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the truth about tudjman and his Croatia

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claude Lowy

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Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

Friday, December 17th 1999

Croatia's Failed Historian

Dragutin Hedl reflects on the legacy of Croatia's leader -
Tudjman the Tito fan, the fanatical nationalist,
the lover of luxury and hoarder of riches, his country's
self-proclaimed hero - and its wrecker.

By Dragutin Hedl in Zagreb (BCR 102, 15-Dec-99)

Three weeks before he went into hospital in Zagreb,
President Franjo Tudjman confidently told foreign
journalists: "Physically and psychologically I am
completely healthy."

It's not thought that he was attempting to deceive his
audience - even though he had less than two months
to live at the time. Like all dictators, the Croatian
president was convinced of his own immortality. But it
seems that none of Tudjman's doctors had the courage to
tell him that his cancer had returned and he
had to undergo surgery.

Formerly one of Tito's World War II partisans and then a
communist army general he was also, by the
time he led Croatia to independence in 1990, a fierce
nationalist. But when in power, he revived bitter
memories of the nationalist neo-fascist Ustase regime that
ran Croatia as a Nazi German puppet state
during World War II.

History favoured him. The nationalist hysteria released by
his Serbian opposite number, then Serbian
president Slobodan Milosevic, rocked and shook the Yugoslav
federation just as communism was
foundering everywhere in east and central Europe. Later,
Tudjman was happy to rewrite history, giving his
Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party the credit for
destroying communism in Croatia.

Even though he was considered a dissident under communism -
he spent a short time in prison because
of his support for nationalism - he was scarcely a rebel
against the one-party system in the former
Yugoslavia.

He had a passport and he travelled around the world,
seeking allies for his plans to create an
independent Croatian state and establishing links with the
Croatian political and economic diaspora.

When he came to power, he began to pay back his debt to the
Croatian émigrés who helped him
financially in his first election campaign. He found a
cheap way of doing this by encouraging the
emergence of the neo-Ustasism they favoured.

He became quickly notorious for finding good words for the
World War II Ustase regime, rejecting the
view that it was a puppet state, collaborating with German
occupiers and chose instead to read it as part
of Croatia's 'historical aspirations' for statehood.

The Ustase insignia - a capital letter U - returned to
public view and the Zagreb's famous Square of the
Victims of Fascism was renamed to suit the new regime's
view. Around the country streets were
renamed after Ustase minister Mile Budak. Soldiers and
policemen hung pictures of Ustase state
president Ante Pavelic in their barracks again.

Thanks to Tudjman, Croatia got its state (it was recognised
by the international community on January 15
1991). Yet, had there been no Tudjman, historical
circumstances suggest that someone else would have
done it. Indeed some think that Croatia could have got its
own state even without war, had a wiser state
policy been conducted. This argument could scarcely be
aired during Tudjman's rule.

In the bloody Yugoslav drama, Croatia was an indisputable
victim of Serbian aggression, but with the end
of the fighting, Tudjman sensed the time was ripe to
realise of his old dream to create a 'Greater Croatia'.
To do this - to recreate the old Banovina of Croatia -
implied the annexation of a large part of what was
by then the independent state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The war that followed was bloody and marked by some of the
worst war crimes reported in the former
Yugoslavia. There was much speculation that the
International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague would have
eventually indicted him alongside Milosevic had Tudjman's
death not ended that prospect.

Tudjman discussed the division of Bosnia with Milosevic on
several occasions (they met on 47
occasions). He created the Croatian Republic of
Herzeg-Bosnia, and despite his endless public pledges
to support his neighbour's sovereignty, he continued to
advocate it even after the Dayton peace
agreement.

Notoriously, he said that he was happy that his wife was
"neither a Serb nor a Jew". And some
anti-Semitic remarks in his book Horrors of War: Historical
Reality and Philosophy, drew international
criticism, particularly from Israel, which did not ease
until prosecution this year of the former commander
of the World War II concentration camp at Jasenovac.

He liked abundance, pomp and luxury. In this sense he
subconsciously emulated his idol, Josip Broz Tito.
The fact that he was the head of a small, poor country that
had been exhausted by war was not an
obstacle for him. He bought a new aeroplane and surrounded
himself with expensive cars and
unprecedented luxury.

Like Tito, he loved military uniforms and had tailors make
him a completely white one, modelled on the
one in which Tito appeared most often. He did not take
Tito's old rank of Marshall, but settled for
Commander of the Croatian army instead, even though there
was no such a rank.

He did however, take on Tito's former summerhouse on the
Brioni Islands and his former Zagreb villa.
(When it was no longer legally possible to keep it on
indefinitely, Tudjman bought the villa from the state,
but not before he had enlarged it and redecorated it at
state expense.)

Like Tito, he liked honours as well. In one day, he awarded
himself nine decorations. And he was prone
to exaggerate: he claimed that Croatia was one of the
oldest nations in Europe, and believed that he
would have got a Nobel prize for his history books - if he
weren't a Croat.

But, unlike Tito, who did not worry about material wealth,
during his ten years in power Tudjman looked
after his family, making it - according to his closest
associates - one of the richest in Europe.

His older son Miroslav is a Croatian intelligence service
chief and his younger son Stjepan and daughter
Nevenka have grown rich from business deals eased by their
government contacts. His wife Ankica
founded a humanitarian foundation whose financial
management has been much criticised. Two
grandsons by Nevenka, who met and married a Serb while her
father was serving in Belgrade, have
found fame for their activities with private banks and
expensive sports cars.

Tudjman created a Croatian state in the image of a space to
be ruled by 200 families, making free with
state property and funds. The country's economy soon
floundered. The late president leaves behind him
an army of unemployed, a million pensioners trapped by
near-worthless pensions and a foreign debt of
nine billion dollars.

He cared little for human rights or democracy, though he
readily invoked the latter. He said that Croatia
was a victim of a foreign conspiracy, that the political
opposition were mere "geese in the fog," and that
up to 15 per cent of the population were plotting against
his state.

The result was the creation of the kind of
pseudo-sovereignty based on international isolation that
Albania's Stalinist ruler Enver Hoxha would have
recognised.

Having little feel for the time in which he lived, Tudjman
turned to myths and history for his ideas.
Whatever was national was elevated, sovereignty was the
highest value of a state.

Yet even though he always liked to talk about himself as a
historian, it seems that he learnt nothing from
history. If he had genuinely been one, he would have lived
in fear of its judgement.

He may be seen as the founder of the Croatian state, but
there is hardly anything positive to add. When
the deconstruction of his cult begins, hardly anything will
remain of his grand image.

Dragutin Hedl is a regular correspondent for IWPR in
Zagreb.

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En français

Barry Marjanovich

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Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

Croatia Brings Genocide Case Against Yugoslavia

Jul 03, 1999 Eastern

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Croatia has filed genocide charges against Yugoslavia
for the 1991-1995 conflict between the two countries, the International
Court of Justice said late Friday.

In its application to the U.N. court, Croatia accused Yugoslavia of
``ethnic cleansing'' of Croatian citizens in the Knin region, eastern and
western Slavonia and Dalmatia, the court said.

Croatia wants financial compensation -- the amount to be determined by the
court -- for the damage suffered during the four-year conflict after it
declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991.

The move triggered a rebellion by its Serb minority backed by the Yugoslav
army controlled by Slobodan Milosevic, who was then president of Serbia.

According to Croatia, Yugoslavia engaged in a second round of ethnic
cleansing when it urged Croatians of Serb origin in the Knin region to
evacuate the area.

Croatia alleged that the aggression by Yugoslavia caused 20,000 deaths and
55,000 wounded. It said more than 3,000 people were still missing.

An estimated 10 percent of Croatia's housing capacity was alleged to have
been destroyed, with 590 towns and villages suffering damage, including 35
that were razed to the ground.

It said 1,821 cultural monuments, 323 historical sites and 450 Croatian
Catholic churches were destroyed or damaged.

It said three million explosive devices were planted in Croatia, making
750,000 acres of land unusable, and 25 percent of its economic capacity was
damaged or destroyed.

Barry Marjanovich

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Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

The Boston Globe

Croatian museum stripped of its art treasures

By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 07/30/99

VUKOVAR, Croatia - The cool, dark entry hall of the Gradski Musej, the city
museum, opens onto sunny, spanking white galleries. But plenty is wrong
with this picture.

The trees outside the windows are charred and dying. Some doors out of the
galleries open onto rooms in ruin.

Most importantly, there are no pictures, at least none of the historic oil
paintings with Croatian religious and cultural themes that were the heart
of the museum's collection before the 1991 war of Croatian independence.

''The museum was shelled and caught fire,'' says Ruza Maric, its director.
''Some roofs fell in, and one part of the collection was destroyed. Just
before the war, we packed the most valuable pieces and stored them in the
cellars of the Franciscan monastery, but after the fall of the city these
were found and transported to Novi Sad,'' across the Danube from Vukovar in
the Serbian province of Vojvodina.

The near-destruction of Vukovar made its residents' last stand one of the
enduring horror stories of the war. Now, a year and a half after the city's
return to Croatian sovereignty, repair workers have replaced most of the
radiators, the steam lines, the electric cables that the Serbs stripped
from the museum walls. But the continuing absence of the collection makes
this a truly hollow restoration. On its walls hang only contemporary works
donated by artists across Europe who heard of the museum's plight.

''We learned from Belgrade TV that our collection was taken to Novi Sad,
and the minister of culture of Croatia wrote the minister of culture of
Serbia to ask for its return,'' Maric says. ''He responded that our letter
was a joke.''

Through UNICEF and UNESCO, the Croatians were able to compile lists of
Vukovar pieces found in Novi Sad and other Serbian cities, but nothing has
been returned.

Vukovar residents also discovered plans, created by the Serbs during their
four-year rule, to knock down the city's few surviving baroque buildings
and replace them with buildings in the Byzantine style.

''I thought when the first shell hit that it was the height of human
perversion to damage such beauty,'' Maric says. ''But it was only the
beginning.''

-----------------------------
http://www.vukovar.com
-----------------------------

Zvonimir Siljkovic

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Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

Hey Barry thanks for your hard work but six month old news posts?

Barry Marjanovich

unread,

Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

CROATIA WEEKLY
http://www.croatia.hr/CW

DIRECT WAR DAMAGES IN CROATIA US$ 37.1 BILLION

According to a study on war damages, the economies of certain cities have
practically disappeared

"The Republic of Croatia incurred so-called direct war damages in the
amount of HRK 236.4 billion, or DM 65.3 billion, or US$ 37.1 billion. At
the same time, indirect war damages are practically three to four times
higher than direct damages. We'll feel the damages significantly in the
near future," pointed out Ivan Novacic, the chairman of the State
Commission for the Recording and Assessment of War Damages, who is also an
assistant finance minister.

The comprehensive report on war damages in the Republic of Croatia has been
completed after almost eight years of thorough work. In his interview to
the Croatian media, Novačić presented the final figures of total war
damages in Croatia publicly for the first time, which are far higher that
the earlier assessments of US$ 27 billion.

"War damages, from the state to the individual level, have diminished the
developmental characteristics of the entire country very seriously and
significantly. Because of the war, the Republic of Croatia has lost one
medium-term development cycle, with the loss of about US$ 15 billion of GDP
in the period from 1991 to 1995. That is why our GDP today is not about US$
8,000 to 9,000 per capita, but half of that figure. Before the war, GDP was
about US$ 6,600 per capita, according to the World Bank. Wartime
consequences have halted the development of the Republic of Croatia in many
aspects, in comparison to a majority of other transition economies,"
explained Novacic.

According to him, the economies of particular cities have practically
disappeared, or have been noticeably reduced (Osijek, Vukovar, Vinkovci,
Sisak, Zadar, and others). This practically means that the war has
restructured the economy. A significant part of export capacity,
particularly of the processing industry, has been lost, and the
consequences can be felt even today.

One of the particularities of war damages in Croatia are immense human
losses. Croatia had 4,784,265 inhabitants in 1991 and the potential
indirect and direct loss in the following years accounted for approximately
270,000 inhabitants, with a direct physical loss of about 20,000 people,
and the loss of natural growth of about 10,000 persons. Direct and indirect
damages caused by migrations account for about 240,000 inhabitants.

Barry Marjanovich

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Dec 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/17/99

Zvonimir Siljkovic <hus...@email.msn.com> wrote in article
<eOZLGfKS$GA.266@cpmsnbbsa03>...

> Hey Barry thanks for your hard work but six month old news posts?

Something is worth reading over and over again!

The Zajednicar, December 17, 1997

BUFFALO, NY -Lauren Elizabeth Yacos is the lovely 11-year-old daughter of
Michael and Kathleen Yacos and this writer's only granddaughter (we have
six grandsons).

Lauren called me one day and told me she had chosen to write about Croatia
as her subject for her teacher's assignment on countries of the world.
After many trips to the library to gather information, she approached me
and asked "what do you have that I can show the class that came from
Croatia?" Well, out came the handmade embroidered dresses, the tablecloths,
wooden bowls, crystal, etc. We borrowed travel posters from our friend Rudy
Kristich, grandma baked Croatian cookies, tambura music playing in the
background and Lauren and her friend Megan told their story about Mila and
Anka growing up in Croatia. Her program was well received by her teacher
and classmates.

Lauren has always been a good student, but we feel her presentation on
Croatia helped her win the "President's Education Award in recognition of
outstanding academic achievement." The award has the Presidential seal with
President Bill Clinton's signature and the signature of the Secretary of
Education Dick Riley.

My award came in a thank you note from my granddaughter - especially the
last sentence, "Grandma, I'm so glad I'm Croatian." So am I Lauren, so am
I!

Elizabeth Yacos
Lodge 557
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Darko Peric

unread,

Dec 18, 1999, 3:00:00 AM12/18/99

claude Lowy wrote in message <385A5C59...@globalserve.net>...

>Friday, December 17th 1999

> Croatia's Failed Historian

Darko: Failure? Based on what criteria?

>
> Dragutin Hedl reflects on the legacy of Croatia's leader -
>Tudjman the Tito fan,

Darko: To an extent.

the fanatical nationalist,

Darko: Any patriotism emitted by a Croat is deemed "fanatical
nationalism".

> the lover of luxury and hoarder of riches,

Darko: Hoarder of riches? Examples please. He was no Marcos, not
even close.

his country's
>self-proclaimed hero

Darko: And by many others...

- and its wrecker.

Darko: Wrecker of Hedl's and Skoric's Yugoslavia!

>
> By Dragutin Hedl in Zagreb (BCR 102, 15-Dec-99)
>
> Three weeks before he went into hospital in Zagreb,
>President Franjo Tudjman confidently told foreign
> journalists: "Physically and psychologically I am
>completely healthy."

Darko: What was he supposed to say?

>
> It's not thought that he was attempting to deceive his
>audience - even though he had less than two months
> to live at the time. Like all dictators,

Darko: Dictator? Your Tito was a dictator. Tudjman had an
authoritarian streak, yes, but dictator, no.

the Croatian
>president was convinced of his own immortality. But it
> seems that none of Tudjman's doctors had the courage to
>tell him that his cancer had returned and he
> had to undergo surgery.
>
> Formerly one of Tito's World War II partisans and then a
>communist army general he was also, by the
> time he led Croatia to independence in 1990, a fierce
>nationalist.

Darko: Can a Croatian ever be a nationalist without the adjectives
"fierce" or "fanatical" appear before it?

But when in power, he revived bitter
> memories of the nationalist neo-fascist Ustase regime

Darko: How could it be "Neo" Fascist? It was in the era of
fascism.

that
>ran Croatia as a Nazi German puppet state
> during World War II.
>
> History favoured him. The nationalist hysteria released by
>his Serbian opposite number, then Serbian
> president Slobodan Milosevic, rocked and shook the
Yugoslav
>federation just as communism was
> foundering everywhere in east and central Europe. Later,
>Tudjman was happy to rewrite history,

Darko: Correct history after it was falsified by the Ministry in
Belgrade.

giving his
> Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party the credit for
>destroying communism in Croatia.

Darko: And HDZ deserves no credit?

>
> Even though he was considered a dissident under
communism -
>he spent a short time in prison because
> of his support for nationalism - he was scarcely a rebel
>against the one-party system in the former
> Yugoslavia.

Darko: I guess he headed the party cell in prison. What an idiotic
statement.

>
> He had a passport and he travelled around the world,
>seeking allies for his plans to create an
> independent Croatian state and establishing links with the
>Croatian political and economic diaspora.
>
> When he came to power, he began to pay back his debt to
the
>Croatian émigrés who helped him
> financially in his first election campaign. He found a
>cheap way of doing this by encouraging the
> emergence of the neo-Ustasism they favoured.

Darko; The Ustashe are dead and buried. Stop this fearmongering.
All we in the diaspora wanted was an independent, democratic Croatia
allied to the West, not NDH 2.

>
> He became quickly notorious for finding good words for the
>World War II Ustase regime, rejecting the
> view that it was a puppet state, collaborating with German
>occupiers and chose instead to read it as part
> of Croatia's 'historical aspirations' for statehood.

Darko: It did fulfill historic aspirations, but not for long.
Hence the civil war that ensued.

>
> The Ustase insignia - a capital letter U - returned to
>public view

Darko: So what? Hedl makes it sound as if it were state policy.

and the Zagreb's famous Square of the
> Victims of Fascism was renamed to suit the new regime's
>view.

Darko: And the majority of the citizenry as well.

Around the country streets were
> renamed after Ustase minister Mile Budak.

Darko: One street.

Soldiers and
>policemen hung pictures of Ustase state
> president Ante Pavelic in their barracks again.

Darko: They should be sent to Goli Otok, right Hedl? Hang pictures
of whomever you want, that's call democracy. Once again the bogeyman
"Pavelic" is right around the corner I guess.

>
> Thanks to Tudjman, Croatia got its state (it was
recognised
>by the international community on January 15
> 1991). Yet, had there been no Tudjman, historical
>circumstances suggest that someone else would have
> done it. Indeed some think that Croatia could have got its
>own state even without war,

Darko: Yeah, from Varazdin to Jastrebarsko. You underestimate the
Chetniks.

had a wiser state
> policy been conducted.

Darko: Like autonomy from the line Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag?

This argument could scarcely be
>aired during Tudjman's rule.

Darko: Aired were several arguments, including that of HSP.

>
> In the bloody Yugoslav drama, Croatia was an indisputable
>victim of Serbian aggression, but with the end
> of the fighting, Tudjman sensed the time was ripe to
>realise of his old dream to create a 'Greater Croatia'.
> To do this - to recreate the old Banovina of Croatia -
>implied the annexation of a large part of what was
> by then the independent state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
>
> The war that followed was bloody and marked by some of the
>worst war crimes reported in the former
> Yugoslavia. There was much speculation that the
>International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague would have
> eventually indicted him alongside Milosevic had Tudjman's
>death not ended that prospect.
>
> Tudjman discussed the division of Bosnia with Milosevic on
>several occasions (they met on 47
> occasions). He created the Croatian Republic of
>Herzeg-Bosnia, and despite his endless public pledges
> to support his neighbour's sovereignty, he continued to
>advocate it even after the Dayton peace
> agreement.

Darko: Without "Tudjman's Croatia" Bosnia would have collapsed in
spring 1992.

"We recognize BiH as an entire and sovereign state. At
the same time, we will be firm in protecting Croatian
interests in BiH."
Ivica Racan (SDP) December 16, 1999
dpe...@sprint.ca

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