The First World War and the Social Crisis in Northern Croatia

Prvim svjetskim ratom nije bio izazvan samo diskontinuitet razvojnih procesa u hrvatskom društvu, nego i duboka društvena kriza kojom su bili oslabljeni tranzicijski potencijali hrvatskoga društva u poslijeratnom razdoblju. U radu se analizira utjecaj Prvoga svjetskoga rata na društvenu situaciju u sjevernoj Hrvatskoj, donoseći pritom procjenu toga stanja na temelju različitih faktora.Due to agrarian fragmentation, high population density and slow industrialization, northern Croatia was on the brink of a food crisis even before the First World War. During the war, and certainly by 1918, this crisis turned into a general societal crisis. Mobilization of able-bodied men at the beginning of the war, and even more so during the war, had severe consequences for low-productive agricultural production, making the food crisis permanent, and, from 1917, critical. The deepening crisis was particularly affected by rising inflation and price increases, but the final disintegration of the existing society was caused by general chaos, crime and frequent peasant uprisings after the disintegration of the army and the complete paralysis of the state apparatus in 1918. The exclusion of Croatian industry from the wider economic system of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy, the immediate postwar destruction of large estates and the impoverishment of the agrarian population, who often destroyed the agrarian economy in the struggle for survival, weakened both the economic potential and its regenerative potential. All this shows that the First World War had devastating consequences for Croatian society and that by joining the Yugoslav state union it could not fully capitalize on the development advantages it had gained over other South Slavic societies before the First World War