Professor of History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, Ivo Goldstein, commented on our list of provocations of Italian fascists in Rijeka, but also about the rapid growth of the extreme right in Croatia. We started the interview by asking him to comment on the events of Thursday, which upset the people of Rijeka.
Is it an organized escalation of Italian fascism?
- From the information that is still to come, there is no doubt that the matter was organized, that neo-fascists were preparing to make a mess and that only timely intervention by our services prevented more trouble. This is an absolutely new thing in Croatian-Italian relations.
In past years and decades, there have been various anniversaries that neo-fascists could have celebrated, but such a powerful provocation has never taken place. Of course, this is scandalous for every condemnation, not only did these people come to Rijeka in an organized manner, but also that the monument in Trieste is being erected to D'Annunzi.
Neither strength nor desire
Croatian authorities have unanimously condemned the incident?
One has to wonder what our country has done to prevent such a provocation. As we have seen, all the representatives of the government made themselves known: the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. But it had been known for months before that a monument was erected in Trieste D'Annunzi.
They needed to talk to the authorities in Rome, they needed to ask for a statement, to demand that they publicly pledge their passions to calm down, to clearly state that Italy respects all agreements signed after World War II, including those key, Osimo agreements.
He also needed to press Antony Tajani for the pig he was cutting. One could also think positively - to make with the Italians a kind of manifestation to commemorate this anniversary together.
Accordingly, more should have been done. However, our country does not know this and does not have the capacity to do such a thing. Because, to criticize D'Annunzi and at the same time in many cities have the streets of Mile Budak, who also wrote books ...
Of course, to be sarcastic, Budak's poetry is truly superb: his lyrics "Serbs on the Willows" and "Running Dogs across the Drina" are anthological values. Therefore, if we support Budak, then why complain about fascist poetry such as D'Annunzio?
So we have a right-wing government that tolerates philosopher incidents, and it is hard to expect that they will wholeheartedly suppress the pro-fascist outbursts of neighboring nations, so are they dangerous for Croatia as well?
- Exactly. How does our government defend the Italians from remembering that they once ruled Rijeka and Istria, when our president believes that calling Herceg-Bosna in Thompson's poem "Are You Beautiful" is no provocation? In the poem, therefore, in which "Herceg-Bosna" - whatever that means - is presented practically as part of Croatia. Therefore, we are not pure in this sense.
Our government is as it is - it has neither the credibility nor the strength nor the desire to invoke Joseph Broz Tito, who, while fighting for the Yugoslav northwestern border, said in Vis:
At the time, he explicitly mentioned Rijeka, Istria, the Slovenian Littoral and Carinthia and noted that "it is about correcting past injustices, Versailles, Rapallo and other treaties". Last week was the 75th anniversary of Tito's famous statement.
Tito defended the northwestern border of Yugoslavia, but also the present-day borders of Croatia and Slovenia. Accordingly, these words of Tito should be repeated today, they should still be a light and a sign to say: "Hey, you stay there for a while: we will not go elsewhere, we will not give ours!"
New hysteria against Serbs
The SDSS president Milorad Pupovac also spoke about the threats of the Croatian extreme right in a different context these days.
It is difficult for me to enter into relations in the ruling coalition. But what Pupovac said was not in dispute. He mildly pointed out, through diplomatic vocabulary, that there are some tendencies in today's Croatia that are reminiscent of NDH.
We are in a theater of the absurd, because those who attack him most severely, who are partly Ustasha nostalgics, should actually thank him and congratulate him. Namely, they think and speak their best about "endehasia", so following this logic, Pupovac said that NDH is the same as today's Croatia, in their eyes this should not be a problem. Of course, such people would catch Pupovac by any word, just to demonize him and make him a problem.
There is a will to expel the SDSS, as a political party of Serbs in Croatia, from the ruling coalition and thus from a legitimate political space, and to send a clear message to Serbs in Croatia: "Don't answer."
- That's right, there are these two dimensions to the problem. But it is part of a general political action in recent years that has intensified these days, and which, in some elements, has absolutely similarities to what has been happening in the NDH. I do not believe that today we can repeat what was happening in "endehasia", but I must warn, and I am allergic, to all tendencies that go in this direction, even if they are very far away.
What are the tendencies?
- Let those who want to push Pupovac and the SDSS out of power, and are Ustashtostalgic, say that any resemblance to what I will read now is accidental and unintentional. I will quote the "Principles of the Croatian Ustasha Movement" proclaimed by Pavelic in 1933: "In Croatian national and state affairs, in an independent, independent state, Croatia must not be decided by anyone who is not a knee and blood member of the Croatian people."
It is clear, then, that Serbs should not decide on these matters, and that this is an Ustasha principle. By what logic does the SDSS, after such a statement by Pupovac, want to be thrown out of government? Second, the hysteria that has been spreading all these months is reminiscent of the hysteria that spread in the spring and summer of 1941, in the first months of the NDH.
Such an atmosphere predated the mass atrocities of the summer of 1941. I will quote Milo Budak from that time: »Croatia has enemies who are not members of the Croatian national community. They are Serbs and Jews. ”He rushed for crime. "Eat only half a bowl with Vlach, and kill him on the head with half a bowl." And of course, "Either bow down or remove yourself."
Milovan Zanic, Minister-President of the Legislative Commission, said in a public speech in June 1941: “You get up, you know, I speak openly: this country, our homeland, must be Croatian and no one else, and therefore those who came here. you also need them to leave.
This has to be the land of Croats and no one else, and there is no such method that we as Ustasha will use to make this country truly Croatian, and to cleanse it of Serbs who have threatened us for hundreds of years and who would endanger us first. We do not keep it secret, it is the policy of this state, and when we do, we will only do what is written in the Ustasha principles.
HDZ Vice President Milijan Brkic told Milorad Pupovac that he should move if he is not satisfied. For seven years, I have been persistently trying to prevent the use of the Cyrillic script in Vukovar, and I remind you
- One of the first decisions made by the NDH authorities was to ban the Cyrillic alphabet, on April 25, 1941. Also, Serbs in the public space and in the NDH are still collectively demonized today by claiming that they never loved Croatia.
Ustashonostalgic people, like Thompson who sings about it, gladly remember the Jasenovac camp, knowing that it is massively killed - Thompson sings, "This is the house of Max's butchers." And there are more such examples. All this is reminiscent of 1941 and the preparatory steps for the mass Ustasha slaughter.
Ominous words
Can you comment on the physical attacks on Serbs in recent weeks?
- The way the Uzdol attack was organized - an organized group that traveled 75 kilometers to beat Serbs and smash around a coffee shop - is strikingly reminiscent of some events of 1941. These are detachments, squads of death.
Luckily no one was seriously injured, but anything could happen. Recalling such death squads again takes us back to 1941. I will recall the murder of a prominent Karlovac lawyer, Milan Vujicic, carried out by three nineteen-year-old Karlovac men, aggrieved by their elders. Vujicic was a Serb, but in opposition to the former monarchist dictatorship.
These Karlovac balavacs were told that "for our cause", Vujicic should be killed because he was a danger to the state, and they did so, despite being married to Anastasia, a Croat whose uncle Pero Blaskovic was even promoted in those days. NDH army generals. All this was not enough to protect Vujicic, but he was taken from Karlovac to a nearby forest and killed there.
The question is who made these people from Split hasty and organized them to go to work in Uzdolje. And why? Under what charge? Because someone, almost 30 years after Croatia gained independence, imagine, cheering for the Red Star. It has to do with fan violence in general, with organizing fan groups as militant units, and of course with the war, with fan groups and on the Serbian side.
That history is a little more complicated, but what happened in Uzdolje is a new dimension of violent behavior towards Serbs, not forgetting the horrific beating of Radoje Petkovic in Viskovo, which ended in his death.
These are all arguments that show that there are elements of fascist in this society. If not only the critical public, but also the authorities, oppose them, they could continue to strengthen. Who is not aware of this and is in high positions is absolutely irresponsible.
As a kind of warning, the President of the Republic repeated the letter from 2016, in which she practically stated that the minority victims of the attack were themselves to blame for what was happening to them, because they allegedly "offend the Croatian people"?
- It's a scandal in itself. To repeat a letter to Pupovac, as a disobedient student who you have to repeat twice to understand, is humiliating. The President of the Republic has constitutional powers that are completely contrary to what Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic is doing. Another dimension of the problem is that what the constitution may not write, but liberal democracy requires, is the protection of the rights of all minorities.
Because, minorities - at this moment Serbian, and then others in Croatia - feel threatened. Pupovac and the Serbs have done nothing this month to harm Croatia. And it has been 25 years since aggression and war.
How much longer do we have to live this war in order to remove a mortgage from the Serbian community from the perspective of the Croatian ultra-rightist? The hatred of the Serbs seems to be a lasting "value" to which they are powered. The trains that Andrej Plenkovic needed to take to do something were long gone. It was to act in the manner of Ivo Sanader: when the Ustashas erected a monument, send a bulldozer overnight.
Well, here we are
It should be recalled that Tito's Yugoslavia defended the northwestern border, and more than that: in the spring of 1952, the governments of the United States and Great Britain decided that the administration in Zone A would surrender to Italy, sparking fierce protests by the Yugoslav side.
Demonstrated throughout Yugoslavia; rallies were held in businesses and schools, and the largest rally was organized on April 15 in Zagreb, where, at the time, the Republic Square - today Ban Jelacic Square - gathered, according to newspaper reports, about 200,000 citizens who "manifested their determination to defend our independence." and rights. "
It was "a magnificent mobilization in a unanimous vocation: 'we do not give Trieste', a document of the will and courage of a people who cannot be intimidated by anything." But, of course, this authority regards the reference to Tito and Yugoslavia as blasphemy. Well then, here we are.
