National identity-building and the “Ustaša-nostalgia” in Croatia: the past that will not pass

Abstract

Most scholarship on post-Communist Croatia claims that the first Croatian president, Franjo Tuđman, intentionally rehabilitated the legacy of the World War II (WWII) Croatian Ustaša and its Nazi-puppet state. The rehabilitation of the Ustaša has been linked to Tuđman's national reconciliation politics that tended toward a particular “forgetting of the past.” The national reconciliation was conceptualized as a joint struggle of both the Croatian anti-fascist Partisan and the Croatian WWII fascist Ustaša successors to achieve Croatian independence. However, the existing scholarship does not offer a comprehensive explanation of the nexus between national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of the Ustaša. Hence, this article will present how “Ustaša-nostalgia” does not stem from Tuđman's intentions, but rather from the morphological gap occurring in Tuđman's nation-building idea. Namely, Tuđman's condemnation of the entire idea of Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia eventually brought about the perception that any historical agent advocating the idea of an independent Croatia is better than any form of Croatian Yugoslavism. Finally, the article will present how contemporary Croatian society is still seeped in “Ustaša-nostalgia” due to the hesitation of the post-Tuđman Croatian politics to come to terms with the legacy of his national reconciliation politics.

Remembering the Causes of Collective Violence and the Role of Propaganda in the Yugoslav Wars

“…As Sell (2003, 309-310) observed, most people did not choose this state-sponsored ethnic identity but discovered that it was imposed on them as succession ensued (see also Gagnon 2004; Lučić 2015). As a political movement, state-sponsored ethnicity—centering on an imagined history but also traumatic collective-memories of WWII (Dragojević 2013; Đurašković 2016), innocence (Živković 2011), and destiny for the people or nation as a unique ethnic, religious, and national community—emerged most memorably in Serbia during the final years of Yugoslavia. Serb nationalists are remembered as exploiting popular crisis-sentiments, ending the civil rhetoric of the Yugoslav era by openly insulting ethnoreligious outgroups, portraying Croatian and Bosnia independence as renewed persecutions of Serbs, and advocating for a land where Serbs could live free from persecution (Oberschall 2012).…”

Razvoj izučavanja hrvatske politike od šezdesetih do danas

“…Ne treba zaboraviti istraživanja koja otvaraju temu suočavanja s naslijeđem komunističke vladavine u Hrvatskoj (v. Cipek, 2014;, a ni ispitivanje usmene povijesti kroz obiteljske narative o 1945. godini kao prijelomnici (Cipek, 2009) te analizu poimanja hrvatske nacije za vrijeme socijalizma na temelju iščitavanja Bakarićevih ideja (Đurašković, 2021). Hrvatska se politologija u tome razdoblju ponovno bavi i naslijeđem NDH te problemom povijesnog revizionizma nakon 1990. godine (v. Đurašković, 2016;Kasapović, 2018), ali i analizom povijesnih narativa kojima su se sámi ustaše koristili za potrebe vlastite legitimacije (v. Cipek, 2008). S protokom vremena od Tuđmanove smrti javljaju se i politološke studije o njegovom poimanju izgradnje nacije (Đurašković, 2014), ali i radovi o političkoj emigraciji, primjerice o Bogdanu Radici (v. Đurašković, 2020).…”

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

“…For example, since 1991, a great deal of critical scholarly attention has been devoted to Croatian memory politics, most recently reflected in controversies over the fascist Croatian Ustaša during World War II and the atrocities committed at the Jasenovac concentration camp (the largest of several such camps) in Croatia, the war's aftermath and 45 years of socialist Yugoslavia (e.g. Banjeglav, 2012;Đurašković, 2016;Gagnon, 2004;Goldstein and Goldstein, 2016;Pavlaković, 2008Pavlaković, , 2010Pavlaković and Pauković, 2019;Radonić, 2018;Sindbaek Andersen, 2012;Subotić, 2019aSubotić, , 2019bYeomans, 2012Yeomans, , 2015. 6 The transnational manifestations of Croatian victimhood narratives and their contemporary representation in diasporic imaginaries and commemorative practices, though, have been under-researched.…”