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Franjo TudjmanPresident of Croatia |
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The chief political and military strategist of the inaugurating of
sovereign Croatia, its international recognition, defence and victory
in the fatherland war - that is how Franjo Tudjman is being presented
in lexicons, and that is how he is generally treated in public. Tudjman was born in 1922, in Veliko Trgovisce, in Zagorje, not far from Kumrovec, where Josip Broz Tito was born. After his schooling in Zagreb, he took part in the anti-fascist movement of 1941. Thus, he will later claim; he was very much disappointed by anti-Croat tendencies among partisans, so much so that he thought about committing suicide. He said that in television interview given in the spring of 1996, and repeated it in an extensive interview, published in the weekly "Globus" in the same year. At the beginning of 1945 he left for Belgrade, for a military school. He worked at prominent military posts, in the Supreme Personnel Administration of the Ministry of People's Defence, in the General staff of JNA (Yugoslav People's Army), and on the editorial staff of the Military Encyclopaedia. He became Tito's youngest general. He wrote fiery texts in glory of the people's liberation combat, Communist party, and socialist revolution. There are different versions of his leaving the military service in 1961. He claims that happened at his request, and that he wanted to dedicate himself to scientific and literary work. He returned to Zagreb, where, in an agreement with party leadership, he established the Institute for the History of the Workers' Movement. He received a doctorate in historical science under ethically dubious circumstances, (he could not do it in Zagreb so it was arranged that he do it in Zadar, but later the respectable historian Ljubo Boban publicly accused Tudjman of plagiarising his doctoral dissertation from Boban's works to a great extent). Tudjman was politically engaged, and on very good terms with former ruling circles. He came into conflict with official policy for two reasons. One was his interpretation of the number of victims of the ustasha regime in the concentration camp Jasenovac, and the other was his views on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tudjman claimed that he objected to the collective complex of guilt, that was put on the Croat people because of the evils NDH (Independent State of Croatia) committed in the Second World War. The others would say that, opposing the manipulation of the number of victims in Jasenovac, he himself played with the manipulations. His later views, from the period when he came into power in Croatia, will show that he is prone to a revision of historic truths. He would declare the quisling Independent State of Croatia as "the expression of historic aspirations of the Croat people." (At the First assembly of HDZ in 1990, in Zagreb.) In his books, he would accept interpretations according to which, the Jews are also responsible for the holocaust. In the pre-election campaign he would say, he is "happy his wife is neither Serb nor Jew." He would give the initiative to bury in the memorial complex at Jasenovac, beside the victims of the concentration camp, the remnants of their murderers also. However, an alarmed international public stopped that attempt of "altering history with hoes." In 1963, he began to publicly support solutions that meant the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He defended the pre-war agreement Cvetkovic-Macek, through which the regional unit Banovina Croatia was formed. Great parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina were included in that unit. Tudjman claimed that the agreement "solved national question of Croats." Former communist head of Croatia, Vladimir Bakaric, considered that view an invitation to a radical altering of Yugoslavia, to a division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to establishing Greater Croatia. He was thrown out of the Communist party because of his nationalism (the party commission claimed his attitudes were "an appropriate defence of Croatian national feeling"), and pensioned him off in 1967. When the persecution of members of the national movement, known as "Croatian Spring" began in 1972, Tudjman was sentenced to two years in prison, although he played a peripheral role in that movement. Then, in 1981, because of interviews given to the foreign media, he was sentenced to three years in prison. Krleza claims, Tito himself intervened with the instruction: "Do not pack Tudjman." He served a minor part of those sentences. The first one was reduced to nine months, and the second time he spent in prison was about a year and a half. In 1987, when he was given back his passport, as the first among all Croat dissidents, he travelled to Canada and the United States of America. There, he established contacts with Croat emigrants. He arranged co-operation with the extreme, ustasha portion of these emigrants. He promised them the annexation of Herzegovina, and they promised him financial support to come to power. Prominent Slovenian military analyst Teodor Gorsek claims, Canadian Croats told him about the arrangement. Tudjman would force a line of division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the agreement Cvetkovic-Macek, and "the diaspora would finance his election campaign. One talked even about five million dollars!" Two years later, in 1989, Tudjman founded the party Croat Democratic Union. It was a nationalist party, in fact, a revolutionary movement. The aim was not only the change of political structure, but also of almost all social relations. HDZ won in the first multi-party elections in 1990, that took place in the shadow of the growing threat from the East. Franjo Tudjman became the president of Croatia. Since that point, he has had major influence on Croation internal and international affairs. The system was introduced which enabled him, de facto, to make all major decisions. His aim was an independent Croatia, nationally as compact as possible, and territorially as big as possible. His policy was a hard nationalistic one, and his style of ruling was rigidly authoritarian. The most intriguing thing, however, was his relationship with Slobodan Milosevic. Although "vozd" (leader), by using JNA (Yugoslav People's Army), that consisted predominantly of Serbs, and by causing an upsurge of the Serbs in Croatia, to insurrection, creating in fact an aggression against Croatia, accompanied by dreadful destruction and human losses, Tudjman never spoke badly about him. The two met alone already in the spring of 1991 in Karadjordjevo and then, two days later, in Tikves. A curt statement says; an agreement was attained: "In the process of a peaceful and democratic solution of the Yugoslav crisis, one must respect the interests of the Serb and Croat people on the whole." Only later, it became clear what the formulation "on the whole" meant. A few days later, at a meeting of six presidents of the former republics in Split, Tudjman and Milosevic tried to initiate an agreement about the division of Bosnia. (Alija Izetbegovic among others, confirmed that). Serb-Croat expert groups were already drawing new maps on a large scale. There was a strategic consensus between Tudjman and Milosevic on at least two points - the destruction of Yugoslavia and the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia represented in some parts "the agreed war." For decades, Tudjman had supported an attitude that, based on a new historic agreement between Croats and Serbs, the territory of ex-Yugoslavia should be rearranged. The concept of establishing Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia meant the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the moving of people. In order to initiate peoples to move and separate, a war was needed. It was impossible to achieve that otherwise. Ethnically clean territories were not the outcome of the war but rather the aim. At the beginning of the war, exposed to the aggression, Croatia, with its sacrifice, hid the real aspect of Tudjman's policy. He would show that when he became stronger. In the summer of 1995, with American help, Krajina (from the beginning of the war under Serb control), was freed. Local Serbs, whom Milosevi_cfirst pushed into crime and war, and then sacrificed, left Croatia in an exodus. Tudjman triumphed. In the so called "Train of freedom", driving from Zagreb to Split over freed Krajina, he spoke about Serbs as "cancer that had to be removed." He ridiculed them, claiming that they ran away in such a hurry, "they had no time to pick up their dirty drawers." The few thousand Serbs, who remained on that territory, were exposed to all kinds of harassment, including murder. The authorities were not sanctioning the crimes. They moved Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina into Serb houses, and did everything to prevent any return of the Serbs who had fled. From 1963 Tudjman continuously had claimed that Bosnia and Herzegovina was an artificial creation. Later he would assert that it had to follow the same destiny as Yugoslavia. He denied nationality to the then Moslems; today Bosnjaks. He declared several times that they were actually of Croat origin. At the beginning, he proclaimed quite openly the attitude that the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina was actually a necessity. Later, under international pressure, he would do that somewhat less transparently. During the election campaign, before the first multi-party elections, he talked about the "unnatural Croat pretzel," that had to be "filled." One of the first decrees of HDZ emphasised the aim of creating Croatia in its "natural and historic borders." In an interview given at New Year's 1991/1992, and published in daily papers, Tudjman offered, as an ideal solution, the "disappearance of the colonial creation - Bosnia and Herzegovina." However, "One part of a small Bosnian nation could remain, where the Muslims would be the majority, and that state could be a buffer state between Croatia and Serbia." That was the period immediately after the cease-fire had been signed in Croatia, while in Bosnia the war was approaching, carried on among others, by the units of JNA, who were withdrawing from Croatia with arms. Tudjman would try to encourage help for his obsession from influential people. There are many testimonies to that. Warren Zimmerman, the last American ambassador to pre-war Yugoslavia, quoted in his memoirs; Tudjman admitted to him at the beginning of '92 that he had talked about the division of Bosnia with Milosevic, with leaders of the Yugoslav Army, and with Bosnian Serbs. "Let Milosevic take 50% of the territory, he controls it anyway. We will be satisfied with less than 50%. We are willing to leave a smaller part of the territory around Sarajevo to Muslims ... the reason why there is no peace in Bosnia is because one did not approach Bosnian Serbs in the proper way," Zimmerman cites Tudjman's words. To the astonishing question, how can he trust the person, who carried out the aggression against Croatia, Tudjman declared: "I trust Milosevic." The conversation took place two months after the fall of Vukovar, and the massacre that was committed there. At his numerous press conferences, and in his interviews, Tudjman would later talk about the necessity of forming a nationally compact Croatian territory; about the need to create a Croatian strategic rear in B&H. He would applaud the model of Cyprus, as an ideal one for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He would claim that there was a conflict of civilisations in Bosnia, and therefore Bosnia was impossible. In keeping with that, he would draw maps of a torn Bosnia, even on serviettes. Two years ago, the London Times published a drawing (on a serviette) made during a dinner party, personally done by the president of Croatia as a model of how to divide B&H. When he was forced to sign the Washington agreement, through which the Federation of B&H was established, Tudjman defined the Federation as a model for a dual split of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and as a confederate annexation of the Federation to Croatia. He interpreted the Dayton plan in the same way. Tudjman did not speak about the destruction of Bosnia only theoretically. Since the plan of creating Greater Croatia was a pendant to the plan of forming Greater Serbia, the technology was similar to the Serb one. Sarajevo would be systematically stripped of its legality; Croat cadres were withdrawn from central organs of power and then the organs were denounced as being only Muslim ones. "Muslim" was identified with fundamentalism. As a match to the Serb quasi-state that was established on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croats had already proclaimed the Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosna at the beginning of May 1992. In Graz, Karadzic and Boban signed an agreement about the cessation of Serb-Croat hostilities, and about the boundary along the Neretva valley, and in Mostar. Then, the war with Bosnjaks would break out, in which Tudjman would even engage the troops of the regular Croatian army, and in which the International Community would finally recognise Croatia as the aggressor. However, the Washington agreement, signed in the spring of 1994, saved Tudjman from defeat in Central Bosnia. Even when, early in the autumn of 1995, the Croatian army, in co-operation with the army of B&H, checked Serbs and created conditions for the signing of the Dayton accord; the Croatian army entered certain areas with the purpose of holding them permanently under control. The greatest victims of TudjmanÕs policy were the Bosnian Croats. As the smallest in number, and the most dispersed people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, their grouping in Herzegovina meant a great move. On the account of the separatist ambitions of Herzegovinians, stirred up from Zagreb, the interests of Bosnians were sacrificed. The result - in Bosnia and Herzegovina today there live 50% fewer Croats than before the war, and the prospects are that they will continue to leave. Herzegovinians cannot join Croatia, as Tudjman had promised them. Croats in Central Bosnia were pushed into war with Bosnjaks, and the results of that conflict will be felt for a long time. People from Posavina are like Croat Kurds, expelled and displaced. To return to their homes, they have to contest against the authorities in the Serb entity, but also against the great plot from Zagreb, that exchanged Posavina for Drvar. Tudjman's political concept is 'anachronic' both at an internal and international level. He developed a strange mixture of monarchical style of ruling and of party state. He established the Court, with operetta attributes. All political power is concentrated in one hand. All economic power is in the hands of several families, close to the authorities. The cult of Tudjman's personality is being built. National wealth is being redistributed. Croatia is being more and more divided into war profiteers, and war losers; into the friends of the authority, and the others. A rigid attitude towards the public, and control of all media caused the first mass demonstrations against Tudjman's authority. Protesting against an attempt to suppress local Radio 101 more than a hundred thousand people demonstrated in Zagreb at the end of '96. The democratic insufficiency, and authoritarian personality of the Croat president are also the reason for the great international isolation of Croatia. Although during his rather large life span he has crossed the road from Tito's general to the person who destroyed Tito's work, Franjo Tudjman has not managed to pullout from Broz's shadow. He personally is, along with his authority, a bad imitation of the late president of the former Yugoslavia - from the distinct inclination towards authority of one party and one person, to usurping Brijuni, and parading in a white uniform, Tudjman adapted everything that was bad in Tito's regime, and rejected everything that was good in it. Jelena Lovric FAMA International - Zagreb DOSSIER, 1997 Back to Top |
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