The Public Polemic of Stipe Šuvar and Šime Đodan of 1969 as an Example of a Struggle of Ideas in a (Trans-)National Context

Abstract

This paper examines the cause, flow, and context of the intellectual and political debate between Stipe Šuvar and Šime Đodan that took place during 1969, in the conditions of socio-political, cultural, and economic turmoil in the then socialist Croatia and Yugoslavia. The main question that was explicitly and implicitly present throughout the debate was: ‘Is Croatia being exploited in Yugoslavia?’ This discussion, however, was multi-layered and more complex than that. In it, the authors touched upon the relationship between nationalism and inter-ethnic economic integration within Yugoslavia as well as the integration of Yugoslavia with the world, the relationship between economy and culture, emotional and rational arguments in the political and economic spheres, nationalism and demographics, modernisation and national/ethnic emancipation, the interaction of processes in the eastern, socialist bloc and in the West, and the consequences that Yugoslavia should draw from them. As a consequence of this more complex interpretation, their opposed positions (struggle of ideas) cannot be reduced to a simple dichotomy such as socialism-nationalism and Croatianness-Yugoslavness. Furthermore, the freer speech that became predominant in Yugoslav and Croatian public space in the 1960s and 1970s made it easier to cross the borders between the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres. The economic dimension of nationalism would prove inseparable from the national discourse, and it would become apparent that it could not be adequately addressed through general debates in the field of economic theory and practice alone. Finally, the Šuvar-Đodan polemic is a reminder of the reflections on globalisation that were then taking place in socialist societies and states, and which had begun long before the fall of the Berlin Wall.