Geneva conference

On 7 November 1918 in Geneva the Prime Minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, under Allied pressure, accepted the plan for a joint government of Serbia and the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The British chronology of the war records under that date that the conference at Geneva decided to form a joint Yugoslav-Serbian government. The talks at the Hotel National lasted from 6 to 9 November, and their outcome, known as the Geneva Declaration, was signed on the last day. In it the Serbian government agreed, though only for a few days, to treat the Yugoslav authorities in Zagreb as an equal partner.

The road to Geneva

The dispute over the shape of the future state had dragged on since the Corfu Declaration of 1917. Pašić wanted unification around Serbia and its dynasty, while the president of the Yugoslav Committee, Ante Trumbić, feared Serbian hegemony and demanded that the Allies recognise the Yugoslavs of the Habsburg monarchy as an allied nation. At the end of October the situation changed. In Zagreb the State of SCS was proclaimed, and the president of its National Council, the Slovene priest Anton Korošec, left for Switzerland to make contact with the Allies. He could not go to Paris, because his visa was valid only for neutral Switzerland. On 3 November the British Prime Minister Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour let the parties know, through the Prime Minister of Greece, Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Czech politician Edvard Beneš, that there could be no question of any South Slav state until its creators came to an agreement. A joint war cabinet was proposed, which would represent the Yugoslavs before the Allies.

The talks

On 6 November four delegations met in Geneva. The Serbian government was represented by Pašić alone. Also present were the leaders of the Serbian parliamentary opposition, Milorad Drašković, Marko Trifković and Vojislav Marinković, as well as Trumbić with several members of the Yugoslav Committee. The National Council was represented by Korošec, the Slovene liberal Gregor Žerjav and the Dalmatian politician Melko Čingrija. Korošec and Trumbić quickly formed a common front, and the Serbian opposition, at odds with Pašić in the ongoing government crisis, took their side. Pašić was isolated in Geneva and did not intend to give way. Serbia was the only recognised state in the whole process of unification and did not want to lose that advantage.

The breakthrough came on 7 November. A cipher telegram arrived from the Serbian legation in Paris saying that the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, wished Pašić to come to an agreement with the representatives of the National Council. Pašić then accepted Trumbić’s plan. At Korošec’s request he also agreed that Serbia would recognise the National Council as the legitimate government of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs of the former lands of Austria-Hungary and ask the Allies to do the same, and also to recognise the Yugoslav volunteers as an allied army. At the demand of Trumbić and the Serbian opposition, Pašić gave up a place in the joint government. The same day he informed the regent, Alexander, and the finance minister, Stojan Protić, of the outcome of the talks by telegram.

Under the agreed text, until the convening of a constituent assembly that was to give the new state its constitution, the government of Serbia and the National Council in Zagreb each kept power in its own territory. Above them a joint government of twelve ministers was created, responsible for foreign affairs, the army, joint finances, communications and the preparation of the constituent assembly. Half the ministers were named at once: three, among them Ljubomir Davidović, were nominated by Serbia and three by the National Council. It was a confederal arrangement, somewhat reminiscent of Austro-Hungarian dualism. The participants also invited Montenegro into the common state, and on 8 November Korošec discussed this with a minister of King Nicholas’s government. Pašić tried to leave Geneva before the signing, but the others quickly drew up the agreement, and on 9 November he signed it together with eleven other participants, stating that he had doubts about it.

Rejection

The agreement did not last even a week. Protić at first approved it on behalf of the government, but on 11 November he received a second telegram from Pašić, in which the prime minister complained of his partners’ lack of trust and suggested that the regent might look for other advisers. Protić took this as an instruction, and on 12 November the Serbian government resigned, rejecting the declaration. Historians still argue whether this was forced by the regent or a calculated tactic of Pašić’s. On 14 November Pašić informed Trumbić and Korošec that the government and the regent would not accept joint ministers who did not swear an oath to the King of Serbia. The Serbian opposition abandoned Trumbić and came to terms with Pašić over a coalition government. In Zagreb, too, the most influential politician of the National Council, Svetozar Pribićević, decided that the declaration did not bind him. Under the pressure of unrest in the countryside and of Italian troops occupying the Adriatic coast, the National Council chose the path of rapid unification with Serbia without the conditions negotiated in Geneva.