Slovene National Council

In mid-August 1918 in Ljubljana, capital of the Austrian Duchy of Carniola, Slovene politicians set up a National Council (Narodni svet). Its chairman was the priest Anton Korošec, leader of the Catholic Slovene People’s Party and of the Yugoslav Club in the Austrian Imperial Council. The British chronology of the war gives the date as 17 August. The Slovene biographical lexicon dates the founding of the Council to 16 August, and Croatian works to 17 August. The meeting was called on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial plaque to the priest Janez Evangelist Krek, who had died in October 1917 and was one of the founders of the Slovene people’s movement. The Council included not only Catholics but also liberals. Its founders included Albert Kramer, one of the leaders of the liberal National Progressive Party.

The Council was the fruit of a movement that had begun more than a year earlier. On 30 May 1917 Korošec read out in the Imperial Council, on behalf of the South Slav deputies, the May Declaration. It demanded the union of the lands of the monarchy inhabited by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs into an autonomous state body under the Habsburg sceptre. In the Slovene lands it was taken up en masse. Open-air rallies were held, and on 23 and 24 March 1918 in Ljubljana representatives of Slovene women presented Korošec with books containing more than 200,000 signatures in support of the declaration. In early March 1918, at a gathering in Zagreb, Croatian and Muslim politicians also adopted it, now without any mention of the Habsburg sceptre. The Austrian authorities responded in May by banning further agitation for the declaration. The Slovenes also knew that the Treaty of London of 1915 had promised Italy part of the lands they inhabited on the Adriatic.

The meeting in Ljubljana took the form of a demonstration of the unity of the Slavs of the monarchy. According to reports in the German and Dutch press, it was attended by deputies of the Croatian Sabor and by Czech and Polish deputies to the Imperial Council, who were greeted at the station by thousands of people. František Staněk spoke on behalf of the Czechs and Stanisław Głąbiński on behalf of the Poles. The celebrations were attended by the Bishop of Ljubljana, Anton Bonaventura Jeglič, who declared that as a faithful son of the Slovene nation he considered it his duty to stand in the ranks of the national fighters. Newspapers in Vienna, probably because of censorship, published reports of the proceedings only in fragments. The Council was to represent the national, economic and cultural interests of the Slovenes and to be only part of a wider organisation of all the Yugoslavs of the monarchy, whose seat was to be Zagreb. Such councils were set up in 1918 in other South Slav lands as well.

This plan was realised a few weeks later. On 5–6 October 1918 the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was formed in Zagreb, and on 17 October Korošec became its chairman. The Council rejected the imperial manifesto on the transformation of Austria into a federal state, and on 29 October proclaimed the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. At the turn of October and November Slovene politicians took over power in Carniola from the Austrian officials. On 1 December 1918 this state united with Serbia in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the state that had been announced a year earlier in the Corfu Declaration.