Croatology, Vol. 16 No. 2, 2025.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.59323/k.16.2.11
Yugoslav Secret Services and Political Emigration: The “War” for the Future of Yugoslavia and Croatia
Davor Dijanović
; Croatian Cultural Council, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The analysis of sources and relevant literature shows that throughout the
entire period of the existence of communist Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav political
leadership and secret services treated the Croatian political emigration, given
its dominantly anti-Yugoslav and anti-communist stance, as a hostile element
and as a state security threat. This resulted not only in the surveillance of the
„hostile emigration“, but also in attempts to violently neutralize its prominent
elements, which included a series of state-organized assassinations. On the
other hand, primarily due to such violent actions of Yugoslavia towards the
emigration (some of the émigrés were subjected to violence in their homeland
before fleeing abroad), an idea of the necessity of violent struggle also emerged
among its smaller segments. Although there have been attempts to prove that
the Yugoslav services only liquidated „terrorists“, mostly linked to the Ustasha
ideology, analysis shows that those emigrants who had no connection to violent
activities were also killed, as shown by the example of Stjepan Đureković.
Keywords
Croatian political emigration ; Yugoslav security services ; Federal Republic of Germany ; war ; state terrorism
Hrčak ID:
337390
URI
Publication date:
2.11.2025.
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