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17 Principles of the Ustaše

The Principles of the Croatian Ustaša Movement (Croatian: Načela hrvatskog ustaškog pokreta), sometimes published under the alternative title Principles of the Croatian Home Guard (Croatian: Načela Hrvatskog domobrana), is the foundational ideological charter of the Ustaša–Croatian Revolutionary Organization. The document was first published under the combined dates of 1 June 1933 and 16 April 1941 by Supreme Ustaša Headquarters, Propaganda Department in Zagreb, and is attributed to the movement's leader (Poglavnik), Ante Pavelić.[1]

The emblem of the Ustaše movement.

It consists of seventeen numbered articles setting out an ethnonationalist, exclusivist vision of Croatian nationhood and statehood. Historians regard it as the primary programmatic statement of the Ustaša movement, combining extreme Croatian nationalism, elements of Nazism and Fascism, Catholic clericalist authoritarianism, and ideas borrowed from the Croatian Peasant Party.[1][2]

Background

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Official proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, April 1941.

The Ustaša movement emerged from Croatian nationalist circles in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes following the introduction of King Alexander I's royal dictatorship on 6 January 1929, after the parliamentary shooting of Stjepan Radić and other Croatian Peasant Party leaders in June 1928.[3][4] Ante Pavelić, formerly a member of the Croatian Party of Rights, fled Yugoslavia and, with material and financial support from Benito Mussolini's Italy, organised exiled Croatian nationalists into the Ustaša organisation, training them in camps at Bovegno in Lombardy and later at Jankapuszta in Hungary.[5][3] A separate, legally registered youth organisation, the Hrvatski domobran (Croatian Home Guard), had operated inside Yugoslavia from October 1928 as an above-ground platform for the same network.[6]

Prior to April 1941, the Ustaša movement remained a small organisation on the margins of Croatian political life. According to a report by Arthur Haeffner, who had close contacts in Zagreb political circles, the number of sworn Ustaša members within Yugoslavia at the time of the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia was approximately 900; the Ustašas themselves estimated they had around 40,000 sympathisers.[1]

Publication history and naming

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The Ustav Ustaše (Ustaša Constitution), one of the two foundational documents of the organisation alongside the Principles.

Pavelić published the movement's program as early as 1933.[1] The Principles were issued under the combined dates of 1 June 1933 and 16 April 1941 by Supreme Ustaša Headquarters, Propaganda Department (Glavni ustaški stan, Ured za promidžbu), in a publication titled Ustaša, in which the Seventeen Principles appear on pages 7–11.[1] An expanded version elaborating on the Principles was prepared by Danijel Crljen, a high school teacher from Dalmatia who became one of the movement's principal ideologists during the war.[7] A further elaboration was presented to the Croatian Diet by Pavelić and Ustaša ministers Mladen Lorković, Andrija Artuković, and Mirko Puk during the last week of February 1942.[8]

The document's title has been a matter of historiographical discussion. Historian Mario Jareb has argued for the compound designation "Ustaša–Home Guard movement," noting that the organisation operated under the name "Croatian Home Guard" in several countries and that the Principles were frequently distributed as "Home Guard Principles" in the early 1930s.[9] Goran Miljan notes that the 1942 Crljen edition is the most complete and authoritative version and that its title Načela hrvatskog ustaškog pokreta is the most commonly used.[9]

Number of articles

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At least one source states the Principles comprised fifteen articles in editions circulating between 1933 and 1941, expanded to seventeen in the 1942 NDH-era Crljen edition.[10] The combined 1933/1941 publication consulted by Tomasevich gives seventeen principles. Readers should consult Jareb's 2007 study (pp. 124–128) directly to resolve this discrepancy.

Content of the Seventeen Principles

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Summary

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Pavelić speaks at the Croatian Parliament on 23 February 1942
Pavelić greeting the Croatian parliament in February 1942

Tomasevich summarises the structure and content of the Principles as follows.[7]

Principles 1–7 describe the Croatian nation, its name and homeland, and the unity of the Croatian lands. Pavelić asserted that the Croats had always been free, that the Croatian nation had always had "lofty political capabilities and an organisational tradition," and that Croatian statehood had existed uninterruptedly almost from the moment the Croats arrived in their present homeland. Tomasevich notes that in reality, since Croatia's union with Hungary in 1102 and its election of the Habsburgs as kings in 1527, the country had possessed only limited, formal statehood rather than true national sovereignty, and that "the notion of uninterrupted statehood was thus more myth than reality," though it played an important political and psychological role in Croatian history.[1]

Principle 8 (modified after April 1941) declared that the Croatian nation had through revolution re-established the sovereign Independent State of Croatia, asserting Croatian sovereignty over and rights to "uninterrupted national and historical territory" and declaring that the Croatian nation was not bound by any past international or constitutional obligations not in agreement with the Principles.[11]

Principle 9 proclaimed that the happiness and welfare of the Croatian people could only be achieved in an independent Croatian state that "should not and cannot be a part in any form of any other state or state formation."[12]

Principle 10 stated: "The Croatian people have their own sovereign rights according to which they alone have the right to rule in their state and conduct all their national affairs."[12]

Principle 11 elaborated: "In state and national affairs in the Independent State of Croatia nobody can participate in political decision making who is not by origin and blood a member of the Croatian nation. Furthermore, no foreign nation or state should determine the fate of the Croatian nation." Through these two principles, Pavelić excluded the Serbian population and most national minorities from political life.[12]

Principle 12 asserted that "the peasantry is the foundation and source of all life, and as such it is the first carrier of all political power in the Croatian state." Tomasevich notes that this principle was taken from the Croatian Peasant Party, though where the Peasant Party upheld freely elected peasant representation, the Ustaše "ridiculed popular elections as a political sham," arguing instead that a political leader who acted in the interests of the people could become the nation's ruler without election.[12]

Principle 13 asserted that all material and spiritual goods in the Croatian state were the property of the people, forbidding private trade in forest and mineral resources. On agricultural land, it drew on Croatian agrarian tradition, limiting ownership to peasant households that worked the land themselves.[12]

Principle 14 postulated the "nobility of work and duty," while denying the Western concept of inalienable individual rights: "Nobody can have any particular rights, but the duties toward the nation and state give the individual [who lives up to them] the right to a protected life."[13]

Principle 15 dealt with responsibility in public life.[8]

Principle 16, on the "sources of Croatian power and progress," opened with: "The center of the moral power of the Croatian people is found in the orderly and religious life of the family." Tomasevich identifies this as creating an opening for alignment with the Catholic Church. He also notes that the idea of the corporative state — not found in the Principles — was added to the Ustaša program by a decree of 1 May 1942, establishing eighteen occupational federations, though wartime conditions prevented their development.[8]

Principle 17 called for the promotion of all Croatian national virtues and national objectives, and the continuity and security of the Independent State of Croatia.[8]

The 1942 edition

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The 1942 Crljen edition expanded on the original Principles to popularise the Ustaša program. Miljan observes that this edition described the Ustaša state as totalitarian (totalistična), asserting that it "integrates, connects, and manages all sources of national strength" and extends its care to children, peasants, mothers, workers, and the elderly, subordinating "the life and work of each individual ... to the service of common national benefit."[14]

Crljen's commentary on Principle 17 explicitly embraces the totalitarian label, arguing the state must extend organized oversight into nearly every area of life — from children's schooling and peasant agriculture to workers' job security and care for the elderly — and presents this comprehensive state control as the principle's intended fulfillment.[15]

The Principles as a de facto constitution

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Some Croatian legal scholars and Ustaša ideologists maintained that the Seventeen Principles, binding on Ustaša movement members before April 1941, became binding on all citizens of the state thereafter and thus constituted its de facto constitution — a situation Tomasevich compares to Germany, where the program of the National Socialist Labour Party served as the de facto constitution of the Third Reich. This proposition was confirmed in administrative practice: examinations required for advancement in the Croatian civil service covered constitutional organisation as their first subject, and the material for this examination consisted of the Ustaša program and relevant regulations.[16]

Ideological themes

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Eclecticism of sources

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Tomasevich describes the Principles' ideology as lacking originality, combining components from "extreme Frankist Croatian nationalism, Nazism and Fascism, Catholic Clericalist authoritarianism, and ideas from the Croatian Peasant Party."[1] He further argues that while the movement had roots in pre-1918 Croatian political traditions such as Frankism and political Catholicism, it was primarily "engendered by the discontent of the Croatian people with the Yugoslav state during the interwar period" and fostered by the growth of Nazism and Fascism in 1930s Europe.[17]

Ethnonationalism and racial exclusivity

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A 1941 Ustaša order for Jews and Serbs to leave an area, directly reflecting the ethnic exclusions of Principles 10 and 11.

Principles 10 and 11 formed the ideological basis for the Ustaša regime's anti-Serbian policy. Tomasevich writes that the Ustaše used these principles to justify "making the Independent State of Croatia into a one-nation state."[18] The practical implications were stated explicitly by Milovan Žanić, chairman of the Legislative Council, in a speech on 2 May 1941:

This state, this homeland of ours, must be Croatian and no one else's... This must be the land of the Croats and no one else's. There is no method that we, as Ustashas, will not use to make this land truly Croatian and to cleanse it of Serbs... when we accomplish this, we will have accomplished only what is written in the Ustasha Principles.[19]

Miljan writes that the Principles and Pavelić's subsequent writings developed the claim that Croats were of distinct, non-Slavic "Gothic" racial descent, differentiating them from Serbs; this theme was expanded in Pavelić's 1936 pamphlet Die Kroatische Frage.[20]

The 1942 Crljen edition's commentary on Principle 11 frames the Ustaša liberation struggle as having required removing two distinct burdens from the Croatian people: Serbian political rule and Jewish economic influence. The text describes Jews using classic antisemitic tropes of parasitism, portraying them as having infiltrated and dominated Croatia's economy, culture, and morality, and explicitly endorses their rapid removal from national life as a necessary corrective.[21]

Peasant ideology and anti-capitalism

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Principle 12's formula — "the peasantry is the foundation and source of all life" — was consciously appropriated from the Croatian Peasant Party, but stripped of its democratic electoral implications.[12] The Ustaše used Principle 12 as a ready-made opening to court the Croatian peasantry; immediately after the NDH's establishment, Pavelić initiated a campaign to attract Peasant Party supporters with a speech on 21 May 1941 declaring that the Independent State would be "a Croatian, peasant, and Ustasha state."[22]

Charismatic leadership

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The Principles' assertions of Croatian sovereignty and national destiny have been analysed alongside the 1932 Ustav Ustaše (Constitution of the Ustaša), which established a mandatory oath of unconditional obedience sworn by all members to Pavelić as Poglavnik.[23] The principle of the charismatic leader was both part of Ustaša ideology and of its daily practice: Pavelić himself made all basic decisions, implemented by Supreme Ustaša Headquarters and subsidiary organs.[24] Miljan, drawing on Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority, argues that Pavelić cultivated a quasi-religious rhetoric of national "resurrection" and "Calvary," positioning himself as the necessary, providential vehicle of Croatian salvation.[25]

The movement's propaganda chief Vilko Rieger explicitly linked adherence to the Principles to loyalty to Pavelić personally, writing in September 1942 that "Ustashism, its essence and its foundation, is not what occurred in the days of revolution and chaos, but what is prescribed in the Seventeen Principles of the Ustasha Liberation Movement, behind which stands the greatest moral and ethical figure and the ideally formed personality of our Poglavnik."[24]

The 1942 edition opens not with the Principles themselves but with a multi-page meditation titled "Poglavnikova duša" ("The Poglavnik's Soul"), which portrays Pavelić's inner being as the vessel through which the entire Croatian national spirit and historical destiny found expression. The passage describes Ustaša followers as having felt joy even under torture and persecution because of their devotion to him, and frames their willingness to die for him as something they regretted being able to offer only once, rather than a thousand times over. The Principles themselves, the text states, were not primarily the product of Pavelić's intellect or legal skill, but emerged from this same soul.[26]

Relationship to fascism

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Ante Pavelić meeting Adolf Hitler, 1941. The NDH was established with Axis military support.

Historians differ on the extent to which the Principles and broader Ustaša ideology constitute fascism. Tomasevich characterises the Principles as ideologically derivative, noting they contain "no originality," and identifies Principle 13 as most directly aligned with Fascist and Nazi economic ideology, while other articles reflect Croatian agrarian or Catholic clericalist traditions.[7] Miljan argues that the organisation had "fully evolved into a fascist organization" by the mid-1930s, applying Roger Griffin's "fascist minimum" criterion of national salvation through total regeneration of the nation under a charismatic leader.[27]

Iordachi and Miljan describe the late 1930s as a period of "fascistization" marked by the adoption of explicit antisemitism, anti-communism, and racial ideology in Pavelić's writings, including Die Kroatische Frage (1936) and Errori e Orrori (1938).[4] Stanley Payne characterised the Ustaša as "proto-fascist" before a fuller transition to fascism around 1936–37.[a]

Legacy and application in the NDH

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Prisoners entering Jasenovac concentration camp. The regime applied the Ustaša ideological program against Serbs, Jews, and Roma.

Following the NDH's establishment in April 1941, the Principles moved from a movement charter binding on sworn members alone to what some legal scholars characterised as a de facto constitution binding on all citizens of the state.[16] The Principles circulated through NDH publications including Ustaša – vjesnik hrvatskih revolucionaraca and were used to provide ideological legitimacy for the regime's policies, including persecution directed against Serbs, Jews, and Roma.[27]

Some Catholic clergy and Clericalist writers maintained that the Ustaša program represented "the quintessence of the Croatian national spirit" and that the Ustaše had assumed Croatia's "traditional role as a rampart of Western civilization against Byzantinism and Eastern Orthodoxy." Tomasevich identifies the extreme anti-Serbian and anti-Orthodox stance as "probably the most attractive feature" of the regime for this constituency.[17]

The NDH never adopted a formal written constitution. On 15 May 1941, Pavelić issued a decree identifying the Croatian royal crown of the medieval king Zvonimir as the embodiment of Croatian sovereignty, but no constitutional text was ever promulgated.[16]

See also

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References

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Informational notes

  1. ↑ As cited in Iordachi and Miljan (2022), who note this as one position in a wider debate that also includes scholars such as Ladislaus Hory, Martin Broszat, and James J. Sadkovich, who have disputed a fascist characterisation of the movement.[4]

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tomasevich 2001, p. 337.
  2. ↑ Miljan 2016, p. 3.
  3. 1 2 Hamerli 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 Iordachi & Miljan 2022.
  5. ↑ Miljan 2016, pp. 9–10.
  6. ↑ Miljan 2016, pp. 7–8.
  7. 1 2 3 Tomasevich 2001, pp. 337–339.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Tomasevich 2001, p. 339.
  9. 1 2 Miljan 2016, p. 15.
  10. ↑ Bartulin 2013, p. 49, n. 16
  11. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 337–338.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Tomasevich 2001, p. 338.
  13. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 338–339.
  14. ↑ Miljan 2016, p. 16.
  15. ↑ Crljen 1942, pp. 79–80.
  16. 1 2 3 Tomasevich 2001, p. 376.
  17. 1 2 Tomasevich 2001, pp. 339–340.
  18. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 391–392.
  19. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, p. 392.
  20. ↑ Miljan 2016, pp. 17–18.
  21. ↑ Crljen 1942, pp. 46–47.
  22. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 357–358.
  23. ↑ Miljan 2016, pp. 11–12.
  24. 1 2 Tomasevich 2001, p. 344.
  25. ↑ Miljan 2016, pp. 13–14.
  26. ↑ Crljen 1942, pp. 4–6.
  27. 1 2 Miljan 2016, p. 25.

Bibliography

Books

  • Crljen, Danijel (1942). Načela Hrvatskog Ustaškog Pokreta. Zagreb: Glavni ustaški stan.
  • Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3615-4.
  • Jareb, Mario (2007). Ustaško-domobranski pokret od nastanka do travnja 1941. Zagreb: Školska knjiga / Hrvatski institut za povijest.
  • Bartulin, Nevenko (2013). The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-25386-5.

Journal articles

  • Hamerli, Petra (2017). "Croatian Political Refugees Living in Emigration in the Interwar Period: The Case of the Croatian Political Refugees in Hungary". Hungarian Historical Review. 6 (3). Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
  • Miljan, Goran (2016). "From Obscure Beginnings to State 'Resurrection': Ideas and Practices of the Ustaša Organization". Fascism. 5: 3–25. doi:10.1163/22116257-00501002.
  • Iordachi, Constantin; Miljan, Goran (2022). ""Why We Have Become Revolutionaries and Murderers": Radicalization, Terrorism, and Fascism in the Ustaša–Croatian Revolutionary Organization". Terrorism and Political Violence. doi:10.1080/09546553.2022.2077730.
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