Original scientific paper
What Did Nixon’s Exclamation “Long Live Croatia” Mean?
Tvrtko JAKOVINA
Abstract
Richard M. Nixon was the first American president to visit
Yugoslavia (September 30 to October 2, 1970). During his
two-day stay with Tito, Nixon also visited the Croatian capital
– Zagreb and Kumrovec, the birthplace of Josip Broz. The
decision to visit another city during his official stay in
Belgrade was unprecedented. In the early seventies Croatian
society was increasingly demanding the democratization of
relations within the Yugoslav Federation, more favourable economic relations etc. During the reception prepared by the
Croatian officials the President of the United States
exclaimed “Long live Croatia!”, which caused many to
interpret this courteous phrase (forgetting that the
exclamation “Long live Yugoslavia!” immediately ensued)
and the visit itself as unequivocal support of Croatian
endeavours. In the text, the author analyses the course of the
American President’s visit and the relevant features of
American foreign policy based on accessible, secondary data
(from Croatian and American daily and weekly newspapers,
electronic recordings and memoirist writing). Although insight
into these for the time being inaccessible archival materials
will shed more light on the event, based on the existing data
it would be hard to attribute a deeper political meaning or
Croatophile attitude to Nixon’s visit to Croatia.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
20342
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1999.
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