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by Shtokavia. . 14 reads.

The Rise of Kalić – The Shtokavian Dream

The Rise of Kalić –
The Shtokavian Dream

Kalić had a hard life. He was born in the city of Zagreb in 1893, which was part of the Danubian Federation at the time. It was dominated by Croatians and he himself was born to a Slovene father and a Croatian mother. Growing up, he was in a relatively poor part of the city as the South Slavs were not regarded as being a priority for the Austro-Hungarian dominators of the Danubian Federation. Rather than receiving large development from investments, it became reliant on selling agricultural goods and using its factories to make steel and other basic resources for the nation to continue its industrial growth. He comments after coming to power of Shtokavia that his mixed heritage and growing up in a part of the nation surrounded by an ethnic group dominated by Austrians and Hungarians as being very influential on his later political views, and it helped give him a sense of union with his people, the South Slavs, through their common daily struggle. He grew up with the dream of the wealth of the Danubian Federation being distributed more to the minorities of the nation, like the Slovenes and Croatians. Later, he came to realise that this dream could only be realised through severing ties with the Danubians; they were being oppressed because they are different.

It was apparent to him early on in his life that Austrians and Hungarians constituted the aristocracy of the nation, mainly, and that the major businesses with Croatian, Slovene or Serbian names were just run by Austrians and Hungarians, or the main shareholders were such. This was a deeply-routed problem that was simply down to the nation having been the Austrian Empire, dominated by Austrians. Though the Austrians were a minority, and the Hungarians and other minorities kept rebelling and demanding more concessions from the regime. This led to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, and rebirthed the nation as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the Hungarians controlling half the nation in Personal Union with Austria. However, the minorities were still left in the situation the Hungarians had been in, and decades later a further compromise was set out to give Czechs and Slovaks, Poles and Ukrainians, Romanians, Slovenes, Croatians and Serbians more autonomy and created a quite spread out balance of power between these people in the Danubian Federation.

Although Kalić was only born in the Danubian stage of this Empire, he learnt from Croatians and Slovenes in his family or from locals of the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. He eventually reached the conclusion over the years that the Austrian Empire has degraded repeatedly from its height until its extinction over the course of over 4 decades after hundreds of years of being an influential European power and the large success of its dynasties in the Holy Roman Empire and afar because people around the world have started to develop a sense of ethnic nationalism. However, he is aware of how long South Slavs have been interbreeding with the Austrians and Ottomans. So this nationalism cannot be routed truly in ethnicities; there is no innate ability to sense one's heritage and it does not define a person for many ethnic groups have changed their language, culture and religion to avoid persecution and to better integrate into a greater Empire. South Slav blood has long been mixed with other peoples' in the Balkans. As such, he concludes, the sense of nationalism and separatism that has ground the Austrian and Ottoman Empires to nothing must be routed in what can be seen: culture, language, religion, whatever sets a group apart from the ruling ethnic groups. Cultural Statism was in the making.

Then, on 1906, war began. The First World War, initiated after the Danubian Federation declared war on the Italian Empire for it having occupied Trieste illegally, having a very large Italian populace there and providing a strong source of trade in the Adriatic. The Italians called the French into the war due to them being in a military alliance, 'The Mediterranean League' and the Ottomans joined them to try and revive its stagnating Empire ravaged by ethnic disputes, much alike the Danubians and the Russians, with a sense of patriotism and reasserting its influence in the Balkans. Russia took distaste to any more Ottoman influence in the Balkans and joined the Danubians. Spain, seeing opportunity to reclaim its lost territories to France in Catalonia, joined the Danubians and Russians, Britain joined to seize French colonies, and Germany on the Italian side to get its Empire some colonies from Britain or Spain after it missed out mostly on the colonial race, and Britain had more colonies to take than France. This caused two large coalitions:
Italy, France, Ottomans, Germany – The League
Danubians, Russia, Spain, Britain – The Coalition

Due to the surprise involvement of the Ottomans in the war on Italy and France, the Danubian Federation was not prepared for the southern front, though fortunately the Ottomans hadn't been initially planning to invade the Danubians and seized the initiative of this war. This meant their invasion was clumsy and disorganised, and Russia's participation forced them to focus more resources on the Russian border and for the Danubians to organise a strong resistance to the Ottoman offensive. The Germans joining the League had been anticipated, though, as the Germans had territorial disputes with the Spanish and British over their colonial expansion and the Germans' desire to expand in the east into Baltic Russia. Russian and Danubian forces were moved to the German border after Britain joined the war. This meant the Germans were unable to take much land in their initial offensive, which was their plan to quickly seize railroads and industry in the Czechoslovak and Galician regions of Danubian Federation.

The Ottoman invasion of the Danubians had a large toll on the Croatians, Slovenes and Serbians. The Danubian Federation, to deal with the huge fronts against the Germans, Italians and Ottomans, had to initiate mass conscription, and by 1906 Kalić was 13. He was too young to be conscripted yet, but the war managed to last to 1909 where he was conscripted until the wars end. By the ending months of the war, the Germans were losing land rapidly, being industrially exhausted by the war effort, and the Ottomans had lost almost all their Balkan land, the Battle of Constantinople immanent. France had been occupied after repeated naval invasions and aggressive land offensives from the Spanish and British and had capitulated, Germany being invaded in the Rheinland and Italy losing Piedmont too.

Kalić fought as a regular soldier on the Italian front, and most notably he participated in the Battle of Venice where Venice was seized by Danubian and Russian forces. From his months in the Danubian army, he met many other nationalists in the army and found there was large military support for more autonomy or even independence for Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. The initial volunteer forces and full time soldiers were mainly Danubian patriots, but after most of them were killed and now almost all the current soldiers on the front lines conscripted, there was a lot of distaste for the Danubian regime and how many Slavic lives their war they started had cost. Weeks after the Battle of Venice, Italy capitulated and Kalić was moved to the German front where Germany and the Ottomans soon capitulated, ending the war in a Coalition victory.

However, in the wake of the war, great social change was now afoot. Returning home, Kalić realised the damage done to the Serbo-Croato-Slovene regions of the Danubian Federation in the Ottoman occupation and the many battles fought to reclaim them. Zagreb itself was badly bombarded by artillery pieces for months. In the Treaty of Vienna, the Danubians gained portions of Italy, the Ottomans, especially Serbian-dominated regions, and Silesian Germany. But the Empire was already strained, being a constitutional monarchy of great political divide, a fractured society of ethnic disputes and violence, now new territories to administrate, a crippled economy and industry. This brought the Empire to the brink of collapse by 1910, and by Febuary of 1911 the Empire was dealt its lethal blow, a lack of a male heir upon monarch death.

In the Regency Council, they were left with multiple bad choices. The Habsburgs had now gone extinct, and they could either allow the Austrians to fall under the Personal Union of the Hungarian half of the Empire they were married into to keep the Austrian Personal Union over Hungary alive, or they could place the last surviving Habsburg, a female, on the throne. They held a conference on the possibility of a female heir, which was refused vehemently by the Hungarians. The Austrians were reluctant to accept a Hungarian-ruled Danubian Federation, and at this point there was a gridlock where no heir could be found and it was decided that the monarchy had to be dissolved, allowing the Danubian parliamentary upper and lower houses to assume complete control and reforming the Federation into a Republic.

This Republic was unpopular by the Monarchists of the nation that had been displeased since the Danubian Federation was formed for its parliamentary democracy, and this was the last straw. As ethnic riots intensified over the war's end to the announcement of the Republic, the Monarchist parties formed a coalition and attempted a coup. This coup failed after they were blocked from storming parliament by police and military forces. This rapidly escalated into a civil war in which the Monarchists rallied Monarchist sympathisers in the military to defect and used their own voter base and paramilitary forces. This triggered the Czechoslovak nationalists rioting to form a militia and to start their participation in the civil war on their own side, clashing with both Monarchists and loyalists.

Kalić found an organised Serbo-Croato-Slovene militia had started to form, and he managed to use his military links to get high-ranking military generals of South Slavic heritage to defect to the militia with their forces to give the militia professional soldiers. As the South Slavic and Czechoslovak revolts grew to encompass hundreds of thousands of people, and several other rebel groups started attacking convoys of any side, the Monarchists finally apprehended the current Prime Minister and force him to surrender to the Monarchists. They attempted to take their leading military general and crown him as the Austrian and Hungarian King, but the revolts intensified further and a peace conference was held with foreign nations' ministers attending to try and at last end this civil war that had raged for most of 1911. On October 1911, the Treaty of Budapest was signed between all the major rioting groups and the Democratic and Monarchist factions. The peace ended the Danubian Federation and split it between Romania, Bohemia-Slovakia, Poland, Ruthenia, Austria, Hungary, Croatoslovenia, and Serbia.

A fortnight after the Treaty of Budapest, the Republic of Croatoslovenia and the Republic of Serbia unite. This unitary state is named after the main Serbo-Croat dialect that standard Croatian and Serbian are set to, Shtokavian; the Federal Republic of Shtokavia. The first elections of the Federal Republic took place on November 1911 and were then held every 4 years after that.

Kalić had fought hard for Slovene and Croatian independence and at last it had been achieved, and furthermore it had now united with the Serbian lands that had broken free of the Federation. However, his dream of unity of the people into one ethnic group was not yet realised. Kalić observed that this new Republic would not last, as the different groups that constituted it, the Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes and to a rising degree, Bosniaks, Montenegrins and Macedonians, would all end up wanting autonomy or to be able to teach their own standard of the Serbo-Croat language in schools or eventually independence. Envisioning simply the same fate for Shtokavia as the Austrian, Austro-Hungarian and Danubian nations, he once again set to his revolutionary work.

He was known in Zagreb for his nationalist rhetoric, and to a larger degree his anti-Austrianism and anti-Magyarism (anti-Hungarianism), as he blamed them for the loss of tens of thousands of South Slavic lives on the Danubian side of the war, that he proclaims they started knowing they would rely on conscripted South Slavs. He was also against Italians and Ottoman Turks for their warmongering against them. This was especially an issue for the Italian, Hungarian and Austrian minorities in Istria, Slovenia and Vojvodina, respectively, of which Kalić has always advocated them being forced to speak the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croat and to adopt the nation's culture or to be deported.

Years passed by. For his participation in the First World War as a decorated veteran, a known South Slavic patriot, a man of both Slovene and Croatian blood and an insurgent in the Danubian Civil War on the side of the Pan-South Slavic nationalists, he had plenty of connections in the Shtokavian army and with the Shtokavian citizenry. Many people have claimed to have been motivated by speeches from Kalić and his followers in the years following the foundation of the Federal Republic of Shtokavia.

On March 1920, 4 months after the 3rd election of Shtokavia ended with a Liberal Democratic-Conservative victory, Kalić and his nationalist/military allies in the Slovenian and Croatian, now some in Serbian too, Shtokavia are displeased with the current regime. The followers are at this point mostly voting for the National Populist Party of Shtokavia, after National Populism, a leading form of Fascism, has seized power in Italy and Poland and has converted them into Socialist-like Totalitarian states with a strong sense of nationality and massive industrialisation and militarisation campaigns. Kalić becomes critical over time to how the National Populists are not fixing the ethnic issues in Shtokavia, and in fact treat the Slovenes, Croatians and Serbians as separate groups in this united state, which he claims legitimises these ethnic groups' nationalism and alienation towards one another. Some of them are voting for other parties, like the Revolutionary Nationalist Party of Shtokavia, though this organisation is more Corporatist in nature and is criticised by Kalić for their Laissez-faire Capitalism that he sees as being exploitive of the lower classes, like the society he grew up in, and he points to companies profiteering from WW1 as a sign of a free market's corruption.

It is decided on March to form their own Fascist party with the economic model of National Populism, State Capitalism or a Mixed Economy and a strong system of social welfare and high taxation for the rich in a competitive business model. It is also authoritarian and ultranationalist. Its new social policy of cultural, linguistic and religious unity and making everyone adopt it was what was new, as National Populists were usually racist towards ethnic minorities on the basis of heritage; their race. This ideology disregarded ethnicity as being irrelevant and for us all being human, and as such the only differences were these cultural divides which could be removed in generations if treated with a strong state. This concept was dubbed Cultural Warfare. As such, the ideology denounced Croatian, Slovene, Serbian and any other non-Pan South Slavic nationalists (Shtokavian nationalists) as being traitors to their own people, as the party refused to recognise Croatians, Slovenes and Serbians as separate groups but as disillusioned and tricked Shtokavians led to believe they're separate by the Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans.

This ideology was named Cultural Statism after its emphasis on cultural unity and Cultural Warfare, and its centralisation of political and economic power on the State and the ruling Cultural Statist Party so it may act as a vanguard for the nation to be revitalised with newfound unity and patriotic spirit. As such, the Cultural Statist Party of Shtokavia was formed.

This party gave an official, parliamentary voice to the growing movement of people who wanted to take the Pan-South Slavic movement that birthed Shtokavia to a new level, one where the minorities are converted to Shtokavian culture and then the culture is spread abroad further, uniting minorities with the rest of the nation by assimilating them. To fit the Shtokavian nation, the religion to be enforced on the Shtokavian people by the Cultural Statist Party in Shtokavia was picked to be Orthodoxy. This was due to the view that Islam had been forced upon them by Ottomans and Catholicism had been forced upon them by Austrians; Orthodoxy was the true religion of Shtokavian nationalism. However, it was chosen to not pursue this too early, as the nation was deeply split between Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox Christians, and a very large chunk of potential voter base could be dissuaded by picking a religion over the others and proposing to enforce it early on.

The cultural and linguistic aspects of the party would be hard to decide upon also, as picking one dialect over the other, Croatian or Serbian, would arise accusations of oppression of the other sub-group and a surge in nationalism of these groups that the Kalić supporters were trying to quash. Kalić, being part Slovene, didn't want to have the Slovene language and culture completely die out in place of the predominant Shtokavian dialectal group that the nation was named after, not to mention the non-Shtokavian dialects of Croatian and Serbian. And so, after months of debate, it was decided that a compromise would be made. The Croatian and Serbian dialects of Serbo-Croat, and Slovene, would be mixed into a sort of conlang in which the most indigenous or popular spelling, pronunciation or grammatical rule would be picked as official and form a new successor to the current dialects of the languages, called the Shtokavian language. To combat ethnic groups infighting with one another, the party downplayed the view of Slovene, Croatian and Serbian as being different languages as being separatist propaganda, being merely different dialects.

The Cultural Statist Party of Shtokavia (CSPS) rapidly grew over the 3rd parliamentary term in Shtokavia after people who had witnessed Kalić speeches all over the nation, from Ljubljana to Skopje, joined the movement and ex-insurgents and WW1 veterans joined the voter base or even were accepted into the party leadership for their devotion to national unity between the South Slavic people. The 1923 (4th) elections went through and the CSPS achieved 13% of the national vote. This was not huge, but it was very significant for a radical party, and a party new to elections, not to mention the existing Fascist/Ultranationalist support in the nation is already largely split between the earlier mentioned National Populist and Revolutionary Nationalist Parties. At the 4th election, one of the reasons the Cultural Statists had managed to achieve 13% of the national vote was due to working with these parties, as they are all extreme Nationalist parties trying to bring about a stronger Shtokavia based around the Polish and Italian models.

By the time of the 1927 general election, the 5th election of Shtokavia's parliament, ties are severed with National Populists and Revolutionary Nationalists after secret meetings manage to get key members of their parties to defect to the Cultural Statists, and in the weeks leading up the elections the voters of these parties are told by the former members and the rest of the CSPS in speeches of the pitfalls in their ideological ideals. CSPS seizes 27% of the national vote this time and leading to the disbanding of the Revolutionary Nationalists. The National Populist Party, at this point, has had its voter base slashed to a third and seeks urgent funding support from Italy and Poland. As the National Populists start to amass a high-quality supply of propaganda, launch a youth wing and start to recruit for a paramilitary organisation, the Iron Guard movement becomes part of a Conservative coalition in power of Romania.

By the Iron Guard seizing a foothold in Romanian politics and word of a strong Italian and Polish-funded campaign to regrow the National Populist movement in Shtokavia, the decision is taken by Kalić to attempt a coup of the ruling Liberal government. The Cultural Statist movement had stolen vast amounts of their members and might lose some to the new National Populist propaganda campaign, not to mention their professional paramilitary wing being filled with Italian and Polish special forces.

On 1928, the Cultural Statist paramilitary wing, the 'Shtokavian Vanguard', CSPS members and thousands of voters march on Belgrade, capital city of Shtokavia. Upon reaching Belgrade and having their path blocked by Shtokavian military forces/police, they open fire and storm parliament. The Shtokavian parliament is then forced by the Shtokavian Vanguard and CSPS to hold a vote on its last bill, one that decrees the current parliament is incapable of carrying out the best interests of the collective Shtokavian people, and as such shall now be dissolved with the CSPS instated as the new, sole ruling party. The CSPS then passes an amendment that dissolves all other political parties permanently in the nation, ends general elections, dissolves the upper and lower houses and establishes a single CSPS Congress, and elects Kalić as national leader for life.

There is a counter-revolution at this point from many of the other parties' voters. But by this stage, most of the military has either served in the First World War or they have been told of it by their parents, and the nationalist sentiment amongst the military of Shtokavia, especially after years of Kalić using his military ties to rally supporters, is very strong and most of the military swears loyalty to the CSPS government. That afternoon, the CSPS passes its second bill in which it declares the Federal Republic disbanded and now the 'Cultural State of Shtokavia' under Leader Kalić.

The nation has, since its separation from the Danubians, had a very large amount of lower class people, and the nation was still yet to reach Western standards of industrialisation. Economic crises recently had swept Europe, causing Shtokavian banks and businesses to fall into debt and for the stock market to crash. The CSPS started by largely abandoning the agricultural sector and urbanising/industrialising rapidly. It nationalised banks and major businesses like railways, steel industries and arms manufacturers. The Shtokavian Vanguard was made a professional branch of the armed forces and martial law was enforced. The linguistic reforms were passed and several books were published by significant Cultural Statists on the new Shtokavian culture and language, with Shtokavian language and culture now official to the nation. Kalić's dream of a strong, South-Slavic state was in full motion.

By the end of 1928, unemployment had been decreased largely by the many, low-paying jobs provided by state companies in the hope of getting people into the job ladder. Taxation was reformed and a new Social Welfare Institute was established to help distribute wealth more to the poor and help them get cheap, new houses in the urbanisation scheme.

In 1929, Kalić made many visits to major cities in Shtokavia and made passionate speeches about the strong new regime they had forged, in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Skopje and more. The Banovinas (regions) of the nation were dissolved and replaced with new Banovinas based on river boundaries rather than the distribution of ethnic groups. This was the initiation of the Cultural Warfare campaign, to take something that Serbian, Croatian and Slovene nationalists could invest their separatist and racist views in, the Banovina that corresponded to their dialect and religion, and draw new boundaries to leave no trace of where there groups are. The hope was that people would take pride in their regional Banovina instead on the basis of it being their homeland, not on the basis of it being their segregated ethnic group.

There was also a campaign to get Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes to move around the nation to try and intermingle them more and to bring about more tolerance of one another.

In 1930, Kalić passes the Act of Linguistic Unity, in which it is now required by law to teach the new Shtokavian conlang in schools and for all legal documents and public signs to be written in it too. Any non-South Slavic speakers in positions of power are removed.

In late 1930, the Cultural Statist Youth Organisation of the CSPS is established and is highly recommended for people to send their children to. It educates the youth on the success of Fascism and the tenets of Cultural Statism they must uphold for national unity. It also teaches that non-Shtokavian languages and dialects divide the nation and that it is treasonous to support regional nationalism. Youth are educated on the new Banovinas.

On 1932, a campaign of anti-Austrianism, anti-Magyarism and anti-Ottomanism is adopted to be taught in schools and Cultural Statist Youth Organisation, CSYO, educating people of their oppression of the South Slavs in the past, and most importantly their dividing of the Shtokavian people into Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes to stop them realising they are a single, powerful entity. It is chosen to leave anti-Italianism out of any further party policies as the Italians and Polish took very badly to the Cultural Statist propaganda campaigns against the National Populist Party of Shtokavia that crippled its membership and voting base, then its forced disbanding in the coup. Since the coup, most National Populists started working with the Cultural Statists and some are in the CSPS itself, now, and strong supporters of Cultural Statism. To avoid Italy stirring up National Populist resistance or imposing sanctions or even starting a war, a closer stance to Italy and Poland should now be taken to help fellow Fascists. Kalić sees this as necessary to the survival of the regime, as the National Populists are one of the closest ideological relatives to the Cultural Statist regime anyway, and Poland and Italy could form a very strong alliance, both militarily and politically, against Democracies or the various strains of Communism, an ideology also rapidly growing.

To continue this, in 1933, Kalić meets up with the leaders of Italy, Poland and the newly elected Romanian Iron Guard regimes to discuss their future working together. However, the Italian National Populists reassert their claims from back in the late 1890s to early 1900s on areas of Shtokavian Dalmatia and the city of Trieste, now Tris, which was kept under Danubian control after WW1 and annexed by Croatoslovenia, now Shtokavia, in the Treaty of Budapest in 1911. The Cultural Statists of Shtokavia insist the demands are worth a lot more than just a defensive alliance, and that no territorial concessions will be made in exchange for allegiance between the regimes. This ends Italian openness to an alliance or trade deals until their territorial demands are met, and Poland supports them in this desire by acting in kind. The Iron Guards, however, are much more open and several trade arrangements are made with state visits to one another promised.

Shtokavia

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