formations of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).

Finally, Vjeran Pavlaković examines the impact of the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) on the internal politics of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, paying particular attention to the polemics about the war in the legal and illegal press of Yugoslavia as well as Maček's position on that war. As Pavlaković reminds us, the Spanish Civil War was the cause célèbre of its time and excited polemics across Europe and beyond. This was above all because General Francisco Franco advertised himself as an advocate of fascism and enjoyed active military support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, although the innovative political experimentation by Spanish anarchists also contributed to a sense of romance about the ill-fated Spanish Republic.Footnote ¹⁰ As Pavlaković tells us, the government in Belgrade tried to keep press coverage of the fighting in Spain to a minimum, on the grounds that the war had little relevance for citizens of Yugoslavia. But, as he further notes, the regime feared that the war was potentially destabilising for Yugoslavia and in fact favoured a victory by Franco's insurgent forces. Maček's view, by contrast, was divided, insofar as he feared victory by either side, viewing fascism as a threat to peasant democracy while at the same time remaining deeply concerned about the growing communist influence in the government of the Spanish Republic. For this reason, as Pavlaković writes, Maček also embraced the tactic of ‘ignoring and suppressing open discussion of the divisive Spanish crisis’, at least initially, later taking to criticising both sides to the conflict.

Maček's most important achievements, arguably, were twofold. First, in spite of the lawlessness actively promoted by the authorities in Royal Yugoslavia, and the interethnic friction which that lawlessness stimulated, the Peasant Party leader was able to build bridges with leading figures in the Serb political opposition and to present a common, Serb–Croat opposition bloc at the elections of 11 December 1938.Footnote ¹¹ And again, immediately after the war, he made contact with fellow anti-communists among Serbian politicians in exile in the endeavour to find a common language. In so doing, Maček confuted reductionist arguments which sought to render the entire interwar period into purely antagonistic blocs of Croats versus Serbs. Second, he was the prime mover behind the Sporazum of August 1939, which not only offered the best prospects for calming those ethnic tempers which had been aroused by the policies and practices of the government of King Aleksandar and the ruling Serbian political bloc, but also anticipated later calls, at the end of the 1980s, for a so-called asymmetric federation. It would be too much to say that, by itself, the Sporazum would have solved all the political problems in interwar Yugoslavia. But it was an important first step towards allowing the Croats to regulate their own affairs, thereby signalling to other discontented groups that local autonomy, for example for Macedonians or Bosniaks or Kosovar Albanians, might further improve the situation. Ultimately, however, only the establishment of the rule of law and the transformation of the state on more legitimate foundations would have provided the assurance of long-term stability for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.Footnote ¹²

These articles explore specific aspects of Maček's career, but by no means do they exhaust the topic. It is our hope that they will serve to stimulate further research into the political career and contributions of this important Croatian politician.