Review article
POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE WAR IN CROATIA AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Miroslav Vujević
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author points up the proverbial complexity of Yugoslavia and the inadequacy of its political structure, made up of six republics, five peoples, four languages, three religions, two alphabets, amd one party. That is why the subjective orientations of its peoples went counter to its existence, leading to its disintegration following the first multiparty elections. Serbs and Montenegrins were its partisans and due to a lack of democratic political culture they launched the war for the preservation of Yugoslavia. The properties of the political culture of the peoples living on its territory had acted as trip-wires for that war, defined its form, course and intensity. Due to their national identification with Yugoslavia and insufficient democratic political culture, Serbs and Montenegrins started the war for the terittories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aggressors belong to the eastern civilisational sphere, speak the Serbian language, write in the Cyrillic alphabet, are culturally tribally oriented, want to live in Yugoslavia and Greater Serbia which would be socialist, and are adherents of repressive types of political culture. The victims belong to the western civilisational sphere, they are Catholics and Moslems, speak Croatian (Croato-Serbian), write in the Latin alphabet, are culturally communally oriented, and favour the participatory political culture. During the Serbian and Montenegrian agression, two civil wars erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina: (1) between the Muslims and the Croats and (2) between the Muslims. The participants of this war all swear their allegiance to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but differ in their visions of its political structure. The Moslems wish for a unitarian state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croats want it to be a federal state, while the Serbs are against any separate state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
105870
URI
Publication date:
4.10.1996.
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