What past is present?

International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 41-52

  Brkljačić, Maja ^a  

^a CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

Croatia; History and representation; Twentieth century; Yugoslavia

Indexed keywords

EID: 4143057041     PISSN: 08914486     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1025384725907     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. It is important to bear this fact in mind. This will be, according to Branislava Baranovic, a crucial moment in determining the relationship of the ethnic majority group to the minorities living in Croatia. Since only Croats were seen as creators of the Croatian nation-state, the official political discourse regarded minorities, especially the most numerous among them (the Serbs), as a disturbing factor. Branislava Baranovic, personal conversation, Zagreb, May 31, 2000. As the essay shows later, this has left deep thumbprints on history-writing and history-teaching, both of which have uncritically imported and further enriched the dominant modes of representation from the sphere of politics.
2. Damir Agicic, in Povijest 4 [History 4 - history textbook for the fourth grade of the secondary school], ed. Suzana Lecek, Magdalena Najbar-Agicic, Damir Agicic, and Tvrtko Jakovina (Zagreb, 1999), 284. This sentence epitomizes perfectly the Croatian solution to the challenge of the much-needed (re)positioning of the country in the region.
3. The material analyzed in the essay is comprised of the titles that are used at Croatian universities as the standard manuals and course books on the basis of which students acquire most of their knowledge of the twentieth century. According to Georg Iggers, state universities have the task to stabilize the social order. Georg G. Iggers, "The Uses and Misuses of History. The Responsibility of the Historian, Past and Present," International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo, Norway, August 9, 2000. It is thus easy to argue that the standard university texts represents the official national discourse.
4. Hrvoje Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest Hrvatske [Contemporary political history of Croatia], 3rd rev. ed. (Zagreb, 1999), xi, original emphasis. All translations from Croatian are mine.
5. I b i d.
6. Ibid., xii.
7. Ibid., 5.
8. Ibid., 7.
9. Franjo Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, 1918-1941 [Croatia in monarchist Yugoslavia, 1918-1941], vol. I, (Zagreb: Hrvatska Sveuc. Naklada, 1993), 61; and Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 13.
10. Franjo Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, 1918-1941 [Croatia in monarchist Yugoslavia, 1918-1941], vol. I, (Zagreb: Hrvatska Sveuc. Naklada, 1993), 61; and Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 13.
11. Matkovic is even more concrete and his conclusions more far-reaching. He claims that around the same time (the year 1844, when the Serbian ideologue Ilija Garasanin wrote the famous essay Nacertanije), "imperialism became the foundation of long-term Serbian politics. . . . The purpose of the ideology formulated in Nacertanije was expansion of the Serbian territory and assimilation of other non-Serbian national groups. . . . Serbian politics has found its inspiration in Garasanin's essay many times, up until the present day" (Suvremena politicka povijest, 13).
12. Ibid., 23. Croatian youth is joined sometimes by the older generation of Croatian politicians, such as Josip Juraj Strossmayer. Serbian youth and older politicians, Tudjman teaches us, never fancied such "supranational fantasies," from which they were shielded by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the policies of the Serbian state. Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, vol. 1, 87.
13. Croatian youth is joined sometimes by the older generation of Croatian politicians, such as Josip Juraj Strossmayer. Serbian youth and older politicians, Tudjman teaches us, never fancied such "supranational fantasies," from which they were shielded by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the policies of the Serbian state. Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, vol. 1, 87.
14. Meaning here the forces of the Entente.
15. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 26, 31-32.
16. Frano Supilo, as quoted in ibid., 40.
17. Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, vol. I, 121.
18. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 33.
19. Ibid., 36.
20. Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, vol. I, 129.
21. Ivo Pilar, as quoted in ibid., 153.
22. Ibid., 227.
23. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 58.
24. Ibid., 61.
25. Tudjman, Hrvatska u monarhistickoj Jugoslaviji, vol. I., 237.
26. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 67, and Tudjman, 225, 237-38.
27. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 67, and Tudjman, 225, 237-38.
28. Tudjman, 373.
29. Ibid., 276, 300-302.
30. Ibid., 29.
31. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 167, emphasis mine.
32. Ibid., 184.
33. I b i d.
34. Ibid., 183.
35. Ibid., 175.
36. Ibid., 179-80.
37. Ibid., 181-83.
38. Ibid., 189.
39. Ibid., 190.
40. Ibid., 191-92.
41. Wolfgang Höpken, "Derzweite Weltkrieg in den jugoslawischen und post-jugoslawischen Schulbüchern, in Öl ins Feuer? Schulbücher, ethnische Stereotypen und Gewalt in Südosteuropa (Oil on Fire? Textbooks, Ethnic Stereotypes and Violence in South-Eastern Europe), ed. Wolfgang Höpken (Hannover, 1996), 165.
42. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 204, 205.
43. Ibid., 204, 206.
44. Ibid., 208.
45. Ibid., 177.
46. I am grateful to Sandra Prlenda for pointing this out to me.
47. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, p. 212.
48. Equally, the key terms of the communist epoch that were significant for the Yugoslav system (such as non-alignment or self-management) have disappeared entirely. We could start explaining this by proposing that these were features characteristic of the whole of Yugoslavia and not Croatia specifically, and that the latter, as it was said at the beginning, stands at the core of the authors' interests.
49. Accordingly, the author finds the introduced federative system to be declamatory and not real, with federal units enjoying only formal independence. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 213.
50. Ibid., 218.
51. Ibid., 214.
52. Ibid., 226.
53. We do not, however, learn anything substantial about his political and ideological agenda. Ibid., 215.
54. Again - the Croatian politicians were not inspired by the quest for freedom and democracy, but only by the struggle for the nation.
55. Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest, 234-39. The Croatian political and intellectual elite, as the conclusion spells out, tried to oppose communism but fell victim to the communist Belgrade center.
56. Ibid., 243.
57. Wolfgang Hopken, "History Education and Yugoslav (Dis-)Integration," in Höpken, ed., Ölins Feuer, 114.
58. This could, perhaps, explain the lack of the exact names of the people from Croatia active in the communist period. They become visible, i.e., they gained names, only once they oppose the system, for example, around 1971.
59. Macek, as quoted in Matkovic, Suvremena politicka povijest Hrvatske, 219.
60. The representation of the Ustashas is only slightly different from the representation of "other Croatian patriots." In the books analyzed, what distinguishes the Ustashas from others are not their intentions or their goal, neither one of which is questioned for a single moment; what sets them apart is the way they tried to materialize this goal, with their biggest fault being connecting the destiny of the country to the destiny of the fascist forces of Hitler and Mussolini. Matkovic, Politicka povijest Hrvatske, 183.
61. As quoted in Branislava Baranovic, "Udzbenici povijesti i nacionalni identitet mladih [History textbooks and the national identity of the youth]," unpublished manuscript, 3.
62. Dubravka Stojanovic on the Serbian side has come to the same conclusions. See Dubravka Stojanović, "The Balkans, Wars and Textbooks. The Case of Serbia," in Höpken, ed., Öl ins Feuer, 143-58.
63. Amos Funkenstein, "Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness," History and Memory 1 (Spring/Summer 1989).