The Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists (, ), acronymised as ORJUNA or Orjuna, was a proto-fascist, anti-communist, terrorist, and Yugoslavist nationalist organisation established in 1921 in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Initially named the Yugoslav Progressive Nationalist Youth, it was founded on the initiative of the Democratic Party for extralegal suppression of political enemies—communists, political parties deemed separatist, proponents of a federal Yugoslavia, and ethnic minorities considered enemies of the state. Those included the Communist Party of Yugoslavia; the Croatian Peasant Party-dominated Croatian Bloc, the Slovene People's Party, the Džemijet, and the Yugoslav Muslim Organization, as well as minorities suspected to be enemies of the state, namely the Hungarians, the Volksdeutsche, and the Jews.
When founded, the organisation received political support from the government, especially the Democratic Party faction loyal to Svetozar Pribićević, and funding from the government budget. In 1925, at the peak of its power, ORJUNA had more than 300 local chapters organised in seven districts nationwide. Up to 40,000 members, including 10,000 belonging to its paramilitary wing, the Action Groups. Organisationally, they resembled the Italian fascist Blackshirts. ORJUNA glorified and used violence to achieve its objectives. The organisation rejected parliamentarism in favour of a dictatorship.
ORJUNA's activities led to the establishment of rival organisations. In 1922, the Croatian Party of Rights established the Croatian National Youth (HANAO), and the People's Radical Party founded the Serbian National Youth (SRNAO)—the former ostensibly to hold ORJUNA's actions in check, and the latter based on the belief that ORJUNA was inadequate for full realisation of Serbian interests. The situation produced frequent, often armed, clashes with HANAO, SRNAO, and communists.
After Pribićević split from the Democratic Party and moved to the opposition, ORJUNA gradually weakened. The leadership became divided in 1928 when Split district leaders and Pribićević accused the ORJUNA organisations in Vojvodina and Serbia of espousing the Greater Serbian agenda. The organisation was disbanded when the royal dictatorship took power in 1929.
Background
Following the conclusion of World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) was proclaimed by the Prince Regent Alexander on 1 December 1918. The Prince Regent appointed a government, and the Temporary National Representation was established (largely appointed) as an interim parliament. The Temporary National Representation was meant to enact electoral law for the future Constitutional Assembly.
By the time of the proclamation of Yugoslavia, the state's system of government was largely undecided. Representatives of the Kingdom of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee, an ad hoc group claiming it represented the South Slavs living in Austria-Hungary, had agreed in the 1917 Corfu Declaration that Yugoslavia would be a monarchy with the House of Karađorđević as its head. Still, the level of centralisation was left to be decided later on. In November 1918, representatives of the Yugoslav Committee joined by the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs negotiated with the representatives of Serbia on the matter and produced the Geneva Declaration, an agreement that Yugoslavia would be a confederation with limited central government powers. The Serbian government quickly rejected the agreement. The country's constitution was not adopted until June 1921.
At the same time, there was the issue of the Adriatic question, the uncertainty regarding the borders of Yugoslavia. It arose from Italian claims stemming from the 1915 Treaty of London and the Fiume question. It was not addressed until the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo. Regardless, the treaty's terms were not fulfilled immediately. In that context, the Allied occupation of the eastern Adriatic, including the region of Dalmatia, remained in place until September 1921. The threat of Italian imperialism led the political elite in Dalmatia to support unconditional unification of Yugoslavia in 1918 and to act against perceived threats to the state. In particular, this was the result of a negative view of the territorial concessions under the Treaty of Rapallo and apparent Italian reluctance to withdraw troops occupying the areas belonging to Yugoslavia under the treaty.
Origins The Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists (acronymised as ORJUNA) is traced to the pre-First World War Yugoslav Nationalist Youth (JNO), which, in turn, emerged from the Croat-Serb Progressive Youth (HSNO). The HSNO pursued the policy of national unity promoted by the Croat-Serb Coalition (HSK) and promoted the evolution of the South Slavic nation as a means for Croats to overcome their unequal position in Austria-Hungary. A portion of the HSNO, disappointed in the HSK's pro-regime policy, split and formed the JNO, abandoning parliamentary political struggle for revolutionary methods.
The JNO espoused the integral Yugoslavist ideology, arguing that the ethnic Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were the single "three-named people". The concept was based on the cult of the heroic Yugoslav race. The heroic cult was derived from writings of Serbian anthropologist Jovan Cvijić who ascribed South Slavic traits (beauty, heroism, democratic spirit, and extreme loyalty to the ideals of national freedom) to the largely Serbian population of the Dinaric Alps. Cvijić also associated the population of the Pannonian Plain in northern and eastern Croatia with an anti-democratic, non-national mentality caused by centuries of foreign rule. The JNO was also influenced by Croatian writer Milan Marjanović who portrayed Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian ideas of Vuk Karadžić and Ante Starčević, respectively, as expressions of unity of the South Slavs. In Marjanović's view, the two differed only in Starčević being an advocate of conservative and feudal ideas, while the Karadžić's position was modern and democratic and, therefore, preferable.
Establishment
The ORJUNA was established in the city of Split on 23 March 1921. It was initially named the Yugoslav Progressive National Youth. The name changed to ORJUNA in May 1922 to reflect an amendment to the organisation's articles, making it no longer an organisation exclusively for youth. The founding assembly, held in the building, elected Marko Nani as the president and as the secretary.
The organisation was established on the initiative of the Democratic Party (DS) and its membership primarily consisted of DS members, especially DS members belonging to the faction loyal principally to Svetozar Pribićević. It was established to carry out extralegal suppression of perceived threats to Yugoslavia, i.e., against communists and separatists. In this context, proponents of integral Yugoslavism considered advocates of a federal system of government separatists. While ORJUNA viewed the Croatian nationalism as a separatist threat, it considered the Serbian nationalism a constructive phenomenon because its programme of bringing all Serbs into a single state "would achieve the unification of the South Slavs".
The organisation gained significance only after the HSS-dominated Croatian Bloc coalition was formed in January 1922. The coalition issued a memorandum calling for the reform of Yugoslavia into a federation, and Yugoslav authorities interpreted this as a cause for concern. The following month, the organisation's leaders were received by King Alexander. The central government started funding ORJUNA from the state budget through the Narodna Odbrana organisation and Juraj Demetrović, Croatia's government commissioner.
Ideology
Like the prewar JNO, ORJUNA adopted integral Yugoslavism as its ideology, closely modelling it after the ideology adopted and promoted by the DS, particularly Pribićević's faction of the Party. Like the DS, ORJUNA supported the idea of the single Yugoslav nation. In addition, ORJUNA modelled its ideology on the example of Italian fascism. The organisation shared several defining characteristics with the Italian fascism such as authoritarianism, anti-clericalism, anti-Communism, use aggressive propaganda, violence and terror, and absolute unity of the state and the people. To this end, ORJUNA advocated subordinating individuals' political and social liberties to the needs of the state, aiming to achieve national unity through paligenetic unitarist revolution and development of corporatist communities.
ORJUNA glorified violence, and regarded Young Bosnia and Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as their role models. Historian Ivo Banac described ORJUNA as an openly terrorist organisation whose members advocated the abolition of parliamentarism in favour of a dictatorship consisting of a corporatist legislature. Due to the absence of radical measures aimed at changing the social structure, historians Roger Griffin and Stanley G. Payne characterised ORJUNA as a proto-fascist organisation.
Leadership The founding assembly elected 11 members of the organisation's action committee. The action committee was restructured as the central committee soon after, and Ivo Petković replaced Nani as the president. In 1922, ORJUNA's central committee was expanded to 30 members. In November 1922, the seven-member Directory was established as the organisation's main executive body. The first president of the Directory was writer . In 1923, new leadership was elected— and Niko Bartulović as the president and the vice president of the Directory. Bartulović was deemed the organisation's main ideologue. The Directory was abolished and the General Secretariat created as ORJUNA's new main body in 1927, and Miodrag Dimitrijević was elected the general secretary.
ORJUNA never established its leader as a person of indisputable authority, which is normally a central feature of organisations modelled on fascism, due to the organisation's dependence on the DS and Pribićević. At the time of the organisation's founding, its members saw Pribićević as a possible Yugoslav version of Italian Duce Benito Mussolini. However, ORJUNA never acknowledged links to Pribićević. Instead, it viewed support from the DS as a form of tactical alliance.
Structure
Additional ORJUNA chapters were quickly established with the central government's support. By the end of 1922, there were 250 new chapters. Of that number, 100 were founded in Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia, with district-level organisations set up in Split and Zagreb. Out of that number, at least 45 were established in Dalmatia alone, and Dalmatia, as the region under threat of Italian irredentism, proved favourable for the development of Yugoslav nationalism. In 1922, local and district-level organisations were established in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina (Yugoslav regions of Bačka, Banat, and Baranya), in Slovenia, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Split was the seat of the organisation from its founding until 1927, when it was moved to Belgrade.
Early membership largely consisted of former members of the prewar JNO. Early membership recruits were heterogeneous drawing intellectuals from Dalmatia and Slovenia, including people moving to the country from the territories ceded to Italy under the Treaty of Rapallo, and Chetnik associations. The membership size is inconsistently reported by various sources. ORJUNA itself claimed it had 100,000 members in 1925, while Leontić later claimed there were 40,000 ORJUNA members at the time. The membership declined after that. At the 1923 congress, it was reported that seven districts included 296 local chapters. The latter figure grew to 302 by 1925.