Other
FACILIS DECENSUS AVERNO
Dennison Rusinow
Abstract
The text provides an overview and evaluation of the strategy and tactics of
Croatian politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The analysis focuses on
the historical Tenth Session of CK SKH (Central Committee of the League of
Communists of Croatia) held in 1970, which defined Croatian politics with
regard to economic and social reform, as well as to centralist unitarism and
Croatian nationalism. The Tenth Session was conceived and held on the initiative
of Vladimir Bakarić, a great figure and a veteran of Croatian politics,
who was the uncontested master of Croatia from the end of the war to 1969.
With the fall of Ranković (1966), the symbol of “neo-Stalinist centralism, bureaucratism
and Great-Serbian hegemonism”, one of the principal obstacles
to modernization and democratization of Yugoslav communism was removed.
The finest advocates of economic and political liberalization of the regime,
of decentralization and of a stronger position of the republics were Bakarić
and his disciples, an intelligent and well-educated generation of communists
(Tripalo, Dabčević-Kučar, Pirker). They are the ones who would eventually
become symbols of the struggle against the Party’s dogmatic conservatism
and Stalinist voluntarism. The author puts forward a series of elements which
make it possible to understand how the political career of this generation of
dynamic and popular politicians, recognized and successful representatives
of socialist democracy and national equality, came to a tragic end marked
by accusations of flirting with chauvinism, of using “neo-Stalinist” methods
against opponents and colleagues, and of attempting to establish a quasi-fascist
state, in which the dictatorial rule of the clique of (former?) communists
and nationalists, in alliance with the new middle class of managers and “technocrats”,
would be masked by socialist rhetoric and pseudo-mobilization of
the masses deluded by nationalism into believing that members of some other
nation are to blame for all problems.
Keywords
Croatian strategy; unitarism; nationalism; Tenth Session of CK SKH; Bakarić; triumvirate
Hrčak ID:
89181
URI
Publication date:
4.10.2012.
Visits: 3.174 *