# Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists

The Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists (Organizacija jugoslavenskih nacionalista, Организација југословенских националиста), 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 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; 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.
Upon founding, the organisation received political support of the government, especially the Democratic Party faction loyal to Svetozar Pribićević, as well as funding from the government budget. In 1925, at the peak of its power, ORJUNA had more than 300 local chapters organised in seven districts all over the country. There were 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.
Activities of ORJUNA led to establishment of rival organisations. In 1922, the 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 on the basis of 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 and Pribićević accused the ORJUNA organisations in Vojvodina and Serbia of espousing the Greater Serbian agenda. The organisation was disbanded upon institution of the royal dictatorship in 1929.

## Background

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) was proclaimed by the Prince Regent Alexander on 1 December 1918. Following the proclamation, 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 proclamation of Yugoslavia, the system of government in the state was largely undecided. Representatives of the Kingdom of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee, an ad-hoc group claiming it is representing 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, but the question of 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 powers of the central government. Serbian government quickly rejected the agreement. The country's constitution was not adopted before June 1921.
At the same time, there was the issue of the Adriatic question, the uncertainty regarding borders of Yugoslavia. It arose from Italian claims stemming from the 1915 Treaty of London and the Fiume question and was not addressed before the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo. Regardless, the terms of the treaty 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) traces its roots 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 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 pro-regime policy of the HSK, 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 heroic Yugoslav race. The heroic cult was taken over from writings of Serbian anthropologist Jovan Cvijić who ascribed South Slavic Übermensch traits (beauty, heroism, democratic spirit and extreme loyalty to the ideals of national freedom) to largely Serbian population of the Dinaric Alps. Cvijić also associated the population of the Pannonian Plain in the northern and eastern Croatia with 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 Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists (acronymised as ORJUNA) was established in the city of Split on 23 March 1921. It was initially named the Yugoslav Progressive National Youth (JNNO). The name changed to ORJUNA in May 1922 reflecting an amendment of the organisation's articles making it no longer an exclusively youth organisation. The founding assembly, held in the Hrvatski sokol Split [hr] building, elected Marko Nani the president and Edo Bulat [hr] the secretary.
The organisation was established on initiative of the Democratic Party (DS) and its membership largely consisted of the DS members, especially DS members belonging to the DS faction primarily loyal to Svetozar Pribićević. It was established to carry out extralegal suppression of perceived threats to Yugoslavia—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 as a constructive phenomenon as 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 reform of Yugoslavia into a federation and Yugoslav authorities interpreted it as a cause for concern. The following month, the leaders of the organisation were received by King Alexander, and the central government started funding ORJUNA from the state budget through Narodna Odbrana organisation and Juraj Demetrović, government commissioner for Croatia.

## Ideology

Like the prewar JNO, ORJUNA also adopted the integral Yugoslavism as its ideology, closely modelling it to after the ideology adopted and promoted by the DS and particularly the Pribićević's faction of the Party. Like the DS, ORJUNA supported the idea of the single Yugoslav nation. In addition, ORJUNA modelled its ideology by taking the Italian fascism as an example. It advocated subordinating political and social liberties of individuals 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 abolition of parliamentarism in favour of a dictatorship of corporatist legislature. Due to 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 eleven 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, the central committee of ORJUNA was expanded to 30 members. In November 1922, the 7-member Directory was established as the main executive body of the organisation. The first president of the Directory was writer Mirko Korolija [hr]. In 1923, new leadership was elected – Ljubo Leontić [hr] and Niko Bartulović as the president and the vice president of the Directory. Bartulović was deemed the main ideologue of the organisation. The Directory was abolished and the General Secretariat created as the new main body of ORJUNA in 1927. Miodrag Dimitrijević was elected the general secretary.
ORJUNA never established its leader as a person of indisputable authority normally central to 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 a tactical alliance.

## Structure

Additional ORJUNA chapters were quickly established with support of the central government. By the end of 1922, there were 250 new chapters. Of that number, a hundred were founded in Croatia-Slavonia and in 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 development of Yugoslav nationalism. In 1922, local and district-level organisations were established in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina (Yugoslav parts 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. The membership size is differently 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.
ORJUNA established special units, its armed wing, known as Action Groups (akciona sekcija, plural akcione sekcije). By 1925 the Action Groups had ten thousand members. In terms of their organisation, the Action Groups resembled the Italian fascist Blackshirts. The Action Groups were organised in battalions and companies, carrying light arms. The weapons were provided by White Hand secret military organisation. ORJUNA uniforms were black, similar in appearance to the ones used by the Chetnik associations and the Blackshirts. Each unit was commanded by a čelnik (lit. 'head') with a superior district čelnik and the veliki čelnik lit. 'grand head') in overall command. In 1924, ORJUNA appointed Kosta Pećanac and Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin to the position. Later, it was taken over by Marko Kranjec [sl]. Bulat, Berislav Angjelinović [hr], and Uroš Bijelić gained high prominence in ORJUNA through their brutal conduct in the Action Groups.
There were also a high-school section (named Young Yugoslavia) and an economic section of ORJUNA, aimed with ensuring future recruitment and financing of the organisation respectively. Academic sections were set up at universities, while cultural sections were tasked with organisation of training courses, concerts, festivities and similar events. The propaganda section was set up to promote ORJUNA among the general public, but it was largely inactive.

## Activities
### Croatia

ORJUNA was particularly active in regions deemed threatened: Dalmatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina. One of the first public actions of ORJUNA took place following the assassination of the Interior Minister Milorad Drašković by the Crvena pravda [sr] faction of the KPJ in July 1921. ORJUNA organised public protests in Split where suspected communists were attacked in streets and their homes ransacked, as well as two days of protests in Zagreb where clashes with Croatian Bloc supporters took place. ORJUNA deemed Drašković's assassination as casus belli, justifying violence against enemies of the state.
In Croatia (including Dalmatia), ORJUNA activities were primarily aimed against the HSS, and independent federalist politicians Ante Trumbić and Mate Drinković. Special units established by ORJUNA carried out armed attacks against the opponents' political rallies. In Dalmatia, ORJUNA organised public protests against the Croatian Bloc. The violence was not always directed at political rallies. There were instances where the Action Groups targeted Croat-owned shops for staying open for businesses on the public holidays meant to celebrate the anniversary of proclamation of Yugoslavia. In October 1922, the Party of Rights established the Croatian National Youth (HANAO) in response to ORJUNA's activities. Physical and armed clashes of the two organisations were frequent, occurring almost daily in Zagreb and Petrovaradin.

### Serbia and Vojvodina

ORJUNA claimed at its peak (1925), that it had 7,600 members in Vojvodina. The provincial organisations appealed to its members more through struggle against ethnic Hungarians and the Volksdeutsche, than through the Yugoslavist ideology. Namely, in the province, ORJUNA targeted Germans, Hungarians, and Hungarian-speaking Jews as foreign elements threatening the state. The three groups dominated the provincial economy and comprised the majority of population in the province. Not all ethnic minorities were targeted by ORJUNA. The Slovaks were deemed as loyal to the state and therefore not attacked. Offices of German and Hungarian newspapers and political rallies were attacked. Arrests of perpetrators of ORJUNA's attacks commonly resulted in release without charges.
The People's Radical Party (NRS) challenged ORJUNA by establishing a competing Serbian National Youth (SRNAO) in 1922. The SRNAO's founders were prompted to the action believing that ORJUNA was inadequate for full achievement of Serbian interests. The NRS appealed to ORJUNA membership there through its favouring of Greater Serbian agenda instead of Yugoslavism and ORJUNA lost more than a half of its membership in Vojvodina to SRNAO by 1923. The conflict also led to physical violence between the two organisations. Regardless of the clashes with each other, ORJUNA and SRNAO occasionally led joint attacks against the minorities.
In Serbia, ORJUNA was relatively inactive until 1927, except in the then Southern Serbia (the territory roughly corresponding to the present-day Kosovo and Northern Macedonia), where its activities were aimed at combating the Džemijet party representing Albanians, Slavic Muslims and Turks. Just like in Vojvodina, SRNAO challenged ORJUNA in Serbia.

### Slovenia

The German-speaking minority was also targeted in Slovenia. The attacks included bombing of newspaper offices, assaults on social events organised by the minority and public protests against the Germans involving ransacking of German-owned homes. Furthermore, ORJUNA targeted the Slovene People's Party (SLS) as political enemies of the state and clericalists. In turn, the Slovenec [sl] Catholic political magazine was particularly critical of ORJUNA in Slovenia.
In 1923, a third of the 10,000 Slovenian ORJUNA members were a part of the Action Groups. The Action Groups regularly clashed with KPJ supporters. The largest such confrontation took place in late 1923 in Trbovlje in Slovenia during a miners' strike. ORJUNA organised a competing event, and the armed clash resulted in seven killed. ORJUNA competed with the KPJ for influence among workers by establishing its own trade unions. These efforts were more successful in Dalmatia, Slovenia and Vojvodina than in other parts of Yugoslavia.

### Bosnia and Herzegovina

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, ORJUNA targeted the leading Slavic Muslim party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Yugoslav Muslim Organization (JMO). That included armed clashes with JMO supporters, sometimes resulting in fatalities. There were also violent clashes between ORJUNA and HANAO, as well as with SRNAO. Bosnia and Herzegovina had the poorest organisation of ORJUNA among all provinces or areas of Yugoslavia, except Montenegro, where no ORJUNA organisations existed.

### Italy and Austria

ORJUNA Action Groups carried out attacks in Julian March in Italy and, in a lesser extent, in Austria. There were clashes with Italian and Austrian border patrols. It also established clandestine groups in Istria and in Carinthia. With support of the Royal Yugoslav Army (but not the government), ORJUNA members were used as counterintelligence assets against Italy and Hungary. One of the final large actions of ORJUNA took place in May 1928, when it organised protests against ratification of the Treaty of Nettuno between Italy and Yugoslavia. The protesters clashed with the police. The largest protest took place in Belgrade, and additional protests happened in Šibenik, Split, Dubrovnik, Ljubljana, Skopje, Sarajevo and Zagreb.

## Decline and dissolution

ORJUNA peaked in 1925, and its power gradually declined afterwards. The decline coincided with Pribićević's break with the DS (subsequently forming the Independent Democratic Party (SDS) and going into the opposition.
A split in the leadership occurred in 1928. Pribićević accused the ORJUNA organisations in Vojvodina and Serbia of being run by the government. His statement was followed by that of Bulat as the head of the Split district, accusing the Belgrade district of ORJUNA of espousing the Greater Serbian agenda and of having too close ties to the NRS. In response, the head of the Vojvodina district Dobroslav Jevđević disbanded ORJUNA in Vojvodina the next day. In turn, Dimitrijević expelled both Bulat and Jevđević, but the Split district rejected the Dimitrijević's decision. In turn, the Ministry of the Interior dissolved all ORJUNA organisations in the Split district. The conflict marked break-up of the unified organisation. ORJUNA was banned shortly afterwards, along with all other political organisations, upon institution of the royal dictatorship in 1929. In its final act, ORJUNA declared its support to the onset of dictatorship, believing it was the fulfilment of its programme of integral Yugoslavism.

## Publications and logo

In August 1921, five months after establishment of ORJUNA, Pobeda (lit. 'Victory') started to be published in Split as ORJUNA's main organ. The initiative for its launch came from Angjelinović. The initial issue of the newspaper received congratulatory messages from Speaker of the Assembly of Yugoslavia Ivan Ribar, Pribićević, and others, as well as a poem by Aleksa Šantić that became the organisation's anthem. Pobeda used combative rhetoric to denounce groups they deemed enemies of the state. Those included communists, clericalists, Croatian Bloc supporters, Trumbić and HSS leader Stjepan Radić specifically, and Jews of Zagreb in general. ORJUNA published a number of other regional or local newspapers. After 1925, as the membership declined, most of them were affected by shortage of money and ceased publication.
The ORJUNA logo was created by Radovan Tommaseo, an artist from Split, in September 1921. The logo consisted of overlaid black letters J, N, and O set in an octagon having triple border of blue, white, and red.

## Legacy

Due to its opposition to the parliamentary democracy and advocation of dictatorial rule in the country, the general public largely viewed ORJUNA as a fascist organisation. Its efforts were largely a failure in view of popularity of its nominal enemies – the KPJ and the HSS. The latter became the dominant political party of Croats in part due to its opposition to the integral Yugoslavism. Despite ORJUNA's efforts, Yugoslavism as an idea did not appeal to a wider public even though the organisation enjoyed significant support in Dalmatia in its early years. There was an attempt at reestablishing ORJUNA following proclamation of the Octroic Constitution introduced by a royal decree in 1931. The attempt failed due to lack of interest.
In Croatia, the ORJUNA's proclaimed struggle against Croatian separatism was viewed in the context of ORJUNA's reliance on Pribićević and his power base among Serbs outside Serbia, especially the Croatian Serbs. In turn, it contributed to a significant deterioration of the Croat–Serb relations.
During the Second World War, following the 1941 Invasion of Yugoslavia, the largest portion of ORJUNA's prominent members joined the Axis collaborating Chetniks. That group included Jevđević, Trifunović Birčanin and Bartulović. Others, like Leontić, joined the KPJ-led Yugoslav Partisans.
In the 1990s, the term orjunaš (lit. 'a member of ORJUNA') was used by Croatian right-wing commentators as a derogatory term to describe the left-wing and liberal opposition to the ruling Croatian Democratic Union as enemies of the Croatia's statehood. In the process, those commentators equated the Yugoslavist ideology and the Greater Serbian political project.