Pravaši

Pravaši 

during the second half of the 19th and in the early 20th century, members of various, principally petit bourgeois, political trends and factions in the Croatian lands of Austria-Hungary.

The Pravaši advanced the principle of the “natural right” of nations and that of the “historic state right” of the Croats to national unification and independence, utilizing the latter principle as an argument in the political conflict. A reactionary aspect of the views of A. Starcevic and E. Kvaternik—the Pravaši leaders during the 1860’s—was the Great Croatian theory, which denied the peculiar national rights of the Serbs and Slovenes. Early in the 20th century there were a pro-Hapsburg faction among the Pravaši (J. Frank and the Trialists), and a pro-Yugoslav faction that advocated a Croatian-Serbian coalition.