Yugoslav Committee

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

The members of the Yugoslav Committee were not entirely in agreement on the method of unification, the desired system of government or the constitution of the proposed union state. The bulk of the committee members espoused various forms of Yugoslavism – advocating either a federation where various lands constituting the new state would preserve a degree of autonomy, or a centralised state. The committee was financially supported by donations from the Croatian diaspora and by the government of the Kingdom of Serbia led by Nikola Pašić. Serbia made efforts to use the Yugoslav Committee as a propaganda tool in pursuit of its own policies including territorial expansion or the creation of a Greater Serbia.

Representatives of the Yugoslav Committee and Serbian government met at the Greek island of Corfu in 1917. There they discussed the proposed unification of South Slavs and produced the Corfu Declaration, outlining some elements of the future union’s constitution. Further meetings took place at the end of the war in Geneva in 1918. Those discussions resulted in the Geneva Declaration, determining a confederal constitution of the union. The declaration was repudiated by the government of Serbia shortly afterwards. The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, formed as Austria-Hungary was breaking up, treated the Yugoslav Committee as its representative in international affairs. However, it soon came under pressure to unify with Serbia, and proceeded to do so in a manner that ignored the earlier declarations. The Committee ceased to exist shortly afterwards.