ABSTRACT
On December 1, 1918, only weeks after the end of World War I, as Austria-Hungary disintegrated and an exhausted Entente celebrated victory, Prince-Regent Aleksandar Karadjordjević proclaimed the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Although the new state quickly became commonly known as Yugoslavia, its official name revealed both the complexity and the conflicts which the kingdom and its leaders would struggle to cope with during its turbulent interwar existence. Only in October 1929, during the royal dictatorship of King Aleksandar, did the state officially become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During Aleksandar’s regime, the state implemented a massive but flawed campaign to expunge “tribal” identities in favor of a unitary Yugoslav identity. By the end of the interwar period, King Aleksandar was dead, and the Yugoslav idea was on life support, wounded and increasingly discarded by dueling Croat and Serb nationalists.
