Bleiburg Massacre and Croatian Victims of Communist Regime – An Interview With Dr Josip Stjepandic

This weekend starting Saturday 18 May 2024 several commemorations of Croatian victims of Yugoslav communist crimes from May 1945 and after across Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and the diaspora will draw a great number of people into a state of sorrow. But also, into a state of overwhelming pride for being a part of or embracing the priceless battle for freedom and independence from communist Yugoslavia Croats who fell contributed to. The cessation of the long-standing remembrance ceremonies at Bleiburg field in Austria, under the pressure of Austrian authorities, is of course, to my view, an unforgivable act against human rights of mourning and against human decency.

In light of marking this sacred time for remembering and mourning the Croatian dead at Bleiburg and along the “Way of the Cross” and issues affecting the remembrance I bring to you an interview with Dr Josip Stjepandic, hoping it will shed a light for you on matters perhaps not known to you.  Prof. dr. Josip Stjepandic was born in 1961 in Modrica, where he finished elementary school and high school. He completed his studies in mechanical engineering in Zagreb. At the Technical University in Graz (Austria), he received his doctorate in 1985, as the youngest candidate in the history of that university. He has been living and working in Germany since 1988, where he is one of the directors of a technology company. He is married and the father of three adult sons. He is the author of 18 books and over 400 professional and scientific papers. He is the editor of 5 scientific journals of the highest category. He occasionally works for foreign universities as a consulting professor. He works for the European Commission as an expert for scientific projects. He is the vice-president of the International Society of Transdisciplinary Engineering. He is the president of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Diaspora and in the Homeland.

We usually start the interview with one general and seemingly simple question to which a comprehensive answer should be given. However, considering the divisions that Bleiburg (which also includes the events of the Way of the Cross) brings in Croatian society, is it difficult to define what Bleiburg is for Croats today?

On the surface, the question is very easy to answer: Bleiburg (including the post World War Two Way of the Cross) is a symbol of severe suffering for those who identify Croats, for those who identify a Yugoslavs it is a symbol of victory over the “internal enemy”, and identity consumers do not waste time on such topics. Deeply, it is a matter of learning from a huge national disaster. Unfortunately, there are few who have learned something valuable from it for the next generation. We saw a “Little Bleiburg” in 1991 in Vukovar. If Croatia had succumbed in 1991, it would probably have been the scene of another genocide, as it was in 1995 in Srebrenica.

I am convinced that if there was wisdom and patriotism in the corridors of power, Croatia would have used the past 30 years of independence to prepare so that such a disaster would never happen again. On the example of the drone that fell in Zagreb in March 2022, we see that Croatia is not at all ready for many real challenges. And for this reason, every future generation should be made aware of what happened in Bleiburg (1945) and why.

Let’s put aside the emotions of those who are for the commemorating of Bleiburg massacres and those who are against, those who deny and those who strive to make the facts available, and let’s instead touch upon the scientific truth in the Bleiburg matter. According to your knowledge, tell us what is the truth about Bleiburg?

According to the British intelligence sources, which are difficult to dispute, at the beginning of May 1945, a crowd of about 200,000 Croatian soldiers and 500,000 civilians, mostly Croats, retreating from Croatia towards southern Carinthia, were stopped at the Drava River by British troops, who disarmed them under false pretences and handed them over to the Partisan troops, who commenced their barbarism on Austrian territory, where there were about 1,000 victims. The prisoners were then taken on marches towards the Southeast, and killed in several places, as evidenced by about 1,800 mass graves, most of which are still unexplored. No matter how you calculate, between the censuses of 1931 and 1948, at least half a million Croats are missing, very few of whom escaped by fleeing abroad. In the same period, the number of Serbs increased by about 700,000. These are the two “atomic bombs on Croats”, which historical researcher and publicist Roman Leljak vividly talks about. The answer to the question of who committed genocide against whom is also in his works.

It was the Croats who suffered the most at Bleiburg, however, members of other nationalities also suffered, but it seems that, except in Slovenia and Croatia, this crime is still being covered up, if not justified. Why is that do you think?

From my point of view, the situation is unfortunately much worse. Slovenia and Croatia are the only two members of the European Union that have not implemented the the European Parliament (EP) resolutions on the condemnation of totalitarian regimes, and that is because they are networked with management structures originating from the former communist regime. Not only are they silent about the crimes of Yugoslavia, but they are trying to gloss over them. On the Remembrance Day of the victims of totalitarian regimes, on August 23 last year, the youngest Croatian member of the European Parliament proudly laid a wreath on the grave of the communist Yugoslavia operative Jakov Blazevic, presumably to express his gratitude for the persecution of “enemies of the people” like Blessed Alojzije Stepinac. This is a metaphor for all the moral failures of current Croatian politics. It is not unimportant to note that the young gentleman, who was born in the days when communism was collapsing, is running for elections again and that another mandate in the EP appears to be smiling at him.

It is said that the grandfather of the Croatian President Zoran Milanovic himself participated in the massacres of Croats after the Second World War. Milanovic repeatedly mocked the victims of Bleiburg with his inappropriate vocabulary and is a staunch opponent of the commemoration. Instead of commemorating victims of Bleiburg, he commemorates those that fell for the fight for communist Yugoslavia at Sutjeska.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic is the son of a former high-ranking propagandist of the Yugoslav regime, and already in his graduation thesis he expressed his admiration for Edvard Kardelj, who was the second fiercest persecutor of Croats after Tito. I can’t imagine that his father who nurtured him kept that fact from him.

Therefore, while this group is in power, there will be many problems, not only with regards to Bleiburg. Instead of showing by word and deed that the new people are different from their South-Communist ancestors, they follow in their footsteps.

One of the “favourite” relativisations of crimes is in connecting Bleiburg and Jasenovac to one another. Tell us if these two tragedies can be put on the same level and, often, one tragedy justified by the other?

Since Jasenovac was not known as a place of execution until the 1970s, when the number of Jasenovac victims began to be inflated and continues so to this day, some kind of cause-and-effect relationship is out of the question. In my collection, I have dozens of foreign books from the post-war period and thousands of documents from the Second World War era, which I have at least flipped through. I can’t remember that I would find a mention of Jasenovac anywhere. Therefore, before any value judgment or comparisons are done, Jasenovac would first have to be thoroughly investigated, what really happened there and how many victims there were in which period. On the other hand, according to all available documents and witness statements, the massacres in Bleiburg and those on the Way of the Cross were perpetrated in order to destroy the biological potential of the Croatian people, in which, unfortunately, the communists largely succeeded. Austrian historian Florian Rulitz in his capital work “Tragedy in Bleiburg and Viktring”, which should be in every Croatian home, provides numerous evidential material that show it was a “special operation”, led by Serbian troops from eastern Bosnia, composed of retrained Chetniks. He thus quotes the Slovenian operative of the Yugoslav security agency for the protection of the people, OZNA, Zdenko Zavadlav, who states in remembering that the Slovenian OZNA operatives were appalled by the barbarism of the Serbian partisans. In this sense, connecting Jasenovac and Bleiburg is a pure construction, to justify crimes against Croats. By the way, Josip Broz Tito’s partisans treated the anti-communist Slovenians in a similar way, even though there were no Jasenovacs there.

FRom Left: Franz Jordan, Siegfried Kröpl, Josip Stjepandić, Valentin Leitgeb, Nikola Hermann

The British embargo on documents about the events of 1945 at Bleiburg meant that they were sealed for 75 years, until 2020. Tell us if anything new has been learned about the crime in the past four years?

As far as I know, the archives are still closed, relevant documents not fully declassified. The British authorities know very well why. There are many testimonies of British officers, which support the suspicion that refugees from Croatia were sent to persecution and death on orders from “above”. I have spoken with several lawyers who believe that the actions by the British military and civilian authorities in Carinthia in the spring of 1945 contain many elements that could be used as evidence in a possible lawsuit against the United Kingdom for the genocide by the Republic of Croatia before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Of course, before any lawsuit, the victims would have to be counted at least.

When did you learn about the concept of Bleiburg, and when did you start investigating that crime. Can you tell us what it was like before 1990 to explore Bleiburg or to talk about it in public?

I grew up in Modrica, in Posavina, in the time (as it would later become clear) of the strictest communism. I spent a lot of time in the village of Kornica, where my parents came from. There I noticed many widows, women in black, but I did not attach any meaning to it. Later I would find out that in that village, where there was actually no war, only one in three adult men survived the month of May 1945, hence so many widows. My grandfathers were indescribably lucky, at that time they were ill with typhus, so as such they were not interesting to the communist “liberators”. I gained further knowledge, including Bleiburg and the Way of the Cross, later, as a student in Zagreb. When I went to Austria for my doctoral studies, I naturally gained a much broader picture of the character of the Yugoslav communist system, and I did not miss any opportunity to testify about it, especially during the Homeland War. At that time, the suffering of the Croats in Yugoslavia had fallen into the background, but the topic was brought up again 12 years ago, when the government of Zoran Milanovic cancelled the parliamentary sponsorship of the commemoration at Bleiburg. This ignited the propaganda terror over the Croatian people’s memory of their victims, which unfortunately continues to this day. Everyone except Croats can mourn their victims! Within the framework of my modest possibilities, I oppose this and surprisingly I have a lot of success. Strangers believe me or at least start to critically check the information they have received from the other party. The rule that facts are the best defence and protection is confirmed. Nowadays, no one should hesitate to testify about what his/her relatives experienced in that criminal system or regime.

Which testimony of the survivors stuck to your memory the most?

The first thing that comes to mind is the testimony of Zvonimir Zoric, especially with regards to the dirty game the British commanders played in Bleiburg. Then the spectacular life story of Nikola Hermann, the honorary consul of the Republic of Croatia in Graz, who was in Bleiburg as a boy. However, I have always been interested in what eyewitnesses from the other side have to say about these events. The most important are Johann Neubersch and Maria Leitgeb, whose testimonies can be found on YouTube. They described in detail the atrocities committed by Serbian partisans, retrained Chetniks from eastern Bosnia, against Croatian refugees. Such barbarism clearly shows that there was no revenge involved, but the planned extermination of the Croats. Valentin Leitgeb, Maria’s son, together with Franz Jordan and the family of the pharmacist Gunzer are among those Austrians who tend to and take care of the Croatian graves in southern Austria. That’s how I became friends with them. With Jordan, whose father-in-law was a Croatian refugee, I addressed the Austrian institutions, so that no one can say that “they was not informed”. Although it is a thorn in the side of many, the Croatian commemoration in Bleiburg is neither prohibited, nor can it be prohibited. It is a fundamental human right that should be practiced in an appropriate way.

From Left: Josip Stjepandić, Gert Gunzer

Can anyone who highlights or commemorates this tragedy be said to be a nationalist, which is another form of silencing those who speak the truth?

The term “nationalist” has been notorious since communist times and is used as a synonym for chauvinism, hatred towards members of other nations. In this sense, just declaring oneself as a Croat, and especially of the Catholic faith, was a reason for suspicion and stigma, which cost some of my peers prison. I somehow managed to pull through, I don’t even know how, although there were people around me – as it would later become evident – who, unbeknown to me, worked for the Yugoslav Secret Police UDBA. Simplified: if the Serbs are not in power, then they claim endangerment, and that the main culprits for this are the Croats. All this propaganda poison is generated in Belgrade and shipped to Zagreb or through Zagreb to Western countries. Recently, a well-known journalist in Germany openly admitted that he was deceived about the so-called “Ustasha coat of arms”. I myself have been the subject of attacks many times. Some time ago, a high-ranking Croatian government official advised my foreign friend to stay away from me. I was told that the candidate in question is a person who wanted to be an Ambassador in Belgrade, so while preparing for that role he engaged in the “hunt for Ustashas”. The Slovenian Olga Voglauer, a representative of the Greens in the Austrian parliament, made sure that the farce was complete. Although she vacations in Croatia every year, she is the ringleader of the anti-Croatian hunt in Austria.

What should be done to enable justice to speak?

In the ideal case, which unfortunately we have not yet experienced in the 33 years of Croatian statehood, the government, primarily the Government of the Republic of Croatia, would take care of this. One email or telephone conversation between the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia and Vienna would remove the problem as if it never existed. The Austrian Government should be asked only one question: What right or regulation is violated, if the Croats in Bleiburg commemorate their dead?

Remembrance of the deceased is one of the basic human rights and state obligations, which the current government unfortunately does not fulfill.

How do you comment, to put it mildly, on the distancing of official Austria and the church circles there from the Holy Mass and the accompanying remembrance program at Bleiburg for the memory of the victims of the communist regime? This especially concerns the Diocese of Klagenfurt-Gurk, its clergy and politicians in Austria?

First of all, the accusations of a nationalist or fascist gathering in Bleiburg are completely unfounded. I have been participating in the commemoration for years and I have not noticed any difference compared to similar celebrations in Croatia. The Catholic Church in Austria has been rocked by a series of scandals, and as such is susceptible to political influences. Therefore, I return to the previous question: Taking care of the unhindered commemoration of Croatian victims abroad, not only in Austria but, for example, in Ukraine, belongs to the tasks of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, which, as a member of the European Union and the Council of Europe, has numerous instruments at its disposal to implement this. The church is only an executor here.

Croatia, it seems, has achieved its national goals, is part of Europe and all integrations, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina Croats have other existential problems and the threat of disappearance… In the spirit of the first question, what will Bleiburg be to Croats in the future?

I don’t agree with that. It is true that Croatia has achieved a lot, but many achievements are only at the declarative level and lack substance, for example the premature introduction of the euro. The picture of the unfinished State is best demonstrated by the lack of concern of the Republic of Croatia for the Croats in the neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Imagine, Croatia has already been in the European Union for 11 years, and in the candidate country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) for EU membership, where Croats are a constituent nation, Croats are denied the constitutionally guaranteed right to their own language, there is not even a State TV program in the Croatian language, and even the placing of a cross on private land is disputed, as shown by the recent case in Novi Travnik.

I believe, however, that the situation will improve and that Bleiburg will get its rightful place in the public space. If the Republic of Croatia were to fulfill the civilisational minimum and build a memorial centre in Bleiburg, I am convinced that it would be well attended.

Interviewin te English language by Ina Vukic

On 8 May 1945 Neither Patriotic Zagreb nor Patriotic Croatia Were LIberated – They Were Either Massacred or Taken To Communist Prison

At Bleiburg field in Austria in May 1945 and for months afterwards along the killing fields known as The Way of the Cross, Yugoslav communists eliminated those they saw as their real opponents, those who rejected communism and Yugoslavia: the bourgeois, businessmen, clergymen, elderly, women, children, soldiers fighting for independent state of Croatia or those defending its borders and all those who might oppose the new communist regime.

The Bleiburg Massacre refers thus to a series of killings carried out by Josip Broz Tito’s communists and partisans which occurred in May 1945, immediately following the end of World War II in the European hub where the murdered and massacred Croats, having fled the newly-declared communist Yugoslavia, sought refuge and asylum under British protection. They sought protection from the communist partisans. The British, however, sent them back south in a forced march that delivered them to be massacred at the hands of Tito’s partisans. The majority of the victims were Croats and Slovenes, with communities of ethnic Germans and Italians also being greatly affected. Communist revolutionaries used foibes, deep sinkholes found in karst, to dispose of the bodies of perceived enemies—many of whom were still alive when dropped into the geologic cavities often referred to as pits; other forms of mass graves were also used, such as burials. Victims included both military personnel of the WWII Independent State of Croatia and civilians.

The fate of the these Croatian refugees, both soldiers and civilians, was decided at the February 1945 Yalta Conference. Joseph Stalin demanded the surrender of all Soviet citizens who had fought with the Germans, and the same yardstick was applied to ‘Yugoslav’ citizens. At first, when the first soldiers and civilians arrived in Bleiburg, Austria, the British welcomed them and promised that they would be taken to Italy, but trains took them back to Yugoslav territory starting May 12, 1945, and brutal death by extermination awaited at the other end. In other cases, the British refused to accept the surrender of the new arrivals and allowed the partisans to take them prisoner. This went on for several days. Later, the British would excuse themselves by saying that Tito had promised humane treatment for the prisoners. The British have indeed much to answer for the blood on their hands here!

During the first fortnight of May 1945, as the war drew to a close in Yugoslavia, terrified Croatian people streamed across hundreds of kilometres of mountains and rivers, on foot, in a desperate attempt to surrender to the British who administered that part of post-war Austria. What they sought above all was protection from the Communist Partisans. Terrifying massacres were being perpetrated behind the Yugoslav lines, and there were few who did not anticipate a ghastly fate in the event of capture, regardless of their actions during the chaotic years of occupation and war.

Hoaning into today’s official Croatia May 8th is being celebrated as liberation of Zagreb Day! Former communists and/or their children or grandchildren who still hold the candle for the former communist Yugoslavia and are still very active and powerful, call the Day of Liberation of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, May 8, 1945, while the absolute truth is that on that day in 1945 Josip Broz Tito’s communist partisan hordes marched into militarily undefended Zagreb, intent on mass murder of patriotic Croats. The Serbian Chetnik-partisan units entered the city first, while the Croatian ones were left at a safe distance. What followed was the massacre of the people of Zagreb, which is still celebrated today as the “liberation of Zagreb”. However, no one was ever held accountable for this heinous crime. Many people still build their careers on that crime, live in mansions, villas, and enormous apartments stolen from patriotic Croats and Jews, and call it “anti-fascism”. The mass crimes committed by the revolutionary communism of the Yugoslavia that include well over one thousand mass graves of butchered and murdered innocent Croatian patriots within months of World War Two end, the demon of communism survived Croatia’s exit from communist Yugoslavia independence war of 1990’s to now rules the roost as it were. What a human tragedy!

While in May 1945 killings were being carried out along and across Zagreb’s meadows and forests, Tito’s closest associate, dissatisfied with the scale and speed of the killings, wrote to the Yugoslav communists in Zagreb in his own hand: “Your work with Zagreb is unsatisfactory. In 10 days, only 200 bandits were shot in liberated Zagreb. We are surprised by this indecision to clean Zagreb of those criminals. You are doing the opposite of our orders, because we told you to work quickly and energetically and to finish everything in the first days. You are forgetting that…” (Aleksandar Ranković, Serbian communist considered to be the most powerful mani n communist Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito).

About 130 mass graves of victims of communist crimes have so far been unearthed in Zagreb and its immediate surroundings and over one thousand across Croatian territory. If everything were discovered and investigated, and if Jasenovac and Macelj sites were investigated in international scientific cooperation, matters of the character of these “liberators”, their purpose and meaning, would be placed in their right historical and moral place. Such a thing requires a political decision. However, nothing happens in this direction from mandate to mandate of government, which perpetuates the myth of Jasenovac Camp, which favours Greater Serbian politics, and which directly harms the Croatian state and people. No one questions the poisoned basis of the key social division, nor offers solutions. Communist crimes are not a topic in Croatia. Where this topic pops up from time to time is labelled by both the members of the government and opposition as well as communism-leaning followers as a reactionary revisionism of the enemies of the people at work. And so “more than thirty years of independence in Croatia have passed in the atmosphere of ‘demons in democracy’, the concept found in Ryszard Lagutko’s book ‘The Demon in Democracy – Totalitarian temptations in free societies,’ (2016), says Croatian journalist and publicist Nenad Piskac last week.  

Consequently, even in free and independent Croatia, the political elites behave as an extended arm of the communist Yugoslavia’s OZNA (Department for Protection of the People), i.e. as its polished prosthesis for the 21st century. OZNA was a revolutionary repressive organisation, founded in 1944 with Aleksandar Ranković at its head, which had precisely defined tasks. As a “single powerful organisation”, it was supposed to manage “political intelligence abroad and in the occupied territory and counterintelligence service in the NOVJ (People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia) and in the occupied territory and in the non-occupied territory” (Founding Document of OZNA).  As long as the Croatian state exists, its territory is “occupied” according to the criteria of OZNA (and its successors). Where there is no Croatian state, there is “free territory”. The logic could not get more totalitarian but, sadly to most, it works. And so, OZNA was to guard and protect the inheritance passed on by the “People’s Liberation War” (World War Two) and this involved the preparation in 1944 for purges sfter the WAr’s end, for the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of Independent State of Croatia soldiers and fighters (Ustashe and Home Guards equally) and hundreds of thousands of civilians, women, children, elderly who had been on Croatian independence side during the war.

In these and such circumstances, the reckoning of the totalitarian regime with Archbishop Alojzije Stepinec was prepared, for which the OZNA also had a pre-developed written script, or step-by-stem scenario for the demise of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, at the time Archbishop of Zagreb, based on false allegations and lies. In these and such circumstances of communist murderous rampages hundreds of thousands of patriotic Croats were purged in the State-ordered murders post World War Two from that small country called Croatia, which then continued as part of communist Yugoslavia!

Lest We Forget!

Ina Vukic

Croatia: Two Decades of Democratic Backsliding

Two weeks out of general elections and still no government formed in Croatia. According to legislative provisions the President of Croatia Zoran Milanovic is to convene the first session of the newly elected parliament by 20^th May 2024 at the latest regardless of whether post-elections negotiations reach the required 76 seats to form a government.   

A bird’s eye view at this stage tells us that the main stumbling block for HDZ/Croatian Democratic Union in mustering the 76 parliamentary seats needed to form government is the fact that Homeland Movement/DP party, considered in the mix of forming government with HDZ, absolutely rejects to be in a coalition with SDSS (Independent Democratic Serbian Party), which has been HDZ’s partner in Andrej Plenkovic’s HDZ government along with other 5 ethnic minorities’ seats since the start, i.e. since 2016. The ethnic minorities group, that make up 8 of 151 seats in parliament, have rejected the proposal circulated by the Croatian media last week that they, without the SDSS 3 seats, join HDZ coalition with Homeland Movement.

“Things are going well, we had good constructive talks. All talks continue next week. The winners will form the Government and keep the activities we have had so far. We talked about the issue of ethnic minorities, we talked about everything. You will hear everything. We will have more than enough hands (seats in Parliament). There will be more than enough hands, we are not turning our backs on anyone. It is always important that you have 76 serious and reliable people,” stated acting prime minister Andrej Plenkovic at a public function in the town on Pula on Saturday 4 May.

It remains to be seen whether any of the three elements in this formula – HDZ, Homeland Movement, SDSS – will make any compromises and concessions in order to form a government. It certainly appears that this will be the case and if it actuates then a great deal of disappointment in the voter pools will ensue and a short life of that new government almost guaranteed.

Having lived most of my life in Australia, which is a multicultural and multiethnic country that boasts fantastic success as a unified nation within this social fabric, I know that ethnic minorities do not need to have a dedicated space in parliamentary rows of seats to ensure their rights and specific needs are met. Dedicated government departments and Commissions are in place to do this job and do it well. The same scenario is found in most developed democracies.   

Having said this, a presence of politically organised ethnic minority groups that focus in their politics on the country of their origin rather than on national interests of the country they are living in as ethnic minority is often viewed as and results as a source of instability or conflict within a democracy. And to my view and view of an enormous ethnic majority in Croatia that view is correct simply because the section of Serb ethnic minority seeking and succeeding at general elections within SDSS political party are those ethnic Serbs in Croatia heavily personally and ideologically aligned and associated with the rebel Serbs who actively pursued genocidal aggression against Croats in Croatia and have since the 1990’s war pursued the political and active path of denying the character of Serb aggression against Croatia and equating the victim with the aggressor. This being the case I cannot compare this situation to any other former communist countries in Europe. Croatia has politically active and politically powerful Serb minority which barracks for Serbia’s national interests rather than Croatia’s. It is evident that the Serbs standing behind that part of the Serb ethnic minority have not accepted Croatian independence nor any responsibility for the genocidal aggression. If instead of SDSS Croatian government was in coalition with the part of Serb minority that fought with Croatia against Serb aggression in the Homeland War, then one could truly say that ethnic minority rights and needs would be better catered for. This way only the political needs of some, in every form, are being met as opposed the needs of the entire Serbian ethnic minority in Croatia.  

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 became the foundation of democratisation of countries in Europe who had swiftly moved from communist authoritarian regimes to reasonably functioning democracies based on competitive political systems with the rotation of power in accordance with results from general elections. Most of these countries made this transition smoothly, without war or military or police conflicts. But not Croatia. It’s 94% of voters who voted for secession from communist Yugoslavia in 1991 were faced with brutal and barbaric military and genocidal aggression from the Yugoslav People’s Army (with Serbian nationals at its top echelons) and rebel Serbs living in Croatia who wanted no Croatian independence. The history holds it well recorded that the Croatian military, political and volunteer forces succeeded in a magnificent victory in 1995 when Croatia won the war.

However, almost immediately after the death of President Franjo Tudjman in December 1999 the general elections of early 2000, when former communists won government, the grapes of envisaged full democracy started to sour in Croatia. This was the time when former communists in Croatia were on a vicious rampage to criminalise Croatia’s defence from Yugoslav/Serb aggression. This was the time when several Croatian military generals and other high-ranking officers were falsely accused of war crimes and sent to the International Criminal court in the Hague (declared innocent of the war crimes charges years later) and others forcibly retired. This was the time when former communist Yugoslavia was breathing its second wind into Croatia. No wonder voter-depression and debilitating anger set in on the patriotic side, stopping many from voting at elections, and former communists won government and set about attacking Croatian patriotism. Just like the communist party of former Yugoslavia did. It was Ivica Racan’s government that pursued open and public support from the SDSS in 2003. To the view of many political analysts, including myself, this was a buffer to sensitise the Croatian public gradually into living with a new reality in which the Serb aggressor’s politics would be introduced as some kind of an ethnic minority right in Croatia! It was HDZ Ivo Sanader’s government that in 2007 made SDSS a coalition partner in Croatia’s government. Who else could bring such a cruel blow against the Croatian people and its Homeland War veterans but a prime minister contaminated from head to toe with corruption. A criminal of large proportions, serving prison for the past several years for corruption during his time as prime minister.  When in 2009 after the fall of Ivo Sanader amidst corruption scandals Jadranka Kosor headed the Croatian HDZ government SDSS continued in a government supporting role and this continued to 2011 when Zoran Milanovic of SDP (Social Democratic Party) took over the government post general elections.  After that SDSS was given an active role in government, including deputy prime ministership, especially when Andrej Plenkovic entered the scene as prime minister of Croatia in 2016.  

In the time since year 2000 Croatian voters, albeit in weak turnout numbers, elected leaders and parties that explicitly pursued pluralism in favour of SDSS, undermined independent media via inserting media control, and failed to curb plaguing judicial oversights and judicial bias, establishing a semblance of illiberal democracy even though they called it liberal democracy. This democratic backsliding away from the planned democracy that was present at the inception of independence from communist Yugoslavia pursuits has for Croatia contributed significantly to the terrible and essentially unproductive or inadequate transition from the former communist regime.

This democratic backsliding or relapsing into bad ways as seen through the eyes of transitioning from communism into democracy has seen a great deal of anger and disappointment within the Croatian community that fought for independence. It has become an insidious cancer wound preventing progression with the values of the Homeland War of 1990’s. The fact that about additional 500,000 of voters in the 2024 general elections voted, evidently in efforts to change this democratic backsliding tide, speaks volumes on the fact that political crisis continues. Political analysists worldwide would have us believe that democratic backsliding tends to take place in societies without ethnic mobilisation – where ethnic minorities are politically insignificant. But Croatia serves as an example to the opposite. I.E., that political backsliding can occur in a country where important and politically mobilised ethnic groups are active and given large political and social space to pursue their ambitions and goals in undermining the importance of ethnic majority and its political and social pursuits. While there are 22 ethnic minorities in Croatia including Serb, Czech, Slovak, Italian, Hungarian, Jew, German, Austrian, Ukrainian, Eastern Slavs, Bosniak, Slovenian, Montenegrin, Macedonian, Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Roma, Romanian, Turkish, Vlach, Albanian and others, all of which enjoy full rights as Croatian citizens, it is the section of Serb minority organised under the SDSS banner that appear as the main culprits for the democratic backslide in Croatia. They appear as the only ethnic minority in Croatia who actively pursue the interests of Serbia and its politics as their identity rather than Croatian citizenship.   

The interplay between ethnic politics and political competition in Croatia is riddled with SDSS’s pursuits in making righteous the murderous actions of 1990’s rebel Serbs to stop Croatian independence any which way, even by mass murder and utter destruction of anything that was Croatian. This aspect of politics in Croatia has caused an incremental decay of democracy and national pride in Croatia. This decay or backsliding can be seen on several fronts that are central to democratic progress such as the political front, legal or judicial front, and the psychological one. With mainstream media control, with dysfunctional judiciary in terms of independence from politics and with continued undemocratic pursuits brought over from communist Yugoslavia, such as nepotism and large-scale corruption coupled with misguided and ad hoc steps towards the goal of reconciliation between the victim and the aggressor of the 1990’s War, significant authoritarianism has flowed into daily lives and governance in Croatia since 2000. This being the case it is unlikely that the shift from the undemocratic pursuits and public psychology which struggles a great deal because the governments have failed to condemn the former communist regime and ban its symbols will occur all at once. However, there is ample support within the Croatian society and within the political life of Croatia for the notion of shedding SDSS from the government and replacing it, if a minority or coalition government must be formed, which is the case for Croatia, with political currents that place the will and skills for the entrenchment of Croatian national interests at the forefront.

“The strategies of backsliding leaders and parties more globally are by now well documented. The leaders entrench themselves in political office, insulating themselves from changes in the preferences of the electorate. They shape the preferences of the electorate by degrading the public sphere through misinformation and hate speech. They seek to undermine the rule of law through nepotism and the allocation of opportunities to wealthy cronies, and then attack the independent, rule-bound bureaucracy. Through these steps, they undermine constitutional checks and balances through a combination of capture and bypassing those who oppose them; and they also try to control the election machinery itself…”, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq, 2022.

The above quote may be seen as a true reflection of what is and has for the past two decades been occurring on the Croatian political scene. The political backsliders would form a group of people in politics seeking power and position for their personal advancement. They are called the “uhljebi,” people who have become public sector employees, elected officials and parliamentarians through a nepotistic relationship or political party affiliation, normally without the required skills or qualifications for that position or role. Uhljebljenje is heavily associated with the Croatian post-communist/socialist “economy of favours” and its evidently widespread crony capitalism, whereby it is common to place a client relative into a position of responsibility that ‘feeds’ his family while also benefitting the patron. Similar practices can be observed in other transitional societies in Europe post Berlin Wall fall and, hence, a constant barrage of new political parties and populist politicians emerging in attempts to lead Croatia away from these oppressive practices. Most of them rising so that they can be shut down through the controlled media apparatus and organised “uhljeb” networks that extend their tentacles all the way down to the voters.

In Croatia, out of all the ethnic minorities the Serb SDSS emerges as the unfettered one. The important role it has been given via appointments to positions of power such as deputy prime ministership, have led to Serb ethnic particularism that undermines Croatian national identity, collective interests and impairs democracy. While it is expected that ethnic minorities stay keen on self-preservation it is one thing to ensure the rights of ethnic minorities and it is another to permit ethnic minorities to constantly bombard the foundations of Croatian democracy which are embedded in the Homeland War victory. The deadlock in the pursuit of transitioning from communist Yugoslavia into a functional full democracy that has plagued Croatia for at least two decades would best be resolved if the new government was formed without the SDSS as its partner. Ina Vukic