Carinthian Plebiscite - Plebiscite

Plebiscite

The Treaty of Saint-Germain with the Republic of Austria, signed on 10 September 1919, should have determined the Austrian-Yugoslav border. It ascertained that some small parts of Carinthia—i.e. the Meža Valley (German: Mießtal) with the town of Dravograd (Unterdrauburg) and the Jezersko (Seeland) municipal area—should be incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, while the fate of wider southeastern Carinthia area down to the Klagenfurt basin was to be determined by a plebiscite.

Wanting to resolve the conflict peacefully, the Allied victors in World War I divided southeastern Carinthia into two zones, "A" in the south and "B" in the north. A two-stage referendum was to be held to determine annexation by either Austria or the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in the smaller Zone B only if a majority of the people in Zone A would have voted for Yugoslavia. The population of Zone A was predominantly Slovene-speaking: according to the pre-war Austrian census of 1910, people in these municipalities who used Slovene as their primary language represented nearly 70% of the population; while the number of ethnic Slovenes was probably higher. German speakers were concentrated in the town of Völkermarkt and certain smaller localities, especially around Bleiburg (Slovene: Pliberk) and Ferlach (Borovlje).

Before the plebiscite, both sides waged intensive propaganda campaigns. Austrian propaganda emphasized the economic benefits of maintaining the unity of the Klagenfurt Basin and appealed to feelings of Carinthian unity and brotherhood between the Slovene- and German-speaking peoples of Carinthia. Conducted in the Slovene Carinthian dialect, Austrian propaganda promised that the Slovene language and national identity would be treated as equal to the German in Austria, officially confirmed by the Carinthia Landtag assembly two weeks before the plebisicite was held. It nevertheless also had an anti-Yugoslav tendency, picturing the conditions in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as chaotic. Yugoslav propaganda almost exclusively used arguments emphasizing Slovene national awareness. It took an aggressive anti-German view from the beginning and turned to economic issues only in the last few weeks before the plebiscite. The campaigners were not capable of using the political instability of the young Austrian republic and its then unenviable position in the international community for advantage.

Despite the six-months term determined by the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the referendum was not held in Zone A until October 10, 1920. In addition to changing the date of the plebiscite, other terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain allegedly were ignored or changed: an Austrian representative was accepted into the commission, and the plebiscite commission changed rules by not allowing the Yugoslav military to control the border between Zones A and B on 8 June 1920. Instead the Yugoslav army had to withdraw from Zone A in accord with the decision of the plebiscite commission on 18 September 1920. Changes may also have been made in electoral registers which allowed people from northern Zone B voting in Zone A, backing the Austrian side. In the following decades both sides would continue to interprete and instrumentalize the plebiscite's circumstances in their own way.