Dr. sc. Joško Badžim / Geopolitika
Translated by Dr. Dorothy McClellan
Cultural and political attacks on Croatia as an expression
of the SANU strategy
How SANU, in symbiosis with Croatian leftists, wants to rewrite modern Croatian history and destabilize the state
In the last few months, we have witnessed the holding of various cultural events in Croatia, which a significant part of the Croatian public considers to be expressions of Greater Serbian and Yugoslav political attitudes and policies.
On the other hand, these events are largely financed from the budget of the Republic of Croatia or regional and local self-government bodies. Some organizations and groups of Croatian war veterans and sports club fans reacted to such an unusual situation with protests, with the support of a part of the patriotically oriented public.
In some cases, the protests were qualified as criminal acts by the State Attorney’s Office and the police, and some perpetrators were even sentenced to one month in detention. The events sparked vehement political debates, especially between the ruling HDZ and left-wing and Serbian parties.
HDZ finances them and they attack it
Despite the fact that the ruling HDZ finances the aforementioned events, left-wing and Serbian parties accuse it of contributing decisively to the alleged growth of right-wing extremism in society. In this regard, the HDZ is particularly criticized for tolerating so-called historical revisionism, which is actually attempts at a scientific revision of Greater Serbian and Yugoslav historical constructions of events from World War II, as well as for tolerating the public use of symbols with a double connotation, i.e. those that are characteristic of or associated with the NDH but were subsequently validated for legitimate use in the context of the Homeland War.
On the other hand, the Government and HDZ representatives assess the aforementioned critical appearances by left-wing and Serbian parties as hysterical, unfounded and excessive attempts to gain political advantage, which also contribute to the strengthening of right-wing radicalism.
As for actors from the right-wing and conservative political scene, the impression is that, with some exceptions and sporadic appearances, they have generally shown considerable reserve in relation to the aforementioned situation.
In addition to the aforementioned external manifestations and narratives, it seems important for the overall clarification of the situation to try to understand its background, i.e. the causes, conditions and ultimate goals of the key actors, i.e. the leading Serbian political representatives in Croatia, the ruling HDZ, the left-liberal and right-conservative parties.
The Serbian side promotes the SANU strategy
The Serbian side, despite its realistically privileged position in Croatia (e.g. guaranteed quotas of representatives in the Parliament, in state, regional and local government bodies, abundant financing of cultural and other projects) and the generally decent attitude of the Croatian public towards Serbs (e.g. attitude towards Serbian tourists, seasonal workers, Serbs in Croatia, etc.), persistently acts from a position of alleged vulnerability, referring to alleged phenomena of right-wing extremism, and promoting political positions that are clearly on the Yugoslav and Greater Serbian line.
From this it is clear that the intention of the Serbian leadership in Croatia is not to secure the legitimate interests of the Serbian community as the largest national minority in Croatia, but rather to implement a strategy aimed at restoring political influence in Croatia, which was lost with the establishment of an independent Croatian state and as a result of the war that the Serbs launched with the aim of keeping Croatia within Yugoslavia or possibly amputating parts of Croatian territory and annexing it to Serbia.
According to publicly available data and indicators, it appears that this is a strategy devised by the Serbian umbrella scientific and cultural institution SANU, the essence of which is the return of Serbian influence in peacetime conditions and with reliance on Western powers in the new geopolitical conditions created by the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and the expansion of the EU and NATO significantly east of Serbia, all the way to the shores of the Black Sea and beyond.
Instead of wars of conquest and Greater Serbia,
they want to turn them into inter-ethnic and civil wars
In the return of Serbian legitimacy lost or severely damaged by the wars they initiated and led with the aim of preserving Yugoslavia under Serbian hegemony or expanding Serbia to the territories of other former Yugoslav republics, an important role is dedicated to changing the dominant paradigm of the aforementioned wars. Instead of qualifying the wars as wars of conquest and Greater Serbia, a new qualification of the wars as interethnic and civil conflicts that arose due to “wrong” policies, and were mostly waged by narrow nationalist and secessionist interests with elements of Nazism, fascism, religious fundamentalism, and the like, should have been fought for.
By regaining the legitimacy lost due to the wars of conquest and crimes, it was calculated in the aforementioned circles that Serbia would be able to re-impose its policies and interests of expanding its influence and gathering the Serbian community in post-Yugoslav countries, i.e. in the area of the “Serbian world”.
In terms of the aforementioned change in the paradigm of war, one can, for example, understand the fact that a special intensity of Serbian cultural and political events was planned precisely in the month of November, when the focus of the Croatian public was directed towards the memories of Vukovar, Škabrnja and other places throughout Croatia that were exposed to the most severe attacks of Greater Serbia and criminal aggression in those days of 1991 and the greatest suffering of defenders and civilians.
An attack on the paradigm of Vukovar is an attack on the Homeland War
The defense and fall of Vukovar on November 18, 1991 is actually the dominant paradigm of the Homeland War, which additionally strengthens or sharpens the attitude and perception of Croatians about the character of the Homeland War, about the aggressor and his political intentions, about the mass crimes committed, about the sacrifices made by defenders and civilians, etc. The aforementioned paradigm is probably the deepest and most clearly engraved in the collective consciousness of the Croatian nation and from that basis it constantly regenerates the attitude of the Croatian nation about itself, about its opponents and dangers, about the great price and value of state independence, etc.
In addition, the image of the attack on Vukovar fully reveals the character of the war as a military aggression by Serbia undertaken with the main military forces stationed and mobilized in Serbia, with the engagement of the Serbian police and intelligence apparatus, logistics, with general media support, mass abuse of Croatian prisoners and civilians in camps on the territory of Serbia with mass crimes and expressions of hatred committed, with the widespread use of criminal paramilitary formations under the control of the Serbian secret services, with the organization of war crimes by the secret services and the military leadership, and most likely also political and academic, such as SANU, which was the main strategic initiator and leader of this criminal and conquering war, i.e. the Greater Serbian political project.
Hence, numerous attempts were organized on the Greater Serbian side to destabilize the aforementioned paradigm. In this sense, we can recall, for example, to the traditional performances of throwing wreaths in memory of the murdered Serbs from Vukovar, which suggests that the intervention of the Serbian and then nominally Yugoslav army was not an act of criminal and conquering aggression but as a defense of the Serbian population in Vukovar.
Furthermore, the media scene will remember the attempt of a pro-Serbian and pro-Yugoslav oriented journalist from Croatia, who in 2021 using swear words, attacked the commemoration of the anniversaries of the fall of Vukovar, believing that they hinder the normalization of life, but the truth is that these anniversaries are not an obstacle to the normalization of life, but to the renewal of Yugoslav ideas and narratives, because they strengthen awareness of the importance and value of Croatian statehood and the dangers that threaten Croatia and all its loyal citizens from Greater Serbian and Yugoslav ideas.
Arrest in BiH and scandalous conversations of Serbian prosecutors
with Drs. Juraj Njavro and Vesna Bosanac
The organized attempt to undermine and replace the Vukovar war paradigm was seen in a particularly interesting way back in 2011. the arrest in BiH, on the basis of an international warrant, of the Vukovar defender Tihomir Purda and the attempt to prosecute him in Serbia for alleged crimes committed by the Croats in Vukovar, and on the basis of “evidence” obtained from the interrogation under torture of Purda and other Croatian detainees in Serbian camps.
At approximately the same time, the scandalous conversations of Serbian investigators with the legendary and heroic doctors of the Vukovar war hospital, Drs. Vesna Bosanac and Juraj Njavro, and for the purpose of collecting statements about alleged war crimes against Serbs in the Vukovar war hospital. To this can be added the initiation of criminal proceedings against the leaders of the defense of some Croatian cities such as Sisak and Osijek, as well as the Hague trials for Oluja with the first-instance verdict for the so-called joint criminal enterprise condemned the entire Croatian political and military leadership.
Wartime Dubrovnik
In addition to Vukovar, as a special obstacle to attempts to change the paradigm of the war and the return of Serbian legitimacy and influence, the paradigm of the war in Dubrovnik in 1991 also played an important role, and given that there were no usual Serbian excuses for war in Dubrovnik, such as the “threatened” Serbian minority that had to be militarily protected from the “vampiric Ustastva” there was no conflict between the Serbian and Croat ethnic communities and no JNA barracks that could be legitimately unblocked, and as otherwise the Serbian side justified attacks on many other Croatian cities.
The attack on Dubrovnik and Konavle was, therefore, a clear expression of the criminal military aggression of Serbia in union with the then pro-Serbian Montenegro, undertaken with the aim of conquering the territory of Croatia. In addition, it was also about the unheard-of wartime savagery or the absence of minimal civilizational reserve or consideration for the world-famous and recognized cultural heritage of Dubrovnik. With this, the Greater Serbian aggression was largely and definitively exposed as aggressive and criminal on a wider international level.
In order to change or at least somehow overcome the paradigm of the war in Dubrovnik, cultural and political projects were organized in Belgrade in 2011, namely spectacular concerts by the great Croatian singer and Dubrovnik native Tereza Kesovija, and then the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra responded with its concert in Dubrovnik.
Attempts to attack the paradigm of the Homeland War were also organized by pro-Yugoslav leftists from Croatia, for example at a recent cultural event in Benkovac, by foregrounding the idea of deconstructing the Homeland War, or rather its reinterpretation according to the Serbian-Yugoslav pattern, and removing it from the Croatian collective consciousness, as an alleged obstacle to coexistence with the Serbs there.
Then, at the event in Šibenik, the Republic of Croatia was implicitly characterized in some program content as the fruit of nationalism and an obstacle to normal civic life, with a tendency towards Yugoslavism and typically Yugoslav-communist interpretations of World War II, and the abuse of the fact that a large number of Croats participated in the partisans and that the partisan option ended up on the victorious and anti-fascist side together with the key and leading Western powers, as opposed to the NDH, to which Croatian nationalism or patriotism is implicitly linked.
In the name of the “Serbian world”
The Serbian memorandum policy is completely clear. It consists of an effort to restore the Serbian position in Croatia, lost with the breakup of Yugoslavia, i.e. the establishment of the Republic of Croatia and the outcome of the war, through cultural and political projects (cultural centers in Croatia, events, etc.), support from the media, entertainment, economic penetration and political strengthening leaning towards the left and Western centers of power, and to transform the Serbs from the position of a national minority to the status of a constituent people, including with territorial autonomies in certain areas with special ties to Serbia and the “Serbian world” i.e. Serbified Montenegro and Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
To this end, in addition, together with Croatian leftists, the protagonists of Serbian memorandum policies problematize or hysterize the emergence of stronger expressions of Croatian patriotism, recognizing them as a barrier to their own efforts and trying to contribute to their suppression and relegation to the margins. In this way, despite reasonable scientific counterarguments, an exaggerated image of, for example, the Jasenovac concentration camp is persistently maintained, and hypersensitive reactions to alleged Ustasha phenomena are constantly reproduced, which Prime Minister Andrej Plenković correctly qualified as a kind of anti-Ustasha hysteria.
HDZ has a problem explaining to its voters what everyone is wondering
In addition to leftists, Serbian political nomenclatures in Croatia also cooperate with HDZ and its governments, which takes place under the auspices of Western powers and is conditioned by their geopolitical interests, and the Serbian side uses this abundantly to advance its goals, while HDZ has a particular problem explaining its moves, or rather its favoring of Greater Serbia policies, to its own voters.
In this sense, HDZ, with its negative attitude towards research, for example, into the character and number of victims of Jasenovac, contributes to maintaining the current distorted and exaggerated picture of that crime, which plays into the hands of leftist and Greater Serbia policies, and harms the aforementioned external and internal Croatian interests.
As an important part of the Great Serbian memorandum package, we can highlight the already mentioned ongoing attempts at the cultural and political rehabilitation of South Communism, i.e. Titoism (e.g. the restoration of the ship Galeb, etc.) and the South Communist interpretation of the Partisan War under the umbrella of anti-fascism, alliance with the Western powers and the significant role of the Serbs.
All of this together provides their political and overall efforts with legitimacy and a favorable political and social atmosphere for further advancement, i.e. the expansion of Serbian influence and for the return of positions lost due to Croatian national independence and the outcome of the war, which is ultimately to be realized by the return of constitutional status, the establishment of territorial autonomies with special ties to Serbia and the “Serbian world” i.e. Serbized Montenegro and Republika Srpska in BiH.
They do not rule out a new war
In addition to all of the above, the leading political forces in Serbia do not rule out the possibility that the redefinition of the position of Serbs in the Republic of Croatia and the overall redefinition of Croatian-Serbian relations could occur in new war upheavals, for which purpose Serbia is intensively preparing its own armed forces, and additionally supports in Croatia the restoration of the Serbian position and potential territorial strongholds of a new Serbian rebellion and resistance to the Croatian authorities.
The hysterical or extremely unbalanced, disproportionate and irritable public appearances of the left in Croatia and attacks on the HDZ, due to the alleged guilt for allegedly releasing the neo-Ustasha spirit, tolerating symbols with double connotations and so-called historical revisionism, can be understood in several ways.
Primarily, the thesis that this is an expression of political struggle and at the same time reaching for arguments with which to try to compromise the HDZ as the main political rival. However, some other facts should be added to this, such as the fact that a significant part of the left in Croatia emerged from the Yugoslav communist structure, which, after the suppression of the Croatian Spring in 1971 and the persecution of its protagonists, was shaped in an anti-Croatian manner, and after 1990, accepted Croatian state independence as a necessity, but not as an expression of conviction or sincere support.
The inherited Yugoslav communist mentality or system of political values, by its nature, is opposed to everything that affirms or advances Croatian statehood and interests, and includes a hysterical reaction to expressions of patriotism, easily linking them to the NDH.
Furthermore, the Croatian nation, in its historical continuity and in its innermost core, is actually permeated with primarily Catholic cultural patterns and values. Croatian patriotism implies precisely such values, at least on a symbolic level.
This fact, however, has a decisive influence on the fact that the left in Croatia poorly identifies with the Croatian nation structured in this way and reacts negatively towards it, either by attempting to impose its own image of Croatian identity or by resorting to alternative identities in the wake of cosmopolitanism, globalism, and the like, but their greatest “weakness” is definitely Yugoslavism.
Marxism and woke liberalism
The aversion of extreme leftists towards the traditionalist pro-Catholic conception or image of the Croatian nation in the 20th century was additionally nourished by the influence of materialist and anti-religious Marxism, and currently – by the influence of neo-Marxist woke liberalism, which is attacking traditional values and their religious, especially Christian-Catholic, basis even more radically. It seems that the left’s former commitment to social solidarity or the protection of broad working and peasant classes has been completely abandoned, and the contemporary leftist ideology has been placed in the service of supporting multinational big capital with all its attendant agendas.
Unlike Croatia, where leftists are averse to Croatian patriotism, in Serbia, for example, many leftists are also the most prominent Serbian nationalists or patriots. In addition, it has been noted that the most prominent leftists in Croatia have maintained particularly close and meaningful relations with the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia, the current Patriarch Porfiri, even despite his open pro-Chetnik inclinations, while they view the Catholic Church and its authorities in Croatia from a great distance and with undisguised suspicion.
Of course, leftists in Croatia, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian nationalists as a whole, are connected by Yugoslavism as a common platform, and in addition, the Serbian Orthodox Church does not emphasize moral Christian principles in its speech to the extent that they would represent an obstacle for leftists to come together around the basic and common Yugoslav idea.
Instead of the culprits, they attacked the protesters
The aforementioned and controversial Serbian and leftist cultural programs are viewed by the HDZ government exclusively through the prism of the jurisdiction of state departments responsible for culture and minority policies, while ignoring the national security dimension of the same projects and, accordingly, the jurisdiction of other appropriate institutions, i.e. the national security system, due to the obvious rooting of the aforementioned cultural programs in the Greater Serbian memorandum concept aimed at the return of Serbian positions in Croatia lost with Croatian independence and the outcome of the Homeland War, which ultimately leads to destabilization and undermining of Croatian national security.
Thus, instead of institutionally preventing the essentially Greater Serbian projects, the authorities have simply attacked the protesters, mainly independent associations of Croatian war veterans and fan groups, with the degree of repression applied, namely the qualification of the protests as criminal acts with the additional imposition of one-month detention on the protagonists, appearing to be quite questionable.
Politically, it is clear that the HDZ is not satisfied with the hysterical reactions in which leftists and Serb representatives refer to expressions of Croatian patriotism with the use of symbols with double connotations and the like, because this brings into focus the fact that the HDZ finances Greater Serbian cultural and political manifestations, which has put the party in an awkward situation in front of its own membership and voters who are to a significant extent
patriotic and who do not support the financing and approval of anti-Croatian projects.
Finally, the logical and key question that arises is why the HDZ leadership is implementing the aforementioned harmful policies of financing and protecting Greater Serbia projects, which are viewed critically and negatively by both a part of the party membership and a significant part of the HDZ electorate?
The only logical answer
The only logical answer is that there is strong international pressure, and many publicly available arguments can be presented in support of this. It is sufficient, for example, to recall the fact that in 2019, the American Ambassador to Croatia R. Kohorst opened the Memorial House of the NOB Fighters in Srb, the construction of which was financed, in addition to the Croatian government, by the American government, in addition to the US Army Corps of Engineers and UNDP, and all this despite or in spite of the fact that recent Croatian historiography has undoubtedly established that the Serbian armed uprising in Srb was also a serious war crime and genocide against the local Croatian population and that its support is therefore unacceptable not only for Croatian but also for general humanistic or moral reasons.
In addition, it is clear that this is a project that, like the aforementioned cultural events, was conceived as an instrument for the renewal of Serbian influence in Croatia the gradual establishment of a constitutive status based on political legitimacy arising from the Serbian role in the National Liberation War, its anti-fascist character and connection with the then coalition of Western victorious powers that still dominate many key events in the Croatian and generally international space today.
In the aforementioned sense - of external influence on these events, we should also look at the fact that after the election victory in late 2003, the HDZ, to the surprise of the public and HDZ voters, instead of the generally expected and comfortable coalition with the HSP, achieved a coalition with the Serbian SDSS, which marked the leading party of Serbs in the Republic of Croatia’s grand entry into Croatian political life, followed by all their cultural, political and other projects aimed at regaining the positions they lost with the Croatian state independence and the war of the 1990s.
The above facts should also be considered as the reasons for the reserved, sporadic or very measured stance on the aforementioned Serbian projects by right-wing Croatian parties, as well as the reasons for a number of other unusual developments on the right-wing political spectrum, from unexplained departures from parties by prominent members, continuous splits, divisions and fragmentation, and the general functioning of many right-wing parties as narrowly
focused activist platforms without a systematic and comprehensive view and constructive contribution to public policies and interests of the Republic of Croatia.
It is difficult to escape the impression that the right-wing political scene is actually designed in such a way that it cannot represent a serious political force, but rather to function as small weights on the political scale, which, depending on the situation and the wishes of the designers, can be joined as a preponderance by the main political poles.
In any case, the main source of the current problematic and harmful situation in Croatia is undoubtedly in powerful foreign factors, and therefore the solutions should only come from there, that is, in a way that external pressures on Croatia subside and that the geopolitical strategies of the great Western powers take into account Croatian interests. Especially those that are important or vital, and this is exactly what is at stake here.
There is currently a unique opportunity for the Croatian side to try to initiate a change of this kind, and this is due to the coming to power of Donald Trump, who has changed many of the previous policies that firmly dominated the domestic and foreign spheres, while demonstrating an exceptional sense (probably brought from the business world) for harmonizing and reconciling different interests as well as for respecting universal or generally accepted principles and goals in international relations, which in recent years have seemed completely neglected (e.g. peace, humanity, justice, etc.).
However, in order for there to be changes in the American strategy towards Croatia and the Western Balkans region, within which we are primarily viewed in American concepts, the Croatian side must come up with new, appropriate, reasonable and convincing positions that will represent Croatian interests and demands, but which will also demonstrate a broader understanding of the geopolitical and foreign policy situation, i.e. the interests of other involved actors, in this case primarily the USA.
*SANU refers to the the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU). Its meaning in the context of Yugoslavia is tied to the 1986 SANU Memorandum. The memorandum was a highly controversial document that claimed Serbia was discriminated against within Yugoslavia's federal structure, which fueled Serbian nationalism and is considered a key factor in the eventual breakup of Yugoslavia.
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