CATHOLIC CLERGY AT THE ELECTIONS FOR THE PARLIAMENT HELD ON 5th MAY 1935 IN THE PERCEPTION OF RULERS

Sa？etak Author analyzes in which ways local heads of districts observed political activities of the Catholic clergy during the elections of May 1935. As higher positioned officials and representatives of the state authorities, these heads of districts were in contact with various social strata, among which clergy was a separate but constitutive part. At the elections in May 1935 two political concepts have opposed: democratic, populist, rural, and federalist idea of equality of all the people, with the demand of civil rights and secret ballot, supported by the Croatian Peasant Party and their allies from the political opposition in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, while on the other side was an unitarian and centralistic idea of ？unified nation and state？, maintained by misapprehension of ？one nation with three names？. Reports of the local authorities about the activities of the Catholic priests during the elections define these activities as ？terror of the Catholic clergy？. However, tone in which these reports were written clearly reveals that the terror was conducted the ideologists of the concept of the ？unified nation and state？. Moreover, it seems that none of the democratic rights and standards were obeyed during these elections. Authorities openly confronted its political opponents, including the Catholic clergy, since majority of clergy voted for the opposition. One has to remember that in that time in villages clergy represented an elite of the opposition, which demanded democratic changes and national equality. By the same token, they supported idea of the Croatian independency. Consequently, the response from authorities was repression, not only during the elections, but also by a constant neglecting and suppression of national and civil rights. Moreover, some of heads of districts have proposed shifting of certain priests and various penalties for the Catholic clergy, including even the most drastic sentence as imprisonment in concentration camps. Therefore, the analyzed archival funds, containing dispatches of local districts authorities about activities of the Catholic clergy during the elections of 1935, represent an important source for the investigation of the development national conciseness among various social strata of the Croatian nation, and the influence of the Catholic clergy on this process. Author maintains that this influence has to be regarded as historically positive. Moreover, one has to bear in mind that these sources depict activities of the of the Catholic clergy in the period just few years before the outbreak of the