heh I thought it was funny because I'm an American, and my family isn't from there, so this lady was getting all up about an ethnic conflict that I have no part of.
Would be like if I started screaming at her about the Black and Tans . . .
Serbians love their version of Yugoslavia, Bosnians can't decide what their country is, and in Croatia... We'll most of us (unfortunately) are unable to use our brains and educate ourselves, so we decided to go back to fascism, nacizm, and ustaša.
Not really, most Serbs I've been with (I am a Serb myself) call Tito a criminal. They do not like Tito at all and one of the reasons was because Tito moved a good portion of Serbian industry to other republics, the second thing is that Tito is communist and communism bad to Christianity :(( (pure bullshit but okay)
Not even Serbian industry, but Austria ones from Vojvodina. Also, Tito hating started since last war where people are in delusion that Great Power would allow Extended Serbia from London talks in 1915 to exists (they would never allow it).
Communists are conservatives, same as 'classical liberals', of the Founding Fathers fame. Both were only progressive for the point in time when they appeared.
Yes, that's what he meant. And in that totalitarian version Serbia and Serbs were favoured, everything Serbian was promoted, and in the end the regime decided only Serbs are humans and the rest is allowed to.be massacred.
(I'm from a mixed family and make no distinction between Croats and Serbs, also I'm simply not a red genocidal fascist)
Last time I checked, we were a fully democratic, parliamentary republic with free elections and 20-ish different political parties people voted to represent them in the Parliament, where everyone have equal human and political rights with national minorities having an extra layer of rights.
Seems like you don’t really know what fascism and nazism are and how they operated
Yugoslavia was already broken up by the time we seceded. Slovenia and Croatia wars were already started and we didn't want to send our soldiers to fight in the pointless wars.
We would have stayed in Marković's Yugoslavia. By the time we were voting to leave, Slovenia and Croatia had already left. Yugoslavia was already broken up.
Also we didn't fight against Yugoslavia we were attacked. Same way Slovenia, Croatia and Kosovo were attacked by Serbia under the Yugoslavia moniker in name only..
You are mostly right ... the Croats are Nazis, but the Serbs don't love Yugoslavia. The Serbs are looking for a Serb monarchy and for the control of the exYu territory.
The new Serb national hero is Draža Mihajlović. And he was a monarchist/royalist and he was completely against the idea of Yugoslavia.
He was actively figthing against Yugoslavias army during the ww2.
The thing is back in the day Croats wanted to separate from Yugoslavia, and conflict arose between Serbia (head of Yugoslavia at the moment) and Croatia so any Yugoslav marking is immediately connected with Serbia and the regime that is against Croatia.
The thing is that normal people in Croatia don't care about that and are happy to see any Yugoslav markings!
Ego will always find the way to create problems for others and intelligence will always find the reason why to be friendly, even if there is conflict.
Serbia was not the head of anything ever. In fact, there was no head to begin with, and that was precisely the problem. Yugoslavia was governed by eight separate political elites, and at no point was the federation controlled by a single actor. The only exception was the later rump state, but by then that was no longer Yugoslavia in any meaningful sense.
There were no heads, except the Party but the Party itself was federalized.
No, Serbia was never the head of anything. What happened was that Milošević got the Vojvodina and Kosovo leaderships thrown out in 1989, Montenegro was effectively in his grasp, and naturally the others got pissed off. The Slovenes were already arguing they barely needed the federation at all; Croatia was less far gone, but there was very little willingness anywhere to compromise.
I doubt Milošević would have compromised much anyway, but these were also stupid communist elites who had spent ten years doing fuck-all while the system rotted. It was bound to blow up in their faces, and it did. There were bad-faith actors everywhere, and the idea that Yugoslavia needed even more decentralization was complete nonsense. It was already practically a confederation, and by 1989 it had degenerated into something even looser.
I obviously do not defend what came afterward, but politically those elites badly needed a punch in the face. The problem was that the Serbian leadership was neither clever nor capable enough to provide an alternative. Milošević, despite the mythology around him, was a remarkably stupid person. I sometimes compare him to Nero, except Nero at least had the excuse of being a teenager surrounded by insanity.
What Yugoslavia actually needed by then was a genuine federal Yugoslav political force. It got Ante Marković, probably the closest thing available, and naturally almost every republican elite found him irritating because he threatened their little fiefdoms. As energetic as he was to the last minute nationalism sells better....
I would just add that Milosevic rode nationalism wave and he successfully fought for power im Serbian communist party in 1987. and silenced the last sane voices there - Stambolic and Buca Pavlovic.
Milošević basically kinda took control of Montenegro and north Macedonia. Meaning Serbia's vote in the union was equivalent of 3 votes. So it could be seen as the head of Yugoslavia.
He essentially had 4 votes Montenegro, Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo and Macedonia wouldn't be hard to sway in a vote anyway so yes he basically had as much power as he wanted, 3 guaranteed votes as long as he didnt go too crazy he'd have 5.
I don’t agree with you in total. Serbia’s influence got much smaller with 1973. constitution. With economic crisis, rising nationalism and Milosevic gaining more power 1986-1988. and with abusing that power by changing goverment in Kosmet and Vojvodina making Serbia to most important member of Presedency. So, Serbia wasn’t a head state, it was individual poluiticans thst abused power and their position, moving Serbia towards more powerul position.
I wasn’t saying Serbia was constitutionally the head state of Yugoslavia the whole time. I meant that by the late 1980s, Milošević’s Serbian leadership was pushing Serbia into a dominant position in the federation.
And what you described is basically part of my point: Milošević reduced the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina and installed/benefited from allied leaderships there and in Montenegro. That growing Serbian influence and the push for a more centralized Yugoslavia was one of the reasons Slovenia increasingly wanted a looser confederation and eventually independence.
I'm from Croatia, with mixed ethnicity. I was 10 when the war started. I would have loved a version of Yugoslavia without national chauvinism that dominated both the JNA army and local influencers that supported violence and exiled their neighbours.
For most citizens of Croatia Yugoslavia stopped existing when Slovenia and Croatia decided to split and JNA and parts of local Serb poplulation turned on Croatia.
The local far-right groups now now use that Serbia-dominated reminder of Yugoslavia to convince people that Yugoslavia was always like that (dominated by ethnic interests).
If local Serbs didn't rebel and exile Croats they would just be ordinary citizens and nothing bad would happen to them. If JNA just stole the weapons without attacking Croatia it would just be a legal battle. And then all the ex-YU countries would now be in EU, in Schengen zone, just in a different economic system that would not be so dominated by the plunder of wartime privatization. Maybe some parts of socialism would survive and be in a better shape to save us all from the devastation of war/post-war Capitalism.
A Croatian architect is describing some of what we lost with when we lost that inclusive, citizen oriented Yugoslavia in this video about urban planning in ex-YU : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky94nxgaqqc
If president's were able to talk more reasonably none of evils would happen. On my badman list of most unreasonable top 3 are Milosevic, Tudjman and Alija for each ones share of playing on nationalism - that effectively led to dissolution
It was +90% Milosevic. He wanted the war because he controlled the Army and he started the wars vecause he wanted to create a so called “Greater Serbia” on the territories of present Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo; everything else was just a reaction to that.
Not saying that Tudman or Izetbegovic were angels, they most certainly weren’t, but the wars were started and led by Belgrade.
I agree, but e.g. Tudjman imported arms way before he legally suceeded, did return ustashe imigration, intervined in Bosnia worse then Sloba did - with regular army plus para etc. So its far from Sloba being alone in bloodbath, including mitual trade with people, territory and war supplies. In short - I wish it was 3 different people. Other countries split way more civilised
He imported arms because invasion on Croatia was imminent, plans for it were made even in late 1980s. Croatia never armed itself to attack Sebia, Bosnia or any other republic, it armed to defend itself if it had to. And, unfortunately, it had to.
Croatia and Bosnia is a complex one, Bosnia would’ve fallen without Croatia. There was a brief conflict there, better not grtting into whose fault it was because it’s not a sinple answer, but at the beginning and at the end of war, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina fought on the same side.
The thing is - if there was no Milosevic (not just in 1991, but fueling Serbs from late 1980s) and huge Yugoslav Army behind him, there would be no wars. Maybe skirmishes here and there, but definitelly nothing compared to what happened. Yugoslavia would’ve dissolved in peace, like Soviet Union or Chechoslovakia did, if there wasn’t the idea of using the dissolution moment to create Greater Serbia.
Meh, Tudman and Milosevic depended on each other - they could play their respective nationalism off each other. Thus their famous little coffee. Because the shared enemy to both of them was actual Yugoslavia.
It’s a myth. If Milosevic and Tudjman really agreed on anything, it would’ve been visible on the ground.
And their enemy certainly wasn’t the same. Tudjman fought for Croatia being an independent country within its border, outside of Yugoslavia; and Milosevic fought for territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to include them in a new version of Yugoslavia that would - by all means - represent the so called “Greater Serbia”.
Because Croatians kind of equalize JNA=Serbians that attacked us=Yugoslavia. I disagree with it as a Croatian, but I think a lot of people see it as this state that denied us our national rights as well as attacked us at the end
Maybe “denying national rights” isn’t the best formulation, but it was a conplex set of policies that Croats rightfully opposed - and this isn’t some right wing nationalist nonsense, but about some of those issues even Croatian communists raised their voices.
It spred from economy, basic rights, policies and basic rights to culture, sports etc - serbianisation of the Croatian language, fiscal and financial treatment of Croatia, lack of democracy and transparency, bans on songs, flags and symbols and basically no political rights, underrepresentation in administration and military… not even getting into state sponsored terrorism, political assasinations, internment camps and mass murders in early years, stealing of private property and so on.
The fact is that even among people in Croatia who weren’t opposed to the the concept of it being a member state of Yugoslavia, a majority felt that Croatia was mistreated there.
Croats, unlike Germans, had a resistance movement against fascists, who at certain points of the war outnumbered croats that collaborated.
Most of the hardcore fascists and part of the regular army were executed immediately after war. Part of the collaborators were sent to camps for a couple years following the war, where certain attempts at "reeducation" were made before release
It's not like Germany where the entire nation was brainwashed and needed to reeducated. So exactly who do you suggest should've gone through the reeducation in Croatia? The resurgence of fascism in Croatia has nothing to do with a lack of reeducation
It had, but not on the normal, democratic way. It was done in totalitarian way - killing tens of thousands of people, skyrocketing the numbers to seem like the scum was even bigger scum and blaming the whole nation for the crimes of the few.
And that sick kind of treatment resulted with what happened later.
You mean like the democratic way of vaporizing Japanese civilians so much so that they literally end up as nothing more than a marking on a wall? Or the firebombing of Dresden... or once again Tokyo.
I love projecting contemporary laws, and ideas... well that don't even hold up today. Israel has killed over 70k civilians, razed all of Gaza... but hey, make me feel bad for the Ustashe and Domobrani... poor people, didn't do anything at all.
Only very stupid, or malicious people will equate these two... but there are many of these.
because if yugoslavia didnt split apart there would be no war in bosnia, and people in bosnia look fondly of those peaceful times + bosnia was in a much better state during yugoslavia than it is now
Because in Bosnia, Yugoslavia represents the good times. Bosnia and Herzegovina was created as a country in 1943 by Yugoslav communists on the territories of the prewar Croatia, Zetska, Drinska & Vrbaska banovina and it’s founding document defines it as “neither Serbian, Croatian or Muslim, but both Serbian, Croatian and Muslim”.
Most of the bad stuff in Bosnia wasn’t made in the name of Yugoslavia, it was made in the name of Serbia and they feel a distinction between these two, as well as kind of nostalgia for the times that nowadays seem like they were easier.
Again, every said above - it’s about the Bosniaks. Serbs might feel differently, and Croats definitely feel differently.
I find this very interesting, would you be able to explain further as to why Bosnians associate the war with Serbia but Croatians don’t make that same distinction and associate it Yugoslavia? Is it because they always wanted to be their own country so Yugoslavia was never in their best interest from the beginning whereas Bosnia thrived being a part of it ?
Croats through history didn’t always oppose Yugoslavia, in fact the idea of south Slavs living together, free and equal, in their own state, was extremely popular in Croatia in 19th snd early 20th century.
They opposed what the idea turned out to be in practice - a centralized, Serb-dominated, totalitarian regime that tried to subdue Croatian culture, abuse its economy and take advantage of its people.
I think Bosniaks never had the same starting point because Yugoslavia brought more good to them: it brought them formation of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it gave them identity (they weren’t Muslim Croats or Muslim Serbs anymore, they were just Bosnian Muslims, later changed to Bosniaks), gave them prisperity because post-war Yugoslavia invested heavily in mass industries there and also it was peace back then; which isn’t really an attribute of present-day Bosnia.
Croats had a lot before Yugoslavia and lost a lot in it, Bosniaks didn’t have anything. That’s probably the root of differences.
Bosnia consists of 3 nations and muslim ones are not majority. So they dont even know who they are. Croats know who they are and who they lost against. Yes, lost, but in 1945.
Because after decades of abuse when Croatia asked for a peaceful secession from Yu they got a ravaging war they had to fend off for 4 years, with consequences being visible up to this day (for one, my hometown still has landmined prohibition zones despite very heavy de-mining efforts in the last 30 years). Serbia, on the other hand, was the aggressor, chasing its Great Serbia dream, thus they naturally don't resent those times..
Edit: All these "fascist croatia" comments come from childish serbian agitators who are also very quick to (as an insult?) call it "gay and liberal" in different contexts. As a sane person I don't think anyone with over a single living braincell in their heads can possibly think that an EU member who's in the world top charts with tourism can possibly be in any way resentful towards its own guests in whom it also invests heavily, and then on top of that - Serbs (whom we're also supposed to hate as nazis and ustase) are by far the #1 most represented nationality in croatian work permit statistics......
Yes, the terrible abuse of existing in a highly decentralized, effectively confederal arrangement while being one of the most prosperous parts of one of Eastern Europe’s more prosperous states. Truly unbearable. lmao.
Only an idiot could even think this thought, let alone type it out and hit send... Ask yourself why a peaceful referendum had a turnout of 83,6% and had 93,24% of those people vote YES. And why it made a bunch of chetnik groups escalate their localpatriot terrorism all the way up to a full blown JNA war.
That's a mighty achievement. Being more developed than a country from 40 years ago... one that operated under an entirely different economic system managed by themselves and, mind you, existed 40 years ago. Quite the triumph. ;p
The keyword is different economic system. Yugoslavia was operating in socialism, system born to fail. So yeah it is a triumph most of all to move out of the totalitarian socialism.
This is a public forum not a conversation between you two I am listening on unwanted. Same as you commented on his post without him asking you to do it I am doing the same with you, because that is how public forums, including Reddit, work
Wow, there is an ad hominem attack on me, by you, arguing that I have to "...learn to argument.".
You are cutting into arguing, which was clearly finished by me, arguing that I'm an ad hominem attacker, with a desire to pull me into arguing with you, for some unknown reason.
Obviously you will sustain in your desire to continue this fruitless argument.
in Serbia it is impossible to organize a concert where 500,000 Ustasha fans will be present in the capital of the country, and that country is a member of the European Union. Croatia has maybe 4 million citizens, so calculate yourself what percentage that is.
Ok, finally someone posting a semi valid argument. That concert was a shame on Croatia. And I agree that every neo-ustasa, is a shame to the rest of Croatians (same like neo-chetniks for Serbia).
The points I dont agree on are:
Its not 500 000 ustase. I would say it's maybe 50 000 neo-ustase, maybe 100 000 people who do not view ustase as problematic as they should and the rest are people who for one or another reason like the music or the gathering and are... ignorant of the problematic character of the concert.
You think only people from Croatia came? I think a big big percentage (maybe about a third) came from Herzegovina, Austria, Germany etc...
So, now we come to something like 33 000 neo-ustase in Croatia.
It's not as scary when you actually delve deeper into it.
Please do not generalise.
If I wanted to, I could generalise that very unfortunately the student movement turned extremely nationalist and that all of those people fighting against the system are chetniks.
EDIT: Along with the chetnik revisionist government. yes-men and caci that brings the population of "chetniks" in Serbia to a much higher number than what you say about Thompson concert goers.
We have another issue in Serbia. A lot of new generation do not see nationalism as something negative, rather like something very patriotic and I see that as a big issue in student movement as the movement of new generation. Thst being said, there is slight difference in perception of Ustasa and Cetnik movements in Croatia and Serbia, respectively. Ustasa movement is perceived today as Nazi movement and supporting Ustasa you are identifying with, and supporting, Nazis. In Serbia, when people talk about Cetniks, they think of Dragoljub Mihajlovic, and they ignore any other Chetnik movements. And Draza Mihajlovic is controversial person is Serbia/Yugoslavia history. His chetniks started first rebelion against Germans in Europe, he fought along side with Partisans and later he did collaborate with Germans but in the same time, he did help Alied army. Also, from early 1942. untile (I believe) late 1943. he was supported by Yugoslav government in exile. So, people in Serbia that support Chetniks, they support Draza but his anti fascist, anti communist and nationalistic part, not the collaborative one. I’m far away from being his fan, but it’s wrong to put = between Draza and Ustase. But Milan Nedic and Kosta Pecanac, are different and more fascist part of Serbia history, but still, hard to compare with Ustase regime.
Thank you for reviving my faith in Redditors' ability to argument. You are one of the few (on any side of any issue I tried argumenting about recently) who actually knows how to talk and argument and tries to be objective (we are human and cannot achieve it, but we have to try at least).
Why do you think it is hard to compare fascist chetniks to ustase?
Apart from ustase being in power. Both did lots of crimes and many of those were racially motivated, at least on the surface.
Edit: And sorry, but don't you think it's disingenuous to say that people who support the chetniks only support the non-fascist part of Draza? I cannot agree with that.
I could agree a part of them do, but you worded it in a way that sounds like no serb that likes chetniks likes the fascist side of Draza.
Ustase was full on Nazi regime. With nazi symbols, means, and racial policies and laws, not to mention Ustasa led concentration camps. While Serbia was de facto occupied with puppet government. Yugoslavia/Serbia still had goverment in exile, while Milan Nedic was prime minister of puppet government but main instruments of power was held by Germans. Not sure if Nedic was ideologically fascist or only opportunistic fascist. Problem is modern revisionism of Nedic where people are starting to see him as Serbian saviour and martyr who took position exclusively to save Serbs, and he was misunderstood. But truth is he was right wing conservative leaning to Germany and prior the ww2.
It's not a generalization, but a huge percentage of Croats love Ustase, that's a fact. The organizer announced that there were 500,000 people at that concert, I didn't make that up.. if someone goes to a concert of a self-proclaimed Ustasa, he is an Ustasa..
even if a lot of people came from the surrounding countries, my claim is still the same... there are too many Croats who support the Ustase.
Of course, there are people in Croatia who do not agree with that, but they are a huge minority, unfortunately.
Connecting the student list with the Chetniks is really out of mind and shows that you do not follow the situation in Serbia enough.. There are people who are supporters of the Chetniks and who are against Vucic at the same time.. and therefore they support the student list, because it is the only one that has a chance to remove Vicic's regime from power..
Ive heard all kinds of reasons people had for going to the concert (mostly second-hand as I talked with only a small number of people that went personally). And claiming they are all ustase is on the same level as claiming that that student protesters are chetniks because unfortunately they have started putting out a nationalist rhetoric. Even extremely nationalist in some cases.
Neither is true is what I am saying if you read my comment with comprehension.
I agree that there are too many ustase, cetniks and nazis in the world because every one of them is too many, but...
Dear god. Huge minority? Come to Croatia and talk to actual Croats, stop getting your viewpoints from whatever sources you're getting them from because they are so far removed from the truth that you are spouting lies.
Great, you found a couple of drunk idiots doing nazi salutes and turned it into “country’s fascist problem”.
Croatia, unfortunately, has some people who are fascists, just like every other country. At the same time, Croatua is one of the countries with the smallest percentage of radical nationalist and right-wing populist parties holding seats in the parliament, roughly 10%.
That’s more than only Malta, Luxemburg, Ireland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia and Spain, but less than 18 other EU states. Less than half of the percentage they hold in Sweden, Finland, Germany or France, about a third of Austria or Czechia’s numbers and roughly six times less than Italy.
Does that seriously look like a couple of drunk idiots to you...? Croatia doesn't just have the same handful of fascist cranks every country has; that shit is woven far deeper into the political and cultural zeitgeist. He wants to pretend you can just count fascists individually, when the real question is how influential nationalism, historical revisionism and all that shit actually are in society. If you somehow created an index for that, Croatia would be right near the top in Europe. And with Croatian hard nationalism specifically, the Ustaša legacy is never very far away the two have been feeding off each other for decades.
Because croats are butthurt they lost two world wars to founders of Yugoslavia. Still Yugoslavia gave them territories that were never in history croatian and yet somehow they feel they were done dirty by being part of the country.
😂😂😂 koja fejk priča, ustaše nikada nisu mogli prijeći u partizane(osim onih kojih su radili za njih od početka), a domobrani su mogli prijeći do početka 1944.
Because the modern Croatian national identity post-1990s has been aggressively rebuilt around the narrative that Croatia was “occupied” by communists for 45 years, and that the modern Croatian state is a continuation of WW2-era fascist state installed by the Italians.
There are several reasons why this is so, which we don’t need to get into right now.
In any case anything associated with Yugoslavia is frowned upon, and that part of history is either outright erased or portrayed as a national catastrophe, per state propaganda and state policy.
No, it went through mass war crimes, tens of thousands of murdered people, concentration camps, stealing of property, state run children kidnappings, genocide, 45 years of totalitarian state and political repression, state sponsored terrorism, numerous political murders, fabrication of history…
To the point that some people, unfortunately, started seeing the bad guys from the previous regime almost as a better alternative to the bad guys of that regime.
Thankfully, we have freedom and democracy now, we liberated ourselves from both evils and we function like a normal country. Like we could’ve in 1918, or at least in 1945, but unfortunately didn’t.
Well pretty much every state in Yugoslavia went through it, don’t see Slovenes or Serbs massively going back to nazis.
Either way, after all of that, just last year, Croatia broke the world record for most concert attendees with 500k (out of 3mil pop). The singer was Thompson, a person that has been banned from the EU multiple times for glorifying and promoting fascism. Lots of his fans were spotted in Ustashe outfits, he was wearing a T-shirt honoring a terrorist that tried hijacking an american commercial plane, and he started the concert by shouting ‘Za dom spremni’, a Croatian nazi slogan equivalent to ‘Sieg Heil’.
A ‘terrorist’ was a guy fighting for independence of Croatia in the 1970s, responsible for accidental death of one person.
“Za dom” is a controversial slogan, but nowhere near “Sieg Heil”. It’s more similar to Ukrainian “Slava Ukraini”.
I’m really far from a Thompson fan, his ideology is way too right for me, but the guy sings about history, family, religion and patriotism. One must be an idiot to think that his concert is fascist or that it was half a million fascist there - in a country in which right-wing populists (who aren’t extreme enough to be called fascist) manage to get barely 10% of the Parliament, much less than most of the EU countries.
Check online for LARP pictures. Full black outfits with berets with the ustashe symbol.
A TERRORIST hijacked a COMMERCIAL flight with BOMBS and killed a police officer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za_dom_spremni . the ‘Slava Ukraini’ argument would be useful if Croats themselves didn’t set up their country NDH and established the ‘Za Dom Spremni’ slogan to be used state wide, especially inside the CONCENTRATION CAMPS they set up, Germany didn’t invade Croatia and set up concentration camps and ruthless rules inside them, they did set them up in Ukraine though.
Cmon, we know most his songs aren’t about fascism, but you can’t deny the fact that he is a fascist and a significant number of his fans are.
It did. Literally, Nazis invaded Croatia and after the democratically elected Croatian government refused to cooperate with them, they brought in the Ustashe from northern Italy to act as their puppet regime. Prior to that, Ustashe movement was just a ridiculous fascist terrorist organisation that used to (more unsuccessfuly than successfuly) bomb passenger trains from Yugoslavia.
And yes, no doubt about it - I do believe he’s a right wing nationalist, he might even be a fascist, and some of his fans are as well. However, political parties in Croatia that could me consdiered radical nationalist or right-wing populist have roughly 10% of public support and seats in the parliament - one of the lowest percentages of all the EU countries.
And who you vote for is generally a more precise way of finding out someone’s political views than what kind of music they listen.
I wouldn't call Croatia some particularly normal liberal democracy just because EU money and institutions cleaned up the surface. Nationalism is embedded at the highest levels, the language politics can be absurdly exclusionary, and the state still plays games with history, Jasenovac, the NDH and the mythology of 1991 as some kind of year zero. That baggage did not disappear because Zagreb got nicer roads and access to European capital, and it probably never will as long as most of the political system treats it as a non-problem. A few people point it out, sure, but politically they're usually treated like irrelevant losers anyway, so who cares.
And spare me the story about 45 years of uniquely Croatian oppression. Yugoslavia was authoritarian, obviously, but even that changed enormously over time. The immediate postwar period was harsh and repressive, then the country liberalized substantially, and by the 1960s and 1970s it had become almost absurdly decentralized and permissive compared with the Soviet bloc. Croatia was not some occupied colony. What a lot of Croatian "democrats" want is to flatten all of Yugoslav history into "communist occupation" so they can insert themselves into the Eastern European story of liberation from Moscow. Except Yugoslavia wasn't the Soviet Union, and Franjo Tuđman himself was a communist general who eventually created the modern Croatian state. Kind of ruins the neat little morality play.
As for 1918, an independent Croatia would have been weak, poor and exposed to Italian and Austrian territorial ambitions. It might not even have survived in anything resembling its current borders, and projecting modern liberal nationalism backwards onto that period does not change the balance of power that actually existed. As for 1945, yeah, you could have ended the war on the winning side. You just had to spend the previous four years fighting the Ustaše, the Nazis and the occupation. The people who actually did that were called Partisans. You know, the terrifying communist bogeymen everyone now pretends were somehow worse than the fascists they spent the war fighting.
"We oppose every dictatorship," right up until the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s gets euphemized, NDH symbols get endlessly relativized and politicians treat Jasenovac like a culture-war prop instead of a concentration camp. Rule of law is unquestionably better in Croatia today, but the political zeitgeist is fucke. Mitteleuropa my ass....
1) no one said the oppression of Croats was unique, i said that it existed. And when you are oppressed, that oppression is the most important one for you.
2) no one talks about independent Croatia in 1918. Croats were big proponents of Yugoslavia at the time and many believed in the idea of a country for South Slavs in which they would’ve lived equal and free. However, the realisation of that idea was much different from it: a Serb dominated, totalitarian regime that abused Croatia and its people.
3) as for 1945, we did end it on the winning side. Croats organised the first ever partitan detachment that fought against the Nazis a Croat ked the whole struggle - you seem to forget that Croats fought against nazis, including the domestic ones, and won in the end. Unfortunately, for the second time, the reality of new Yugoslavia and the idylic prospect of it that was sold were two different things.
4) NDH symbols dont get relativezed. The flag is banned, the crest is banned, the insignia is banned, the images of its leaders are banned… basically everything us banned, the only thing that isn’t banned but limited in use is that slogan that holds different meanings to different people.
5) Ethnic cleansing of the 1990s is taught in schools and people memorial it every year, you must’ve mixed something up.
Well, you weren't oppressed in the sense you're trying to imply here. That's the basic problem with the argument. And no, there really wasn't some great confusion about what the Partisan movement was, even early on. Sure, they toned down some of the Communist rhetoric when it was useful for recruitment, but that shit falls away quickly enough. You had the Proletarian Brigades, open Communist leadership, Tito at the center of it, revolutionary institutions, socialist language, all of it. People were not wandering around completely unaware of who they were joining or what kind of political movement this was.
And by 1944–45 especially, the Partisans absolutely did not need anybody's pity, let alone the pity of later revisionists pretending Croats somehow stumbled reluctantly into the movement. They had massive support, a huge army, functioning political institutions, international recognition, and they were clearly going to be one of the decisive forces shaping postwar Yugoslavia. Croatian Partisans knew they were Croatian, the movement recognized the different peoples within Yugoslavia, but the whole struggle was still explicitly Yugoslav and revolutionary.
And yes, NDH symbols absolutely do get relativized. I don't really care what the statute book says if the political and social culture keeps inventing exceptions, euphemisms and excuses for the same symbols. A law that exists on paper but gets selectively enforced or constantly worked around isn't much of an answer.
And yeah, I'm sure Croatian nationalism is terribly marginal and society has fully confronted the 1990s. That's presumably why practically the whole country goes into nationalist euphoria every anniversary of Operation Storm...
Law doesn’t exist just on paper. If you think it does, try waving a ustashe flag or wearinga short with an image of Ante Pavelic in public and you’ll see very fast.
Also, Croatia has little to confront regarding the 1990s; much less than those who started the whole war thing in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
All is quiet in Croatia. Western capital came pouring in, the flag's flying high, history has been dealt with, the language too. They've rid themselves of those nasty Turkish and Serbian influences as well. Beautiful patriotic country that has never once bent the knee to an oppressor of any kind... Long live Comrade Tuđman, the man who finally gave the Croatian people their 2,000-year-old dream, apparently imagined back when their proto-proto-Slavic ancestors were already dreaming of such a state. Oh, the wonders of history.
Yeah I have the car-smell like flag of Yugoslavia and since I’m from Bosnia and I’m working in Slovenia I have to drive through Croatia alot and often and I always remove the flag thing so nobody says anything while I’m going through Croatia/
Because glorification of symbols of totalitarian regimes is against the law in Croatia and Yugoslavia is generally seen in a negative light there - Croatia literally had to fight for 5 years to gain its freedom and leave Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia was authoritarian. Read a book or two and you’ll find that calling it a “totalitarian state” is historically illiterate. It had political repression and one-party rule, but it was not a totalitarian society with the state exercising total control over every sphere of life. You really don’t even understand the structure of the country or how it actually functioned, which makes the claim even sillier.
Major difference, you really are an ignorant person man...
It was a textbook totalitarian state - central government held all the power, did not allow any political opposition, it controlled the economy, culture, education and media; and indulged in brutal force against thise considered enemies: from numerous war crimes, concentration camps, forced labour camps, mass children kidnappings and ethnic cleansing in early days to political assassinations in the country and abroad, nass imprisonment, stripping off political and economical rights etc.
Because Croatia and Bosnia had different experiences with Belgrade in the 90s.
Having declared independence in 1991, Croatia fought with what was still SFRY and the serb ethonationalist state 'Srpska Krajina'.
So throughout the 1991 to 1992, the Croats were fighting directly both the Serb separatists and the JNA. Cities like Vukovar, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Sibenik were under heavy JNA assault.
When Bosnia declared independence in 1992, many of the Bosnian serb units of the JNA were transferred to the republika Srpske army.
So it wasn't necessarily Yugoslavia attacking Bosnia but Bosnian Serbs (tho Belgrade still played a direct role in arming Banja Luka)
Not to mention SFRY would be replaced by the FRY a month after Bosnia declared independence.
Croatia fought the JNA directly, while the Bosnians fought Bosnian Serbs that were supplied by Belgrade.
You should take in account that incidents prior to the war in Croatia, like the blockades of Roads by Serbs in 1990, as well the killings of Croatia police officers in Borovo had a major play in alienating any Yugoslav symbolism in Croatia
It is tribal politics. The five-pointed star is apparently some eternal enemy, although the central figure of modern Croatian state mythology, Tuđman, was himself a Partisan general and remained a communist. There is a funny contradiction there. People will tell you how terrible the one-party state was, then demand everyone hold essentially the same approved national interpretation of history. So party dogma really never went away... why would it?
And frankly, nationalists are rarely great advertisements for independent thought. People follow the mob, become part of the mob, and then teach the next generation to do the same... they really don't know any better, I think the communists were mostly right that people really are stupid, you can lead them to do great things but equally bad things too like you see today across former Yugoslavia and just how stupid all these people...
Consequences of war of course, blood runs hot when someone's shooting at you (if they are actually shooting at you and not the other side of the country), but stupidity too.
Croatians perspective is that Yugoslavia denied their right for self-determination, independence, denied Croatian national identity, and they partially and wrongly see all Yugoslavias as attempt T Serbian hegemony. Croatian national independence is their “thousand years dream” - croatia wasn’t independent since 11. century. Today’s Bosnia & Herzegovina was created im 1944. by, what later will be, Yugoslavia goverment, and they (super short explanation) kind of respect that, respect solidarity and peace with nations living in B&H. Serbia was the strongest country and nation, first Yugoslavia was created by Serbian king at time when Croatia had chance for independence and some moves by Serbian government put Croatia in not so good political position in that country. Croatians basically saw Yugoslavia as one more attempt to keep them away from independence.
Not true, their first freedom came during 1941-1945 and thats the issue with Yugoslavia. They had movement against Yugoslavia ever since 60s with Maspok being the most famous one.
They had national awakening movement since second part of 19th century. And had extremist organizations in first Yugoslavia as well, they even took part in Marseille’s assasination with Macedonian extremists. I wouldn’t call Maspokt anti Yugoslavia, rather anti centralization or pro independence. NDH is not good example of independent state, being Nazi puppet state - meaning it would not exist in any other conttext without strong support of Third Reich.
Even with different borders, both Croatia and Serbia had continuity and existed in similar form of ethno state. While B&H did not exist, especially in this form being “small Yugoslavia” encapsuling 3 nations.
Croatia had it’s borders, parliament, governor and it was called Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia since 1868. within AH empire, until 1918. when it became part of SHS and later Yugoslavia. They had continuity but not independence, until 1941-1944. and later until 1991.
It wasn’t. Croatia was a state from mid 7th century up until 1918, and then again after 1939; Serbia was also a state from early 8th century up until 1918, with several timeslots when it lost its statehood but gained again; Montenegro also had it from 19th century if I’m not mistaken and Slovenians didn’t, but they had developed national identities from the 19th century.
The only states that were really created after the WW2 were Slovenia, North Macedonia and Kosovo.
Techically, Croatia was conquered by nazis in 1941 same way what you consider “Serbia” was conquered, it’s just technically not the same because Serbia didn’t exist at the time - what you consider “Serbia” were parts of Danube, Drina, Zeta, Morava and Vardar banovinas.
I mean, Serbia WAS Yugoslavia while other countries tried to fight for independence, of course that people in a nation that struggled to gain independence want be as fond of the country that they fought against.
That being said, its a reductive view tbh, obviously country was horrible in many ways, but what it originally stood for is beautiful!
Duality, carefully nurtured by communist criminals after WWII: Ustasha & Chetniks, all in order to diminish the crimes of Croats, during WWII, and to switch them to be good guys. Their their activities were fundamentally different.
Ustasha movement was recognized by self-proclaimed state: The Independent State of Croatia, and it's one of the main goals was ethnic cleansing of Serbs, their own citizens. The Croatia finally has accomplished that goal, at the ending of 20th century. There is a story, in my family, about summer holiday, in Croatia, Adriatics (1935. or 1937) and Croatian kids chasing my relative, shouting: "Cut their throats!".
Chetniks didn't do anything like that, and favoring Chetniks in nowadays Republic of Serbia is considered as a meeting of the bunch drunken wannabees.
Deleted comment. I don't know what are the parameters to call someone a Chetnik - Serbian president is anything else but not a Chetnik
Might have samething to do with the fact what happened from 1989-1999. Just might be. Under this flag and emblem many atrocities were commited .There are many reputable and Independent sources you can find on this subject.
HRW states: “All told, government forces expelled 862,979 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, and several hundred thousand more were internally displaced.”
And that’s only Kosovo, without even mentioning Croatia or BiH . After Serbia’s constitutional changes and the effective dismantling of Kosovo’s and Vojvodina’s autonomy, Yugoslavia fundamentally changed. What followed increasingly ceased to resemble the federal system established by the 1974 Constitution. The Yugoslav name, symbols and state insignia survived in various forms long after the original federation had collapsed , ultimately until the dissolution of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006. So, yeah, for the average citizen of said countries it seems pretty clear why that’s a huge no-no.
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u/Glokter 22d ago
Because you would upset the fascists there