Interactive nationhood: the relation between C roatian and Y ugoslav national identity in the interwar period

C roatian and Y ugoslav national identity have been closely connected throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. This article questions the assumption that C roatian national identification inherently opposed the Y ugoslav nationalising efforts of the interwar Y ugoslav state by means of a study of commemorative activities. In the commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the C roatian K ingdom in 1925, the Y ugoslav level of national identity was activated as a complement to C roatian national identity. During the 1930s, commemorations of M atija G ubec and the I llyrian movement conveyed a mutually exclusive relation between C roatian and Y ugoslav national identity. I argue that the dismissal of grassroots C roatian historical commemorations that were indifferent but not averse to Y ugoslav nationhood in the integral Y ugoslav policy of the authoritarian state during the 1930s curtailed the potential of these commemorations as vehicles for Y ugoslav national identification and complicated the concurrence of C roatian and Y ugoslav nationhood.