Between Belgrade Centralism and Balkan Geopolitics: Slovene Political Strategies Under King Alexander’s Dictatorship, 1929–1934

This article examines Slovene political responses to King Alexander Karađorđević’s royal dictatorship between 1929 and 1934 as a case study in the limits of authoritarian state-building in interwar Yugoslavia. It argues that the dictatorship failed because it treated the national question as a problem of party politics rather than as a structural crisis of state legitimacy. The article compares three Slovene political strategies: Catholic Populist autonomism, liberal Yugoslav unitarism, and communist federal self-determination. While these currents differed sharply in ideology and political tactics, all confronted the same dilemma: Yugoslavia was perceived both as a centralist state dominated by Belgrade and as the only viable geopolitical framework protecting Slovenes from Italian, Austrian, and Hungarian revisionism. The Slovene case thus reveals that the crisis of royal Yugoslavism extended beyond Croatian opposition and exposed the broader fragility of centralized nation-building in the Balkans.