SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE TIMISOARA SERBS TO JOIN THE KINGDOM OF SERBS, CROATS AND SLOVENES

Text topic: The Centennial оf The Unification оf Vojvodina With Serbia

Text author: Јована Касаш

At the end of the First World War, as an act of self-determination, national councils were set up on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the parts inhabited by Serbs. It cannot be said in all certainty that the Serbs from Timisoara were nationally conscious, although they did express their wish to join their compatriots. Due to the longstanding Hungarization and Germanization, they mostly communicated in Hungarian, they did not carry Serbian emblems, and there were not any newspapers written in Serbian in Timisoara. The Serbs present in the Council, influential citizens of Timisoara and national activists took pains to change such state of affairs. In response to the call from the People’s Board in Novi Sad, Timisoara also sent their representatives to the Great Peoples’ Assembly in Novi Sad. The session of the Great Peoples’ Assembly held on November 25, 1918 was to represent an exceptional historical act by which the regions of Banat, Bačka and Baranja were to unite with the future State of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. Timisoara, as part of the Banat region, was also to join the new state as the territory conquered by the Serbian army, where the Serbian population expressed the wish for it. However, the Peace Conference in Paris was to give this city, along with the Serbs who lived in it, over to the Kingdom of Romania.