Original scientific paper
Country-Town Relations as Interpreted by Intellectuals in Croatia During the Between-the-War Period
Zorica Stipetić
Marijan Maticka
Abstract
The authors have pointed out that their essay is but an attempt to drawing up of the main tendencies of the relations country-town during the between the war period, though the title may suggest its being a survey as well as an analysis on the basis of which a conclusion could be reached on the totality of intellectual production in Croatia of that time. Some papers of several most representative intellectuals from different ideological currents were studied, as of e. g. R. Herceg, I. Šarinić, J. Predavec, R. Bićanić, S. Kranjčević, A. Pribićević, H . Krizman, D . Tomašić, O. Frangeš, M. Ivšić, V. Rieger, A. Cesarec, M. Krleža, O. Keršovani, M. Mirković, V. Bakarić, while, on the hand, the politicians-ideologists have been left out.
The basic purpose of this essay is to give an answer to the questions posed on the quantity and the manner of the intellectuals' sphere comprehension and interpretation of the social reality, the level and importance the interpretation reached, the main themes it undertook to study, the stimuli that spurred such interpretation.
The essay has been divided into three parts; the first being a synthesis of discussions on the relation between the intellectuals and the title-suggested problems, the grouping of the intellectuals and the dynamics of their gathering round the "peasant" ideology. The second part is dealing with the interpretation of the country-town relations as expressed by the intellectuals who were supporting the conception as well as by the intelectuals of the oppositions, supporters of mostly Right ideas upon the problem. The third part contains an "expose" of the critique of the liberal left middle-class and Marxist intellectuals on the above conceptions.The authors have concluded mentioning that the thought expressed everywhere was almost always completely falling behind the practice inspite the fact that there was compiled an enormous literature dealing with the problems of the peasants, the problems of the relation country-town being implicit, and that the social critique was accompanying it regularly, though perhaps based on various motives and political arguments and interests of politicians. This approaching the subject of the relations country-town meant, in fact, the revealing of the problematical side of an acute social question, so much so that there had been no possibility of putting on an "academic" attitude or ideologically or politically non-deflned. Nevertheless, the majority of written pages did not arise from the whole of ideology system, nor was it up to any kind of political level, for, the inconsistencies were so strong as to be easily detected even in the largely accepted conception of ''nationalist idea", the name the authors gave to "peasant" ideology. The un-tenability of such self-illusion as the idea of the possibility of ideal peasant life represented, particularly as it was really conceived in anarchic and autarchic un-changeability, had caused the ideologists to fall into the trap of inconsistencies so much that they could not overcome it, not even on the level of theorizing, not to mention the creating of practical solutions. The only issue was to maintain the discussions on the level of stating of the situation, while the proposed solutions were avoiding or even misrepresenting the essence of the problems.
According to the authors this general estimate may cover partly the Marxist intellectuals' work, as they, too, were sometimes apt to lose track and err all the way from the theoretical abstraction to political opportunism. Nevertheless, they were , rather late perhaps, the first to come to and clothe in words the very essence of the peasant problem as seen in the light of historical rules. Thus, again, this was the proof of their equivocality, anachronism, of social un-tenability of "peasant" ideology as well as of in-humanity of capitalistic system, while, on the other hand, they had been fighting for the vision of such society in which the inconsistencies of the relation country-town would be solved.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
219324
URI
Publication date:
2.5.1974.
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