Review article
On the Importance of Peasant Uprising of 1573 in the History of Communist Movement and the Revolution in Croatia
Ivan Jelić
Abstract
The main subject of this article is dealing ith is the studying of a question: what turned the tradition of the Great Croatian and Slovenian Peasant Uprising of 1573 to become a kind of historical reality during the Yugoslav revolution of 1941-1945 (the tendency was very strong on the territory of Croatia). Many an example points to the fact that the revolution, a very complex historical process in itself, was including and continuing the tradition of the great peasant upheaval, offering it thus the possibility to reappear under completely different historical circumstances as a well defined historical act; that again leads to a conclusion that one ancient history event, though still a living legend of a rather subjective character, got a coat of a new aspect, that of historical objectivity, at a quite different and new momentum.
Should one open a discussion with the fact that the component of traditionalism of the peasant uprising was clearly interwoven in the structure of the activities of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPT) in the days of rising to arms against German and Italian occupiers and their home allies, in Summer 1941, one should stress immediately that it had not been only the result of the moment, but more the logical consequence of that-time line of development of the communist movement. The pre-war development of the political idea inside the structure of the communist movement strongly attracted and, in a way, attached to itself the ideological tradition of the peasant uprising, though the basis of the theoretical development of the idea lay on the ever clearer and more concrete defining of the historical duty of the proletariat inside the existing social structure. For, the peasant uprising represented an example of historical un-conditional requiring of the association: Croatian peasantry - Croatian working class, in order to reach the final, goals, thus considered the upheaval could be given the name of social revolution as well. The tradition manifested itself in the national liberation struggle and revolution in Croatia from 1941 to 1945 as a visible moving power, mass-attracting Croatian peasants to the side of CPT and revolution. One of the main political speeches (almost a slogan) was, in order to help the revolution on Croatian territories, drawing forward and giving light to the component of heroism and mass-upheaval characteristics of the traditional peasant uprising. The idea was always clearly standing out at those fatuous moment which were marked as the boundary-stones in the line of development of the revolution, helping to recognize its very up-coming and widening influence as a vital constant of the revolution in Croatia itself.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
219234
URI
Publication date:
2.2.1973.
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