Excerpts from Anto Knezevic's "An Analysis of Serbian Propaganda"

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WHY IS TUDJMAN'S "WILDERNESS" UNDER ATTACK?


The saying "Habent sua fata libelli" (books have their own fate) is attributed to the Roman writer Terentianus Maurus from the first century A.D. Tudjman's Wilderness of Historical Reality proves that the saying still holds true even nineteen centuries later.

Written and published before the first democratic elections in post-World War II Croatia, the book turned up in the center of international public opinion in 1991 and 1992. Although the book examines the historical and philosophical aspects of war and violence, the international media present it in an almost exclusively political context.

It is significant that the polemics about Tudjman's book coincided at the time when Croatia was seeking international recognition of its independence. It is entirely clear that the attacks on Wilderness of Historical Reality are directed against the President of the Republic of Croatia, not at the Historian Dr. Franjo Tudjman. The first edition of the book was published in 1988, but the book was attacked in the international media three years later, at the height of the war in Croatia. The attacks are an expression of those inter- national forces which strove to postpone the international recognition of Croatia. These attacks have been carried out by non-historians.

Still, the attempt to postpone recognition of Croatia cannot by itself explain certain facts. It is well- known that Tudjman has written other books: Rat protiv rata (War Against War, 1957), Stvaranje socijalisticke Jugoslavije (The Creation of Socialist Yugoslavia, 1960), Okupacija i revolucija (Occupation and Revolution, 1963), Uvod u historiju socijalisticke Jugoslavije (Introduction to the History of Socialist Yugoslavia, 1964), Jugoslavenski odbor i stvaranje zajednicke drzave jugoslavenskih naroda (The Yugoslav Committee and the Creation of a Common State of Yugoslav Peoples, 1966), Velike ideje i mali narodi (Great Ideas and Small Nations, 1969), Nationalism in Contemporary Europe (Boulder, Colo., 1981), etc.

When some politician is to be toppled, then his entire biography and bibliography are "raked up." Here one might ask the question: why, out of all these works by Tudjman, is the book Wilderness of Historical Reality attacked?

Was Wilderness of Historical Reality attacked because of its "anti-Semitic" contents, as the American Balkan specialist Robert D. Kaplan asserts? No. Neither the book itself nor the political moves of the President of Croatia offer support for such an accusation. Tudjman explicitly condemns anti-Semitism in his book as well as in a letter to Edgar Bronfman, the President of the World Jewish Congress (January 8, 1992).

A "Correction" printed in the Congressional Record on Thursday, July 11, 1991 indicates that the American Congress had indeed received some misleading information about Tudjman's Wilderness:

CORRECTION

Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, last year I submitted for the RECORD an important study on rising anti- Semitism in Eastern Europe. The study was drafted by the London-based Institute of Jewish Affairs in coordination with the Anti-Defamation League.

Since that time, it has come to my attention that a mistaken translation of an excerpt from a book by Dr. Franjo Tudjman, leader of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union and now the President of the Yugoslavian Republic of Croatia, gave a misleading and inaccurate picture.

In discussing antisemitic incidents in Yugoslavia, the report stated that a 1989 book by Dr. Tudjman entitled "Wanderings of Historical Truth" sic! included a blatantly antisemitic reference. The report described the antisemitic reference as a "particularly worrying incident."

It seems, however, that the antisemitic comment was not made by Dr. Tudjman. The statement was a quotation by a former Serbian prisoner in one of the Nazi death camps. Dr. Tudjman was quoting the prisoner, specifically identifying his statement as anti- semitic.

Dr. Howard Spier, the author of this report, has apologized for the, error. He was quoting from an article which appeared in the London Jewish Chronicle by Srdjan Matic, a leading official of the Zagreb Jewish community. Mr. Matic has since indicated that he was misinterpreted.

I am pleased to correct the RECORD at this time.

In a letter to members of the U. S. Congress (January 21, 1992) Tudjman writes:

Dear Member of Congress:

On behalf or the citizens of independent, democratic Croatia, I extend my greetings to the distinguished and esteemed Members of the U.S. Congress.

I am compelled to communicate with you in response to recent articles that have appeared in the general press in the U.S. that have accused me of the serious charge of anti-Semitism. The baseless charges stem mainly from inaccurate translations from Croatian into English of my writings Wilderness of Historical Reality as well as quotations that are either erroneous or taken out of context.

I am deeply troubled by these false allegations and consider them to be a stain on my personal character and honor, and by extension that of the Croatian people. This letter is meant to seek your under- standing as representatives of the American people of my past and present position on the subject.

1. In 1941, the Nazi puppet regime in occupied Croatia put a price on my head. The same year, a leading Jewish physician fled Croatia and entrusted me with the safekeeping of his son.

2. I fought the Nazis during World War II as a member of the resistance forces, attaining the rank of General. Many Croatians fought against the Ustasha regime of terror and evil and against the Nazi-Fascist occupation.

3. My brother was killed by the Nazis in 1943.

4. My mother and father were killed by the Communists in 1946.

5. I was jailed by the post-war Communist regime because of my anti-totalitarian political views.

6. I am unalterably opposed to oppression from the right and the left, and I condemn in the strongest terms possible the evil genocide which the Nazis and their puppet collaborators in Croatia and other countries perpetrated against the Jews, Gypsies, Croatians, Serbs and other groups.

The systematic process the Nazis developed and implemented to exterminate the Jews of Europe made it, undeniably, one of the greatest crimes in history against mankind.

In this regard, the Ustasha regime of the Independent State of Croatia committed countless war crimes against humanity. I deeply regret the fact that the Jewish Community of Croatia was victimized as part of the Holocaust of World War II. As President of the Republic of Croatia, I will oppose the specter of anti-Semitism in Croatia whenever it rears its ugly head, as it does from time to time in many countries. I will not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form whatsoever. All Croatians including Croatian Jews know this. I fought for and strongly support the new Constitution of Croatia which protects individual human rights and guarantees the rights of all minorities in Croatia.

Since my election on April 1, 1990, 1 have taken the following steps in support of this policy: 1. I have issued an appeal seeking funds to restore the destroyed Jewish synagogue in Zagreb, and I am working with Croatian Jews to achieve that objective. In addition, I have returned the property previously confiscated by the state to its rightful owners, the Jewish Community of Croatia.

2. I publicly endorsed the repeal of the "Zionism is Racism" resolution in the United Nations, which passed the UN. 3. I offered to provide transit to Jews wishing to emigrate from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Until the outbreak of the recent Serbian war of aggression against Croatia, El Al had regular direct flights from Zagreb to Tel Aviv.

4. Following the recent bombing of the Jewish Community Center by unknown individuals, I attended a rally of 40,000 Croatian citizens to express my solidarity and support for the 1200-member Jewish Community of Zagreb.

5. As soon as the situation in Croatia permits, I have every intention of traveling to Israel to meet with Israeli government officials and citizens, and to visit the Yad Vashem Memorial Museum on that occasion. I wish to reiterate my deepest sorrow and regret about the losses sustained by the Jewish Communities in Europe and to vow in their memory that such events will never happen again.

6. Twelve Jews serve in high-ranking positions within the Croatian government today, including the President of the Constitutional Court, two Judges of the Supreme Court, the Minister of Health, the Deputy Attorney General and the Deputy Foreign Minister.

7. A major street in the center of Zagreb will be dedicated in the memory of the Croatian Jews who were persecuted during World War II.

The people of Croatia are struggling to build lasting democratic institutions and to assure a free and democratic future for generations to come. I urge you not to be misled and misinformed by propaganda from Communist sources and their agents seeking to falsely defame me and, thus, to manipulate for their own sinister purposes the serious subject of the Holocaust, thereby damaging the image and accurate identity of Croatia and its people.

I look forward to establishing diplomatic relations with the U.S. in the near future and enhancing the friendship that already exists between the people of our two democratic nations.

In closing, I reiterate my complete and total dedication to the fulfillment of the most essential tenets of democracy: respect for human rights and the guarantee of freedom and protection of minority rights.

Sincerely, Franjo Tudjman, President

Numerous intellectuals of Jewish descent throughout the world have shown that accusing Tudjman of anti-Semitism is unfounded:

Those of us who have read Tudjman's book also can testify that he did not make anti-Semitic or Holocaust-denying statements. (Arnold Harris, Stefanija Harris and Dr. Philip Cohen "Friend of Serbia distorts the truth", The Wisconsin State Chronicle, February 28, 1992, p. 5.)

Dr. Tudjman, who during World War II fought against the Nazi regime in Croatia and was later imprisoned by the Communists, is on record for supporting the rebuilding of the synagogue in Zagreb at government expense. (Martin Dryer, "The Jews In Croatia, The Jewish Press, March 20, 1992, p. 80.)

This, naturally, does not mean that Tudjman's book might not contain some formulations which should be the subject of scholarly debate.

Was Wilderness of Historical Reality attacked because of the "Nazi" contents of the book and "Goebbelsian" spirit incarnated by Tudjman, as Israeli journalist Teddy Preuss asserts in The Jerusalem Post? No. In the book itself Tudjman calls the powers defeated in the Second World War, including the Nazis, war criminals.

Was Wilderness of Historical Reality attacked because of Tudjman's "fascism," as some non-Yugoslav newspapers report again and again, referring to sources from Belgrade? (See, for example, the paid advertisement, "Serbs Fear Croatian Return To Fascism," published in The Washington Post on February 19, 1992, p. A16. The advertisement brings public charges against Tudjman on the basis of Wilderness of Historical Reality.) No. Tudjman himself was part of the anti- fascist resistance during World War II. Such an accusation is not accepted even by the Belgrade correspondent of the Communist Moscow newspaper Pravda, Evgenii Fadeev, whose reports have an unquestionable pro-Serbian character. After the unsuccessful putsch in the USSR in August, 1991, Fadeev's reports showed a certain tendency to depict the conflict in Croatia somewhat more objectively, but his basic tone remained the same. Fadeev met Russia's decision to recognize Croatia and Slovenia with evident disapproval. Fadeev informs the readers of Pravda that I. S. Deriabin of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained to the Serbian and Montenegrin administrations that Russia did not wish to lag behind developments. "Remember", says Deriabin, "how many times in the past we were late, and that did us no good. This is a similar situation. We must take contemporary reality into consideration." Aleksandr Kondrashov, the correspondent of the Russian news agency ITAR- TASS, and Evgenii Fadeev do not agree with Russia's official position. They hold that "taking reality into consideration does not mean hurrying," as the title of their report from Belgrade reads. The recognition of Croatia should not have been hurried, say the correspondents, and they conclude their report with these words:

Having cut with one stroke the Gordian knot of the Soviet Union, but not yet having found the solution to the knots of Chechenya and Tatarstan, we have decided to pull on one more thread, hoping this time to untangle a complication beyond the boundaries of our own country - the Yugoslav knot. Why are we in such a hurry? (E. Fadeev, A. Kondrashov, "Shchitat'sia s real'no- stiami - ne oznachaet speshit'," Pravda, February 7, 1992, p. 4.)

Three weeks later Pravda would repeat Fadeev's refrain about the premature recognition of Croatia. Russian academic Pavel Volobuev and scholar Liudmila Tiagunenko write that in Croatia there are "too many facts about the crudest genocide against the Serbs." They do not make clear whether along with "the crudest genocide" there also exists a "more refined genocide." They give no proof of the "genocide." But all the same, despite this serious accusation, the writers do not assert that the Croats are fascists, nor do they attack Tudjman. They are more concerned about Russia's strategic interests in the Balkans. The Russian federation, they write, has inherited from the Soviet Union

"certain geopolitical interests, and historical traditions. There is also a capacious concept known as long-term interests, which are essentially different from short-term ones and opportunist ones. Foreign-policy categories such as spheres of interest, long traditions of alliance, also have not disappeared (whether or not this pleases certain of our moralistic editorial-writers). (P. Volobuev, L. Tiagunenko, "Riskovannyi obgon: Chto za speshka s priznaniem Khorvatii?" Pravda February 28, 1992, p. 4.)

Was Wilderness of Historical Reality attacked because of its "denial of Ustashe crimes", as some journalists and politicians have asserted, for example, in the French press? No. Tudjman condemns all the war crimes of all the sides in the Second World War and he explicitly condemns the Ustashe crimes.

Now we come to the crucial question: if the above- mentioned accusations against Tudjman's book are unfounded (and we shall demonstrate that they are), why then have many newspapers throughout the world, as well as some politicians, attacked Wilderness of Historical Reality so violently? Or rather: why is it Wilderness of Historical Reality that they have attacked, and not any of Tudjman's other books?

The answer to this question can be given only by a comparative analysis of Wilderness of Historical Reality and the texts written against Tudjman. The results of this analysis demonstrate that the book is attacked precisely because of its scholarly content.

In the book, Tudjman systematically and with thorough documentation demolishes the myth of the collective guilt of any people, and of the Croats in particular. Making use of scholarly facts, he questions almost every foundation of the anti-Croatian propaganda that has gone on for many years. These are the main reasons for the attacks on Wilderness.

The numerous anti-Croatian articles and audio- visual programs in the world media all start from the fundamental premise that "Croats are ugly, dirty and evil." On the basis of this premise, taken as an unquestionable and already proven truth, the anti-Croatian myth is constructed in various versions. The main actors in the anti-Croatian myth have negative characters. Croats in the myth can be good only if they testify to the evilness of other Croats. In keeping with one's needs, the myth can include ingredients from reality (geographical data, individual historical actors and events), but the basic premise remains unchanged.

Naturally, Tudjman is neither the first nor the only person to deny the hypothesis of the historical guilt of the Croats. This has also been done by numerous Croatian exiles throughout the world. However, Tudjman's words have greater weight than the others for several reasons. First, unlike the many who for their whole lives abroad (whether they wanted to or not) have carried the brand of the Ustasha on their brows, Tudjman is a well-known anti-fascist. And the world knows that, East and West. Second, Tudjman, as a scholar of history, not as a historical layman, used facts to bring the presupposition of a people's collective guilt into question. Third, Tudjman came into conflict with the Communist powers in Yugoslavia several times because of his published works. He was sentenced to prison twice in former Yugoslavia. Tudjman is a historian who has received several international awards for his works including the Catherina de Medici Peace Prize (Pisa, Italy, 1990) and the award of the Center of Ethnic Minorities (Barcelona, Spain, 1991). He is a European intellectual who was listed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, and who later became the President of a post-Communist state. It is clear that all these reasons provoked the wave of anti-Tudjman texts that spring from the rich treasury of anti-Croatian propaganda.

This, among other things, is what Tudjman writes about in Wilderness of Historical Reality in 1988, on the eve of the first democratic elections in Croatia:

From a historical perspective, it is unquestionable that there can be no positive changes in the political and psychological climate as long as a Croatian person feels that moral and psychic violence is being done to his being and conscience, first of all by a distorted and unacceptable interpretation of the history of his forbears and his present life, or rather as long as he feels fettered and insulted in his personal and national dignity. Since the history of a people consists of the totality of historical events, from which no single ideology, religion or movement can be excluded, nor any ideological-programmatic orientation, political party or historical personality - regardless of how close or different they might be, however they might be interconnected or denied, however advanced or retrograde, and to whatever complete or partial, positive or negative results they led - the fact is that the Ustashe cannot be separated out of Croatian history, just as the Chetniks cannot be separated out of Serbian history, or, say, colonialism from English, Nazi-fascism from German, or Stalinism from Russian history, etc. (Wilderness, pp. 71, 72).

The immediate creators of anti-Croatian propaganda could hardly have undergone a harder blow than the one delivered by Tudjman's book. With documents in hand, Tudjman demonstrates how, for example, the "Jasenovac myth" came to be.

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THE JASENOVAC MYTH


Tudjman indicates that in the third chapter of the December 26, 1945 Report of the Yugoslav State Commission for the establishment of war crimes delivered to the International Military Court in Nuremberg, the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia is mentioned only in third place, after two concentration camps in Serbia: "The crimes in camps (internment and maltreatment, Banjica, Sajmiste near Belgrade, Jasenovac, other camps (Wilderness, p. 91).

Tudjman demonstrates how the number of victims of Jasenovac increased "slowly but surely." At the beginning of the 1950's the UDB (the Yugoslav secret police) wrote a four-volume survey of the Ustashe movement. The survey was written "for internal use," that is, for the introduction of UDB functionaries and for "teaching in [Communist] Party schools." It states, within the context of a description of Ante Pavelic"s hypocritical Christianity, that "he shot thousands and thousands of innocent people" in Jasenovac (Wilderness, p. 323).

In the minutes of the court proceedings against Ljubo Milos (Ustashe officer of the Jasenovac camp) is written that the president of the court council asked Milos how many people were liquidated in Jasenovac and "whether a number [of victims] could stand" like the one mentioned in the bill of indictment. And "the indictment says from 40,000 to 60,000" victims. First, Milos says that he cannot say, and then he agrees that "he can say."

In the course of the later interrogation, one judge (Dr. M.) and the president of the council ask Milos about the total number of victims in Jasenovac. This time without any explanation, they raise the number of victims by 50% to 100%, to eighty thousand. Milos answers "Perhaps more or perhaps less" (Wilderness, p. 324).

"Even that was not enough. The minutes were later altered by hand with ink, and the statement that in "Jasenovac a few hundred thousand" people were liquidated is put into Milos"s mouth. Later that alteration is once again altered to read "several hundred thousand" people. Such handwritten alterations in judicial minutes are not permitted, writes Tudjman: "It is legally prescribed that each error or change in the deposition must be individually stated and introduced in a continuation of the text, in the same manner, in this case by typewriter, along with the statement which is to be corrected" (Wilderness, pp. 324, 325).

It is interesting that Klara Mandic writes in 1992 in an American Jewish newspaper about "the infamous Croatian concentration camp, Jasenovac, where tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were exterminated during World War II". (K. Ma[n]dic, "Fascism Reawakens in Croatia Charges Jewish Leader," The Jewish Advocate, January 24-30, 1992.)

In 1953, the Serbian historian, Vladimir Dedijer, writes that "during the war more than 200 thousand persons were massacred" in Jasenovac (Wilderness, p. 321). In 1984, the same Vladimir Dedijer writes that "more than a million people passed, and between 480,000 and 800,000 were killed" in the Jasenovac camp (Wilderness, p. 94). Dedijer, evidently, had not read what he himself wrote in 1953.

Miodrag Djukic read neither Dedijer's data from 1953, nor the newer, increased numbers from 1984. And if he had read Dedijer, he probably would not have believed him: how can one believe a researcher who raises the number of victims by 140% to 400% over thirty years? In the same year, 1984, Djukic thus brings out the newest, exactly rounded number, in the official publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje: "In Jasenovac alone, from a small-area, in less than four years a million Serbian men, women and children were tortured and killed in the most brutal manner" (Wilderness, p. 98). Other Serbian investigators would raise the number of Serbian victims in Jasenovac to one million, two hundred thousand (Wilderness, p. 98).

Serbian scholar Dr. Bogoljub Kocovic writes in 1985 about the increase in numbers of Serbian victims: "Many [Serbs] in their anti-Croatianism [antihrvatstvo] search for spiritual food for their viewpoints. There is a deeply-rooted opinion, I would say a myth, that at least one million, if not more, Serbs were killed [...], that the Serbs were practically the only ones who suffered real losses" (Wilderness, p. 340).

However, even a number greater than a million, though it is large, is nonetheless limited, finite. The myth, nonetheless, is not limited either by reality or by anything else other than the intentions of the mythmakers themselves. And since the mythmakers decided that the Jasenovac myth should state the truth about the unforgivable crime of the Croats, there would also appear a perfected version of the myth. The final version, produced by two Serbs, Dragoljub Zivojinovic and Dejan V. Lucic, states that "Jasenovac is the greatest torture chamber in the history of humanity" (Wilderness, p. 409).

Thus the myth finally returns to the place where it really belongs: to eternity.

The process of mythmaking is more interesting than the myth itself. Unlike the myth, which expresses unquestioned, eternal truth, the process of mythmaking itself is temporal, subject to alterations. Thus one of the mythmakers, Milan Basta, in a text written in 1963, wrote that "about 800,000 people were killed" on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945, the short period of existence of Fascist puppet state). Some twenty years later (in 1984) the same mythmaker would write that in Jasenovac alone more than 700,000" people were killed (Wilderness, p. 100). Here one sees two versions of the same myth. Milan Basta's myth has a message: as far as the number of (Serbian) victims is concerned, there can never be enough (in Italian, basta).

Naturally, the problem is not what Tudjman has shown that the myth is a myth. Many scholars never did believe in this myth, and one can never dissuade the mythmakers and myth-believers that the myth and reality are connected only through real mythmakers.

The problem is that the myth has also been sold beyond the borders of former Yugoslavia. Starting from the fact that some of Tudjman's previous books were translated into English and German abroad, the mythmakers correctly foresaw that Wilderness of Historical Reality would also be translated into major languages. Therefore, they decided to counterattack: they made their own selection of quotations from the book, translated it into English and offered it through Yugoslav embassies to the world at large. The outcome of this undertaking and its repercussions will be the topic of this survey of anti-Tudjman texts in the worldwide press. (Here we must limit ourselves to only a few of these texts, but they are representative examples.)

The most interesting aspect of all this is that Tudjman's book gives the answers to almost all the accusations made against him.

[Watzy]

THE "BALANCED" APPROACH TO THE WAR IN CROATIA


American National Public Radio (NPR), in its most popular program "All Things Considered" on January 7, 1992, broadcast the "lead" headline: the downing of the EC observers' helicopter over Croatia. After reporting the killing of one Frenchman and four Italians, NPR presented George Bogdanich, from the "Serbian Media Center" (Chicago), to its listeners. Bogdanich "informed" his American listeners that the Serbs in Croatia are threatened; that it "emerges" from the Croatian Constitution that national minorities are second-class citizens; that flying the Croatian flag is the same thing for the Serbs as flying the Nazi swastika over Washington would be for Americans, and so on.

A similar comparison would later be made by the Deputy Serbian Information Minister in the London "Times": "How would the British Jewish community have reacted to the flying of swastika banners and the naming of streets after fascist leaders of the second world war?" (Nebojsa Jerkovic, "Serbian case for fairer treatment," The Times, February 25, 1992, p. 11).

However, the only Ustashe sign, applied to the Croatian flag during WWII, was a large letter U, a sign which nobody dreams of applying to the flag of the Republic of Croatia which consists exclusively of historical symbols of Croatia dating back to the tenth century. Therefore, the only element that could be compared to the Nazi swastika is not part of the Croatian flag. The statement that any streets in Croatia are being named after the fascist leaders is equally absurd and utterly false. It is true, however, that the actual Serbian flag, on the contrary, does not significantly differ from the Serbian flag used by the pro-Nazi regime during WWII, not to speak of the beautiful black flag of Chetnik units with the skull and two crossed bones clearly shown on many TV programs throughout the world, reporting the fall of Vukovar and similar Serbian glorious "victories." By the way, the BBC report on the fall of Vukovar let the world hear, unfortunately without understanding it, the song of the Chetniks pouring into the devastated city:

Slobo, Slobo, salji nam salate,
Bice mesa, klacemo Hrvate.

Slobo, Slobo*,
a salad is just what we need,
there shall be plenty of Croatian meat.
(translated by Rina Obad-Slezic)

In examining controversial political questions the American media usually talk with representatives of both sides in the conflict. This time, that was not the case: only G. Bogdanich spoke; not a single Croatian representative spoke on this program. How then is the NPR approach to the war in Croatia "unbiased" and "balanced?" The editors of the program evidently felt that the Serbian side was harmed by the very news that the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army had downed the helicopter. Therefore G. Bogdanich was invited to defend the Serbian side (and the fact that his defense was an attack on the other side had nothing to do with the program's editors). Therefore, a "balanced" approach would mean first reading the (factual) American news about the war in Croatia and then offering a Serbian interpretation of the war.

NPR usually presents the opinions of both sides in a conflict. Thus, President Franjo Tudjman, Dubrovnik mayor Pero Poljanic and others have spoken on the program "All Things Considered," acquainting the American public with events in Croatia. Their statements matched the news given on NPR. Representatives of the Serbian side have generally spoken not about events but about feelings (Serbian fear of persecution), about the general concepts of freedom and rights in Serbia (not mentioning Kosovo), and about "fascists" in Croatia. For example, the Serbian foreign minister V. Jovanovic stated in one interview a series of very controversial assertions because of which caused some listeners to complain in writing to NPR. However, the radio corporation did not reply to the complaints. After the conversation with G. Bogdanich many more letters were sent to NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. This time some of the letters of complaint made the argument which has the most weight in Western, democratic societies: if NPR continues to offer incorrect and unobjective reporting on the war in Croatia, then a part of its listeners will cease to give financial support to the local Public Radio stations. After this a reply came from NPR. I cite the letter of the Executive Editor of the program "All Things Considered," dated January 14, 1992:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your thoughtful and also critical letter concerning our coverage of Yugoslavia. As you might expect, All Things Considered's coverage of the conflict in that country has produced many letters from across the political spectrum.

Some listeners believe we have been "too soft" on the Croatians. Others, like yourself, feel we have presented a "pro-Serbian" line in our coverage.

Let me assure you that NPR takes its journalistic responsibilities very seriously in covering this conflict. We believe that coverage includes the hearing from many different points of view. In the many hours of air time we already devoted to this story, we have broadcast reports, interviews and commentary reflecting a wide range of different opinions, positions and angles. We will continue to do so. But while airing these views, we endorse none of them.

As with other conflicts around the world, the war in Yugoslavia is highly emotional and we get a lot of conflicting information. While you may disagree with the views you hear in one particular story, we believe that over time in the cumulative daily programming there will be other reports or discussions acceptable to your own point of view.

We do not expect everyone to agree with all of our coverage. However, we do expect that careful listeners will come to appreciate the overall thoroughness with which we are addressing the many different and complex sides of this story.

Sincerely.

The following conclusions can be drawn from NPR's reply. 1. It is very difficult to be unbiased and objective in this kind of situation. As soon as the expression "War in Yugoslavia" appears, the report is already adopting (perhaps unwittingly) the perspective of one side in the conflict. Belgrade speaks of "war in Yugoslavia," Zagreb speaks of "war in Croatia." Yugoslavia no longer exists, for months the war was fought exclusively on Croatian soil, and so the name of the conflict is not unimportant. No one calls the conflict in Moldova "war in the Soviet Union" or "war in the Commonwealth of Independent States."

2. The answer is impersonal. The listener is not "Sir or Madam, but an individual with a name and surname who co-finances NPR.

3. The answer is general. It does not respond to a single one of the many concrete questions of numerous listeners. That means that contact (communication) has not been made between NPR and its listeners. The answer is not an answer, but only the appearance of an answer, or rather a justification of the editorial conception of "All Things Considered." (At the same time, it should be mentioned that NPR probably lacks the financial resources that would enable it to respond to every letter from its listeners.)

4. Calling on the "emotional" side of the conflict is only an excuse. The listeners did not react because of some one's emotions, but because of factual errors which Bogdanich made in a public statement.

5. If NPR does receive contradictory reports about the conflict, that cannot be a justification for one-sided broadcasting and disinformation of the American public.

In any case, it appears that the activity of the "Serbian Media Center" from Chicago is not limited to the radio waves. It is surely no accident that one newspaper from the same city carries similar "truths," referring, like Bogdanich, to the Croatian Constitution.



THE "FAIR PLAY" OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE


On February 15th, 1992, the daily Chicago Tribune in an editorial stated inter alia: They [Croats] changed the constitution to render Serbs virtual non-citizens, for example, and banned the Cyrillic alphabet, used by Serbs but not Croats. ("For Croatia, help and challenge," editorial, The Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1992, p. 12.)

This is incorrect information: articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia guarantee equal rights to all the citizens and national minorities of Croatia.

Article 14

Citizens of the Republic of Croatia shall enjoy all rights and freedoms, regardless of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, education, social status or other properties. All shall be equal before the law.

Article 15

Members of all nations and minorities shall have equal rights in the Republic of Croatia. Members of all nations and minorities shall be guaranteed freedom to express their nationality, freedom to use their language and script, and cultural autonomy.

(The Constitution of the Republic of Croatia Prepared by Dr. Ljubomir Valkovic (Zagreb, 1991), p. 35. Italics are added)

So whence the "news" about the "banning of the Cyrillic alphabet" and "Serbs virtual non-citizens".?

Journalistic ethics demand that the public be informed, not disinformed. Richard Liefer of the Chicago Tribune is writing about the Croatian Constitution, but he seems not to have read the Constitution itself. Or is some 'kitchen translation' of the Croatian Constitution in circulation again? The Chicago Tribune editorial continues: The United Nations Security Council will act next week to authorize a UN peacekeeping force for Yugoslavia, where a tenuous cease fire has sharply curtailed fighting between Serbs and Croats in Croatia. (...)

Just as all the main parties to the war had to marshal the will to embark on peacemaking, so they must next summon up the commitment and good faith to ensure that peacekeeping succeeds.

Regrettably, neither is overabundant in a couple of crucial leaders. One is Milan Babic, president of Krajina, an ethnic Serbian enclave in western Croatia. An opponent of the UN plan, he warned darkly this week that "large casualties" would follow the peacekeepers' arrival.

The more important leader, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, has been sending mixed signals about the UN plan: criticizing it to journalists while pledging support to diplomats.

("For Croatia, help and challenge," p. 12.)

Is this too an example of the "balanced" approach according to which one must criticize Tudjman a little bit, and Milan Babic a little bit (as if Babic were the main factor in the war theater)? Interestingly, Liefer does not mention Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at all.

After four months and seven letters of mine to the Chicago Tribune, I finally received a cordial letter written on July 8, 1992, in which the Editorial Page Editor, N. Don Wycliff, elaborates on the February 15 editorial's statements:

Dear Mr. Knezevic:

Mr. Liefer has acknowledged that the statements about which you inquired were, in fact, misstatements. He has explained to me the source. I do not feel obligated to share that explanation with you or to demand that he do so. If this response is unsatisfactory, I am sorry.

Regards,

(etc.)

Although Mr. Wycliff was certainly under no obligation to reveal anything more than he stated in his letter, my satisfaction was purely moral, since the Chicago Tribune did not publish any correction of Mr. Liefer's "misstatements." And the Chicago Tribune

is committed to accuracy, honesty, fair play and the well-being of our community. Those are the standards to which we hold ourselves and by which we ask you to judge us. If you think we have failed to meet them, we want you to tell us. Please address your concerns to the Public Editor, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan, Chicago, IL 60611.

(Chicago Tribune, Editorial page.)

If Mr. Wycliff himself had the time and resources to check the contents of all editorials before publication, this "accuracy, honesty, [and] fair play" might be more complete.

[Watzy]

THE WORK OF PROPAGANDA


In the same city of Chicago, in March of 1992, a meeting was held of exceptional importance for the further propaganda work of Serbs in America, the Cleveland radio program "Serbian Hour" announces:

The SerbNet Central has gathered Serbian national organizations and prominent Serbs in the USA. It [the Central] can begin work. Formation of the SerbNet network was necessitated because of the need to beat back the one-sided, biased information in the foreign media about events in Yugoslavia, as well as anti-Serbian propaganda. American Congresswoman Helen Delich [Bentley], who enjoys the undivided trust of all Serbian groups and organizations as well as individuals, has called for unity in order to influence the media so that they show Serbia and the Serbian people objectively. Thanks to Helen Delich Bentley, all Serbian organizations and their leaders are now in a single organization. At the latest meeting, which was held in Chicago two weeks ago, Helen Delich Bentley was elected president of SerbNet, and vice presidents are Bob Stone and Dr. Rajko Tomovic.

("Serbian Hour," March 29, 1992.)

It is interesting that this news item speaks of the "beating back of one-sided, biased information in the foreign media," but the American media are not explicitly mentioned. This could mean one of two things: either the American media are not mentioned out of respect for the country in which Serbs are living, or the Serbs of SerbNet are satisfied with the writing of the American media. It is also interesting that, though Congresswoman Bentley is not satisfied with the media's depiction of Serbia, she is entirely satisfied with the American policy towards former Yugoslavia: Bentley was the only individual I interviewed who expressed complete satisfaction with U.S. policy. Even Representative Jim Moody, who also has strong Serbian sympathies, regretted that the United States hadn't played a more active role as a broker between the [conflicting] parties.

(P. Glynn, "Yugoblunder," The New Republic, February 24, 1992, pp. 16-17.)

Every Sunday evening, the Cleveland Public Radio Station WCPN broadcasts a fifty-four-minute political and folkloric program called the "Serbian Hour," in English and Serbian. The program's editor is George Djelic, the speaker is Dobrana Radakovic. The political program is enriched by telephone reports from Belgrade journalists and interviews with more prominent Serbian politicians (Vojislav Seselj, Radovan Karadzic, Milan Babic, and others), Helen Delich, Jim Moody, etc. As the program's speaker herself announces cassette recordings of the program "Serbian Hour" are circulating "from Alaska to Australia." The program is so popular that some dignitaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church order its cassettes. "The Serbian Hour" broadcast in Serbian on May 31, 1992, after the U.N. imposed sanctions on Serbia, an excerpt from the book Reci srpskom narodu kroz tamnicki prozor [Words to the Serbian people through a jail window] by the Serbian bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic, framed as follows by commentary: In place of our commentary on events in our father- land and the [U.N.] condemnation of the Serbian people as an aggressor, we offer the words of Vladika Nikolaj [Velimirovic], written at the time of his captivity in the concentration camp of Dachau:

'There are events in the history of the human race which, like a great bell, ring every day in the ears of those who are not deaf and summon their conscience to alarm. One such event, which for thousands of years already has disturbed the human conscience, is the narrower choice between Jesus Christ and Varavvas, or Barabbas, as the Western heretics pronounce it. It was Pontius Pilate, a Roman polytheist, who was both the president and proposer of this election, the voters were the Jews, monotheists. Pilate attempted everything in order to free Jesus, for he could find no fault in him. His final attempt was offering the Jews the choice of either Jesus or Barabbas. He reasoned logically: not one charge against Jesus was proven, whereas all the charges against Barabbas were proven and were obvious. Barabbas had earned death as a rebel and a blood-sucker. Pilate hoped that the conscience of the Jewish elders was not entirely burnt out and that they would be able to rise above personal malice and wickedness and to prefer a just man to a criminal. Pilate surely also thought that the choice would be for Jesus because of the greatest holiday, on whose eve this choice was to be carried out. Because, for what purpose is the great holiday if not to cleanse and revive man's conscience? A monotheistic people, the holiday of Passover, the righteous man Jesus. Pilate believed that in a few minutes, by the liberation of the righteous man Jesus, he would make happy his wife, Claudia, who had begged him not to spill the blood of this righteous man, and so the polytheist Pilate cried to the monotheist Jews: "Whom do you want me to release to you: Barabbas or Jesus?" But to the exceeding surprise of the polytheist Pilate, the monotheistic Jews cried out with a single voice: "Barabbas! Barabbas!" Pale and confused by such a choice, Pilate asked one other question of that irrational and conscienceless Satanic rabble [toj beslovesnoj i nesavesnoj rulji satanskoj], a polytheist to the monotheists: "And what am I to do with Jesus?" To this the monotheists began to howl like hungry jackals: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And the polytheist Pilate washed his hands of the blood of the righteous man, and the jackals in human skin once again began to bark rabidly: "His blood is on us and on our children!" which happened and which happens too to the present day. Barabbas was set free, and the Son of God, the Messiah and Savior of the world, was driven to Golgotha and crucified on the cross. And while the greatest righteous man under the sun and above the sun expired in torment on the cross, Barabbas treated his voters to drinks in the beer- halls of Jerusalem. This is truly the great bell which every day disturbs the conscience of humanity. Everyone asks himself, "How could that have happened?" And we ask ourselves, "How can that also happen this very day?" For do you not see, brethren, that today as well Barabbas wins in elections, and Jesus loses? The cause of the gloomy tragedy of today's humanity can bc explained with a single word: for they chose Barabbas in place of Christ. For they have become Barabbases, rather than being Christians. Their goals are barbarian, their methods too arc barbarian. Their goal is to elevate themselves and their people to the skies, and to trample all other people and peoples like mud. And their methods are the same as those of that first Barabbas: secret conspiracy, falsehood, rebellion and blood.'

These have been the words of Vladika Nikolaj from the book Words to the Serbian people through a jail window.

This anti-Semitic piece probably needs no commentary, though one may also be struck by the offensiveness of the less obvious associations (for example, that the Serbs are messiahs whom the rest of the heretical world wants to crucify, that elections as a means of social determination are corrupt etc., and that the position of Serbia in the world today echoes its supposed total victimization during the Second World War). It is also interesting that the editors' commentary that frames Bishop Velimirovic"s text does not address what he was doing writing a piece like this a few yards from the gas chambers - or the fact-that he (unlike many of the Jewish prisoners) presumably survived Dachau and lived to see his writings published. It seems that Bishop Velimirovic continued in Germany the same anti-Semitic policy of the Church in Serbia. Namely, in January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, adopted a proclamation prohibiting conversions of Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy. This proclamation, issued in cooperation with the occupying Nazi military authorities, thereby blocked one means of saving Jewish lives. (See Tomislav Vukovic, Mozaik izdaje (Zagreb: HKD sv. Cirila i Metodija, 1991), p. 220.).



THE "BALANCE" OF READER's LETTERS


One of the most prestigious newspapers in the world, The New York
Times, has on the whole reported on the conflict in Croatia
without much visible influence of anti-Croatian propaganda. The
New York Times unambiguously condemned the Serbian aggression
from the beginning, which is evident just by looking at the
titles of editorials:
"Serbia vs. the New World Order" (August 14, 1991);
"The Sacking of Croatia" (September 22, 1991);
"Serbia's Spiteful War" (November 6, 1991);
"De-Recognize Yugoslavia" (December 18, 1991).

Of course, the editorial position of the New York daily newspaper
was underscored by the official American position that Serbia's
conduct represented "out-right military intervention against
Croatia," as Secretary of State James A. Baker described the
conflict before the Security Council of the United Nations:

"The apparent objective of the Serbian leadership and the
Yugoslav military working in tandem is to create a 'small
Yugoslavia' or 'Greater Serbia', which would exclude Slovenia and
a rump Croatia. This new entity would be based on the kind
of repression which Serbian authorities have exercised
in Kosovo for several years."
("Bush's Yugoslav Policy Shifts to Serbs," The New York Times,
September 27, 1991, p. A4.)

However, the editors at times apply a "balanced" principle to the
letters of readers. This is understandable, since letters as a
rule show events from one side, while newspapers should show both
sides in a conflict. So, for example, two letters about the war
in Croatia are published in The New York Times on September 16,
1ency is more than evident.
Morin is unreliable in the facts, and that is the first thing
that strikes the reader. So, for example, he writes that the
Turks took Constantinople in 1459, whereas the Byzantine capital
actually fell in 1453. Morin asserts that Austria annexed.
Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1909, but the annexation was carried out in
1908. Morin mentions the head of the Independent State of Croatia
five times and he spells his name
wrong five times, as Pavlevic. (The head of the pro-Nazi "New
Serbia general Milan Nedic, is not written incorrectly - because
Nedic is not even mentioned.)

If someone makes use of incorrect historical facts, it is hardly
likely that the interpretation based on those facts will be more
correct. Let us cite some interpretations which Morin offers the
French public as if they are unquestionable and correct:
"Some Muslims, enlisted by the SS or by Pavlevic, massacred
Serbs, and the Chetniks massacred Muslims."

Here the same propaganda technique used by Teddy Preuss in The
Jerusalem Post is in action: a terminological shift. Morin uses
the national name of those who carried out massacres of the Serbs
(in this case, Muslims), while those who carried out massacres of
the Muslims are not identified by their national
name (Serbs), but rather by the name of one armed formation
(Chetniks). Another propaganda technique is also present here:
the order of listing the crimes. The Muslims who killed Serbs are
mentioned in the first place, and only then the Chetniks who
killed Muslims. Thus the more numerous Chetnik killings seem to
be justified as revenge for the allegedly first-murdered Serbs.
Morin's "objectivity" comes to the surface in the next sentence:

"Some Croats, Slovenes and Muslims were "pro-German" during the
war because they were anti-Serbian and for a time they saw their
new oppressors as liberators."

Here we see the third propaganda technique in action, the one
used by Semeniuk in Novoe Russkoe Slovo: it is not enough to
blacken the Croats alone, one must blacken other peoples too, and
especially those who have a real chance of achieving
international recognition of their independence. And those are,
in this case, the peoples of the republics of Croatia
Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Morin's "reflections" offer
French readers historical revisionism. He ignores the fact that
one of the strongest (if not the strongest) anti-fascist
resistance movements in Europe was precisely on the soil of these
three republics, under the Croat Tito's leadership. Morin does
not mention the fact that the Serbian government of
general Nedic was also pro-Nazi. If French historians,
proud of the role of de Gaulle in the Second World War, do not
forget that Petain existed as well, why then does Morin neglect
the Serbian Petain, Pavelic's counterpart? Why too does he
neglect the Serbian fascist phalanges from Dimitrije Ljotic's
"Zbor"?

Morin compares the position of Kosovo's majority Albanians with
the position of the Serbian minority in Croatia. Unfortunately,
this French admirer of Serbian writer Milos Crnjanski offers no
coherent support for his comparison. He accepts the following
Serbian estimation of the number of Serbian victims during World
War 11:
"The Serbs estimate the number of their people massacred by the
Ustashe at seven hundred thousand. This number, contested by the
current Croatian president Tudjman, could be revised downwards."

As we already saw, there are many Serbian estimations of the
number of their war victims. These estimations differ
significantly and contradict one to another. The figure of
700,000 Serbian victims is only one of them. It is interesting to
note that Morin does not mention any Croatian estimation of
Croatian victims from that period. Why does the French expert
pass over the Croatian victims in silence?

Morin writes that "it is Serbia that is the principle victim of
the centrifugal forces" in former Yugoslavia, forgetting that the
Croats too are scattered throughout other republics. According to
the French scholar, the plurality of residents in
Bosnia-Hercegovina are "a Muslim nation, although Serb in
origin." We know the source of the assertion on the Serbian
ancestry of the Bosnian Muslims, but we do not know any facts
which might support it. And so on, through the columns of
the French press.

[Watzy]

TIME SHIFTED LOGIC


Dragnich, Simic and others maintain that today's Croats should
ask forgiveness because of the Serbs who died fifty years ago.
Because of the Serbs then who were murdered by the Croats then.
According to this "time-shifted logic," the Serbs would not have
to ask for forgiveness for today's Serbs, who are killing today's
Croats, until 2041. (The question of whether today's Serbs should
ask forgiveness for the Serbs who killed Croats, Muslims,
Albanians, Jews, Gypsies and others fifty years ago, needless to
say, does not trouble Dragnich and Simic.)

The same time-shifted logic is apparent not only in Dragnich's
missives, but also in all other literary genres and forms: myths,
diaries, novels, dramas, recollections..., and even in poems.
Here is an example of that logic in a contemporary poem printed
under the title "The New World Order - Central European
Division."
Croatians are the good guys now,
Although their past is slightly shady.
So worry not that these same guys
Chased both your bubbe and your zayde.
(Calvin Trillin, "The New.World Order - Central European
Division," The Nation, March 9, 1992, p. 293.)

Trillin, a colleague of Alexander Cockburn at the weekly Nation,
writes the words for "grandmother" and "grandfather" in Yiddish
(bubbe, zayde). For stronger poetic-political effect. The use of
Yiddish might seem to exclude the many Sephardic Jews who lived
in former Yugoslavia (and, before that, in the Ottoman Empire).
However, the message is clear: the Croats were persecutors of the
Jews. If the Ustashe killed Jews (and some of them certainly
did), then today's Croats are no better, although the
international media show them as "the good guys now."

It is very interesting to note that Trillin overlooks the
following facts:

- That in Serbia there were the concentration camps as well; it
was not Croats who entered Serbia to kill Jews (and Serbs and
others) there - it was Serbs (Nedic, Ljotic - names that don't
ring a bell for the American reader).
- That only 6% of Serbian Jews survived the Second World War.

- That Belgrade was the first city in Europe to be declared in
1942 Judenfrei, by SS Plenipotentiary Dr. Harald Turner.

- That of 11,970 Jews who lived in Belgrade before the Second
World War, 1,115 survived the war thanks to effective
collaboration of the Serbian quisling government, the Serbian
public, and the Serbian Orthodox Church (see the Encyclopedia of
the Holocaust [New York: Macmillan, 1990], vol. 4, pp. 1716-1722;
Politika, Belgrade, April 29, 1989.)

One might ask: are the Croats, who suffer today, shown in
Trillin's poem in a bad light only because of the sins of the
Ustashe against the Jews? The leftist orientation of the weekly
Nation also, no doubt, contributed to the creation of the little
poem: the government in power in Croatia is not left-wing, but
the government in Serbia remains Communist (or "left-wing"). For
Trillin it seems more important that someone is "left" rather
than that someone is an aggressor (unless, of course, they kill
Jews - we have no regrets, it s seems, for mere buildings like
the synagogue in Dubrovnik, which is, incidentally, the second
oldest surviving synagogue in Europe).

It is also significant that figures such as Patrick Buchanan have
emerged to champion the position of Croatia. It is understandable
that a strong conservative support for any issue might provoke
thinkers further to the left to take an opposing position.
However, in this case that position has been assumed too
automatically and without enough scepticism. Is the agenda of the
American left shaped only by its disgust with Buchanan, or does
it examine reality and make: conclusions for itself? For example:
the Serbian government is opposed by Slovenes, Croats,
Macedonians, ethnic Albanians, and Slavic Muslims, not to mention
the ethnic Hungarians and other groups living in the formerly
autonomous province of Vojvodina. Are the Croats to blame for all
of this? Could there be another valid interpretation for this set
of data - such as, none of the other groups that made up
Yugoslavia want to live in Greater Serbia?

Former Yugoslavia, which certainly was in some ways the most
attractive manifestation of socialism in Eastern Europe, seems to
be calling in debts from American leftist journalists and
scholars who may have visited, collaborated, become friends with
the old regime there.

Dragnich writes in a similar, Trillinian vein:
Mr. Tudjman could, of course, say that [the Independent State of
Croatia] was not his Croatia. But postwar German leaders could
also have said that Nazi Germany was not their regime. But not
only did the new German leaders acknowledge the brutal acts or
the Nazis, they also apologized and even paid reparations.

Dragnich's memory has undergone the same change as Simic's.
Dragnich overlooks some things, while other things magically
appear to him. First, in Wilderness (and in other writings)
Tudjman explicitly recognizes that terrible crimes were committed
in the Independent State of Croatia, including crimes against
Serbs. However, Tudjman also writes about the Serbian Chetniks'
crimes against the Croats in that Croatian state. Dragnich does
not speak about that - but that speaks about Dragnich.

Second, even if it were necessary to ask for forgiveness, Tudjman
as president of Croatia could not ask forgiveness of those who
are attacking and killing the citizens who freely elected him.
Neither did the German leaders seek (nor would they have sought)
forgiveness of those who were killing contemporary Germans. Here
Dragnich applies "actor-shifted logic."

The possibility of forgiveness can only be spoken of in both
directions: in the Second World War the Ustashe did kill Serbs,
but the Chetniks also killed Croats. Someone should also ask
forgiveness for the Croatian poet and anti-fascist Ivan Goran
Kovacic, who was slaughtered in 1943 by Serbian Chetniks. And for
thousands and thousands of other Croats who were not poets but
who shared the poet's fate in the Second World War.

The New York Times abandons its "balanced" approach when the
search for any kind of balance becomes ridiculous. When the
Croats are daily dying in front of tanks and bombers. Then the
New York daily paper opens its pages only to the victims' side.
On December 18, 1991, The New York Times printed two letters,
both from Croats. In the first letter, "Croats are Victims of
Serbian Harassment", Professor Davor Kapetanic of the University
of Washington gives valid arguments for a refutation of David
Martin's assertion about the arbitrariness of the Croatian
boundaries. The author of the other letter, M. Modric from
Zagreb, describes the everyday horrors of the citizens of Croatia
who, before the eyes of the American president, are "enjoying"
the fruits of the "New World Order" announced after the Gulf War.
The letter is entitled "We live in Hell." The title is taken from
the contents of the letter.



OLD AND NEW MISTAKES OF THE ANTI-CROATIAN PROPAGANDA


The anti-Croatian propaganda learns from its mistakes, adapts,
but at the same time it makes new and greater mistakes. So,
for example, the title of Tudjman's book "Bespuca povijesne
zbiljnosti" was incorrectly translated in Belgrade as
"Wastelands - Historical Truth". The incorrect translation was
used by Kaplan, Preuss and many others. After Katarina
Mijatovic"s assertion' (The New York Times, January 3, 1992)
that the translation is "Wastelands of Historical Reality",
the propaganda adapts itself. A paid advertisement printed in
The Washington Post already adopts Mijatovic"s translation.
The advertisement in The Washington Post has the banner
headline, "Serbs Fear Croatian Return To Fascism" (February
19, 1992, p. A16. On the same day, on p. A18, The Washington
Post published an editorial entitled "Yugoslavia - the Cyprus
Model".)

The very title of the advertisement reveals a shift: although
the propaganda usually insists that today's Croats are
fascists, this title says that the Croats are not fascists
(but they could, from the Serbian perspective, return to
fascism). The advertisement covers a whole page. The title is
printed on two lines, in letters more than 1.3 inch tall.

The advertisement consists of a photograph and text. The
photograph in the center of the advertisement shows Hitler and
Pavelic shaking hands. Under the photograph it says, "Adolf
Hitler at a meeting with Ante Pavelic, fascist leader of the
Independent State of Croatia which adopted a policy of
genocide that claimed hundreds of thousands of Serb, Jewish,
and Gypsy victims during World War II."

In the upper left-hand corner of the photograph is printed in
fine print, "Photo provided courtesy of the Museum of the
Revolution of the People and Minorities of Yugoslavia" in
Belgrade. The advertisement was created by the organization
Wise Communications, 1250 24th Street, NW, Washington, DC,
20037, which acts as an agent for the Oil Company Jugopetrol,
Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

(The same organization, Wise Communications, supported Klara
Mandic's tour through America in February of 1992. Klara
Mandic is "a Jewish leader, founder and general secretary of
the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society" from Belgrade, as The
Jewish Advocate of January 24-30, 1992, presents her to
American readers. During her tour of America K. Mandic
lectured on the threat to the Jews in Croatia.)

The text of the advertisement in The Washington Post is
divided into two parts. In the upper part are eight "facts",
and in the lower part a passage with the subtitle "U.N.
Initiative is Key To Peace In Yugoslavia". What sort of
"facts" are cited in the text? Here are the first two:
fact
Under the fascist leadership of Ante Pavelic, Croatia declared
war on the United States before Germany did so in 1941 and
fought against the United States and its allies in both World
War II and World War I.
fact
Serbia was an unwavering ally of the United States in both
World War II and World War I.

These "facts" to a great extent do not correspond to
historical truth. In saying that Croatia also fought against
the United States in the First World War (although not,
however, under "the fascist leadership of Ante Pavelic"), the
propaganda admits that Croatia then, although a part of the
Austro-Hungarian' Empire, existed as a state subject, as a
triune kingdom with its own parliament and other powers. Under
other circumstances the same propaganda will deny that Croatia
existed, at all before 1918. The article does not mention
where and when Croatia fought against the USA in the First
World War. That would be a real fact, but that fact is not and
cannot be cited.

It is an undisputed fact that Serbia provoked the First World
War, in which thousands of American soldiers also died. That
fact, not surprisingly, is not mentioned in the anti-Croatian
advertisement, but it is mentioned in the American
advertisement for R.G.D. Laffan's book "The Serbs: The
Guardians of the Gate". The advertising blurb describes the
Serbs as "an important but misunderstood people, unfortunately
remembered by most as the precipitators of World War I - when
a nationalist assassinated Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand
in 1914." (Barnes & Noble: America's #1 Book Sale Catalog.
1992 Book Sale #3, p.11).

In the Second World War a pro-Nazi government was formed under
general Milan Nedic, which, together with the highest level of
the Serbian Orthodox Church, Draza Mihajlovic"s Chetniks and
some Serbian political parties, was an unwavering ally of
Germany until 1944 when Tito's forces liberated Serbia. (And
Tito was a Croat.) This is a fact, just as it is a fact that
one part of the Serbs fought against fascism.

It is a fact that the largest opposition party in pre-war
Yugoslavia was Hrvatska Seljacka Stranka (HSS) - the Croatian
Peasant's Party (HSS). It is a fact that the Serbian
nationalist Punisa Racic killed the leader of the HSS, Stjepan
Radic, and some of his colleagues in the Belgrade Parliament
in 1928. It is a fact that the HSS "before the war had the
majority of the Croatian people behind it" (Wilderness, p.
445). It is a fact that the same party, HSS, which represented
the majority of the Croatian people, refused to collaborate
with the Germans and the Ustashe in 1941. It is a fact that
the new head of the HSS, Vladko Macek, refused to become the
puppet head of the Independent State of Croatia "because of
his democratic, anti-fascist views" (Wilderness, p. 433). It
is a fact that because of this the Ustashe tried and
imprisoned Macek in the Jasenovac concentration camp, and then
interned him in Kupinec ("Jasenovacki Ocenas", Danas, March
17, 1992, pp. 46-48). It is a fact that on the soil of the
Independent State of Croatia one of the strongest anti-fascist
movements in Europe was active under the leadership of the
Croat Josip Broz Tito. One of the participants of that
anti-fascist movement was Franjo Tudjman. Those are facts too.



JUSTIFICATIONS OF AGGRESSION


The war against Croatia is justified by the defense of the
Serbian minority. However, some Croatian regions (such as
Konavli, etc.) are occupied where there are and were no Serbs.
Dubrovnik is under attack, that "indubitably Croatian city,"
as the October statement of the European Community calls it.
"European Community Faults Serbian Forces on Truce", The New
York Times, October 28, 1991, p. A5.) When the attack on
Dubrovnik went on into the month of November, 1991, Lord
Carrington (hardly a rabid supporter of Croatia) sharply
condemned the attacks on Dubrovnik in the name of the European
Community in the following words: "There are no Serbs in
Dubrovnik. It never was a part of Serbia and this attack is
absolutely unjustified." (From the editorial "Serbia's
Spiteful War," The New York Times, November 6, 1991.)

The military aggression against Croatia is further
justified by the "threat to the Serbs" in Croatia. How,
then, do we explain the fact that areas where the Croats are
in the overwhelming majority (eastern Croatia, the Croatian
coast) are more destroyed than the narrower region around Knin
with its majority Serbian population?

The war against Croatia is also justified by the intention of
breaking the blockade of barracks of the Yugoslav People's
Army in Croatia, but areas are attacked where there are no
army barracks.

The aggression is justified by the struggle against "the
fascist powers" in Croatia, but at the same time Croatian
territories which elected Communists rather than the Croatian
national parties are occupied and destroyed (Baranja, the city
of Vukovar).

The war is also justified by the need to correct the "unjust"
Croatian-Serbian boundaries, for, Balkan specialist David
Martin asserts, "the existing frontiers between Croatia and
Serbia were arbitrarily drawn by Marshal Tito, a Croat, after
he came to power in 1944" and that to the detriment of Serbia
(D. Martin, "Croatia's Borders: Over the Edge", The New York
Times, November 22, 1991). Five days later Martin's text was
reprinted in the Cleveland daily Plain Dealer, but with a new
headline: "Yugoslav Internal Borders Invalid." Martin's
pro-Serbian text in Alex Machaskee's Plain Dealer provoked
this reply from the scholar C. Michael McAdams, which among
other things calls the southern (formerly autonomous)
province of Kosovo by its Albanian name, Kosova:

In 25 years of South Slavic studies, I have never read
anything so devoid of fact as David Martin's "Yugoslav
internal borders invalid" ([The Plain Dealer's] Forum, Nov.
26). His basic thesis, that borders "arbitrarily drawn by
Marshal Tito, a Croat..." resulted in Croatia gaining Serbian
territory after World War II is absurd. Serbia has increased
its borders after every one of its many wars since 1813. The
present eastern borders of the Croatian republic reflect
those of 1848, and its entry into Yugoslavia in 1918 minus
eastern Slavonia, which was seized by Serbia in 1939. After
World War 11, Serbia retained the city of Zemun and eastern
Slavonia, Croatian lands for more than 1,000 years. Serbia
today controls more territory than it has in its entire
history. In the north it has annexed the lands of Hungarians
and Croatians. In the south, 200,000 Serbs rule over almost 2
million ethnic Albanians in an absolute police state of
Kosova. Montenegro is a Serbian fiefdom.
(C. Michael McAdams, "Yugoslavia's borders," The
Plain Dealer, December 11, 1991, p. 4C.)

Not a single justification of the aggression against Croatia
can be supported by the facts. Thus some facts remain which
cannot be disputed: Croatia did not begin the war; Croatia did
not attack Serbia (except in Professor Longinovic's
nightmares); Croatia has not set out to defend the rights of
the Croatian minority in Serbia with weapons. (According to
the 1981 Census, 149,368 Croats live in Serbia.) It is for
these reasons among others, that the European Community
eventually imposed sanctions against Serbia, and not
against Croatia.

[Watzy]

THE TRUTH


Every war, including the most recent Serbian-Croatian war,
influences the consciousness of the warring sides. The
opposite is also true: pre-war consciousness itself, to a
certain extent, contributes to the outbreak of military
conflicts.

The first victim in any violent conflict is the truth,
or rather speech about the conflict. The attitude of a
third, "neutral", party towards the warring parties is formed
in connection with the reports about the conflict itself and
in connection with the interests of that third party.

Let us look first at how one of the sides in this conflict,
the Serbian side, sees itself. On the "Serbian Hour" broadcast
over Cleveland Public Radio Station WCPN, on January 5, 1992,
an Orthodox Christmas greeting to the listeners was read in
Serbian. After the traditional Serbian Christmas greeting,
"Mir Boziji, Hristos se rodi!" [God's peace, Christ is born!],
priest Momcilo Djujic, among other things, sends this message
to Serbs "in the fatherland and in diaspora:"

The Serbian people has lived through such fateful days many
times in its past, but by faith in God it [the Serbian people]
always overcame all misfortunes and conquered all enemies and
remained in honor on the world stage among the cultured
peoples as God's people who - in its struggle for freedom,
survival and future life - never took away other people's
property, nor killed, or wiped out civilian population, nor
ruined other people's homes, nor destroyed temples that were
raised to God's glory.

It is a known fact that a part of the Orthodox clergy of
northern Dalmatia in Croatia condemned Momcilo Djujic as a
German collaborator at their congress on October 21, 1943.
(Another part of the clergy served as Djujic's Chetniks, while
a third part waited out the war without taking a political
position.) Here is the text of the public condemnation of
Djujic's activity during the Second World War:

The clergy publicly, before the people, condemned the
[Serbian-governed Royal Yugoslav] government in exile in
London, which through its minister Draza Mihajlovic, and then
the latter through his self-styled Chetnik "leaders and
"dukes," Father Djujic and others like him, organized the
Chetniks, who actively assisted the German occupiers.
(Document in the archives of the Institut za historiju
radnickog pokreta Hrvatske in Zagreb, identified as
NV-148.)

And what did Djujic's "active assistance of the German
occupiers" consist of? Vladimir Dedijer, in his Novi prilozi
za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita [New materials for a biography
of Josip Broz Tito] writes, "The Dinaric Chetnik division,
under the command of the priest Momcilo Djujic, bore the daily
order to clean out the Croats and Muslims from Lika and
northern Dalmatia [in Croatia]" (Vol. II, pp. 548-549,
see Wilderness, p. 314). Serbo-Nazi ideology extends directly
from the World War II Chetnik movement to the present.

What were the results of this "cleaning?" The result was that
"1327 residents of the Knin area were killed by the knives,
clubs, and bullets of Djujic's brigands" (Tomislav Vukovic,
Mozaik izdaje (Zagreb: HKD sv. Cirila i Metodija, 1991), p.
185).

Let us suppose that all this testimony against Djujic is
unreliable. Let us suppose that Djujic never gave out
the mentioned "daily order." Let us suppose that there is not
a single piece of proof of Djujic's war crimes, because of
which he cannot return to former Yugoslavia even today. Let us
suppose that Djujic is innocent. Let us return to his
assertion that "the Serbian people [...] never took away other
people's property, nor killed or wiped out civilian
populations, nor ruined other people's homes, nor destroyed
temples that were raised to God's glory" in its "struggle for
freedom, survival and future life."

Then the question arises: is Father Djujic speaking the truth
in his Christmas greeting? Before answering one should explain
that both Father Djujic and the "Serbian Hour" program
consider the war in Croatia precisely "a struggle for freedom,
survival and future life" of the Serbian people.

Let us look now at the evidence against Djujic' s assertion
about the Serbian "not taking away", "not killing", "not
wiping out", "not destroying" and "not ruining", which
according to Djujic, has assured the freedom-loving "God's
people" a place of honor "on the stage of the world among the
cultured peoples."



THE FACTUAL TRUTH


In opposition to Djujic's assertion stand two facts which are
proven and unarguable. The first fact: in Croatia much
property has been stolen, many Croats killed, much of the
civilian population wiped out, many homes ruined, many temples
of God destroyed. And the thieves, killers, Wipers, ruiners
and destroyers did not come from nowhere. They have their
names and surnames.

The second fact: all the leading world information media have
acquainted the international public with the first fact. The
daily news from Croatia speaks precisely of stealing, killing,
wiping out, ruining and destroying. Let us cite only one of
the hundreds of headlines which speaks of how Serbs take away
Croatian houses: "Serbs grab homes - Fed army mops up
Vukovar," writes the Canadian paper The Toronto Sun, November
20, 1991.

Having in mind these two facts, the question arises: is Father
Djujic perhaps lying on the eve of the Orthodox Christmas?



THE MYTHOLOGICAL TRUTH


At first glance one might answer simply: yes, Father Djujic is
lying. He talks about not killing, while in Croatia civilians
are falling like ears of wheat.

However, simple answers do not always lead to the truth. If
one examines Djujic's assertion in more detail, then one can
find in it what Americans call a "Catch 22." That "catch" is
the expression "the Serbian people." The Serbian people
consists of more than ten million souls. It is absolutely
clear that a people of ten million does not take away, does
not kill and does not destroy. The Serbian people also
includes Ivan Djuric, who declared in Paris (according to the
news report of the "Serbian Hour") that after the war he would
get down on his knees and ask forgiveness from the Croats for
the genocide the Serbs have carried out on them.

This means that - from the viewpoint of formal logic - Father
Djujic is not lying in his Christmas greeting. He would lie if
he asserted that his heirs, the Chetniks, were not killing,
destroying and stealing. But he is not talking about them, he
is talking about the Serbian people.

We have already established that every evaluative judgment
about a whole people is a factually false statement. Djujic's
assertion that the Serbian people is good (for it does not
kill, does not destroy, does not steal and is therefore "God's
people") is a true mythological statement with an
ideological-religious background. For the Serbian people, as
for any people, it is a fact that as a whole, it is neither
good nor bad. One part of any people can commit crimes,
another part can be doers of good, while the behavior of the
larger part remains outside the evaluative definitions of good
and evil.

Djujic is not talking about facts, he is talking about
mythological pictures. Since his assertion has nothing to do
with facts, he is not lying about the facts. He states a
mythological truth, which is linked with a national religious
truth.



THE RELIGIOUS TRUTH


On the same day (January 5, 1992) on the same program (the
"Serbian Hour") a missive was also read from His Holiness
Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church. From the first
sound the difference between Djujic's message and the
Patriarch's is perceptible. Djujic's voice is loud and
powerful, the Patriarch's voice is soft and dignified. His
Holiness speaks slowly, allowing silence to form between his
words and so give them an extra weight. In the background of
His Holiness's word a quiet melody flickers. His Holiness
speaks:

Whence so much false testimony about us and about our Heaven,
so much dishonor, so much brutality and rage? How is it that
Europe and the world do not see so many crimes, and how is it
that slander so successfully catches and sticks to the highest
places of world diplomacy just as a spider's web catches on
new timber?

His Holiness wonders and asks why the world "does not see so
many crimes which are occurring before our eyes. In fact, the
world both sees and fails to see the crimes in Croatia. The
world sees crimes but perhaps it does not look at them with
the eyes of His Holiness. Therefore the Patriarch holds that
the world does not see (and perhaps cannot see) the real,
spiritual truth of the Serbian-Croatian conflict. Indeed, this
truth is not seen even by some believers of the Serbian
Orthodox Church. Or perhaps they have come to doubt that
truth? His Holiness addresses them too, repeating the words of
Jesus, spoken to his disciples on the lake in Galilee: "Why
are you fainthearted, you with little faith?" (Mt 8,26) Little
faith in our truth. The Patriarch says, "As once the apostles
grew frightened of the storm in the lake in Galilee, so too
among us many people are afraid of drowning in the stormy sea
of our days."

In His Holiness's missive there is, however, one place which
can hardly be reconciled with the spiritual call of a
patriarch: the phrase about "world diplomacy." Jesus spoke
about faith, but he never spoke about "world diplomacy." He
said "Pay back Caesar's things to Caesar, but God's things to
God" (Mt 22,21). Hence should not the speech of the Patriarch,
Christ's and God's lieutenant, leave talk of "world diplomacy"
to the lieutenants of Caesar?



THE IDEOLOGICAL TRUTH


Ideological truth by its contents is a continuation of
mythological and religious truth. In Father Djujic's assertion
we saw what the mythological viewpoint on "God's" Serbian
people looks like. In the missive of His Holiness we saw how
the Serbian religious, spiritual truth about the
Serbian-Croatian war was opposed to the views of world
diplomacy. The following case will show us what the Serbian
ideological truth about the Croats looks like.

On October 2, 1991, the Regional Council of the Serbian
Democratic Party (SDS) from Chicago sent a message to American
Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley. In the three-page document
the SDS reports on the "horrors which the Croats committed
against the Serbs in Karlovac" in Croatia. The document begins
with the usual assertions from the treasury of anti-Croatian
propaganda.

The first sentence says that the crime against, thirteen
Serbian reserve soldiers was committed by "Croatian Ustashi
forces." The second sentence states that the atrocity of the
Croatian Ustashe at the Korana Bridge on September 21,
1991, is equal to the most bestial atrocities of the Pavelich
Horror State." The fifth sentence transforms these Ustashe
into "a Croatian Interior Ministry group of armed men." Then
the torments which the Serbian soldiers suffered are
described: their "eyes were dug out, ears cut off, head cut
off," etc.

While all the media are constantly reporting to the
international public about the hundreds of unarmed Croatian
civilians killed in Nova Gradiska, Drnis and Split, the SDS
describes the death of thirteen Serbian reserve soldiers in
Croatia. SDS writes:

The crime speaks for itself. It is a repetition of the
Nazi/Fascist nature of the Croats from WW II when over one
million innocent Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were slaughtered for
no other reason then [sic!] not being Croatian Nationalists.

The SDS text is a representative sample of hundreds and
hundreds of published anti-Croatian texts as well as Serbian
messages to the governments of many countries. As a
representative, that is, a typical example of anti-Croatian
propaganda, this text would not be worthy of special attention
if there were not something else in it as well. The SDS does
not limit itself to the assertion that the Croats are
Nazi-Fascists. The SDS goes farther:

Sadly, the Croatian Nazi/Fascist propaganda machine
successfully used many US politicians to advance their cause
of Nazi/Fascism rebirth in Croatia.

Even this is not enough. The SDS goes even farther and points
out the shared responsibility of American politicians for the
crimes of the Croats:

These politicians must accept partial responsibility for the
crimes described above as well as for thousands of other
crimes committed by the Croatian "democracy" which these
politicians supported and encouraged.

Here we see how the above-mentioned "crime" turns into
"crimes." Whereas the message describes one incident at the
Korana bridge in Karlovac. The secret remains: how does one
crime grow into many crimes? And besides that: from where have
the "thousands of other crimes" appeared? And finally:
which crimes? One would expect, if only for the sake of
greater verisimilitude, that at least one case would be
mentioned besides the incident at the Korana bridge. But that
does not stop the SDS. The SDS goes in deeper:

The most notorios [sic!l American supporters of Croatian
Nazi/Fascism are listed below, however, these are certainly
not the only ones.

The list that follows mentions fifteen American politicians,
beginning with Robert Dole, Republican leader in the American
Senate (who would propose the Resolution on the recognition of
Croatia and Slovenia on January 23, 1992), including Denis De
Cancini [sic!], Alan K. Simpson, Alfonse D'Amato, and
Tom Lantos. After this the SDS promises that a more complete
list will be provided later. Then follows the revelation of
the purpose of the list of "American supporters of Fascism in
Croatia," but also of the message to Helen Bentley. The
purpose sounds almost unbelievable, even for the long history
of American democratic public life:

More complete list will be compiled later for the Serbian
community and all men of good will to begin a campaign to
demand resignation of all American supporters of Fascism in
Croatia.

In order to achieve the greatest possible effect, the SDS also
moves into breadth: the message is sent not only to
Congresswoman Helen Bentley, but also to President George
Bush, senators, members of the Congress, James Baker, human
rights organizations and the mass media.

The SDS message, without doubt, did a great deal of harm to
the Serbian cause, and it helped to uncover the operation of
anti-Croatian propaganda. Those who read the message drew the
logical conclusion: if the Croats are as much fascists as
Senator Dole is a pro-fascist, then the Croats are not
fascists. Whatever one may think of the conservative Robert
Dole and other politicians on the SDS "blacklist, only
ideologically short-sighted persons could accuse the most
influential American politicians of supporting fascism.

It remains unclear in the sentence cited from the document
which extenuating circumstances caused the accusation to
change from supporting "Nazi/Fascism" to supporting just
"Fascism." Where has the "Nazism" gone?

The message is an excellent illustration of what happens when
ideological truth (of the SDS) comes into conflict with the
factual truth (the American politicians from the list). The
SDS writes that the Serbian community in the USA has already
warned the politicians listed about their erroneous view of
the war in Croatia, but the warnings were in vain:

The Serbian community in the US has protested US politicians'
association with the darkest forces the world has known,
namely the "Croatian Young Democrats," but those named above
have dismissed these protests and continued supporting the
Nazi/Fascist elements in Yugoslavia thus giving them hope that
they will with foreign help succeed in their evil plans.

Thus Nazism is once again joined to fascism, but it is no
longer reserved only for the Croats, but rather is applied to
a broader area of former Yugoslavia. The Croats evidently are
not the only Nazi-fascists. This is followed by a threat to
both "fascists" and "pro-fascists:"

Consequently, the Serbs must hold equally responsible the
perpetrators of the crimes and their supporters. The Serbs
shall never forget the victims listed above and thousands
others [sic!] that have already been killed in similar fashion
[sic!] in Croatia. The evil doers and their supporters shall
never be forgiven, no matter where and behind what world
democracy they are hiding.

That is right, Mr. Dragnich they shall never be forgiven, even
if they ask to be.

The threat is followed by a suggestion for action, or rather
for a political direction for American powers:

We believe that it is the time for the US to condemn
unconditionally the Croatian Fascist Government and call for
its destruction.

The adjective "Nazi" has been lost again, but that doesn't
matter. Something else is more important - condemning all the
American politicians from the SDS list:

Furthermore, we believe that all men of good will must support
the Serbian-Americans in condemnation of all those US
politicians who have been supporting and encouraging the
rebirth of Croatian Fascism. We hope that you will spearhead
the proposed campaign to condemn the irresponsible [sic!] US
politicians and to expose the "Young Croatian Democracy."

The two sentences cited here demonstrate important traits of
ideology. First, one sees the tendency towards total
opposition of good ("we" and "all men of good will") and evil
(all US "supporters" of the Croats and all Croats). Second,
the ideology rests on faith, and not on facts ("we
believe..."). Third, the ideology does not allow a person to
make a free choice ("all men of good will must support
Serbian-Americans"). But why is it that "all men of good will
must support Serbian-Americans" in the free American state by
supporting a single political position? Why should someone
have to condemn the same people they see every day on
television screens, the victims of the war in Croatia? Why
condemn the American politicians who behave according to
principle? They condemn the aggressor in the case of Croatia,
as they did in the case of Kuwait.

The ideology demands that all co-ideologues join in the
struggle against all enemies. The individual is forced to melt
into the all, into the supposed common interest. Anyone who
does not accept our common position (which is the incarnation
of justice and truth) is either an enemy or a traitor.

[Watzy]

THE PURPOSE OF TUDJMAN'S BOOK


The fundamental question which Tudjman examines in his book is
the question of evil. As a concrete manifestation of evil he
investigates wars and violence in human history from the
Biblical Cain to the war in Afghanistan. Tudjman as a
historian analyzes not only historical facts, but also
philosophical and theoretical interpretations of war, from
Plato to Barbara Tuchman. His goal is to reach an
understanding of the insanity of violence, war and crime with
the help of the historical investigation and reason. Of
course, Tudjman stresses, to understand does not mean to
justify:

Without examination of the causality and interdependence of
all historical phenomena there can be no talk of their
amelioration, not to mention their elimination. To be sure,
the demand for understanding of historical events in no case
means a tendency to justify any sort of historical crimes.
(Wilderness, p. 295)

Evil has been a constant companion of humanity throughout all
of history, and so human history can also be analyzed as the
history of wars and violence. Peace is an interlude that would
arise as the result of a war in which one side was defeated.
The real world is always the result of the concrete
relationship of conflicting sides. In the real world pacifist
teachings are not only mere illusion, but also internally
contradictory. Even Christ's heralding of peace on earth is
contradictory, for Christ also says: "Suppose ye that I am
come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather
division" (Luke 12,51; quoted in Wilderness, p. 244). Even
Immanuel Kant in his teaching about "eternal peace" says that
"a peaceful state between people.... is not a natural state,
moreover, that is precisely a state of war.... A state of
peace, therefore, must be created." (Wilderness, p. 245)

It is a paradox that peace is most stable when it is ensured
by powerful weapons. At times the most efficacious means of
combatting violence is precisely other violence. Gandhi's
movement could succeed against the British, but it would have
had no effect against Hitler, who sent those who disobeyed to
the gas chambers. It was Russian tanks, American warplanes and
British warships that were successful against Hitler. But,
just as it is clear that the Allies opposed Hitler's war of
conquest with violence, it is also clear that the Allied
application of violence was necessary and justified. Tudjman
writes:

The human mind has never flagged in the noble effort to master
the destructive powers in man and in historical occurrences.
The tragedy and grandeur of these attempts is in the
contradiction of being itself: the elimination of all kinds of
violence cannot be achieved without the use of some kind of
violence. (Wilderness, p. 167)

Tudjman examines the relations of Serbs and Croats within
European and world history. The conflict between Serbs and
Croats appears on several levels: as a conflict of (Byzantine)
Orthodoxy and (Latin) Catholicism; Cyrillic and the Latin
alphabet; the Serbian and Croatian languages (which for
political reasons had to be melted into one binominal
language, "Serbo-Croatian", in Yugoslavia); the conflict of
different habits, ways of life and two national
consciousnesses. However, the fundamental conflict takes place
between two political ideas: Serbian (unitaristic)
expansionism and Croatian (confederative) republicanism. The
conflict between these two peoples deepened after 1918, when
Croatia and Serbia for the first time in history entered a
common state. The Croats supported a (con)federal structure,
but the Serbs imposed their own centralized government with
the argument of force. Therefore the Croatian parliament never
recognized the political act of unification of Croatia and
Serbia.

The Serbian state-forming idea denies the identity of the
Croatian people, and in that the integrality of Croatian
territory, the existence of the Croatian language, etc. The
"father of the Serbian language," Vuk Karadzic, as early as
1836 outlines the hypothesis that there are "Serbs all and
everywhere" from "Trieste to the Bojana river," i.e., from the
north of Italy to Albania. Karadzic admits sincerely that
Croats, Slavic Muslims and others do not feel themselves to be
Serbs and do not wish to be called Serbs. This does not
discourage Karadzic, however. Thus in the nineteenth century
the Croats were offered a choice: either agree that they were
Serbs, or be destroyed. Karadzic's ideas were accepted and
further elaborated by:

- the statesman Ilija Garasanin in the Serbian expansionistic
program "Nacertanije" ([Outline], 1844);

- the Serbian politician Nikola Stojanovic in his article "Do
istrage nase ili vase" ([To the extermination of either ours
{Serbian} or yours {Croatian}], 1902)

- the Chetnik Stevan Moljevic in his project for Greater
Serbia, "Homogena Srbija" ([A Homogeneous Serbia], 1941);

- the "Memorandum" of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
(1986).

The Serbian aggression against Croatia (1991-1992) is an
attempt to realize these plans of a Greater Serbia. The idea
of Greater Serbia exists not only in political blueprints, but
they have also become an integral part of Serbian national
consciousness in everyday life. This is clear in the popular
songs based on the melodies and structure of Serbian folk
music. Let us cite only three such songs:

1) Igrale se delije nasred zemlje Srbije,
Sitno kolo do kola vilo se do Stambola.
[Hop, hop, kick, kick, skip, skip, in the spin
Sturdy guys danced in the ring,
From Serbia to Istanbul together clinged
"Friendly" to conquer it in full swing.]
(translated by Rina Obad-Slezic)

2) Tamo daleko, daleko kraj mora,
Tamo je selo moje, tamo je Srbija.
[Far away, far away by the sea,
There is my village, there "is my Serbia".]
(translated by Rina Obad-Slezic)

3) Donecemo mi slobodu svima,
Od Soluna pa do Segedina.
["Freedom" we shall bring to all,
From Thessalonica to Szeged
with shouts of "joy".]
(translated by Rina Obad-Slezic)

Thus, these popular songs sing about the sea, which Serbia
does not have; about Istanbul, which is in Turkey; about
Thessalonica, which is in Greece; about Szeged, which is in
Hungary. If these songs sing this way about cities which are
defended by the Turkish, Greek and Hungarian armies, how will
they sing about the Croatian cities which were not defended by
a Croatian army? It is clear, for example, that in Serbian
songs the Croatian speaking Catholic Dubrovnik will become
Serbian speaking Orthodox Dubrovnik:

Na vrh Srdja vila klice:
Zdravo srpski Dubrovnice!
"Hurrah, beloved Dubrovnik of Serbia!
A fairy cheers you, from the hill of Srdj
that besieges you.
(translated by Rina Obad-Slezic)

It does not matter that reality does not match the epic songs
or the myth. Reality can be changed in many ways: with tanks,
cannon, bombers, warships, rockets and so on, as far as
Rijeka, Karlovac, Osijek and the Presidential Palace in
Zagreb. But we must not forget when reality starts to change:
at the moment when real people begin to believe in the myths
or the popular songs. When they start to feel that someone
else's territory belongs to them.

In Wilderness, Tudjman gives a special analysis of the
historical relations of the Croats and Serbs in the 19th and
20th centuries. Paraphrasing "Katz's law," according to which
people and peoples act rationally only when they have
exhausted all other possibilities, Tudjman asks the legitimate
(in 1988) question: have all the irrationalities been
exhausted in Serbian-Croatian relations? "Judging by
historical reality, the answer would have to be affirmative,"
says Tudjman (p. 463), but he cautiously adds that this answer
is ambiguous. He points to the Jasenovac myth of the
unpardonable collective guilt of the Croatian people because
of the crimes of the Ustashe against the Serbs in the Second
World War as the ultimate irrationality in Serbian-Croatian
relations. The myth had four goals:

1) To concentrate all Ustashe crimes in one place.

2) To increase the number of Serbian victims as necessary.

3) To exclude any possibility of the formation of an
independent Croatian state by the premise of the genocidal
nature of the Croats.

4) To cover up the Chetnik genocidal crimes against the
Croats.

Tudjman does not deny the crimes of the Ustashe:

Regardless of the mythic manifold increase of the victims of
Jasenovac (it does not matter by how many tenfold) - the crime
took place. Horrible and enormous. Both in its dimensions and
in the way it was carried out. It also had genocidal
characteristics. (Wilderness, p. 465).

Tudjman, however, cannot agree with the Serbian mythmakers on
the following points:

a) The number of Serbian victims cannot be inflated.
b) The number of Croatian victims cannot be reduced or
ignored.
c) the Chetnik crimes against the Croats, the Slavic Muslims
the Jews, and others cannot be ignored or underestimated.
d) the Ustashe or Chetnik crimes cannot be ascribed to the
entire Croatian or Serbian people. Besides this, writes
Tudjman, "Pavelic's and Mihailovic's attempts at a radical
solution of the Serbian or the Croatian question proved to be
unachievable and equally detrimental to both peoples."
(Wilderness, p. 472) Croatian-Serbian relations are loaded
with numerous political and cultural controversies. But still,
Tudjman does see a path out of the wilderness:

The fundamental preconditions for a way out of the historical
wilderness of Serbian-Croatian relations - the antagonisms and
misunderstanding, for which all the horrors of the actual
reality or [the Second World] War are not sufficient, so that
they elevate them to the monstrosity of a Jasenovac or a
Bleiburg myth, and to theories of genocide - are very simple:
a) To think through the causality of all historical
occurrences with extremely sober rationality.
b) To accept the national identity of the Croatian and the
Serbian national beings, such as they have been formed over
the course of historical development with all their
ingredients and determining factors.
c) To recognize that each of them [the two nationalities] has
the right to self-determination and to their own statehood,
i.e. to inviolable sovereignty in deciding about their own
fate, in other words about their lives and their business, and
d) To resolve mutually disputable questions by negotiation for
the sake of harmonious coexistence in a community of peoples
with equal rights in both Yugoslavia and Europe (Wilderness,
pp. 477, 478).

Historical events from 1990 to 1992 have demonstrated once
again the triumph of irrationality (war and violence), but
also the realization of the strategic goal of Croatian policy
which was chosen by the citizens of Croatia in a referendum:
the independence of the Republic of Croatia. Tudjman's
contribution to this is unquestionable, and this is recognized
by his most reasoned Croatian critics. Zivko Kustic, the Adam
Michnik of Croatian journalism, writes that it is precisely
"the international policy of Tudjman and his government" that
forced the Western countries including the Vatican, to become
engaged for Croatian freedom and independence. (Z. Kustic,
"Sto su Hrvatskoj mitra i orao?," Globus, January 24, 1992,
p. 17.)

Both Tudjman's book and the war in Croatia show that the
political independence of a people must often be paid for with
what is most precious: human lives. The cost of Croatian
independence is very high: thousands dead, hundreds of
thousands displaced, enormous material destruction. These
losses were the result of a military imbalance of power which
was highly unfavorable to Croatia, as well as of European
misunderstanding of the fundamental historical complications
in Serbian-Croatian relations. British scholar James Pettifer
writes about this:

One of the underlying reasons why the initial northern
European attempts to mediate in the Yugoslav crisis were so
inept was that so many of the EC politicians and officials
involved were insensitive to the cultural identities of the
participants, to the point of crass ignorance in some
instances. Nineteenth-century British colonial officers with a
classical education would have made more sense of things than
some or the lawyers from Brussels, prisoners of a culture that
is superficially sophisticated and cosmopolitan but in
practice technocratic and conformist. [...] If anything good
can come out of the debacle in Yugoslavia, perhaps a clearer
understanding of the need to preserve and respect cultural
diversity and new small nations will hopefully be part of it.
(J. Pettifer in the review of Minorities and Autonomy in
Western Europe (London: Minority Rights Group Publication,
1991), published in The World Today [London], January 1992.)


Tudjman's Wilderness offers a historical explanation of the
causes of the latest war in Croatia. Therefore Wilderness may
be read not only as a historical introduction but also as a
scholarly epilogue to the Croatian war for independence. And
more than that: the book offers a key to understanding the
most important political moves of the first democratically
elected president of Croatia.



EPILOGUE


The military conflict in Croatia in 1991 was actually a
conflict between two political conceptions: the Greater
Serbian conception from the "Memorandum" of the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts (1986)[whose co-author, Dobrica
Cosic, has recently been installed as President of what
remains of Yugoslavia] and the Croatian conception embodied in
Tudjman's Wilderness (1988).

The "Memorandum" explicitly asserts that "the position of
Serbia must be seen within the framework of the political and
economic domination of Slovenia and Croatia" in former
Yugoslavia ("Memorandum SANU", Duga, June 1989, p. 36).

If Slovenia and Croatia were in fact exploiting Serbia, why
then did Serbia not accept and even welcome the declarations
of independence by Slovenia and Croatia? Why would Serbia want
to go on living in the same state with its "exploiters?"

The Belgrade press accepted the Memorandum theses about the
unequal rights of Serbia and the endangerment of the Serbian
people in former Yugoslavia. So, two years ago it was
announced that "in Bosnia and Hercegovina the Brkovics and the
Sagoljs should be cleansed", that is, the Croats and all those
who disagreed with the Serbian policy. (Duga, May 26 - June 8,
1990, p. 8).

The current "ethnic cleansing" of the Slavic Muslims and the
Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina is the realization of several
programs for Greater Serbia. Let us consider one of the most
famous political programs, "Expulsion of the Albanians,
written by Vasa Cubrilovic. His lecture "Expulsion of the
Albanians" was presented in the Serbian Cultural Club in
Belgrade on March 7, 1937. The author of the expulsion
program, Vasa Cubrilovic, was also a member of the terrorist
group "Mlada Bosna," which carried out the assassination of
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.

(This document is deposited in the Military-Historical
Institute of the Yugoslav People's Army in Belgrade [Archive
of the Royal Yugoslav Army, Nr. 2, Fasc. 4, Box 69]. The text
is cited from Izvori velikosrpske agresije, ed. Boze Covic
(Zagreb: August Cesarec and Skolska knjiga, 1991), pp.
106-123. From this point on in my text I give pages of this
edition in parentheses.)

According to Cubrilovic, Royal Yugoslavia could achieve
political stability through two parallel processes: Serbian
colonization of lands with non-Serbian population and
expulsion of some nationalities from the country. The results
of the Serbian colonization until 1937 were not satisfactory,
said Cubrilovic. The country was politically unstable in
"South Serbia" (Macedonia) because of the strong Macedonian
resistance to Serbian settlers. Cubrilovic advised the Serbian
authorities: "The colonization from the north should be
reduced in the regions inhabited by Macedonians," (p. 110).
However, the country is politically unstable in "North Serbia"
as well because of the large number of Hungarians and Germans
in Vojvodina:

Hungarian and even German farm laborers and small proprietors
should be sent partially to the south because in Backa [a part
of Vojvodina], on the border with Hungary, they represent a
danger, the more so because the Serbs in Backa comprise hardly
25 per cent of the total population. (p. 118)

(In case the reader wonders why these German farmers have not
appeared earlier in this book, the answer is that the
"question" of the Volksdeutsch in Vojvodina was "solved" in
1944-1946, when almost all the Germans who did not manage to
flee were massacred or sent to concentration camps - even
those who had not collaborated with the Nazis or with
Nedic.)

Nonetheless, the Serbian Academician saw the Albanians as the
most dangerous nationality. They should be expelled to Albania
and Turkey. The expulsion of the Albanians from Yugoslavia
would solve at the same time the problem of the fifth
"dangerous" nationality, Slavic Muslims: "With the removal of
the Albanians, the last link between our Muslims in Bosnia
and Novi Pazar and the rest of the Muslim world is cut"
(p. 110). Cubrilovic was aware of the difficulty of the
task. The few successes already achieved in colonization he
saw as the result not of good organization, but rather of the
"colonizing qualities of our race [nase rase]" (p. 117). Since
the gradual colonization of Kosovo was not a solution:

It is impossible to repulse the Albanians only by means of
gradual colonization [...], the only way and the only means to
cope with them is the brutal force of organized state power
[brutalna sila jedne organizovane drzavne vlasti] in which we
have always been superior to them. (p. 111)

The Serbian-ruled Royal Yugoslav authorities had discontinued
the successful policy of former Serbian rulers ("Karadjordje
during the First uprising as well as Milos, Mihajlo and Jovan
Ristic") which had "cleansed Serbia of the foreign element"
(p. 108). Why was the Royal government of the 1920s and 1930s
less successful in "cleansing Serbia of the foreign element".?
Cubrilovic found the answer in the useless attempt to copy
European standards in resolving national conflicts in Royal
Yugoslavia:

The fundamental mistake of our responsible factors [the
authorities] at that time was that, forgetting where they
were, they wanted to solve the major ethnic problems of the
troubled and bleeding Balkans by applying Western methods.
Turkey brought to the Balkans the custom of the Sheriat,
according to which victory in war and the conquest of a
country confers the right to the lives and property of the
conquered subjects. (p. 107)

Instead of "Western methods", Cubrilovic argues for "oriental
methods" in solving the Albanian question in Kosovo:

When it comes to religious issues, the Albanians are very
touchy, therefore they must be harassed on this score too.
This can be achieved through ill-treatment of their clergy,
the destruction of their graveyards [...]. We should
distribute weapons to our colonists, as need be. In those
regions, the old Chetnik action should be organized and
secretly assisted. In particular, a tide of Montenegrins
should be launched from the hills, in order to create large-
scale conflict with the Albanians in Metohija. This conflict
should be prepared by our trusted people: It should bc
encouraged and this can be done more easily since the
Albanians have revolted, while the whole affair should be
presented with peace in our hearts as a conflict between clans
and tribes and, if need be, ascribed to economic reasons. In
an extreme necessity, these will be bloodily suppressed
with the most effective means by colonists, Montenegrin tribes
and the Chetniks, rather than by the Army. There is one more
means which Serbia used with great practical effect after
1878, secretly burning down Albanian villages and city
quarters. (pp. 113-114)

Cubrilovic supposed that Europe with its Western standards
would probably criticize these "oriental methods." But he had
a prepared Realpolitical reply:

[T]he world today has grown used to things much worse than
this and is so preoccupied with day-to-day problems that this
aspect should not be a cause for concern. At a time when
Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can
shift millions of people from one part of the continent to
another, the expulsion of few hundred thousand Albanians
will not lead to the outbreak of a world war. (p. 112)

The most respected scholarly organizations in Serbia, the
Royal Serbian Academy of Sciences and the University of
Belgrade, "ought to take the initiative to organize a thorough
scholarly study of the whole problem of colonization in our
country." Realization of the colonization "should be entrusted
to the main General Staff. Here is why. For pure reasons of
national defense" (p. 118). The Army had a vital role in
colonization.

During the setting up of new colonies, military forces should
be used where required... For this job, the Army should be
given the right and possibility of creating a kind of
obligatory labor duty for public purposes, just as Stamboliski
did in Bulgaria (Trudova povinost) and Hitler in Germany
(Arbeitsdienst) by calling up reservists for military training
or extending the term of military service. (p. 122)

Jovan Raskovic, psychiatrist and leader of the Serbian
Democratic Party in Croatia, announced in Belgrade two years
ago that the Serbian people may even make war against the
other peoples of former Yugoslavia, but that this would be to
the benefit (!) of the other peoples:

However stupid that might appear: the Serbian people,
according to the state of things today, will go on carrying.
out, if not wars, then that liberating thought which will be
directed towards other peoples, as a contribution to them and
for their own good.

("42 aplauza za Jovana Raskovica", Duga, May 26 - June 8,
1990, p. 20.)

These declarations of war and cleansing the non-Serbian
population of other republics sprang from the real assumption
that the Yugoslav People's Army would carry out the war and
clean up the territory of other republics. The Serbian
conception felt that military might could and should resolve
all the open political questions of the existence of former
Yugoslavia.

In distinction from the Serbian conception, Tudjman started
with the necessity of respecting political rights and the will
of the citizens of all the republics of former Yugoslavia,
including their right to their own state. Tudjman was against
military might as a forcibly imposed arbiter in political
questions. He supported an independent and sovereign Croatia,
but he wanted to achieve it, if possible, through a
confederation of sovereign states or, if that were impossible,
through dissociation by agreement and not by war. However,
the other side did not accept either a confederation or
dissociation by agreement and threatened to crush the
disobedient republic with military force. Tudjman responded
with a call to the citizens of Croatia for a referendum, in
which the Croats declared their support for a free and
independent Republic of Croatia. The other side, the
Serbian-led Yugoslav Army, responded with military aggression
against Croatia. The leadership of Croatia, headed by Tudjman,
found itself in an extremely difficult position: a militarily
superior aggressor was taking over Croatian territory; Croatia
could not arm itself because of the U.N. embargo on weapons;
the international community did not send peace-keeping forces
to Croatia; the European Community did not recognize the
independence of the Republic, while within Croatia itself some
elements were working against the attainment of independence.
While the other side relied on military force and the
passivity of the international community, Tudjman acted on
both levels: both on the international political stage and on
the battlefields of Croatia. Tudjman's government agreed to
numerous cease-fires (which the enemy immediately violated),
but this was a way of demonstrating to the international
community who was continuing the war by violating the
cease-fires, and who wanted peace.

On January 15, 1927 the European Community recognized the
independence of Croatia within its pre-war boundaries. In this
way, Tudjman achieved the strategic goal of the Croatian
political conception: the independence of Croatia. The Greater
Serbian conception (along with some tactical successes)
suffered a double strategic defeat: both military and
political. One of the best-prepared European armies needed all
of three months, with enormous casualties of its own, to
conquer the ruins of one city, Vukovar. This could not be
called a brilliant military victory but rather the incapacity
to conquer all of Croatia. The cities of Osijek, Vinkovci,
Pakrac, Sisak, Karlovac, Zadar, Dubrovnik and so on have been
bombarded but not occupied. And these cities, indeed, were
included into the planned Greater Serbia.

The political defeat of the Greater Serbian idea is even more
severe: international condemnation of aggression and the
introduction of sanctions against Serbia.

And so it would seem that the author of Wilderness had a
better sense of history and human justice than the authors of
the 1986 "Memorandum" of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and
Arts, in which the plans of the acquisition of Greater Serbia
were delineated.

http://wap.macedonia.org/propaganda/intro.html

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Nice work Watzy! This just shows how hideous Serb propaganda is and what a bunch of whingers they are.