Studia Croatica

Year VIII, Buenos Aires, 1967, Nos. 24-27

CONTENTS

Croats in Defense of Their National Language 2

The Declaration on the Name and Current Status of the Croatian Literary Language 17

Draft Resolution of a Group of Serbian Writers 19

The Croatian Language 20

The Case of Father Draganovic 34

Testimony of Saint Isidore of Seville on the Arrival of the Croats in the Mediterranean 46

The Spiritual Profile of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac 49

Some Problems Facing Culture in Socialist Yugoslavia 68

A Measure by the French Government Harming the Resistance of the Croatian People to Communism and Grand Servism 77

The Intellectual and Freedom 90

The Printer Dobric Dobricevic (Boninus de Boninis) 94

The Naval Battle of Vis of 1866 97

DOCUMENTS: 113

Statements of the Bishops from Croatia regarding the Protocol on the "Regulation of Relations" between the Catholic Church and Communist Yugoslavia 113

Declaration of the Patriotic Macedonian Organization 117

Notes and Comments 118

In Memoriam Ernest Pezet 118

Tito and the Arab-Israeli War 120

The First Results of Economic Reform in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 124

Act of Solidarity with Vinko Nikolic 126

Against Diplomatic Complacency 127

Milovan Djilas's Leaps from Marx to Njegos 128

In Memory of Dr. Rodolfo N. Luque 131

In Memoriam of Three Distinguished Friends of Croatia 132

Prof. Leopoldo Ruzicka, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Turned 80 133

Book Reviews 135

Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Volume XIII, The War Years, June 23 - December 11, 1941; Ed. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1964, pp. L - 1035. 135

John C. Campbell: American Policy toward Communist Eastern Europe: the Choices Ahead, Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press, 1965, p. 136. 136

Dr. O. Dominik Mandic: Etnicka Povijest Bosne i Hercegovine (The Ethnic History of Bosnia and Herzegobina), Ed. The Croatian Historical Institute, Rome 1967, pp. XVI-554. 139

Arthur Conte, Yalta or the division of the world, Madrid 1964, pp. 446 (Original title in French: "Yalta, ou la partage du monde", trans. by Juan Francisco Torres). 141

Ernest Nolte: Die faschistischen Bewegungen (The Fascist Movements), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1966, pp. 306. 143

Angelo Tamborra: Imbro Tkalac and Italy. Ed. Instituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italino (Series II: Memoirs, vol. XXIV), Rome 1966. 147

Mandicev Zbornik ("The Mandichian Compendium" in tribute to R. P. Dr. Domingo Mandic on the occasion of his 75th birthday). Ed. Studia Instituti Chroatorum Historici Romae, vol. I-II, Romae MCMLXV, p. 320. 149

Journal of Croatian Studies, V-VI, 1964-65, Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of America, Inc., New York, pp. 220. 152

CIRIL A. ZEBOT: Slovenia Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Slovenija vceraj, danes, jutri), Klagenfurt, Austria, 1967; self-published, book written in Slovenian, pp. 172. 155

PRVISLAV WEISSENBERGER RAGANZINI: "Relations between Austria-Hungary and Chile", Part 1: Year 1900; offprint from the Annals of the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, 1967, pp. 40. 157

BOGDAN RADITZA: "The Disunity of the Slavs", ORBIS No. 4, vol. 10 (Institute for Foreign Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania. 157

JOSIP TORBARINA: Raymond Kunic and Alfieri: Roman literary and artistic diversion in the late Settecento; separata from volume 107 of Storia e Letteratura, Raccolta di studi e testi, Rome 1966, pp. 11-41. 159

GEORGE J. PRPIC: "Eastern Europe and World Communism - A selective annotated bibliography in English", Cleveland 1966, pp. (III) 147 (Ed. Institute for Soviet and East European Studies, John Carroll University). 160

DR. STANKO VUJICA: "Croatia's struggle for independence", published by Croatian National Council in Exile (PO Box 152 Midtown Station, New York), New York, 1965, pp. 4-18. 161

Croatians defending their national language

Ivo Bogdan, Buenos Aires

I. The Statement of the Problem

What happened in March 1967 following the "Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language," signed by 18 representative Croatian literary and scientific institutions, aroused great surprise among foreign observers—greater surprise than that caused a year earlier by the dismissal of Alexander Ranković, head of the political police and the visible leader of the Great Serbian chauvinist group preparing the "Sukarnization" of Tito.

Even then, it was clear that even in the communist regime, which claimed remarkable successes in resolving the chronic national conflicts within the multinational Yugoslav state, national discrimination was still practiced to a high degree, in the Great Serbian spirit and in the style of pre-war Yugoslavia and its dictatorship of the Serbian army and dynasty. However, the aforementioned Declaration, which asserts the right of Croats to their own literary language, and the violent reaction it provoked in official circles, demonstrated that the problem is much deeper and that communist Yugoslavia, even after the fall of Rankovic, acts in the interests of Greater Serbia.

It is worth noting that foreign observers who justified the violent imposition of the communist regime as a regrettable but effective method for solving national problems in the Yugoslav conglomerate, heterogeneous both nationally and culturally, were mistaken. Many non-communist authors presented the communist regime prevailing in Yugoslavia as the antithesis of the pre-war Greater Serbian governments, when the Serbian oligarchy, under the dynastic scepter, openly maintained a system of national oppression and economic exploitation.

Tito's regime was presented as a historical necessity, as the solution to the national conflicts that, between the two world wars, caused a permanent crisis, culminating in 1941 with the military surrender and disintegration of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and, during the fighting, with a bloody aftermath of the national war and the mutual extermination of Croats and Serbs.

Those who know the situation well could never accept such a simplistic and, moreover, highly undemocratic image of Yugoslav reality. The events surrounding the Declaration proved them right.

Dictatorship, whether monarchical or communist, is not and cannot be the appropriate method for resolving the intricate national conflicts in the turbulent southeastern European region in general, and in Yugoslavia in particular. Notwithstanding all the reservations, often justified, regarding the possibility of democratic practices in certain areas, where autocratic governments are the expression of deeply rooted local tradition; Notwithstanding all the reservations regarding the right to national self-determination, which, of course, cannot be the panacea for all the calamities of that turbulent area, it is evident that the latent conflicts between the peoples of a typically plurinational and culturally heterogeneous state like Yugoslavia cannot be solved with the methods of a tamer who uses the whip to tame his caged victims.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt came much closer to the truth when, in his deliberations with Sir Anthony Eden in 1943 on the postwar settlement of Europe, he expressed "his repeated opinion that the Croats and Serbs have nothing in common, and that it is therefore ridiculous to insist that two such antagonistic peoples should live under one government," and that he considered the solution to the Serbian-Croatian conflict one of the two "very essential problems of Europe." Instead of acting in accordance with Roosevelt's reasoning, in the final phase of the war, under pressure from Stalin, the Western Allies gave credence to the promises of the Yugoslav communist guerrillas that, by applying the federalist formula, they would resolve the problem of national conflicts in the "liberated" and restored Yugoslavia.

It is not appropriate here to examine whether the Western Allies were indeed forced to accept the communist solution. Here, we are primarily concerned with establishing that the communist formula was readily accepted by a sector of foreign observers, and that many continue to persist in this error. Therefore, in the abundant international literature on Yugoslavia, particularly regarding the Stalin-Tito conflict and its implications, there are, in most cases, significant gaps, even contradictions.

Thus, "Titoism" is casually discussed as the phenomenon of "national communism," without taking into account that Yugoslavia is a multinational and national state, created and maintained by force and against the will of the vast majority of its unfortunate subjects. National discrimination was practiced in favor of Serbia and to the detriment of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and numerous national minorities, such as Hungarian (Vojvodina) and Albanian (Kosmet). Furthermore, the problem of national oppression in communist Yugoslavia is as acute as the problem of individual and political freedoms.

Among the paradoxes and contradictions of the little-known Southeast of Europe, the most prominent is the phenomenon of the communist dictatorship, presented as the prototype of national communism. This dictatorship differs from others precisely because it practices a policy of national oppression and economic exploitation in favor of a single people and to the detriment of the others, who constitute a significant majority. Foreign observers studying the problems of "Titoism" can only properly assess them if they remember that many of this regime's measures are determined by the conflicting interests among the peoples of Yugoslavia, whom—it should be recalled—Roosevelt claimed had nothing in common but were, in fact, antagonistic (due to their cultural and political traditions).

Because of its multinational composition and its commitment to maintaining the supremacy of one people over the others, Yugoslavia can only be compared to the Soviet Union, whose constitution it copied almost verbatim. In both countries, the supremacy of one people over the others is practiced: Russian in the Soviet Union and Serbian in Yugoslavia. However, there are significant differences favoring Russia's position. Not only is it the largest European nation, having created its empire around the same time as the other European colonial powers, but its human, cultural, and economic potential provides it with all the necessary conditions for pursuing an imperial policy. Furthermore, the Russian people built their empire within the sphere of Eastern European civilization, of which Russia is the primary bearer, the direct successor to Byzantium.

In contrast, Serbia, which dominates other peoples in Yugoslavia, constitutes only a quarter of the population and territory. It is less culturally and economically developed than Croatia and Slovenia and, as Roosevelt observed, subjugates territories of culturally antagonistic peoples, those formed by different political traditions. While Croatia and Slovenia have developed in parallel with other Western European peoples for over a thousand years, Serbia, like Russia, belongs to the cultural sphere of the Christian East.

Therefore, any kind of Yugoslav unitarianism—as Arnold J. Toynbee noted even before World War II—is nothing other than a "bold experiment in political chemistry," insofar as it consists of uniting within the same borders and under the same government "populations that have been nurtured, until now, by two different civilizations."

Among the paradoxes of the Yugoslav communist regime is the fact that the communists in the 20th century, precisely during the period in which Yugoslavia was formed and received its current name, adopted an anti-Yugoslav stance, denying the multinational South Slavic state, governed by Serbs, the right to exist and emphasizing that it was the duty and the right of Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins to separate from Serbia and create independent nation-states.

This stance aligned with the strategy of world communism, specifically its Moscow leadership, given the counter-revolutionary role then played by the Serbian rulers. The Kingdom of Serbia, before and during the First World War, until the collapse of Tsarism, was Russia's protégé. It then came under the tutelage of the French Third Republic, which the communists at the time considered the main bastion of international anti-Soviet reaction.

The expansion of Serbia through the incorporation of the territories of defeated Austria-Hungary (Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina) and Montenegro, with the support of France and other victors of the First World War, aimed to create a military power that, under the Serbian dynasty, would form the cornerstone of French alliances against the Soviet and pan-German threat. In accordance with Lenin and Stalin's principles of exploiting national conflicts for the sake of world revolution, the Yugoslav Communist Party, seeking to weaken the opposing powers, attempted to capitalize on the resistance of the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia by insisting on their right to self-determination and national independence.

The communists partially modified their position, favouring the disintegration of Yugoslavia along national lines, only after Franco-Soviet relations improved and the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia—especially the Croats led by Esteban Radic—organized resistance to Greater Serbian interference independently of the communists and in a democratic spirit.

The complete reversal of international communist strategists in favor of Yugoslav unity occurred during World War II, after the collapse of Yugoslavia following the German attack on the Soviet Union. Although prominent communist leaders, even after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, believed that the creation of the State of Croatia, the integration of Macedonia into Bulgaria, and the integration of Kosovo and Metohija (Kosmet) into Albania aligned with the aspirations of the affected population, the communist leadership, whose ultimate goal was to seize power and extend the Soviet empire to the borders of Italy and the Adriatic coast, declared itself in favor of the restoration of Yugoslavia.

This was intended to garner the sympathies of the Serbian masses and their active participation in the communist guerrillas. Unlike the other peoples of Yugoslavia, the Serbs were the only ones who lamented its disintegration in 1941, as they had become accustomed, under the influence of Greater Serbian propaganda, to seeing in it an aggrandized Serbian national state. Only with the massive participation of the Serbs were the communists able to organize the guerrilla war and then, with the help of the Allies, invade Croatia and Slovenia, restore the Yugoslav state, and extend Soviet influence and pressure to the borders of Italy.

This fundamental shift in relations between the peoples of Yugoslavia, in favor of the Greater Serbian conception, was masked by the communists with propaganda about the complete overcoming of national differences through the ideal of "brotherhood and unity," supposedly achieved through the federal form of the reconstituted Yugoslav state. Thus, the Yugoslav communist regime encountered not only difficulties that, as in the case of other communist countries, stemmed from the communists' inability to resolve economic and social problems, but also a resounding failure to overcome the national antagonisms that led to the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1941.

All the promises of communist propaganda that the second Yugoslavia, the communist one, unlike the first, the monarchical one, would bring national freedom and equality, were not fulfilled. Yugoslavia, neither after twenty years of communist rule nor after the much-touted liberalization, is a community of free and equal peoples, but rather a dictatorial regime with centralist tendencies acting in the interests of an expanded Serbia. On this point, there is no doubt today, after so many attempts, first, to overlook national differences and then, in the second postwar phase, to interpret them merely as a struggle between the opposing interests of the more industrialized western regions (Croatia and Slovenia) and the eastern territory of the Serbian sphere of influence.

While the entire problem was reduced to economics, the regime's propagandists could argue that this was a transitional phase in the period of industrial development and that the difficulties would be eliminated within the framework of economic reforms based on self-management, which would allow the more industrially developed republics of the Yugoslav federation to have greater freedom in allocating their own revenues. There was even an attempt to present the resounding crisis that arose from the removal of Alexander Rankovic as a victory for the supporters of the much-proclaimed reform against the centralist tendencies of the bureaucracy and even against "Stalinism," which are synonymous with Greater Serbian dominance.

Rankovic's overthrow was presented as the definitive defeat of the Greater Serbian past, without even attempting to seriously explain how it could have happened that, after 20 years of achieved "brotherhood and unity," a kind of coup d'état had to be carried out against the leader of the Greater Serbian group that had dominated the state and party apparatus for twenty years.

The March 1967 Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language, signed by 18 of the most representative Croatian cultural and scientific institutions, including writers and philologists—among them prominent communists—and its condemnation of the communist leadership, serves to clarify whether the communist leadership continues to uphold the state unity of Yugoslavia as an enlarged Serbia, or whether it leans toward transforming Yugoslavia into a community of peoples with equal rights.

The statement by Croatian writers and scientists also has the merit of shifting the discussion on relations between the peoples of Yugoslavia from the economic sphere to the cultural one, thus framing the problem in its true dimension, since peoples, even in our era of nationalities, are, first and foremost, cultural groups.

Given that some twenty nations in the Hispanic world use the same literary language, the struggle of the Croatians for their national language as a fundamental element of their national culture will be better understood if we consider the specific circumstances of a broad sector of Europe that imposed and determined its development. Therefore, we will now address the nature of the language struggle in the formation of the culture and national consciousness of the Croatians and other neighboring peoples who developed under similar conditions.

We will then gather the facts and discussions related to the Declaration of March of this year. Finally, we will show that it concerns the defense of national and human rights, trampled by the Yugoslav communist regime, which likes to portray itself as the standard-bearer of the new humanism and the struggle for human rights and, therefore, national rights, and vice versa.

II. The Historical Background

While the events surrounding "The Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language" shook public opinion in Croatia and throughout Yugoslavia and were described by one of Tito's closest collaborators as "the political bombshell," and while the Western European press described these events as an earthquake that shook the very foundations of the regime and the Yugoslav state, the major Latin American newspapers, which faithfully record even minor events, did not give the Declaration the attention it deserved. Nor did publications that study European countries with communist regimes at a scientific level perceive the scope of the Declaration. This is perhaps because, unlike in Europe, language in the Americas is not a factor of national differentiation. While certain European peoples, especially those of Central and Eastern Europe, in their struggle for existence and emancipation, often had to reject attempts to impose a foreign language that threatened their very existence, this did not occur in the Americas.

Thus, South American public opinion, to which the communists try to present themselves as champions of national interests, following the Cuban model, could not appreciate, in this case, the extent of the regime's violent reaction against the Croatian intellectuals who raised their voices in defense of the national language, nor could it properly appreciate how insincere the communist tactic of the "national liberation" front is.

Relatively large territories of Central and Eastern Europe were in the past, and in some cases still are, exposed to attempts to impose a foreign language through coercive means by the State or other means. The history of this vast region records numerous instances in which, particularly two great peoples, the Germans and the Russians, attempted to impose their languages on other peoples. There were also similar attempts by the Hungarians, Poles, Greeks, and Serbs. One can even speak of similar attempts by the Italian fascist government. Consequently, resistance to these attempts during the period of national movements, coupled with a simultaneous interest in popular literature in the spirit of European Romanticism, is the essential, and in several cases principal, characteristic of the national movements of Central and Eastern Europe.

In the specific case of Croatia, which we are discussing here, the attempt to introduce German as the official language for the peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy during the reign of Joseph II (1780-1790) marks the first systematic attempt in this direction. Simultaneously, more as an administrative necessity, the Republic of Venice was forcing Italian in Dalmatia, while the Turkish authorities in Bosnia, alongside Croatian, were increasingly using Turkish in the administration and the army.

In Croatia, the members of the old regime successfully opposed the attempt at Germanization, adhering to Latin, the diplomatic language for all regions of the multinational and multilingual Habsburg monarchy. Later, when the Magyars, following the example of Joseph II, whom they had successfully opposed along with the Croats, attempted to impose Hungarian on all the lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen—conceiving of them as a Magyar nation-state, even though in Hungary at that time Croats, Romanians, Slovaks, Germans, and others constituted the majority of the population—the Croats initially resisted Magyarization by resorting to Latin and then, following the spirit of the national era, asserted their own language in the public administration.

Since 1848, Croatian has been the sole language spoken in the Croatian Diet (Sabor), which until then had primarily used Latin. The same applies to the judiciary, the administration, education, and, to some extent, the army. The Croatian government, based in Zagreb, used Croatian even in its official correspondence with the Imperial government in Vienna and with the government of the Kingdom of Hungary, including during the period of Austro-Hungarian dualism (1867-1918). The Hungarian attempt to impose their language as the official language on the Croats was the main cause of the Croatian-Hungarian War of 1848, a fact not given due consideration by liberal circles in Europe at the time. However, certain prominent statesmen, such as Camillo Cavour, recognized the nationalistic and progressive nature of the Croatian resistance, led by the then-controversial Ban (prorex) Count Joseph Jelačić.

The ban (prorex) was also heavily criticized at the time. While during the enlightened absolutism the Croats acted in solidarity with the Hungarians against Germanization, defending Latin as the language of communication in the multilingual Danubian monarchy, in the Romantic era they sought support among the Slavic peoples of the Austrian Empire. All these peoples—Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, Galician Poles, and Serbs from southern Hungary—had to fight against the imposition of German, Hungarian, or Italian. Furthermore, due to Turkish pressure, a sense of solidarity developed in Croatia with the Balkan Slavic peoples, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Bulgarians, who were fighting for their liberation.

All these peoples of the Slavic linguistic group found themselves in a difficult situation, forced to devote considerable energy to the struggle for existence and national emancipation. Even peoples like the Czechs, Poles, and Croats, who possessed a relatively ancient and developed literature in their national languages, found themselves in a weaker position in this struggle compared to their larger neighboring nations, which exerted considerable cultural and political pressure upon them.

Setting aside Latin and struggling against the cultural supremacy of these larger neighboring countries, they were forced to hastily create scientific terminology and organize their own cultural institutions—academies, universities, schools, museums, galleries, literary and scientific societies, and publishing houses—and translate into their national languages the works of universal writers, which until then they had mostly read in the original. All these peoples, overcoming dialectal literature and differing orthographies, had to develop their literary and scientific languages, study ancient writers and folk literature, and compile more comprehensive grammars and vocabularies. In this period of European Romanticism, a new scientific discipline emerged: Slavic philology, in which foreign scholars, especially professors from German and Austrian universities, would also make significant contributions.

Aspiring to overcome a sense of their own weakness and driven by political motives, Austrian Slavs not only developed a feeling of solidarity among the peoples of the same Slavic linguistic group, but also exaggerated the affinity of these languages and, above all, the extent of this affinity in the linguistic, ethnic, cultural, and political spheres. Writers and poets played a significant role in this, though scientific rigor cannot always be demanded of them.

Due to prejudices linking race, language, culture, and nationality, conceptions were formed that can be described as linguistic nationalism, or even linguistic racism. The influence of German authors during the Romantic era, who developed linguistic, cultural, and racial nationalism, was decisive in this process. These prejudices, when transferred to the political arena, generated the Pan-Slavic movement, with the byproducts of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

.However, the inspirations of the ideologues, especially the poets—who were very active during that phase—were quite different.

While smaller Slavic peoples, in propagating the solidarity of the Slavic language group, are deluded by the idea of a large and potentially invincible Slavic world stretching from the borders of Italy and Germany to Turkey and China, other, larger peoples, primarily the Russians, try to exploit these sentiments for their expansionist purposes, even as some pursue messianic chimeras. In time, Pan-Slavism, Czechoslovakism, and Yugoslavism become synonymous with the Greater Russian, Greater Czech, and Greater Serbian ideals, to the detriment of their counterparts in the movements of solidarity among the peoples of the Slavic language group. These movements were originally conceived idealistically, and almost without exception, by writers and historians from precisely those peoples who would later fall victim to the illusions and prejudices of racism and linguistic nationalism.

To focus on the case of Yugoslavia, we must point out that it was precisely in Croatia that the originators of the idea of solidarity among all the peoples of the Slavic linguistic group in general, and of the South Slavic peoples in particular (Bulgarians, Montenegrins, Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs), emerged.

Only later did this idea of South Slavic solidarity, which arose in Croatia for idealistic, even religious, reasons, find an echo in Serbia, albeit in a very different sense. While universalist tendencies prevailed among the Croats, along with the desire to affirm the values and achievements of European civilization—which, according to the prevailing conception of the time, were considered universal and not valid only for a fraction of humanity—the Serbs viewed linguistic affinity and inherent prejudices as instruments of their political expansion, of the restoration of the ephemeral medieval Serbian empire, whose memory lies at the root of the expansionism of the contemporary Serbian nation-state. Serbian nationalists are not bothered by the fact that their medieval empire was a multinational imitation of the Byzantine Empire, since it included not only Serbs but also a large number of Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, and Romanians.

Therefore, when Croatian national authors and leaders are cited in support of Yugoslavism, as understood and practiced by Serbs in Yugoslavia—formerly monarchical and now communist—it is a clear falsification and a vile abuse. In fact, all official Belgrade propaganda, during the monarchical (1918-1941) and communist (after 1945) periods, in favor of Yugoslav national and state unity, insofar as it relies on Croatian authors and politicians, is at best a system of half-truths.

Nevertheless, this official propaganda is aided by the fact that it can invoke prominent representatives of Slavic philology in Germany, Austria, France, and Russia. Even in the early stages of studying the various South Slavic languages and dialects, before one could speak of Serbian literature as a distinct entity, official scholarship referred to the languages of Croats and Serbs, due to their similarity, as Serb-Croatian and sometimes simply Serbian. However, scholarly work, at least, did not go so far as to speak of a common Croatian-Serbian or even Yugoslav literature. Consequently, there is no common Serbian-Croatian literature, nor a common literary language, although its linguistic basis is vernacular speech.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of the similarity between certain Croatian and Serbian dialects rather than the languages as a whole. Only a portion of Croats speak of a "Stokavski" dialect, related to the dialect used by some Serbs in the area surrounding Belgrade, since in southern Serbia, dialects more closely related to Bulgarian than to Croatian are spoken. Besides the Stokavski dialect, the basis of the literary language, Croatians use Chakavski (the oldest dialect) and Kajkavski, which are quite different from the dialect that forms the basis of the supposed Serbian-Croatian literary language. The Kajkavski dialect, spoken in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, is particularly close to Slovene than to the dialects that serve as the linguistic basis for the Croatian literary language. Therefore, one could also speak of a Croatian-Slovene language, which would clearly be a gross exaggeration.

In summary, it should be established that not only is there a distinct Croatian literary language separate from Serbian, but also that Croatian vernacular speech, taken as a whole, differs markedly from Serbian vernacular speech taken as a whole. The only similarity between the Serbian and Croatian dialects of the Stokavian group is found in the Stokavian dialects.

The fact that the Stokavian dialects form the linguistic basis of both Croatian and Serbian literary languages not only led to the aforementioned tendency to systematize the languages of Serbs and Croats as a single language, more frequently referred to as Serb-Croatian than Croat-Serb, but also prompted attempts to create a shared literature for Serbs and Croats.

These attempts to establish the foundations for a common Croatian-Serbian literature coincided with the linguistic reforms of the Romantic era and with the solidarity movements of the Slavic language group. The Croats, within the framework of their national movement and for the sake of national unity, adopted the Stokavian dialect as the basis of their literary language. It is not only the vernacular of the vast majority of Croats, but also the language of most of their rich folk epic poetry. It was of great importance that the great Croatian Renaissance writers, whose main center was Dubrovnik, used this dialect. The Serbs, at the same time, thanks to the efforts of Vuk Stafanovic Karadzic, introduced vernacular speech and phonetic orthography in place of the antiquated Church Slavonic language, which the people did not understand. Among Croatian writers, it was favorably received that Karadzic wrote a Stokovsky dialect, the same dialect as the Croats.

Thus, in 1850, Vuk Karadzic and several prominent Croatian writers met in Vienna and agreed to promote a common literary language for Croats and Serbs based on the Stokavian dialect of eastern Herzegovina and Dubrovnik. Previously, and independently of the Serbs, the Croats had adopted this dialect—which their greatest writers had already been using in the 16th and 17th centuries—as the basis of their literary language.

However, the Serbs did not respect the Vienna Agreement, so Croatian and Serbian literature continued to develop separately and independently, and consequently, so did their respective literary languages.

Croatian writers remained faithful, at least to the spirit of the Vienna Agreement. Unable to renounce a centuries-old literary tradition, they sought to enrich their literary expression by drawing on the works of the Croatian classics, who wrote not only in Stokavian but also in other dialects. This tradition of dialectal literature never died out. Even great contemporary Croatian poets (Domjanic, Nazor, Krleza) also wrote in their regional dialects. No one considers this a departure from literary unity; on the contrary, dialectal literature is valued as an enrichment of Croatian literary expression.

Therefore, the Croatian literary language is, in a sense, the result of diverse influences, a synthesis of popular speech in different dialects and of the literary tradition.

The Serbs, on the other hand, did not accept the agreement reached in Vienna regarding the use of the "ijekavski" variant of the "stokavski" dialect. Instead, from the beginning of the linguistic reform, the "ekavsko stokavski" dialect, spoken in Belgrade and its surroundings, prevailed there. It is entirely foreign to the Croatian literary tradition, although there were chauvinistic attempts to proclaim the classical Croatian writers of Dubrovnik as Serbs. Therefore, the Serbian literary language developed in a different direction than Croatian.

One of the important factors in the differentiation between the literary languages of Croatian and Serbian was the use of different scripts. While Croats use Latin characters, Serbs insist on their variant of the Cyrillic script used by Russians, which was also reflected in cultural influences. The use of different alphabets prevented the creation of a common reading public. Similarly, the use of different orthographies had an impact. While Croatian orthography tended toward a moderate etymological approach, Serbian orthography is purely phonetic.

In parallel, among the South Slavic peoples, alongside the literary languages of Serbian and Croatian, Bulgarian and Slovene developed. Thus, even assuming that the literary languages of Croatian and Serbian are two "variants" of the same language, given the existence of Slovene and Bulgarian, scientifically recognized as independent philological subjects, one cannot speak of a single South Slavic language, although we often find that term in the press.

It is important to emphasize here that subsequent attempts to unify the Croatian and Serbian languages, in the spirit of Yugoslav unitarist policy, were favored by the strong inclination of Croats towards universalist cultural and political solutions, despite the aggressive Serbian nationalism that also resorted to linguistic arguments in favour of the Greater Serbian idea. Thus, prominent Croatian linguists such as Jagic and Maretic hindered the natural tendency towards the differentiation of the Croatian language from Serbian.

They contributed significantly to the continued support, within scientific and literary circles, of the thesis of a common Serbian-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian language, notwithstanding the evident Greater Serbian leanings of Vuk Karadzic, the father of modern Serbian literary language, who maintained that all Croats who speak the "Stokavski" dialects are ethnically Serbs and that almost all Croatian folk poetry is part of Serbian folklore. The first chapter of his work, in which he presents his Greater Serbian theories, bears the characteristic title "The Serbs Are All and Everywhere." Karadzic speaks of "Serbs of three religions," which, in fact, contrasts with the deeply rooted conception of the Serbs, who, according to their Byzantine tradition, identify their nationality with membership in the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Croats responded to these chauvinistic and pseudoscientific theses by insisting on their national name, their statehood, and their national identity. The main spokesperson for this resistance was the "Croatian Mazzini," Dr. Ante Starcevic, known as the father of the nation. Simultaneously, efforts were made to further differentiate the literary language of Croatian from Serbian through the cultivation of Croatian literary tradition and the use of etymological orthography. These attempts appeared to be a response to Greater Serbian pressure. It seems ridiculous, but some Serbs even went so far as to claim that Croats "stole" their literary language from the Serbs.

For this reason, in the last hundred years, the discussion about the language has been inseparable from political controversy. The main proponents of the Croatian national idea, followed by the majority of the people, such as A. Starcevic (1823-1896), then Esteban Radic (1871-1928), and Vladimir Macek (1879-1964), consistently and systematically emphasized the individuality of the Croatian literary language and used etymological orthography. When Croatia achieved limited autonomy in 1939 (1939-1941), its autonomous government, in order to counter Yugoslavia's unitarian efforts, particularly during the dictatorship of King Alexander (1929-1934), mandated the use of moderate etymological orthography in schools. Despite pressure from the dictatorship, most Croatian writers employed this orthography. This distancing from the Serbs in the linguistic sphere gained further momentum during the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), which was eliminated by the communists when, at the end of World War II, they restored Yugoslavia with Serbian and Russian support.

The response of "the second Yugoslavia" to Croatian efforts to assert their own literary language came in the form of the use of phonetic orthography instead of etymology. At the same time, there is a strong emphasis on numerous words, forms, expressions, and modalities used in Serbia that are foreign to the Croatian linguistic sense. In 1954, a meeting of Croatian and Serbian philologists was held in Novi Sad, the headquarters of Matica Srpska (the central Serbian cultural institution). It was decided that the supposed common language would be called Serbo-Croatian in Serbia and Croatian-Serbian in Croatia. Since the existence of two distinct literary languages could not be denied, the validity of two distinct "variants" of this language—Serbian and Croatian—was recognized.

There is no doubt that the Novi Sad Agreement, presented as a spontaneous and free agreement between linguists and writers, was a manifestation of the unitarist tendencies of the communist dictatorship, which sought support from intelligence services in its open struggle against the national resistance of the Croats who yearned for their independent nation-state. The communists managed to prevent the consolidation of the independent Croatian state, proclaimed in 1941, in a favorable international context but after a long and bloody struggle that undoubtedly had the character of a national war between Croatia and Serbia. In 1945, Croatia's independence was liquidated, and Yugoslavia, which had disintegrated in 1941, was restored. The new Yugoslav rulers, with the aim of breaking Croatian resistance to the new regime and the imposed South Slavic union under Serbian hegemony, went so far as to carry out massacres of Croats.

Just as under the dictatorial regime of the Serbian monarchy, this unitarian pressure under the communist regime also favored, in the linguistic sphere, the supremacy of the Serbian literary language and its gradual imposition on the Croats. The same thing happened as after the Vienna Agreement of 1850; the Serbs again failed to respect what had been agreed upon with Croatian writers, with the difference that in the new circumstances, the full weight of the central power based in Serbia tended to assert the Serbian linguistic "variant" to the detriment of Croatian.

These efforts deeply wounded the Croats who, under one of the most brutal dictatorships, could not express their displeasure not only because of the stipulations imposed in the unitarian direction, but also because of the systematic transgression of these stipulations and other grievances and measures against Croatian literature and language. This provoked a reaction from the very Croatian writers who had signed the Novi Sad Agreement.

This Croatian discontent only became apparent in recent times when, due to a certain "liberalization" of the regime, it became possible to oppose not only the economic exploitation of Croatia for the benefit of Serbia, but also the unitarist pressure in the cultural sphere, especially concerning interpretations of national history and the imposition of the Serbian language in administration, education, communications, and the military. This pressure is felt not only by Croats but also by Slovenes and Macedonians, who have a recognized right to their own literary languages, yet Serbian is imposed as the official language of the entire federation. Even the highest leaders of the communist regime openly censured the unitarist tendencies propagated by the central government, as they were in direct contradiction with the official doctrine that Yugoslavia is a multinational federal state and that its constitution recognizes the "socialist republics" of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro as nation-states.

The defeat of Alexander Rankovic, the visible head of the Greater Serbian group that had dominated the Party and the State for twenty years, was interpreted in Croatia as a possibility for resistance in the cultural sphere, considered far more important than industrial development, since peoples are first and foremost cultural communities.

However, Rankovic's removal was due less to a desire to ease the pressure for unification than to the danger of a coup against Tito being prepared by the Greater Serbian communists with the backing of the Soviet Union. This "putsch" was intended to overthrow, in the Soviet style, not only Tito but also the communist leaders in Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia. It was, therefore, a struggle for power without regard for the national rights of the victims of Greater Serbian policy. For this reason, with Rankovic's fall, Serbian preponderance did not disappear.

In the struggle for power, Tito and his collaborators also had to seek support from the Serbian communists and even reassure Moscow of their friendly sentiments toward the Soviet Union. In his efforts to maintain the precarious balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces within the Yugoslav national and cultural conglomerate, Tito continued to make concessions to Great Serbism. Even the attempt at decentralization reform was justified to Great Serb circles as necessary to maintain the unity of the multinational state by easing pressure on the Croats and other peoples of Yugoslavia, since otherwise open national conflicts and the collapse of the state, as happened in 1941, would ensue.

Croatian public opinion, including prominent communists who, by a confluence of circumstances, govern important literary and scientific institutions, expressed its discontent with Tito's tacit concessions toward the Greater Serbian elements. Not being directly involved in politics, the intellectual class is more closely linked to the life of the people than the hated politicians and perceives more readily than those in power that this tactic of Tito's is paralyzing the transformation of Yugoslavia, now an enlarged Serbia, into a community of equal peoples, which is one of the tenets of the official doctrine itself. The main victims of this appeasement tactic, aimed at preserving the regime and the state, have been the Croats from the beginning.

While Slovenes and Macedonians, at least in theory, are recognized as having the right to their national language and culture, the Serbian language and cultural values, which ultimately lead to the Serbization of the Croats, have been imposed on the Croats under the pretext of solidarity with the Serbs. The concessions made to the national sentiments of the Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins—minor peripheral republics—can be interpreted as a mere tactic to concentrate all forces on breaking Croatian national resistance to addressing the core of the Yugoslav problem and the main obstacle to implementing the Greater Serbia program. Once Croatian resistance is broken, nothing will prevent the realization of Greater Serbia.

It is evident that even communist intellectuals in Croatia think this way. Until now, party leaders have told them that the fate of the regime and the Yugoslav state are inseparable. The disintegration of the Yugoslav state under the right to national self-determination would not only cause the collapse of the communist regime in Croatia but would also provoke bloody reprisals against its Croatian communist beneficiaries.

In contrast, among intellectuals affiliated with the Communist Party, whether they joined during the war or out of opportunism, not to mention the younger generation, this argument and the fear of reprisals are losing their persuasive power every day. Given the growing opposition to Soviet rule in Central and Eastern European countries, the easing of tensions between Western democracies and communist countries, and the ecumenical spirit of the Second Vatican Council, slogans about the capitalist, imperialist, and Vatican threat against the "people's authorities" of Yugoslavia no longer hold water.

Thus, sharp disagreements arose between political leaders and communist intellectuals who, along with other Croatian writers and scientists, are working to defend the Croatian language, disregarding the appeasement tactics of the top communist leaders, headed by Tito. This is clearly evident from the circumstances surrounding the conception, drafting, and publication of the Declaration on the Name and Rights of the Croatian Literary Language, as well as from the violent reaction of the communist authorities.

III. The Declaration and Its Impact

The activities surrounding the drafting, discussion, and signing of the "Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language" concluded in mid-March 1967. The Declaration was addressed to the Croatian Parliament (Sabor Croatia) and the Belgrade Parliament (Skupstina), which were then debating constitutional reforms, but also to the general public. While the signatories were submitting the Declaration to the two legislative bodies, requesting the protection of the Croatian language in the text of the proposed Constitution, the Zagreb-based literary and cultural weekly, Telegram, published the full text of the document on March 17.

It later emerged that the communist leaders, having learned of the Declaration "by mere chance," asked the communist intellectuals, who had been very active in its preparation, to prevent its publication. The Telegram editors—also communist, as it could not be otherwise—however published the Declaration under the pretext that it was already being printed. In this way, the Declaration reached the public, to whom it was also addressed. It aroused enormous interest not only in Croatia but also in Serbia, making it impossible to silence it or prevent discussion of the explosive issue it brought to the forefront.

Therefore, the Executive Committee of the Communist League of Croatia, together with the members of the Central Committee of the Communist League of Yugoslavia present in Zagreb and trusted representatives from the press and television, decided how to react. Vjesnik, the Zagreb daily and main communist organ in Croatia, had to publish the text of the Declaration on a full page on March 19th, and simultaneously a feature article entitled "Politics, Not Linguistics," along with the "Conclusions of the Novi Sad Agreement" of 1954 and the list of its signatories (some signed both documents), and the text of the "Foreword to the Orthography of the Croatian-Serbian Literary Language," prepared jointly by Croatian and Serbian philologists.

This was the signal and the directive to unleash a broad campaign against the Declaration, aimed at silencing and discrediting its initiators and signatories. In this campaign, in addition to numerous institutions and organizations controlled by the communists, including the entire print, radio, and television media, the communist dictator Tito himself took an active part. All of this was coordinated as a prelude to the sanctions against the promoters of the Declaration and the categorical rejection of the proposal to constitutionally protect the name and equality of the Croatian literary language.

In the previous chapter, we referred to the historical background of the Declaration. It is appropriate here to discuss its text and scope. As mentioned, prominent communist intellectuals actively participated in its drafting and signing. They evidently believed that with the removal of Rankovic, the all-powerful standard-bearer of Greater Serbian chauvinism, the time had come to ensure the equality of the Croatian literary language with Serbian, which had been favored until then. Prominent Croatian intellectuals—among them Miroslav Krleza, the most brilliant communist writer and a member of the Central Committee of the party in Croatia—worked together with non-communist Croatian writers, scholars, and linguists.

Moreover, among the members of the various institutions that endorsed the Declaration were several Serbs from Croatia, who thus expressed their solidarity with its Croatian initiators. Consequently, the Declaration is not the work of Croatian nationalists, much less nationalist extremists. On the contrary, it was conceived within the strict framework of the legality and reality of the Yugoslav communist state, a fact strikingly reflected in its preface and the full text, so moderate in its formulation that those unfamiliar with the situation would not be able to discern any revolutionary or rebellious elements. The full text of the Declaration is published as Annex I, pp. 27-28. Here, we will limit ourselves to a brief analysis.

Positioning themselves within the framework of Yugoslav communist legality, the signatories state—though most do not believe it—that the communist revolution is the culmination of the centuries-long struggle of the Yugoslav peoples for national freedom and social justice. They go on to maintain that the Declaration "is in accordance with the fundamental principles of socialism regarding the right of man to live free from all oppression" and "with the right of every people to full sovereignty and unlimited equality with all other national communities..." However, this "principle of national sovereignty and complete equality is not realized in the cultural sphere, especially concerning the right of the Croatian people to call their language by its own name," despite its similarity to Serbian. This occurred, despite the clarity of the principles, agreements, and legal provisions, due to "the tendencies toward statism, unitarism, and hegemonism" and because of "a certain imprecision in the formulations."

Thus, the principles, clear in themselves, are implemented "through the state apparatus and by means of public mass communications" (federal bodies, Tanjug - the official news agency -, Yugoslav radio and television in joint broadcasts, through postal and telecommunications services, railways, so-called economic and political literature, newsreels, various administrative forms, and then through the use of language in the Yugoslav People's Army, the federal administration, the legislature, diplomacy, and political organizations). In fact, even today, the imposition of the "state language" is carried out, such that the Croatian literary language is reduced to the unequal status of a local dialect. Furthermore, "in practice, the Serbian language is imposed by force of fact as the sole language for Serbs and Croats." For this reason, 18 Croatian literary, cultural, and scientific institutions propose amending the constitutional text to officially recognize four official languages instead of the current three, namely: Serbian, Croatian (and not just "Serbian-Croatian"), Slovenian, and Macedonian, and, consequently, that the Croatian literary language be given practical equality with Serbian.

The Declaration preemptively rejects the objection that, because of the "common linguistic basis" between Serbian and Croatian, it is unnecessary to differentiate them by distinct names in practice. Postponing the Croatian language contradicts "the right of each of our peoples to preserve all the attributes of their national existence and to develop to the fullest extent not only their economic but also their cultural activity." Among the attributes of national life, the right of Croats to call their language by its own name is of paramount importance.

In the final section, it states that the Declaration is addressed to the legislative bodies responsible for constitutional reform (Matica Hrvatska sent the text to her), but also "to all our public," which justifies its publication despite the efforts of the communist leadership to prevent it at the last minute.

This is of paramount importance for the examination. Among the reasons why the communist regime violently rejected the Declaration was the reaction of the Serbs. The immediate response came from Serbian writers in the form of a draft resolution signed by a group of 26 members of the Serbian Writers' Society, prepared two days after the Declaration was published.

It was drafted as "The Proposal," which was to be examined by the plenary meeting of the Society, already announced for April 1967 in Belgrade. We transcribe this proposal in its entirety in Appendix II, according to the text published in Borba (April 2, 1967, Belgrade). At the request of the communist authorities, this proposal was not discussed, as its signatories withdrew it, offering various excuses: some said they signed it out of anger against the Declaration, others because they were drunk, etc.

However, despite the defiant tone, it is important that on this occasion the Serbian writers recognized the competence and representativeness of the signatories of the Croatian Declaration and the justification for their actions. of their demands, although in return they express that the Declaration implies the unilateral "annulment" of the 1954 Novi Sad Agreement and demand that the Serbian minority in Croatia be recognized as having "the right to study in their language and alphabet and according to their own national curricula, the right to use their national language and alphabet in communication with all official bodies... in short, the right to freely and without hindrance cultivate all aspects of their national culture."

Ultimately, the Serbian writers, although they tried to limit the scope of the Declaration by acknowledging the competence of its signatories in matters of literary language and adopting the principle of each people's right to their own language, refuted the regime's campaign, which insisted on the political nature of the Declaration and therefore on the undue interference of the writers in the political sphere reserved for the Communist Party.

On the other hand, by suggesting that the Declaration supposedly constitutes a threat to the rights of the Serbian minority in Croatia, the authors of the Draft, in their capacity as Greater Serbian nationalists, found themselves in the the same line as the regime, because - as we will see shortly - they repeated what was officially said.

Starting from the well-known Marxist-Leninist viewpoint that only the Communist Party has the right to represent the interests of the people, and considering the Declaration as an act directed against the "brotherhood and unity" of Serbs and Croats, as interpreted by communist propaganda, Vjesnik, in his article "Politics, Not Linguistics," argues that Croatian writers and philologists disqualified themselves by encroaching on the political arena, reserved for communists.

Tito, like Stalin and other high-ranking officials, maintains that they, not writers and philologists, are the ones called upon to decide on cultural and literary matters. In this specific case, the communist leaders believe that the Party-State's rationale requires that, despite the much-promoted "liberalization" and national equality, the Serbian language must be effectively imposed on Croats, and that measures favoring the preponderance of Serbs as proponents of unitarianism must be promoted. Therefore, in accordance with totalitarian conceptions, Croatian writers and philologists are denied the right to think and propose ideas regarding their language, that is, regarding their specific activities.

But when, in 1954, a few Croatian writers and linguists, under the pressure of Rankovic's terror, agreed to certain stipulations that, in the regime's intention, were meant to lead to linguistic unity—in reality, to the imposition of the Serbian literary language—then, of course, they were competent. Now, when those same writers and philologists, encouraged by Rankovic's fall, pointed out that practice, and not his Declaration, had "nullified" what had been agreed upon in Novi Sad regarding a certain equality between the Croatian and Serbian "variants" of the supposed common literary language, the communists deny the competence of 18 scientific and literary institutions. At the same time, the societies of former guerrillas, communist community committees, trade unions, and other entities that have nothing to do with literature are judging matters of literary language.

Even the communists of the Albanian minority in Kosovo Metohija, despite not understanding Croatian and knowing little or nothing about literature, went so far as to offer their opinions on the Croatian literary language. It was precisely before them that Tito spoke against the Declaration during his visit to that region, while trying to calm the Serbs, who were alarmed by the Albanian minority's forceful demands, following Rankovic's elimination, for protection against the pressure exerted by the communist political police, dominated by Serbs for over 20 years.

The insinuations of Serbian writers, echoing the propaganda of the communist regime, are also untenable. According to them, Croatian writers and philologists, by demanding that the Croatian national language have its own national name and be equal to Serbian, had "annulled" the Novi Sad Agreement, and those who signed both the Agreement and the Declaration were inconsistent. However, these assertions contradict the text of the Declaration, which clearly states that the Serbian literary language is being officially imposed on Croats, contrary to the spirit of the Novi Sad Agreement, which, at least in theory, ensured a precarious balance between the Croatian and Serbian "variants" of the supposed common literary language.

It was not necessary to wait for the Declaration to realize that the Novi Sad Agreement was, in fact, dead. Therefore, the Agreement was "annulled" by the Serbs with the help of the communist regime. Consequently, those who signed the Agreement and now the Declaration are, in reality, still striving for equality between the Croatian and Serbian languages. If they are to be criticized, it can only be the Croats for having been too weak or fearful in 1954, since they could have known beforehand that the Serbs would not abide by the agreement but would instead try to impose their hegemony.

Therefore, the presence of those who signed the Agreement and now the Declaration speaks not against, but in favor of, the Declaration.

The signatories of the Declaration, who are accused of having political rather than linguistic motives, would readily acknowledge, if they could, that the interests of the Party-State in the service of Grand Serbism—that is, political motives—guide the regime's campaign against the Declaration, a document whose main characteristic is to place the crucial issue of safeguarding Croatian national culture on the agenda. Certainly, important issues in national life can also be, though not necessarily, political matters. But in this case, it is a matter of politics in the strict sense, that is, the issue of the common national good, outside of and above partisan debates.

It was in this sense that the initiators and signatories of the Declaration understood the issue of the national language. Croatian intellectuals, not the communist rulers, interpret and defend Croatian national interests. This is how even writers and philologists of communist affiliation, participants in this joint action of Croatian intellectuals, understand it, despite significant ideological differences and despite pressure from communist apparatchiks.

In reality, it is a national front, an open rebellion of intellectuals, including communists, against the communist political monopoly practiced to the detriment of Croatian national interests and rights, against the official lie about the happy resolution of national conflicts within the multinational Yugoslav conglomerate, which should serve as justification for the communist regime both before the affected peoples and before international public opinion. It is well known that even influential Western politicians—for example, Sir Anthony Eden—accepted, at least pro forma, the thesis that, in view of the previous failure of the Serbian dynasty, the communist regime would be better suited to organizing the political settlement between the warring nations within the Yugoslav conglomerate.

The regime's angry reaction manifested itself in the constant repetition that the Declaration constituted an attack "against the greatest achievement of the national liberation struggle, namely, the fraternity and unity of the peoples of Yugoslavia." The tone of the entire campaign was set by the dictator Tito, who, it is claimed, considered the re-establishment of Yugoslavia his principal work and its preservation his historical mission. In Kosmet, he repeatedly referred to the Declaration, emphasizing that the Communist Party "will not allow an attack on the greatest achievement of the national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution: the fraternity and unity of the peoples of Yugoslavia..." Alluding to the Declaration, he described it as "power from behind" by those who "worked surreptitiously and suddenly struck from behind." She links it to individuals who "in a refined and sometimes secretive manner attack even the Communist League, claiming that the Communist League (Party) is supposedly outdated and that politically it has lost the battle."

This exasperation at the Communist Party's being overlooked by intellectuals is a constant source of criticism for those among communist leaders who condemn the Declaration. It could not be otherwise, since Tito—former Austro-Hungarian sergeant, metalworker, professional revolutionary, talented guerrilla leader, and skillful Stalin-type party official—in his role as arbiter of linguistic issues, did not hesitate to lecture writers and philologists—members of the respective Academies, university professionals, and internationally renowned authors—stating that, despite everything, "the Novi Sad Agreement is the best solution that could have been achieved, since, in fact, there are no differences on this matter." The day before, speaking in a factory, he put forward as the irrefutable argument against the Declaration that the workers and peasants "do not care whether a word is pronounced one way or another".

The invocation by official propaganda and Serbian writers of the right of the Serbian minority in Croatia (14% of the population according to official statistics, undoubtedly favorable to the Serbs) to their own language and alphabet (Russian Cyrillic characters), even if there were a danger of discrimination (which there isn't), constitutes a classic example of the inversion of terms.

According to this logic, even in the "Socialist Republic of Croatia," which in theory has the character of a nation-state, Croats would not have the right to use their own literary language so as not to offend the members of the relatively small Serbian ethnic minority. Furthermore, according to this same Greater Serbian logic, Croats, if they don't want to be labeled chauvinists, shouldn't claim equal rights to their language in the central administration of a multinational state, where their numbers are almost equal to those of the Serbs, who want to impose their language in public administration and all media not only on Croats but also on Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Macedonians, not to mention the Hungarian and Albanian minorities.

Tito himself, by opposing the Declaration, is in fact declaring himself in favor of imposing the Serbian literary language on Croats, completely excluding their centuries-old literary tradition, a constitutive part of Croatian national culture and, due to the circumstances, the essential factor in the national differentiation between Serbs and Croats.

Regarding the rights of the Serbian minority in Croatia to their own language and alphabet, rights for which the communists so vehemently advocate, these rights were never denied to them in Croatia under normal circumstances. During the Austro-Hungarian period, under Croatia's autonomous government, the Serbian minority enjoyed full rights in education and culture. The Orthodox Christians had their own religious schools and used the Cyrillic alphabet without any hindrance. In fact, the Serbian minority in Croatia was considered "a people of the state," just like the Croats—a unique case in the modern era of nation-states, where the people who give their national character to the respective state are usually dominant.

After this analysis, it is easy to understand why the Declaration's proposals regarding constitutional amendment were flatly rejected. It is hard to believe that anyone among the initiators and signatories of the Declaration expected their proposals to be accepted. It is more likely that they sought to exert pressure on the leaders of the Communist Party in Croatia, who had previously participated in the opposition to economic centralism, to do the same in the cultural sphere after Ranković's fall. For now, violent reactions from the Croatian communist leaders and a series of reprisals can be recorded. However, after the flood of protests organized by the regime, it can be inferred that the Croatian communist leaders find themselves in an embarrassing situation.

On the one hand, they demonstrated to the Croatian public a lack of courage to defend national rights in the face of the onslaught of Grand Serbism, even after Ranković's overthrow. Instead, Croatian intellectuals had to take up the defense of national culture, defying the communist leadership, which arrogates to itself the monopoly on political action and control over all aspects of national life. The communist intellectuals who participated in drafting and signing the Declaration were censured and punished for "lack of vigilance," "nationalist deviation," and above all, for their hostile attitude toward the communist leadership.

Their role was then assumed by "the self-styled representatives of the Croatian people."

In other words, Croatian intellectuals, including communists, believed that the Communist Party of Croatia did not defend national interests. This was clearly stated at a meeting of the Zagreb Party Urban Committee by one of its members: "I believe that the Declaration meant that the Communist League (Party) was taking a back seat in resolving certain problems and on the national question; that is, it was not waging this struggle, and that new men and new forces would have to be found to bring this struggle to a successful conclusion."

Vladimir Bakaric, president of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia, went further. In a session of the Central Committee, he openly acknowledged that "in connection with the national question, even among our communists, an atmosphere has been created whereby the one who most criticizes the (communist) leadership is the revolutionary."

The communist leaders, as on other occasions when referring to national conflicts, maintain that the struggle for the success of socialism automatically leads to the desired solution, since "the interests of all workers are identical." However, the communist intellectuals of Croatia concluded that the imposition of the communist dictatorship did not bring equality of rights between Croats and Serbs. Therefore, they endorsed the Declaration and persevered in their position despite the monstrous campaign of intimidation unleashed by the regime.

Bakaric himself acknowledged this when he said that some eighty communist intellectuals had signed the declaration, who "are not enemies of socialism. Quite the contrary. And it is impossible to convince them that they are on the wrong path."

The leading figure of the regime in Croatia can only explain the intellectuals' rebellion by suggesting they are the displaced, vulnerable to foreign manipulation.

After discussing the supposed causes of the national question, and trying not to widen the chasm between Croatian public opinion and the communist leadership, he acknowledges that he himself had to fight against economic centralism.

But currently, "others have embraced nationalism, precisely those who, in this revolutionary stage, have not found their place, with whom we cannot find common ground..." In this matter, "foreigners have also interfered" (referring to exiles), and "various intelligence services are heavily involved."

Bakaric then demanded severe punishment for the instigators. His criticism of nationalism was not limited to the Declaration, but extended to other instances of intellectual rebellion. He does not exclude, but rather anticipates, other similar cases. However, he acknowledges that the campaign against the Declaration "went too far." He declares himself opposed to administrative measures, namely, the intervention of the political police, but demands punishments from the party organs.

Indeed, several prominent communist intellectuals were expelled from the Party and others reprimanded. (In Belgrade, none of the signatories of the "Proposition" were expelled from the Party.) All those who signed the Declaration were stripped of their leading party and administrative positions. M. Krleza, the most prominent communist writer, resigned as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist League of Croatia.

The communist leaders do not dare deny the existence of outstanding problems concerning national equality, including the problem of the Croatian language. In doing so, they reaffirmed what the Declaration states. They reserve the right only to resolve these problems themselves using socialist methods. Writers and linguists should leave those problems to them, although they admit that there is no "common language" between them and the public when it comes to national rights.

While communist leaders strive to plug the rifts in Croatia, where opposition to Serbian dominance in the Party-State is growing, they are simultaneously forced to defend themselves against the Serbs, denouncing the "defense of the peoples of Yugoslavia," which the Serbs interpret as the fraternal acceptance of their hegemony by the other peoples of the multinational state of Yugoslavia. This subordination to Grand Serbism is a faithful reflection of Yugoslav reality, regardless of whether the communists admit it or not. They rose to power solely due to the abnormal situation caused by the subjugation of several peoples to Serbia upon the creation of the new South Slavic state under the 1919 peace treaties. The resistance of the oppressed peoples inevitably led to the collapse of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in World War II and the subsequent civil war between Serbs and Croats, with disastrous consequences for both peoples.

Thus, the conditions were ripe for communist action, especially for an understanding between communists and Great Serbs, who had previously been severely criticized by the communists. With Yugoslavia disintegrating, the Serbs, until then the privileged people, found themselves powerless in a country under German and Bulgarian occupation. The masses, imbued with the Great Serb spirit, became a resentful and even desperate element, psychologically conditioned to accept the leadership of the communists who promised the restoration of Yugoslavia with Russian aid and the ruthless punishment of all opponents of that state.

Only in this way could the communists carry out their revolution. But this implied betraying the peoples forcibly incorporated into Yugoslavia, that is, the vast majority of the population. The communists achieved their revolution, but they became instruments and prisoners of Great Serbism. The foundations of their power still lie in Serbia. The Serbs are the only possible guardians of the coerced state unity that the communists hypocritically try to justify with the special fraternity of the Yugoslav peoples, contradicting reality and even the tenets of communist internationalism.

There is no valid reason for a special fraternity among the Yugoslav peoples that could not also encompass other peoples. Insisting on "fraternity and unity" as the "ultimate achievement" of the partisans during the last world war is incompatible with communist doctrine and with the will of the peoples resisting the imposed union with Serbia. Only through dialectical labyrinths can it be reconciled, in a way, with the communist conception that a dubious "fraternity and unity," rather than a communist revolution, would be the principal and ultimate conquest, not only in times of war but forever.

The Yugoslav communist dictator, speaking out against the declaration to the "activists" of Kosmet's party, gave ample proof of the duplicity and inconsistency in the use of the slogan about the famous "brotherhood of the peoples of Yugoslavia" when he said:

"Among us communists, there must not be that: I am Serbian, you are Albanian, or you are Montenegrin, and things like that. Above all, you are communists."

That is to say, among communists, national interests must be subordinated to the reason of the State-Party, dominated by Serbs.

But this means ignoring the opinions and interests of the vast non-communist majority. In the specific case of Kosmet, it is a conflict between the Serbs, who consider Kosmet to be "old Serbia," and the Albanians of Kosmet, who are the vast majority of the population. Furthermore, they live in densely populated areas along the borders of Albania, their nation-state, and rightly cannot understand in the name of what "brotherhood" the Albanians of Kosmet should be subject to Serbia instead of being incorporated into the Albanian nation-state.

The Albanians are not part of the Slavic language group, and for them, even the arguments of a peculiar "brotherhood" in the sense of Pan-Slavic propaganda, as imposed on Croats and Serbs who belong to the Slavic language group, are invalid. Moreover, the Albanians of Kosmet are mostly Muslim, so religion does not unite them but rather separates them from Orthodox Serbia and Russia. On the other hand, the Albanians know very well that, being Muslim, they are "hereditary enemies" to the Serbs, former supporters of Turkish rule. For these reasons, the current communist rulers in Albania prefer to be satellites of distant China rather than of Russia, Serbia's traditional protector.

Hence the need for Tito to remind Kosmet's communists, both Serbs and Albanians, that they are first and foremost communists, and only then Serbs or Albanians.

But, given that Albania is one of the states with a communist regime, how can even Kosmet's communists, even as party activists, be convinced that they must accept the Greater Serbian thesis, that their place is in Serbia and not in the neighboring nation-state of the Albanians?

It is evident that, in this specific case, the much-vaunted "brotherhood," even invoking Marxist internationalism—as interpreted by the aging dictator, now quite diminished—is nothing more than a crude imitation of Greater Serbianism.

There is no doubt that Bakaric, Tripalo, and other communist leaders in Croatia know perfectly well that they, like Tito, are prisoners of Grand Serbism from the moment they allied themselves with it with the aim of achieving the communist revolution, which was then impossible without the massive participation of the vital interests of the people to whom they belong.

It is their condition as communists; it may offer them some consolation that they acted then in accordance with the line of dialectical activism, that is, to achieve, from their point of view, the supreme good, the communist revolution, which was then impossible without the massive participation of the Serbs. To appease the Serbs, they became complicit in the liquidation of the Croatian national state, which had emerged in 1941, and in the massacres of Croatian patriots in 1945. In this way, they managed to establish themselves as rulers in the second Yugoslavia, but one dominated by Serbs, just like the first (1918-1941), despite the "socialist" and federalist façade of the restored Yugoslav state.

Closer to the Croatian national reality than Tito, the communist leaders of Croatia, pressured by the communist intellectuals who signed the Declaration, do not object to being bad communists but rather to having erred through haste. On the one hand, they had favored Rankovic's Grand Serb policies, and on the other, the resurgence of Croatian nationalism, which was not only anti-Yugoslav but also anti-communist and pro-Western.

The weak point in the self-defense of Croatia's communist leaders, prisoners of Grand Conservatism, from the perspective of communist intellectuals, has been and continues to be their impotence in confronting the conflict of two loyalties—communist and patriotic—brought about by their alliance with Grand Conservatism. By framing the problem by aligning themselves with non-communists in the defense of national values, Croatia's communist intellectuals have undermined the party leadership and brought to the forefront the problem of resolving the conflict of two loyalties: to the homeland and to the communist revolution.

The declaration on the name and current status of the Croatian literary language

The centuries-long struggle of the Yugoslav peoples for national freedom and social justice culminated in the revolutionary transformation of 1941–1945. The gains of the national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution made it possible for all peoples and nationalities in Yugoslavia to begin a new phase of their historical life. Adhering to the fundamental principles of socialism concerning the right of every person to live free from all oppression and the right of every people to full sovereignty and absolute equality with other national communities, the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians have formed their federal union, consisting of six socialist republics, as a guarantee of their mutual equality, fraternity, and socialist cooperation.

The principle of national sovereignty and absolute equality also includes the right of every people to preserve all the attributes of its national existence and to develop to the fullest extent not only its economic but also its cultural activity. Among these attributes, the very national name of the language used by the Croatian people plays a decisive role, since it is the inalienable right of every people to call its language by its own name, regardless of whether it is a philological phenomenon that, as a peculiar linguistic variant or in its entirety, also belongs to some other people.

The Novi Sad Agreement recognized the shared linguistic basis of the Serbian and Croatian literary languages without denying the historical, cultural, national, and political truth regarding the right of each people to use their own language as a means of national and cultural life. These achievements were also shaped by constitutional texts and the program of the League of Communists, the political guide of our peoples in revolutionary struggle.

While the fundamental principles are clear, imprecisions in their formulation have allowed them to be circumvented, distorted, and transgressed in practice within the broader deviations of our economic and cultural life. It is well known under what circumstances statist, unitarist, and hegemonic tendencies reappeared in our country, and with them the concept of the need for a "state language." In practice, this role was assigned to the Serbian literary language due to its dominant influence in the administrative center of our state community.

Despite the decisions made at the Eighth Congress and the Fourth and Fifth Plenary Sessions of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which emphasized the importance, particularly in our time, of socialist principles concerning the equality of our peoples and, therefore, of their languages in the administrative apparatus and public and mass media (federal newspapers, the TANJUG news agency, radio and television, joint broadcasts, postal and telecommunications services, railways, political and economic literature, newsreels, and various administrative forms), and consequently in the language used in the Yugoslav People's Army, the federal administration, legislation, diplomacy, and political organizations, the "state language" is effectively imposed even today, relegating the Croatian literary language to the unequal status of a local dialect.

First, the significant initiatives of economic and social reform, stemming from the essential features of self-management characteristic of our socialist society, compel us, within the sphere of our linguistic, literary, scientific, and cultural activities in general, to undertake everything necessary to ensure the immediate implementation and application of all the principles outlined in our socialist system.

In this regard, the undersigned Croatian cultural and scientific institutions and organizations consider it essential to:

1) Establish, through the constitutional text, the equal rights of the four literary languages: Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian.

To this end, it is necessary to amend the text of Article 181 of the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which should read as follows:

"Federal laws and other documents of federal bodies shall be published, in their original text, in the four literary languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia: Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian. In official communications, the organs of the federation shall be obligated to adhere to the principle of equality for all the languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia."

The rights of ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia to their respective languages must also be adequately guaranteed.

The current constitutional provision regarding "the Serbian-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian language," with its imprecision, makes it possible for these two parallel names to be understood in practice as synonyms, rather than as a basis for the equality of the Croatian and Serbian literary languages, both with each other and with the languages of the other peoples of Yugoslavia. Such confusion makes it possible for the Serbian literary language to be imposed by force in practice as the sole Serbian-Croatian language.

That this is the truth is proven by numerous examples, including the most recent: the Conclusions of the Fifth Assembly of the League of Composers of Yugoslavia. These resolutions were published simultaneously in Serbian, Slovenian, and Macedonian as if the Croatian literary language did not exist and as if it were identical to the Serbian literary language.

The undersigned organizations and institutions consider that in these cases the Croatian people are not represented and are placed in a position of inequality. This practice cannot be justified in any way by invoking the obvious scientific fact that the Croatian and Serbian literary languages derive from a common linguistic base.

2) In accordance with the preceding claims and explanations, it is essential to ensure the consistent use of the Croatian language in schools, the press, public and political life, and on radio and television whenever the Croatian population is involved, and that employees, teachers, and those who act in public, regardless of their origin, must officially use the literary language of the environment in which they operate. We submit this Declaration to the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, to the Federal Assembly of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and to all of our public opinion, so that in the amendments to the Constitution currently under consideration, the principles set forth above may be clearly formulated and, consequently, their full implementation in our social life may be ensured.

Matica Hrvatska (Central Literary Institution, Editor's Note). - Croatian Writers' Society. - Croatian Center of the PEN Club. - Croatian Society of Philology. - Department of Philology of the South Slavic Academy in Zagreb. - Department of Modern Literature of the South Slavic Academy in Zagreb. - Institute of Linguistics and Theatre Studies of the South Slavic Academy. - Chair of Modern Croatian-Serbian Language, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. - The Chair of Modern Croatian-Serbian Language at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. - The Chair of Old Croatian Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. - The Chair of Old Croatian Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar. - The Chair of Modern Croatian Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar. - The Linguistic Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. - The Institute for Literary Studies at the University of Zagreb. - The Institute of Old Slavic Languages in Zagreb. - The Croatian Association of Literary Translators.

Zagreb, March 15, 1967

Draft resolution from a group of Serbian writers

One or two days after the Declaration was published on Telegram (March 17, 1967), a group of members of the Serbian Writers' Society drafted this Proposal to be considered as a draft Resolution to be adopted by the plenary of their Society:

"The group of writers considered the 'Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Language,' issued by the Croatian Writers' Society and previously adopted by the most prestigious scientific and cultural institutions in Croatia. After a thorough analysis of this significant historical document, the group of writers considers it the legitimate and inalienable right of every people to make decisions regarding the name and development of their own language.

The Serbian writers' group believes that the institutions that signed the 'Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language' are the most competent in matters concerning the Croatian literary language and considers their declaration representative and meritorious.

Therefore, the group of writers proposing this Resolution, setting aside the historical and scientific aspects of the issue and taking into account..." The fact that the Declaration in question stipulates that the Vienna and Novosibirsk agreements are nullified is taken into account. The Croatian and Serbian languages will develop in complete independence and equality. The group of writers proposing the Resolution considers it natural that the foregoing should also extend to all the languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia and to all national alphabets: Latin, Macedonian Cyrillic, and Serbian, and to their orthographies.

The group of writers proposing the Resolution submits the request to the Assembly of Serbia, and consequently to the Federal Assembly, the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, and the Parliament (Sabor) of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, that henceforth, consistently and obligatorily, they eliminate from official use the terms "Croatian-Serbian" or "Serbian-Croatian" and that in the federal administration, the legislature, political organizations, railways, postal and telecommunications services, the Tanjug agency, the lexicographical institute of Yugoslavia, customs, the The Yugoslav army and all other institutions must practice equality among all Yugoslav languages and alphabets.

For this reason, the group of writers proposing this Resolution demands that Belgrade Radio and Television cease arbitrarily acting as a central Yugoslav studio, introduce Cyrillic script into its local programming, and use both alphabets in parallel in joint broadcasts of Yugoslav Radio and Television.

The society, or the proposing group, believes that no effort is too great and no price too high to pay if the equality of the languages and alphabets of our peoples is always and consistently respected.

The group of writers proposing this Resolution considers it their duty and right to draw attention to a problem that, in light of the preceding requests, has become even more pressing.

The Constitution guarantees the right to the independent development of the language and culture of all our peoples and nationalities. The affirmation of the recognition and independent development of the Croatian and Serbian languages requires that this right be guaranteed by constitutional provisions to all Croats living in the territory of the Socialist Republic of Serbia and to all Serbs living in the territory of the Socialist Republic of Croatia.

The group of writers calls for the inclusion in the Constitutions of the Socialist Republic of Serbia and the Socialist Republic of Croatia of provisions that guarantee all Croats and Serbs the right to be educated in their own language and alphabet and according to their national curricula; that they be guaranteed the right to use their national language and alphabet in communication with all organs of power; the right to establish their own cultural associations, local museums, publishing and journalistic enterprises; in short, the unhindered promotion of all aspects of their national culture.

The Croatian language

Zdravko Sancevic, Caracas, Venezuela

The Croats have their own language, which they call Croatian (hrvatski jezik). This consists of the popular forms (pucki jezik) spoken by the people and the literary form (knjizevnik jezik). Synonymous terms for Croatian, sometimes used in the past, include Illyrian, Slovinski, or Slovenski. Croatian belongs to the South Slavic branch of the Slavic language group, which in turn belongs to the East Slavic or Satem division of the Indo-European language family.

The South Slavic languages extend in a broad band from the southeastern Alps to the Black Sea, occupying most of the Balkan Peninsula and partially penetrating Central Europe. In reality, it is a series of related dialects spoken (from west to east) by the following nationalities: Slovenes, Croats, Montenegrins, Serbs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians.

Each of these nationalities has its own literary language, with the exception of the Montenegrins, who partly follow the Serbian orientation (alphabet, Orthodox ecclesiastical influences) and partly the Croatian orientation (dialect of eastern Herzegovina and Dubrovnik). A diagram with the classification and characteristics of each of these languages is attached.

Philologists, however, have noticed that the Bulgarian, Macedonian, and eastern Serbian (Torlaco) dialects have developed certain phonetic and morphological peculiarities more than the other South Slavic dialects. Among these, the following stand out: 1) the loss of declension endings; 2) the use of the post-positive article (zena-ta, dete-to), and 3) the analytic character in contrast to the synthetic character of Slovene, Croatian, and Western Serbian.

This special position of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Eastern Serbian (Torlaco), and the fact that a large number of Croats, Croatian Serbs, and Montenegrins speak the dialect used in eastern Herzegovina, has led many philologists to try to simplify (in fact, complicate) the South Slavic linguistic picture by calling the first group (Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Eastern Serbian dialects) simply the Bulgarian language, and the conglomeration of Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian dialects the Serbo-Croatian language. This latter classification of the South Slavic languages into Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian has resulted in political and national upheavals, implying that some Serbs are Bulgarians and creating the false impression that Croats and Serbs are part of a single nation.

Popular Forms (pucki jezik) of Croatian

The popular language spoken by the Croatian people comprises six dialects and a number of subdialects. Their main characteristics are presented below. For the extent of each dialect, see the dialect map.

1. Dinaric dialect (also called Western, Eastern Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Bosnian-Dalmatian, Neo-Ikavski). Main characteristics: interrogative pronoun, what? is sto; Paleo-Slavic word jat transformed into i (i kavski); Use of the group sc (Scakavski) in some areas (western Bosnia, Dalmatia between the Cetina and Neretva rivers) and st (Stokavski) in others (western Herzegovina, Dalmatia north of the Cetina, Lika, Subotica-Sombor area in Vojvodina); verbal ending -i predominantly becomes o (vidian) except in Dalmatia and Lika where it is a (vidija).

2. Slavonic dialect (also called archaic Scakavski). The interrogative pronoun "what?" is sto; jat is i (Ikavski), e (Ekavski), and mixed; accentuation is archaic with little influence from the Neo-Stokavski group, retaining the ˜ accent throughout the dialect, with the sc group predominating. I kavski predominates in Posavina, Slavonia, and Bosnia, Baranja, and the Sombor-Bac area in Vojvodina. Ekavski in Lower Podravina and in part of western Sirmium. Ikavo-Jekava mixtures occur in Slavonian and Bosnian Posavina (dite-djeteta) and Ikavo-Ekava in Plain Slavonia (St. Mihanvci) and part of Baranja (dite-deteta). Isolated uses of jat are also found near Lower Podravina in Hungary, as well as the use of l in verbal adjectives (nosil) and the cr group (Crnkovci).

3. Eastern Bosnian dialect (also called Ijekavsko Sckavski). The interrogative pronoun "what?" is sto; jat is predominantly ije (ijekavo), with accents of ` and ñ; the sc group predominates. The syllable is not lengthened in examples such as stàrac - stàrca (instead of stârca), in the feminine instrumental ending -im, characteristic verbal form ja bi doji, mi bi doji instead of ja bih dosao, mi bismo dosli. Examples such as meja (instead of meda) are found towards the west and southwest. The old accent ` is partially preserved towards the north. Mixtures of jat occur in Tessanj and Maglaj (dete - djetea), in Zepce and Jablanica (dijete - diteta). In the central part of the area, we find diphthongs uo instead of the old vowel l (stuop, for stup, zuoc for Zuc).

4. Eastern Herzegovina dialect (also called the Krajina dialect and Neo-Ijekavski): the interrogative pronoun "what?" is sto; jat is ije (Ijekavski); Neo-Stokava accentuation; use of the st group. Besides Croats (it is the basis of the Croatian literary language), this dialect is spoken by most of the Serbian minority in Croatia, some Montenegrins, the population of Sandzak, and the Užice area in Serbia. In the eastern subdialects (Montenegro and Sandzak), the imperfect tense with the h omitted, or replaced with k or g (bijak, bijagu), and the forms with c and d (deca, cerati = djeca, tjerati) are preserved. Among the Croatian subdialects, the Zumberak dialect stands out with its archaic accentuation, as does the Dubrovnik dialect, which incorporates many elements of the Čakavski, Dinaric, and East Bosnian dialects, along with remnants of the old accentuation and declension.

The Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina primarily speaks the Dinaric and East Bosnian dialects, and to a lesser extent, East Herzegovina (Sandžak and Herzegovina). It is worth noting that in the Zeta dialect area of Montenegro, Muslims in Podgorica (now Titograd), Plav, and Gusinje use some Ikava forms (dite-deteta).

It is also important to point out that the four dialects listed share the interrogative pronoun *sto*, which is also common to Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian, and Bulgarian dialects. However, older dialectal classifications were extremely simplistic, using only the interrogative pronouns kaj, ca, and sto as the criterion for differentiation.

5. The Kakawski dialect. This dialect acquired its name from the interrogative pronoun ca, although this has already been replaced in many areas by sto and even, in some cases, by kaj (southwest of Karlovac). Several subdialects exist within this dialect, with notable differences between them, but all share the common characteristic of having preserved many linguistic archaisms. For this reason, the Kakawski dialect is of great interest to philologists.

Here, however, we will mention only some of the most important characteristics: the use of closed vowels e, a, and o, sometimes converted into diphthongs (pet = piet, glava = gluava); the vowel r can be followed by a vowel (parst, perst); the old vowel l is sometimes preserved (valna, velna); The predominant pronunciation of jat is Ikavski (sime, dite), but it can also be Jekavo (sjeme, djete in Lastovo), Ikavo-Ekavo (dite, delati in the Zadar, Croatian Littoral, and Lika areas), and Ekavo (dete, delati in Kvarner).

Also characteristic are Tsakavism (c instead of c and s, z instead of s, s, z, and z); the use of the groups cr (crv), sc (scap), jt, and jd (najti, najde); the use of v or va (vnuk, vavik); the preservation of l in j (judi, jabav); incomplete jt pronunciation (listje, divji = lisce, divlji); preservation of verbal l or its loss (rekal, reka = erkao); and s and s instead of c and c (maska, hrvaski (from hrvacki) = macka, hrvatski). and three accentuation systems. The vocabulary is rich in archaisms and is also influenced by Italian (Venetianisms).

6. Kajkavski dialect. This dialect is named after the interrogative pronoun kaj. It is predominantly Ekavski but shows influences from Kajkavski. There are six subdialects (Zagorje - Medimuje, Donja Sutla, Prigorje, Goroni, Turopolje - Posvina, Krizevki - Podravina). The first four have the old accentuation and the last two the more recent one. The two subdialects that differ the most are Gorani and Krizevki - Podravina.

Many characteristics are common to some subdialects and absent in others. However, the most important characteristics, even though they do not always extend to the entire area of the dialect, are the following: the use of closed-articulation vowels e and o sometimes converted into diphthongs (muos, vouk in Gorani); loss of final unstressed vowels (sim, kak = simo, kako); the vowel may be accompanied (carni, cerni); the cr group is preserved in most subdialects; the final l is preserved (dal, vzel) sometimes becoming o, u or f; existence of prosthetic consonants preceding a vowel (vuho, jogenj, hrja).

The declension retains many archaisms, but the vocative case has been lost. The genitive plural loses the final -a (zen, penes), while in the masculine gender it has -of or -ef (nozof, nozef). The dative, instrumental, and locative cases have their own peculiarities: g zenam, k ljuderm, tatom, ze zenami, s tati, z ludmi, pri zenah, etc. For masculine nouns, the accusative singular ends in -a (na krof but zrusil krova). Sibilization has been abandoned (raki, rogi = raci, rozi).

For numbers 2-4, the plural is used (dva sini, tri brati). In general, the declensions are more similar to Čakavski than to other Croatian dialects or to Slovene. There are several comparative endings: -si, -ejsi, -eji (veksi, spametnejsi, bogateji). The future tense is characterized by the use of the future II form or the present tense: bum posekel, posecem. In the third person plural, verbs end in -jo (delajo, vlecejo, gledijo = delaju, vuku, gledaju). The adverbs s and iz have merged into z. Vocabulary shows German and Hungarian influences.

Diagram of the South Slavic languages

Lengua:	Esloveno	Croata		Servio	Macedonio	Búlgaro
Nacionalidad:	eslovenos	croatas	montenegrinos	servios	macedonios	búlgaros
Dialectos:	Grupo Suroeste Grupo Noroeste	Cakavski Kajkavski Dinárico Eslavonio Bosníaco-oriental Herzegovino-oriental	Herzegovino-oriental Zeta	Sumadija – Voivodina Herzegovino-oriental Kosovo-Resava Torlaco: Prizren - Sur Morava-Svrljiga - Zaplanj - Timok - Krasovan - Svinjica	Occidental Oriental Norte Sur	Noreste Sureste (Tracio) Noroeste Sudoeste
Alfabeto:	Latino con signos diacríticos (Gajica)	Latino con signos diacríticos (Gajica)	Cirílico reformado (servio)	Cirílico reformado (servio)	Cirílico reformado (macedonio)	Cirílico antiguo (ruso)
Nro. de Letras:	29	32 (2 de escaso uso: gj, dj)	30	30	31	33 (3 ahora fuera de uso)
Ortografía:	Etimológica	Fonética moderada	Fonética pura	Fonética pura	Fonética	Predominantemente etimológica
Base de la Lengua Literaria:	Subdialectos centrales: Dolenjsko, Gorenjsko y elementos del estirio	Dialecto herzegovino-oriental y herencia literaria	Dialecto herzegovino-oriental	Dialecto Sumadija - Voivodina	Dialecto Occidental	Dialectos Orientales
Albafetos históricos:	Latino	Glagolítico (Glagolitsa) Cirílico croata (Bosancica) Arabe Latino	Glagolítico (Glagolitsa) Cirílico eclesiástico	Cirílico eclesiástico Cirílico rusificado	Glagolítico (Glagolitsa) Cirílico eclesiástico	Glagolítico (Glagolitsa) Cirílico eclesiástico Cirílico ruso

It should also be mentioned that the first three Croatian dialects share the interrogative pronoun *sto* (stokavski), which is also common to Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian, and Bulgarian dialects. Previously, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian dialects were classified solely based on the interrogative pronoun (stokavski, cakavski, kajkavski) and the form of *jat* (ikavski, ijekavski, ekavski).

This anachronistic and simplistic classification has been replaced by one based on the study of all dialectological aspects (voices, forms, accents, syntax, and vocabulary richness), not just some. Dialectologists (G. Ruzicic, M. Hraste, J. Vukovic, P. Ivic, D. Brozovic, B. Finka, and S. Pavicic) have arrived at a more comprehensive classification, which is the one presented here.

In connection with the anachronistic and simplistic division of Croatian, Montenegrin, or Serbian dialects into Stokavski, Kajkavski, and Cakavski only, some Slavic philologists of the last century had assigned a nationality to each of these. For Dobrovsky, Croats were those who spoke Kajkavski, while those who spoke Stokavski and Cakavski were "Illyrian-Dalmatians."

For Kopitar, Croats were those who spoke Stokavski and Cakavski, while Kajkavski speakers were Slovenes. Finally, for Vuk Karadzic (in his article "Serbs Are All and Everywhere"), Serbs were all those who spoke Stokavski, Croats those who spoke the Cakavski dialect, and Slovaks those who spoke Kajkavski. With the advancement of linguistic research, and especially Slavic studies, these romantic and even chauvinistic theses were very soon rejected. The renowned Slavic philologist Vatroslav Jagic has contributed to correcting and clarifying these absurdities.

It is also worth mentioning that the distribution of dialects prior to the great migrations caused by the Turkish invasion in the 16th and 17th centuries was different from what it is today. Kajkavski occupied a larger area, roughly corresponding to the former Diocese of Zagreb (that is, encompassing Upper Croatia, Western Slavonia, northern Bosnian Krajina, and Bosnian Posavina as far as the Vrbas River). Çakavski corresponded to the area of what was then the Archdiocese of Split, that is, Gorski Kotar, Kvarner, Croatian Krajina, Upper Puye, Dalmatia, the karst valleys of Western Bosnia, Western Herzegovina, and the Dubrovnik coastline. In the rest of Bosnia up to the Drina River, the rest of Slavonia and in Eastern Herzegovina, a Croatian dialect was spoken characterized by its affinity with the Kakavski and Kajkavski languages and the use of Stokavski, Ikavski, Scakavski and the letter j (meja), that is, a common dialect of what are currently the Dinaric, Slavonic and East Bosnian dialects.

Literary language

Probably before the 9th century, Croats began using Church Slavonic as their literary language, written in characters known as the Glagolitic alphabet (Glagolitza). Its introduction, until recent times, has generally been attributed to the disciples of the Slavic Apostles Cyril and Methodius. More recently, however, the theory of other, earlier origins for Croatian Glagolitza has been supported with sound arguments. (See Nos. 39, 40 of the general bibliography). While official documents in this area were written in Latin, Church Slavonic, written in Glagolitic script, was preserved in the liturgical texts of the Croatian Church, which was always Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman.

Over time, the vernacular began to permeate the Church Slavonic texts. The oldest document, a mixture of vernacular Croatian and Church Slavonic, written in Glagolitic script, is the Baska Tombstone (Bascanska ploca), dating from the 1100s. (Reproduced in "Studia Croatica" Vols. 14-15, p. 49). Around this time, public documents and law codes began to be written in vernacular Croatian (Document of Ban Kulin - Isprava Kulina Bana, 1189; Code of Vinodol - Vinodolski Zakonik, 1288).

With the penetration of the Croatian vernacular into apocryphal and liturgical literature, a significant Glagolitic literature developed (lives of saints, tales, and novels), largely translations. Alongside the Glagolitic alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet in its Croatian form (Bosnia, Southern Dalmatia) and the Latin alphabet (Istria, Dalmatia) now appear. However, from the 14th century onwards, the Latin alphabet predominates, although the other two (Glagolitic and Croatian Cyrillic) persist until the 19th century.

The first important work in Croatian literature is the poem Judita (1501) by Marko Marulic, which, according to the poet himself, was "composed in Croatian verses" ("u versi hrvacki slozena"). From then on, a rich literature in Croatian was written in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Besides religious themes, it is also inspired by the beauty of women, love, youth, patriotism, and the suffering caused by the Turkish-Christian wars of this period. The writers wrote in their regional dialects: Marulic, Lucic, Hertorovic, Zoranic, Krnarutic, and Barakovic in Kakavski; Cubranovic, Vetranovic, Naljeskovic, Drzic, Gundulic, Bunic-Vucic, Pamotic, Zrinski, Frankopan, Ritter-Vitezovic, Durdevic, Kanizlic, Gravobac, Kacic, Reljkovic, and Katancic in Stokavski-Ikavski or Stokavsko-Ijekavski; and Habdelic, Brezovacki, and Stos in Kajkavski. Orthography was also not standardized; in the southwestern regions, Italian influence was evident, while in the northwestern regions, Hungarian influence prevailed.

In the territory dominated by the Turks, Catholic Croats continued to use the Croatian Cyrillic script (Bosancica), and Muslim Croats used Arabic script. Towards the end of the 16th century, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation, attempts were made to use a common, artificial literary language for all Slavs (Temperica, Budinic, Komulivic). However, Kasic, author of the first Croatian grammar (Instituciones Linguae Illyricae, Rome 1604), and Mikalja, author of a Croatian dictionary (Tesaurus linguae Illyricae sive Diccionrium Illyricum, Loreto and Ancona, 1649 and 1651), promoted the use of the Bosnian dialect (Stokavski, Ikavski, or Ijekavski) as the literary language.

Following this effort, several Croatian writers wrote in Stokavski (Vitaljic, Kavanjin, Ritter-Vitezovic, etc.), while others (Budinic, Ritter-Vitezovic) tried to reform the orthography using diacritics (c, z) and assigning a letter to each word. These efforts to establish a common literary language did not achieve lasting success. Only the Croatian national movement, known as Ilyich, in the last century, under the leadership of Ljudevit Gaj (1809-1871), introduced a unified orthography among Croats (Brief Foundation of Croatian-Slavic Orthography - Kratka osnova horvatski-slavenskoga pravopisaña). Following the examples of Ritter-Vitezovic and Czech orthography, it proposed the use of letters with diacritics (c, z, s, and modified l, n, and d).

While the first three letters were accepted (c, z, s - French ch, French j, English sh), for the following three, double characters were accepted (lj, nj, dj, or gj = ll, ñ, English g in George), taken from Ritter-Vitezovic's suggestions. Gaj also introduced in 1836 the common literary language based on the Eastern Herzegovina dialect (Stokavski - Ijekavski), etymological orthography, and the sign e with the accent for the khat. In the field of grammar, Gaj's main assistants were A. Mazuranic (1805-1888) and V. Babukic (1812-1875); the former published two "Illyrian Grammars" in 1836 and 1854, and the latter "Fundamentals of the Illyrian and Latin Languages" in 1839 and the "Croatian Grammar for Lyceums" in 1859.

In 1850, a literary agreement was reached in Vienna, attended by the Croats I. Kukuljevic, D. Demeter, I. Mazuranic, V. Pacel, and S. Pejakovic; the Serbs V. Karadzic and D. Danicic; and the Slovene F. Miklosic. This agreement proposed the use of the Eastern Herzegovina dialect as the literary language, the use of ije and j3 instead of e with a diacritic, and the abandonment of the vowel accompanying the vowel r and the h in the genitive plural.

Although published by Gaj, the recommendations of the agreement were not implemented until much later. Towards the end of the 19th century, two Croatian linguistic centers emerged: the so-called Zagreb and Rijeka Schools. The former was active after Lj. Gaj, A. Mazuranic, and V. Babukic, the grammarian and writer A. Veber-Tkalcévic (1825-1895), and the lexicographer B. Sulek (1816-1895). F. Kurelac (1811-1874) was a member of the second group.

The Zagreb School advocated the use of the -h ending in the genitive plural (ahavci), strove to purify the literary language by creating new vocabulary and adapting Czech and Russian terms into Croatian, established scientific terminology, and generally made the language suitable for easy and logical use in schools, administration, and the sciences. F. Kurelac of the Rijeka School attempted to synthesize an artificial literary language from various popular dialects and old Croatian literature, but he was unsuccessful.

The great Slavic philologist V. Jagic (1838-1923), although most of his life and scholarly work took place outside Croatia, managed, through strictly scientific reasoning, to correct the errors of nationalist romanticism in linguistics (Vuk Karadzic, Kopitar), which assigned only one dialect to Croats: Kakavski or Kajkavski. Jagic also participated in debates and wrote on topics of varied linguistic interest.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, a group of philologists turned to the teachings of the Serbian linguists Vuk Karadzic and D. Danicic (phonetics in orthography and the strictly vernacular). Consequently, Croats obtained phonetic orthography with the publication in 1892 of "Croatian Orthography" by I. Broz (1852-1893). They follow the "Grammar and Stylistics" of T. Maretic (1854-1938), published in 1899, 1931, and 1963. "The Dictionary of the Croatian Language" by I. Broz and F. Ivekovic (1834-1914), published in 1901, has the main flaw of having limited itself solely to material published by the Serbian linguists Vuk Karadzic and D. Danicic, thus omitting many words in common use in the Croatian language.

Meanwhile, the Sureslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) in Zagreb has been publishing an extensive "Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language" since 1880. To date, 17 volumes have been published, and the work is still underway. Upon completion, it will contain a total of 250,000 words. (Words from Kajkavski are not included, so a dictionary of Kajkavski is forthcoming as a necessary complement to the aforementioned historical dictionary of the Croatian literary language.)

Broz's "Croatian Orthography" was continued by D. Boranic (1870-1955), with 10 editions printed. Boranic's orthography stabilized the Croatian literary language by using moderate phonetics, in contrast to the purely phonetic Serbian orthography of A. Belic. However, there were attempts to return to etymological orthography (S. Radic and the period 1941-1945).

Due to the adoption in the last century of the Eastern Herzegovina dialect (Stokavski - Ijekavski) as the basis of the Croatian literary language and the Vojvocina-Sumadija dialect (Stokavski - Ekavski) as the basis of the Serbian literary language—that is, of two geographically and linguistically close dialects—a certain convergence occurred between the two languages, with a number of grammatical and lexicographical coincidences.

However, it is due to the continued use of these two different dialects, the use of two different alphabets, and a number of other factors and reasons that two separate literary languages and literatures still exist. The first reason is that among the Croats, a rich vernacular literature existed in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, with a consequent literary tradition and heritage.

Among the Serbs, literary works prior to the 19th century are relatively few, written in Old Slavic and Serbo-Slavic languages. The latter is an artificial mixture of Old Slavic and the vernacular, heavily Russified in the 18th and 19th centuries. After the adoption of Eastern Herzegovina as the basis of the Croatian literary language, however, the influences of the literary heritage continued to be felt, while the Serbs drew exclusively on folk sources.

The existence of two cultural and literary centers with different orientations—Zagreb for the Croats and Novi Sad and Belgrade for the Serbs—maintained two distinct atmospheres in subsequent literary production. Existing differences persisted, new ones emerged, and two distinct readership groups formed: Croats and Serbs. Currently, these differences encompass phonetics, morphology, syntax, style (approximately seven thousand commonly used words), alphabet, and orthography.

In 1954, a meeting of some 30 Croatian and Serbian writers and linguists was held in Novi Sad, Vojvodina. The outcome was the decision to develop a common orthography and dictionary with the aim of creating a literary language, "Croato-Serbian and Serbo-Croatian" (hvatskosrpski or srpskohrvatski), for use by Croats, Serbs, and Montenegrins. The conclusions suggest that the meeting was, if not openly pressured, at least promoted by certain official circles interested in Yugoslav integration at the expense of Serbian and Croatian national and literary identities. The meeting did, however, recognize the equality of the two "variants," the western or Croatian and the eastern or Serbian, in the "common literary language."

In 1960, the unified orthography was published simultaneously in Croatia and Serbia. This orthography is a compromise between D. Boranic's Croatian orthography and S. Belic's Serbian orthography. According to it, two alphabets continue to be used (the Croatian Latin and the Serbian Cyrillic), while the different phonetic (Croatian and Serbian ekavski), syntactic, stylistic, and cultural variations of both Croatian and Serbian are incorporated into the common literary language. The simultaneous publication of two dictionaries is expected, one in Zagreb (Latin alphabet) and the other in Novi Sad (Cyrillic alphabet). These dictionaries should include "the lexicographical richness of Croatian and Serbian literatures from the national renaissance in the 19th century to the present, incorporating all that has been properly developed."

Meanwhile, Croats use "the western variant" and Serbs "the eastern variant," still referring to them as Croatian and Serbian, respectively. However, the pressure of Serbian vocabulary and phonetics is felt in Croatia and particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most affected sectors are journalism, radio, television, school curricula, official documents and publications, forms, stamps, and military, economic, and diplomatic language. For this reason, the 18 Croatian institutions representing Croatian writers and linguists published the now-famous "Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language" in March 1967, demanding that it be designated as the national language of Croatia and granted the same rights as the Serbian language, which was officially favored over Croatian.

Bibliography

Abbreviations:

MH = Matica Hrvatska (Croatian Cultural and Literary Center).

JAZU = Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti (South Slavic Academy of Sciences and Arts).

HIBZ = Hrvatski Izdavalacki Bibliografski Zavod (Croatian Publishing and Bibliographic Institute).

General

1. Baricevic, A. A. (1756-1806), Historia Litteraria Croatiae.

2. Appendini, F. M., Notizie istorico-critiche sulle antichitá, storia e letteratura de Ragusei, 1802-1803.

3. Appendini, F. M., De Praestantia et vetustate linguae Illyricae, 1806.

4. Rozic, V., Barbarizmi (Barbarisms), Zagreb, 1904.

5. Andric, N., Branic jezika hrvatskoga (The Defender of the Croatian Language), Zagreb, 1911.

6. Milcetic, I., Hrvatska Glagoljska bibliography (The Croatian Glagolitic Bibliography), Starine 33, JAZU, Zagreb, 1911.

7. Prohaska, D., Das kroatisch-serbische Schrifum in Bosnien und der Hercegovina, Zagreb, 1911.

8. Vodnik-Drechsler, B., Povijets hrvatske knjizevnosti I (History of Croatian Literature I), MH, Zagreb, 1913.

9. Bogdanovic, D., Pregled knjizevnosti hrvatske i srpske (The Review of Contemporary Literature Croatian-Serbian), 1914, 1916, 1933.

10. Prohaska, D., Pregled savremene hrvatsko-srpske knjizevnosti (The Review of Contemporary Croatian-Serbian Literature), Zagreb, 1921.

11. Maretic, T., Jezicni savjetnik (The Linguistic Counselor), Zagreb, 1924.

12. Prohaska, D., Srbocharvatská literature (The Serbian-Croatian Literature), Prague, 1928.

13. Ujevic, M., Hrvatska Knjizevnost (Croatian Literature), Zagreb, 1932.

14. Ivsic, S., Jezik Hrvata Kajkavaca (The Language of the Kajkavian Croats), Ljetopis JAZU, Zagreb, 1936.

15. Guberina, P. and Krstic, K., Razlike izmedju hrvatskoga i srpsko knjizevnog jezika (The Differences between Croatian and Serbian Literary Languages), MH, Zagreb, 1940.

16. Kombol, M., Provijest hrvatske knjizevnosti do preporoda (History of Croatian Literature until the Renaissance), MH, Zagreb, 1941, 1945, 1961.

17. Ujevic, M., Plodovi srca i uma (The Fruits of the Heart and Reason), Zagreb, 1941.

18. Pavicic, S., Dalmacija, Govorne znacajke hrvatskog 19. Pavicic, S., "The Linguistic Characteristics of the Croatian Population in Dalmatia," in *Croatian Encyclopedia*, HIBZ, Vol. 4, Zagreb, 1942.

20. Jezic, S., *Croatian Literature*, Velzek, Zagreb, 1944.

21. Trograncic, F., *Medieval Literature of Southern Slavs*, Rome, 1950.

22. Murvar, V., *Croatian Literature* (Croatia and the Croats), Croatia, Chicago, 1953.

23. Pavicic, S., Podrijetlo hrvatskih i srpskih naselja i govora u Slavoniji (The Origin of the Croatian and Serbian Villages and Dialects in Slavonia), Djela JAZU, Vol. 47, Zagreb, 1953.

24. Trograncic, F., Storia della letteratura croata dall'Umanesimo alla Rinascita nazionale (secolo XV-XIX), Rome, 1953.

25. Barac, A., Jugoslavenska knjizevnost (Southern Slavic Literatures), MH, Zagreb, 1954, 1958.

26. Barac, A., Hrvatska knjizevnost od preporoda do stvaranja Jugoslavije (Croatian Literature from the National Renaissance to the Creation of Yugoslavia), 2 volumes, JAZU, Zagreb, 1954 and 1960.

27. Cronia, A., History of Serbo-Croatian Literature, Milan, 1956.

28. Croatian Dialectological Symposium, 1st volume, JAZU, Zagreb, 1956.

29. Mandic, D., Kako su govorili Hrvati i Srbi kod svog dolaska na jug (How the Croats and Servians spoke at the time of their migration to the South, Hrvatska Misao (Croatian Thought), Vol. 25, Buenos Aires, 1958.

30. Maver, G., Serbo-Croatian Letteratura in Storia delle letterature moderne d'Europae d'America, 1960.

31. Kadic, A., Contemporary Croatian Literature, 's-Gravenhage, Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1960.

32. Kadic, A., Croatian Reader with Vocabulary, 's-Gravenhage, Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1960.

33. Macek, V., Hrvatski knjizevni jezik i pravopis (The Language Croatian Literary and Spelling), Croatian Magazine, Vol. 4 (40), Buenos Aires, 1960.

34. Spalatin, C., First Common Orthography for Croatians, Serbs, and Montenegrins, Journal of Croatian Studies, Vol. II, New York, 1961.

35. Nizeteo, A., On Croatian Language and Literature, Journal of Croatian Studies, Vol. II, New York, 1961.

36. Spalatin, C., Orthographic Reform in Yugoslavia, Journal of Croatian Studies, Vol. III-V, New York, 1962-1963.

37. Raditsa, B., Notes on the Croatian and Serbian Literatures, Journal of Croatian Studies, Vol. III-IV, New York, 1962-1963.

38. Spalatin, K., Jedinstveni pravopis hrvatskkog i srpskog injizevnog jezike (The Unified Orthography of the Croatian and Serbian Literary Languages), La Revista Croata, Vol. 1 (49), Buenos Aires, 1963.

39. Japundzic, M., La Glagolitza Croata, "Studia Croatica", Vol. 14/15, Buenos Aires, 1964; also "La Revista Croata", Vol. 4 (52), Buenos Aires, 1963.

40. Mandic, Nenapisano poglavje hrvatske pismenosti (Unwritten Chapter on Ancient Croatian Literature), in Rasprave i prilozi iz stare hrvatske povijeti (Studies and Contributions of Ancient Croatian History), Croatian Historical Institute, Rome, 1963.

41. Jagic, V., Rasprave, clanci, sjecanja (Studies, Articles, Memories), MH, Zagreb, 1963.

42. Jonke, Lj., Knjizevnik jezik u teoriji i praksi (Literary Language in Theory and Practice), Znanje, Zagreb, 1964.

43. Babic, S. (Editor), Jezik (The Language), Panorama, Zagreb, 1965.

44. Pavletic, V., Panorama hrvatske knjizevnosti XX stoljeca (The Panorama of Croatian Literature of the 20th Century), Svarnost, Zagreb, 1965.

45. Sicel, M., Pregled novije hrvatske knjizevnosti (The Review of Recent Croatian Literature), MH, Zagreb, 1966.

46. Vaupotic, M., Hrvatska suvremena knjizevnost (Contemporary Croatian Literature), Croatian Pen Club Center, Zagreb, 1966.

47. Deklaracija o nazivu i polozaju hrvatskog knjizevnog jezike (The Declaration on the Denomination and Status of the Croatian Literary Language), Vjesnik, Zagreb, 19. III. 1967.

48. Predlog za razmisljanje (A proposition to think about), Borba, Belgrade, 2, IV. 1967.

49. Apel hrvatskih knjizevnika i Pisaca u emigraciji (Appeal of Emigrant Croatian Authors and Writers), Bulletin of the United American Croats, No. 31, New York, 1967.

50. Statement of the Croatian Academy of America about the Zagreb Language Declaration, Croatia Press, No. 1-2 (253-254), New York, 1967.

51. Mirth, K., Croatian and Serbian or Serbo-Croatian? Croats Seek Constitutional Protection for Croatian Language in Yugoslavia, Croatia Press, No. 1-2 (253-254), New York, 1967.

52. Vujica, S., Hrvatski jezik i hrvatska drzava (The Croatian Language and State), Bulletin of the United American Croats, No. 31, New York, 1967.

Ortografías

1. Jambresic, A., Manudictio ad croaticam orthographiam, Zagreb, 1732.

2. Jambresic, A., Manudictio ad croaticas dictiones debite scribendas, Zagreb, 1745, 1779.

3. Ritter-Vitezovic, P. (1652-1713), Orthographia Illyricana.

4. Gaj, Lj., Kratka osnova Horvatsko-slavenskoga pravopisaña (Breve Proyecto de la Ortografía Croata-Eslava), Budapest, 1830.

5. Maretic, T., Historija hrvatskoga pravopisa latinskijem slovima (Historia de la Ortografía Croata en Alfabeto Latino), Zagreb, 1889.

6. Broz, I., Hrvtaski pravopis (Ortografía Croata), Zagreb, 1892.

7. Broz, I. y Boranic, D., Hvatski pravopis (Ortografía Croata), Zagreb, 1904.

8. Boranic, D., Pravopis hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Ortografía de la Lengua Croata o Servia), Zagreb, 1921, 1940, 1947, 1951.

9. Boranic, D., Koriensko piasnje (Ortografía Etimológica), Zagreb, 1944.

10. Pravopisna Komisija, Pravopis hrvatskosrpskog knjizevnog jezika (Ortografía de la Lengua Literaria Croata-servia), MH, Zagreb, 1960.

Gramáticas

1. Kasic, B., Instituciones linguae illyricae, Roma, 1604.

2. Jambresic, A., Syllabus vocabulorum grammaticae in illiricam vernaculam conversorum, Zagreb, 17926, 1735.

3. Della Bella, A., Una breve grammatica per apprendere con proprieta la Lingua Illirica, en Dizionario Italiano, Latino, Illirico, Venecia, 1728.

4. Tadijanovic, P., Svachta pomalo iliti kratko sloxenje imena i risci u Illyrski i Nemachki jezik, Magdaburgo, 1761, Tropava, 1766.

5. Reljkovic, M. A., Nova slavonska i nimacka gramatika, Zagreb, 1767.

6. Lanosovic, M., Neue Einleitung z slavon. Schprache, Osijek, 1778, 1789, 1795.

7. Voltic-Voltiggi, J., Gramatica illirica, en Ricsoslovnik illiriscskoga, italianskoga i nimiacskoga jezika (Diccionario de las Lenguas Ilíica, Italiana y Alemana), Viena, 1803.

8. Appendini, F. M., Grammatica della lingua Illyrica, 1808.

9. Starcevic, S., Nova ricsoslovnica ilisko-francuska na potribovanje vojnicske mladosti ilirskih darzava, Trieste, 1812.

10. Durkovecki, J., Jazicnica horvatsko-slavinska, Kroatisch-slovenische Sprachlehre, Budapest, 1826, 1828.

11. Brlic, A., Grammatik der Illyrischen Sprache, Budapest, 1833; Zagreb, 1842, 1850, 1854.

12. Babukic, V., Osnova slovnice slavjanske narécja ilirskoga (Slavic Grammar Project, Illyrian Dialect), Zagreb, 1836.

13. Della Bella, A., Principle elementari della grammatica illirica, Dubrovnik, 1837.

14. Mazuranic, A, Temelji ilirskoga i latinskoga jezika (Fundamentals of the Illyrian and Latin Languages), Zagreb, 1839, 1842.

15. Babukic, V., Ilirska slovnica (Illyric Grammar), Zagreb, 1854.

16. Mazuranic, A., Slovnica hèrvatska za gimnazije i realne skole (Croatian Grammar for High Schools), Zagreb, 1859.

17. Budmani, P. Grammatica della lingua Serbo-Croata, Vienna, 1867.

18. Veber-Tkalcevic, A., Slovnica hèervatska (Croatian Grammar), Zagreb, 1871, 1876.

19. Divkovic, M., Hrvatska Gramatika (Croatian Grammar), Zagreb, 1879.

20. Maretic, T., Gramatika e stalistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga knjizevnoga jezika (Grammar and Stylistics of the Croatian or Serbian Literary Language), Zagreb, 1899, 1931.

21. Leskiean, A., Grammatik der Serbo-Kroatischen SpracheI, Heidelberg, 1914.

22. Reset, M., Elementar - Grammatik der Koratischen Sprache (Elementary Grammar of the Croatian Language), Zagreb, 1916, 1922.

23. Florschütz, J., Gramatika hrvatskog jezika (Grammar of the Croatian Language), Zagreb, 1939.

24. Hamm, J., Gramatika starocrkvenoslavenskog jezika (Grammar of the Paleslavian Ecclesiastical Language), Zagreb, 1939.

25. Brabec, I., Hraste, M., Zivkovic, S., Gramatika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Grammar of the Croatian or Serbian Language), Skolska Snjiga, Zagreb, 1954.

26. Maretic, T., Gramatika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga knjizevnoga jezika (Grammar of the Croatian or Serbian Literary Language), MH, Zagreb, 1963.

Dictionaries and lexicons

1. Vrancic, F., Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae Linguarum, Latinae, italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae, Venice, 1595.

2. Hevaji-Uskufi,M., Potur-sahidija (Croatian-Turkish Dictionary), 1631.

3. Mikalja, J., Blago jezikaslovinskoga illi Slovnik - Thesaurus linguae Illyricae sive dictionarium Illyricum, Loreto, 1649, Ancona, 1651.

4. Habdelic, J., Dictionar ili Rechi Szlovenszke (Dictionary or Slavic Words), Graz, 1670.

5. Della Bella, A., Dizionario Italiano, Latino, Illirico, Venice, 1728, 1785.

6. Jambresic, A. Index vocum croaticarum et germanicarum cum brevi introductione and linguam croaticam, Zagreb, 1738.

7. Belostenec, I., Gazophylacium seu Latino-Illyricorum onomatum aerariu, 2 volumes, Zagreb, 1740.

8. Jambresic, A., Lexicon Latinum interpretatione Illyrica, Germanica et Hungarica, Zagreb, 1742.

9. Stulli, J., Lexicom Latino - Italo - Illyricum, 2 volumes, Budapest, 1801.

10. Voltic-Voltiggi, J., Ricsoslovnik Illiricskoga, Italijanskoga i Nimacskoga Jezika, Vienna, 1803.

11. Stulli, J., Rjecsosloxje (Dictionary), 2 volumes, Dubrovnik, 1806.

12. Stulli, J., Vocabulario Italiano -Illyrico - Latino, Dubrovnik, 1810.

13. Sulek, B., Nemacko-hrvatski rjecnik (German-Croatian Dictionary), 2 volumes, Zagreb, 1860.

14. Sulek, B., Rjecnik znanstvenoga nazivlja (Dictionary of Scientific Terms), Zagreb, 1874.

15. JAZU, Rjecnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language), 17 volumes (16,000 pages, 250,000 words), Zagreb, from 1880 to the present.

16. Nemicic, M., Medicinski rjecnik (Dictionary of Medicine), Zagreb, 1898, 1913.

17. Broz, I. and Ivekovic, F., Rjecnik hrvatskoga jezika (Dictionary of the Croatian Language), 2 volumes, Zagreb, 1901.

18. Mazuranic, V., Prionosi za hrvatsko pravno-povjestni rjecnik (Contributions to the Croatian Legal-Historical Dictionary), JAZU, Zagreb, 1808-1923.

19. Bogadek, F. A., New English-Croatian and Croatian-English Dictionary, Hofner, New York, 1926, 1944, 1947.

20. Samsalovic, G., Njemacko-hrvatsko-srpski rjecnik and Hrvatsko-srpski-njemacki rjecnik (German-Croatian-Serbian and Croatian-Serbian-German Dictionary), Zagreb, 1929, 1960.

21. Samsalovic, G., Leksikon Minerva (Minerva Lexicon), Zagreb, 1936.

22. Velikanovic, I. and Andric, N., Sta je sta, stvarni hrvatski rjecnik u slikama (Illustrated Croatian Dictionary), Zagreb, 1938.

23. Androvic, I., Rjecnik talijansko-hrvatski (Italian-Croatian Dictionary), Zagreb, 1938.

24. Hirtz, M., Rjecnik zooloskih maziva (Dictionary of Zoological Terms), Vol. 1 and 2, JAZU, Zagreb, 1942.

25. Androvic, G., Dizionario delle lingue Croatian e Italiana, 2 volumes, Hoepli, Milan, 1943.

26. Benesic, J., Hrvatsko-poljski rjecnik (Croatian-Polish Dictionary), Zagreb, 1949.

27. Sremec, N. (ed.) Sveznadar (Lexico), Seljacka Sloga, Zagreb, 1953.

28. Filipovic, R., Englesko-Hrvatski Rjecnik (English-Croatian Dictionaryi), Zagreb, 1955.

29. Deanovic, J. and Jerney, Hrvatsko-srpski-talijanski rjecnik (Croatian-Serbian-Italian Dictionary), Zagreb, 1956.

30. Doyre, J., Deanovic, M., Maixmer, R., Hrvatsko-srpski-francuski rjecnik (Croatian-Serbian-French Dictionary), Zagreb, 1956.

31. Tolstoj, I. I., Serbsko-horvatsko-russkij slovar (Serbian-Croatian-Russian Dictionary), Moscow, 1957.

32. Klaic, B., Rjecnik stranih rjeci, izraza i kratica (Dictionary of Foreign Terms, Expressions and Abbreviations), Zagreb, 1958.

33. Selakovic, M. and Vrancic, L., (ed.) Prirucni leksikon (Manual-Lexico), Znanje, Zagreb, 1959.

34. Filipovic, R., Rjecnik stranih rjeci (Dictionary of Terms in Foreign Languages), Zagreb, 1960.

35. Drvodelic, M., Hrvatsko-engleski rjecnik (Croatian-English Dictionary), 1961.

Periodical Publications

1. Rad JAZU, Odjel za filozofiju (Works of the South Slavic Academy of Sciences and Arts, Philology Section), Zagreb, since 1867.

2. Stari pisci hrvatski (Ancient Croatian Writers), JAZU, Zagreb, since 1867. To date, 32 volumes have been published.

3. Gradja za provijest knjizevnosti hrvatske (Materials for the History of Croatian Literature), JAZU, Zagreb, since 1897. To date, 28 volumes have been published.

4. Noviji pisci hrvatski (Recent Croatian Writers), JAZU, Zagreb, since 1949. To date, 12 volumes have been published.

5. Hrvatski latinisti (Croatian Latinists), JAZU, Zagreb, since 1951. To date, 5 volumes have been published.

6. Jezik (Language), Hrvatsko filolosko drustvo (Croatian Philological Society), Skolska knjiga, Zagreb, since 1952.

7. Filologija (Philology), Hrvatsko filolosko drustvo (Croatian Philological Society and JAZU), Zagreb, since 1957. To date, 4 volumes with summaries in other languages have been published.

8. Radovi Staroslavenkog Instituta (Works of the Paleoslav Institute), Paleoslav Institute, Zagreb.

The Case of Father Draganovic

A discussion about ideal values that ends in a physical and propaganda knockout

Francisco Nevistic, Buenos Aires

"There is no need to kill a human being in a camp to make them suffer; it is enough to kick them so they fall into the mud. Falling is equivalent to dying. What rises is no longer a human being but a ridiculous monster smeared with mud" (Madame Lewinska: Twenty Months in Auschwitz, pp. 61-62, quoted from the book Men Against Humanity, by Gabriel Marcel, Ed. Librería Hachette S.A., Buenos Aires, 1955, p. 38.)

The end of last year, full of great surprises, brought us a new, unexpected, and resounding piece of news: the mysterious disappearance from the orbit of the free world of Dr. Krunoslav Draganovic, a Croatian priest, historian, former professor at the University of Zagreb, and a man widely known for his charitable and humanitarian work, and his surprising reappearance in communist Yugoslavia, under extremely strange and complex circumstances.

His disappearance was initially shrouded in absolute silence. It seemed like a "perfect crime." A man, a public figure, a fearless opponent of communism, had vanished. He had been completely absent. The nuns at the Pressbaum school, near Vienna, where Father Draganovic was spiritual director and a teacher, and where he lived, alerted his friends and the Austrian ecclesiastical and civil authorities due to his long and unusual absence.

Croatian political exiles, especially his closest friends, deeply worried, began knocking on the doors of the free world, maintaining that Draganovic was a victim: either he had been taken by force or he had been killed somewhere, without witnesses. It is known that at the end of August 1967 he was in Munich, where he signed a contract for the publication of one of his scientific works.

From there, at the beginning of September, he left for Rome where he met with several friends and then began his return journey via Trieste to Pressbaum. On September 8th and 9th, he was seen in Trieste. From that moment on, all trace of him was lost. Croatian exiles, residing on every continent, were dismayed. Their emotions and thoughts converged in a dark premonition, perhaps a merciless reality: Draganovic was kidnapped, tortured, and possibly murdered on the orders of the communist regime in Belgrade.

The free world began to react. On October 14th, Radio Nacional de Madrid announced the sad news of Dr. Draganovic's disappearance. A campaign then began in the Austrian and Italian press. In Austria, because Draganovic had opted for Austrian citizenship in 1956, and in Italy because he had disappeared from their territory, in the vicinity of Trieste.

The Austrian government, considering it its duty and encouraged by repeated appeals from Croatian refugees worldwide, inquired with the Yugoslav communist government about the fate of its citizen of Croatian origin. Belgrade replied that it knew nothing about the matter. A few days later, on November 10, 1967, the Yugoslav government's information secretary acknowledged that Father Draganovic had already "voluntarily" presented himself to the Yugoslav authorities on September 17, taking advantage of the Amnesty Law, and was free in Sarajevo, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Since then, the Draganovic affair has been a controversial topic, especially in the European press, radio, and television. We are not interested here in a chronological account of everything that has been said and written; due to space limitations, we will limit ourselves to citing some newspapers and their headlines to verify our assertions.

The question arises: why did the Draganovic case receive so much publicity? The answer lies in his personality and the work of this eminent Catholic priest.

The human profile and work of Dr. Draganovic

K. Draganovic was born on October 30, 1903, in Matici, Brcko district, Bosnia. He attended primary school and two years of secondary school at the Jesuit school in Travnik (Bosnia), completing the remaining grades in Sarajevo. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering in Vienna, but after passing his first exams with top marks, Draganovic felt drawn to the priesthood.

Instead of a mechanical engineer, he preferred to be "the engineer of souls." He dedicated himself to the study of Greek and Latin in order to enter the major seminary of the Archdiocese of Sarajevo. An excellent student, he quickly mastered all his subjects and was ordained a priest in 1928. The Archbishop of Sarajevo, Monsignor Juan E. Saric, a poet and tireless organizer of Catholic Action, sent him to Rome where Draganovic furthered his studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, receiving a doctorate. Upon returning to Sarajevo, he served as secretary to Archbishop Saric, then as director of the diocesan chancery, and as the first president of the archdiocesan ecclesiastical tribunal.

In 1940, he was appointed, through a competitive process, associate professor of ecclesiastical history at the University of Zagreb, and in 1942 he was appointed full professor. During this period, alongside his demanding and responsible administrative duties, Draganovic worked intensively on historical research. The fruits of this work are the following publications: The Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Light of Statistics, Sarajevo, 1926; and History of the Croatian Provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 1942. In this work, Draganovic illustrates the history of these provinces through the development of the Catholic Church in the seven centuries prior to the arrival of the Ottomans in 1463. He also examines the mass conversions of Catholics to Orthodoxy in Croatian-speaking territories during Turkish rule. This monograph, with its solid scientific foundations, was written in German for its first edition and forms part of Father Draganovic's doctoral dissertation. It was published in the journal Orientalia Christiana Periodica.

He also wrote Croatia Sacra, a compendium on the history of the Catholic Church in Croatia, originally written in Latin, later translated into Italian, and published in Rome in 1943 in an edition of 3,000 copies, with a foreword by Cardinal Fumassoni Biondi.

With these scholarly works, the young priest Draganovic had gained a reputation as a talented historian. However, Providence had other plans for his public life. In 1943, amidst the turmoil of war, as the Croatian people fought for their right to self-determination against internal and external enemies, Draganovic, heeding the wishes of the Croatian episcopate and government, moved to Rome to care for the Croatian internees whom the Italians had taken from their homes and imprisoned in various concentration camps in Italy. Among them were also Slovenes and Montenegrins, totaling 80,000 people. In cooperation with the Pontifical Assistance, Draganovic carried out extensive charitable and humanitarian work for the benefit of all, without distinguishing between Croatian, Slovenian, or Montenegrin, or Catholic or Orthodox.

He fulfilled this noble mission until the end of the war, when his dedication, efforts, and concerns multiplied tenfold. On May 15, 1945, the Croatian army, assembled at the Bleiburg camp on the Slovenian-Austrian border, surrendered to the British army. The British military authorities, in turn, handed them over, along with thousands of civilians, to partisans acting under the orders of the communist government in Belgrade.

It is estimated that on that occasion, more than 200,000 people—civilians and soldiers, men and women, the elderly and children—were handed over and subsequently murdered. Thousands of Croatians managed to escape and sought refuge in Austria and Italy. However, they were not safe, as swarms of Yugoslav and Soviet communist agents, sometimes in collusion with the Allied authorities, pursued and hunted them down as if they were savages. In that desolate landscape of utter incomprehension, the only hope was the Vatican, and there, the driving force behind the rescue operation was named Draganovic. Aware of what had happened to his homeland and his fellow Croatians, Draganovic made superhuman efforts to help them. He had the support of the Pontifical Assistance, the International Red Cross, and various Italian religious and civil institutions. Many Croatian exiles owed him their lives, and others owed him the opportunity to begin a new life in free countries overseas. Father Draganovic carried out this mission in frequent contact with Pope Pius XII and Monsignor Montini, later Pope Paul VI.

Thanks to his magnanimous understanding and assistance, Draganovic's actions were highly successful during one of the most dramatic moments in the Croatian nation's history. It was precisely because of this humanitarian and selfless work that the Yugoslav communist authorities branded him a "war criminal" and "enemy number one." Responding to the personal invective against him, published in Der Spiegel on April 29, 1964, Draganovic said: "How I became the 'bete noire' of Tito's regime, I myself could not say. I conjecture that I have earned this 'honor' by fulfilling my Christian duty to help my neighbor in need..."

This work continued until 1954, when a new course in Vatican policy began. The free world abandoned its crusade against communism, especially in Europe. Communism was increasingly consolidating its power over millions of Catholics in southern and eastern Europe. Catholicism, both as an institution and as a group of faithful, bears the brunt of the pressure from communist regimes. For this reason, the Vatican seeks new ways to alleviate the suffering of its adherents.

Draganovic, an inflexible opponent of communism and a keen observer of internal relations in his country, disagrees with some aspects of the new political course concerning Yugoslavia, where Croats, as a national identity, face grave risk. To avoid hindering the Vatican's efforts, he leaves Rome and moves to Austria, opting for Austrian citizenship and serving as spiritual director and teacher at the convent school in Pressbaum, near Vienna. In the peace of monastic life, he returns to historical research. He frequently works in the Vienna archives and prepares a new study on the relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Habsburg Empire. But his extraordinary dynamism does not end there.

Draganovic, a fervent Croatian patriot, remained in constant contact with Croatian exiles and their religious, socialist, and political struggles. What most tormented him was the bloody prelude to this wave of refugees: the Bleiburg tragedy. For 20 years, he gathered material and data for a work in which, with documents and eyewitness accounts, he would reveal to the world the magnitude of this tragedy and the horrors of the crime, the genocide perpetrated by the communist government in Belgrade against defenseless Croatian civilians and unarmed soldiers at the end of the last world war. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, especially to Bonn, Munich, Trieste, and Rome, where he provided aid to Croatian exiles in need.

In August 1967, he embarked on another journey to visit friends and fellow countrymen living in almost every country in Western Europe. During this trip, he also had to sign the contract for the publication of his documentary work on the Bleiburg Tragedy. According to information published in Volksbote (Munich, December 16, 1967), this work would constitute a tremendous indictment against the communist regime in Belgrade for a crime of such magnitude that it surpasses human imagination. The contract was discussed in Munich at the end of August. From there, Father Draganovic left for Rome, and from Rome, as mentioned, he traveled to Pressbaum via Trieste, where he disappeared. It wasn't until November 10 that the Yugoslav authorities reported that Draganovic was in their custody.

The question arises: what had happened to Father Draganovic? Was he kidnapped and forcibly taken to Yugoslavia, or did he return voluntarily? What awaits him in the immediate future?

From the numerous commentaries and reports published in the international press about this case and its implications, two opposing theories can be deduced. One comes from the Yugoslav communist government and its acolytes in the free world. The other perspective comes from Croatian exiles and the independent press, who are solely seeking to establish the truth. The official position of the Belgrade government and its supporters, such as Die Welwoche, Der Spiegel, and Die Weltpresse, maintains that Father Draganovic returned to communist Yugoslavia voluntarily.

What is characteristic of these media outlets is their almost hostile attitude not only toward Father Draganovic personally, but also toward the Croatian nation. In contrast, Croatian refugees and a large part of the world press firmly maintain that Father Draganovic was taken against his will to communist Yugoslavia. Some of the European press, if not entirely accepting this position, at least challenges the Yugoslav communist narrative, providing arguments that render it untenable.

The author of this article has known Father Draganovic for almost 40 years. He must admit that few Croatians have impressed him as much as Draganovic. I met him in 1931, a young priest, tall, slender, smiling, and always active. His appearance and mannerisms, especially in conversation, foreshadowed the harmony and depth of his inner, intellectual, and spiritual life. His guiding principles were metaphysical: to serve God, the Croatian people, and humanity in general in the light of a holistic faith and the practical application of ethical and legal values. He knew how to inspire and motivate; he planned and promoted intellectual, organizational, scientific, educational, charitable, and social initiatives.

We know that sympathies belong to the emotional realm and diminish our objective and impartial discernment. Despite our sympathies for Father Draganovic, we strive to offer an objective account of his case, presenting it in a complete and impartial manner. As if this time, the feeling of sympathy acted in opposition to subjective feelings.

The special attraction, that very peculiar charm that flowed from Father Draganovic's personality as a priest and historian, patriot and charitable organizer, was his love of truth. His adherence to truth and to the values that we could summarize in the notion of Justice, compels us to be objective. It was no coincidence that he embraced the priestly vocation in his later years, for embracing the vocation of a Catholic priest implies the complete renunciation of the pleasures and comforts that this world offers.

The meaning of life is achieved, the inner voice of his conscience told him, if you renounce the promising career of an engineer and take up your cross following the Lord. "Si vis perfectus esse..." these words resonated in the young man's soul, surpassing all the attractive promises of a technical career in our technological world.

After this brief digression, let us return to the heart of the matter. Was Father Draganovic taken by force or did he voluntarily return to communist Yugoslavia, where his Croatian people live oppressed?

What supports the thesis of the Yugoslav communists and their friends around the world? Only improbability and impossibility. According to the New York Times of November 11, 1967, at the press conference the previous day, representatives of the communist government in Belgrade, A. Humo and State Prosecutor Zugic, declared that Father Draganovic had decided to change his life and activities and that was why he returned to his homeland. A. Humo (a Serbian communist from Herzegovina, who without any remorse justified the confinement of 13 Franciscan friars in an air-raid shelter in February 1945 in Siroki Brijeg, Herzegovina, who were later doused with gasoline and burned alive by communist partisans), also stated at that conference that Draganovic admitted the non-existence of the supposed Croatian-Serbian national problem; that he was no longer a supporter of Croatian independence and was very impressed by the progress of all kinds that he had observed in communist Yugoslavia.

To lend credence to this statement, the prosecutor Vladimiro Zugic submitted the following day in Sarajevo photocopies of a letter written, according to the official account, by Father Draganovic himself, in which he admits to having freely returned to submit to legal proceedings, praising both the proper conduct of the authorities towards him and the remarkable technical, economic, and political progress of communist and multinational Yugoslavia. According to the Viennese newspaper "Die Presse" on November 18, 1967, Draganovic repeated this claim of his voluntary return at a press conference held in Kristalbar, near Sarajevo, organized by the Yugoslav communists. His father was brought to the conference accompanied by government secret agents, and the personal documents of all journalists were thoroughly checked. Later, Draganovic confirmed his "voluntary return" to the Austrian cultural attaché in Belgrade. As usual, a Yugoslav communist agent, dressed in civilian clothes, was also present.

Supporters of the Yugoslav communist regime, believing information and propaganda from Belgrade and accepting the official narrative of Father Draganovic's free return, launched an attack, distorting and misrepresenting his work and his struggle for the Croatian people's right to self-determination. By attacking him, they slandered the entire Croatian nation, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the issue at hand. The German magazine Der Spiegel, which we will discuss later, was particularly prominent in this regard.

With distorted facts and half-truths, they attempted to cover up the serious human rights violations inflicted by the Belgrade government in depriving an innocent man of his freedom. According to this information, reproduced by Der Spiegel, Draganovic was allegedly an Ustaša-fascist, decorated by Dr. Ante Pavelić, a satellite of Hitler and Mussolini. His Catholicism and nationalism "discovered" certain Yugoslav regions like Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to make them Croat and Catholic again, the Ustaše, Draganović's spiritual heirs, spent a year massacring 500,000 Bosnian Orthodox Serbs.

It is "logical," then, according to this press, that Draganović returned "freely." If the contrary is proven, the Belgrade regime and those who echo it abroad in this case are justified in advance, since such a criminal as Draganović deserves severe punishment.

What are the facts? In truth, no one knows how Reverend Draganović arrived in Yugoslavia. Neither the place nor the manner of his arrival, nor the men who "helped" him, are known with certainty. There are several versions, but none entirely certain. Only the Italian police authorities could establish how the events unfolded. Therefore, we do not claim that he was chloroformed while sleeping in Milan or Trieste, or bound in Opicina near Trieste.

Nor do we mention the names of the people who allegedly took part in one or the other version. We are interested in whether Father Draganovic could have returned voluntarily, as the Yugoslav government and its international supporters maintain, or even whether Draganovic himself was "prepared" by police agents from his disappearance around September 10 or 16, 1967, until November 10, 1967—a two-month period shrouded in absolute silence—or whether the assertion that Draganovic is a victim of violence is true.

Until the police provide information on the specific nature of the act of violence, our arguments rest on moral certainty. It is true that this is the weakest of the three certainties: moral, physical, and metaphysical. However, in the specific case of Draganovic, our moral certainty is so high that we can state with almost metaphysical certainty that an act of violence was perpetrated against him. On what is this certainty based?

The Yugoslav communist authorities insist primarily on the statements and letter of Father Draganovic himself, published two months after his stay in Yugoslavia, under circumstances and in a place that we still do not know. However, we Croatian exiles and those interested in establishing the objective truth can also insist on Father Draganovic's statements, but with a substantial difference: while we refer to his statements made in the free world and without police "protection," the Yugoslav government invokes documents that Father Draganovic "prepared" under communist tutelage. The documents we have invoked are consistent with the complete character of the father, faithfully reflecting his intellectual and moral formation as a priest and patriot. Those presented by the Yugoslav communists, on the other hand, are in total contradiction with the most essential and personal characteristics of his personality, his life, and the work of a public figure of over 40 years. His statements to the Yugoslav authorities were made under circumstances unknown to us, but we can imagine them by reading George Orwell and his descriptions of the communist error.

While Draganovic's statements and his letter to the Sarajevo court prosecutor resemble the declarations of Soviet defendants during Stalin's infamous purges, the European press refers to the will that Father Draganovic dictated in 1965, in duplicate, to the German lawyer and notary Dr. W. Schöttler, leaving one copy with him and the other with a Croatian priest, a personal friend. There, among other things, Draganovic states verbatim: "Now, while I am a free man and in possession of all my physical and spiritual faculties, I solemnly declare: I renounce in advance any statement or admission that could be extracted from me should I fall into the hands of the Yugoslav police.

Everything I might declare, write, or sign must be considered contrary to my free will and my deepest convictions." Il Tempo, a major independent Italian daily, in its November 18, 1967 edition, published a facsimile of Father Draganovic's will, written on April 27, 1961, under the headline "Another Episode of Brainwashing." In this will, he refers to the documentation relating to the Bleiburg massacres of 1945, committed against the unarmed Croatian army and civilians, and we read the following verbatim: "Finding myself daily in the struggle, whether for the highest ideals of the Church of God or for the martyred Croatian people, I may err daily and commit mistakes where I least expect them. I am not worthy to see the freedom and independence of my Croatian people realized, a cause for which I have always prayed to the Lord, but I firmly believe that God, just and merciful, will not deny them this grace, and with it, a free and flourishing Catholic Church."

Commenting on the letter that Father Draganovic, according to the official Yugoslav claim, addressed to the prosecutor handling his case, Il Tempo states:

"The communists have presented a 'handwritten' letter from Draganovic, giving it considerable publicity in the Yugoslav press, in which he attempts, with the effort of a true psychiatrist, to analyze the mechanism of his 'conversion to' Yugoslav socialism. We do not doubt that Draganovic wrote the letter himself, but we know for certain (from information leaked by the intelligence services of a Western country) that Draganovic has been subjected to harsh treatment, first with hallucinogenic substances, and then with drugs that attack the nervous centers upon which the integrity of an individual's personality depends.

Therefore, the letter, while indeed written by Draganovic, is not Draganovic's; rather, it is the work of those who have perpetrated a monstrous violation of his personality." Furthermore, the Italian newspaper continues, Draganovic's friends, Croatian intellectuals, claim that Father Draganovic uses Serbian idioms in the letter in question instead of the corresponding Croatian terms, an error that Draganovic, an excellent connoisseur of the Croatian language, could never have made. Based on this analysis, Il Tempo concludes that even a simple external critique of the writing reveals that it does not bear the mark of Draganovic's style or characteristics.

It is almost unnecessary to add here that Cleveland's official graphologist, Dr. Tholl, after a thorough analysis of the texts of the letter supposedly from Father Draganovic with the authentic manuscript of his letters held by his friends in the free world, has reached the following conclusion: The letter published in the Yugoslav and Italian newspapers, attributed to Father Draganovic, is not authentic. Two versions of it exist. One was published in the newspaper "Vijesnik," and the other in the seminar "Vjesnik u Srijedu," both published in Zagreb.

Vinko Nikolic, in his book *Pres vratima domovine* (On the Threshold of the Homeland), published this year in Munich, also included an extensive conversation with Father Draganovic, later published as a separate publication. In the prologue to this separate publication, Draganovic wrote on August 8, 1967, among other things:

"Time has shown that most of my slanderers are also the ones who insult the Croatian people and trample on their rights. Many blind people have had their eyes opened and realized that I am denigrated and persecuted primarily for having remained steadfast in defending the rights and honor of the Croatian people. I do not consider this action of mine as politics, much less partisan politicking, but simply as my duty as a man and a patriot."

Thus, my personal tragedy becomes an intimate part of the great national tragedy that the Croatian people have endured since the war, and this gives me the strength to bear it. The Croatian people, undeservedly, are the most slandered in the world. And I am among their most denigrated sons, though I deserve it neither for the position I held nor for the importance I had, without even mentioning guilt. Which, in turn, makes me happy in my misfortune. Did they simply slander me?

"I don't want to talk here about measures of greater or lesser scope taken against me. Nor about minor physical attacks, like the one that occurred in Nice. Nor about assassination attempts planned and thwarted at the last minute. I only want to say that such 'measures' are the work of my enemies, or rather, the enemies of the Croatian people.

Back in 1962, the Yugoslav secret agent and diplomat (who knows where the former ends and the latter begins) Slavki Aleksic uttered before numerous people, including high and low clergy, the abominable slander—for the first time in 20 years—that I had 'slit children's throats.' This same agent and diplomat, on another occasion and before other people, declared that they could have eliminated me without difficulty—some men even offered themselves for the task for a 'small reward'—but it wasn't done because 'the whole of Draganovic isn't worth the scandal that would erupt in Rome.' Perhaps Comrade Aleksic's assertion isn't as unfounded as some might think."

"Another high-ranking 'leader,' this time a fully-fledged agent without diplomatic disguise, Nikoa Cimesa, then residing at 18 M. Oreskovica Street in Rijeka, interrogated various refugees in Opatija during the winter of 1957/58. He demanded the smallest details of my movements, especially regarding the concentration camps, and other aspects of my life, because 'dead or alive, they would take me to Yugoslavia.' I wouldn't have mentioned this threat, among so many others, had I not learned something very important last year (just now!).

A few years earlier, this same Cimesa, head of the Udba (Yugoslav secret police) at the Stara Gradiska penal-correctional institute, tried to persuade a young prisoner from Z. in Dalmatia to go to Buenos Aires and kill a well-known Croatian leader as proof of his 'rehabilitation,' under the guise of high promises." The young man rejected this criminal offer and continued to atone for his 'punishment' under worsening conditions. We don't know who agreed to commit this crime, but the fact that someone did is proven by the gunshots on the night of April 10, 1957, and the blood spilled by the Croatian leader himself. Comrade Cimesa was in charge of 'the refugees'.

"What fate awaits me? I am no prophet, and I do not know. I do know, in fact, that I do not 'deserve' such a global scandal. If, on the other hand, they consider that I 'deserve' it, I know that no threat will divert me from the path imposed upon me by my status as a priest and my Croatian patriotism. I also know that, with God's help, I would be prepared for this measure as well. Finally, everyone would realize who ordered this act and for what purpose.

"One more reason, then, why I write these lines."

"The bread of exile we eat is hard."

Is any comment necessary on these expressions of the priest's will? To avoid falling into error, condensed in the old formula: qui nimis probat, nihil probat, we leave it to the readers to evaluate for themselves the authenticity and probative value of the statements made by Dr. Draganovic, once while free and once while in captivity. For a sound mind and logical-legal reasoning, the statements made while free nullify the formulated in captivity.

The communist regime could invoke the legal principle that a person's subsequent expression of will nullifies a previous one if it contradicts it, but in that case, the Belgrade regime would have to prove that Father Draganovic freely returned to his homeland and that his recent statements are truly the free expression of his will, which is clearly impossible. The most we could concede to the communist regime is that the father's contradictory statements cancel each other out. What then remains in favor of the Yugoslav government's position? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And in favor of the Croatian position? A whole host of arguments.

Father Draganovic signed the contract for the publication of his well-documented book about the Bleiburg Tragedy in August, and by September he had surrendered to the Yugoslav communist authorities to be prosecuted. Is such an attitude understandable? Having placed the ultimate responsibility for the crimes against the Croatian army and civilian population on the communist regime in his book, Draganovic, without any justification, surrendered to the same regime to "fix" his legal situation.

Absurd from every point of view! Just a few days before his disappearance, Draganovic wrote to the nuns in Pressbaum, where he was residing, announcing his imminent return. If he intended to return "freely" to Yugoslavia, could this lie be compatible with the inner life of a Father Draganovic, dedicated to the search for truth as a priest and by virtue of his scientific and historical vocation?

The Rev. Father Cecelja, a Croatian priest living in Salzburg, Austria, sent Father Draganovic 70 Mass intentions. Draganovic accepted them for the following 70 days, even though he had "freely" decided to return to Yugoslavia. Would his conscience allow him to act so dishonestly in what is most sacred to a Catholic priest, who had renounced all comforts, heeding the inner voice: Si vis perfectus esse...? The most experienced psychoanalysts would find themselves facing a knot and an unsolvable mystery. The solution would lie in the intervention of Alexander the Great's sword, wielded this time by the communist regime in Belgrade.

The regime considers Draganovic a "war criminal" and "enemy number one," imputing to him the most improbable acts over the past two decades. If this enemy number one... 1. Now, having invoked Yugoslav socialism, declared the end of the Serbian-Croatian conflict, and acknowledged the country's technical, cultural, and political progress and democratization, why did the Belgrade government conceal his whereabouts for two months and lie to the Austrian authorities, claiming to know nothing about him? Are the Yugoslav communists so modest that they are ashamed of one of their most resounding recent "successes"?

If Draganovic returned voluntarily, why has he not yet been able to speak privately with his ecclesiastical superiors, the Holy See's delegate, or his family? The Vatican claimed this right from the Yugoslav envoy to the Holy See, V. Cvrlje.

Taking all these factors into account, at the press conference organized by Croatian associations in Buenos Aires on November 28, 1967, to clarify this case, we stated the following in summary:

"Dr. Draganovic was declared by the Yugoslav government to be its number one enemy. Just a few months ago, the priest argued before a German court, with the persuasive force characteristic of his personality, that the Yugoslav state is not a state governed by the rule of law and that there is neither judicial security nor impartiality there. Furthermore, it is known that the Reverend, in his capacity as an eminent historian, had compiled numerous prima facie documents concerning the mass killing of Croats, Slovenes, and Montenegrins, committed by the Yugoslav authorities at the end of World War II.

"Here, the question inevitably arises: if this communist government persecutes, tortures, and condemns to long years of imprisonment, or wait for the priest—the number one enemy—to be released." 1. This government—by voluntarily surrendering himself into their hands without mercy? His voluntary surrender would signify physical and moral suicide.

But suicide is characteristic of the mentally disturbed or nihilists. Is it possible that nihilism invaded the spirit of Father Draganovic, a man in the prime of his intellectual activity, with a meticulous work program planned for the immediate future, giving his life a more sublime meaning? Bearing all this in mind, who can attest to the Yugoslav declaration regarding the supposed voluntary return? Only those who seek to denigrate his moral character or the cause for which Father Draganovic fought his entire life: the freedom of man and the self-determination of his Croatian people.

Is it acceptable that Father Draganovic decided to take such a momentous step, mocking himself, his ideals, and his friends, without telling anyone beforehand—not his ecclesiastical superiors, nor the sisters whose souls and the school were entrusted to him, nor the civil authorities of Austria, for whose citizenship he opted, nor even his closest friends?

To take such a step requires mental derangement. But then the Belgrade authorities could no longer speak of a voluntary return. If, nevertheless, the Yugoslav government insists on the father's free will, it must explain the inexplicable. For the rectitude of logic and the decorum of an ethical mind—and such is the mind of Father Draganovic, as we know it—exclude, both subjectively and objectively, the possibility of his voluntary return to a communist country that has persecuted him for more than twenty years as its number one enemy. 1."

If this were not the case, why would the Yugoslav authorities, in order to silence the Croatian exiles and appease public opinion opposed to their criminal act, not accept the proposal put forward by the German newspaper Volksbote (November 25, 1967, Munich), to establish an international commission before which Father Draganovic would have to declare clearly and definitively, but on Austrian territory, whether or not he had returned voluntarily?

If the Yugoslav government's claim were true, it could deal a tremendous blow to its Croatian adversaries and rid itself of an embarrassing charge for human rights violations at a time when it is so desperately striving to align itself with the West. An affirmative answer from Father Draganovic would constitute a victory for the Belgrade government, a victory both domestically and internationally, and a defeat for the Croatian exiles and the people of Croatia.

It is obvious that Belgrade desires such a victory. Why, then, does it not accept the proposal? The explanation is that Yugoslav police officers committed a grave crime against human rights and are now trying to use their victim to cover up their own wrongdoing with extorted statements. Furthermore, through a propaganda campaign and by falsifying his life and work, they are trying to defame Father Draganovic and the Croatian national struggle for the right to self-determination. In this way, they seek to deceive world public opinion, preventing anyone from becoming indifferent to the fate of this upright man. Little by little, "the Draganovic case" will fade into oblivion, even though it constitutes the most flagrant violation not only of international law but also of the most basic norms of civilized society.

"Der Spiegel" against itself

As we have already mentioned, in this defamatory campaign against Father Draganovic and the distortion of the Croatian people's liberation struggle, the German illustrated magazine Der Spiegel, published in Hamburg, knew no bounds. In its November 27, 1967 issue, it published an article entitled "Volga in Rome," illustrated with photos of Father Draganovic, Hitler, and Pavelić, and a photo of the Ustaše undoubtedly fabricated for this purpose.

Der Spiegel accuses Draganovic of having applauded the restoration of Croatian independence in 1941 and therefore claims he is an Ustaše-fascist. Like Draganovic, the entire Croatian people "unanimously" welcomed the restoration of their sovereign state, declared Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac before the communist "tribunal." Archbishop Stepinac, although in constant conflict with the ruling regime, was a fervent supporter of Croatian independence. If Der Spiegel knew anything about Croatian history and the Croatian people's struggle for the right to national self-determination, it would surely not accept the official tenets of the Yugoslav communist government in their entirety, unless its primary objective is "business" and not the defense and dissemination of higher values, first and foremost freedom and rights in human society.

Der Spiegel claims that Draganovic had "discovered" yet another "Yugoslav territory," formerly Catholic, which is Bosnia, extending "southeast of Croatia." Driven by the desire for "this Yugoslav territory" to become Catholic and Croatian again, Draganovic is said to have inspired the policies that incited the Ustaše "to slaughter 500,000 Orthodox Serbs in a single year." This assertion by the German magazine, which earns fabulous sums (around fifteen million marks annually), disqualifies it as a reliable news source and as an instrument of public opinion in the free world.

Der Spiegel ignores the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina, since the migration of the Croats, were and remain its core territories. Seven centuries before the arrival of the Turks, Bosnia and Herzegovina were ethnically, culturally, and politically united with the other Croatian provinces.

In 1952, the Yugoslav scholars Viktor Novak and Petar Skok published the so-called "Supetar Cartulary." This is a collection of 15 parchments that confirm that Bosnia and Herzegovina were Croatian provinces during the time of the national monarchs from the 7th to the 12th centuries. "There it speaks of seven Croatian princes, electors of the Croatian kings, and of the appointment of the Croatian princes (banus) by 12 Croatian tribes. The Cartulary Peter, currently Krilo-Jesenice. There, among other things, it says: "Tempore transacto erat consuetudo in regno Croatorum: eram septem bani qui electant regem in Croatia, quando rex sine liberis noriebatur, scilicet banus Croatiae primus, banus BOSNIENSIS secuindus, banus Sclavoniae tercius, banus osege quartus, banus Podraui quintus, banus Albaniae sestus, banus Sremi septimus..." .

The Benedictines of the 12th century were unaware of the Serbian claims to Bosnia, which appeared in the 19th and 19th centuries. They recorded an unalterable historical fact: that in the first seven centuries, before Turkish rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina were two of the seven Croatian provinces, and that the heads of the autonomous administrative authority were the Croatian banes (princes), who are elsewhere listed as being elected by the Croatian kings.

In 1468, King Matthias Corvinus issued a receipt for 800 gold florins to the Republic of Dubrovnik. The document states that Dubrovnik gave this money "for the maintenance of our city of Počitelje, which is located in our kingdom of Croatia."

Antonio Burgio, papal delegate to the court of the Hungarian-Croatian king Ludwig II, wrote on February 18, 1526, to Jacob Sadoleto, secretary to Pope Clement VII in Rome: "In the letter of the 15th of this month I said that the Croats intend to accept Duke Ferdinand (of Austria, Editor's note) and that Count Christopher (Frankopan) intends to become ruler of Bosnia. Later I learned with greater certainty. Let Your Excellency know that the negotiations are genuine and it is said that Archduke Ferdinand is receptive to the idea of being able to proclaim himself King of Bosnia, since Bosnia belongs to Croatia."

The heroic defender of Kiseg, Nikola Jurisic, wrote on June 23, 1541, to the captain of Bihac that the city was "...the salvation and sustenance of the entire kingdom of Croatia...", while the apostolic delegate in 1580 described the Una River in present-day Bosnia as "...the most important river of Croatia," and the Venetian ambassador informed his government of the fall of Bihac, stating that "it is the principal city of Croatia and the most important fortress in those regions." King Ladislaus IV Cumanus wrote in 1273 that "the inhabitants of the area around Glamoc (a Bosnian town) belong to one of the twelve Croatian tribes..."; "the Glamochan people... they rejoice in their freedom, which they truly, first, and most naturally enjoy as nobles of the kingdom of Croatia...". Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andrić, in his novel "The Bridge on the Drina," describes Visegrad and its surroundings as a Serbian Orthodox region, the sole reason why the Belgrade government sponsored his election. However, the American historian H. Lamb, in his work *Suleiman the Magnificent* (Garden City, 1957, p. 328), notes that Mohamed Pasha Sokolovic, whom Andric claims was Serbian, answered the sultan, when asked about his origins, that he was "from the Croats," and that his school records, where he was the top student, indicate that he was Croatian.

In a way, one can understand the error made by *Der Spiegel* in considering Croatia and Bosnia as two distinct political-national territories, given that Bosnia throughout its history rejected both Hungarian and Austrian sovereignty. Under the tremendous pressure of Ottoman military power and due to deep internal religious divisions in Croatia (this was during the period of the relentless struggle against the Patarean sect in... The Catholic Church), the Patarenes (Bogumili) embraced Islam, and Bosnia recognized Turkish sovereignty.

However, Croatian consciousness always remained alive there. Thus, to assist the hasty author of the defamatory article in Der Spiegel, we note that a Frenchman wrote a book at the end of the 17th century entitled "The History of the Present Situation in the Kingdom of Hungary," where he states, among other things: "Formerly, the Kingdom of Croatia comprised all the territory from the Drava River to the Dalmatian Sea and was divided into three parts." Present-day Croatia lies between Bosnia, Slavonia, Germany, and Dalmatia...

A distinction is usually made between Austrian or Royal Croatia and Turkish Croatia, given that their respective sovereigns are the House of Austria and the Ottomans." This neutral testimony shows that Bosnia and Herzegovina are not just "more Yugoslav regions," as discovered by Dr. Draganovic, but rather the authentically Croatian national and state territory where the Muslim-Catholic population still constitutes the Croatian majority. Consequently, history and modern ethnic and democratic principles support the thesis that these are indeed Croatian provinces. Draganovic's scholarly work aimed to verify this fact by providing new and irrefutable historical evidence. Scholarly work should not be used to declare someone a criminal. Civilization and science almost always go hand in hand.

If Der Spiegel adopts the suggestions of its pro-Serbian informant that Draganovic was striving to Croatize and Catholicize Bosnia again, its This work is unnecessary and inaccurate. Bosnia and Herzegovina are Croatian provinces and, therefore, there is no need to "Croatize" them. In that sense, the German magazine's "story" is out of place. It is inaccurate, on the contrary, for attributing to Draganovic and "his" Ustaše the massacre of 500,000 Orthodox Serbs, perpetrated in the course of a single year.

To seize Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to an Orthodox minority who had settled there during the Turkish occupation, the Serbs assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, thus unleashing the First World War, one of humanity's greatest tragedies. Since Draganovic is one of the most prominent historians who demonstrated that Serbia had absolutely no right or historical claim to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that its behavior in these provinces since 1918, as in all of Croatia, was marked by oppression, violence, and denationalization, it is obvious that Belgrade turned its hatred and fury against him. Defaming him, slandering him, kidnapping him, and "depersonalizing" him were, for them, nothing compared to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the unleashing of the first world conflagration. Among these "futile things" is also the slanderous accusation that the Ustaše killed 500,000 Orthodox Serbs in a single year. However, a serious historical study proves that during the last war, 300,000 Serbs and 600,000 Croats died.

Who was Draganović to prevent the Serbization of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a prize coveted by Serbian politics for 150 years? Draganović is the spiritual symbol of a Croatian generation that cannot resign itself to Serbian rule in Croatia. His human and political integrity, his scholarly work, and his tenacity in defending Croatia constituted a serious obstacle to Serbian oppression under the pretext of "unity and fraternity," the slogan of the current communist regime in Yugoslavia. When they learned that Draganovic was about to publish his work on the "Bleiburg Tragedy," the fruit of 20 years of diligent research, in which he would present to the public, with undeniable evidence, the horrendous crimes of the Belgrade diplomats and military officers, criminal hands seized him, and morally, he was eliminated.

The Serbian communist saw in him the kind of person that Thomas Mann proclaimed as an urgent necessity for the existence of Western society and freedom. Bearing in mind this idea of the German writer, at the press conference, which we discussed in the preceding pages, we also said: "If I may characterize Father Draganovic, I could say that he is a 'militant humanist.' The Western world today needs a militant humanism that does not allow itself to be trampled on by the adversary 'without shame or scruples.' Belgrade learned early on of this essential trait of Father Draganovic. Being also a staunchly democratic, anti-communist man and a rigorous scientist with weapons that never rust in the struggle for the defense of the Croatian people in their conflict with the communists and the dominance of Serbia—a conflict that has lasted without pause for more than a century due to Serbia's claims to Bosnia, Father Draganovic's native province—the authorities of that regime wanted to eliminate him once and for all. When the tactic of denigrating him as a war criminal failed, kidnapping under the pretext of a free return remained as the only recourse. Once in the hands of the Belgrade regime, Father Draganovic, while physically alive, is intellectually and morally dead. Communism has thus obtained, even with a repulsive crime, yet another victory over free men.

What fate awaits him? We could repeat his words, that we are not prophets. But to illustrate his sad destiny, we can reproduce the words of Madame Levinska: "There is no need to kill a human being in a concentration camp to make him suffer; it is enough to kick him so that he falls into the mud. To fall is to die. What rises is no longer a human being but a ridiculous monster, smeared with mud."

Someone might add that this work censors the Nazi concentration camps and the treatment of the prisoners. But the young Yugoslav writer of Russian origin, Mihailo Mihailov, to whom the Western press attributes more importance than he deserves, wrote that the communists, or more precisely the Bolsheviks, organized the first concentration camps and that in this respect they were the Nazis' teachers.

Since the communist regime in Belgrade is determined to label its adversaries, and first and foremost the Croatian national opposition and Father Draganovic—in this campaign it relies on the services of the magazine Der Spiegel—as "fascist criminals," we believe it appropriate to conclude these reflections with the words of Gabriel Marcel on propaganda in general and the sweeping accusations against Nazism in particular:

"All propaganda, in short, implies the aim of manipulating consciences. After the abject ferocity of the concentration camps, we find here imposture. Let us observe, moreover, the inevitable connection between these aspects of the same scourge. How can one not be led to take more rigorous, more inhuman measures against those who refuse to be indoctrinated and who consequently constitute adversaries whom one seeks to subdue by all means? Propaganda is the cynical ignorance of that ordering of consciences to the truth which the great rationalists, despite what one may think of their metaphysics, at least had the glory to achieve." "Imperishable to be brought into full light. But what is truth?" asks, with even more insulting irony, the one who has become a master in the art of shaping public opinion to his liking."

"What is truth?" Regarding the discussion about what constitutes political truth after the last war, Gabriel Marcel, unwittingly, perfectly summarizes Croatian reality in general and the case of Father Draganovic in particular: "There are, moreover, many points that would need to be emphasized here. I am thinking in particular of the prodigious debasement of the discussion, of the very foundations of the discussion, which brings us the most lamentable evidence every day. To execute the adversary or to knock him out, it suffices to stick a label on him, and also to throw in his face, as one would the contents of a jar of vitriol, a massive accusation that he is unable to answer; faced with the other's bewilderment, he declares that he confesses and capitulates. This is how, in some circles, it will be impossible to express a nuanced judgment about certain contemporary figures and their initial intentions without being automatically classified among those who approve of the methods of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. This is but one example among many others. But everything demonstrates that the sense of nuance, inseparable from the sense of..." The truth is, it is literally drowned by partisan passions.

The case of Father Draganovic—to lend a certain intellectual "elegance" to a crime—must be considered in a higher, more elevated category of human thought. The category of the discussion about truth and justice seems to us to be accurate and appropriate. According to G. Marcel, this same category was placed by liberals in the fullness of rational light. Indeed, Draganovic was initially engaged in a debate with communism. It concerns the universal truths and values of life, its meaning. Catholic spiritualism, one of the most sublime in history, and the most consistent and absolute atheism and materialism, such as Marxism. Then the father began the discussion about the right of self-determination of the Croatian people, their freedom and the integration of their historical and ethnic territory into a political unit, Croatian national sovereignty, which Yugoslav communism, of Serbian origin, categorically denies in its entirety.

While Draganovic demanded distinctions and nuanced judgments from them and the free world, separating truth and justice from sweeping and impassioned pronouncements, his adversaries, blinded by partisan passions and thirsting for the power of a radically revolutionary class, assert only one thing: Draganovic is guilty; his Ustaše and the Croatian people are guilty for having accepted Nazi policies, the policies of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, as G. Marcel would say. Instead of a debate based on arguments and evidence, Belgrade is delivering a veritable knockout blow, both physically and through propaganda. Such a stance from the Belgrade government is not surprising; it is, in a sense, a natural consequence of power-hungry communism and Serbian nationalism driven by hegemonism and expansionism. What is surprising, however, is the attitude adopted by publications such as Der Spiegel, Die Welwoche, and other news outlets in the free world. With such an attitude, these widely circulated media outlets contribute to the general confusion, when the need for nuanced and serious judgments is one of the most urgent and redemptive, for by acting otherwise, they obscure, if not annihilate, that brilliant liberal tradition. True liberals must seek the truth in every corner, rejecting a simplistic formula that violates the truth and hinders access to it, to the detriment of everyone, even themselves.

Father Draganovic, a frank, sincere, and open personality, respectful of the rights of others while defending his own, a true liberal with a Christian metaphysics, deserves greater understanding from the free world. While being kicked around by Yugoslav communism, he rises and is not a "ridiculous monster," despite the incredible actions of certain Western newspapers that try to ridicule him. By smearing him with mud, as Der Spiegel and others do, Draganovic emerges as a shining victim of the totalitarianism of our time, insatiable for power and domination. He is an exemplary, albeit painful, victim of the ideals of freedom and Western civilization.

To ease our consciences as free men and to alleviate Father Draganovic's personal plight, we appeal to the free world to endorse the proposal made in the newspaper Volksbote (Munich, November 25, 1967). The German weekly requested at that time that Father Draganovic be allowed to hold a press conference in the free world, for example in Austria, to declare whether or not he freely returned to communist Yugoslavia.

We insist on this request because only in this way can this grave case of human rights violations be unequivocally resolved. Free Croats accept all the risks. Does the Yugoslav government also accept them? By rejecting them, it bears all the consequences of the crime perpetrated violently against the law and the good morals of the civilized community. Otherwise, Father Draganovic will disappear from the scene and be consigned to the obscurity of a regime that did not refrain from far more abominable crimes. We do not believe that is in the interest of the free world.

Testimony of Saint Isidore of Seville on the arrival of the Croatians in the Mediterranean

Dominik Mandic, OFM, Chicago, EE.UU.

The Croatian man (Hrvat) appears for the first time on two memorial plaques in public buildings in the city of Tanais, located at the mouth of the Don River on the Sea of Azov. These plaques, written in Greek, date from the early 3rd century CE. The first plaque was written during the reign of the Tanais emperor (Basileans) Sauromates (175-211 CE). It mentions a patrician, son of Horvat (Xopoáθos). The second plaque, written in 220 CE during the reign of Emperor Rescuporidus, son of Sauromates, lists Horvat Xandarsios among the four chieftains of Tanais. Various Iranian tribes lived in the Tanais state at that time, and one of them must have been called Horvati (the Croats, editor's note). Their chieftain in 220 CE was Hovat of Xandarsios.

During the Hunnic incursions into Europe in 375 CE, the Don Croats were displaced northwest and reached what is now southern Poland. There they mixed with the indigenous Slavic peoples and assimilated the Slavic language. At the end of the 5th century, with the Hunnic state disintegrating, the Croats founded a large Slavic state that stretched from the Oder to the Bug rivers, with its capital at Hrvat (Croat), located on the site of present-day Krakow. The state was called Greater Croatia or White Croatia.

The Arrival of the Croats in the Adriatic

During the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Phocas (602-610) and in the early years of the reign of Heraclius I (610-641), the Avars, Turanian tribes, invaded Pannonia, Dalmatia, the central and southern Balkans, and seriously threatened to destroy Byzantium itself, the center and capital of the Byzantine Empire. In this difficult situation, Emperor Heraclius turned to the Croats beyond the Carpathians and offered them Dalmatia and other surrounding lands if they would engage the Avars in battle and remove this mortal threat from Byzantium.

As noted by the Byzantine emperor and historian Constantine Porphyrogenitus, based on records preserved in the archives of Constantinople and in accordance with Croatian folk tradition, a large portion of the northern Croats, some 300,000, heeded the imperial call. Under the leadership of five brothers and two sisters, members of the Croatian ruling family, the Croats crossed the Danube and, in battles lasting a decade, defeated the Avars and drove them north of the Danube.

The Croats then settled, as Porphyrogenitus recorded, throughout Dalmatia, southern Pannonia, and also in what was then Illyricum, encompassing the coastal regions of the Romano-Byzantine provinces: Praevalis, Old and New Epirus, that is, the coastal areas from present-day Bay of Kotor to Wallonia in Albania. Other small groups of Croats, fighting against the Avars, reached Macedonia, Achaea, and the Peloponnese. They settled in these provinces, lived for centuries, and gave some places the name "Hrvati" (Croats), which they still retain today. Thus, there is a village called "Hrvati" on Lake Ohrid; in the medieval district of Brenik, two villages bore the name "Hrvati," while in Greece there are towns and villages called "Haravati" near Athens, not far from Marathon, near Mycenae in the Argos district, and in the Peloponnese. There is even a village called "Harvati" on Crete.

As recorded by the crowned chronicler C. Porphyrogenitus, Emperor Heraclius entered into two written treaties with the Croats: the first, known in imperial terminology as Prostakasis (the Order), concerned the emperor's call for the Croats to migrate south and his promise to give them Dalmatia once they liberated it from the Avars. The second, called Keleusis, Ilussio (the Decree), formalized the Croats' relationship with the Byzantine Empire and legally granted them Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Illyricum, which they had liberated and where they had already settled after defeating and expelling the Avars north of the Danube.

When did the Croatians arrive in the Adriatic?

Emperor Porphyrogenitus writes that the Croats fought the Avars for several years, finally defeating and expelling them from Dalmatia and other neighboring regions where they had settled. Since Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Illyricum belonged to the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Rome, according to the same emperor, Emperor Heraclius requested that the Pope establish the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Dalmatia and send priests there to baptize the Croats. All of this occurred during the lifetime of Heraclius I, who died on November 11, 641. This indicates that the Croats must have reached the Adriatic at least 10 or 15 years before Heraclius's death, that is, between 625 and 630. The same conclusion is reached by the reference in the Roman Liber Pontificalis, in which the contemporary author recorded that Pope John IV (640-642) sent Abbot Martin to Istria and Dalmatia in 640 with a large sum of money to ransom Christian captives and collect the relics of martyrs from churches destroyed by the Avars. A similar chronological conclusion can also be drawn from the information provided by Paul the Deacon, who noted that the Croats had crossed the Adriatic in 641 to help the Byzantines liberate central Italy from the Lombards.

Indeed, Pope John IV would not have sent Abbot Martin with so much money, nor would the Croats have dared to leave the eastern Adriatic coast, had they not defeated the Avars, settled in Dalmatia and the surrounding regions, and established lasting peace and security there. At least 10 to 15 years must have passed before the Croats defeated the Avars and established themselves permanently in these regions, securing peace. From this, it can be inferred that the Croats arrived in the Mediterranean in the third decade of the 7th century, that is, between 620 and 630.

We arrived at these chronological conclusions through historical research and deductions. However, the precise year in which the Croats arrived in the Mediterranean is recorded in the works of the celebrated Bishop Saint Isidore of Seville. This is the oldest contemporary account of the Croats' arrival in the South.

Testimony of Saint Isidore of Seville on the Arrival of the Croats in the Mediterranean

Saint Isidore of Seville wrote several theological and historical works. Of his historical works, the most famous is his Chronica Maiora, preserved in many manuscripts, a considerable number of which date from the 7th and 9th centuries. These manuscripts are divided into two groups. In the first group, the Chronicle ends with the fifth year of Emperor Heraclius, that is, the year 615, and in the second group with the sixth year, that is, the year 626. The first group includes the Codex Claromontanus, in Paris, from the 7th-8th century, and two codices in the Vatican, from the 9th century, the Codex Albenis from the 8th century, etc.

The second group includes the manuscripts: Petropolitanus, Sangallensis, and Helmstadiensis, all three from the 9th century; then Bernensis from the 10th century and Florentinus from the 11th century. This proves that Isidore of Seville published his Chronica maiora for the first time in 615 and for the second time after 626, that is, 627, the same year in which he wrote his other work, the so-called Epitome chronicorum (Short Chronicle), which is in fact an extract of the Chronica maiora.

In the second edition of the Chronica maiora, Isidore of Seville writes: "Heraclius, however, reigned in the sixteenth year, at the beginning of which the Slavs took Greece from the Romans, and the Persians Syria, Egypt, and many other provinces."

In his Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville describes his Greece in these terms: "Greece... Greece has seven provinces: the first in the west is Dalamatia, then Epirus, then Hellas, Thessaly, followed by Macedonia, then Achaea, and two provinces on the sea, Crete and the Cyclades."

In this account by Isidore of Seville, the action was not insignificant or adventurous by the "Slavs," such as the attack on Crete in 263. Nor was it the attack by the Avars and Slavs on Byzantium in 626, for news of the defeat of the Avars and their subordinate Slavic troops spread very quickly throughout the Roman Empire, which also included Spain.

In 613, the Persians occupied Syria and Jerusalem, a fact Isidore noted in the first edition of his Chronica Maior. In 619, the Persians conquered Egypt, the Byzantine granary, an event that did not prompt Isidore to include in his Chronicle. It was only when the Slavs, in the sixteenth year of Heraclius's reign, "took Greece from the Romans," that the event so moved Isidore that he included it in his work; that is to say, he prepared the second edition of his Chronica Maior.

This indicates that the capture of "Greece" in the sixteenth year of Heraclius's reign was such a striking action and a momentous event that Isidore considered it appropriate to record it in his Chronicle. Historical sources do not indicate, however, that any Slavic people, with the exception of the Croats, waged war and conquered the lands of what is now called "Greece" between 625 and 630. Therefore, the information provided by Isidore of Seville in the second edition of his Chronica Maiora can only refer to the Croats, which should be considered the oldest contemporary record mentioning their arrival in the Adriatic.

According to the earliest reports received, Isidore noted in 627 that the Croatian Slavs had invaded "Greece" at the beginning of the sixteenth year of Emperor Heraclius's reign, a year that ran from October 5, 625, to October 5, 626. It is unlikely that the Croats would have arrived on the Adriatic during the cold winter months of 625 or at the beginning of 626. It is even less plausible that the Avars would have dared to unleash all their forces against Byzantium to capture it at the beginning of spring in 626, if the Croats had already begun fighting in Dalmatia and other provinces of the former Roman-Byzantine "Greece" during the winter of 625-26.

Therefore, the Croats must have arrived in Dalmatia and other "Greek" provinces during the sixteenth year of Emperor Heraclius's reign, while the Avars were besieging Byzantium, that is, from mid-July to mid-August of 626. In the very ancient manuscript of Isidore's Chronicle, in the Codex Sorianus of the year 743, the Chronicle's twofold conclusion was recorded: the first is identical to the codices of the first group that conclude the Chronicle with the fifth year of Emperor Heraclius, and the second reads as follows: Heraclius reigned in the eighteenth year, at the beginning of which the Slavs took Greece from the Romans... This is what Isidore, having been informed in detail, notes for the third time in the margin of the original text used for the Codex Sorianus, that the Croats took Dalmatia and other "Greek" provinces in the eighteenth year of Emperor Heraclius, that is, from October 5, 627, to October 5, 628. All circumstances point, as we have argued, to the fact that the Croats invaded Dalmatia and other "Greek" provinces, then in the hands of the Avars, in the summer of 626 while the Avars were besieging Byzantium. Following the wishes of the Byzantine imperial representatives, the Croats must have first penetrated as far as the Adriatic in Dalmatia and from there marched along the Adriatic coast southeast to expel the Avars from the "Greek" maritime provinces: Prevalis, and Old and New Epirus.

This undertaking required more than a year, as noted by the contemporary author in the margin of the original Soria codex. Although the Croats fought as allies of the Byzantines, in accordance with the agreement they seized the conquered lands, and therefore, Isidore of Seville rightly noted that the Slavic-Croats took the provinces of "Greece" from the Romans, that is, the Byzantines.

The spiritual profile of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac

Bonifacio Perovic, Buenos Aires

Twenty years after the "most tragic trial"

The greatness of Cardinal Stepinac, the constancy of his apostolic zeal, the value of his witness and his martyrdom—which earned him "universal admiration and veneration," in the words of Pope John XXIII in his funeral sermon—lies in his spiritual character. From his spirituality spring all his other virtues, as from a primordial source. Therefore, all analyses of his public actions, his deeds, and his pronouncements must begin with this fact, never forgetting the spiritual essence and content of Stepinac's life. To overlook this would be to misunderstand him and, consequently, to diminish or deny his true personality and significance. Stepinac was above all a man of God who faithfully followed in the Lord's footsteps and the divine voice of his priestly mission in close cooperation with the graces he had received: a defender of divine and human rights, a strong man, that is, "first and foremost a man of the Church, concerned for the interests of his flock, committed to alleviating misery, and, according to unanimous consensus, a true apostle and saint."

During the war, it suited the communists to highlight Stepinac's intrepid attitude, so they lavished praise on him only to attack him after the conflict as a "collaborator," thus prompting the Western world to begin discussing "the Stepinac case," which implied the possibility that he had become involved in political activity, making his conduct during the war inconsistent with the high ecclesiastical office he held. The Church's ideological adversaries even went so far as to insinuate dark and even criminal political implications.

The Church was not for a moment misled by this self-serving and coordinated campaign. The Holy See, well-informed, defended from the outset the personal and pastoral integrity of Cardinal Stepinac. This does not exempt Croatian Catholics from the duty of affirming him before the free world in his spiritual greatness, through whom God has worked great things. Only in this sense can he serve to promote the just cause of the Croatian nation, as its guide and beacon of hope; the source of new graces for the Croatian people and the Church of Silence.

Offshoot of Christian Croatia

Stepinac's youth was not much different from the life of the young men in the countryside from which he came. It unfolded in a healthy and natural environment, imbued with the deep Christian life of the peasant families. In that atmosphere, nature harmonized with grace, soul with body, both still immune to the "new waves" of modern life and far removed from the seductions of the intellect and the heart, which would later bring with them the errors and excesses of communism.

He was born into a peasant family, raised in an environment of deep Christian tradition, where religious truths and moral values constituted the supreme good. Although his father was a well-off farmer, life was not easy then. The peasant labors were hard and arduous, the life rigid and modest, as in all peasant families in Croatia. Earning enough to live, raising and educating the children, leading an orderly and methodical family life, which had to first and foremost shape men, and resolving the other problems and relationships of life, was all very serious business, conceived as the meaning of life, as the vocation for which one day we will give an account to God.

Luis was born and raised in that environment. Therefore, he was very much like any of his contemporaries: identical circumstances, identical problems; agricultural tasks, difficulties, temptations, uncertainties, joys, and pastimes. The foundation, certainly, was sound; the seed sown was good, and all that would come would be the result of his cooperation with the divine graces and gifts he received, through which he would attain a remarkable degree of perfection.

In his case, we can perceive that the infused supernatural graces do not destroy, diminish, or deform human nature, the peculiar temperament of each individual.

Stepinac belongs to the mountain-subalpine type of person from northwestern Croatia, whose traits could be summarized as: somewhat introspective, not very communicative, with a certain melancholic undertone, which is reflected in the traditional folk poetry of the region. People imbued with age-old wisdom, tenacious to the point of obstinacy in the fight "for old rights," almost always in economic distress, full of love for their homeland, patient, orderly, resilient, and deeply religious. In these traits, we can easily recognize Stepinac. He will always carry them as a constitutive part of his being.

But these traits, ennobled by spiritual graces, become beautiful virtues that reach the level of heroism. The same traits in other men, for example, in scientists and politicians, do not reach perfection, which means that only through God's work are they transformed into the flower of virtue. Those of us who knew him in specific situations of the turbulent past, which we also lived through, see clearly that a saint is not predestined to be one, is not an "automaton" in God's hands, but rather a unique, original creation, with all his innate flaws and virtues. Through the grace of Christ's salvation, he finds strength and light in the purification of the imperfections within him and, moreover, builds the divine kingdom in his soul, fully aware of freedom and responsibility, following the divine Model in love.

Stepinac was so deeply rooted in the Croatian environment that his complete identification with "his people," with their beliefs and aspirations, would lead the communist regime to condemn him, even though the communist leaders knew very well "that he was innocent of the crimes he was accused of."

The Jesuit priest Esteban Sakac revealed to us "the profound spiritual substratum and the firm supernatural foundations of his extraordinary rise," as well as the decree of his priestly vocation. His account reveals an edifying example of a peasant mother of great faith and devotion, who, from the moment her son was born, accompanied him with prayers and sacrifices and spiritually educated him to become one of the illustrious sons of the Croatian nation and a shining star of the universal Church. Barbara, Aloysius's mother, upon her son's birth, vowed before God to fast three times a week so that God would deign to instill a priestly vocation in her son.

Aloysius was unaware of his mother's vow until he decided to study theology. The path was not easy. Both mother and son had to endure many trials. During the First World War, Aloysius had to leave the minor seminary to enlist and fight on the battlefield. After the war, Stepinac, now a young reserve officer, did not return to the seminary. "Divine Providence," observes Father E. Sakac, "to prepare him for his later decision and to test his mother's faith and strengthen his own, led him to the altar by winding paths, sometimes through dark trails."

His mother's faith and hope did not waver; she continued her prayers and fasting, like Saint Monica for her son Augustine, to whom Father Sakac compares him. Once, Barbara said to Reverend Loncaric, Stepinac's former tutor, a priest who was very interested in his priestly vocation: "You educate him, and I will continue praying, until God and Aloysius decide." Her prayers were answered. After studying at the Faculty of Agronomy and pursuing other activities, Aloysius made his decision and entered the major seminary as a student of the "Germanicum" in Rome.

In short, A. Stepinac is our contemporary, born in Croatia and raised in its spiritual environment, shaped over centuries. Light and shadows, virtues and flaws were present in him as in any man, but he had a heart open to divine inspiration, which he finally followed, strengthened by the spiritual support of his devout mother. His natural disposition was sound, and, cooperating with the graces he received, Stepinac rose to the point of sacrifice pleasing to God, giving his life for his brothers and sisters.

An overlooked sacrifice by the mother was the blessed seed that would bear fruit in another sacrifice, the supreme expression of love that would move Popes Pius XII and John XXIII, and with them all the upright souls of the world. Mother and son, filled with faith and pure, supernatural love, offered themselves as a holocaust to God. God accepted it and led them to the summit of Golgotha. Aloysius, a man perfectly suited to the times in which he lived and acted, and to the spiritual needs of his flock, is a magnificent offshoot of the peasant class, enriched over centuries in his ancient Croatia with Christian graces and virtues.

He emerged as the embodiment of Christian Croatia during a period when dark forces conspired to tarnish and violate it. "Monsignor Stepinac was tried as the spiritual leader of the Croats, and he emerged from the trial as a leader of his people and an example to the world," declared Mgr. Fulton Sheen.

Great is the power of Divine grace! Would the Croatians have had a Cardinal Stepinac without this long Christian tradition, symbolized in the figure of his mother? How much grace and consolation would the souls of the Croatian faithful have been deprived of, and the Church of Silence of its most splendid witness, without Stepinac? What model and representative, what defender, and what hope would the entire Croatian people have been deprived of without Stepinac? Croatian mothers now have in Barbara an edifying example to follow.

In these depths of mutual salvation, as taught by the dogma of the communion of saints, Stepinac's interior life was firmly rooted, so that all the attacks and storms that would besiege him until the last moment of his life could not break him.

Man of God

The entire personality of Aloysius Stepinac revealed a spiritual being. By temperament and upbringing, he was inclined toward an intense inner life; however, Divine Providence called him to play a leading role in the most decisive moments of the turbulent history of Croatia and its Christian people.

Therefore, two vital dimensions existed within him: one turned toward the interior, contemplative life, inherent in his character; the other inclined toward the exterior, heroic life, determined by the grace of his vocation and his pastoral mission. In the natural order of things, these two aspects would seem incompatible, but in Stepinac's case, the first dimension, by God's secret designs, was the necessary premise of the second, so that there was perfect harmony in his personality. Only in his inner union with God was Stepinac able to overcome the demonic forces that rose up against him and those he represented.

We will attempt, while aware that this will not be exhaustive, to outline his inner, spiritual character.

His soul had left its mark even on his physical appearance, so that his figure gave the impression of a man in whom the spirit reigned supreme.

Rather tall, with a high forehead, a prominent nose, thinning hair, and an austere complexion, as if sculpted from stone; his figure expressed decisiveness, integrity, an inflexible character, and an iron will. This is how his portraitist, the great sculptor Ivan Metrovic, saw him. He resembled an ascetic more than an ecclesiastical dignitary, with his slender, ascetic figure, with his ancestral faith, capable of moving mountains, and for this reason, in the eyes of his faithful, he was a man of God. He was sparing of words, introspective, averse to all ostentation and exhibitionism.

I must admit that in my frequent encounters with Stepinac, it was not easy to engage him in a long, incoherent conversation. The same was said by many others. However, some managed to have long conversations with him and even make him laugh. He gave the impression of a man prematurely burdened with great responsibilities at odds with his natural inclinations, but he accepted them as the cross imposed upon him by Providence when, as a newly ordained priest, he was appointed successor to the elderly Archbishop Bauer, ordinary of one of the largest dioceses in the Catholic Church.

Given his inclinations, he might have preferred to be a spiritual director in a seminary or a modest rural parish priest. Outward appearances and public opinion were of no concern to him. He was neither a fanatic nor ambitious. External successes and ventures held no appeal for him. He was a man of the people, a son of peasants, elevated to the throne of the Archbishops of Zagreb, princes of Church and State, who even in the last century functioned as banes (viceroys). He surely must not have been comfortable surrounded by the splendor of the historic archbishop's palace, nor at the solemn receptions and public parades where he would have had to shine with his knowledge and oratory, participating in conventional conversations and tedious discussions at grand receptions.

He abhorred politics, and especially politicking, its maneuvers, traps, schemes, and compromises. None of the co-defendants in the trial, writes Monsignor Salis Seewis, "said or could say that the Archbishop encouraged him, verbally or in writing, to any political action, much less to commit a political crime. On the contrary, some of the co-defendant priests admitted, although their statements were not published, that the Archbishop had severely reprimanded them as soon as he learned of their political activity." When, during the war, a woman said to him, in her naiveté, "Your Excellency, people reproach you for not being political," Stepinac replied with his characteristic smile, "It's true, I am here to promote the divine cause and not to direct politics."

He was a man of integrity, without flaws, upright; He always emphasized, without rhetoric, the evangelical doctrine (which he knew thoroughly and frequently quoted from the Gospel in his speeches and writings), natural law, human rights, and spiritual values, in a time when the aspirations of the masses encompassed only the kingdom of the earth, and other values were relegated and trampled underfoot.

We can scarcely glimpse the inner world of his soul, the refuge of his conscience. But the first encounter with Stepinac revealed a soul that founded its relationship with God on the virtue of humility, which, according to the doctrine of spiritual theology, is the true foundation upon which a strong spiritual organism must be built. He did not like to speak of himself, and I believe he revealed his inner life to very few, except his confessor and spiritual director.

His most devoted collaborators, and therefore those who knew him most intimately, affirm that Stepinac, by temperament, was far from being humble "by nature." He was a man with a profound sense of dignity, and indeed, considering his conduct during the most sorrowful trial (a term coined by Pius XII), he reveals himself to have possessed unyielding fortitude.

In reality, it was "within the walls of Germanicum and in the catacombs of Rome," as one of his collaborators put it, that his pride was mortified and purged. His virtue of humility was the fruit of a long inner struggle, and once he possessed it, he was able to endure with Christian patience the humiliations, insults, offenses, and threats without ever revealing, either in his writings or his sermons, any hint of resentment. His words are characteristic: "You can joke with Stepinac, but not with the Archbishop, who will know how to defend his honor."

A Swiss priest, a colleague of Stepinac at Germanicum, remarked: "He was a good companion and friend, but very quiet; he didn't like to talk much, and certainly never about himself." A year after being appointed coadjutor archbishop, he visited the Germanicum and declared to his former colleagues and the new students: "Dear brothers, I wish you all the best, except for becoming bishops."

On the occasion of the chapter's congratulations on his appointment as coadjutor archbishop, he responded in these terms to the words addressed to him by His Excellency. Salis Seewis: "I thank you from the bottom of my heart, although I cannot rejoice, for the appointment you have made me is a heavy cross to bear. Each of you, by virtue of your age, your merits, and your wisdom, has more qualifications to this office than I. But, since Divine Providence has decided that it should be me, I hope that we will work together in harmony and love. I assume this difficult office, obeying the wish of the supreme head, the Holy Father. Therefore I say: In te, Domine speravi. My intentions and purposes are pure: to follow the teaching of the cross and to defend Catholic truth without any fear."

The opposite of humility is pride, "the source of all sin" (Ecclesiastes 10:15), the most serious sin because it resides in the human spirit. Against this sin of the fallen angels and the first humans, Stepinac armed himself with humility. This supernatural virtue was able to develop in him to a very high degree. As a man of God, he experienced his first relationship with the Creator and Redeemer as a weak and sinful creature, and only in this way, in cooperation with divine grace, was he able to develop within himself the other virtues: modesty, moderation, poverty, magnanimity, fear of God, and above all, the virtues of fortitude and love.

All these virtues shone forth in his private life, and here I would like to mention in passing his virtue of poverty, which the Second Vatican Council so strongly recommends today. To be the head of a vast and very wealthy archdiocese and remain poor was, without a doubt, a great virtue of Cardinal Stepinac. He distributed everything he had personally to the needy and to charitable institutions.

On the eve of the war, I went to see his secretary, requesting that the Archbishop, with his help, facilitate a three-day spiritual retreat for some poor students. In response, the secretary opened his desk drawer and told me, "Look, Father, how much the Archbishop has in his coffers: 25 dinars (50 cents), and there are eight days left until the end of the month." He then confided in me that all sorts of poor people and beggars wandered the palace corridors, and "we were barely able to convince the Archbishop to stop their constant presence in the palace and instead tell them where they could receive help."

Stepinac, therefore, in his will (dated October 9, 1959), could state: "...I leave no property whatsoever, neither movable nor immovable. Everything I received as Archbishop of Zagreb that was not needed for essential needs, I used in accordance with the prescriptions of the Code of Canon Law for the poor and the poor. Consequently, I have nothing to leave."

Catholic doctrine teaches that the infused virtues are, strictly speaking, the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love, which contain the essence and root of supernatural life. They enable the activity of the soul to be aligned with the supernatural purpose of humankind. Furthermore, they contain the seed of eternal life and participation in divine life. In general, theologians and the Council of Trent teach that moral virtues are bestowed together with the theological virtues, since they are not sufficient on their own to achieve the supernatural goal.

All the virtues, particularly fortitude expressed through heroic acts and prolonged suffering, arose in Stepinac from these theological virtues. Through his faith, he conquered and was not conquered. The ancient Greeks gave rise to tragedy, in which man confronts superior forces and, in this important, "tragic" struggle, falls as a victim, unable to withstand them. But in Christianity, the soul armed with faith knows no "tragedy." We can speak of "drama," whether that of Golgotha or of other heroes of the faith. In drama, too, man confronts superior forces, but inwardly remains free; apparently, physically, he may be defeated, but spiritually he emerges victorious, for he is armed with even more powerful forces: with divine power, he defeats the devil and evil.

"There were," notes Dr. Emanuel, Bishop of Speyer, "those who spoke of the tragedy of the Stepinac case, who was supposedly a victim of his misguided politics. Only those who are ignorant of spiritual and supernatural reality, as well as the history of this world, can express themselves in this way, since a man of misguided politics does not remain in the hearts of millions as a shining example, nor are so many studies and books written about him.

Christ was also condemned for political reasons. Stepinac had no politics 'of his own'; he was an instrument in God's hands during those difficult days when passions were unleashed everywhere. In the crossfire of ideologies, antagonistic interests, errors, and horrors, he remained pure and firm as an oak, not bowing to anyone, aware of the mission he had to fulfill and the testimony he had to bear. He believed in the victory of injustice and the Kingdom of God over atheism and materialism, and he accepted without hesitation the sacrifice of his earthly life, when, under certain conditions, honorable, he was able to save her. This is not how a 'tragic' man or a political man acts, but only a man endowed with the theological virtues, strengthened by prayer in union with God."

Those who knew him well are convinced that his life was spent in constant union with God and in perpetual prayer. As archbishop, he prayed the rosary daily with the servants, visited and helped the poor in the suburbs of Zagreb. He founded and directed the first Caritas in Croatia. He fasted and practiced penance, which was reflected in his character.

Every October he visited the parishes of Zagreb and prayed the three parts of the rosary with the faithful, kneeling, and during Lent he led the Stations of the Cross. Every year he led the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Bistrica, walking all day in the summer, delivering Lenten sermons, hearing confessions, visiting the seminary and parishes, overseeing popular missions and priestly vocations, striving to reorganize Catholic Action, and making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. All of this proves that he spared no effort or sacrifice in spreading the kingdom of Christ and in the salvation of souls. "He set an example for everyone in his arduous work," writes the editor of "Katolicke list," on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

In the suburbs of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, Stepinac founded 11 new parishes. He transformed the summer residence of the archbishops of Zagreb, Brezovica Castle, into a Carmelite convent on the condition that they pray for the priests of his archdiocese, and there, in the countryside, he planned to find his final rest. He felt a special devotion to the Virgin Mary and consequently took charge of the proper upkeep of the famous shrine of Our Lady of Bistrica.

He left behind a Croatian translation of "The Rosary as Meditation and Oral Prayer" by the French Dominican André Pradel. In his spiritual testament, dated May 28, 1957, he exhorts us in a special way: "Honor the Virgin Mary," and then continues: "...our grandparents and great-grandparents adorned our homeland, like a crown of stars, with churches and chapels consecrated to the Virgin Mary... Before their altars they knelt humbly and prayed for the forgiveness of their sins before the Lord through the intercession of her who is the Refuge of sinners. In her they placed their hopes in difficult personal and national times. Keep the tradition of your fathers."

He was elevated to the dignity of archbishop, unknown to the public, without desiring or expecting it, as he himself confesses. He accepted this burden, submitting to the will of God. As time goes by, it becomes clear that this burden is becoming the true cross to which his earthly life is destined. Thus, on the occasion of the audience granted to Croatian peasant writers participating in a course on the eve of World War II, organized by the Catholic Writers' Society (as recounted to me by the writer Lucas Brajonic, a participant in the event), after offering a few words of greeting and exhortation to the attendees, he gave each of them a small cross and said: "I give it to you as a symbol of your archbishop, and probably of many of you." On March 23, 1945, on the eve of the communist invasion, he said to Reverend Cecelja, who had to go into exile: "I know what awaits me here. Pray for me so that I may endure."

The election of the young priest Aloysius Stepinac as Archbishop of Zagreb, ordained barely three years earlier, apparently without merit, without special talents, without having yet held any responsible position; His appointment as archbishop cum iure successionis of the largest and most important diocese in Croatia, and one of the largest in the world, seemed to many an imprudent act. However, there were those who sensed in him the special charismata of God. Vinko Kriskovic, a notable Croatian liberal thinker and writer, a friend of Stepinac's predecessor, Archbishop Bauer, writes about this:

"When Archbishop Bauer appointed Stepinac his coadjutor with right of succession, many reproached him, arguing that he could have found a more capable and better-educated priest for the position. Bauer always replied that grave persecutions of the Church were imminent, and in his entire diocese there was no priest who could endure and face them with more courage than Stepinac. He spoke the truth." Kriskovic concludes: "Thus perhaps the prophecy will be fulfilled that the crucifix, which found its eternal dwelling place in the human soul, on which the Croats are now crucified, will also redeem them for what reason rebelliously demands and the heart yearns for: their freedom. Crux, spes unica."

During the first four years (1935-1939) of his pastoral mission, Archbishop Stepinac did all he could during that period of threatened peace, awakening and encouraging positive religious forces, pointing out errors, and performing penance and works of charity. The Holy Spirit was thus preparing him for his great work, for which John XXIII would congratulate him on the occasion of his silver jubilee as bishop in these terms: "For we hold in high esteem the merits of your spirit and your heroism, your devotion, your vigilant Catholic conscience, and the unwavering firmness of your invincible heart." And in his funeral oration, he called him a "blessed soul."

In the Whirlwind

Studying "this blessed soul" who, during the tremendous conflagration, became the voice of the universal conscience in the name of truth and justice for all those threatened and persecuted, and who ultimately played a significant role in the history of his people, raises the question: how was it possible to cast so much suspicion, so many false interpretations, and so much slander against such an "example of apostolic zeal and Christian virtue" (Pius XII, January 12, 1953)?

It is understandable that different interpretations arose regarding the appropriateness of his unwavering stance toward all totalitarian regimes, or regarding some of Stepinac's actions, as all of that can be debated. But here we ask: how could his Christian conscience, his pastoral rectitude, and his moral integrity be called into question?

Today, 20 years after his condemnation and 6 years after his death, with the copious documentation available to all, we can objectively point out the sources of the opposing propaganda and the motives that inspired it, thus clarifying, for those who are not fully aware of the case, "the case of Cardinal Stepinac."

Above all, his "misfortune" was belonging to a small, enslaved people, considered the enemy by the victors, so that the Croats and their pastor were judged according to the old adage "Woe to the vanquished." Political morality in general, and particularly in times of war, is opportunistic, utilitarian, and at odds with natural law and Christian moral principles.

In the first phase of the war, Stepinac confronted the aggressive Nazi-fascist ideology; at that time, the communist guerrillas themselves broadcast his sermons and statements from Soviet radio stations, exploiting them for propaganda purposes. Since propaganda is not always at the service of truth and objective justice, the communists, in launching their counteroffensive, turned against the Archbishop for having dared to criticize Marxist errors and communist totalitarianism.

Aside from the confusion created by communist propaganda, the danger of misinterpretation lay in the fact that the most significant events of his life occurred during a period marked by a dearth of news about occupied Croatia and of accurate, truthful, and objective information (1945-46). If one were to glance at what the newspapers and magazines published at that time, writes Bishop Emanuel of Speyer, one would be astonished by the enormous gaps one finds.

The free world lacked a true picture of what was happening in Croatian lands during and after the last war. Almost everything the public learned during the 17 months of violent communist attacks against Stepinac, which preceded his arrest, came through the Yugoslav communist press and the pronouncements of the new rulers, which the world generally accepted as if the vanquished had no voice or vote.

Public opinion was biased, and our Archbishop was portrayed as part of his defeated people, who, according to wartime morality, "can do no good" and "have no right." According to that morality, the war criminals were not Stalin and Tito; instead, a man of clear conscience was condemned as a "criminal."

The first source of the falsification of his character during the war lies in the deficient and erroneous information disseminated by world opinion.

The second, the true culprit behind the falsification and denigration of the Archbishop of Zagreb, is the Yugoslav Communist Party. Communists who admit to lying, falsifying, and distorting, as long as it serves the interests of the revolution, are outside the framework of the history of civilization, and especially of Christianity. Even in practice, they differ from the most primitive peoples, who respected certain ethical principles in their dealings with the enemy.

Given the situation, and despite their "appropriation" of the Archbishop during the war, the communists were only interested in subjecting him to their plans. The attacks began months before the trial, and the slandered man had no opportunity whatsoever to defend himself. The French magazine Etudes, December 1946, wrote about this: "...while the communist guerrillas roamed the forests, Tito's secret broadcasting station (just like the BBC in London) never failed to cite the Archbishop of Zagreb as an example, praising his patriotic faith, his indomitable pride, his unwavering opposition to the oppressive occupier. But these same people, upon coming to power, leveled very serious charges against him: collaboration with the enemy during the Italian-German occupation, cowardice in the face of the dictator Pavelić, and the plot against Marshal Tito's popular government. It took only 16 months to rewrite history, to declare the hero a traitor."

All truth, justice, and freedom were then embodied in the Communist Party, which in turn was anti-human, anti-Croatian, and atheist. Therefore, what else could be expected but that the representative of humanity, of the people, and of God would be condemned along with those values?

The third accomplice is the Serbian nationalists, despite being adversaries of communism. The viciousness of the anti-communist Serbs in slandering Stepinac was not self-evident, since it suited them to resist communism in solidarity with the Croats, especially given that Stepinac had aided the Serbs during the war. But, once again, when it came to the Croats, the Serbian nationalists, as supporters of a Yugoslavia conceived as an enlarged Serbia and consequently enemies of the independence of the Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians, acted in a strange psychosis that can only harm the genuine national interests of the Serbs themselves.

Such a chauvinistic stance is an anachronism today. To explain this, allow me to offer a brief historical reflection. New horizons are opening up; peoples are drawing closer and feeling part of a whole, so that all major problems are becoming more widespread. Christian churches are preparing the paths to rapprochement and unity, should we prove ourselves worthy of it. Many, however, cling to outdated conceptions of closed nationalist politics and selfish interests.

After medieval Christendom, there came times that no longer accepted universal morality or Christian religious truths. An apparent conflict had arisen between faith and reason, between philosophy and theology, but that era is fading. At the beginning of our century, new perspectives are opening up; problems are no longer posed as a contrast between faith and freedom, dogma and reason, as the Italian socialist leader G. Saragat, now president of Italy, recently acknowledged.

New ideologies and totalitarianisms are stifling freedom, reason, religious freedom, and individual rights. Faced with the onslaught of these anti-Christian forces, which enslave humanity, society, and nations, the Church emerges as the conscience of humankind, as the representative of the natural rights of man, society, and peoples, founded on Christian ethics.

Within this context, Archbishop Stepinac also fulfilled his historical mission. Only the fact, as has been stated, that he was not a man of political leanings, but rather the representative of the universal Church, enabled him to observe and weigh, without bias, bias, or selfish interests, that complex and tangled situation of antagonistic interests during the last world war.

Thus he was able to combat the ravages of various destructive ideologies and be the voice of conscience for the persecuted Croats, Serbs, Jews, and Roma, based on natural law and the Christian principles of justice and love. "I did not spend a single day," Stepinac rightly said, "without intervening on behalf of Serbs, Jews, and my own countrymen." At the end of May 1942, after the peace procession near the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes in Zagreb, the archbishop delivered a sermon on peace, beginning with the Augustinian definition of peace: "Peace is the tranquility of order." "What does the tranquility of order require?" the archbishop asked. "First, it requires that every person, without exception, always and everywhere recognize their own misery and powerlessness, and the greatness and omnipotence of God." Criticizing the purported architects of the so-called Nazi-fascist "new order," he continues: "The tranquility of order, that is, true peace, requires a just relationship with our neighbor.

Christ perfectly defines this relationship in the parable of the pious Samaritan, who on the road healed the wounded man with oil and wine, without regard for his origin or other circumstances, but solely for human suffering, for human nature. A true relationship with our neighbor requires that we see in him not a beast, but a human being, a child of God, as we are, brothers and sisters whom we must love, for together we must pray: Our Father who art in heaven (Matt. 93:24). It would not be serious to speak of a new world order, wherever it might come from, if in that order the person, the immortal soul of man, who is above all systems, who is irreplaceable, who has all inalienable rights that no human power can or should limit, is not respected. It would be It is wrong to think that perhaps the Catholic Church, in its defense of fundamental human rights and freedom of conscience, is afraid of any human power.

The Swiss newspaper Schweizerische Kirchenseitung emphasizes Stepinac's humanitarian mission in these terms: "With Archbishop Stepinac, it was not only the archbishop, the man, who was condemned, but also Law, Freedom, and human Dignity. If we do not protest and if we allow this case to fall into oblivion, we would be complicit in the trampling of human rights, freedom, and dignity."

In his address, delivered in Zagreb Cathedral on the anniversary of the coronation of Pope Pius XII, March 14, 1945, Stepinac rose up in defense of the human person: "Undoubtedly, one of the most egregious errors of our time is that the value of man has fallen to zero... For, regardless of whether or not one believes in the personal God, everyone, even the adherent of the materialist conception of the world, feels deep in their soul and manifests it in their life, that they are not and cannot be the same as their dog, that they are not and cannot be a screw in a machine...

Those who have preserved the treasure of faith know that they carry in their soul the firm awareness that the Creator God exists; they know that man is not the fortuitous effect of a nebulous pantheistic evolution, but the work of the Creator's will, who spoke and put into practice his decision: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness' (Gen. 1:26). Every man, therefore..." Therefore, regardless of race or nation, whether they have completed university studies at some European cultural center or are hunting for food in the African jungles, each person equally bears the imprint of God the Creator and possesses inalienable rights that no human power can subjugate or limit. Each person has the right to physical life, to marriage, to religious education, and the right to the enjoyment of material goods...

For its part, the Communist Party, through a smear campaign and a monstrous trial, attempted to portray him not as a spokesperson for the conscience and freedom of oppressed humanity, but, by stripping him of the dignity of the episcopate and pastor of souls, to present him as a mere citizen, burdened with crimes. Stepinac, aware of this Machiavellian game, puts the accusation in its proper place and exclaims in court: "My conscience is clear (the audience laughs) and I do not intend to defend myself." Here it has been repeated a hundred times, "the accused Stepinac!" You don't have to be so naive not to understand that behind this "accused Stepinac" are the Archbishop of Zagreb and the representative of the Catholic Church.

Three of the aforementioned campaigns against Stepinac are inspired by "anger and zeal" and, consequently, lack objective truth. But time is the best judge. World public opinion is increasingly aware of the truth; global problems are now framed differently than in the postwar years. Moreover, even the "de-Stalinization" inaugurated by Khrushchev opened the eyes of many people to the monstrous trials orchestrated in communist countries, and, of course, to the trial of Stepinac.

His figure takes on clearer and more luminous contours; he becomes the symbol of the Church of Silence, and his name is one of the most well-known in the world, pronounced with "admiration and veneration," as John XXIII expressed it. The Church—without being swayed by self-serving propaganda—defends Stepinac from the beginning with diligence and fervor; during the trial and the unjust condemnation, it mobilizes, for the first time, the free consciences of the world in a unanimous protest against communist liberticidal actions. It is unnecessary to elaborate on arguments to refute the communist campaign against Stepinac, since it does not pursue "the search for and expression of objective truth, but rather serves preconceived and utilitarian objectives," as the Holy Father states in the encyclical Ecclesiam Suam. The communists knew they would condemn a just man—they would later acknowledge this—and presumably Titus would have freed him, but the Serbs opposed it.

While public opinion, initially misinformed, largely corrected its viewpoint, and the communists indirectly admitted to having condemned him so that he would not hinder their plans, the Serbian nationalists, inspired solely by their narrow political interests, did not retract their position. We Croatian Catholics regret that our Orthodox brothers and sisters, at least those of the older generation, are unwilling to reconsider their stance in the face of so many irrefutable arguments and testimonies demonstrating that Cardinal Stepinac was not a political figure, that he was not guided by any political interests, and that he neither insulted nor belittled Serbs or Orthodoxy.

On the contrary, there is abundant evidence of his ecumenical spirit, his concern for them, and his work on their behalf. We hope that the new Orthodox generation, less burdened by the past and viewing the world from a broader historical perspective, will be open to objective truth and to new spiritual horizons in this era of universalism and ecumenism, and that they will share the just historical verdict regarding Stepinac.

In rising up against the errors and abuses of the Nazi fascists, Ustaše, Chetniks, and communists alike, Archbishop Stepinac inevitably had to confront and grapple with all these oppressive regimes and their particular interests. A longer process of tempering passions and chauvinism is therefore necessary to judge his apostolic work without prejudice, or, to use the words of Bishop Salis-Sewis, "the most perfect example of a true man and priest, full of compassion and love for all suffering and pain."

In this unequal struggle, Stepinac knew the fate that awaits those who oppose communist totalitarianism. But, "history will deliver its verdict, which will be in my favor," he declared before the tribunal. A man bound to the chariot of temporal, political interests does not sacrifice his freedom and his life with such dignified calm, but only he who, obeying his conscience, fulfills the duty assigned to him by Providence. "I will receive your sentence with a clear conscience... I will be able to go to the next world with a clear conscience... The accused Archbishop of Zagreb knows not only how to suffer for his ideas, but also how to die." Thus speaks a righteous man before the tribunal while facing the threat of death.

Documentation Catholique, in its commentary on the persecuted Church in Yugoslavia, notes, among other things: "Lies are used, and very often, in political controversies. There are countries, such as the Middle East, where lies are told shamelessly, without provoking any reaction or weakening the authority of the liar."

So that such assertions do not appear unfounded, we will cite some characteristic documents related to the protection that Stepinac afforded the Serbs.

The Tablet of October 19, 1946, wrote: "The archbishop's first intervention to save some imprisoned Serbs whom Pavelić was trying to execute dates back to the beginning of the occupation of Croatia in the spring of 1941. On May 14, 1941, he sent Pavelić his first official note of protest following the execution of 260 Serbs in Glina by the Ustaše. A week later, on May 22, in a note to the Minister of the Interior in Pavelić's government, he condemned the measures taken against Jews and Serbs. A few weeks later, he delivered to Pavelić the letter from the Archbishop of Belgrade, asking him to put an end to the persecution of Serbs in Croatia and to provide better treatment for Serbian prisoners... In February 1942, he protested to the Minister of the Interior about the demolition of Orthodox churches in the diocese of Senj, and in March against the mass deportation and the arrest of Jews.”

At the meeting of the Croatian episcopate, held in Zagreb at its former archbishop's palace, a note of protest against the persecution of Serbs, and especially against forced conversions to Catholicism, was drafted on December 17, 1941. This note was presented to the head of state by the bishops at a joint audience. Article 11 of the aforementioned document states verbatim: "In order to receive the Orthodox into the Catholic region of this nature, it is essential, above all, not only to guarantee but also to enforce the civil rights of which they have been deprived, and especially the right to individual liberty and property. All illegal treatment by local authorities against the individual liberty and property of the Orthodox must be categorically prohibited once again. If any among them deserve punishment, they must be tried like all other citizens, following due process in the regular courts. From this moment forward, under the most severe penalties, all public agitation and any individual act aimed at the demolition of Orthodox churches or chapels or the looting of their property must be prohibited."

During the war, the Archbishop's Palace in Zagreb served as a refuge and center of aid for the persecuted and starving. Stepinac personally cared for the war orphans. Following the 1942 military operation on Mount Kozara against the communist guerrillas, thanks to the archbishop's intervention, abandoned children were entrusted to Caritas, taken to Zagreb, cared for and clothed, and then placed with families where they were educated.

In this way, around 7,000 children were saved, mostly the children of Orthodox guerrillas. Caritas had organized a whole network for collecting food and clothing, and without making any distinction, provided aid to Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims. "What was the gratitude of the communist guerrillas who now dare to bring the archbishop to the dock?" asked Documentation Catholique. "They replied that, in organizing this work of Christian charity, he was only seeking to gain converts, and such proselytism could not be tolerated." Regarding Caritas, Stepinac declared during the trial: "You also reproach me for the activities of Caritas. I repeat here that this institution performed great charitable works for our people and your children."

We have cited, as examples, some of the many statements and actions of the Archbishop of Zagreb that reveal the voice and deeds of a pastor, not a politician. Here we can rightly ask: was there another voice as virile and courageous that rose up in that maelstrom of war among other non-Catholic and non-Croatian sectors as his? Only a representative of faith and the spirit, unencumbered by earthly affairs and considerations, sacrificing his own life, could act with such decisiveness and certainty in the tragic moments of our history in defense of all without racial, national, or religious discrimination.

We must imagine the difficult situation of a man who abhorred politics, yet fulfilled the mission of Metropolitan of Croatia during the most decisive moments for his homeland and the world, when unbridled passions began their demonic dance. When various totalitarian regimes and their fanatical supporters ravaged our country, Stepinac had to remain faithful, just, and objective, refusing to align himself with any political faction. Yet he could not remain silent; instead, he had to speak out and condemn errors, violence, and crimes, defending justice, the equality of God's children and all people before the law, and human dignity. In his speeches and notes to the authorities, he never ceased to protest and exclaim for the forgotten and violated virtues and rights of all, without distinction, whether Croats, Jews, Serbs, or Roma.

He was consistent with himself: his character, his spiritual formation, and his pastoral vocation formed an indivisible unity. That is why John XXIII rightly called him in his funeral sermon "a faithful reflection of the Good Shepherd," and Bishop Salis-Seewis, in the aforementioned letter, said: "...our respected Archbishop Dr. A. Stepinac is the most beautiful example of a saint and an exemplary shepherd."

In te, Domine, speravi

Bishop Salis-Seewis, in his courageous and heartfelt pastoral letter, read in all the churches of the archdiocese, written on September 12, 1946—two weeks after the archbishop's arrest—said: "In this grave persecution of our archbishop, we find him guilty of nothing. Placed by God at the head of his flock, he rose up, understandably, with apostolic zeal and courage, in defense of divine laws, the Church, and its rights. He always did so. He did so under previous regimes and authorities. He was doing so even now, in the current state. He did so solely out of a sense of duty and responsibility before God and out of love for his Croatian people, knowing that authentic national life cannot be built and its development ensured without faith in God and without keeping his commandments."

But in defending with apostolic zeal the just cause of the faith, the Church, and its people, as well as human rights, in those circumstances, when the enemy believed the opportune moment had arrived to suppress all those values, it certainly meant sacrificing his own life. The archbishop accepted the challenge and the great trial it entailed. A faithful follower of the divine Model, he agreed to drink the bitter cup to the dregs. This bitterness would be intensified because he would not be condemned as a champion of faith, justice, and love, nor for his faith in the Holy Trinity, but for alleged political acts, and worse still, he would be judged as a criminal "who seduces the people."

Following the meeting of the episcopal conferences from September 23-26, 1952, the bishops presented Tito with a letter that read: “Is it not truly astonishing that the clergy, who in the civilized world almost never come into conflict with the penal code, have become so incorrigibly criminal in our country?”

The communist authorities did not reveal the true reasons for arresting Archbishop Stepinac.

The archbishop was detained on September 8, 1946, after negotiations with the communist government regarding the settlement of Church-State relations broke down. For the communists, the settlement consisted of nothing less than Croatian Catholics, and later the other Catholics of Yugoslavia, breaking with Rome and founding their own national church. Were the communists aware of how contradictory and absurd their undertaking was? Precisely because he had failed to persuade Stepinac and the other Croatian Catholics to separate from Rome, the archbishop was accused of converting the Orthodox to Catholicism.

Documentation Catholique (1/1946) also refers to this point when it writes: "Tito's regime encountered strong opposition within the country, especially in certain regions, such as Croatia, which is understandable. First, because this Catholic country, and therefore one with a more developed Christian consciousness, felt more deeply the incompatibility between communism and the spiritual destiny of humankind, and also because this regime eliminated the Independent State of Croatia, a centuries-old dream, realized at the beginning of the war, which fulfilled the aspirations of the entire people..."

That is why the famous trial of Archbishop Stepinac, Metropolitan of Croatia and therefore the highest representative of the Croatian people, was orchestrated. But it so happened that the choice of person was entirely misguided, since Stepinac was already suspected by the Germans, more than reserved, and even an opponent of the Ustaše. Above all, he was a man of the Church.” François Mauriac is much more precise. He writes: “…we have read some reports and gathered testimonies that convinced us: Monsignor Stepinac, sentenced to 16 years, is innocent.

Everything is explained if we remember that on September 8, 1946, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Primate of the Croatians, refused to break with Rome.” Therein lies the crux of the matter..." L'Osservatore Romano also emphasizes the same point (October 1, 1946): "The bishop, the pastor, the valiant defender of humanitarian principles and love, with courage and language worthy of the Acts of the Apostles, proclaimed from every Catholic altar that we cannot allow the Church to be put to death, but they would have showered him with gold and silver had he wanted to serve as a stepping stone." Tito himself implicitly admits this when he declared at an election rally in Zagreb shortly after the conviction: "They accuse us of having imprisoned Stepinac to get rid of him." I openly told Monsignor Hurley, the papal delegate, during his visit: "Dismiss him, remove him, otherwise we will be forced to arrest him." In other words: he interferes with our plans, he gets in our way, and he must disappear. We have already seen what those plans were. Tito stated them unequivocally at the end of 1949 in a meeting of Slovenian "popular" priests: "Since we have separated from Moscow, why don't you separate from Rome?"

The facts and statements cited shed sufficient light on the true causes of Stepinac's persecution and his "guilt." L'Osservatore Romano (October 12, 1946), responding to the accusations against Stepinac, whose principal, according to the communists, was Rome, writes: "...for if his guilt was indeed guilt, it would not be his own, but that of the Church—not Croatian or Yugoslav, but universal..." The bitter but true heart of this whole painful story is this: Bishop Stepinac is as much a criminal as the Catholic Church. The Church of Christ….” In the same issue of the Vatican newspaper, we also read: “The trial of the Catholic Church, the trial of Bishop Stepinac…” Stepinac was the trial of the Croatian homeland.

But Stepinac, imprisoned by the Yugoslav communists, continued to disrupt their plans. Despite the "crimes" he was accused of, the communist regime continued to offer him freedom on the condition that he leave the country. In October 1947, Bakaric, the highest communist authority in Croatia, visited him in the Lepoglava prison, addressing him as "Your Excellency," while the authorities after his arrest simply called him Stepinac. Bakaric insisted that he sign the pardon petition, addressed to Tito, which had already been drafted. He assured him that he would be immediately released and handed over to the Americans, who would take him abroad. For any man in the archbishop's situation, the temptation would have been great, as he could not otherwise expect to regain his freedom or resume the leadership of his archdiocese. Instead, Stepinac, a man of clear conscience and supernatural fortitude, preferred to endure his ordeal and refused to sign the request. pardon.

He demanded a review of the proceedings before an independent tribunal, not the Communist Party; he declared himself willing to answer to the Croatian people in Zagreb's main square, but refused to abandon his country, his people, his diocese. Since the communists feared the true will of the people, Bakaric, of course, did not accept their final offer and returned from Lepoglava empty-handed. Tito and his companions began to grow uneasy at the stance of this indomitable character.

There were other attempts to advise him to distance himself from his flock, which Stepinac categorically rejected. He told the correspondent of the Catholic Digest: "I cannot go to Rome to receive the cardinal's hat. I cannot and I do not wish to, since I cannot leave my people. I will stay here, if necessary, until death." Indeed, he remained, to the admiration of the Church and the world.

Responding to the offer from the Yugoslav communist government, which ostensibly sought to demonstrate its goodwill and in fact was trying to rid itself of a heavy burden by offering to release Stepinac on the condition that he leave Yugoslavia, L'Obbservatore Romano published the official communication from the Holy See on July 9-10, 1951. This communication stated that the Belgrade government had informed the Holy See, through the Apostolic Nunciature, that it was willing to reduce Stepinac's sentence on the condition that he leave the country permanently.

The Holy See sent the following response to the Belgrade government: "As the Holy See's opinion regarding the trial and conviction of His Excellency Stepinac is well known, it is obvious that it would be happy to see Bishop Stepinac free. However, the Holy See is aware that the prelate, convinced of his innocence, prefers to remain with his flock. The Holy See cannot fail to respect this sentiment and therefore does not intend to impose upon him the separation from his flock, which would be contrary to what Bishop Stepinac considers in his conscience to be his duty."

Milovan Djilas's statement on this matter is known. Ivan Metrovic found him in New York and, upon asking him, "What do you think of Stepinac and his conviction?", Djilas (then Tito's presumed successor) replied: "To tell the truth, I believe—and I am not alone in believing this—that Stepinac is an irreproachable man, of unwavering and unyielding character. Strictly speaking, he was convicted innocent, but it often happens in history that the righteous are condemned for political reasons." To another question from Mestrovic, Djilas retorted: "We would have nothing against his Croatian nationalism, but we cannot tolerate his allegiance to the Roman Pope."

Another high-ranking communist leader told Mestrovic: "He is undoubtedly a man of strong character, irreproachable and firm in his convictions. If he had yielded on just one thing, he would be free today and would have saved us great trouble. His Croatian nationalism would not have bothered us. If he had proclaimed the Croatian Church, we would have praised him to the heavens."

Ivan Mestrovic wrote in The Syracuse Herald Journal (October 1, 1952) reported that Tito himself had declared that Serbian circles in present-day Yugoslavia and their clergy opposed the release of Archbishop Stepinac.

The documents we have just cited reveal the true background and reasons behind Stepinac's conviction. Every person who loves truth must conclude that the trial and sentence were not based on Stepinac's alleged political or common crimes, but rather on a trial orchestrated against the Catholic Church and the Croats' fidelity to the universal Church. In short, we can conclude that the communist authorities wanted to separate Catholics from Rome.

Since Archbishop Stepinac, head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Yugoslavia, resisted these designs, they fabricated a trial against him, invented charges, and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Once the sentence was pronounced, and given its enormous global repercussions, he was thoroughly discredited. Uncomfortable for the communist regime, the authorities could not back down because of Serbian opposition, so they offered him refuge abroad. The archbishop rejected the repeated offers, as he did not want to abandon his parishioners who were going through difficult times and harsh trials; he remained in prison, then under confinement and house arrest, which did little to change his situation, and placed all his hopes in the Lord.

Stepinac, therefore, was innocent of all the accusations and very aware of the true reasons for the trial, that is, the judicial farce to cover up those reasons. That is why he remained silent during the trial, since he knew he had been condemned beforehand. He remained silent in the face of all the insults hurled at him, especially by the prosecutor Jakov Blazevic, who called him a "war criminal... collaborator of Pavelić and the Nazis... enemy of the people... bandit... emissary of the foreign government... who was dragging everyone down the path of treason and terrorism."

We read in the Gospel: “Then Pilate said to him, ‘Do you not hear all the accusations they are making against you?’ But he made no reply to anything he said, so that the governor was greatly amazed” (Matthew 27:13-14). Seeing the archbishop’s silence, Blazevic shouted, “You are silent like Christ before Pilate!” and he was right. It was the moment when Stepinac most resembled Christ. The Vatican newspaper itself confirmed this.

Pastor Stepinac imitated Christ the Good Shepherd and, following in his footsteps, became a magnificent example of a follower and witness of Christ, thus playing a very significant role in Croatian history. He knew that Divine Providence had chosen him to be an expiatory victim for so many terrible sins committed during the war. It was necessary, therefore, to make amends to the inflicted divine justice. Simultaneously, he was chosen to serve as a bulwark against new lies, new violations of justice and love, against the subversion of all higher values, the virtues of rights, and human life. Finally, he was aware that, as a shepherd, he could not abandon his flock at the very moment when the wolves were invading it.

In this way, Stepinac triumphed over Tito. He did not kneel before arrogant communism nor did he accept its demand that the garments of Christ be torn even further. He endured a great trial, and despite the profound heartbreak, the flock remained united; Croatian Catholics did not betray the faith of their forefathers. God accomplished a great work through his humble servant Stepinac.

His virtues, particularly his fortitude, fidelity, and love for the Church and the people, determined the subsequent course of the Church in Croatia, simultaneously shaping its historical and cultural trajectory. History will one day recognize the invaluable role of the peasant's son in the archbishopric of Zagreb as "the martyr of unity," as François Mauriac called him. What would have happened if the archbishop had wavered even slightly during those dramatic events and attempted to compromise with the anti-religious and anti-national communist regime?

Great things require great decisions and sacrifices. Stepinac was great because of his courageous resolve to face the challenge and willingly offer his sacrifice. He agreed to be the good seed that must die in the Croatian fields to later bear fruit a hundredfold. His sacrifice is the most sublime expression of his love for the Church, for the people, and for souls.

His motto was taken from Psalm 30: "In You, Lord, I have put my hope," and the following verse reads, "and I shall never be put to shame." And so it happened: Cardinal Stepinac put his adversaries to shame, but he himself was not.

Sacrifice, pleasing to God.

There is something inscrutable to the human mind in the unspeakable pains and passion of the Savior, which remains as the secret of divine love. It is certain that all his faithful followers, especially the martyrs and saints, will one day conform in one way or another to the Divine Model of love through the Cross. The practice of Christian virtues is not done for the sake of these virtues themselves, but for the love that is thus attained and that builds the synthesis of perfection. Moral virtues perfect us in the means, and only the theological virtues direct the soul toward its ultimate goal: God. Faith is the condition for possessing life, since the Father bestows life on those who believe in the Son. Holy Scripture clearly shows that holiness springs from faith first and foremost and blossoms in love.

Christian perfection consists in the imitation of God in the absolute example that is Christ, who is not only a Teacher who instructs but also desires that we imitate him. "Be imitators of God, then" (Ephesians 5:1). Every divine attribute, upon which a devout soul meditates and delves into the majestic revelation, can become the ideal of imitation and perfection, says St. Thomas Aquinas, while the saints, by imitating the Savior, thereby become human models of perfection.

Morally, holiness requires free consent, human submission to the divine will. Thus holiness is born and grows by virtue of the twofold principle: the divine and the human. God gives grace, man offers his cooperation. We must therefore conform ourselves to the divine will, to the graces and talents infused by the Holy Spirit.

After examining Cardinal Stepinac's profile as a man of prayer, devout and faithful to his vocation, humble, patient, full of love for God and the poor, just and pious; after considering his portrait as a pastor and teacher of souls, a confessor of God and defender of the persecuted and abandoned, we must now follow him through more than 14 years of imprisonment and confinement on his long Way of the Cross, where each station lasts a year.

In this final stage of his life, stripped of all episcopal prerogatives and human rights, he is nothing more than a victim slowly burning away. To reach such a summit of heroic perfection, spiritual theology emphasizes the necessity of active "purification": dying to oneself and to the transient and mortal world through which one had already passed; so that now, in the last years of one's life, one may experience passive purification, as the hand of God guides one to become the masterpiece of Divine Grace.

When Stepinac had done all that he could and should have done, he surrendered himself to God so that the Holy Spirit might guide him along the thorny path of Golgotha. Grace within him did not act in vain; it grew steadily, and the divine Spirit prepared him for a long and painful immolation until he attained heroic virtues.

The world is ignorant of the paths by which God leads the chosen ones, and for this reason, it officially despised him. The fainthearted criticized him for his unwavering opposition to the incursion of evil, but the faithful community of the "people of God" were filled with wonder at the great things the divine hand worked in him.

We have already emphasized that Stepinac had foreseen the sacrifice of his earthly life and was preparing for it. When his time came, he willingly took up the cross to bear witness to Christ to the very end.

This fact alone refutes the reproaches and slander of his enemies who claimed he was an exponent of politics contrary to his own. Politicians, seeing their lives threatened in 1945, sought refuge, and only the good shepherd remained with his flock and laid down his life for them. Stepinac was not a politician and did not seek refuge; he did not even accept a diplomatic compromise. Rather, following the example of the Savior, he gave his life when he could have saved it.

As sanctifying grace, says St. Bonaventure, allied to the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, must develop organically and grow to the fullness of Christ. That is to say, moral virtues grow through the repeated practice of good works, acting on the initiative of the soul itself in a state of grace; gifts, on the other hand, increase through the breath or initiative of the Holy Spirit, thus leading the soul to perfection.

Consequently, for love and the other virtues to produce perfect works, they must be perfected by the Holy Spirit. The soul cannot completely cleanse itself of its imperfections solely through continuous prayer and the active exercise of the virtues; passive purification is also necessary to attain perfection. Therefore, perfection presupposes and requires passive purification, in which the Holy Spirit takes the initiative.

The period of Archbishop Stepinac's imprisonment and confinement was the time of his passive purification, which St. John of the Cross calls the "dark night" of the soul. We are not permitted to penetrate the process of this mystical event in the depths of his soul, in the intimate dialogue of his suffering soul with Christ. We can only glimpse it, from afar.

All the calumnies launched from various sides during the war and in the postwar period, especially during the communist campaign and the legal proceedings, reappeared successively in his soul; all the insults and mystifications, all the reproaches and advice from the so-called well-intentioned to compromise with two faits accomplis, to soften his stance and seek a compromise in the greater interest of the nation, to save what could be saved; All the suffering of his flock under communism, the persecution of the faithful, and the painful defection of the weak... all of that must have paraded through his soul, been re-examined, and resonated deeply in his soliloquy with the crucified Christ, whom he then resembled more closely. Countless times he must have asked himself:

Was his unwavering stance and opposition to communist atheism the only right path in defense of the faith and the people? Did he, by acting in this way, set a true example for other pastors and the faithful? Did his tenacity not perhaps aggravate and prolong the suffering of his people, threatened with biological extermination and torn apart religiously and morally? Anyone who knows even a little about the inner life and mystical ascent of the purification of chosen souls will easily understand how the tempter assaulted his soul during the long, solitary hours of imprisonment, inducing doubt, weakening his faith, breaking him, and leading him to despair.

To the moral suffering were added physical pain. We had heard of his illnesses, but we didn't know the extent of his suffering until we read his letter to the Osijek District Court on December 1, 1959. In that letter, Stepinac responds to the court's summons to appear for questioning in the case of the priests "Cyril Kos and co-defendants."

"The consequence of the sentence that scandalized the world is that my physical life during the thirteen years of imprisonment and confinement has been on the brink of death. Doctors in our country and abroad have done everything possible to prolong my life, but they have not been able to restore my health to this day. They have taken thirty-four liters of blood from me, and that is still not enough. They had to operate on both legs to save me from imminent death by thrombosis. Because of those operations, I am practically an invalid who drags his feet around the house leaning on a cane. In addition, for the last five years I have suffered from prostate problems, and despite all the medication, there are rare moments when I feel completely pain-free. I will not mention the near-fatal illness that afflicted me two years ago when journalists announced that I was in danger of dying. Nor do I want to recall other ailments that plague me, such as bronchial catarrh. I suffered from that for years. When Dr. Sercer requested that I be allowed to go to "The seashore, his request was rejected..."

"Therefore, I tell you that I am a man with both feet on the grave, that I am already descending into it..." Two months later, on February 10, 1960, he died.

It is true that Stepinac repeatedly declared during and after the trial that his conscience was clear. But he was not only Aloysius Stepinac, but the Metropolitan Archbishop of Croatia, the representative of the Church and the shepherd of his persecuted people. He was thus placed as a sign, as a symbol, to whom the eyes of the people and the Church were directed, and what was subjectively, in his innermost being, clear and pure—was it so considering the broad dimension of objective, historical reality? I believe that precisely this intimate spiritual struggle was the reason he asked from prison that his parishioners pray for him, which was not a conventional formula, but the urgent, painful need of an anguished soul. Didn't the doctors also declare that his thrombosis was a consequence of inner, moral suffering? No one, however righteous and devoted to the divine will, can be entirely certain that they are on the right path while living in this world.

Holy souls, as we have said, must possess all the Christian virtues, forming a coherent unity. According to the times and the needs of the Church, other virtues are emphasized at different times. At the beginning of the Church there was a hecatomb of martyrs, then of hermits, monks, and penitents, and in the Middle Ages we find great spiritual reformers, and in modern times, social apostles. In our age of errors, aberrations, and violent ideologies, confessors of the faith of Christ are needed, and in the face of brutal force and refined persecutions, heroic fortitude is required.

Cardinal Stepinac is above all a confessor of the faith, a witness to Christ, as evidenced by his life and work. "Know that Jesus Christ is God. For Him we are ready to die," he exclaimed during his trial. Indeed, he gave his life for Christ God, adding martyrdom to his confession, the ultimate example of unwavering faith and love. His death was technically not violent because the communists resorted to subtle persecution, trying to avoid creating Christian martyrs.

Strictly speaking, his death was that of a martyr, and more difficult than a violent death, since for Stepinac, that would represent a shorter and less painful sacrifice than the slow extinction in prison. Bishop A. Schell of Lomas de Zamora, speaking at Stepinac's funeral, referred to "the death that is—we do not hesitate to say it—the death of a martyr for Christ, although he does not belong to that heroic category of the sons of the Church who shed their blood..."

Many others call him a martyr; for example, in the journal Etudes, published in Paris, the celebrated writer François Mauriac and others, while the prestigious Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación (February 11, 1960) wrote that "his death brings to a close a more arduous and more admirable mission of our times." We leave it to the Church to define his sacrifice, but without a doubt, we can already call him "veluti martyr."

The virtue with which Stepinac amazed the Church and the world was the supernatural virtue of fortitude. This moral virtue is accompanied by the virtues of patience and constancy. It sustains the soul in the pursuit of a difficult good without being broken by any impediment. It strengthens the soul so that it does not capitulate to dangers, weariness, insults, and threats.

Fortitude is not the same as intrepidity, since the latter may be characteristic of a soldier, while fortitude is a passive virtue of suffering, the wall that resists assaults, a kind of steadfast guard. Saint Thomas says that the principal attribute of fortitude is not to attack but to endure, that is, to persevere unfailingly in the face of danger. Its passivity is apparent; it refers only to external action, while volitional activity is more vigorous and pure, without admixture of base passions and interests. P. A. Benigar, in the aforementioned work, compares the contemplative soul to those who listen to a renowned orator, who inspires them with his ideas and feelings.

The listeners at this moment are active, for they act receptively. Thus, our prisoner had immersed himself in religious life, in rich spiritual activity, and thereby accumulated great spiritual capital that will enrich all of us, as a Christian community, with his apparent passivity. The soul is never so active as when it surrenders itself as a submissive instrument into the hands of the Holy Spirit.

The gift of fortitude is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit that strengthens the moral virtue of fortitude, preparing the soul for the special inspirations of the Holy Spirit, thus maintaining our strength in the face of danger. This gift is necessary for those who suffer martyrdom for the sake of the faith.

The opposite of fortitude is cowardice, despised by all. In history, only strong men shine as examples. Many, for reasons of natural order, accept the natural virtue of fortitude, mostly innate, for reasons of glory or wealth, but then it ceases to be a virtue.

The supernatural virtue of fortitude does not resort to force. Cardinal Stepinac does not rebel, insult, threaten, or hate. He only defends divine and human rights; "I do not intend to defend myself personally," he declares before the tribunal. He does not ask for a lawyer. He does not fear being arrested, tried, condemned, or confined, but heroically bears his cross, accepting his "prolonged suffering of 15 years of confinement in his own country," as John XXIII said in his funeral oration. A man full of fortitude, he declares during the trial: "If it is necessary to fall, we will fall, for we have fulfilled our duty... I will be able to go to the next world with a clear conscience."

This mystical and real Way of the Cross, this passive purification, marks the highest stage of perfection, prepared through long practice in humility, prayer, renunciation, poverty, and love, constantly cooperating with Divine Grace, and readily obeying the Holy Spirit. Only with this ascetic preparation could Stepinac have been chosen by Providence as a defense against demonic forces, and to be the spokesperson for truth, justice, freedom, and the love of God before the enemies of God and humanity, at a time when they were intoxicated by bloodshed and victory.

Only a strong man, who placed all his hope in the Lord, could, in the heart of a defeated, terrified, scattered, and despised Croatia, confront and publicly condemn the errors and crimes of Marxism-Communism, and affirm divine and human rights. This man, assailed by pain and anguish, yet filled with divine strength, did not retreat, did not yield, did not doubt, but with patience and perseverance endured the assault, offered his life, and even magnanimously forgave. "The great example of invincible patience that he gave to all during so many years of imprisonment, despite the short distance between his dwelling and theirs (his flock)," amazed John XXIII, as he expressed in his address at St. Peter's Basilica on February 17, 1960.

"The great example of invincible patience that he gave to all during so many years of imprisonment, with such a short distance between his home and theirs (his flock)" amazed John XXIII, as he stated in his address at St. Peter's Basilica on February 17, 1960.

"The great example of invincible patience that he gave to all during so many years of imprisonment, despite the short distance between his home and theirs (his flock)" As much as there is presumption, boastfulness, and arrogance in human boldness, so much does the soul recognize and feel its weakness in the supernatural virtue of fortitude, knowing that everything comes from the Savior. It was precisely through this human weakness that God humbled and conquered the arrogant through Stepinac.

Looking at his struggle with human eyes, we ask ourselves: what immediate effect could he have expected at that historical moment in Croatia, in such an unequal fight against Yugoslav communism, internationally recognized and glorified as the victor? According to human predictions, he had lost the battle in advance. But God works in the long term. His spirit did not take into account external, sensational victories and successes; he had consented to be the instrument of the Holy Spirit in dispelling the darkness and bearing witness to divine rights and his human achievements, and God will provide for the rest when his time comes. Hence his "extraordinary merits," since Stepinac was indeed "an example of apostolic zeal and Christian fortitude," declared Pius XII in St. Peter's Basilica on January 12, 1953.

Stepinac inflicted a great moral defeat on Yugoslav communism, and every moral setback has long-term repercussions. The entire ideological campaign and political terror at the disposal of the communist leaders, without the slightest possibility of defense or opposition, were deflated by the resistance of a single man. World public opinion, once the trial was over and the sentence handed down, began to glimpse the weaknesses of Tito's regime, which called itself "the regime of national liberation." Grace proved stronger than sin and violence.

Cardinal Stepinac, through his fidelity to the Church, remained loyal to his people, and only through their unwavering faith can they take pride in their Shepherd. Stepinac became a symbol and inspiration for Croatian Catholics and non-Catholics alike to persevere in their struggle for higher values. Thanks to his heroic conduct during the most difficult trials of the nation's history, the Croatian people did not suffer the disastrous spiritual and cultural upheaval that the communist leaders had hoped for. Therefore, we can rightly consider Stepinac an extraordinary gift from God to the Croatian people.

Croatia remained faithful to the Church and to itself. The Church in Croatia, like the Church of Silence in other countries, maintained its moral stance. Martyrs do not die in vain; they are the seed that will give rise to new life. The silence that the cardinal, a symbol of the Church of Silence, maintained as his sole means of defense during his trial and imprisonment, as well as the peace of his grave, speaks a voice far louder and more directly than the noisy communist propaganda. Communism will celebrate its victory temporarily, but the fissure has already appeared, one that will cause it many headaches. And if it so chooses, it can learn from the Stepinac case that God and the soul exist, and that the power of the soul is shaking its monolithic system.

"Since it was pleasing to God, it was necessary that temptation should test you" (Tobit 12:13). The soul was purified. The man of God knew that his first relationship with his Creator and Savior stemmed from his condition as a sinner. The entire economy of our salvation is built upon this notion. "Deep down, I am convinced that I have flaws," he acknowledges in his spiritual testament. And since God forgave him, he, in turn, became a person. If I have wronged anyone, I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, ask for forgiveness, and I forgive all those who have wronged me in my life with all my heart” (Stepinac’s Spiritual Testament). These words from his testament moved the good Pope John XXIII:

“How tender, how moving is his request for forgiveness from all those whom he may have offended in his life—even with the best of intentions and charity—in the slightest way; how sublime is his repetition of the last words of the dying Christ to all those who made him suffer so unjustly: ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:24).”

"Stepinac was a 'vir fortis'; he fought a great battle, trusted in God, and closed his eyes with the words: 'Thy will be done!' Oh! Truly, he is a faithful reflection of the Good Shepherd... he has accumulated such a wealth of merits that the Heavenly Father has surely bestowed them as grace and blessing upon all the families and all the faithful of that fervent and devout Croatia."

John XXIII, alluding to his extraordinary and heroic virtues of fortitude, perseverance, kindness, and love, wished to see him raised to the altars when he said: "We pray for the happy glorification of his spiritual effect."

An example and encouragement are given. The Croatians pray for his beatification for the greater glory of God and the salvation of their nation.

Some problems facing culture in socialist Yugoslavia

Stanko M. Vujica, Wilkes Barre, USA

In recent years in Yugoslavia, and particularly in Croatia, considerable attention and publicity have been given to various "negative" phenomena and "contradictions" within the vast field of culture. The philosophical journal Praxis, published by the Croatian Philosophical Association, dedicated three issues last year (3, 4, 5) to the general theme of "Yugoslav culture."

In total, 19 papers, previously presented at the Korcula Summer Seminar, were published, addressing all aspects of the issue. Other Marxist publications also participated in the debate: the weekly Vjesnik u Srijedu (Zagreb), Telegram (Zagreb), the literary journals Kolo (Zagreb) and Forum (Zagreb), the philological journal Jezik (Zagreb), and the official organ of the League of Communists, Socializam (Belgrade), to name just a few of the publications you can consult, at least in part.

The purpose of this work is quite modest. Without going into detail, I will limit myself to summarizing its conclusions and trying to capture the spirit and general meaning of the discussions. It should be noted from the outset that the authors whose viewpoints I will refer to are all Marxists. Non-Marxist intellectuals, who may publish from time to time, refrain from taking a stance on current issues. Whether deliberately or unintentionally avoiding present and internal matters, they employ their talent and erudition in investigating the past or in studying and translating foreign works.

The constant theme that characterizes all these discussions and the common thread that links them is the confrontation of two contrasting conceptions of Marxism: the official conception of the ruling regime and the humanist conception of Marxist intellectuals, "free thinkers," the most prominent and radical of whom are those grouped around the Korcula Summer Seminars and the journal Praxis. This controversy is of interest to us here only insofar as it pertains to the state of culture in a socialist society.

"Young" Marx and "Old" Marx

The evident confusion that permeates all Marxist writings on culture stems from the inconsistencies of the founders themselves, especially from the divergent, even contradictory, viewpoints of the "young" and "old" or "mature" Marx.

The classic Marxist worldview, the ideological framework of the communist movement from Marx and Engels to Kosygin and Breshanev, is based on the "mature" works of Marx and Engels, namely The Communist Manifesto, Capital, Anti-Dühring, and others. The central doctrine in these works is Dialectical Materialism, that is, the thesis on the primacy of matter over spirit, of economics over ideology.

Culture, the ideological manifestation of a given era, constitutes, according to the well-known phrase, a mere "superstructure," a reflection, a rationalization of the "infrastructure" or economic base. Homo economicus, man as producer and consumer of goods, is at the center of Marx's interest, who critiques capitalism from economic, not anthropological, grounds. Capitalism is a bad economy; it doesn't work. In a highly complex and technological age, the old law of the jungle—private ownership of the means of production, unrestricted competition, and unbridled individualism—necessarily leads to chaos, ruin, and the impoverishment of the working class.

Capitalism is fraught with inherent contradictions that inevitably lead to its collapse. Marx was averse to any moralizing or preaching. He scorned what he called utopian and humanitarian communism; he considered his own system scientific. Marx and Engels could say little about the nature of the society that would emerge after a dying and doomed capitalism. It was simply assumed that, once the "infrastructure" was changed, a change in the superstructure would inevitably and automatically occur, presumably an improvement, but, as we have already pointed out, ethical categories such as "good" or "evil", "best" or "worst" were deliberately omitted from Marx's analyses.

However, there is another Marx, the one from his youth—barely 20 years old—who wrote a series of articles, most of which were only published in our century. The most important of these writings are those published in 1932 under the title Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In these manuscripts, Marx criticizes capitalism primarily from a humanist, anthropological, and not economic, point of view. Homo creator, man as a free creative being, is the theme that concerns Marx.

Throughout history, man has led an alienated existence: he has been stripped of his authentic nature as a being who creates praxis. Marx envisioned definitive communism as "a positive overcoming of private property, of man's self-alienation, and thus of the effective reconquest of human nature by and for man" (Mega, III, p. 114). By reclaiming his inherent productive powers, previously subjugated, man will produce things spontaneously, for the sheer pleasure of doing so.

Some products will be material goods, indispensable for physical existence, but even this economic activity will not signify forced labor, but rather artistic creation, free from the agony of monotonous, alienated work. Man will see in work a joyful creation. Industry itself will be an outlet for his creativity. Moreover, in definitive communism there will be such abundance that only a small part of man's daily activities will be dedicated to mere economic production.

The rest of man's life will be devoted to the cultivation and enjoyment of the arts and sciences. As Robert Turner stated in his book Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge University, 1961), "Marx's conception of the ultimate communist state is substantially aesthetic in nature. This utopia is an aesthetic ideal for the future relationship between humanity and nature, which he envisions in terms of artistic creation and the contemplation of beauty, made by humankind" (pp. 157-158).

For the "young Marx," the liberation of humanity from the slavery of alienated labor and the absolution of its spiritual energies for creative activity constitutes the ultimate motive and the force that justifies all previous revolutionary efforts. Capitalism must be abolished because it has dehumanized and alienated humanity, perverted its authentic nature, and created within it what Hegel called "unhappy consciousness." The "young" Marx defined communism as the overcoming of alienation, the "self-reconquest of man" (Selbstgewinung), "the reintegration or return of man to himself, the overcoming of man's self-alienation" (Mega, III, pp. 113-114).

This humanist vision of the early manuscripts constitutes the authentic essence of Marxism, according to the current of thought held after the publication of Marx's early manuscripts, first by some Western Marxist thinkers and now by the Praxis group in Croatia.

They understand that this aspect of Marxist doctrine has by no means disappeared behind the framework of Dialectical Materialism and "vulgar economics." Their position is that the theory of two Marxes is false. There are not two Marxes, the "young" and the "mature," who would be incompatible; there are only two approaches to Marx. In his early writings, Marx formulated his overarching goal: the creation of a genuinely humane society where individuals could cultivate their minds and freely exercise their creative abilities.

In his later works, Marx concentrated on the economic aspect, never forgetting that economics was merely a means. By exclusively emphasizing these latter aspects, Marx's successors in the communist movement obscured and perverted the essence of his vision, paving the way for Stalinism, which is the complete perversion and distortion of Marxism. The humanist Marxists of Praxis made Stalin their scapegoat and Stalinism the target of their "unrelenting criticism of everything that exists," but it is obvious that Stalinism interests them only because it is, as Rudi Supek put it, "the most widespread Marxist conception in the contemporary socialist world."

"Stalinist Positivism"

"Stalinism," of course, means many things; in fact, anything a Marxist does not want in their socialist society is condemned as "the remnant" of Stalinism. Indeed, there are many such "remnants," for, as philosophers in Praxis often say, "dogmatism runs deep." Critics of Stalinism in Croatia label Stalin's theoretical deviations with the common term "Stalinist positivism."

They use the term "positivism" in the Comtean sense: the exclusive reliance on industrialization through applied science and technology as the sole method of human improvement, as the only path leading to the communist utopia. “Stalinist positivism,” writes Supek, “completely stripped dialectical materialism… of the humanist and personalist substance of Marx’s historical conception. Hence, Marxism became the doctrine that extols the continuous advancement of society in which the basis of all progress is the forces of production developing according to national laws, where, consequently, industrialization is the unconditional sign of progress (which more or less marks the limits of capitalist production, or else why socialism?), where culture and the entire ‘superstructure’ are merely a reflection of the development of the base, so that there is no need to worry about them.”

Another aspect of Marxist-Stalinist positivism is organicity, that is, the subordination of the parts to the whole. In society, this means the subordination of the individual to "the collective will" and "common interests," or, as Stalin emphasized (in "Socialism and Anarchism"), "the liberation of the individual is impossible without the liberation of the masses." Hence the belief that socialist society can only be built upon the inflexible suppression of everything personal in man; that every manifestation of individualism must be condemned as "selfish," "anarchist," "decadent," etc.

According to Praxis, the results of Stalinist positivism "were disastrous." The physical sciences and technology, essential for rapid industrialization, were fostered, but socialist culture as a whole was profoundly impoverished. The arts, placed at the service of the economy and politics, were stifled by the insistence on so-called socialist realism and by constant administrative interference in the freedom of artistic expression.

Instead of addressing the problems and suffering of contemporary man, artists had to study the problems of wheat cultivation and sing praises to "wise leadership." The social sciences, subjected to the pressures of ideological dogmatism, were not only paralyzed but virtually proscribed. All this is all the more lamentable given the enormous progress these studies had made in the West over the past few decades.

"Today, fifty years after the October Revolution," says Supek, "it is more than painful to examine the cultural landscape of socialism as the historical stage that had promised 'a new kind of man' and more humane relations between people." With a very small modification, all that still holds true for the Soviet Union, homeland of the first socialist experiment, where Stalin's crimes were revealed and repudiated, but where the Stalinist way of thinking still prevails, not to mention China.

Stalinist Positivism and Yugoslavia

And what about Yugoslavia? The Marxist-humanists surrounding Praxis maintain that Yugoslavia has distanced itself considerably from Stalinism and is progressing toward the ideal of a genuine socialist society. But alas, many Stalinist "remnants" remain, giving us cause for celebration. One of these is the insistence that building socialism consists primarily of raising the economic standard. Everything else is unimportant, or at least not urgent. This is certainly not admitted publicly, but it shapes government policy. Priority is given to the physical sciences and technology, to the training of specialists, while the arts and humanities are systematically relegated.

In the article "Our Publishing Activity in Light of the Existing Cultural Level," Jozo Lausic cites statistical data to show that Yugoslavia ranks almost at the bottom of the scale of published titles in European countries. Fields of study such as sociology, anthropology, political theory, and psychology are practically nonexistent. For example, Yugoslavia, in terms of books on psychology, barely surpasses Albania.

The main reason for the small number of published books is the lack of public libraries, whose number was already meager in pre-war Yugoslavia, but was halved after 1947. While in England, France, Germany, and Italy 80% of books are acquired by public libraries, in Yugoslavia that figure does not exceed 4%. Twenty percent of the population is illiterate, and another 20% can barely sign their names and read newspaper headlines. "Our cultural level is far below our economic level," concludes Lausic.

Several contributors to the Praxis symposium deplore this state of affairs. "Vulgar economists," as they call their critics, forget that man does not live by peace alone and that for Marx, culture is the soul of socialism. While economic development is promoted, other genuinely human needs should not be relegated; in other words—as Supek says—"Why Socialism?" The affluent societies of the West have satisfied the physical needs of the masses at least to the same degree, if not more so, than socialist states, despite Marx's prediction of the increasing pauperization of the working class under capitalism. The only basis and justification for criticizing contemporary "organized" capitalism, unless we assume that Marx's condemnation is erroneous, lies in addressing the problem within the broader context of the humanist predicament of his early writings.

Capitalism gives rise to man's "unhappy consciousness" and self-alienation. While it achieves success in the economy, it is culturally sterile. The advantage of socialism lies in its ability to better satisfy man's needs. Therefore, "if it does not develop culture, it is not socialism," the editors of Praxis emphasize. Moreover, this must begin immediately after the revolution. The notion that cultural development can be awaited only after socialism is developed is a contradiction in itself. Marx's teaching on the economic base and superstructure is rejected as outdated and is argued to be applicable only to capitalist society, not to socialism.

The separation of the various spheres of human activity and the predominance of the economic over the spiritual do not stem from human nature; rather, they are manifestations of human self-alienation. Socialism overcomes this separation and predominance: its goal is the whole person, the harmonious fulfillment of all their needs. The policy of relegating the arts and sciences and subordinating them to other, more pressing needs is, therefore, contrary to the spirit of authentic socialism.

The problem of cultural funding is also unsatisfactorily addressed in Yugoslavia. Official policy typically consists of subsidizing cultural institutions and publishing houses, which presents two negative aspects: poor bureaucratic management and ideological interference. Selimovic mentions two stark examples of bureaucratic mismanagement in the Sarajevo-based journal Odjek. The Fund for Cultural Activities of the Socialist Republic of Serbia allocated 6 million dinars to various cultural activities and disbursed 21 million dinars for the institution's administrative expenses. The Institute for the Protection of Copyright (ZAMP) collected 480 million dinars in royalties in one year, but only 2% was paid to authors.

Currently, "administrative funding" is minimal, and cultural products depend on the law of supply and demand. This aligns with the new free-market economic policy and self-management in all businesses, adopted a few years ago. Publishing houses are established, independent companies and must sustain themselves with their own resources.

This measure of "liberalization" of culture is the target of attacks from those who advocate liberalization in other areas. The outcry now is against the commercialization of culture: there must, after all, be a difference between books and sausages, they say; genuine cultural values cannot be treated as competitive commodities, and readers merely as consumers. It is obvious that, competing with sausages, books have no prospects in a low-income country.

It is another matter that prices in general are subject to inflationary trends, and so are book prices, which in Yugoslavia are three times more expensive than in the Soviet Union, Hungary, or Poland. But the worst consequence of such an economic approach to cultural products is the decline of good taste. The flooding of the market with cheap, mass-produced art is deplored everywhere, but it is inevitable in a culturally underdeveloped country.

A society that professes its special concern for the masses and operates according to the principle of supply and demand must necessarily produce a mass culture. The masses want bread and circuses. In this way, the humanist Marxist "liberals" are making a very peculiar case. To save culture from degradation, they are forced to appeal to the authorities to do something. But this means administrative funding, bureaucracy, and ideological intervention—that is, what they deplore. These humanist Marxists want the State to assume new functions and, at the same time, to step aside, as their opponents point out.

Socialist culture?

There are other contradictions in the "inflexible criticism of everything that exists." As we pointed out, for humanist Marxists, culture constitutes the raison d'être of socialism. From a purely economic point of view, its superiority to capitalism is at least doubtful. Therefore, in theory, they adhere to the idea that there is a socialist culture distinct in its nature from bourgeois culture. This, in fact, is explicitly denied by at least some contributors to Praxis, and implicitly by all.

In the article entitled "Culture as Fetish and the Economic Approach to Culture," Bruno Poponic highlights that twenty years ago, for incomprehensible reasons, the Stalinist thesis that a "new" "socialist" culture exists and that the duty of every cultural worker is to promote such a culture was accepted. But he adds that there is something completely wrong with this concept of the "new culture"; it is merely a "soap bubble." Others expressed similar views. Jozo Lausic, in the aforementioned article, also criticizes the view that there are two cultures. The notion of "socialist culture" is meaningless when referring to what is more appropriately called "cultural politics," that is, the policy of socialist society to treat culture in a way that differs somewhat from how it is treated in "bourgeois" societies.

Even those who, theoretically, cling to the idea of a vaguely defined "socialist" culture, deny it in practice. This is clear in their discussions about the relationship between "old" and "new" culture. The notorious Marxist dogma is that history itself, that is, human history, begins with communism (what came before was "prehistory," the period of man's inhumanity toward his fellow man, of class struggle, of economic exploitation, etc.), and that the culture of the past, being a reflection of inhuman economic and social realities, is perverted in its essence; it is a dehumanized culture, an expression of "unhappy consciousness" and man's self-alienation.

In The German Ideology, Marx repudiated classical German philosophy, the highest manifestation of bourgeois culture, precisely as one of the forms of man's self-alienation. In theory, then, the old culture must be overcome and replaced by the new, "higher" socialist culture. Interest in the old culture belongs in the museum; it is something to be embalmed, mummified, and exhibited as a curiosity, a monument to human stupidity. But such theoretical structures, a priori, crumble upon first contact with the solid realities of life. No socialist country has been able to live according to such theories.

Indeed, one of the paradoxes of socialist societies lies in the growing interest in everything related to the past, as evidenced by the flood of books and monographs about major historical events and figures. In the general introduction to the considerations on the culture of Yugoslavia, the editors of Praxis expressed what appears to be the consensus of all the contributors. "A nihilistic attitude toward cultural heritage," they wrote, "is, at its core, an a-cultural or anti-cultural attitude, and it doesn't matter how one tries to justify it by accepting the new 'higher' culture, since it lowers the starting point below the level already achieved." Furthermore, they continue: "In the culture that we have called 'opulent comfort', feudal or bourgeois, there are often more universal, genuinely human elements than in the one that is sometimes explicitly proclaimed as socialist culture."

Socialism and the West

A similar ambivalent position is observed with respect to Western culture. Perhaps one could speak of the Oedipus complex. As Mihailo Mihailov recently reminded Tito, Marxism originated in the West. However, the word "West" in the Marxist vocabulary is equivalent to the unredeemed part of humanity, and like sin, it both fascinates and repels Marxist believers. The editors of Praxis state: "Opulent Western society satisfied man's physical needs and, in the cultural sphere, launched vast quantities of products onto the market that can satisfy the needs of the alienated human soul." On the other hand, it is admitted that alienation has not disappeared in socialist societies.

Rudi Supek and Predrag Vranicki seek to clarify this point. Supek states that because political revolution and revolutionary government were assumed to be sufficient guarantees for man's liberation from his status—namely, from comforts and other forms of alienation—the problem of alienation was not part of the discussion during the Stalinist decades. Events, however, refuted such a simple assumption. First and foremost, socialism inherited certain alienated forms from capitalism that cannot be eliminated overnight or discarded: the state, classes, the party, the nation, the bureaucracy, religion, comfort, the market, currency, etc.

Furthermore, there are other, more subtle and complex forms of alienation inherent in advanced economics and technology as such. Vranicki observes that "homo duplex, a characteristic phenomenon of contemporary civilization, has not disappeared as a problem in socialism." The increasing specialization and fragmentation of labor accentuate its monotony, lack of creativity, and dullness, and alienate the worker from their work.

Socialism will also have to grapple with the problem of automation. Underlining that "helplessness and a sense of doom" have characterized the feelings of many people in "organized capitalism," Supek adds: However, it would be naive to assume that only bourgeois society faces these new problems of social contradictions. They also arise, albeit under somewhat different conditions, in socialist society. Supek continues that the problems of statism, bureaucratism, technocracy, technological automation, mass culture, and chaotic industrialization and urbanization are equally relevant to socialism.

Although, as stated, the elimination of the feeling of alienation would be socialism's only advantage over capitalism, it turns out that this advantage is quite precarious. But it provides, at least in the opinion of Marxist philosophers, the answer to the perplexing problem of why everything Western, especially American, holds such a strong attraction for the public in socialist countries, be it the "decadent" poetry of T. S. Eliot, the existentialist philosophy of Sartre, pop art, or anything that serves popular entertainment.

Perhaps the main reason is the failure of socialist literature.

Failure of socialist literatura

During the early postwar years, Marxist writers in Yugoslavia sought to surpass their Soviet models in what was called socialist realism. What should have been literature became thinly veiled propaganda: the glorification of the "homeland of socialism," the "brilliant" Stalin, and his own "struggle for national liberation," whose importance was elevated to cosmic proportions; the encouragement of collective enthusiasm for building roads and factories. The most important aesthetic criterion was "partijnost" (party consciousness).

In an anthology of recent Croatian poetry, published in 1952, the name of Tito, and even of the Party, appears in a dozen poems (poems containing Stalin's name were excluded, thus omitting the most outstanding postwar poems). The rigorous Stalinist period was relatively short-lived due to the notorious political events. Historians of Yugoslavian literature consider Miroslav Krleza's programmatic speech at the Third Congress of Yugoslav Writers, held in Ljubljana in 1952, as the official date of the break from socialist realism with its black-and-white technique. "Writing is not the same as describing or transcribing... because then every hack would be a poet..." he said.

From then on, the rejection and mockery of socialist realism became a mania among Yugoslav Marxist writers. The art of kicking a dead horse had been perfected to its most subtle limits. Just as everyone politically considered it convenient and popular to refer to Stalin with contempt, so too did every writer then unleash their satires against "Zhdanov's socialist realism."

The problem, it seems, is that the pendulum swung completely in the opposite direction. Even enfants terribles like Dobrica Cosic, the Serbian novelist, defend artistic freedom. In direct response to Tito's statement on "the artist's responsibility to society," Vjesnik wrote a few years ago in the Zagreb newspaper: "By his very nature, the literary artist embraces all social reality;... he tends to accept social realities and deny them at the same time. Understanding the nature of the relationship between art and society depends on the capacity and willingness to understand and accept only that art which, in the name of higher or different visions, opposes a social reality that deserves to remain the same forever... There will be minor disagreements, and life will be a little more bearable in this world if society... assigned much less socio-political or ideological significance to art."

Encouraged by the repudiation of socialist realism and political interference in art, some writers turned away entirely from social themes. It is significant that some liberal critics feel it necessary to apply the old Zhdanovist epithets to them: "formalist," "narcissist," "individualist," "petty bourgeois," "egoist," "decadent," etc. It so happens that these writers have become self-absorbed or express existentialist sentiments of cosmic loneliness, the absurdity of existence, anguish, etc., without referring to socialist reality. Unlike their colleagues in the philosophical discipline who later embarked on a ruthless critique of everything that exists, Marxist writers, it seems, couldn't care less about all that, to the point of not even deigning to criticize it.

This indifference is considered harmful. Condemning what he calls the "privatization" of the arts, Vlado Gotovac writes: "Many (writers) have withdrawn into their own world, protecting their position regarding events with silence...; to be respected means not getting involved in uncertain risks, not risking anything..." He censures literary critics for adopting a tolerant and unprincipled attitude toward these phenomena. Tolerance has become a virtue for the critic and, indeed, their only criterion. "In this way, one makes few mistakes, but also says little."

Vjeran Zuppa, regarding criticism, points particularly to the so-called Krug generation (Tomicic, Golob, Buljan, Slavicek) and Razlog, who, "playing senselessly with words and piously closing their eyes, are quite content to let their fate be determined by others." "The characteristic of most of our writers," Gotovac complains, "is their supreme ambition to enter the history of literature, while they seem less ambitious to contribute their words to contemporary history."

"Yugoslavian culture"

Just as there is great confusion regarding the meaning of the adjective "socialist," there is similar confusion regarding the adjective "Yugoslav" in relation to culture. Several papers presented at the Praxis symposium on "Yugoslav culture" attempt to determine the meaning of the term "Yugoslav" in its context. Of course, the word has an obvious geographical and political significance: it refers to the territory inhabited by the peoples known as South Slavs (Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians); it also refers to the State of Yugoslavia.

Therefore, the term "Yugoslav culture" can be used as a collective term for the cultures of the peoples who now live within the borders of the State of Yugoslavia. But can it be used for something more? Are there any cultural aspects of the different nations within Yugoslavia that are common to all of them and only to them? In short, is there such an entity as Yugoslav culture, as there is French or Albanian culture? In posing this problem, the editors of Praxis emphasize and suggest what they believe is the answer to the question posed.

They write: "In a world where the feeling of national belonging still largely motivates people in their achievements, culture cannot be 'anational.' Culture is simultaneously national, supranational, and international. The problem lies in how to relate the specifically national dimension, especially in Yugoslavia, where there are two scripts, three languages, five nations, and six republics." They then state that Yugoslav culture "is not an accidental conglomeration of nations unrelated to one another; ultimately, it is a culture of nations interconnected not only by their common linguistic and ethical origins and centuries-old reciprocal economic, political, and cultural influences, but also by their shared socialist present."

The same idea is shared in a dissertation on the subject written by Dobrica Cosic. Reaffirming the official policy that Yugoslavia is a multinational state and that there is no Yugoslav nation (in the ethical sense), and condemning any attempt to suppress individual national cultures in the name of a supposedly common Yugoslav culture, Cosic also maintains that Yugoslav culture "is not a simple, mechanical, non-complementary conglomeration of the independent national cultures within the borders and state territory of Yugoslavia. The national cultures are Yugoslav also by virtue of certain identical orientations in their content" (p. 527). Cosic then details these identical aspects, namely: the socialist structure of Yugoslav society; the ideology and international spirit in relation to other cultures and its own values; the common values acquired in the past and present based on common goals and struggles for liberation; national similarities, especially linguistic ones; common aims and ideals; and numerous common influences, particularly in the last two or three decades.

It is evident that, apart from a few national similarities and mutual influences no greater than those existing between all nations, especially neighboring and ethnically similar ones, the only thing the national cultures in Yugoslavia have in common is their shared socialist experience. However, the Yugoslav peoples share this socialist experience with the other countries of Eastern Europe. Moreover, as has been pointed out, there is serious doubt as to whether there is a socialist culture distinct from the others.

National problem

It is worth emphasizing here that in all these discussions surrounding Yugoslav culture, the so-called "national question" is ever-present. Almost all the symposium participants referred to the resurgence of "chauvinism," as it is officially termed, "nationalism," or "separatism," particularly among Croatians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Albanians. The editors underline that some believe "a public discussion on the issue of nationalities is dangerous and harmful," but silence, they counter, would be even more dangerous. As Marxists and adherents of the party line that insists on "brotherhood and unity," the authors deplore and condemn the resurgence of separatist tendencies in the non-Serbian republics. Setting aside the political and economic aspects of the problem, they confine themselves to its repercussions in the cultural sphere. “It is interesting,” declares Rudi Supek, “that one of the sources of the national problem here in Croatia lies in the realm of literature. Indeed, here one finds a particular national sensibility and a certain sense of frustration.”

Supek suggests that the reason might be that authors here have a more attuned and developed ear to the feelings of the people. Supek admits that there is statistical evidence of discrimination in the cultural sphere and cites official data showing that in 1965 Croatia received 400 million dinars in subsidies for publishing, while the sum allocated to Serbia amounted to 2.25 billion.

M. Selakovic cites another example in his article published on Telegram on May 3, 1965, entitled “Yugoslav Writers: What Do They Mean to the Publisher?” The Belgrade publishing house Mlado Pokoljenje (New Generation) published 60 volumes of world literature under the title The Complete School Reading Book, for use in schools, emphasizing in the introduction that the "selection was made according to the requirements of the curriculum." It includes 34 Serbian writers, 6 Slovenian writers, 3 Croatian writers, and no Macedonian writers. A great scandal erupted when Recnik srpsko-hrvatskog jezika (Dictionary of the Serbian-Croatian Language), compiled by the Serbian linguist Milo S. Moskovljevic and published in the spring of that year by two Belgrade publishing houses, Nolit and Tehnicka knjiga, caused a stir. This dictionary systematically omits the word "Croatian" and all its derivatives. In contrast, the word "Serbian" is repeatedly mentioned. The word "srbovati" is defined as: to behave like a true Serb.

The book was finally withdrawn from circulation, primarily due to its anti-communist stance (the word "fascism" is defined as "the counterweight to communism," and "partisan" as a "communist guerrilla" and as "a man who is fanatically guided by the interests of his political party").

Last year, the Soviet Academy requested a monograph on "The Peoples of Yugoslavia" from the Ethnographic Institute of Belgrade for inclusion in its "Peoples of the World" edition. The monograph was published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade. The foreword emphasizes that representatives from all the republics of Yugoslavia collaborated in the preparation of "this ethnological publication, unique in its scope and importance," and that "many individual Yugoslav scientific and technical viewpoints were coordinated and became collective." In the Zagreb-based cultural weekly Telegram (June 27, 1966), the Croatian Marxist historian Trpimir Macan critically reviewed this edition, titling his piece "An Unacceptable Omission." Among other things, he points out the following inaccuracies: the ancestors of present-day Bosniaks are declared Serbs, and Bosnia-Herzegovina is listed as a Serbian province. The Renaissance literature of Dubrovnik, the pride of Croatian letters, is listed as Serbian literature. A distinction is made between Dalmatian and Croatian literature, which is a single entity.

Sixty-four writers are cited, the most important for the development of Yugoslav literatures in the eyes of the editorial staff. Among them, however, are not the names of prominent Croatian men of letters such as Preradovic, Domjanic, and Matos, but rather a dozen completely unknown Serbian writers. When discussing World War II, Draza Mihailovic and his nationalist Cetnik guerrillas are not listed as "collaborators," but only Ante Pavelic and his Ustaše, etc.

Imposition of the Serbian language

Over the past few years, Croatian philosopher Professor Ljudevit Jonke felt it necessary to write a series of articles in the magazines Jezik (Language), Telegram and other newspapers, censuring the persistent efforts to impose the Belgrade variant of the Serbo-Croatian language in Croatia. “It is unpleasant,” Jonke observes, “to think about this matter, and even more so to write about it. Some believe that because it is unpleasant, the best thing would be to keep quiet. These things, they argue, will somehow sort themselves out over time. On the other hand, I believe that nothing will be achieved if measures are not taken to rectify it.” With numerous examples, he supports his arguments, “that even today many have adopted the position that, under the pressure of the dictatorship of January 6 (proclaimed on 6/1/1929 by King Alexander Karageorgevic), flourished in pre-war Yugoslavia, namely, that no effort should be spared to impose a variant of the literary language on the entire Serbo-Croatian language area.”

“In Bosnia and Herzegovina, things have gone too far,” laments Mate Hraste, another Croatian linguist, and if this course continues, “everything that for years and decades belonged to the Zagrabian variant of the language will disappear in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” "Croatian-Serbian, and only what currently belongs to the Belgrade variant will remain." Professor Jonke cites the case of a teacher in Sarajevo who, in front of the entire class, told a Croatian student that the Croatian-Serbian language is used only in the Republic of Croatia and that the Serbian language is used in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He adds that, according to his information, in Bosnia and Herzegovina the popular language is officially called Serbian even where the population is predominantly Croatian.

The imposition of the Belgrade dialect in Croatian-speaking areas reached such proportions that, not long ago, three Croatian associations were forced to protest. The Croatian Writers' Society published the conclusions of its plenary session, stating, among other things: "For some time now, certain public figures have been waging a campaign with the aim, and resorting to various means and methods, of imposing a single standard and only one (Belgrade) terminological, lexical, syntactic, and orthographic variant on the entire territory of the Croatian-Serbian language... All of this This proves that the unitary aspirations that threaten the understanding, collaboration, and fraternity of our peoples have not yet been extinguished.”

The Zagreb Linguistic Circle’s “Resolution” was drafted in a similar vein. Emphasizing that “this is not just a linguistic problem but necessarily a political one,” the “resolution” rejects the view of Serbian philologists that “no people has the right to sovereignly decide on its language.” The statement from the Scientific Department for Language of the Zagreb Academy of Sciences and Arts specifically criticizes Professor Djordje Rasovica, who maintains a thesis “similar to that of the unitarists of pre-war Yugoslavia: that the Croatian variant of our literary language, as an attribute of the Croatian nation, has no right to exist.”

Resurgence of nationalisms

All the writers at the Praxis symposium agreed on one point regarding the resurgence of nationalism: the primary cause of this phenomenon is the failure to develop socialist consciousness. “How have we sinned against the future and the present,” Supek asked, “that the ghosts of the past have returned and haunt us?”

Supek answered his own question by stating that “the main reason lies in the absence of certain positive factors,” in the “impotence” of socialist culture, in “ideological disorientation.” Certain contradictions of bourgeois society were not overcome, and socialism has not yet provided a new spiritual homeland for the younger generations.

The Croatian Marxist novelist Pedro Segedin argued along the same lines. In the article "On the Feelings of Belonging and the Responsibility of the Intellectual in a Small Nation," Segedin argues:

"If we have liquidated (social) classes, what then is the one in which we live? Society. But society is a rather abstract notion. Then, not surprisingly, the nation appears... The nation is richer in myths than the class. Therefore, it is natural that in the society that has liquidated classes, the nation appears on the scene with its inventory of values. And how are we, as socialists, prepared for that? Not at all. Perhaps, should it be this way?"

Speaking specifically of "leftist intellectuals," Segedin observes that they tend to shift their allegiance to humanity and have relegated loyalty to their own ethnic group to a secondary or tertiary position; they have become internationalists, citizens of the world; the anchor of their loyalty and aspirations is the future of humanity. Segedin expresses his doubt about the wisdom of such action and continues:

"The question arises: Can adherence to a class, to the exploited sector of humanity, or to a worldview, however founded on scientific premises, justify abandoning allegiance and responsibility to the people among whom one was born, simply because that ethnic group is small in number or even in importance? Or because it was necessary to sacrifice it for the sake of socialism in broader national territories? I will leave this question unanswered, since perhaps the problem is not well formulated."

It must be acknowledged that these Marxist intellectuals, in their scrutinizing analyses of the socialist experiment in Yugoslavia, have not hesitated to express both their doubts and their hopes. According to recent news, the journal Praxis will be suspended. It seems the Party has decided that such self-criticism does not benefit socialist society and threatens the existence of the multinational state of Yugoslavia. This indirectly admits that neither socialism nor Yugoslavia can survive the application of the democratic system of freedom of thought and expression.

A measure by the French government that undermines the Croatian people's resistance to communism and Grand Servism.

Ivo Bogdan, Buenos Aires

I

General de Gaulle's attitudes toward European, Atlantic, and world politics are well known, often confusing even the French themselves, their allies, and the numerous admirers and friends of the French nation worldwide. Leaving aside the NATO issue and his opposition to Britain's entry into the European Common Market, it suffices to point to his stance on the war in the Middle East and his other actions in international politics, whether in the Eastern or Western spheres, which have been the subject of very divided opinions. World public opinion is almost unaware of another, perhaps even more perplexing, case. This concerns the banning of the publication of "Hrvatska Revija" (Croatian Review), the organ of Croatian intellectuals in exile, and the expulsion from France of its editor, Professor Vinko Nikolic, as we shall see later. This was done to serve the communist government in Belgrade, thereby effectively accepting its view that the unity of the Yugoslav multinational conglomerate supersedes the right of its peoples to personal, political, and national freedoms, and to undermine fundamental freedoms and rights.

This case is both astonishing and worrying for several reasons.

First, it involves coercive measures against a prestigious journal that, due to its democratic ideals, had managed to bring together almost all foreign writers and journalists. Furthermore, the Croatian Review consistently expressed its appreciation and affection for France. This is, therefore, a shocking attack on freedom of thought and expression, perpetrated by the government of a great nation, generally considered and cherished as the second homeland of free people throughout the world.

Leaving aside other aspects, only the one we have just mentioned deserves the attention of all lovers of liberty. It is thus understandable that the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE) intervened publicly in favor of the right to free expression of exiled Croatian writers. The representatives of the Argentine writers did so with a deep understanding of the problem, given that Vinko Nikolic is an Argentine citizen and founded the Croatian Review in Buenos Aires, where it was published regularly for fifteen years before his move to Paris.

Another aspect of this painful problem lies in the persecution of exiled intellectuals, victims of a communist tyranny who, out of love for freedom, left their homeland to be able to think and express themselves freely in the democratic countries of the West. It is a great sacrifice, for the separation of a writer from their native-speaking audience is deeply painful. Therefore, the measures taken against the Croatian Review and its editor exacerbate the already tragic situation of exiled Croatian intellectuals, due to their limited opportunities for expression and contact with their readers.

Thus, the measures taken by the French government constitute, without exaggeration, not only a challenge to human and liberal sentiments, but also a blatant violation of the right to political asylum, so highly respected in Latin American countries. This is all the more egregious given that the Croatian Review did not interfere in political actions; it merely advocated, through reasoned arguments, the right to freedom and self-determination of the Croatian people, victims of communist tyranny and Serbian domination and exploitation under the pretext of uniting the South Slavs.

Such a drastic measure by the French authorities against a prestigious publication of free exiles had decidedly negative effects on the prestige of the current French government, among the ranks of numerous asylum seekers behind the Iron Curtain, and in their respective countries.

The third aspect of this case is no less regrettable. There is no doubt that the closure of the Croatian Review and the expulsion of its editor from France were carried out at the express request of the communist government in Belgrade, which has usurped power in Croatia. This government is concerned by the fact that both exiled Croatian intellectuals and those in Croatia are increasingly demanding, in unison and with greater vigor, the right to self-determination not only for Croatia, but for all the peoples of Yugoslavia, who have been deprived of political freedoms and national rights. Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, the compact Albanian ethnic group of Kosovo-Metohija, and the large Hungarian minority in Vojvodina find themselves in the same situation as the Croats.

This is, therefore, a repressive measure against those who demand for the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia the right to self-determination, enshrined in so many pronouncements and solemn declarations from the First World War to the United Nations; we are referring, then, to the right that formally appears even in the text of the Yugoslav constitution, the norm that General de Gaulle liked to highlight as one of the pillars of his conceptions regarding the international order.

While it no longer surprises anyone that the communist dictatorship in practice distorts the right to self-determination, in the case of the French government it was reasonable to expect that it would proceed with greater consistency in the interpretation and application of the rights and principles so emphasized by General de Gaulle and, moreover, obligatory, at least in theory, for all member states of the United Nations. If General de Gaulle had the moral fortitude to recognize the right to self-determination for the colonies of the former French empire, which were joining the community of civilized nations for the first time, it would be logical to expect that he would not consider that same right subversive when it comes to ancient European nations like Croatia. This is all the more true given that the creation of nation-states upon the dissolution of the Yugoslav multinational conglomerate would mark the beginning of a solution to a whole series of problems, which were among the causes of the First World War and continue to be a source of ongoing tension in this part of Europe and a potential threat to peace.

Finally, this case takes on added gravity due to the personality of General de Gaulle, a statesman with a highly developed awareness of history and historical responsibility. Even the harshest critics of his foreign policy cannot forget that he is one of the most prominent political figures of our time, a meritorious and sincere champion of the rights and freedoms of peoples, deeply rooted in the traditions of France and the Christian West. of a politician influential not only in his homeland but throughout the world and, what matters most in our specific case, of a political thinker of extraordinary stature.

If, despite all this, a publication of intellectuals like the "Croatian Review" is pursued under his aegis, it is obviously not simply a matter of yielding to the pressures of the Yugoslav communist government at a time when this French statesman—consistent with his view that governments and regimes come and go, but peoples remain—is trying to reach out to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, regardless of their regimes. Knowing the courage and personal integrity of this prominent political figure, we are compelled to record a sad fact: that the Yugoslav rulers once again misled a government of the free world.

Previously, during the last world war, they managed to conceal their true aims from democratic governments, presenting themselves as liberators and labeling as slanderers and Nazi collaborators all those who pointed out that their main objective was communist revolution and the establishment of a Soviet empire of satellites. They achieved this by skillfully exploiting confusion and prejudice regarding certain national issues, a chronic phenomenon, especially in France, when it comes to the unresolved national question in a sensitive area, particularly in Yugoslavia.

It turns out that French foreign policy—with all due respect—is still beholden to the prejudices prevalent in the Third Republic regarding the political and national reality in Southeast Europe. There is a persistence of the now anachronistic conceptions from the time of the First World War, even in this era of re-evaluating past concepts, especially concerning the period between the two wars, and even in our current era of European cooperation, which presupposes a new approach to relations between the peoples of Europe. The persistence in certain prejudices is detrimental both to the peoples directly affected and to the countries and governments that do not know how to discard them in time.

Therefore, we deem it appropriate to highlight both the facts surrounding the tragic case of the persecution of the Croatian Review and the reasons why the Yugoslav communist tyranny, in its vicious campaign against Croatian intellectuals who advocate for the right to self-determination both at home and in exile, managed to make the government of a free country, under the leadership of a great statesman, an accomplice.

All of this contrasts sharply with the character of both General de Gaulle and the enduring France that we all feel and cherish as the homeland of personal, political, and national freedoms. In other words, the fact that the French government is siding with those responsible for political and national oppression of the peoples of communist Yugoslavia requires careful analysis.

We have already published several references and notes in this journal regarding the Croatian Review and the work of its director and editor, Professor Vinko Nikolic, who is also a member of our editorial team. Gradually, the Croatian Review gathered in its pages the most prominent exiled Croatian writers.

We will mention only the most prominent figures in cultural and political life, now deceased, namely: Dr. Vladimir Macek, successor to Esteban Radic as president of the Croatian Peasant Party, which, in the period between the two world wars, won every election by an overwhelming majority; Ivan Mestrovic, the celebrated sculptor who was politically active as an exile in France during the First World War; Monsignor Ivan Saric, Archbishop of Sarajevo and a distinguished man of letters, who died in exile in Madrid; Professor Filip Lukas, former rector of the Higher School of Commercial Studies in Zagreb, president for many years of Matica Hrvatska, Croatia's oldest literary institution, renowned author, and friend of France; and Professor Vinko Kriskovic, former Vice-President of Croatia, statesman, legal author, and essayist. Furthermore, the contributors include over a hundred Croatian writers and publicists, as well as several foreigners, all friends of Croatia, responding to the urgent need to address, within the free world and on a democratic and liberal platform, the problems—off-limits to politicians, intellectuals, and writers—of those living in subjugated Croatia.

When the editor and owner of the Croatian Review decided, after 15 years of uninterrupted publication in Buenos Aires, to move it to Europe, it was natural that its new headquarters would be Paris, since France symbolizes for the free people of the world the land of liberty and, as such, the second homeland of all lovers of freedom.

General de Gaulle's policy of heightened independence from other powers and his affirmation of national rights should not be an obstacle but rather an advantage in order to create spiritual connections with the captive countries, precisely from France, which aims to strengthen its influence in that region. On the other hand, the French capital, with its Slavic Institute and its rich libraries, offers opportunities for work and study, and provides the necessary documentation to defend the right to freedom of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

It is true that there are precedents of sometimes very strict control over exiles by the French authorities. However, it was difficult to imagine that in France freedom of expression could be attacked in cultural matters that are not directly political, which in the case of the Croatian Review was taken for granted, since this publication is far removed from any political activism and its opposition to all forms of extremism is quite clear.

Therefore, the Croatian exiles were deeply shaken by the incredible news that the editor of the "Croatian Review" was ordered by government authorities to leave France within 48 hours. He had previously published the first volume of his magazine in Paris in 1966, with abundant material on Franco-Croatian relations, emphasizing the influence of France on the development of national and political thought among the Croats.

Professor V. Nikolic was not informed of the reason for his expulsion. He could only surmise that it was a direct intervention by the government of communist Yugoslavia, since until then the reception and treatment he received from the French authorities had been very cordial. One might even conclude that the presence of such a publication in France was desirable, as it enhanced France's prestige in the eyes of all lovers of liberty, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe, who spiritually identify with the glorious traditions of France.

Although the measure against the editor of the "Croatian Review" is extremely severe and quite unpleasant due to the lack of any explanation and the possibility of defending himself, Nikolic considered it to be merely slander against him and believed that the magazine could continue to be published in Paris, regardless of his personal situation, especially since from the beginning another person, residing in Paris, had been appointed as editor and owner. It could be hoped that the editor's personal situation would eventually become clear and be resolved satisfactorily. The main thing was to continue with the magazine. For this reason, it was decided not to discuss the matter publicly, since expressions of displeasure and criticism stemming from the French authorities' possible misunderstanding could have rather negative effects.

Thus, having overcome numerous editorial difficulties, a volume encompassing three issues was successfully typesetted at the same Paris printing house to complete the 1966 edition of this prestigious quarterly magazine. When this voluminous tome was already typeset and ready for printing, the French police stormed the printing workshop, destroyed the pages as they entered the press, and informed the printer that publication of the magazine was prohibited.

Thus, it turned out that V. Nikolic's expulsion was not only directed against him personally but also against the "Croatian Review." The French government, in ordering the expulsion of Professor Nikolic, probably wanted to save face, since measures, however severe, against an exile, slandered and denounced by the communists, would not cause as much of a scandal as the banning of a prestigious journal to which prominent authors and unimpeachable democratic figures have contributed for 16 years. Thus, it would be evident that the measure affects not only an individual but a free voice that proclaims national rights within a liberal and democratic framework, without subversive implications or calls for direct action against the oppressors of the Croatian people.

These are not measures against the organ of some revolutionary or partisan faction, but against a platform created by Croatian intellectuals in the free world, yet with strong resonance in oppressed Croatia. This is precisely what worries and unsettles the supporters of the communist dictatorship to such a degree that they have requested the assistance of the French government against free Croatian intellectuals. Their request, unfortunately, was granted.

We can state that the decision was made at the highest political level. This is clearly inferred from the written instructions issued by the Quai d'Orsav to the administrative bodies, which state that the resistance of the oppressed peoples in Yugoslavia, especially the Croats, is increasing and that there is a danger of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

This is also clearly evident from the recent (March 1967) Declaration of Croatian cultural institutions in defense of the Croatian language. The French government, it is stated in said instruction, considers it appropriate to render a service to the Yugoslav government, concerned about the growing opposition of Croatian intellectuals. For this reason, the ban on the magazine remains in effect, and in the future, this decision may be altered without the knowledge and consent of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. II

Unfortunately, in the modern era of nation-states and power politics, few governments respect the general interests or the rights of other peoples if they do not align with the designs and interests of their own country.

Therefore, when politically analyzing the French government's action against the "Croatian Review," it is necessary to examine not only whether the resistance of the Croats and their insistence on the right to self-determination are truly justified, but also whether they harm France's interests, properly understood, and conversely, whether the support France provides to the Yugoslav government—communist, moreover—against the Croats benefits France, especially when that government curtails the right to self-determination of various peoples and national minorities in Yugoslavia, who constitute the absolute majority of the population in that typically multinational state.

These questions are all the more pertinent given that this is precisely an act by a government that likes to emphasize that parties and regimes come and go, while peoples remain with their enduring interests.

Indeed, this concept of the transience of regimes could be invoked, in this specific case, as justification for the reprisals against the Croatian refugees, despite the fact that the request came from a communist government. If it is in France's best interest, it is necessary to defend the integrity of Yugoslavia regardless of its regime.

Indeed, the measures taken by the De Gaullist government against the Croatian cause can only be interpreted as a continuation of the Third Republic's policy, which, between the two world wars, in obvious contradiction to its democratic ideals, supported the Great Serbian dictatorships of Yugoslavia, while openly practicing a policy of national oppression against Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and the large Albanian, Hungarian, and German minorities.

This policy was barely disguised by the assertions that Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes constitute a single people, liberated and unified in 1918 by the Kingdom of Serbia with the help of the victorious powers of the First World War, and that it is imperative to defend the threatened union of this nation, which does not exist in the ethnic sense. However, given the past experience during and after the last world war, the problem of Franco-Yugoslav relations must be approached very differently.

Not only is Yugoslavia, an active or at least potential member of the anti-Western communist bloc, a country with a totalitarian power system, opposed to Western democracies, but it is now officially recognized that Yugoslavia is not a nation-state but a multinational one. Its peoples are even recognized, in the text of the constitution itself, as having the right to self-determination, despite this right being practically trampled by the communists.

Furthermore, it was evident that monarchical Yugoslavia, protected by the Third Republic precisely because of the unresolved national question, could not be a reliable and faithful ally of France. Therefore, the policy pursued by the governments of the Third Republic regarding Yugoslavia can be considered misguided and counterproductive. For all these reasons, the question arises: does the protection of Yugoslav unity align with the interests of France and with the principles professed by General de Gaulle? A brief analysis will aid in a better understanding of the problem.

When the Third Republic contributed to the creation of the new Yugoslav state at the end of the First World War, disregarding the right to self-determination claimed by the democratic and overwhelmingly majority Croatian parties, and then provided the Greater Serbian-inspired governments with copious political, financial, and military aid, despite their dictatorial and oppressive regimes, the French governments considered the new multinational state to be an expanded Serbia. The persecution of nationalities, deprived of their fundamental rights, has been conceptualized and wielded as a measure to protect the threatened national unity.

This anomaly arose when France, victorious in the 1914-18 war, enjoyed a dominant position on the European continent before the resurgence of the Third Reich and the relative consolidation of the Soviet Union. Precisely in view of this danger, despite the collapse of the four empires—Austrian, German, Russian, and Ottoman—victorious France considered the problem of its own security system in Central and Eastern Europe—that is, in a vast area stretching between Italy and Germany on one side and the Soviet Union on the other—to be urgent.

But in the euphoria of victory, which came at a very high price, little consideration was given to whether this system, consisting of the alliance between France, Poland (restored and enlarged), and the countries of the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), rested on firm and permanent foundations and was consistent with the principles proclaimed by the victors as their war objective: the creation of a new Europe, composed of nation-states with democratic regimes. Thus, the 1919 peace agreements created a geographical and political status quo in Central and Eastern Europe that left a large part of the population in despair, to such an extent that the cordon sanitaire between Germany and the Soviet Union, conceived by Paris, failed to fulfill its intended purpose. Not only were the countries diminished according to the principle of *vae victis* (woe to the vanquished), but the resulting disorder also harmed the very peoples the agreements were meant to favor, as well as their guardians, primarily France.

The defeated countries, such as Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria (Turkey being partly an exception), with reduced territories and onerous economic burdens, very quickly aligned themselves with the bloc of disaffected revisionist nations seeking protectors and aid, which they found, sooner than expected, first in Fascist Italy and then in the Third Reich.

Nor did the countries favored by the victors feel the advantages of the increased territory, which included a growing number of foreign and hostile ethnic elements who constantly aspired to integrate with their respective nation-states, becoming a permanent source of internal and external tension.

The specific and serious case of the violation of the right of peoples to self-determination (national self-determination) was represented by Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, new states supposedly national but in fact multinational, which emerged from the ruins of the dismembered Austria-Hungary. As is known, the old multinational monarchy was disintegrated by virtue of the national principle. However, when the Republic of Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were established in Bohemia and Serbia, respectively, entire populations and vast territories inhabited by foreign ethnic elements were annexed.

This constituted a gross violation of the right to national self-determination, so emphasized at the end of the First World War. New multinational states were established by violating the same national principle that motivated the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. However, since the aim was to strengthen the countries considered allies and to make the planned cordon sanitaire effective, attempts were made to maintain appearances, and theories were invented about the supposed national unity of the Czechs and Slovaks, and of the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes, proclaimed as parts of the same people.

According to these theories, in the case of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Czechs, and Slovaks, these were merely regional designations of indivisible nations: Czechoslovak and Serb-Croatian-Slovenian, respectively, abbreviated as Yugoslav. In reality, states were created in which Czechs and Serbs, respectively, governed in a centralist manner, in both cases constituting a minority of the population of the new states.

The newly formed states, aggrandized through a series of violations of the national principle while simultaneously exalting it, were unable to achieve political consolidation, not only internally but also externally. The smaller countries, which suffered as a result, increasingly insisted on their revisionist protests, demanding the return of the alienated portions of their national territory. They were soon allied with the Soviet Union, and later with Italy and Germany.

The resulting tensions served as justification for establishing a whole series of repressive measures and later military regimes, even in the countries assisted and protected by the Third Republic. External tensions, and sometimes terrorist activities fostered from abroad, required larger budgets for the army and armaments. This, on the one hand, overwhelmed the already weak economies of the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and on the other hand, provided an opportunity for enrichment and embezzlement by the wealthy ruling class.

Furthermore, autarkic tendencies exacerbated the critical economic situation, while the new industrial society was being formed, and everything indicated that it was necessary to operate with broader economic sectors. Hitler skillfully exploited all these circumstances to draw into his orbit not only the resentful revisionist governments but also the countries that comprised the French security system, rendering it completely inoperative in the fourth decade of the 20th century.

As for Yugoslavia, which is of primary interest to us as the typical case of the described process, despite its multinational character, it was treated by French governments between the two world wars as if it were a homogeneous nation-state, and even as an expanded Serbia. Sympathy towards Serbia dates back to the time when France and Russia established an alliance. Due to Franco-Russian collaboration, France was obliged to protect Serbia, which was favored by Russia.

From 1903 onwards, when Russian representatives in Belgrade assassinated King Alexander, the last of the Obrenović dynasty, and his wife, and enthroned Peter Karageorgević, a Russian protégé, the governments of the Russian Tsar made Serbia the mouthpiece of Pan-Slavic policy in the Balkans. In return, Serbia could count on the support of the Russian Empire in carrying out its expansionist plans, which coincided with those of the Russians.

Thus, the program to create a Greater Serbia—which was to be the main power in the Balkans and encompass considerable parts of neighboring countries: Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Greece, Albania, and Montenegro—was imposed by Russia on its allies, particularly France. This is what happened when Serbian terrorists, assisted by the Russian government, carried out the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo in 1914. They were declared by the Russians and their allies as defenders of Serbia's right to Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though the Serbian population in that province constituted a minority compared to the Croatian majority, which sought the realization of its national objectives within the Danubian community, transformed into the community of free peoples with equal rights.

However, the old Habsburg monarchy failed to reorganize itself and, consequently, became increasingly dependent on Germany, serving the aims of German expansionism (Drang nach Osten), which ran counter to the interests of the majority of its population, as well as those of other European powers. Thus, the feared Pan-Slavic Russian imperialist aspirations appeared as a lesser evil precisely for those European powers that had traditionally opposed Russian expansion in the Balkans and the Near East.

We are compelled to mention the known facts so that the origin of France's acquiescent attitude toward Serbia, which, as a Russian protégé in the First World War, was also an ally of France, can be better understood. She became France's direct protégé after the Russian revolution, having been deprived of the unconditional support of the Russian Empire, with which she was linked by religious, cultural, and political affinities that did not exist in the relationship with the new French protector, feared by the Serbian rulers because of the well-known Western and republican position of the Third Republic, opposed to the Russian-Serbian tradition.

However, this new relationship with France meant a certain freedom of movement for the intelligence services, impossible under Russian protection, since they shared no spiritual affinities of any kind with their new protector. Furthermore, a Serbia protected by France after the collapse of the Russian Empire ceased to be viewed with suspicion in Western countries as an exponent of the Pan-Slavic threat.

For their part, the governments of the Third Republic, in their search for strong and reliable allies against the communist threat and the potential resurgence of Prussian militarism, wholeheartedly favored the implementation of the monstrous and reactionary program of a Serbian empire, even though this inevitably meant clashing with the legitimate interests and aspirations of all the peoples of the turbulent southeastern Europe and fostering the resurgence of new hotspots of tension in a region already seething due to the collapse of the empires that had controlled it for centuries. The fact that Serbia constitutes barely a quarter, and is culturally and economically backward, of the new Yugoslav state, subject to its domination, sufficiently illustrates the weakness of what Paris considered an advantageous acquisition and the harmfulness of the situation created from the standpoint of general interests with the unconditional support of Grand Servism.

In the interest of truth, it should be noted that throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the population of diverse ethnic origins is so mixed that it is sometimes impossible to draw borders according to national criteria in a way that would satisfy all peoples. Furthermore, in the specific case of the Balkans, it should not be forgotten that the process of the awakening of national consciousness in certain regions lags far behind the analogous process occurring in Western nations, which are the result of a specific and gradual development.

Hence, even those well-versed in the European zone of the former Ottoman Empire found it difficult, at the beginning of the century, to establish the ethnic composition of those regions. Even today, it is debated whether Macedonians are a separate people or a regional expression of the Bulgarian people; whether Montenegrins constitute a distinct national identity or are part of the Serbian people. Furthermore, the Yugoslav communist regime, in the case of Bosnia, feeling compelled to abandon the 1914 Serbian nationalist thesis that Bosnia was a Serbian province, came to favor the theory that Bosnia was not a Croatian region, arguing that the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not Croats like the Catholics of the same former Turkish provinces, but rather a "nationally undefined" group.

This was intended to justify the creation of the "Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina" within the Yugoslav federation, instead of incorporating these provinces into the "Socialist Republic of Croatia," to which they belonged by virtue of their ethnic majority, geographical location, economic importance, and historical process. Meanwhile, Serbia was amended to include Kosmet, with its Albanian majority, and Vojvodina, with its Hungarian and Croatian majority.

All this confusion and imprecision regarding the ethnic composition of the European part of the former Ottoman Empire facilitated Greater Serbian propaganda, which resonated not only in political but also in academic circles in Western Europe. But the truth, sooner or later, comes to light. Even at the beginning of this century, it was no longer possible to present the Croats—mostly Catholic and with their own Western-style cultural and political traditions—as part of the Serbian people whom Serbia had to liberate. Even in Tsarist Russia, distrust was growing toward plans that aimed at simply annexing Croatia to the Russian sphere of influence through its annexation to Serbia.

St. Petersburg's distrust of Western influences via Zagreb, the Croatian capital, led the Russians in 1915 to agree, without much resistance, to the secret London Pact, according to which a considerable part of Croatia was ceded to Italy as compensation for Italy's entry into the war against the Central Powers, its former allies in the Triple Alliance. The Great Serbs tried to circumvent this problem by arguing that the South Slavic peoples were merely different tribes of a unified Yugoslav people who had to be completely liberated from foreign (Austrian, Hungarian, and Turkish) domination and unified under Serbian leadership. In this case, Serbia had to play the role that Piedmont and Prussia had played in the previous century in the unification processes of Italy and Germany, respectively.

This theory, based on the fact that the South Slavic peoples—Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Croats, and Slovenes—belong to the Slavic language group, never gained traction among the Serbian masses. It was used solely as a useful tool for propaganda and subversive action against Austria-Hungary. Serbia's true political objective was not Yugoslavia—a community of equal peoples—but Greater Serbia.

Behind this program lay Tsarist Russia. Only after its collapse did Serbian politics begin to consider the theory of Yugoslav unity, always as a means to create Greater Serbia. Thus, after the Bolshevik Revolution, Serbian diplomats spoke less of Greater Serbia and more of the liberation and unification of the South Slavs—excluding the Bulgarians, of course—because if Bulgaria were to join the new state, the balance of power would be so unfavorable that the theory of a finally united people could not prosper.

The theory of the supposed South Slavic tribes, liberated and unified by Serbia, was accepted by the victorious powers when they were planning to create the cordon sanitaire. Therefore, they needed not small states but rather nations of medium power. Unable to openly reject the right to national self-determination, which President Wilson so insisted upon, the Third Republic readily adopted a wide variety of often contradictory theories regarding ethnography, history, and geography to serve as a pretext for supporting governments held hostage by allies.

In the specific case of Yugoslavia, the annexation of Croatia to Serbia was also facilitated by other circumstances which, for the sake of bravado, we cannot analyze here, limiting ourselves to outlining just a few facts.

The idea of South Slavic solidarity had some traction in Croatia even in the 19th century. Clearly, this was not about denying the political and national identity of the peoples of the Slavic linguistic group, and even less so of the Croatian people. Croatian thinkers, under pressure from the centralist tendencies of Vienna and Budapest, and under the impact of Italian irredentism in the Adriatic, sought only the support of the peoples of the same Slavic linguistic group.

It was the era of European Romanticism, when linguistic community was frequently identified with cultural, political, and even racial community. On the other hand, the Croats believed that, as a people of Western European culture and with a level of civilization superior to that of the Balkan Slavic population, held back by five centuries of Turkish domination, they had become the bearers and promoters of the conquests of modern civilization among the less fortunate Balkan Slavic peoples.

The Serbs, however, who during the 19th century had established their nation-state and, aware of their Byzantine tradition, strengthened by Russian influence, vehemently rejected these Croatian conceptions of South Slavic solidarity. They aspired only to realize their Greater Serbia program within the tradition of the ephemeral medieval Serbian Empire, an emulation of the Byzantine.

This Serbian attitude inevitably dampened the enthusiasm of the Croatian architects of South Slavic solidarity. Thus, the Yugoslav and Pan-Slavic ideal was resolutely opposed by the leading representative of modern Croatian national thought in the 19th century, Dr. Ante Starčević. However, he was also a staunch opponent of Austrian, Hungarian, and Prussian supremacy, an enthusiastic admirer of France, and a man of distinctly liberal views. As such, he abhorred Russia, which symbolized the Byzantine tradition of Caesaropapism and autocratic power. Nevertheless, the difficult situation in Austria-Hungary under the dualist system (1867-1918), with the predominance of Hungarians and Austrians to the detriment of the Slavic majority, fueled the propaganda advocating for Croatia's rapprochement with Serbia.

The real danger for Croatia arose at the end of the First World War, as it was an integral part of the Habsburg monarchy, which lost the war. Croatia was occupied by Serbian, French, and Italian troops. Under the terms of the Treaty of London, Italy occupied and attempted to annex two Croatian provinces (Dalmatia and Istria). Serbia sought to incorporate Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Slavonia, thus risking Croatia being reduced to a small territory around Zagreb.

These events surprised Croatian politicians who, until then, had been fighting for the unification of the Croatian provinces around the Ban (Prorex) and the Parliament (Sabor) in Zagreb, within the framework of the Danubian Commonwealth. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, was believed to have intended to transform the monarchy in favor of the Slavic peoples, which would have undermined the arguments of Pan-Slavic, Russian, and Serbian propaganda, and this was the main motive for the famous assassination.

With the unexpected collapse of Austria-Hungary, a completely new, difficult, and disadvantageous situation arose for the Croats. Therefore, for the time being, the influence of politicians seeking a solution by relying on Serbia prevailed. They acted with the conviction that agreement and collaboration between two peoples of equal strength would result in a balanced and mutually beneficial outcome.

Of course, this relationship was conceived as a kind of confederal bond between two equal and sovereign nation-states, without discrimination or supremacy of any kind. But the Serbs thought and felt differently.

From the moment the Serbs found themselves, despite the collapse of the Russian Empire, their protector, among the victorious powers, and with most of Croatia occupied by Serbian troops, they considered it the right time to impose their rule on the Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Slovenes, finally realizing their imperial dreams.

It is true that the Serbs were forced to formally accept the model of a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. This was demanded by the general situation described and by President Wilson's stance in favour of the right of the peoples of the dismembered Austria-Hungary to self-determination. But the government of the new kingdom was centralized, ruled by the Serbian king and army, and based on an aggrandized Serbia.

The slightest manifestation of the idea of Croatian national individuality was persecuted from the outset as subversive, an attack against the supposed national unity achieved by Serbia in its historical role as the South Slavic Piedmont. In reality, the supposed national unity was merely that which facilitated the annexation of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro to Serbia, not to mention Kosovo and Metohija (Kosmet) with their non-Slavic Albanian ethnic majority, and Vojvodina with its Hungarian and German majority.

This supposed liberation and unification, according to the Italian and German model of the last century, was felt from the very beginning by the Croatian people as a rupture of Croatia's millennia-old state continuity and rejected as subjugation to foreign domination, doubly odious because of the sham liberation hypocritically invoking the supposed Serbian-Croatian union. What Croatia had managed to safeguard even during the most difficult moments of the Austro-Hungarian dualism, when it had nevertheless retained the status of a kingdom with the attributes of sovereignty, it lost at the time of its supposed liberation by the Serbs. Therefore, in every election—1920, 1923, 1925, 1927, 1935, and 1938—and despite repressive, sometimes bloody, measures, the Croatian people voted overwhelmingly in favor of the program of a neutral and pacifist Croatian republic, which they aspired to establish by virtue of the democratic right to national self-determination.

This Croatian opposition, even though it rejected all forms of violence, was brutally suppressed, even resorting to mass killings, culminating in the extermination of the Croatian leaders within the very walls of the Belgrade parliament in 1928, that is, ten years after the supposed liberation. The Croatian resistance, though until then pacifist and purely democratic in its inspiration, served as a pretext for the Serbian king to establish his personal dictatorship. Misinterpreting the pacifism and democratic methods of the Croats in their resistance to Grand Serbia as weakness and a lack of self-sacrifice, King Alexander proclaimed as the political dogma of his dictatorial regime the absurd unitarist theories according to which the Croats, a people of six million with their own millennia-old cultural and state tradition, are not a nation, but merely a tribe.

According to the ideologues of Yugoslav unitarianism, the Croatian nation was invented by the enemies of the Slavs: the popes, Hungarian kings, and Austrian emperors. Croatian national resistance has been presented to French public opinion as a relic of the past and as resistance to national unity on the part of irresponsible demagogues and agitators in the pay of the powers advocating for the revision of the 1919 peace treaties. In fact, those who acted irresponsibly were the Serbian rulers of the new state, who saw in the annexation of the new territories, incomparably richer than those of pre-war Serbia, not only the aggrandizement of Serbia but also a propitious opportunity for their own rapid personal enrichment. Therefore, they considered any warning about the urgent need for reasonable measures to normalize the situation and thus respond to the expectations of their Western protectors to be dangerous and vexing.

The same political and diplomatic circles in France eventually realized that Yugoslavia, due to its Greater Serbian and anti-democratic character, constituted the weakest link in the security chain between the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, and Fascist Italy. Nevertheless, sentimental considerations for Serbia, their small ally from the First World War, persisted in Paris, completely forgetting that the Serbs were primarily allies of the Russians and ignoring the fact that the persecuted Croats and Slovenes were precisely those aligned with the French. Thus, timely pressure was not exerted on Belgrade to cease its violence and injustices against the majority of the population of the new state, if it was to be prepared for eventual resistance against the Axis powers and Soviet interference. Conversely, when King Alexander ordered the assassination of Croatian democratic leaders in the parliament building in 1928—deputies who had come to Belgrade on the advice of Paris and London to fight for political reforms through parliamentary means—and when he established a military dictatorship in 1929 under the pretext of preserving state and national unity, the dictatorial king enjoyed the full support of the Third Republic.

It is true that the French democratic left openly criticized King Alexander's dictatorship, and members of the democratic center were concerned about the future of Yugoslavia. Prominent politicians like Eduardo Herriot and diplomats like Alexis Léger sent messages to King Alexander suggesting a change in his policies, given the strengthening of the Third Reich and the increasingly evident dangers of direct aggression from Mussolini, in light of his imperialist ambitions.

However, the Serbian rulers of Yugoslavia never seriously considered transforming Yugoslavia into a community of free and equal peoples. They knew very well that in that case, the influence of the majority—Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians—would prevail, and that in this way the Serbian dynasty and the oligarchy it favored could govern only in Serbia, which, for their insatiable appetites, was already too poor and too small.

Unfortunately, the Serbian rulers were able to count on the support of the Serbian masses, who for decades had been educated in the Greater Serbian spirit. In Serbia, every manifestation of opposition from Croats and other oppressed peoples was interpreted as an attack against the state, which most Serbs perceived as Greater Serbia. The communists would later exploit this sentiment in the second phase of World War II to impose themselves as political and military leaders with the support of a large part of the Serbian masses, following the same program as the restoration of Yugoslavia within the Russian sphere of influence.

When in Central and Eastern Europe, given the situation described above, the influence of the German Third Reich grew and when the right wing in France was forced to seek relief in the alliance with the Soviet Union, then the Serbian oligarchy considered it pertinent to safeguard Serbian hegemony and its interests, dispensing with France and its allies of the Little Entente (Romania and Czechoslovakia).

Thus, Yugoslavia, under the dictatorial government of Milan Stojadinovic, a typical representative of the Serbian oligarchy, openly sided with the Axis powers, hoping to reap economic and political benefits. Furthermore, the Third Reich became a much-desired market for agricultural products after the major economic crisis that particularly affected Southeast Europe. Politically, it was necessary to avert the danger that neighboring revisionist countries would exploit Yugoslavia's internal national conflicts. These countries were emboldened by the Third Reich's agitation against the so-called Treaty of Versailles and by its invocation of Hitler's right to national self-determination, albeit stripped of its democratic content.

During the Popular Front era and the Spanish Civil War, the Serbian rulers of Yugoslavia saw the Third Reich, on the one hand, as a powerful bulwark against communist subversion, but on the other, as a latent threat to the precarious Yugoslav union. A key political card skillfully wielded by the Axis powers was Belgrade's fear of Croatian and Macedonian nationalist exiles who were resorting to expeditious means, imitating the fighting style of pre-war Serbian nationalist activists.

As is well known, these revolutionary activities of Croatian and Macedonian nationalist activism culminated in the assassination attempt against King Alexander in Marseille in 1934. The Sarajevo assassination of 1914 and the massacres of Croatian leaders in the Belgrade parliament in 1928, orchestrated by supporters of King Alexander, served as models.

Thus, at a critical moment, while the Third Republic grappled with internal political difficulties and while the military and economic power of the Third Reich was growing, Yugoslavia, playing into the hands of the Axis powers, practically dismantled the Little Entente and, with it, the entire French security apparatus in Central and Eastern Europe. When Austria was annexed, a prerequisite for the Munich Agreement and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, the Yugoslav dictatorial government of Stojadinovic hailed these acts as a triumph of the right to national self-determination—the same right that, with even greater justification, would be turned against Yugoslavia in 1941.

Meanwhile, Serbian circles, who owed everything to France, calmly witnessed the collapse of the Polish and French front. They only took action at the beginning of 1941 when they staged a coup d'état, typically Balkan, with the aim of eliminating the very limited Croatian participation in power. For external consumption, this coup was presented as an act against the Axis powers, although at the same time in Rome and Berlin, the Serbian military and political figures of the coup government were striving to present it as a measure of domestic policy and promised to respect Yugoslavia's accession to the Tripartite Pact.

The putsch, however, was a welcome opportunity for Hitler and Mussolini to end the disastrous Italian campaign in Greece and eliminate the threat of a new Salonika front, while simultaneously securing their right flank in anticipation of the impending war against the Soviet Union. While tiny Serbia in World War I offered unexpected and vigorous resistance to the Central Powers, in 1941 Yugoslavia, four times larger than Serbia in 1914, capitulated almost without a fight after 12 days of Blitzkrieg. This was the logical outcome of Greater Serbian policy, the root cause of internal conflicts in Yugoslavia, surrounded by hostile neighbors—Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Albanians—who considered the Axis operations against Greater Serbianism to be both their duty and their national interest.

Such was the inglorious fall of Greater Serbia in the form of a Yugoslav monarchy, a fall favored by its protectors, especially France, in 1919, who hoped that an aggrandized Serbia would become the cornerstone of their political and defensive system in Central and Eastern Europe. In vain, the representatives of Greater Serbian policy in the exiled government in London then tried to salvage their prestige by hyperbolically exaggerating the exploits of Draža Mihailović's nationalist guerrillas, who mostly killed Croats, Catholics, and Muslims. It was only the communists who organized genuine guerrilla actions and gained the support of the Serbian masses with their program of revenge against Croats and Macedonians, Germans and Hungarians, and the restoration of Yugoslavia under Russian protection.

It is essential to emphasize that in both world wars, the Serbs fought solely in their capacity as Russian protégés and allies. The attempt to make Serbia, after the fall of Tsarist Russia, an ally of the Western democracies failed utterly. Moreover, the creation of the multinational Yugoslav state under Serbian domination, with its inevitable internal and external conflicts, can be considered one of the direct causes of the communist revolution. By depriving the Croats and other peoples of Yugoslavia of their right to self-determination after the First World War, Serbia was not helped, while entire peoples who could have been useful members of the European community are subjected, along with the Serbs, to communist rule.

General de Gaulle demonstrated energy and clarity of vision in dismantling the French colonial empire and conceiving new forms of cooperation with formerly colonial peoples. In Europe, he did not hesitate to extend a conciliatory hand to the neighboring German people, understanding that good relations between two great European nations constitute the essential condition for European cooperation and a new balance in a divided world. Nor did he hesitate to take other measures, disregarding the opposition, criticism, and mixed feelings of national and international public opinion. He overlooked the well-known interference of communist Yugoslavia against French interests during the war in Algeria, which led to the suspension of diplomatic relations between Paris and Belgrade.

All of this he did, and continues to do, faithfully reflecting his belief in the right of peoples to be masters of their own destiny. There is no doubt, then, that General de Gaulle possesses sufficient spirit and character to undertake a review of France's traditional policy in Southeast Europe, which does not favor coexistence and progress in a turbulent region. No Croat demands that anyone, least of all France, act against their own interests, nor against the rights of Serbia. What is desirable, in the interest of all the peoples directly affected, including Serbia, and for the sake of the international good, is that no chauvinism or expansionism be fostered, facilitating the realization of the democratic right to self-determination for all the peoples of Southeast Europe.

Under the current circumstances, Western governments are neither asked nor expected to support revolutionary movements aimed at inciting the people to rise up against the communist regime or to help disintegrate any of the existing states. What can justifiably be expected is that no action be taken against the rights of oppressed peoples to resist in the internal political arena. It is not right that Croatian refugees, while respecting the laws of the countries in which they reside, should be prevented from expressing, within the framework of democratic ideals, the suffering and aspirations of their people, who have the right to freedom, just like all other peoples without distinction, at least like the former French colonies.

Our displeasure with the support given by France to the Great Serbian governments does not extend so far as to prevent us from seeing the motives that guided France, especially since the Croatian people, due to their deeply rooted democratic sentiments, never ceased to sympathize with the Western democracies even when they supported the Great Serbian dictatorship despite the legitimate interests and rights of the Croatian people. We know that this is a painful chapter in European history, marked by power politics and national contrasts, which are fortunately gradually disappearing.

The Western democracies relegated Croatia in 1918 and 1945—through no fault of our own and solely because of our geographical location and the resulting natural ties with the peoples of Central Europe—in favor of Russian and Great Serbian political conceptions. Because of this unfortunate overall development, the normal process of Croatia's integration into the democratic sentiments and aspirations of its people was hindered. What was called national liberation in 1918 and 1945 actually meant a new form of slavery, the domination of one people over others, sustained first as a Serbian military and dynastic dictatorship and then as a communist one, always in favor of the interests of an aggrandized Serbia, which was and remains the potential exponent of Soviet imperialism, while Croatia, in accordance with its thousand-year-old tradition, dreams of inclusion in the European community, a more appropriate framework than the supposed Yugoslav union.

In contrast, modern Serbia, true to its traditions, constantly strives to assert itself as an exponent of expansionism in southeastern Europe—formerly Tsarist imperialism, now Soviet imperialism. Therefore, the question is pertinent: Can supporting Serbia's expansionist aspirations at the expense of nations with a Western orientation and tradition, such as Croatia and Slovenia, be considered sound policy, taking into account both general and French interests?

We believe that in the preceding exposition of Franco-Serbian relations before and after the First World War, we have demonstrated that the hopes many French people placed in Serbia were utterly dashed. Furthermore, in these new circumstances, when efforts are being made to smooth over the differences between the European powers—the cause of the two world wars—the policy based on unconditional support for Serbia against the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia—the majority of the population of that multinational state—and against almost all of its neighbors must undergo a comprehensive review. To insist on old positions, born within the framework of outdated power politics, is unworthy of a statesman of broad vision like General de Gaulle.

It would be absurd for us to deny any European power the right to strengthen its influence in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We believe, however, that it is necessary to evaluate the means that lead to that end. Let us take as an example the United States, which—as is well known—after the Stalin-Tito conflict, deemed it appropriate to provide substantial economic, military, and political aid to the Yugoslav communist regime, without imposing any political conditions.

Although we believe that this was not the best way to deepen the fissures in the hitherto monolithic Soviet bloc—which was the aim of those in Washington advocating unconditional aid to the Yugoslav communists—we cannot ignore that massive US assistance would have indirectly accelerated the natural process of the weakening of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe on the one hand, and of the political pressure exerted by the communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia on the other.

Currently, in communist Yugoslavia, the problem of the crisis of the regime and of the state itself, torn apart by national antagonisms, is becoming increasingly evident. This process can in no way favor the interests of the Soviet Union. Therefore, relying on Moscow's support, Rankovic and his Serbian group tried to "Sukarnize" Tito, for conceding too much to the opponents of Belgrade's centralism, which, in their view, threatened the existence of the regime and the state.

Tito managed to thwart Rankovic's plans, which entailed Yugoslavia's total support for the Soviet Union as guarantor of Serbian supremacy over the other Yugoslav peoples, but he had to stop halfway: he had to overturn the charges against Rankovic and maintain Serbian control of the communist secret police, while externally forging even closer ties with the Soviet Union. The decentralizing process in favor of the oppressed and economically exploited Yugoslav peoples, exploited for the benefit of Serbia, was halted or at least delayed. This was clearly demonstrated by the repression of Croatian intellectuals who rejected the equality of the Croatian literary language with Serbian, which the authorities were imposing as the official language of Croatia.

As we have seen, in this predicament, Tito sought help from the French government against the free Croatian intellectuals and, unfortunately, received it. Therefore, it is worth asking whether this support for the communist dictatorship and Serbian domination over the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia is indeed the right path, leading to the strengthening of French influence in Central and Eastern Europe, and particularly in Yugoslavia.

Supporting Serbian supremacy, which enjoys the backing of Soviet Russia, means halting the natural evolutionary process aimed at granting more individual and national rights and freedoms to the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia, including the Serbs. Surely, the vast majority of Serbs cannot resign themselves to the humiliating role of guardians of a forced state unity and, moreover, serve the interests of internal and international communism, which has deprived even the Serbian people of fundamental freedoms.

Therefore, neither those French people who do not understand how detrimental to France's interests the support given to the Greater Serbian oppression of the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia was, nor those who do not take into account that in the era of European reconciliation the question of how France approaches its position regarding the rights of Croatia and Slovenia to their freedom arises independently of past conflicts between European powers, have any reason to insist, for sentimental reasons, on the unconditional support of every Yugoslav government, even the communist one, in the struggle against the opposition to the Greater Serbian conception of Yugoslav unity, which is also within the sphere of Russian interests.

When it comes to responsible factors and the enlightened public opinion of France, so respectful of individual and national liberty, we rightly hope that the simple truth will be understood: it is impossible to consolidate France's influence by doing the same as the Soviet Union and in its interest. For Moscow supports Belgrade's centralism against the proponents of decentralization among the Yugoslav communists themselves, hoping to attract Greater Serbian circles through the solidarity of their interests.

Therefore, these are objectives opposed to those of the Third Republic, which contributed to the creation and maintenance of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia under Serbian leadership, also considering it part of the defensive system against Soviet interference. Continuing the policy of unconditional aid to Serbia under communist leadership at a time when Yugoslavia, on fundamental issues, aligns itself with the Soviet Union, makes no sense whatsoever, both from the perspective of France's interests and those of the free world. If we cannot expect Western statesmen to act like the communist leaders, that is, to support in Yugoslavia the currents and trends that are favorable to them, it would be logical for them at least not to lend their support to the bearers of Soviet influence to the detriment of the forces that, defending individual and national freedoms and rights, are also working in favor of the process that can only favor the forces of freedom in the world.

The Intellectual and Freedom

In homage to the Croatian writer Vinko Nikolic

Carlos Alberto Erro, Buenos Aires

On behalf of the Argentine Society of Writers, I have the honor of participating in this event honoring and vindicating the Croatian writer Vinko Nikolic ( ). The fate of a Croatian writer, or a writer of any other nationality, cannot be a matter of indifference to Argentine writers, because we believe that freedom is the cause of humankind, and that, as General San Martín said in Lima, "all liberal men of the world are brothers." The servitude of a single man affects the freedom of all men. When a writer is oppressed anywhere on Earth, all writers on Earth are oppressed. As Juan Bautista Alberdi aptly stated, "Man becomes more convinced each day that nothing that happens in the world is foreign to him and that the sun no longer sets on his domain."

Alberdi, the great Argentine thinker, understood before anyone else that technological progress, especially in the field of communications, was generating a new sociological reality, which he called the "World People," that necessarily required a world government, which has been partially realized with the League of Nations and the United Nations. The League of Nations, for him—though he did not live to see it fully realized—was the institutional projection of that sociological phenomenon he called the "World People."

But let's suppose that this fabulous shrinking of the world resulting from technological progress, which has eliminated great distances, had not occurred. We would still have the imperative duty to proclaim our solidarity with a writer who has suffered persecution and ostracism for being faithful to his ideals; we would still have to say, "Vinko Nikolic, we stand with you..."

And we would have to say it because we are writers and because we are Argentines. As writers, we know that there is no worse, more sterile, and degrading environment than that of a lack of freedom. As Argentinians, we know that the very essence of our nation's tradition, from the day of its birth in May 1810, is made of devotion to liberty and respect for and deference to the rights of the human person.

Moreno, the guiding spirit of May—as Mitre called him—proclaimed in the pages of the "Gazeta," a few days after the Revolution, that a dangerous liberty is better than tranquil servitude, that those are happy times, as Tacitus said, when one can feel what one wants and say what one feels, and in the famous Decree on the Suppression of Honors of December 8, 1810, he inscribed in its operative part this concept that seems forged in the fervor of a harangue: "Because no inhabitant of Buenos Aires, whether drunk or asleep, should harbor feelings against the liberty of his country." In 1811, the Triumvirate issued the Decree on Freedom of the Press, which enshrined the principle that ideas could be published without prior censorship. Immediately afterward, the Decree on Individual Security was issued, signed by Bernardino Rivadavia as secretary, and whose clauses admirably express the principles that protect the human person.

It was Esteban Echeverría, the standard-bearer of the Generation of 1837, who, in the face of tyranny, declared: "Liberty, like the giant in the fable, regains new spirit and strength with each fall: storms magnify it, and the calm sea deifies it." And Juan Bautista Alberdi said that freedom of the press is the most fundamental of human freedoms and that without it, no freedom can exist.

Freedom of the press, he added, is an unallocated power that the principal, that is, the sovereign people, reserves for themselves to keep the representative, that is, the one who governs, informed of how they want them to carry out their duties. Bartolomé Mitre, during the famous June Days of 1852, said that freedom finds within itself the path to correcting errors and that it is like Achilles' spear, which heals the wounds it inflicts. And the great Sarmiento recommended that we do the same as he did, who always did what he thought was right without asking permission from the Chief of Police.

We would refute this entire tradition if, faced with a case like that of Vinko Nikolic, who could not live in his country for not submitting to Tito's communist regime and who has also been unable to live in France because the authorities of de Gaulle's government, acting in a highly reprehensible manner, have expelled him from that land which we all considered a refuge of freedom in the world and which we so often evoked with the words of Leopoldo Lugones: "Sweet France, our mother, mother of free men."

As liberal men, we stated six years ago upon assuming leadership of the SADE (Argentine Society of Writers), "We do not consider ourselves possessors of the truth, but rather seekers of it, and therefore we need to confront and, if possible, enrich our understanding with that of those who do not think like us. The fanatic, on the other hand, or one who professes aesthetic, political, or ideological dogmas, does not allow for dialogue, and rather than convincing others, is interested in forcing them to think like him, by any means, be it pressure or force. The possibility of dialogue is, spiritually, the very foundation of democracy and freedom." Our era, marked by propaganda thanks to the fabulous progress of communication technology, shows a pernicious tendency to think in slogans, to subscribe to myths. And to think in slogans or myths is to think in a radically unscientific way. Because, what is a slogan, what is a myth? A slogan, a myth, are supposed truths that are accepted beyond rational criticism and free thought. Examination.

The only scientific attitude, that is, the only position loyal to the truth, is that of Socrates, who begins by stating that he only knows that he knows nothing, or that of Descartes when he places, at the beginning of the "Discourse on the Method," the "cogito, ergo sum," "I think, therefore I am." Those who seek to persuade through dialogue demonstrate more faith in their truth than those who try to impose it by force. Dialogue is about respecting and considering others. Dialogue, a courtesy of reason, is always, at its core, a tribute to our fellow human beings.

The world is increasingly divided into affirmations and negations and no longer lives enjoying its doubts, Chesterton wrote around 1935. Contemplative faith in freedom is ineffective and conspires against its enduring nature. What is needed is dynamic faith, which transcends mere movement, the making of the efforts and sacrifices that are indispensable, in the present stage, so that freedom does not succumb. Faith as a struggle, as a root that nourishes and strengthens militancy. And freedom is endangered as long as the two aspects that Erich Fromm distinguishes within it—"freedom from" and "freedom to"—are not fully realized simultaneously. "Freedom from" is what protects us against coercion, censorship, and, in general, against impediments to our lawful actions. "Freedom to" is the awareness of the positive end we aspire to achieve, free from legal or political constraints; it is knowing why we want freedom.

Modern man is not content with simply not being oppressed or coerced; he also demands that the government be conducted in such a way that, within the framework of freedom, he feels involved in a collective endeavor to improve his living conditions and the fate of his country and society. Only in this way does modern man overcome his loneliness and helplessness, and feel that his fellow human beings are his brothers and sisters. Only in this way does freedom truly flourish and become indestructible.

Totalitarian regimes, whether of the right or the left, put an end to dialogue. That is why they are always disastrous for humanity development of the human personality. They mutilate the spirit and with it, they mutilate culture. That is why those who, like the writer Vinko Nikolic, in whose honor we are gathered this afternoon, suffer persecution for being free men, are standard-bearers of a great cause, and we all owe them a great debt of gratitude.

What they defend, what they embody, is far beyond their personal fate. It is intimately linked to the progress of the spirit and the enduring legacy of human culture.

The sovereignty of the people, freedom of the press, of expression, of worship, of association and assembly, freedom of dissent, the protection and respect for the rights of the human person and the privileges of political minorities, are not a superstructure of the bourgeois economy; on the contrary, they are the essential principles of political civilization, forged by humanity through centuries of effort and suffering, inconceivable without Greek philosophy and Christianity; they are the result of the The penetration of ethics into politics, and the day they disappeared, an immense mass of darkness would have covered the earth. I had occasion to say this on the national holiday of the Croatians, and I will repeat it as long as I have a breath to express it.

And if freedom is a necessary condition for the person in general, it is all the more so in the specific case of the intellectual, the philosopher, the sage, the writer, or the artist. The example of Vinko Nikolic illustrates this. The work of the intellectual always unfolds in the speculative realm and, by virtue of being speculative, relates to an absolutely or relatively ideal world. Therefore, one of the intellectual's principal services consists of proposing ideal existences for things.

Having to proceed in this way for an organic reason, due to a fatality of their very constitution, the intellectual's role is to impose ideal demands on things. Having to proceed in this way for an organic reason, due to a fatality of their very constitution, the intellectual is the being who finds it most difficult to fully coincide with reality; this explains why, throughout history, the true intellectual appears as a dissenter, as a dissatisfied individual, and why, if they are involved in politics, they are constantly in dissent.

But manifestations of dissent, of dissidence, are only possible in a free regime. With freedom suppressed, the intellectual is condemned to inertia; he suffocates. This does not mean, however, that the intellectual is obliged to be nothing other than a critic of society and politics. The creative attitude, the affirmative attitude, is as characteristic of the true intellectual as the critical function; moreover, the basis of the work of every authentic and great intellectual, of every intellectual who is not a failure, is always creative, because the elaboration of a principle, a doctrine, or an absolutely or relatively ideal world, implies an extraordinary creative or recreative effort.

The intellectual may even—and we have many illustrious examples of this—adopt a fully positive political position; but if he remains true to himself, if he does not abandon his condition as an intellectual, the conduct he observes must be very different from that of the man of action or the politician. Let us suppose, for example, that he creates a political theory or a theory from which political consequences emerge; Once their political propositions are put into practice, the intellectual cannot avoid, when faced with the resulting concrete organization, formulating demands from an ideal standpoint, while the man of action and the politician, placed on equal footing, will dedicate themselves to defending at all costs the reality arising from their ideas.

Speculative work is worthless if it does not rest on objectivity, disinterestedness, and impartiality. In the order of nature, and in the division of labor in society, the intellectual has been assigned the function of thinking objectively, disinterestedly, and impartially. The nature of this function places them under a series of imperatives that do not apply to the man of action or the politician. The intellectual has a fundamental duty of authenticity, of loyalty to their way of thinking and feeling in every situation, of fidelity to what their innermost being dictates regarding each problem.

The great virtue of the intellectual is probity in the realm of thought. Conversely, his greatest sin, his most serious failing, is to betray himself, to compromise with something repugnant to his conscience, to remain silent, or to twist or distort his judgment on reality. There can be no great thought if it does not unfold in an atmosphere of moral purity. Thought, to become great, must begin by being pure.

Every day I feel more inclined to correlate logic with morality, to affirm the absolute dependence between the value of thought and the probity of thought. I cannot conceive—it seems to me at this moment an irremediable contradiction—that great, fruitful thought can arise if the one who expresses it deceives himself. What use is the intellectual who, for reasons of expediency or convenience, silences his authentic testimony of the world? He withholds from us the only thing that could interest us. He deceives us and betrays himself.

The need to be true to oneself at every moment, to think with integrity despite unleashed passions—which sometimes take the form of tumult and sometimes of great collective movements with which the Fatherland, the Nation, the State identifies—means that the intellectual lives in constant danger of being left alone, with everyone against him. And the true intellectual is known by his capacity to be alone with his conscience. He is capable of making a righteous conscience an invincible bulwark. The fear of solitude, the fear of disappointing the applauding chorus, are the characteristics of the mediocre or false intellectual. But they can also coincide with a considerable intellectual stature; in such cases, the author is lost, not through ineptitude but through cowardice. Vinko Nikolic's conduct teaches us that he belongs to the breed of true intellectuals.

And the intellectual must not abdicate his characteristic stance toward things, even though in the present age society's preferences lean toward men of action and politics invades every domain, but on the contrary, he must make it his pride, his faith, his emblem, because he performs a necessary, irreplaceable function, and his is an attitude that cannot be sustained without great sacrifices and therefore entails a true aristocracy of conduct.

My sympathy lies entirely with those, I said in 1936, who in this confusing hour have not allowed themselves to be swept away by the turbulent gale, and have proudly maintained their position as intellectuals, that is, as men capable of thinking with integrity; with those who have preserved a spirit free enough to continue posing ideal demands even to the most violently aggressive regimes, and have refused to hail as a perfect panacea what is nothing more than a desperate escape, however grandiose and difficult it may be, from chaos; of those who have made their presence felt in the face of the misery of the century, to use the terms with which a French magazine described the doctrinal attempts of the younger generation aimed at overcoming the current political regimes. My sympathies lie with rebels like Vinko Nikolic.

On behalf of Argentine writers, we tell him that he is not alone; that we appreciate his sacrifice and his effort, and we know the transcendent significance of his stance. The Argentine Writers' Society published a statement of protest and solidarity regarding the expulsion of the Croatian writer from France and addressed the Société des Gens des Lettres in Paris, requesting its intervention to redress this injustice. On behalf of the Argentine Society of Writers, inspired by the ideals that nourish and define the tradition of our country, we tell the illustrious exile that it is our heartfelt desire to see him back in his homeland and that we fervently pray that this will be possible without delay, so that he may finally live in freedom near the green meadows, the shady forests, the beautiful Adriatic coasts of his beloved Croatia.

The printer Dobric Dobricevic (Boninus de Boninis)

Antun Nizeteo, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

The invention of the printing press also had repercussions, even at the dawn of Croatian culture. The first Croatian printing press, in Kosinj, Croatia (or Senj, 1483), was recorded as early as 1482. However, prior to this, Croatian writers Nicholas Modruski (1474) and George Sizgorić (1477) printed their works in Latin. Incidentally, the first poetic and artistic work printed in Croatian is Marulć's poem Judith (printed in Venice in 1521; only one copy of this first edition survives in Croatia, in the library of the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik).

However, at the end of the 15th century, the names of Croatian artisans stand out in the history of European printing, namely: Andrei Patasic, Dobric Dobricevic (Bonus de Boninis), Gregorius Dalmatinus, Blaise Baronic, Bartul Pelusic, and several others. All of them worked in neighboring Italy, particularly in Venice, where, for economic and cultural reasons, the art of typography progressed more during the 15th century than in other European centers.

Dobric Dobricevic was born on the island of Lastovo in 1454. Lastovo was then a territory of the Croatian republic of Dubrovnik, so Dobricevic considered himself a citizen of that republic, notably including "di Raguxi," "de Ragusa," meaning "from Dubrovnik," in his Latin signature and colophons. Born into a Croatian family, his surname appears as early as the 14th century in its Croatian variants: Dobricevic, Dobric, Dobrojevic. Later, he also used the Latinized forms Bonin, Boninus, and Boninis, and, following the custom of the time, signed his works accordingly.

Dobricevic learned the printing trade in Venice, first in the workshop of his countryman Andreas Paltasic, originally from Kotor. In 1478, they published a selection from Lactantius's *De divinis institutionibus adversus*, as well as perhaps other lesser-known printed works. It was only in Verona that Dobricevic began working independently, printing Fuvio Blondi's *Roma ristaurata* in 1481 and later his *Italia illustrata*.

Also in Verona, he printed the manual *Gramma metrice scripta* by Alessandro de Veila Dei. According to certain catalogues and earlier testimonies, this would be one of Dobricevic's very rare incunabula, although a copy is known to be preserved, for example, in the library of the University of Turin. From this period, his masterpiece stands out, in both Latin and Italian editions, *De re militari* by Roberto Valturi, the celebrated builder of fortifications in the service of Sigismondo Valatesta, illustrated with woodcuts based on the drawings of Matteo de' Pasti.

Dobricevic would later perfect this genre of illustration in some of his works, such as the edition of Dante's *Divine Comedy*, and even more so in the printing of Aesop's fables. Dobricevic printed a total of four books in Verona. Our master would spend much more time in Brescia (from 1483 to 1491). From that period, we know of 38 incunabula by Dobricevic. Burger believes—and this opinion is shared by Badalic and Donati—that Dobricevic printed a total of 43 books: four in Verona, 38 in Brescia, and in Lyon, he independently published (1499) a book of prayers.

Badalic estimates that the British Museum library holds the largest number of incunabula (22 in total) by our master. A smaller number of his works are preserved in Croatia, primarily in the rich collection of the bibliophile and scholar Baltasar Bogisic, now part of the scientific library of Cavtat near Dubrovnik.

Dobricevic left Brescia in 1491 and, probably now financially secure, was able to give up printing and dedicate himself more to bookselling and publishing. As early as 1494, he published in Venice the work of William Aegiddi of Zeeland, *Super caelestium motuum indagatione sine calculo*, and in 1499-1500, in its Lyon edition ("expensis Bonini de Boninis Dalmatini"), the aforementioned book *Officium B. V. Mariae* was published, a work of the French printers N. de Benedictus and J. de Suigo.

Perhaps other prayer books and missals as well. Dobricevic was then in Lyon as an agent of the Republic of Venice. He must have been a skilled diplomat, given that the Venetian government sent him as a delegate to negotiate with the French and Hungarian-Croatian courts. It is known that he sent secret reports of his missions to the Council of Ten. Later, Venice appointed him inspector of the granaries ("incettatore di granaglie"), a position he held until he retired to Treviso where, until his death in 1528, he was the dean of the cathedral chapter.

The depth of Dobricevic's love for his native land is further evidenced by the large canvas he gifted to the Church of Our Lady in Lastovo at the end of the 16th century. In this painting, one can still see Dobricevic's likeness, as painted by his friend, the Italian artist P. F. Bissolo. His love for his birthplace is also demonstrated by the dedication he made to his friend George Kruzic in his edition of Giles's *Super caelestium motuum indagatione sine calculo* (Venice, 1494).

George Kruzic (Georgius de Cruce), bishop, humanist, and astronomer, was, as is well known, one of the most learned Croatians of his time; a favorite of King Matthias Corvinus, he was the scion of a prestigious, now extinct, family from Regusina. Brayer, more than sixty years ago, in highlighting the nature of this dedication, aptly concluded: "that this extremely rare literary document offers us proof that Dobricevic was in contact with his native city and, especially, that he enjoyed the favor of Bishop Kruzic."

Among Dobricevic's relatively few works, two incunabula stand out: Aesopus moralisatus (Brescia, 1487) and the edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (Brescia, 1487). Both books were illustrated with woodcuts, and while Aesopus, due to its graphic and typographic character, its presentation, and its materials, is one of the most accomplished products of Dobricevic's printing workshop, the Dante edition is more important in a bibliographic and historical sense. Although these incunabula are not very rare, it is worth mentioning that one copy is also preserved in Croatia. Aesop's works are in the Franciscan library in Visovac, and Dante's Divine Comedy is in the library of the State Archives in Zadar.

In the aforementioned work on incunabula in Croatia (it is regrettable that the Croatian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not included in said work), Badalic highlights that Brodicevic was one of the most cultured printers of his time and that his editions stand out among those of the 16th century, concluding: "If we take a look at the subject matter of Brodicevic's editions, we realize that he, like Patasic, prefers secular themes, and in his time such an attitude was progressive in publishing activity; of the 19 editions preserved in Croatia, six deal with history (Plutarch, Macrobius, Blondus, Bergomensis); three with philology (Varrus, Festus, Nonius); seven editions of literature (Aesop, Alighieri, Catullus, Gellius, Propertius, Lactantius, Tibullus); two editions refer to law (Ubaldis, Statuta Cremovia); one edition relates to religion (Ludovicus A. Turri).

Badalic then notes that the British Museum, which owns 22 editions by Dobricevic, lacks "his valuable edition of Dante Alighieri (1487), which is held in the State Archives in Zadar." It is interesting to note that a relatively large number of Dobricevic's editions are held by North American libraries: 27 are cataloged and verified, and in multiple copies. Perhaps some are in the possession of anonymous owners.

According to Goff, the Library of Congress in Washington holds two copies of Dobricevic's edition of Aesop, and Dante's Divine Comedy by our master printer is listed in the catalogs of 21 North American libraries.

Most of the Dobricevic incunabula found in the United States are not listed in Badalic's catalogue, which means they either don't exist or, at least, aren't registered in Croatia. The considerable number of Dobricevic editions found in the United States is due to the development and extensive holdings of American scholarly libraries.

Regarding the edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, of which there are several copies in American libraries, in addition to the reasons already given, it should be emphasized that this edition is an important edition of Dante not only from a bibliophile's perspective but also from a bibliographical one, since it is important to know that numerous collections in the United States are dedicated to Dante.

It is an undeniable fact, for example, that the Dante Library at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, with its 13,000 volumes, constitutes the most complete collection of printed works on Dante in the world. The collection was founded in the last century by Cornell's first librarian, the esteemed bibliographer and scholar Willard Fiske. While some European libraries and collections can boast of possessing invaluable manuscripts of early editions of Dante, to my knowledge, there is no other library in the world more complete with regard to printed works by and about Dante than that of the Dante Library at Cornell University.

This rich library possesses, for instance, in addition to the first printed edition of the Divine Comedy (Foligno, 1472), the Convivio (1490), Vita Nova (1576), and also the Florentine edition of the Divine Comedy (1481). This edition, as is well known, is illustrated with engravings generally attributed to Botticelli, though some doubt they could be by Bacci or Baldini. Meanwhile, the edition of Dante's poem illustrated with woodcuts, or in other words, the second illustrated edition.

This work by the Croatian master typographer occupies an important place in Dante's bibliography and possesses a specific character and historical-cultural value. Furthermore, in typographic terms, these illustrations by Dobricevic—despite many contemporary specialists' negative judgments regarding their graphic execution and artistic-craft merit—not only preserved its renown in posterity as one of the first printed editions of the bibliophile edition of the Divine Comedy but were also warmly received by his contemporaries. Moreover, imitated and compiled, they "long set the fashion"—as the British Museum catalogue emphasizes—"in illustrated editions of the Poem." Indeed, the next edition of the Divine Comedy (Venice, B. Benalius & M. Capsaca, 1491), published four years after Dobricevic's, reproduced his woodcuts. It is true that they were reproduced in a much smaller format and are more striking, as we were able to ascertain by comparing both editions in the Dante Library at Cornell University.

As for the text and commentary of the Divine Comedy in Dobricevic's edition, they are a mere transcription of the Florentine edition (1481) by Christophorus Landinus. The text and commentary are copied so carefully that, with few exceptions, they include all the errors and omissions of the Florentine original. Regarding the illustrations, Dobricevic added a total of 68 woodcuts, one for each canto of Inferno and Purgatorio, plus an introductory one featuring the poet.

If we consider that three woodcuts are doublets, then the total number of illustrations is reduced to 65. It is strange that the cantos of Paradiso were not illustrated. It was previously believed that Paradisoo had a woodcut referring to the first canto. The cause of this erroneous conclusion was the opinion that the illustrations prefaced each canto, when in fact they were located at the end of each canto (with the exception of Canto XI of Purgatorio).

As for the graphic execution of Dobricevic's illustrated edition, there are divergent, sometimes diametrically opposed, opinions. This fact, however, does not diminish the value of his work. For his name will remain in posterity simply because of its association with the glory of Dante's immortal poem.

The Naval Battle of Vis of 1866

Karlo Picinic, Buenos Aires

July 20, 1966, marked the centenary of the naval battle of Vis between the fleets of the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire.

The island of Vis lies approximately 20 nautical miles from the Dalmatian coast and over 60 miles from the opposite Italian shore; it is located almost halfway between the Porte de Otranto and the Gulf of Trieste. Due to its geographical position, Vis was for two millennia an important strategic sentinel of the eastern Adriatic coast and, as such, key to that sea. The greatest European powers fought for its possession in the past, and after changing hands several times, at the end of World War II, it was returned to Croatia, then one of the "socialist republics" of Yugoslavia.

The Island of Vis and its Past

In the early stages of its history, Vis was independent and inhabited by Illyrians. The Ionian king (Ionius) is mentioned in the 5th century BC. At the beginning of the 4th century BC, Dionysius the Elder, the Syracusan tyrant, seized the island and founded a Greek colony there called Issus (the island's name is Issa in Latin, Vis in Croatian, and Lissa in Italian). The remains of this colony can still be seen today near the site of Gradina.

This colony, which produced excellent wine and pottery, soon prospered and founded its own colonies on the island of Korcula (Corcyra Nigra), in Split (Spalatium), in Trogir (Tragurium), in Stobrec (Epetium), and in Solin (Salona). Issa acted as an intermediary, using its own currency, in the exchange of goods between these colonies and various Mediterranean cities. Its coins featured a two-handled vessel adorned with a grapevine bearing bunches of grapes, a symbol of wine on a ceramic cup.

In Rome's war against Teuta, queen of the Illyrians (230-228 BC), Issa was an ally of Rome. The Illyrians besieged it in 230 BC under the command of Teuta's commander, Demetrius of Pharos (Hvar in Croatian). Teuta, expanding her kingdom southward, had conquered Corcyra (Korcula in Croatian), a haven for pirates, and was harassing the Romans. The consul Gaius Fulvius Contumatus sailed from the Tyrrhenian Sea into the Adriatic with 220 ships and threatened Corcyra. Demetrius of Pharos, seeing that all resistance would be futile, surrendered Corcyra and lifted the siege of Issa.

Later, the Roman army of 120,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, embarked at Brundusium (Brindisi) and conquered, without encountering much resistance, the Illyrian lands from the Histria peninsula in the north to the Norenta (Neretva) River in the south. This territory became the Illyrian vassal state, ruled by Demetrius of Pharos (Quislings already existed at this time). Queen Teuta retained the small portion of the kingdom from the Neretva River to Boka Kotorska and the northern part of present-day Albania. She also had to pay Rome a heavy annual tribute.

Issa remained loyal to Rome. Its ships contributed to the Roman victory over the Carthaginians in the First Punic War and later in the war against Philip of Macedon. During this period, under Roman protection, Issa grew wealthy and built baths, a theater, and a forum. When the Roman Empire was divided into western and eastern parts in 395 AD, Issa fell under Byzantine rule. Since Byzantium was too far away to protect it from the Eastern Goths, these invaded in 536 from Pannonia and completely destroyed it. Its inhabitants dispersed throughout the island's interior. Thus ended this city after nine centuries of labor, wealth, and glory.

In the mid-7th century, the Croats, its current inhabitants, settled there. The island of Vis was successively part of the Principality and the Kingdom of Croatia. Its main settlement was Veloselo, conquered at the end of the 10th century by the corsairs of Neretva. Until then, the Venetians paid Croatia and the people of Neretva an annual tribute for free navigation in the Adriatic, and in return, the corsairs did not attack them.

Croatia was weakened at that time as a result of internal struggles surrounding the succession to the throne. In contrast, Venice, under Doge Pietro II Orseolo, grew stronger and decided to free itself from the tribute paid to Croatia and from the corsairs of Neretva. The Venetian admiral Bragadin attacked Vis in 1997, routed the Neretva corsairs, destroyed Veloselo, and took its inhabitants captive. In 1000, Doge Orseolo II sailed from Venice with a fleet and forced all the Dalmatian cities, from Krk to Dubrovnik, to acknowledge Venetian supremacy.

He then returned to Venice bearing the title of "Duke of Dalmatia and Croatia." Until then, the Dalmatian cities nominally recognized the authority of Byzantium, but in fact, since the time of King Tomislav (920-929), Croatian kings ruled there in the name of Byzantium, which had ceded these cities to them (the Dalmatian theme).

Great changes occurred when King Petar Kresimir IV ascended the Croatian throne in 1058. He reconquered all the Dalmatian cities and islands from the Venetians, bringing the entire Croatian territory under his control, from Rasa (Arsa) in Istria to the Neretva River and from the coast to the Drina River. Byzantium recognized his sovereignty over the Dalmatian cities. Then Peter Kresimir assumed the title of "King of the Croats and Dalmatians." King Dmitri Zvonimir, Peter Kresimir's successor and an ally of Pope Gregory VII, considered himself King of Dalmatia in his own right, disregarding the sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire.

Until 1102, Vis, like the other Dalmatian islands and cities, was under the control of the Croatian kings, then the Croatian-Hungarian kings, and suffered greatly due to the incessant struggles between the Croats, the Venetians, and the Normans. In 1358, the Croatian-Hungarian king Louis I the Great of the House of Angevin once again expelled the Venetians from the Croatian islands and cities, but this situation lasted only until 1420, when the last Angevin on the Croatian-Hungarian throne, Ladislaus the Neapolitan, sold his alleged rights to Dalmatia to Venice for 100,000 gold ducats.

Venice then seized the Dalmatian islands and cities, except for the territory of the Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), which remained independent until 1809. In 1843, the inhabitants of Vis suffered another misfortune: Ferdinand I of Naples, in the war against Venice, attacked the island with his ships and destroyed Veloselo. After the war ended and Ferdinand I's army withdrew, a period of peace and prosperity ensued. The dispersed population descended to the coast and, with great effort, built a new town on the same site as the old Issa. There, at the bottom of the picturesque Bay of St. George, the new Croatian town arose, bearing the same name as the island.

On the beaches of the western coast, where the legendary city of Meum once stood, Kómiza was built, a village of fishermen and sailors. Behind it, from Hum, the island's highest mountain (587 m), a magnificent panoramic view opens up over the adjacent islands: Šolta, Brač, Hvar, Susac, and Lastovo, and over the mountains of the Dalmatian mainland: Kozjak, Mosor, and the Pelješac hill. To the west, shrouded in a light mist, the Gran Sasso d'Italia can be seen.

The island's interior is dotted with towns and villages, the largest being Podhumlie, Podspilie, and Veloselo. Along the coast, in addition to Kómiza, Okljucna stands out on the northern tip, and Rukavac on the island's southeastern cape. Not far from Okljucna, atop a hill 40 meters above sea level, lies the Cueva Dura (Hard Cave), covering almost 1,000 square meters. Five nautical miles from the island's southwestern promontory, the islet of Bisevo rises perpendicularly from the sea. It is known for its Blue Cave, comparable in size and beauty to the Blue Cave of Capri in the Gulf of Naples.

All the island's place names are of Croatian origin, except for the island's ancient Greek name, Issos, which was Croatianized to Vis. Similarly, the ancient Illyrian, Greek, and Latin names of all the cities and islands from the Rasa River in Istria to the Bojana River in Albania were Croatianized. From the 7th century onward, new settlements, of course, received Croatian names.

A historical event speaks in favor of Vis's Croatian character in a peculiar way. In 1177, Pope Alexander III, pursued by Frederick Barbarossa, landed on the small, uninhabited Dalmatian islet of Palagruza (Pelagosa). He then sailed 40 miles north to Vis, where the Archbishop of Split and all the islanders awaited him, singing religious hymns in their vernacular. The Pope stayed in a house in the center of Vis, and this house is still called "the papal palace," "the Pope's house," or "Papini." Afterward, Alexander III continued on to Zadar, accompanied by the Archbishop of Split. There, too, he was greeted by the parishioners, who sang in their Croatian language (...in eorum sclavonica lingua...). From there he traveled to Venice.

During its long rule in Istria and Dalmatia (1420-1797), Venice did not seek to denationalize the Croatian population. The Venetians referred to their Croatian neighbors as "Schiavoni" (a vulgar Latin form of "Sclavi," instead of "Slavi"), and to the Balkan immigrants who fled Turkish attacks throughout the 16th and 17th centuries as "Morlacchi" (Maurovalacos). The Venetians did not enter Croatian villages; they merely demanded their loyalty.

In this way, national identity and the Croatian language were preserved in the villages and even within the Church (a unique privilege within the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church). In the cities, administered by Venetian governors, praetorians, and officials, people communicated and understood the authorities in the Venetian dialect, which they had learned. At the end of the 15th century, parallel to the Italian Renaissance, a flourishing Croatian literature emerged in Dalmatia, forming the basis of the subsequent Croatian national revival.

Following the custom of the humanists, the names and surnames of writers, artists, and scientists were translated into Latin or Italian, resulting in two versions: Lucic or Lucius, Klovic, Clovius, and Clovio; Tomasic and Tommaseo; Cetnic or Cettineo; Sisgoric or Sisgoreo, Martinic or Martinis, Jaksa or Giaxa, Gazarevic or Gazzari, etc. In this way, an Italian nucleus formed in all the former Roman cities of Istria and Dalmatia, along with the Venetian immigrants. Italian was used as a lingua franca in maritime life, trade, and industry throughout much of the Italian Mediterranean, giving Italian irredentism a pretext to claim Istria and Dalmatia as its own authentic provinces.

The population of Vis lived well from winemaking and fishing. The fish market of Vis is mentioned as early as the 14th century. Preserved fish was exported in large quantities to Venice, mainly exempt from customs duties. The town of Vis gradually grew into a small city.

With the dissolution of the Republic of Saint Mark under the Peace of Campo Formio in 1797, all political and economic ties between Dalmatia and Venice, forged over 377 years of shared existence, were severed. Further disorientation ensued due to the rapid changes in power under the new rulers. With the dissolution of the Republic of Venice, Dalmatia, along with Vis, was incorporated into Austria, and in 1806, under the Treaty of Bratislava, Vis fell into French hands.

A year later, the Russian fleet under Admiral Sinjavin expelled the French and seized the island. However, following the Treaty of Tilsit, Sinjavin's ships abandoned Vis, which again fell into French hands. The port of St. George then saw ships and vessels of all flags opposed to Napoleon, and most of all, British ships. The British took over the entire island, which during the blockade against Napoleon had become a haven for smugglers. There were so many foreigners that the island's population increased from 4,000 to 12,000. Lacking sufficient housing, many newcomers lived on ships.

In 1811, the French sent nine warships and seven auxiliary vessels to Vis with the aim of recapturing it. The ships were partly French and partly Italian, under the supreme command of Admiral Dubourdieu. The Italian squadron was commanded by Admiral Pasqualigo. The British awaited them in the strait between Vis and Hvar with four medium-sized frigates under the command of Vice-Admiral Hoste. The British ships were several times smaller in firepower than their adversaries, but superior in courage and skill.

The British drove a wedge between the French and Italian squadrons, set one frigate ablaze, and captured another. Admiral Dubourdieu fell in the battle, and Admiral Pasqualigo was taken prisoner along with three other commanders of the Italian squadron. The remaining ships fled, some to Hvar, others to Ancona and Brindisi, and two French frigates reached Corfu. The English flag was raised again on Vis. To honour their admiral, the English named the islet at the entrance to Vis harbor after him; it is still called Hoste.

The English built several fortresses on Vis: George, in honor of their king, on the western side of the harbour entrance; Wellington Tower on Mount Jurjev, on the eastern side of the harbor entrance; Robertson Tower near George; and Bentink Tower, outside the harbor, on the hill above Rogacic Bay. They built a barracks on Hoste Islet and established a cemetery for their fallen at the bottom of Vis harbor, on the small Sucurje Peninsula, and placed a memorial plaque with an inscription in English, Italian, and Croatian. The English liked the people of Vis and appreciated the island's strategic position, which they called the Adriatic Gibraltar.

On July 13, 1815, by resolution of the Congress of Vienna, Vis with all of Dalmatia ex Veneta was awarded to the Austrian Emperor Francis I. The Austrians reformed the English fortifications and built new ones, namely: a large fortress in the center of the town of Vis in the district called Kut, named the Battery of Our Lady; the Mamula Battery, on the seashore, not far from the George Fortress; the Sepurine Battery, on the sea, above Mamula; the Saint Cosmas and Andrew Battery, at the bottom of the harbor, above the town; the Podstrazje Battery, above Rukavac in the southeastern part of the island; the Maximilian Blockhouse, on the Saint Michael Mound, above Komyza; the Knezrat Battery, on the hill that closes off the Komyza Bay at its northern end; The Dragomirkamik battery, on Mount Stazica, at the southeastern end of Komiza Bay, and the Schmidt powder magazine at the entrance to Vis harbour.

Around the 1830s, the Italian Risorgimento and the Croatian national movement emerged, both nationalist movements. Italy aspired to unification, and the Croats also longed to unite all their provinces within the Austrian Empire. This led to bitter political struggles between Italians and Croats, and between Italians and Slovenes, from Gorizia and Trieste to Boka Kotorska.

The Italians, although a small minority, demanded the integration of Istria and Dalmatia into Italy. As a counterweight, the Croats and Slovenes began to establish their political and cultural institutions and schools to strengthen their people's national consciousness and prepare themselves against virulent Italian irredentism. The leading figures of the Italian union, Mazzini and Cavour, opposed the incorporation of Dalmatia, Istria, and Trieste into Italy, arguing, quite rightly, that in these regions, and to some extent in the cities, the population was predominantly Slavic. However, as the unification of Italy progressed, the outdated notion of renewing the conquests of the Roman Empire gained strength among Italians, regardless of the means and the sacrifices of men and resources.

The Battle of Vis

The year 1866 arrived, fraught with turmoil for Austria and the Croats, then one of the peoples comprising the Habsburg Monarchy as an associated kingdom. In 1859, the Austrian Empire was defeated at Magenta and Solferino by Italian and French troops, losing Lombardy, Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and Lucca. These provinces were incorporated into Piedmont, which in turn had to cede Nice and Savoy to France. Thus, outside the borders of Italy lay Papal Rome and Austrian Venice.

In 1864, Austria had allied itself with Prussia in the war against Denmark for possession of Schleswig-Holstein, which, after the victory of the German-Austrian fleet, belonged to Prussia. But Prussian-Austrian relations soon soured due to the Kingdom of Prussia's ambition to unify all of Germany under its rule. Thus, in 1866, the Prussian-Austrian War broke out. Italy seized this exceptional opportunity to achieve its definitive union and declared war on Austria.

On June 24, Austria defeated the Italian troops at Custozza, but on July 3, it was in turn defeated by the Prussians near Königsgrätz. To salvage its honor before its allies, Italy decided to attack Austria at sea with its powerful fleet. A victory against the older, weaker Austrian squadron would allow it to expand its power along the eastern Adriatic coast. The Battle of Vis revealed all these plans.

Admiral Carlo Pelliondi Persano, commander-in-chief of the Italian navy, was considered Italy's finest naval strategist. A native of Vercelli, Piedmont, he was 63 years old at the time. In 1861, he and his fleet captured Messina from the Spanish Bourbons and Ancona from the Papal States. He was elected to the legislature and, in 1862, became Minister of the Navy.

In 1866, the Italian fleet concentrated in the wide, sheltered harbor of the Taranto citadel. Persano awaited the arrival of the brand-new Italian battleship, the Affondatore (Sink-man), and issued instructions and orders to the ship commanders for the imminent clash with the Austrian squadron. Strangely, however, he never conducted naval exercises to practice his instructions. Depretis, the Minister of War, ordered him to move with the fleet to the Adriatic, to the port of Ancona, from where it would be easier to attack the Austrian ships.

Persano remained in Ancona, constantly awaiting the arrival of the battleship "Affondatore," recently built at the Armstrong shipyards on the Thames, which was sailing towards Italy. Although the Italian admiral had a fleet far superior to the Austrian one, Persano did not dare to engage in battle without this state-of-the-art vessel. Minister Depretis was impatient; Austria had been defeated at Königsgrätz and rumors of an imminent peace were already circulating, yet the Italian fleet hadn't even moved to demonstrate its strength and alleviate Custozza's defeat.

On the contrary, a squadron of Austrian ironclads, under Rear Admiral Tegetthof, attacked Ancona on June 27 and July 6, beyond the range of land batteries, with the aim of provoking a battle with the Italian fleet before the arrival of the "Affondatore." But Persano did not accept the Austrian challenge. Depretis then threatened Persano with dismissal if he did not go on the offensive.

Finally, after a single naval maneuver, Persano decided to leave the port of Ancona and on July 16 issued orders to all units, calling upon the crews to "save and restore to Italy the lands that belong to her." At three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, the Italian fleet set sail for Vis, 120 nautical miles from Ancona.

In total, there were 11 ironclads, namely: the wooden frigates with steel sheathing, Re d'Italia, with 32 guns, and Re di Portogallo, with 28 guns, both displacing 5,700 tons and built in 1862 in New York; the partially armored wooden frigate, Príncipe di Carignano, of 4,086 tons, equipped with 22 guns; the armored corvettes Terribile and Formidabile, of 2,700 tons and with 22 guns each; the partially armored frigates Ancona, Castelfidardo, Maria Pia, and San Martino, of 4,250 tons and 26 years old each; and the armored gunboats Palestro and Varese, of 2,000 tons and with 4 guns each. The wooden ships consisted of four frigates totaling 14,375 tons and 208 cannons; three corvettes with a total of 42 cannons; six auxiliary vessels with a total of 12 cannons; and four gunboats with 36 cannons, for a total of 28 vessels.

The 11 armored ships were armed with the most modern rifled cannons, which fired 74- to 300-pound balls, with greater accuracy and at a greater range than rifled cannons.

After leaving Ancona, the fleet headed for Losinj in order to mislead any potential Austrian patrol boat. At night, it turned towards Vis, reduced its speed, and sent word to the Messaggiero to verify the island's armament. Persano evidently believed he could seize the island and establish a base there, from which Italian forces could advance into all of Dalmatia. Vis was, after all, considered a key to the Adriatic.

On the morning of July 17, Messaggiero appeared in the port of Komissa flying the British flag. Commodore D'Amico, Persano's chief of staff, observed the bay and its fortifications and then entered the port of Vis under the French flag. Sailing slowly through the harbor, he steamed off and at five in the afternoon rendezvoused with his squadron.

D'Amico informed Persano that there were between 2,000 and 2,500 soldiers on the bay island, four fortifications in the port of St. George, and two batteries each in Komissa and Rukavac. The Italian admiral and his staff were now convinced that they had more than enough forces to undertake the action. The fleet continued on course for Vis. Only Vice Admiral Albini held a contrary opinion and tried to persuade Persano that Vis was the Gibraltar of the Adriatic and a tough nut to crack for the Italian fleet.

The Italian writer Janni Mauro claims that Vis was well fortified with powerful artillery, while the English historian Sir William Laird Clowes asserts that the fortresses at Vis were built to withstand wooden ships. According to Austrian records, the garrison at Vis consisted of 1,833 soldiers and officers under the command of Colonel Urs de Margina. The officers were mostly German, and the soldiers primarily Croatian. The fortifications, although well-maintained, were outdated.

According to the D'Amico report, Persano divided his fleet into three parts:

1. Rear Admiral Vacca, with the ironclads Principe di Carignano, Castelfidardo, and Ancona, and the corvette Guiscardo, would attack the fortifications of Komiza and, once breached, land troops to draw the attention of the entire garrison of Vis.

2. Vice Admiral Albini, with the wooden frigates Maria Adelaide, Gaeta, Duca di Genova, and Vittorio Emanuele, and the wooden corvette San Giovanni, would attack the batteries of Rukavac and, once destroyed, land a contingent of infantry.

3. The strongest units, under the command of Admiral Persano—that is, the eight ironclads along with the avisos Ettore Fieramosca and Messaggiero—would engage the fortifications of Vis.

4. Commander Sandri, with four gunboats, will proceed to Hvar and cut the submarine telegraph cable between Hvar and Vis.

5. The avisos Esploratore and Stella d'Italia will position themselves northwest and northeast of Vis, respectively, within sight of the main squadron, and will signal the arrival of the Austrian fleet.

6. The supply transport Indipendenza and the hospital ship Washington will remain near the islet of Bisevo, ready to respond.

7. The attack will begin at dawn on July 18.

At daybreak, the fishermen of Komiza saw the Italian fleet pass by, heading for the port of Vis. The batteries at Komiza fired a salvo without live ammunition, and when the ships did not raise their flags, they fired live rounds. The ships did not return fire and continued on their way. It was eleven o'clock when the entire Italian squadron took up its positions and the duel between the fortifications and the ships began.

The commander of the Vis garrison immediately telegraphed the governor of Zadar, informing them of the attack and the power of the aggressor fleet, so that all the Austrian authorities as far as Vienna were soon informed of the news. It wasn't until four in the afternoon that the torpedo boats under Sandri's command arrived at the port of Hvar.

He forced the Hvar authorities, under threat of cannon fire, to tell him without delay where the submarine cable connecting Hvar to Vis was laid, and he cut it. But he forgot to cut another cable connecting Hvar to the mainland, so that everything happening in the waters off Vis was being communicated from Hvar to Zadar and Pola, a spectacle that could easily be observed from Hvar with binoculars at a distance of 10 nautical miles.

While the battle raged off the port of Vis with the main body of the Italian squadron, Albini returned with his units without having accomplished his mission. The Podstrazje battery was too high for the ships' cannons and bombarded them without any chance of silencing it. For the same reason, Vacca returned to Kómiza at four in the afternoon with his ships, after the fruitless fight with the batteries at Knezgrad, Dragomirkamik, and Maximiliano. He couldn't even consider landing the infantry. Both squadrons joined Persano's main force.

Off the port of San Jorge, a fierce battle raged between four fortresses and eight ironclads. There were also wounded and dead among the population of Vis, who began to flee in terror inland and hide in caves. Young men came to the aid of the exhausted soldiers and brought them ammunition. Around three in the afternoon, the Italians achieved their first success: they hit the Schmidt powder magazine, which exploded with 17 men inside. The Italian ships greeted this with a resounding "hurrah."

Shortly afterward, around four-thirty, another success followed: the George fortress was silenced. It was full of wounded and had no one to reload the cannons. An even louder "hurrah" erupted from the Italian squadron. But the fortress soon received reinforcements and reopened fire on the enemy, who retreated out to sea instead of entering the harbor as planned. During the night, the forest above the town of Vis was ablaze, set ablaze by enemy fire. The Re d'Italia alone had fired 1,300 cannon shots.

The following day, July 19, the attack on the island resumed. Vice Admiral Albini received orders to attack Kómiza with his ships and land a contingent of infantry there. Passing through the fire of the Knezrat and Dragomirkamik batteries, Albini's ships approached the beaches of Kómiza and lowered boats full of soldiers, who began rowing toward the town. Then the blockhouse Maximiliano began shelling the boats, and the ships, whose fire was unable to reach it because it was positioned high on the hill of San Miguel. Albini abandoned the action and returned to the port of Vis, rejoining, as he had the previous day, the main body of Persano's forces.

On this day, the George fortress also paid a very high price in blood, and by nightfall, already greatly weakened, the battleships Formidabile, Maria Pia, and San Martino were able to enter the port of Vis, patrolling the harbor and firing at the houses. The crews of the Italian ships thought Vis had fallen and cheered "Visa Lissa" (Vis is loose). At that moment, they were caught in the crossfire from the San Cosme and Andrés batteries, located above the town, and from the Notre-Dame battery, situated in the city center.

Their aim was so accurate that the Maria Pia and San Martino immediately left the port. The Formidabile, under the command of its valiant commander, Simeone di Saint Bon, accepted the fight and anchored in the port. Left alone and fighting for a full hour against the furiously firing batteries, it lost around 60 soldiers, killed or wounded, and was badly damaged. This caused panic among the crew, who demanded that their commander withdraw from the port.

In their panicked haste, the sailors failed to raise the anchor, leaving it on the seabed along with the chains. The Formidable withdrew in time, but due to the damage it had sustained, it was unfit for further combat, and Persano dispatched it to Ancona. The fortresses of Vis were also battered, but they did not fall. During the course of July 18th and 19th, they fired 2,733 cannon shots.

On this day, the new battleship Affondatore, accompanied by three wooden frigates, finally arrived from Ancona in the waters off Vis. This 4,700-ton ship had an armored deck, as well as two turrets on the deck with two 230 mm caliber guns, which fired 150 kg shells with a range of 15 km. Its outer armor was 17 cm thick, and its sinking point was 8 m long.

At dawn on July 20, the Italians received new reinforcements: the packet ship Piemonte, filled with troops to conquer the islands. Persano again ordered Vice Admiral Albini to land troops on the island, at any cost, and the battleships Terribile and Varese to attack the fortresses of Komiza. This time, Albini tried his luck on the northern part of the island, first in Rogacic Bay, then below Gradac near Okljucna, but he was repelled by the Robertson and Bentink batteries. Some accounts showed the Italians themselves pointing rifles and revolvers from the ships at their soldiers in the boats, forcing them to row to shore despite the heavy fire from the batteries.

Around 9:00 a.m., an Italian dispatch signaled Persano: "Suspicious ships to the northwest." Tegetthof was arriving with his squadron.

Rear Admiral Wilhelm Tegetthof, born in 1827 in Maribor (present-day Slovenia), was the scion of a noble German family from Westphalia. He studied at the Venice Naval Academy and joined the navy in 1845. By 1854, he was commanding the torpedo boat Elizabeth and later, during the Crimean War, the patrol boat Taurus. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Archduke Maximilian, entrusted him with the most difficult missions, which he always accomplished successfully.

In 1864, as a captain, with the wooden frigates Schwarzenberg and Radetzky and three Prussian gunboats, he defeated the Danish fleet near Heligoland (North Sea). This victory earned him the rank of rear admiral at the age of 27. When the Archduke accepted the royal crown of Mexico, Tegetthof, by imperial decree and due to his merits and talents, assumed command of the Austrian naval fleet.

On July 18, Tegetthof received telegraphic information from Vis regarding the Italian navy's attack. Before the cable was cut, he managed to reply: "Hold on, I will be with you tomorrow." Afterward, volunteer scouts from Hvar kept him constantly informed of the events unfolding off the island, which convinced him that the Italian undertaking was serious. However, he could not command the fleet without the consent of the War Ministry in Vienna and Archduke Albrecht, commander of the Austrian army in Italy.

The Archduke feared an attack by the Italian fleet on the rear of his left flank on the plain of Padua and believed that the Italian squadron's attack at Vis was a maneuver to draw the Austrian fleet away from the Italian battlefield and the port of Pola. Finally, after deliberations between the Archduke and Tegetthof's War Ministry, the fleet was allowed to leave the port of Pola, but only as far as Vis, so that it could return to the northern Adriatic without delay if necessary.

Furthermore, Tegetthof was advised to take only the armored ships to the battle and leave the antiquated wooden vessels in Pola. However, Tegetthof believed that the selection of warships was solely his prerogative, and he took all the wooden ships with him, informing Vienna that he would find a task for each vessel. Indeed, as we shall see, the Austrian wooden fleet, with its well-trained crew, contributed significantly to the victory over the Italian navy. In the maneuvers that Tegetthof frequently conducted in the waters off Pola, the gunners honed their skills in firing and the signalmen in sending and receiving signals, two fundamental aspects of naval tactics at the time.

The first division of the Austrian warship consisted of seven armored wooden vessels, led by the 4,500-ton frigate Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, armed with 16 cannons. Following these were the frigates: Habsburg, 4,500 tons, armed with 16 cannons; Salamander, 3,400 tons, with 26 cannons; Kaiser Max, 3,800 tons, with 28 cannons; and Don Juan de Austria, 3,800 tons, with 32 cannons. The second division was led by the old wooden ship Kaiser and consisted of the following wooden frigates: Adria, Donau, Novara, Radetzky, Schwarzenberg, and the corvette Erzherzog Friedrich, a total of seven ships ranging from 2,000 to 2,700 tons, with a total of 314 cannons. The third division included the torpedo boats Dalmat, Hum, Reka, Seehund, Velebit, Sreiter, Vall, Kraka, and Norenta, and paddlewheel support vessels: Andreas Hofer, Elizabeth, and Greif (the Imperial Yacht), a total of twelve ships of 10,350 tons with 46 cannons.

The table below shows the strength of both squadrons in terms of cannons, armor, and speed of their best units. Only rifled, breech-loading cannons should be considered. Rifled cannons, loaded from the front, posed no threat to armored ships except at very close range. Austria was unable to replace the outdated cannons on all its ships with modern ones because Prussia, an ally of Italy, prevented the transport of armaments from the Krupp factories through its territory. Thus, of the Austrian wooden ships, only the old Kaiser possessed, atop its museum of 96 cannons, a rifled cannon mounted forward of the foremast.

	Cantidad cañones	Peso de bala	disparo salva
Erzherzog Ferdinand Max	(cañones lisos, sin estría)
Habsburg	(cañones lisos, sin estría)
Kaiser Max	14	6 libras	896 libras
Prinz Eugen	14	64 libras	896 libras
Don Juan de Austria	14	64 libras	896 libras
Drache	16	64 libras	1.024 libras
Salamander	16	64 libras	1.024 libras
Total:	74		4.736 libras
Affondatore	2	296 libras	590 libras
Re d'Italia	2	160 libras	300 libras
Re d'Italia	16	100 libras	1.600 libras
Re d'Italia	14	74 libras	1.036 libras
Re di Portogallo	14	300 libras	4.200 libras
Re di Portogallo	14	74 libras	1.036 libras
Total	62		8.762 libras

Armor thickness of Austrian ships: 12 cm.

Armor thickness of Italian ships: 10-17 cm.

Speed of Austrian ships: 10 mm.

Speed of Italian ships: 12 mm.

Based on this data, taken from the English author John Richard Hale, it can be inferred that the three most powerful Italian ships could, in theory, have destroyed the entire Austrian fleet. The Italian author Franco Garofalo gives the following ratio of forces:

	Italia	Austria
Tonelaje	2.64	1
Cañones	1.66	1
Potencia motriz	2.57	1

The preceding diagram considers the relationship of cannons according to their number, not their caliber.

According to Tegetthof's strategic plan, the Austrian squadron had to break through the enemy's battle line with intense fire, position itself below the Vis fortifications, and bombard the enemy from land and sea. To this end, the battle line was arranged in a three-tiered formation, resembling the flight of swallows.

The first tier consisted of the first division, that is, the armored ships; the second tier comprised the second division, the wooden frigates; and the third tier, completed by the wooden gunboats and support vessels, formed the battle line. The fleet was led by the Lloyd Austrian packet ship Stadium, which, with its speed of 12 knots, served as a warning vessel.

Around 10:00 a.m. on July 19, the squadron began to weigh anchor and leave the Fasana Channel, near Pola. Once at sea, Tegetthof telegraphed the War Ministry about his departure and traveled overland to the southern tip of Istria, from where he transferred by boat to the frigate Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, his flagship. From the Kaiser, its commander, Commodore A. von Petz, signaled the ships to salute Tegetthof with their flags, and as he passed among the vessels, a spontaneous cheer erupted from the crew for their 39-year-old rear admiral.

Sailing towards Vis, the fleet was caught in a severe storm with a southeasterly wind and rain that obscured the horizon. The following day, around 9:00 a.m., the rain stopped, and Vis and the Italian squadron suddenly came into sight. Tegetthof, seeing the Austrian flag on Vis, was pleased that its defenders had fulfilled their orders to hold out and that he himself had been able to keep his promise, "I will arrive tomorrow." This promise, although fulfilled a day late, instilled courage and a spirit of sacrifice in the defenders.

At the signal regarding the arrival of suspicious ships, Persano ordered Albini's units to abandon the troop landing and join the main fleet. He then deployed his three divisions of armored ships in a wake line to prevent the Austrian squadron from joining the Vis fortifications in the joint defense. The Italian ships, therefore, blocked Tegetthof's access to Vis with cannon fire from their left flanks.

The first division was commanded by Rear Admiral Vacca aboard the Principe di Carignano, the second by Commodore Faá di Bruno aboard the Re d'Italia, and the third by Captain Ribotty aboard the Re di Portogallo. These three divisions entered the battle without the Formidabile, which had been sent to Ancona, and without the Terribile, which was with Albini. Thus, Tegetthof faced only 10 Italian ships.

Shortly before the battle, Persano left his flagship, the Re d'Italia, and boarded the Affondatore, the most modern, fastest, and most suitable ship for leading the fight. The Affondatore was, in fact, the predecessor of modern monitors and dreadnoughts. However, the timing of the flagship change was unsuitable, for while Persano boarded his new ship, the second and third divisions had to halt, increasing the gap between the first and second divisions, which had already moved quite far ahead, unaware of the change when the battle began. The course of the battle showed that Persano's transfer proved detrimental to the Italian fleet.

The Erzherzog Ferdinand Max (nor the Habsburg) lacked modern rifled cannons, but Tegetthof chose to sail with it into battle because it bore the name of his protector and friend, the ill-fated Mexican emperor. From that ship, he gave the first signal for battle: "Attack the enemy and sink it." The Italians ignored this signal, believing Tegetthof was still on the Kaiser and firing specifically at that ship. Another prepared signal, "This must be the victory of Vis," was not given because cannon smoke already filled the horizon. These signals left all units free to engage in individual combat according to each commander's initiative.

Even before leaving Fasana, Tegetthof had gathered his commanders and explained the battle plan, strictly forbidding them from opening fire before approaching the enemy within range of their own guns. The Italian ships launched their first charges at 10:43 a.m. In the morning, the Principe di Carignano and the Castelfidardo opened fire on the Salamander, severely damaging its bridge.

Shortly afterward, the left wing of the Austrian First Division attacked the three ships of the Italian First Division under Rear Admiral Vacca, supported by the Schwarzenberg, the Donau, and the Radetzky from the left wing of the wooden frigates, and both Italian battleships were forced to withdraw. The right wing of the Austrian battleships then engaged the Italian Second Division, commanded by Faá di Bruno.

The remaining Austrian wooden ships of the Second and then the Third Divisions entered into combat with the Italian Third Division under Ribotty. From the very beginning of the battle, the valor and strength of the Austrian wooden ships were fully exploited in the clash where two Austrian divisions, a total of 14 vessels, withstood the charge of the three Italian divisions—that is, 10 ships equipped, provisioned, and built according to modern technology—by sheer numbers rather than armament.

After the initial clash, confusion ensued, which the Austrian ships used to their advantage to perform daring individual feats. Passing through the Italian formation, the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max twice rammed the stern of the Palestro with its bow and enveloped it with fire from its forward battery. At that moment, Corporal Nikola Karkovic of Hvar saw that the Palestro's ensign was touching the bow of his ship, jumped aboard, and snatched it away. Tegetthof saw this and shouted amidst the infernal noise, "Who has the ensign?" Krakovic handed it over to the rear admiral. The Palestro managed to avoid this danger, but fortune turned against it. No sooner had it moved away from the Austrian flagship than another Austrian battleship awaited it, launching a heavy broadside and setting its deck ablaze.

The battleship Re d'Italia suffered rudder damage and could no longer maneuver. At the worst possible moment, it was surprised by the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, commanded by Baron Sterneck, who decided to sink it with the prow of its bow. In a flash, he reached the foremast, climbed to his crow's nest, above the smoke of the cannons, and from there signaled to the helmsmen. Very soon, the prow of the Austrian ship pierced the port side of its adversary.

The Re d'Italia listed to starboard, then to port, and sank in three minutes. Its commander, Count Faá di Bruno, took something from his pocket, perhaps a cherished memento, looked at it, and threw it into the sea. He then shot himself in the ear. Two Croatian sailors jumped onto the stern of the sinking ship to seize its flag, but were prevented by the Italian officers Rasetti and Del Santo. Rasetti wrapped the flag around his waist and jumped into the sea.

The other battle pennants remained on their standards, and the ship sank with honor with its 560 men. Unfortunately, the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max could not stop to save the crew, as the attack by Italian ships from all directions made self-defense urgently necessary. Later, after the war, Tegetthof inquired about Officer Rasetti and wrote him a commendable letter of congratulations.

At the moment of the collision with the Re d'Italia, the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max had twisted a plate of its armor plating, and the gilt shield on its bow had fallen onto the deck of the Italian ship and sank with it. After the collision, the Ancona tried to ram it with its bow but failed. Due to the maneuvers, both ships found themselves in parallel line and covered each other with fire. Strangely, the Ancona was loading its cannons with gunpowder; only in this way did the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max leave the seabed undamaged, while the Ancona lost several plates of its armor. It was later learned that the gunnery officer of the Ancona had consulted his command about whether to load incendiary or demolition shells, and while awaiting the answer, the crew was firing with gunpowder to "dazzle the enemy." After the war, both belligerents admitted that keeping the crew near the cannons during such deadly combat was extremely difficult.

The Re di Portogallo was the first to attack the wooden ship Kaiser, inflicting considerable damage. Then, four battleships attacked, breaking its foremast, funnel, and masthead, killing 21 men and wounding 70. The broken mast lay on top of the funnel. Its commander, Antonio v. Petz, without hesitation, rammed the Re di Portogallo with his bow and simultaneously fired a salvo of 96 shots from all sides, testing the ship's strength and the courage of its crew. The crew reacted immediately to the impact and continued the charge, clearing the way for their ship and division.

The Re di Portogallo lost 20 meters of its armor plating as a result of the impact. The Ancona, attempting to assist, collided with the Varese. The Kaiser, badly damaged, headed for the port of Vis, escorted by the gunboat Elizabeth. At the harbor entrance, it encountered the Affondatore, which refused to attack. In the subsequent investigation, Persano declared that he did not consider it noble or chivalrous to sink a ship already disabled. Furthermore, it was learned that the Affondatore's commander, Captain Martini, had encouraged Persano to sink the Kaiser by ramming it with his bow. Persano, it was said, refused to do so for fear of going down with the heavy Austrian vessel.

In the afternoon, as the fury of the battle subsided and the smoke from the cannons thinned, Persano, from the Affondatore, raised the signal, asking, "Where is the Re d'Italia?" The ships replied that it was sunk. The Palestro was ablaze, but with its engines running, and was slowly drifting westward. Tegetthof ordered one of his ships to cut it off, but the commander replied that it was too risky to approach the burning vessel. Then the Italian auxiliary ships, the Governolo and the Indipendenza, came to the burning battleship to rescue the crew. But Alfredo Capellini, its commander, refused to abandon it, rejecting the assistance and saying that the crew would extinguish the fire themselves.

This spectacle and the sinking of the Re d'Italia must surely have impressed the Italian admiral and his squadron's crew. Furthermore, Persano's incessant arguments with Vice Admiral Albini contributed to the failure of the Italian enterprise. Barely had Albini returned from his failed landing at the start of the battle when Persano signaled him from the Affondatore to enter the fray with his units.

But the vice admiral paid no attention to the signals from the Affondatore, unaware that it was now the flagship, and instead awaited orders from the Re d'Italia. Only in the final phase of the battle, when the bulk of the fleet began to withdraw westward, covering the burning Palestro, did Albini's units fire a few rounds from a distance of three or four miles. Thus, due to the vice admiral's lack of initiative, the battleship Terribile and the wooden ships, totaling 300 cannons, did not participate in the battle.

At two in the afternoon, the last rounds were fired, and immediately afterward, the Italians broke off the battle. On the Palestro, the fire reached the powder magazine, which exploded at 2:30 a.m. The ship sank with its commander and 250 men.

Tegetthof had already regrouped his units in their previous formation, ready to resume combat should the enemy so desire. Persano, however, after rescuing 20 men from the sunken Palestro, continued westward with his squadron. Tegetthof did not pursue him, as his ships were slower than the modern Italian vessels. Moreover, he had liberated Vis and accomplished his mission.

The Austrian ships began entering the port of Vis in reverse order, that is, first the weakest, the wooden ones, and then the most powerful. The last to enter, at 7:30 in the evening, was the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max with the rear admiral, who was enthusiastically greeted by the other ships and by all the inhabitants of Vis, gathered on the landing.

A aviso patrolled off the port, and inside the port, Tegetthof inspected all the damaged vessels to ascertain their condition. During the night, the damage was repaired as best as possible. As we mentioned, the bridge of the Salamander was damaged. Water was leaking through the hulls of the frigates Erzherzog Friedrich and Schwarzenberg, which their pumps were absorbing.

A 300-pound cannonball twisted a plate of armor plating on the Austrian battleship Don Juan. The wooden ship Kaiser and the wooden frigate Adria emerged with worse damage to their decks. Thirty-eight men were killed and 138 wounded in the battle, 99 of them on the Kaiser alone, including both dead and wounded; even its commander, Commodore von Petz, was slightly wounded. The commander of the battleship Drache, V. Moll, and the commander of the wooden frigate Adria, Erich von Klint, an Englishman, also fell. Klint was fond of the Croatian sailors and enjoyed hearing them recite their heroic songs. Before the battle, he would encourage them and remind them of the heroes of their glorious past, and he himself fell a hero in the heat of battle.

The Italian losses were more severe. At the end of the battle, the battleships San Martino and Maria Pia collided, and the former was put out of action. The Maria Pia lost a plate of its armor plating in the fighting and received 14 cannonballs to its hull, which caused it to catch fire. In addition, the Principe di Carignano and the Castelfidardo were damaged. The extent of the damage to the Affondatore was never determined.

Perhaps that ship had suffered some serious damage to its hull, since on August 3, during a storm, it sank in the harbor of Ancona. This valuable unit of the Italian fleet was refloated after the end of hostilities. In total, the Italian squadron lost two battleships and three others were put out of action. Apart from the human losses on the Re d'Italia and the Palestro, the other Italian units suffered 5 dead and 39 wounded. Thirteen survivors from the Re d'Italia reached the northern coast of Vis.

At 3:30 a.m. on July 21, the entire Austrian fleet was ready to put to sea, to engage in a new battle, including the old Kaiser. But there was no enemy in sight. The Italian squadron, after the battle, sailed west of the island of Vis until 10:30 p.m. and then turned towards Ancona.

On July 23, a brig flying the Italian flag, loaded with gunpowder and provisions, entered the port of Vis, under the mistaken belief that Vis was in Italian hands. Indeed, news of the Italian fleet's victory circulated throughout Italy in the early stages. It had probably been brought to Ancona by the battleship Formidabile, which returned to Ancona on July 20, having been put out of action.

Its crew, quite rightly, expected the imminent fall of Vis, but they were unaware that Tegetthof had come to the island's aid. The news of the Italian squadron's defeat provoked widespread astonishment and deep fury against its unfortunate admiral.

But the blame for the failure does not fall solely on Persano. Italy needed a naval victory before peace could be concluded (the armistice began on July 25). The Italian fleet was composed of Sardinian-Piedmontese and Venetian units, which had to conduct joint exercises to form a cohesive unit like the Austrian squadron. And this required time.

After the battle, the Austrian navy erected a modest marble monument to its fallen soldiers in the center of the Vis cemetery. The monument was shaped like a rectangular prism with a sarcophagus on top, upon which rested a sentinel lion holding the flag in its paws. On the front of the prism was a bronze plaque with the dedication and date of the battle; on the opposite side was a bronze bas-relief depicting a scene from the battle. The names of those killed in the battle were carved on the side slabs.

The monument was encircled by the anchor chain that the Formidabile had left at the bottom of Vis harbor, recovered by its inhabitants. Next to this monument stood another, smaller one, in the shape of a checkerboard, commemorating the officers and soldiers of the Vis fortifications who fell on July 18 and 19, prior to the naval battle.

At the end of the First World War, the Italian Navy, during its occupation of Vis from 1918 to 1920, removed the larger monument to Livorno and placed it in the large square between the buildings of the Naval Academy. There it stands as a testament to the Italian cadets of "an avenged defeat." But removing the monument does not rectify or disrespect history.

All historians of naval warfare—except the Italians—consider the Battle of Vis among the most memorable naval engagements, from Salamis to Jutland. It was—they unanimously affirm—the first clash between ironclads, which demonstrated that armor plating could not withstand the penetrating force of artillery, but only to some extent lessen its devastating effects. Ramming with the bow still proved superior to artillery in penetrating and sinking ships. But improvements in the construction and armament of warships brought with them a new tactic in naval warfare.

Already in the Battle of Vis, Italian ships were firing cannonballs whose weight was two, three, and even four times that of Austrian cannonballs. The range of Italian cannons was similarly different from that of Austrian cannons. Enormous (for that time) 150-kilogram cannonballs were found in many places on the island of Vis, having been strayed there from the site of the battle, a distance of 10 kilometers. (As a "curiosity," one of those bullets was sent to the War Ministry in Vienna.)

Furthermore, as we mentioned earlier, the Italian units possessed thicker armor than the Austrian ones and, importantly, were faster. With these advantages, they were able to remain safe from Austrian artillery and attack the enemy with their long-range cannons. Instead, they tried to board the Austrian ships with their pikes, but without success. It is astonishing—as historians of the Battle of Vis point out—that the Italian squadron did not resort to its superior artillery and, on the contrary, adopted the fighting method most conducive to the less well-armed side.

Tegetthof took this superiority into account and therefore ordered his units not to open fire on the enemy before they could reach them with their cannons. He knew that he could only win the battle at close range. The Italian admiral, a man of old school, was certainly not interested in the new tactic. He first tried to block Tegetthof's access to the port of Vis and then engaged in a naval duel on Tegetthof's terms.

In the two-day battle with the Vis fortifications, Persano had to keep his approach to the island as close as his cannons required. By remaining out of range of Vis's artillery, he was able to destroy all the fortifications and, so to speak, keep his ships and crews intact. This tactic was first employed in the history of naval warfare by the United States fleet in the Spanish-American War of 1898. In the Battle of Manila, the American ships, under the command of Admiral Dewey, destroyed the entire Spanish squadron without a single loss.

J. R. Hale, mentioned earlier, emphasizes that the Battle of Vis demonstrated what a poorly armed squadron can achieve in the hands of an excellent crew. Hale believes that the sailors on Austrian ships were descendants of the ancient Illyrians, renowned navigators (and corsairs, Ed.) who long resisted the Roman invasion (from 179 BC to 50 AD). We fully share Hale's opinion, adding that these descendants of the ancient Illyrians speak Croatian today and, like their Illyrian ancestors, are prepared to defend their coasts against Italian invasion.

Unfortunately, many in Italy still believe that their borders should be protected by the Dinaric Mountains, that is, in the heart of Croatia. The Croatians, in turn, believe that the natural borders between Italy and Croatia are defined by the Karst plain and that Italy is not, and never has been, in any danger from its neighbor on the eastern Adriatic coast.}

Some Italian historians tend to downplay the significance of the Battle of Vis, emphasizing the impact of this failure on the 1918 victory over Austria-Hungary. Others record the battle as a minor success for Tegetthof, "un piccolo successo," and refer to it as "lagloriuzza di Lissa" (the small glory of Vis), acknowledging no merit in the actions of the Croatian sailors or the Austrian officers. This conflict, they argue, only prolonged Austrian power in Istria and Dalmatia for 50 years, until the end of the First World War.

However, even during the war of 1866, the Croatian sailors and gunners who fought at Vis against the Italian invasion knew full well, as did the entire Croatian coastal population from Trieste to Kotorsk, that under Italian rule they would lose the fundamental national rights respected by Austria. This patriotic sentiment among the crew contributed significantly to the victory over Italy's superior force. That Tegetthof was aware of these sentiments and took them into account is clear from his response to the congratulations of the mayor of Vis, Pedro Dojmi, on the victory: "It's easy to win with your Croatian lions!" Furthermore, the Italians had not even managed to gain control of Dalmatia after the fall of Austria-Hungary.

Italian officers assured their crews that the Austrian fleet was weak and easily defeated. Therefore, upon seeing the Austrian ships coming to Vis's aid, they began to joke and mock: "Here come the fishermen!" (Vengono i pescatori). Their disappointment and depression were all the greater as they withdrew from the battlefield. An officer from the Affondatore wrote: “…The Austrian fleet is not what they wanted us to think. Three times we tried to run aground and sink the Kaiser and other ships, but they skillfully evaded us and showered us with a hail of deadly bullets; their roar deafened us. We were all battered from head to toe…”

Admiral Persano was accused and brought before the Supreme Court of Italy. Before the trial began, he published a pamphlet in his defense entitled I fatti di Lissa (The Deeds of Vis), blaming some of his senior officers for the defeat and for disobedience. Among other things, he stated: “The Italian ships had the pride of pursuing the enemy as they returned to their shores and—unable to overtake them before they were safe—of remaining masters of the waters of the battle.”

Giuseppe Fumagalli, in his book Chi l'ha detto? (Who Said It?, p. 162), notes in this regard: "However, these are words more to weep than to laugh, but they are historical words, the words of Admiral Count Carlo Pellion di Persano in the official telegram dispatched to the government immediately after the unfortunate Battle of Vis on July 20, 1866. The inept commander tried to console himself for the day's tragedy with the fact that his ships, decimated and battered, had remained masters of the waters."

The court declared Persano incapable and cowardly in the face of the enemy, demoted him, and dismissed him. He died in 1883, completely forgotten.

Emperor Franz Joseph I promoted Tegetthof by telegram to the rank of vice admiral and conferred upon him the Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa. All the commanders and many officers of the Vis fortifications and the fleet were also promoted and decorated, including seven Croatians. Of the 431 decorated cadets, non-commissioned officers, soldiers, sailors, and stokers, 162 were Croatian. Every participant in the battle received a commemorative medal. Nikola Karkovic was received by the Emperor in Vienna, who pinned a gold medal to his chest and promoted him to boatswain.

The old wooden ship Kaiser, which had received the most cannon fire in the battle (and fired the most), after repairing its funnel and sides at the Pola arsenal, arrived in the port of Trieste, invited by the Trieste municipality. The entire city awaited its arrival with great celebrations and enthusiasm. A dance was organized on board "for the upper classes and the beauties of Trieste," according to a chronicle.

The Trieste municipality designated Tegetthof an honorary citizen and prepared a splendid welcome for him on this occasion. Zadar, the capital of Dalmatia, did the same. However, it should be noted here that the rear admiral was not well-liked in Viennese court circles or in the War Ministry.

He was more of a soldier and strategist than a diplomat, and he didn't mince words. He insisted, at all costs, on confronting the enemy with the fleet and had to convince the ministry bureaucrats that it was better to lose a battle fighting than, like a coward, remain with the ships in hiding. He argued that in peace negotiations, ships sunk in glory are worth more to a country's prestige than those that must be surrendered to the victor under the peace agreement.

Despite all the intrigues, Tegetthof was appointed to the Upper House in 1867 and, in 1868, by a letter from the Emperor, was appointed head of the naval section of the War Ministry. At the same time, he retained his position as commander-in-chief of the Austrian Navy. He died in 1871 at the age of 44, leaving behind his elderly mother. A monument was erected in his honor in Pola (removed and installed in Vienna after the First World War), another in Vienna, and a third in Maribor (present-day Slovenia).

In 1873, the Austro-Hungarian government completely disarmed the island of Vis, relocated its garrison, and destroyed all the fortifications except for the large and beautiful Battery of Our Lady, which was converted into a local charity. Vis ceased to be the Gibraltar of the Adriatic. Its port became too small for the needs of a modern naval base and could no longer provide shelter and refuge for the newer and larger warships. Moreover, the Italian navy was no longer a threat to Austria-Hungary, and this threat seemed to disappear in 1881 with the formation of the Triple Alliance between Germany, Italy, and the Danubian Monarchy.

Despite the altered political relations, Italy, after the Battle of Vis, recovered from its losses and was always stronger at sea than its ally Austria-Hungary. Moreover, even Italian public opinion considered the Tripartite Alliance provisional and circumstantial. Therefore, the top brass of the Austro-Hungarian fleet viewed their Italian ally with skepticism.

In contrast, the ruling circles in Vienna failed to grasp the true implications of the vital need for a strong navy whose objective would be to guarantee, in both war and peace, the monarchy's free passage through the Port of Otranto. The Austrian monarch, inherently conservative, hesitated to modernize armaments and incur expenses, although this proved disastrous for the Austrian army in 1859 at Magenta and Solferino, and in 1866 at Sadova (Königsgrätz).

It wasn't until January 20, 1866, that the emperor approved the allocation of 1.5 million florins for the manufacture of new rifles, which were ready only on July 31, and the war had ended on July 26. Peace was concluded on August 23, according to which Austria paid 31.5 million florins in reparations. The victories won at Custozza and Vis in 1866 against vastly superior Italian forces were due to the incompetence of the Italian leaders, the courage and skill of the Austrian strategists, and the patriotic fervor of the army and navy.

The Croats and the Battle of Vis

The Croats, in general, considered the victory at Vis a national triumph. The remnants of the Italian language and of Italian employees in state offices, courts, and schools, inherited from the Venetian period by the Austrian authorities who had previously governed in conjunction with Venetian Italy, had to disappear as the Croatian national movement expanded.

After the Battle of Vis, the struggle continued in the cultural and political arenas and only ceased with the collapse of the Danubian Monarchy, which had prevented the incorporation of Dalmatia into the Kingdom of Croatia. The governments in Vienna and Budapest greatly feared the solidarity movement of the Slavic language group, which they had unwittingly fostered by alienating the Croats and dividing them between Austria and Hungary, following the old adage: divide and conquer. Despite the insistent Croatian demands for the reunification of their lands under the old title Regnum Chroatide, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, the imperial government in Vienna, despite the loyalty and selflessness of the Croatians in the turbulent years of 1848 and 1866, did not reach a solution in the sense of the Croatian national movement.}

Only with the designation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as heir to the throne did the hope arise that this astute man would unify all the provinces of the former Kingdom of Croatia and thereby create, within the Danubian Monarchy, a Croatia with equal rights to Austria and Hungary. Under his influence, the navy began to strengthen, incorporating four dreadnoughts. To surpass the Italian navy, the Imperial Council in Vienna voted in early 1914 to allocate 300 million crowns for the construction of six new super-dreadnoughts.

But it was all too late. The Archduke and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo, and the monarchy's policies reverted to their old ways, finding itself embroiled in the war in July 1914 under the impact of the German Drang nach Osten and the misguided Austro-Hungarian policies toward the other peoples of this multinational community.

After the battle, Viseu recovered very quickly. At the beginning of this account, we mentioned that winemaking flourished in Vis from ancient times. Even today, the excellent, full-bodied Vis wine, called "opol," sold very well in Trieste and abroad. The French bought it every year "for their needs," especially when the wine harvest in France was poor. Legumes, vegetables, and greens, which ripened as early as February under the sunny Vis sky, were exported to Split and later to Zagreb, once the railway line was built.

The inhabitants of Vis followed the old traditions of their ancestors and engaged in fishing and seafaring. Fishing was plentiful, and preserves were made in the factories of Komiza. Wine and fish were transported by boat from Vis to the Adriatic ports. Serafín Topic's shipping company regularly provided passenger and cargo service between Trieste and Boka Kotorska. After World War I, this company expanded its services to include overseas cargo ships, and after World War II, it relocated to the United States, from where it manages its fleet of modern transoceanic freighters.

Given its strategic position during World War II, Vis was the scene of significant events. In 1943-44, it served as an Allied base against the Third Reich. On this island, under the protection of the Anglo-American fleet and air force, the leaders of the Yugoslav communist partisans found safe haven when they could no longer hold out on the mainland. For several months, Vis was the headquarters of the partisans' supreme command, as well as the seat of Tito's government, which later moved to Belgrade when the Red Army captured that city. Since 1945, the island of Vis, along with the provinces of Dalmatia and Istria, has been part of the "Socialist Republic of Croatia" within the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."

A century after the fierce Battle of Vis, the Croatians were left with only fond memories. The British and Germans were freed from the mutual hatred accumulated during the two terrible world wars. On May 31st of this year, veterans of the largest naval battle in recorded history met in the battlegrounds near Jylland (Jugland).

The British arrived with two destroyers and the Germans with two frigates. After a brief parade, they simultaneously laid wreaths in recognition of their comrades who, in 1916, exactly 50 years ago, fell for the freedom of their respective countries. This indicates that a new era is dawning in the West, one in which humanity will prevail over force, over hatred between peoples and classes, and will overcome subversion and the treacherous, hidden destruction of life and peace.

It would be a noble and beautiful gesture if the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Italian and Croatian combatants could meet and, following the moving example of the British and Germans, lay floral tributes to their heroic ancestors as a pledge of peace, friendship, and mutual respect. And, to further the grandeur of the act, the Italian Navy could bring the Vis monument from Livorno and place it in the cemetery where it was found in 1918. Then the Croatians could have greater respect for their great neighbor across the blue Adriatic.

Literature consulted: John Richard Hale: Famous Sea Fights; Franco Farola: Da Nelson a Togo; Petar Kuicic: Viski boj (The Battle of Vis); Janni Mauro: Rostri e Siluri; Sir William Laird Clowes: Four Modern Naval Campaings; Freiherr Alphons von Czibulka: Die Grossen Kapitäne; Pmorska Enciklopedija (The maritime encyclopedia). Zagreb, 1936, vols. VI and VII; Nikola Zic: Istra, Zagreb, 1936, part 2, Mardesic Pater: Viska bitka (The Battle of Vis), Zagreb 1966.

DOCUMENTS:

Statements of the Bishops of Croatia regarding the Protocol

on the "Regulation of Relations" between the Catholic Church and Communist Yugoslavia

The Protocol signed in Belgrade on June 25, 1966, concerning relations between the Catholic Church and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, received widespread coverage in the world press, generating a wide range of commentary. We published an extensive commentary on the Protocol in vol. 20-21, pp. 143-152 of our journal. However, until recently, the lack of comments or statements on the Protocol from the bishops of Croatia, who had the greatest stake in this whole matter, was striking.

Therefore, we deem it appropriate to reproduce in full the reflections on the same topic published by the distinguished member of the Croatian Catholic episcopate, Bishop Francisco Franic of Split-Makarska, in the journal Crkva u svijetu (The Church in the World, no. 6, year 1, Split, pp. 3-8), a joint publication of the ancient dioceses of Dubrovnik, Hvar, Kotor, Split-Makarska, and Sibenik, and whose editor is the author of this commentary. We transcribe these reflections in their entirety below as a document, omitting only the introduction, which is certainly very interesting but contains only general reflections on Marxism in theory and practice.

We will now transcribe two paragraphs from the statements made by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Croatia, His Eminence Cardinal Francis Seper, to the Catholic newspaper Glas Kocila (The Voice of the Council) of Zagreb, published on January 22, 1967, after a prolonged silence. These statements refer primarily to the practical aspects of protocol.

Article by Bishop Franic of Split

"I believe that the Protocol on the dialogues between the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Holy See is of great historical significance. This Protocol could signify a new era for the Church in our country, perhaps even in the world, regarding the Church's relationship with Marxism, the system on which public social life is based in our country and in other states with a similar social order...

"Legal norms (in Yugoslavia) cannot guarantee a 'tranquil' life, since life is constantly evolving and involves new situations, fraught with risks, that the old norms and 'agreements' could not foresee."

" "Therefore, the legal norms of our Constitution and our laws, including the clauses of this Protocol, which contain terms such as these: freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, the separation of Church and State, the equality and parity of all religious communities, equality in the rights and duties of all citizens regardless of their religious creed and profession of faith, the freedom to found religious communities, the recognition of legal personality for religious communities—all these terms and legal norms are subject to the pressures of daily practice and, with it, undergo an evolution that is sometimes more difficult and longer than others. In the future, more difficulties than we expect may arise, and the evolution may take longer than anticipated, but with this Protocol, the Catholic Church demonstrated its belief in the possibility of this evolution. (Emphasis in the original: Editor's Note). This would be the first and most significant historical impact of the Protocol.

"The most important point of the Protocol appears to be the second." I think we can consider this the inauguration of a new orientation for Marxist philosophy, at least in practice, and gradually in theory as well.

"In that section, for example, it recognizes 'the Holy See's competence over the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia and over spiritual, ecclesiastical, and religious matters...' This means that the Holy See has and can exercise its spiritual and religious jurisdiction over Catholics in Yugoslavia. The breadth of this papal jurisdiction within the Church is well known."

How broad this jurisdiction is! One need only recall the bodies through which the Pope exercises his supreme authority in the Church, namely, all the Roman congregations and their affairs. If the Pope could fulfill, through these congregations, all matters within his purview in the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, this would represent an unexpected development in our religious and generally social circumstances.

"As we see it, the principle is correctly formulated and recognized by the State, but its application is debatable. However, this principle will evolve in practice, naturally along a circuitous path, and ultimately, this development will be influenced not only by diplomatic maneuvering and the scientific and philosophical evolution of Marxist and Christian thought, but also by the daily lives of us Catholics, priests and laity.

"The State, therefore, in principle recognized with the Protocol the first principle of the organization of the Catholic Church, namely, papal authority over its faithful."

" "In the second part of the Protocol, the Church, in return, recognizes the State's first principle of organization, namely, that politics, according to Marxist doctrine, constitutes the exclusive domain of the State, in which neither the Church nor anyone else can interfere.

"This principle is expressed in the Protocol in the traditional language adopted by the Second Vatican Council, that is, that the activity of Catholic priests will be carried out within religious and ecclesiastical frameworks and that, therefore, priests cannot abuse their religious and ecclesiastical function for ends that, de facto, would have a political character.

"It was commented that with this, the Church withdraws from political activity.

"But here we must make a clear distinction. The Church does not renounce its religious and ecclesiastical role, even in the political sphere, insofar as it has the rights and duties to preach the morality that should apply to politics and even to economics." Such will be the primary duty of us bishops, though we will have to fulfill it not only with great apostolic zeal but also with special prudence.

"Moreover, the Protocol did not suspend the national rights of our clergy, for example, their right to feel themselves part of the Croatian people. Priests only commit themselves, through their supreme superior, to not engage in political activity in the exercise of their priestly duties and not to abuse religion for political ends.

"Of course, in practice disagreements may arise, as they have so far, about what, strictly speaking, 'politics' is. That is why it was added that the Holy See, and not only the State, will give its verdict in specific cases. In this way, we can receive instructions from the Holy See regarding our activities so as not to jeopardize the agreement."

"In the second point of this second part, the Holy See condemns 'every act, committed by anyone, of political terrorism and other criminal forms of violence,' and all of this 'in accordance with the principles of Catholic morality.'

"Even in cases of political terrorism, such as those already mentioned, it is not only the State that is at fault, nor is an act criminal or terrorist, but also the Holy See.

"Consequently, the right recognized in principle by the Holy See to the State will be restricted in practice through the control of the Holy See and, of course, by natural, divine, and ecclesiastical laws.

"Certain prestigious Catholic newspapers in the West commented, in the wake of the Protocol, that it is evident that this agreement was made because in the past of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, cases of political and criminal activity by the clergy were frequent.

"The inaccuracy of such comments is inferred from the statement made by Monsignor A. Casaroli on the occasion of the signing of the Protocol, that is to say, these points do not refer to the past but to the future.

"It is precisely in this that we see the third historical significance of the agreement in question.

"The Church, in principle, recognizes the State's right to engage in politics, as already stated; however, political activity related to criminal law, strictly speaking, remains the exclusive domain of the State.

"Of course, the application of this principle will also be subject to evolution, which in turn will depend on the further development of religious, cultural, economic, and other conditions.

"If this principle were applied in light of current Marxist doctrine, then the Church would gradually disappear, since the word 'politics,' in the current Marxist vocabulary, encompasses all social phenomena, and therefore religious phenomena insofar as they become social phenomena. Consequently, religion will become a 'private' phenomenon and not a 'social' one, which would imply its end, since religion, that is, the Church, is, in its essence, a social phenomenon."

"But this Protocol already considers the Church as a social phenomenon and, as such, signs the agreement, since it negotiates with the head of this organized social phenomenon.

From all this, it follows that the Protocol in question opens a new perspective for the future development of the Church and the State in our country, and perhaps in the world. In this process, many Marxist conceptions, as well as many of our own, will develop and crystallize. The dialogue opened by the Protocol will ensure a better future for both parties insofar as this dialogue is conducted with mutual respect and freedom, without which fruitful dialogue is impossible.

I will conclude my reflections with the viewpoint I expressed in my intervention at the Council on October 23, 1963:

"The Church must live today on the alms of its faithful, as Saint Peter did, or on the work of its hands, as Saint Paul did; it must renounce all possessions that generate wealth in the capitalist manner." Any emolument received by bishops, priests, or monks of any state, be it socialist, capitalist, or Catholic, would reduce the Church's freedom in dialogue with the respective state and undermine the people's respect for the Church.

Evangelical poverty is necessary today for bishops and priests to reform themselves, with its help, in holiness. We will call ourselves "the Church of the poor" in vain if we do not renounce the superfluous goods and emoluments we possess or are offered. If we do not adhere to these norms in practical life, people will not believe that we belong to their Church, the Church of the poor.”

Statements of Cardinal Seper

His Eminence Dr. Francis Seper, Metropolitan Archbishop of Croatia and President of the Episcopal Conference of Yugoslavia, made his statements in the form of a dialogue on the occasion of the courtesy visit of the envoy of the Yugoslav government to the Holy Father on December 22, 1966.

The first question suggested the Pope's thought that Catholics in Yugoslavia, seeing that their rights and freedom of action were better secured and guaranteed, would be encouraged to work more diligently for the good of the country. Cardinal F. Seper replied:

“In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, as in other parts of the world, here too the Church desires to fulfill its mission of service, which was assigned to it by its divine Founder. This mission is spiritual, but its fruits can be manifested in all spheres of human and social life.” Nor in Yugoslavia did the Catholic Church hesitate to help everyone within its means, to serve the common good. It does not seek special privileges and does not yearn to dominate, nor does it wish to exert influence through force or manipulation, but rather wants to contribute to the growth of freedom and to better human and social relations among all the citizens of this State.

"The Church believes that its experience and the strength it possesses could benefit everyone, particularly here, in this region where various peoples and faith groups live, and where different ideological tendencies converge."

"There is no doubt that Catholics here have worked until now, just like all other citizens, for the general development of their country, but from now on, with the signing of the Protocol and the establishment of relations between the Federal Government and the Holy See, we hope that this work will become even more evident and carried out with greater cohesion."

The Catholic community will not shy away from commitment. To do so, of course, it needs broader frameworks of freedom. We hope that this space of freedom, both for the Catholic Church and for other social groups, will grow steadily, as we appreciate the efforts made in this regard.”

Clarifying the concept of “space of freedom,” the cardinal said that very few churches were built after the war, while the population increased significantly. New towns and neighborhoods sprang up, but the Church was unable to build new churches, a situation felt especially in large cities. “In recent times,” the cardinal emphasized, “this aspect has also begun to thaw. We believe and hope that things will move forward more vigorously and radically.”

He then continued: “The serious issue is that many people who, for very different reasons, maintain an unfriendly attitude toward the Church, view this expansion of the space of freedom for the Church with suspicion, as if it were a weakening, a retreat in the face of the adversary. Such a sentiment has no real basis.” Let them understand that the Church is neither an enemy nor an adversary. It was not instituted to hate but to approach everyone with friendship and freedom. It wants to educate its members in the spirit of true freedom for all, which it proclaimed to the whole world at the last Council. Recognizing this reality will stimulate the will for joint effort."

The cardinal then referred to the Catholic press, which lately "has progressed considerably, but the need for its quantitative and qualitative growth remains." In this regard, he called for equality with other press outlets. He then expressed his hope that Catholics will be able to make their voices heard through other media. "That, we believe," he said, "is a matter of time."

Perhaps there is goodwill on both sides, but the means to make it a reality have not yet been found. He hopes that conferences can be held outside of churches, in public halls. He especially hopes that the Church will not be hindered in its humanitarian work, for this is its mission of love. He places his hope that "things will improve" also with regard to education and schools. He advocates that the "space of freedom" be extended to all members of the Catholic community and not only to the clergy, since those who work in education "must hide their religious beliefs and practices, or fear the consequences if they reveal that they are believers."

The cardinal continues: "It is not only about teachers, but also about students. We rightly hope that the competent authorities will take serious measures so that the procedures that prevented children and young people from learning Christian doctrine and humiliating them for it are not repeated.

In general, he hopes that all problems will be addressed with more realism." This, moreover, is a problem in other sectors of social life, not just the teaching profession. We want all sectors of social life, not just the teaching profession, to have equal opportunities to develop their abilities and put them at the service of the community according to their professional aptitude, which, moreover, is guaranteed by the Constitution itself (Articles 33 and 36).

When asked whether changes to the laws were necessary, the cardinal clarified that it was more a matter of the concrete situation and practice than of legislation. "It's more a matter of certain individuals who think they are applying the laws, while still operating in a tense climate, from which we should emerge as soon as possible through a concerted effort.

That's why we must commend those who have contributed to mutual openness and who are striving to clear the general atmosphere. We believe that these efforts, conducted with maturity and if they expand, can make a significant contribution of experience and guidance, also in addressing contemporary problems on the international stage."

Asked if the churches could be satisfied with the legislation in force in Yugoslavia, the cardinal replied: "You know that the states themselves realize that certain laws are not eternal, since, in fact, laws are provisional and, in certain circumstances, serve as instruments to achieve the greater good of the citizens. Therefore, laws change to better adapt to the progress of the community."

The Catholic Church, in the Belgrade Protocol, accepted the existing legislation in Yugoslavia as a starting point. This, of course, presupposes the possibility of evolution in legislation concerning religious matters so that it does not lag behind the development of reality itself and become an anachronism. Thus, for example, today, after the Second Vatican Council and its clearly defined position on religious freedom, it would be an anachronism, devoid of any real foundation, if laws on religious affairs were based on the premise that the State, through these laws, must protect non-believing citizens from the interference of religious communities.

To the interlocutor's final question: "So, Your Eminence feels optimistic?", Cardinal Seper replied:

"Well, we will strive and do everything possible to justify this optimism." We believe that the Catholic communities of the Croatian and Slovenian peoples, as well as those of the other peoples of Yugoslavia, will maturely and diligently strive to achieve what the Holy Father expressed in his address to the envoy of the government of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on December 22, 1966: that the activity of Catholics, which, of course, primarily aims at the spiritual good of believers, may also "more happily influence the development and progress of the entire community in the direction of justice, freedom, and concord."

Declaration of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization

The 45th Annual Convention of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization (MPO) of the United States and Canada, held in Cleveland, Ohio, from September 3 to 6, 1966, reviewing the situation of the subjugated peoples of Yugoslavia, unanimously adopted the following declaration:

The events that have taken place in Yugoslavia since the beginning of this year clearly demonstrate, among other things:

1) That Serbian chauvinism uses every means at its disposal to preserve the integrity of Yugoslavia.

2) The Serbian communists resort to the most disparate maneuvers in their attempt to consolidate their dominance over other subjugated nationalities.

3) The secret police (UDBA) are in absolute control of the situation in the country. This was admitted by Tito himself, as well as by his henchmen and supporters.

4) The different nationalities are increasingly resisting Serbian communist hegemony.

5) This resistance from the nationalities is reflected within the Communist Party itself. It affects its unity or its "monolithic" character, as Tito used to describe it. Now such unity has proven to be a mere myth.

6) Tito and his clique will continue with their "reforms" with the purpose of securing the privileged position of the Communist Party and maintaining the country under their control.

7) The dismissal of Rankovic, the purge within the party, and the power struggles constitute a very small part of the long series of events since 1912, which proves that the idea of a Greater Serbia, under the false label of Yugoslavia, brought only turmoil to the Balkans. It threatens world peace and ends in devastation and sacrifice for all, including the Serbian people.

8) The various nationalities are determined to achieve their freedom and independence by all means, and nothing can now stop them from this goal.

Taking into consideration all these factors and other relevant factors, the 45th Convention of the MPO appeals to all oppressed peoples and their émigré communities in the free world to continue the struggle for the freedom and independence of Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, Macedonia, and Serbia, and for the incorporation into their respective countries of the regions seized by force by Belgrade.

The Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, the people of Vojvodina, Albanians, Bulgarian Macedonians, etc., must work together to overthrow the communist dictatorship in Belgrade. The establishment of a free and independent state for each of these peoples is the only sure path to achieving genuine peace and fraternal understanding in this part of the world.

No one should be deceived by the false ideas of the Serbian communists. They speak to us of a kind of economic "freedom," while the Communist Party dominates and controls everything. While we hear and read about a kind of "republic," we simultaneously witness great efforts being made to Serbize everything in general.

The Bulgarian Macedonians know this better than most. For the past 22 years, schools, military barracks, and all institutions in Macedonia under Yugoslav control have had as their primary task the suppression of Bulgarian national consciousness among the people, using the so-called "Macedonian" nationality to achieve their "Servization." Following the same model, Muslim Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina were officially classified as having "undefined nationality" so that one day they might more easily declare themselves Serbs.

These Serbian chauvinistic fallacies must be rejected to ensure peace and freedom for all in the Balkans.

Forward with the growing resistance against the Belgrade dictatorship!

May there be freedom and independence for Croatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia for the sake of true and lasting peace and understanding among peoples!

This is the wish of the 45th Annual Convention of Macedonian Patriotic Organizations.

Cleveland, Ohio, September 6, 1966.

Notes and comments

In memoriam Ernest Pezet

Milan Blazekovic, Buenos Aires

On November 21, 1966, Ernest Pezet, French parliamentarian and political writer, died in Paris at the age of 79. He was one of Yugoslavia's greatest friends in France, as he himself declared. But, with a deep understanding of the political conditions and relations between Croats and Serbs in both monarchical and communist Yugoslavia, Pezet was a true friend of the Croats, without the harmful sentimentality that often characterizes the French friendship with Serbia and Serbs, and to the detriment of the victims of pan-Serbian petty imperialism.

Ernest Pezet was born on December 6, 1887, in Rignac (Aveyron). Before the First World War, he began his political activity when, after teaching in private schools, he joined the Catholic politician Marc Sagnier in the newspaper "Democratie" and then, in 1917, was appointed editor-in-chief of L'Ame Française, the organ of the Rassamblement Démocrate Chrétien (Christian Democratic Assembly).

In 1919, he became director of La Voix du Combattant (The Voice of the Combatant). He was one of the promoters of Christian Democracy in France (Parti Démocrate Populaire) and, from 1928, a deputy for the province of Morbihan. From 1932 to 1940, he served as rapporteur and permanent secretary of the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs of Central and Eastern Europe, and before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed vice-president of that committee.

He continued in the same position from 1945 to 1958. After the war, he joined the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), founded in November 1944. He was elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly, and in the 1946 elections, he was elected senator for French citizens residing abroad. He also served as vice-president of the Senate and as France's delegate to the United Nations and the French Peace Conference. In 1959, he was elected an honorary member of parliament. He was honored and distinguished by being awarded the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor.

Pezet wrote about thirty books. Those dating from the period 1922–1930 are primarily political in nature; those published between 1930 and 1959 deal with topics of general European interest or address the problems of specific European countries. Édouard Herriot, Henri de Jouvenel, A. Tardieu, and J. Péricard wrote the forewords to some of his works.

As a specialist in Southeast Europe and also a politician, he did not rely solely on official Serbian information, since he had access to Croatian and Slovenian Catholic circles. Pezet was very familiar with the situation in Yugoslavia since its formation and the dangers that the existing tensions posed—especially during the dictatorship of King Alexander Karageorgevic—not only to the existence of Yugoslavia but also to peace in Europe, despite the optimism of the pro-government Yugoslav and French press.

Pezet visited Yugoslavia several times and corresponded with prominent political figures of all stripes and faiths in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, except—as he explicitly states—with the socialists and separatists. He compiled material in which he told the stark truth about the Yugoslav reality, seeking to warn his compatriots against potential and unpleasant surprises and to point out to the French press, parliament, and public opinion the grave danger looming over Yugoslavia, viewed with so many illusions and unfounded hopes.

Desiring first and foremost to inform his fellow citizens and then to save the unity of Yugoslavia—a unity that should be founded not on force and violence but on the agreement of all the peoples that comprise it—Pezet wrote his book, *La Yugoslavie enpéril?* (Is Yugoslavia Under Siege?), in collaboration with Professor Henri Simondet, who handled the historical section. The book was published in 1933 (Librairie Bloud & Gay, Paris 1933, pp. 281). This significant warning to the political actors responsible in France and Yugoslavia not only implied an open critique of pan-servism in all sectors of public life in Yugoslavia, but also entailed a defense of Croatian national rights and principles. It is no wonder, then, that Pezet's book, although written with the clear intention of preserving the unity of Yugoslavia, an integral part of the Little Entente and a pillar of the French system of Central European political security, was banned in Yugoslavia. His subsequent works on Yugoslavia would suffer the same fate.

After the Marseille assassination attempt of 1934, Pezet published his study *Le drame de Marseille et ses conséquences centro-européennes* (Vie intellectuelle, 1934), in which he exposed not only the activity and structure of the Croatian (Ustaša) and Macedonian revolutionary organizations, but also the external implications of the Croatian and Macedonian problems. He reiterated that Yugoslavia was unsustainable unless it underwent a complete reform on a federal basis, in the spirit of genuine democracy and with respect for the freedom of its nationalities.

Since even stricter censorship prevailed in Yugoslavia after the Marseille assassination attempt, this study remained virtually unknown to the Yugoslavian public. Following the Marseille assassination attempt, his book *La Yugoslavie en péril?* (Yugoslavia in Peril?) was published. It gained significant attention in France and was cited by the defense in the Aix-en-Provence trial as evidence that the attackers were motivated by patriotic reasons.

When Father Teodoro Dragun presented his book, Le Dossier du cardinal Stepinac, to the public on December 21, 1958, in the crypt of Sainte Odile, Ernest Pezet spoke on that occasion and placed the Stepinac affair within the context of the Dreyfus Affair. His work was published in 1959 as a booklet under the title Stepinac-Tito, contextes et éclairages de L'Affaire (Nouvelles Editions Latines, Paris 1959, pp. 30), and in 1960, in a somewhat abridged Spanish version, published in Studia Croatica (Buenos Aires, 1960, Year I, No. 1, pp. 10-20).

Pezet, therefore, addresses the political situation in Yugoslavia and its central problem, the Serbian-Croatian relationship, three times. Taking into account the irredentist tendencies of some of its neighbors, he advocates for federalization and genuine democratization of the country. Identical ideas were held by other internationalists, champions of Yugoslav unity such as Wickham Steed and Seton Watson, whose letters from 1932 Pezet published in the appendix to his first book, along with the manifesto of prestigious British figures, published in the Manchester Guardian on December 24, 1932.

Despite his thorough understanding of the problem, Pezet, like other advocates of Yugoslav unity, failed to accurately recognize the inability of Serbs to coexist in the same state with any other non-Serb people. Well, besides so many other differences between Croats and Serbs, it stands out that the Croats—whether willingly or not—coexisted for centuries in a commonwealth with other peoples of the same cultural sphere, while the Serbs, almost simultaneously, were either subordinated to foreign powers or lived in their autocratic and nationally homogeneous unitary state, never becoming accustomed to distinguishing nationality from the state and democratically sharing power with any other people. For this reason, the attempt to consolidate Yugoslavia through the creation of Banovina Hrvatska (Croatian Autonomy) on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War failed; on the contrary, it encouraged the Serbs to accelerate the collapse of Yugoslavia. For the same reason, the current pseudo-federal system of communist Yugoslavia did not and cannot resolve its national problem.

This fact was not perceived at the time by many Croatian politicians, so Pezet cannot be blamed for the illusions he harbored, which were created, even under different circumstances, by some Croatians. In line with this ideal Yugoslavia, however paradoxical it may seem to us today, Pezet, as an honest and prudent politician, became a sincere friend of the Croatian people.

Tito and the Arab-Israeli War

Jure Petricevic, Brugg, Switzerland

New situation for the Croats and other oppressed peoples in Yugoslavia as a result of Tito's unconditional support for the Soviets against the Israelis.

The brief Arab-Israeli War of June 1967 marked a significant turning point in Yugoslavia's relations with Western democratic countries, led by the United States, as well as in the balance of power within Yugoslavia itself. By radically condemning Israel and severing diplomatic relations with that state, and then by aligning itself with the Soviet Union and participating in the Eastern European bloc conference (with the exception of Romania), Tito lost the support of influential figures in the United States who had until recently backed him politically and economically.

The last vestiges of the understanding and sympathy that Tito's previous policy of independence from Moscow had enjoyed in Western public opinion had vanished. Tito and Yugoslavia lost the support and assistance in official Western democratic circles and among the public that had contributed to their survival for years. This would have far-reaching consequences for Yugoslavia's international standing, an Yugoslavia already internally fractured. Because of the unresolved problem of resistance from nationalities opposed to Greater Serbian supremacy, Tito was drawn into the Communist Party by the Croatian-Slovenian-Macedonian opposition. He clashed with Rankovic's Soviet forces, plotting a coup to seize power. The victims of this coup would have been not only the communist opposition in Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Kosmet, but Tito himself.

By publicly aligning himself with Soviet policy during the Arab-Israeli war, Tito improved his personal situation. This maneuver paralyzed the Greater Serbian forces, who could only rely on Soviet support to seize power by force. This leap by Tito temporarily stabilized his precarious position, since for the Soviet hierarchy he now holds far more importance and value than Rankovic's displaced, extremist Greater Serbians. On the international stage, Tito, by showing solidarity with Nasser, rendered the Soviet Union, as a superpower, a great service, while simultaneously facilitating the strengthening of Soviet influence in Yugoslavia.

However, in this game with the Greater Serbian circles, Tito acted as Yugoslavia's guardian. But he continued with his old policy of improvisations without solid foundations. The primary goal of this policy remained the same: to wield power and stay afloat at all costs. Domestically, Tito's rise to and maintenance in power depended on the Greater Serbian forces. With Rankovic removed, he fell out of favor with those circles. By censoring the Declaration on the Croatian Literary Language and repudiating the Croatian intellectuals who signed it, Tito partially improved his standing with the Serbs. Now, by adopting the Moscow line in the Arab-Israeli war, he seeks to secure his position internationally against the Greater Serbian circles.

This situation implies new aspects in the internal and external politics of the Croats and other non-Serb peoples in Yugoslavia in their struggle against Grand Serbism. But, above all, it is essential to analyze the Soviet and American attitudes in the Arab-Israeli war and in a potential small local war between the non-Serb peoples of Yugoslavia and Serbia—that is, a local Balkan war looming on the horizon as one of the possibilities resulting from the ongoing crisis in Yugoslavia.

The Arab-Israeli war, like the Vietnamese war, is marked by the policy of coexistence of the great powers: the United States and the Soviet Union. The relationship between these two powers, these two empires, is determined by the reciprocal decision to avoid a war between them that would inevitably lead to nuclear war and probably to their mutual destruction. Faced with this primary principle, all ideological and other considerations become irrelevant.

This postulate gains strength and importance with the emergence of China as a new great power, an enemy of both the United States and the Soviet Union. China's claim to vast areas at the expense of the Soviet Union and Beijing's tendency to eliminate Moscow's influence in Asia and Africa primarily determine Soviet political strategy, which, in view of the Chinese threat, gradually imposes the reconciliation of relations with Washington and a permanent coexistence of the Soviet and American empires, despite ideological and other differences.

The atomic bomb and the common Chinese threat make a new world war impossible today, a situation that will very likely prevail in the future as well. Indeed, the fear of atomic war also plays a decisive role in China, so that in Vietnam the three powers—the US, the Soviet Union, and communist China—carefully avoid direct military conflict. Washington and Moscow strictly adhered to this principle in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arabs received Soviet weapons and Israel Western ones, and they could have fought to mutual annihilation, but the overriding state interests of North America and the Soviet Union have not allowed, and continue to prevent, this war—local from the perspective of the great powers—from escalating into a world war. It seems the Arabs seriously anticipated military intervention by their Soviet ally.

According to various reports from Yugoslavia, it can be inferred that certain communist circles in Belgrade also anticipated Soviet military aggression against Israel and were disappointed when the expected aggression did not materialize. However, considering the current global political situation, even the Americans were unable to intervene militarily. Second-tier powers, such as France and Great Britain, have clearly distanced themselves from any military intervention, unlike the events of 1956 when those two countries attacked Egypt as allies of Israel.

These relations between the great powers must be taken into account when assessing subsequent developments in Yugoslavia. The possibilities envisioned by certain resisters of Grand Serbia and Communism in the "American intervention" are gradually fading. The conviction grows stronger every day that the captive peoples of Yugoslavia will not be liberated with American or any other military aid, but rather through their own efforts at a specific international juncture.

It is now crucial that Serbian hegemonic circles realize that their domination over the Croats and other non-Serb peoples and national minorities will not be preserved and maintained by Soviet military intervention, but rather that the true balance of power in Yugoslavia will be the determining factor in the final outcome of the struggle.

However, the situation in southeastern Europe and Yugoslavia differs from that prevailing in the Near East or East Asia. Although the principled stance of Moscow and Washington remains unchanged, the specific circumstances in southeastern Europe, especially with regard to Yugoslavia, must be taken into account.

Through a tacit agreement between Washington and Moscow, Yugoslavia, after the end of the last world war, was included in the Soviet sphere of influence. Furthermore, it is known that the Soviets, even while negotiating in Yalta in early 1945, counted on the division of spheres of influence in relation to Yugoslavia into the eastern and western halves, and that Stalin and Churchill had reached an agreement on this matter.

It even seems that Stalin was willing to recognize the Independent State of Croatia, that is, the creation of the State of Croatia, even the Pavelić regime. This vacillating Soviet policy, like the current disintegration of the Yugoslav state, indicates that the Soviets would accept the partitioning of Yugoslavia according to national criteria if they were unable to maintain it as a whole under their influence and if internal national conflicts led to its disintegration.

The Soviet leaders, being the pragmatic politicians they are, do not want a world war and an atomic one. They will try to secure the greatest possible influence in that territory in the new situation.

The fact that Yugoslavia is not a member of the Warsaw Pact, which comprises the communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and is led by the Soviet Union, also supports this process. If the Soviet Union were to intervene militarily in the event of internal conflicts in Yugoslavia, it would formally step outside the framework of the Warsaw Pact bloc, thus clashing with the interests of the United States and France.

Furthermore, the political difficulties within the Warsaw Pact would not favor such an intervention. Of course, neither the United States nor NATO nor any other power could intervene in the event of internal conflicts in Yugoslavia, since Yugoslavia is a neutral country with respect to the current military blocs (NATO and the Warsaw Pact).

It is highly likely that in the event of internal unrest in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the West, respectively, would provide indirect political and military support to their protégés. This possibility is particularly relevant if neighboring states in Yugoslavia, such as Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, intervene in these events. The current volatile political situation in Yugoslavia and the Balkans could easily escalate into local armed conflicts.

The oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia should already be learning from their recent past and should not blindly follow leaders and rigid ideological positions and programs, but rather be guided by their own and the general interests. This is especially true today for the Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian communists who hold key positions in the current phase of national liberation.

Tito and Yugoslavia lost sympathy and friends in the West.

Tito's declaration against Israel on June 5, 1967, his participation on June 9, 1967, in the Moscow meeting that brought together the leaders of the communist parties and governments of the Central and Eastern European states, Yugoslavia's intense activity in the extraordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly convened on the occasion of the Arab-Israeli War, and the special role played by Tito in the process of that conflict constitute, in two senses, a significant shift in Yugoslavia's international position.

On the one hand, Tito, without many reservations, aligned himself with the Eastern communist bloc under Soviet aegis, virtually ending the conflict he had with Stalin and the subsequent tensions that arose with Stalin's successors. In the last decade, Tito gradually ceased to be the maverick in the Soviet forest and now, on the international stage, publicly subordinated himself to the policy of the Soviet Union in a large-scale conflict.

In this way, Tito inaugurated the final phase of the "non-aligned" bloc's policy, which he theatrically attempted to implement with his friends Sukarno, Nasser, and Nehru (now joined by Indira Gandhi), who simultaneously endorsed and flattered him for supposedly having successfully resolved internal political, economic, social, and religious problems.

On the other hand, Tito and Yugoslavia, with their stance in the Arab-Israeli War, lost significant support in the West. This support came from various liberal, intellectual, and Jewish circles, primarily in the United States. Under the influence of these groups, the Washington government had pursued a friendly policy toward Tito and Yugoslavia for years. This political course, for a time, harmed the oppressed peoples and democratic forces in Yugoslavia. This American policy gradually changed in recent years. Now it is finally over and impossible. It has even lost all formal justification.

Until the Arab-Israeli War, most of the public opinion in the West favored Tito. However, as public opinion shifted in favor of Israel, Tito, with his radical actions against Israel, not only lost the remaining sympathies but also aroused displeasure and hostility in Western Europe and America. It is hardly necessary to prove that the highly influential Jewish circles became bitter adversaries of Tito and Yugoslavia.

This shift in the attitude of Western countries will be an important factor in the internal political events of Yugoslavia. The demands of oppressed peoples to exercise the right to self-determination and national liberation were very slowly met with understanding in the Western democratic world. Now, in this respect, the situation is changing in favor of the Croats and other non-Serb peoples in Yugoslavia.

In the subsequent and inevitable conflicts and clashes that will occur, these peoples will have the sympathy and support of official circles and public opinion in Western democratic countries. It is now appropriate to speak, and with good reason, of a psychological, and particularly political, shift in the West's attitude toward the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia. The national resistance of the Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and others is becoming easier and entering a new phase.

Tito's move to the Soviet bloc strengthened democratic tendencies and weakened the Great Serbian coup forces.

When he dismissed Rankovic, Tito supported the opposition within the Communist Party and acted as their spokesperson in the Brioni case. To consolidate his wavering position among the Serbs, who had facilitated his rise to power and supported him until Rankovic's fall, Tito very soon, after the Brioni conclusions, turned against the opposition comprised of Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Albanian communists.

His first step in this direction was the pardon of Rankovic and Stefanovic, that is, the suspension of the criminal proceedings against them and their Great Serbian accomplices. Tito's condemnation of the "Declaration on the Position of the Name of the Croatian Literary Language" and its signatories is another major concession to the Great Serbians or to "Yugoslavism" aligned with the Great Serbian conception. But Tito, in the presence of Rankovic's forces, did not feel safe.

These forces, it seemed, were preparing a coup, and the victims would be not only the reformers and democratically oriented communists but Tito himself. Since these forces, with or without Rankovic, were forging very close ties with the Soviets and, whether justifiably or not, were counting on Soviet support, Tito did not feel secure.

This weakness of his probably played a significant role in his active and radical actions and his unconditional alignment with Soviet policy during the Arab-Israeli conflict last June. Tito turned in favor of the Serbian chauvinists, who are now forced to prioritize him over Rankovic's coup attempt, since the latter could become a liability for the Soviet Union, risking the inability to defeat its internal enemies without direct Soviet intervention, which, given the international complexities, would constitute too dangerous a risk. Thus, the Great Serbian coup clique was paralyzed, at least for a time, in its attempt to seize power.

This created favorable conditions for the opposition within the communist ranks. Their most dangerous adversary was momentarily weakened and sidelined. Tito had to continue his balancing act and could not fully suppress the opposition, while still playing the role of guardian of the forced Yugoslav union with the Great Serbian central government, but without Rankovic and his coup plotters.

To remain in power, Tito once again satisfied the Serbs, albeit only partially. This new balance of power gave both the communist and democratic opposition greater opportunities for action, allowing them to regroup and plan new actions. The new situation favored this process and made it possible to break the deadlock that had arisen after the action against the signatories of the Declaration on the Croatian Literary Language.

The artificial creation of war psychosis

In Yugoslavia, a war psychosis is being officially and systematically created among the vast majority of the population. The main reason for this action is the weakness of the regime, which, by arousing fear of war and external enemies, tends to consolidate its position and divert public attention from internal difficulties.

It is not difficult to invent reasons for such a psychosis. Yugoslavia skillfully points to two countries as a threat of war: Greece and Italy. The military dictatorship in Croatia is interpreted in certain Yugoslav circles not only as the failure of the democratic regime and the establishment of a dictatorship, but also as a premeditated plan by the Western powers, under the auspices of Washington, to threaten neighboring communist countries, and particularly Yugoslavia.

A similar, if not greater, danger is seen in Italy. Within the North Atlantic defensive bloc, the United States of America, following difficulties with France, supposedly assigned Italy a special role in the Mediterranean. As there were recent voices and actions in Italy advocating for the incorporation of Istria and Dalmatia into Italy, these irredentist demonstrations by extremist and chauvinistic Italian elements proved useful to the Greater Serbian group in Yugoslavia, eager to weaken its adversaries by creating a war psychosis.

Here again, the efforts of Italian and Serbian chauvinists coincided to the detriment of the Croats and Slovenes. This is the traditional anti-Croatian policy of Serbia and Italy, now in a new form.

While it is obvious that irredentist forces in Italy began to act with greater freedom, insisting on their claims to the eastern Adriatic coast, these actions cannot be attributed to American policy. The United States, along with Great Britain and France, is responsible for the demarcation and guarantee of the Italo-Yugoslav border. The Trieste question was settled under their influence.

Neither American nor NATO policy tends to alter these borders, which would have serious consequences with the Soviet Union. That would mean a violent attempt to change borders from the outside. Such an action is inconsistent with the American conception, which does not want armed conflict with the Soviet Union. The Washington government cannot, therefore, embark on a military adventure, either directly or through any ally in the Atlantic military bloc.

For this reason, American support for the Italian military campaign against the Croatian and Slovenian coasts would be contrary to Washington's post-war political course. Tito and his Great Serb friends know this well, and they intentionally exploit extremist excesses in Italy in order to intimidate non-Serb peoples, and especially the Croats and Slovenes, who are the backbone of the resistance to Great Serbism, disguised as Yugoslav unitarianism.

The problem of major political changes in Yugoslavia and the eventual disintegration of the multinational Yugoslav state into several nation-states, due to internal conflicts and the right to national self-determination, is posed differently. In that case, the changes would occur without military interference from Greece and Italy as members of the Atlantic bloc under the aegis of the United States. Such changes would be driven by internal forces, and this premise, for reasons already explained, encourages both the Soviet Union and the United States to refrain from military intervention. The current situation in Yugoslavia follows this course.

In parallel with the artificial creation of a war psychosis, Serbian chauvinists are trying to rekindle old tensions between Croats and the Serbian minority in Croatia. Leaflets threatening the Serbian minority in Croatia with massacres are being distributed in Croatian regions, especially in Banija and Kordun. Although it is difficult to find out and verify who writes and disseminates them, it is most likely that they are written and disseminated by UDBA (the secret police) in order to unite, in the current precarious situation, the Serbian minority with the Greater Serbian regime and the State, thus leading them to the enemy pole of the Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians.

According to this calculation, the Serbian minority in Croatia, Macedonia, and Kosmet would be the surest target for Greater Serbian centralism to repress aspirations and actions in favor of national liberation. With this, the Tito regime artificially instigates old conflicts and seeks in the Serbian minorities its last defenders and saviors.

However, these calculations are doomed to failure. Not even the most hardline Croatian extremists support programs for the extermination of the Serbian minority. Even these isolated groups drew conclusions from the reciprocal Serbian-Croatian extermination and today advocate for cooperation. Even in the unlikely event that such programs were to materialize, they would encounter severe repudiation from Croatian public opinion and influential figures in Croatia and in exile.

The politics and struggle of the oppressed peoples of Yugoslavia for national liberation cannot be based on fighting against the Serbian minorities and waging war to the point of extermination. Nor can Serbia and the Serbs pursue a policy of exterminating the Croats, as outlined in previous plans. The experience of the last war compels both the Serbs and the oppressed peoples to seek lasting solutions, respecting each other's rights and existence within their respective nation-states.

The first results of economic reform in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Tihomil Radja, Fribourg, Switzerland

Since the so-called economic reform began two years ago in communist Yugoslavia, numerous comments, some critical, some laudatory, have appeared in both the West and the East. Official Yugoslav commentary, after two years of experience, is optimistic, while economic circles and the general public view this reform with considerable criticism and openly compare it to the 1962 reform, which was a resounding failure.

The two-year period is sufficient to assess, from a purely economic perspective, the results achieved and to answer two fundamental questions:

First: Was it possible to halt the rapid rise in prices and adjust them to the forces of supply and demand, one of the primary objectives of the reform?

Second: Was it possible to balance economic relations with other countries and thus create favorable conditions for the economy of communist Yugoslavia to integrate normally with the economies of developed countries based on the convertibility of its currency (the dinar), which is another objective of the reform? I. Based on official data, it can be stated that the rise in prices is still too rapid. According to data from June 1967, the rate of price increase hovers around 8% per year, which we can describe as inflationary price growth. Furthermore, in the first months after the reform was implemented, prices had risen by up to 40%, a rate characteristic of so-called galloping inflation.

It is important to emphasize that prices are rising even though the number of employed people is decreasing, and therefore the purchasing power of the entire population is being reduced. In the last two years, more than 200,000 workers and employees have lost their jobs, which has caused and continues to cause numerous "work stoppages," that is to say, strikes. Due to natural population growth, the "army of the unemployed" is, of course, increasing: at the end of May, 263,000 unemployed were registered, and only seven thousand new jobs were created.

This situation affects young people finishing their studies the most, while older people go abroad in search of work and sustenance. It was estimated that their number would reach 400,000 by the end of 1967, equivalent to 12 to 15% of all employees in the state sector of the Yugoslav economy. Considering that only 9 million inhabitants live off the private sector (farmers, artisans, and freelancers), it is difficult to believe that the regime can successfully carry out economic reform without the participation and will of the majority of the people. Along with many others, this is one of the fundamental economic and political contradictions of the current communist regime.

A sharp and constant increase in prices proves that the supply of goods and services does not meet demand. Industrial production—not to mention agriculture—is not increasing, even though it would be logical for prices and the population to continue rising. There are two main reasons for this. The first reason is that, despite all the decentralization measures and proclaimed worker self-management, economic enterprises have not truly become independent, which is impossible where there is widespread confusion about the role of the State in the economy, about property relations, and about the freedom to do business. It suffices to mention that, after the reform, companies have access to, on average, barely 60% of total income—not profits—to give us a clear idea of the State's participation in the economy. The second reason is that many companies face the problem of selling their products both in the domestic market and, even more so, in the international market. Nobody buys the goods from the so-called "political factories," which ultimately leads to the bankruptcy of numerous companies, established with valuable foreign funds.

II

The shortage of the requested merchandise is largely remedied by imports, which increased by 22% last year, while exports grew much less. This is the reason for the imbalance between imports and exports; exports reached 85% of the value of imports in 1965, and 78% in 1966, while in the first quarter of 1967 they reached 75%, which significantly increases the external debt.

At the end of 1966, the external debt of communist Yugoslavia totaled $2.177 billion, an increase of $858 million compared to 1965. This sum represents more than a third of the total annual national income and is 24 times greater than the official reserves in gold and foreign currency, which—incidentally—cannot cover even one month of normal merchandise imports. In the short term, in one year, the external debt recently increased by $160-70 million.

The Yugoslav communist government managed to extend certain debts, but—in the opinion of specialists—the payment of the foreign debt in the coming years should reach $200 million in principal and another $60 million in accrued interest, which means that every year a quarter of exports will have to be set aside to pay off old external debts. To this must be added the interest accrued on the new debts that the Belgrade government incurs daily abroad, both in the West and the East. Under these conditions, the convertibility of the dinar can wait another decade.

***

All these facts indicate that the 1965 reform is a failed measure, just like the 1962 reform. This is inevitable under the conditions of "state socialism," based on the monopoly of political and economic power. However, the 1965 reform constitutes an important step in the disintegration of the communist system and of Yugoslavia as a state community. The reactionary communist forces, the privileged ex-guerrillas, and the political establishment sense this, demanding, with varying degrees of subtlety, a return to the old order and "the strengthening of trade ties with our counterparts." However, there is no return to the old order, as such a return would provoke widespread rebellion among the working masses, nor would it be advantageous from the perspective of the international situation. On the economic front, one more reform like that of 1965 is possible, and the communist economic system will be buried forever, along with its "ideological superstructure," the so-called Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Act of solidarity with Vinko Nikolic

On July 14, 1967, the prestigious newspaper "La Nación" published extensive information about the public event organized in Buenos Aires regarding the banning of the renowned publication of exiles, "La Revista Croata" (Hrvatska Revija), and the expulsion of its director, Professor Vinko Nikolic, by the French government. The full text of the report is transcribed below.

The San Ignacio Center for Studies held a public event in the halls of the City Hotel, Bolívar 160, to honor the Croatian writer Vinko Nikolic and condemn communism. The event was opened by actor Héctor A. A. Danelli, who spoke about the aims of the institution, stating that "it was created by a group of citizens who share common feelings and ideals, inspired by the inalienable values that form the heritage of the Argentine people and respond to the honor and the most wholesome traditions of the nation." He added that its purpose is to contribute to the moral, civic, and cultural development of the population through bi-weekly conferences at its headquarters at 225 Bolívar Street. The organization's motto, he stated, is "faith with justice and freedom," placing the nation above all partisan, personal, or sectarian interests. Furthermore, among other things, it combats "international communism in all its forms and places, and under any name or organization."

He was followed at the podium by the organization's president, Dr. Alejandro Dusssaut, who spoke about the origin and evolution of the Croatian people. After describing the events that led to the arrival of communism in those lands, he spoke of the Croatian citizens who emigrated to Argentina, forming a community of approximately 140,000 people, mostly residing in Chacabuco, Salto, Rojas, and Pergamino, in the province of Buenos Aires. in Córdoba and Mendoza, and in Chovet, Santa Fe province.

As some of the most prominent representatives of the Croatian community in Argentina since its early days, he remembered Nicolás Mihanovich, a shipping magnate; Juan Vucetich, inventor of the fingerprint identification system; and others. He also recalled various university professors and technicians, as well as artists and those who founded Croatian-Argentine cultural organizations.

The president of the Argentine Croatian Cultural Club, Professor Antonio Gazzari, then spoke about the life and work of the poet Vinko Nikolic, who was forced into exile for not sharing the communist political ideology. Nikolic came to Argentina in 1947, he said, and began working as a librarian at the Ministry of Public Works. In 1966, he decided to go to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, but before the end of the year, he had to leave France by order of the government. From there, he went to Germany, where he currently edits the "Croatian Magazine."

Dr. Alejandro Vázquez, who took the podium afterward, criticized the French authorities for Nikolic's expulsion, emphasizing the poet's status as an Argentine citizen. He also stated that he brought to the event the support of "Voices of the History of Free Men," an institution that advocates for the strengthening of freedoms, disseminates the principles of representative democracy, and promotes the cultural advancement of peoples.

The event concluded with remarks by Carlos Alberto Erro, representing the Argentine Society of Writers, who recalled that the organization had published a statement of protest and solidarity regarding the action taken in France against the Croatian writer. He said that Nikolic's sacrifice and effort were appreciated and that the transcendent significance of his stance was truly valued. He concluded by declaring: "Vinko Nikolic is not alone."

Against diplomatic complacency

(Speech by Dr. A. J. Vázquez at the public event honouring Professor Vinko Nikolic)

The expulsion of Professor Vinko Nikolic constitutes an affront to culture, a threat to freedom, and a disrespectful act toward the Argentine Nation. The Croatian teacher adopted our citizenship in accordance with the terms of Law 346, and in doing so, he assumed responsibilities, but he also acquired rights that cannot be disputed.

Among these is the right to protection by the Republic so that, wherever in the world he resides, he may enjoy the essential attributes that our legal system recognizes for all inhabitants. This power of countries to protect their nationals—whether native-born or naturalized—is fundamental to the sovereignty of their peoples, and its exercise must be rigorously respected among nations that accept the norms of international law enshrined in bilateral or multilateral treaties, and which emanate from the law of nations.

By ordering the expulsion of this distinguished Argentine citizen from its territory, the French government has committed an unfriendly act toward our country. The influence exerted on General de Gaulle's government by representatives of international communism, who keep the noble Croatian people subjugated, to ensure the expulsion was carried out, constitutes a grave precedent. Faced with this injustice, it is imperative that our country make the appropriate protest.

Diplomatic efforts must be sufficiently forceful and swift so that this new attack on freedom and culture receives adequate redress. We will build nothing lasting in the West if citizens' rights are not properly respected and if we do not speak the language of truth. Diplomacy is a sign of civilization only when it is conducted with energy and frankness.

If, in order to avoid conflict, we are inclined to be complacent in the face of arbitrariness or accept the fruitless dialogue of intrigue and lies, people will lose their faith, and we will thus facilitate the penetration of communist tyranny. It is inconceivable that an Argentine by naturalization, who honors the cause of human dignity and literature, should have suffered the affront of expulsion when he was dedicated to perfecting his vast knowledge of the origins of the Croatian language and the ancient culture of his people at the Sorbonne.

The measure adopted stems from the purpose of the puppet government of Yugoslavia to silence the virile voice of an illustrious thinker. Such an intention should come as no surprise, as it is inherent to the essence of red totalitarianism; but what defies all explanation is that the measure was ordered by the government of France, the cradle of freedom of expression and the undisputed center of Western culture.

This outrage offends the French people themselves; it violates clear precepts of the Charter of the United Nations, ratified in Paris in 1948; The principles of the French Revolution of 1789 and the precursors stated in the memorable decree of August 6, 1790, which proclaimed: "Free France must open its bosom to all the peoples of the earth, inviting them to enjoy, under a free government, the sacred and inviolable rights of humanity." This principle is unequivocally enshrined in the current Constitution of the Republic. Our country must protest, through diplomatic channels and with the energy that the situation demands, this unfriendly attitude of the French government, which is unprecedented in its unusual and unjust nature. I have the honor of bringing to this event the endorsement of "Voices of History of Free Men," an institution that advocates for the strengthening of liberties, disseminates the principles of representative democracy, and promotes the cultural advancement of peoples.

Dr. Alejandro J. Vázquez

Milovan Djilas's leaps from Marx to Njegos

Bogdan Radica, New York

Imprisonment and persecution gave Milovan Djilas the opportunity to concentrate and draw from his inner self what political activity would not have allowed him to do. Ortega y Gasset, in one of his insightful essays on Mirabeau, said that politicians, military men, and active men, prevented by circumstances from acting politically, should channel their enormous energy into writing. This is what Julius Caesar and Napoleon did, and I would add: Clemenceau especially. The anti-Stalinist rebel Leon Trotsky did so as well. Now, the most recent rebel against the Stalinist-Titoist tyranny, Milovan Djilas, is doing it.

Milovan Djilas made his first appearance with the well-known treatise *New Class*, which brought him popularity and introduced him into all Marxist texts. Alongside Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, fragments of *New Class* also appear in these texts today. In other words: Djilas, too, is becoming a classic of Marxism.

After this ideological treatise, Djilas presented a serious, one might say tragic, analysis of his Montenegro in the well-known *Land Without Justice*, which I was the first to read in its original form and gave to the prestigious editor Williams Jovanovich, president of the publishing house Harcourt, Brace, World and Co. Jovanovich immediately arranged for its translation and publication. He did so driven by a certain sentimentality, given that he himself is of Montenegrin origin, born in the mountains of Colorado, yes, but to a Montenegrin father and a Polish mother.

Later, Jovanovich visited Djilas in Belgrade during the brief period of his freedom and took many of Djilas's manuscripts. To date, he has published a book of war stories about the communist guerrillas, entitled *The Leper and Other Stories*. In that collection of short stories, the most horrifying is "The War," describing how communist guerrillas kill a young man whose parents are transporting him in a coffin to get him out of the war and keep him alive. The story "The Leper" refers to Djilas himself, whom the village tyrant—an obvious allusion to Tito—places in solitary confinement to prevent the spread of infection, where he dies of sores and hunger.

Finally, Djilas also wrote his sensational "Dialogues with Stalin," in which he unmasked the Kremlin tyrant, using Machiavellian language, to serve as a warning to those who allowed themselves to be mere pawns of Stalin's skill at deceiving, extorting, and blackmailing. Stalin, who for Djilas was once the sun illuminating the earth, is here placed on the same level as Cesare Borgia, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great. Perhaps no one has captured the character and figure of this Asian despot as well as Milovan Djilas, so much so that this small book can stand alongside Machiavelli's *The Prince*.

The most recent book, published by Harcourt, Brace, World & Co., is an extensive study of the Montenegrin poet, bishop, and prince Pedro Petrovic Njegos. Its English title is *Njegos: Poet, Prince, and Bishop*. The introduction was written by Williams Jovanovich, to whom the book is dedicated. Michael B. Petrovich, a Serbian-American professor of Slavic history at the University of Wisconsin, wrote the foreword and translated the work.

Professor Petrovich added a series of notes to the book and, at the end, an extensive bibliography on Njegos, consisting almost exclusively of works written by Serbian authors. Djilas wrote his work in Srijamska Mitrovica prison from 1957 to 1959, as noted at the end of the text. It is clear from the book that Djilas wrote it from memory without access to the bibliography, which, probably, was neither available nor permitted to him in prison. Despite errors and omissions, Djilas's powerful memory for reproducing the events and verses of Njegos stands out. One senses that Djilas carried Njegos within him, perhaps from a young age, as is the case with most Montenegrins.

Djilas's essay is incomplete and, worse, uneven. On the one hand, he strives to present Njegos in an engaging and intense light. At times, he suggestively describes the origins of Njegos's family, his birth, childhood, youth, and adulthood. The image of Montenegro with its theocratic rule of the prince-bishop and its divinely divided tribal society is impressive at the outset.

The efforts of the autocratic Njegos to create a modern state from the divided tribes are highly significant for understanding that mysterious and alluring Balkan atmosphere. Njegos's descents to Boca di Cataro (Dalmatia) and his journeys to Vienna via Trieste, then to St. Petersburg, his encounters with the Russian Emperor Nicholas I, and his exposure to Russian Orthodoxy are truly evocative. Likewise, he skillfully and sometimes masterfully recounts his time in Vienna and his conversations with Metternich, his encounters with the Serbian dignitaries Vuk Karadzik and Taija Ban, and finally his journey through Italy in the company of Ljubomir Novakovic.

All this material could have served the author to offer us a genuine fictionalized biography of this Romantic poet, Orthodox bishop, and statesman, as André Maurois or Strachey have done in the West, or as Josip Horvat did in Croatia with Lj. Gaj and F. Supilo. Djilas did not take that path: he divided the material into chapters and fragments, avoiding a pleasant and narrative style, constantly descending from the attractive surface to the depths of Montenegrin tragedy, one of the bloodiest in the Balkans, interspersing his thoughts, often dark and nebulous.

Djilas did not take that path: he divided the material into chapters and fragments, avoiding being engaging and narrative, constantly descending from the attractive surface to the depths of Montenegrin tragedy, one of the bloodiest in the Balkans, interspersing his thoughts, often dark and nebulous. The main part of the book is dedicated to the problem of "the Serbian cosmic misfortune," as conceived in Njegos's three main works: *The Garland of the Mountain*, *The Torch of the Microcosm*, and *Little Stephen* (Scepan Mali). Djilas, self-taught like Njegos, tried to bring to light all of Njegos's inner, religious, national, political, and social contradictions.

Instead of clarifying them, he complicated and entangled them even further, so that his analysis is quite incomprehensible even to those familiar with Njegos and completely incomprehensible to readers who do not know him and have not read him in the original. His philosophy of life, at its core the philosophy "of the tragic sense of life in men and nations," as Miguel de Unamuno masterfully defined it, is contradictory.

Njegos is not Christian in the ritual and orthodox sense of the term; He is rather a Manichean and perhaps a Bogomil. He is torn between East and West: he is disappointed by the East, by Russia; in the West, in Italy and in Vienna, he yearns for his Montenegrin mountains where man is closer to God and nature, hero and man. But what is the "manliness and heroism" (cojstovo i junastvo) that Montenegrins so proudly display, no one knows for sure.

A constant challenge to God and to the men who found themselves in these mountains where the winds howl through the blocks of stone. Finally, Djilas fused all of this into a Montenegrin "philosophy," from which he transferred it to the philosophy of Servism, ending in a strange pan-Serbian philosophy of Yugoslavism, unexpected in Djilas. The Yugoslav is one who is first Montenegrin and then Serbian. Njegos is the Montenegrin-Serbian-Yugoslav poet, a kind of triangle, where those who are neither Orthodox nor "racially Serbian" have no place.

Djilas, in his book on Njegos, referred to, if not glorified, the greatness of "the Serbian race," which defies everything and everyone, the harshness of the environment in which it emerges, the inclemencies of the times in which it achieves the status of a state. Orthodoxy is the principal characteristic of the "Serbian race" and of the Serbian state; the Byzantine-Russian Orthodox conception includes all Serbs within the state.

Those who are not Orthodox are excluded, first and foremost Muslims, the Islamized Christians who must be biologically exterminated for having exchanged the cross for the crescent moon, betraying not only the faith of their ancestors but also dishonoring their blood. Blood is the basis of the Great Serbian racism of Njegos and Djilas.

Pure blood is the basis of a pure race. To speak of race and blood today, after the horrific genocides that Europe and the Balkans endured not so long ago, is not only scientifically inaccurate but also humanly repulsive. For a Marxist, who remains one, this signifies regression, a return to the mists of ignorance and unconsciousness. But the Byzantine-Orthodox conception demands it as the foundation of the State. Djilas, far from condemning it, embraces it, and in many places, justice prevails.

Incidentally, Djilas now embraces and adopts all the outdated interpretations given to Njegos, first by the Serbian Orthodox bishop Velimirovic, a supporter of the Orthodox conception of Njegos, and even by Izidora Sekulic (a Serbian writer) whom Djilas previously criticized. In his Legend of Njegos, published in Belgrade in 1952, Djilas censured all writers, from Velimirovic and Sekulic to the communist Radovan Zogovic, who saw in Njegos a poet of pure Serbian descent.

Here there is no mention of that condemnation, which has completely died out, and Djilas presents Njegos and himself as a Great Serbian apologist; what is worse, he places this Great Serbian conception as the foundation of the Yugoslav idea. He ignores all the proven facts: he glorifies Garasanin and his Nacertanie (Great Serbian expansionist plan) as the basis of the "Serbian empire," which Njegos also accepted, and which he says became the basis for the unification not only of all Serbs but of all South Slavs. Had he read the commentaries of Stranjakovic and especially Vasa Cubrilovic, he should have realized that Garasanin's purpose was solely to unify all Serbs "wherever they may be," and then to bind the Croats, Macedonians, and Slovenes as an appendage to his Greater Serbian conception. However, we Croats have always lived under the illusion that Njegos did not share this idea. His letters to Jelacic, the prorex of Croatia, do not demonstrate this.

By glorifying Garasanin as a great statesman not of the Serbs but of the South Slavs, Djilas shows that he knows very little or nothing about this subject, or that he too is reverting to the antiquated thesis of Byzantine-Orthodox Greater Serbian hegemony. His sporadic observations on the Croatian poet and statesman, Mazuranic, and Jelacic are flawed and inaccurate. Although he maintains that Mazuranic's poem "The Death of Smailaga Cengic" is not a plagiarism of Njegos, as many Serbs claimed, he makes no distinction between "The Mountain Garland" and Mazuranic's poem, which also demonstrates his limited understanding of Mazuranic's spirit.

Romanticism is present in both cases, but quite different: one arose from the racist concept of the extermination of blood brothers for religious reasons; the other avoids racism to the extent that it is possible in a Romantic poem. Djilas drowned in the passion of his emotions just like Njegos, without offering us any justification.

The conflict of Western ideas that sometimes assailed Njegos, especially the progress of science and rationalism—this conflict in an intellect that readily absorbs everything but often fails to delve deeply—found no solution in Djilas's analysis. All of this leaves the attentive reader empty and disappointed.

Djilas's ignorance is best reflected in his brief reflection on Tommaseo. First, Tommaseo was not born in Azar but in Sibenik, which is very important to his work. Tommaseo was very proud of his Sibenik origins. He loved his hometown, its surroundings, and Tijesno, where he always dreamed and for which he wept with longing.

Tommaseo, we might say, liked the Serbs more than the Croats. (I wrote an extensive work on this subject in the Journal of Croatian Studies, volumes V-VI, New York.) Tommaseo disliked Njegos, believing that the Montenegrin bishop had sold Montenegro to Russia, thereby allowing Byzantine-Orthodox Russia to impose hegemony over all the Catholic South Slavs.

Tommaseo advocated for a "Catholic Slavia" led by Poland, and its cultural guide was to be Dalmatia. In his plan, he had assigned Šibeni the role of capital for the Catholic Slavs. He also attacked Njegos for not behaving like a Christian, for not living a life befitting a bishop. He wrote all this quite clearly in his message Ai popoli Slavi (1840). It is evident that Djilas never read it. Tommaseo even says that in Trieste, Njegos mingled with the dancers, squandering vast sums of money in Europe—money given to him by Russia—while his people suffered in Montenegro.

Although Tommaseo was known for exaggerating his invectives against those he disliked, as in the case of Leopardi, the picture of Montenegro as he described it at that time is not far from reality. Djilas himself sometimes provides even worse accounts of the prevailing situation in Montenegro then. Tommaseo's basic idea was that Catholic Slavs could not and should not share a conception that subjected them to Russian hegemony.

While Tommaseo emphasized "that we are all Slavs and Christians," being himself a sincere and profound Christian, he foresaw that there would be no concord or peace between Orthodoxy and Catholicism in a Slavic community. As far as we know, he was not wrong on that point. In this respect, he was later fully persuaded by the Croatian leader Eugenio Kvaternik, who shared a similar view.

Placed in our time, this book by Djilas is counterproductive, as it clashes with all his previous ideas on the correct approach to the national question in a complex state like Yugoslavia. If this is indeed the Serbs' "cosmic worldview," then it is evident that in such a multinational and multiconfessional state, as conceived by Njegos and Garasanin, there can be no place or happiness for Croatian Catholics, Slovenes Catholics, and even less so for Bosnian Muslims.

The current situation in Yugoslavia demonstrates this with absolute clarity. Both the former and current Yugoslavia demonstrate it concretely: neither the pre-war bourgeoisie nor present-day Marxism was capable of resolving this problem, as Yugoslavia is fracturing along the tragic line between West and East. If a tragic view of life exists among Serbs, it also exists among Croats.

These two tragic views are now shattering Marxism as well, which, spearheaded by Djilas, believed it could overcome and resolve all these tragic contradictions. We hope that the exterminations will not continue and that the separation will be resolved in a way worthy not of "heroes" but of human beings.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this book was only published because it was edited by a man of Montenegrin origin. No other American publisher would have published it. Its translator was also an American of Serbian origin. The translation is very good, considering Djilas's language and his nebulous and often obscure formulations.

Although I haven't seen the original, I find it hard to believe that Djilas could have written all that, that glorification of Serbian racism, without reserving judgment on many of his concepts. Professor Petrovic was very terse and often biased in his notes. Jelacic was not just the Austrian general, but something more. Nor was Mazuranic a mediocre figure. Although Djilas doesn't mention Gaj's meetings with Njegos in Vienna and Cetinje, they should have been recorded in his notes.

These meetings were far more important than so many others cited by Djilas. Petrovic's bibliography is one-sided, exclusively Serbian. It is significant that Djilas's Legend of Njegos, which Petrovic must have known, is not included in the bibliography. Finally, he should have corrected himself, stating that Tommaseo was not from Zadar but from Sibenik, and he shouldn't have given two different names for the same city: sometimes Zadar and sometimes Zara.

Petrovic's comparison of Djilas to Silone is contrived to make it tenable. His prologue should have been more specific, explaining to the American public the relationship between Djilas and Njegos. Finally, while we agree with Petrovic that Djilas is the most significant writer Montenegro produced after Njegos—as we stated several years ago—it was necessary to place Djilas within the context of his ideas regarding Yugoslavia's national problems. Why wasn't this done? The answer is clear: both the editor Jovanovic and Professor Petrovic took every opportunity in their prologues to emphasize their Serbian identity.

From all this, we can conclude that the book was intended as a manifestation of the Greater Serbian ideology to the American public. Given this, it is obvious that those of us who are not Serbian should view this book with suspicion. We cannot share Petrovic's judgment that Njegos's value in world literature is equal to that of Dante, Goethe, and Pushkin. It may be for the Serbs, but by no means for the world.

Moreover, the fact that Njegos did not generate the expected sensation is demonstrated by the fact that American critics wrote little or nothing about the book. For example, the New York Times did not review it in its daily edition, and, significantly, nothing has yet been said about it in the Times' weekly review of new books, even though its publication dates back several months. The Times usually reviews the most important works three days after their publication or at least three weeks after their appearance in the Sunday supplement.

The book will undoubtedly be reviewed and evaluated in specialized journals dedicated not to the general reading public but to specialists. With all due respect to Djilas and his suffering, the author of these lines must admit that this leap surprised him greatly. He expected a broader perspective and, above all, that Djilas would renounce outdated and archaic criteria and present a Njegos acceptable to all South Slavs. It is true that Djilas ended his voluminous book paying homage to Ivan Mestrovic, saying that this sculptor was the most appropriate to create the statue of Njegos, since he emerged from the same stony karst formation as the Montenegrin poet. But Mestrovic sculpted Njegos as a romantic poet, sorrowful and moved, weeping before the fate of all suffering peoples, something that, unfortunately, Djilas did not do.

We have no other option but, through Mestrovic's Njegos, to keep alive the memory of this bard, conflicted and broken, of human tragedy, and to approach the Montenegrin tragedy of ancient times with the same love we have always felt for those rugged mountains where "only the gray eagle flies high."

In memory of Dr. Rodolfo N. Luque

On November 20, 1967, as a result of a serious traffic accident earlier that month, the illustrious journalist, unwavering defender of freedom and democracy, man of vast culture, jurist, and editor of "La Prensa," Professor Dr. Rodolfo N. Luque, passed away.

He leaves behind a distinguished and unblemished career spanning 63 years dedicated to journalism. He was a man who fought throughout his life for sacred principles in the pursuit of truth and justice. He firmly defended the rights of man and society. He cultivated understanding among individuals and nations throughout his life. For this, he left behind many friends, perhaps the greatest legacy he could have left.

He was a great friend of the Croatian people. He honored our magazine with his contributions ("The Contemporary Chapter of the Struggle for Freedom," vol. 3-4, p. 115).

Dr. Luque's curriculum vitae demonstrates his continuous ascent through the natural ladder of his profession. He rose through the ranks on his own merits from the humblest position in the Archives Department of "La Prensa" to the role of chief editorial writer, a position he held for over thirty years.

Dr. Luque was born in Villa del Rosario in December 1888. After completing his primary and secondary education in Rosario, he arrived in Buenos Aires in early 1904. Driven by an inclination towards journalism and the wishes of his father, who had been a correspondent in Santiago del Estero for many years, he joined the staff of the newspaper "La Prensa." The same year he began in the Archives Department, he became a reporter, then a columnist. He briefly served as news editor, and in 1910 was appointed secretary of the editorial staff, a position he held until 1922 when he began writing editorials. He distinguished himself in his coverage of diverse sectors.

In 1910, he received his doctorate in law from the Faculty of Law at the University of Buenos Aires, and as a young lawyer, he addressed political, economic, and financial issues, as well as constitutional and public law. He practiced law until 1931 while continuing his journalism career. He also taught history and civics in secondary schools.

For his outstanding journalistic skills, he served three terms as president of the Buenos Aires Press Circle and as president of the Bar Association in 1930. He also presided over the Rotary Club of Buenos Aires for three terms and later served as governor of Rotary International District 138 from 1955 to 1956.

For his merits, he received several important distinctions, including some of international standing. Of particular note is the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for his contribution to inter-American brotherhood.

Alongside his extensive work as an editor for "La Prensa," he published the following works: Political Professionalism and Income Tax; Impressions on the Current State of Italy; Work, Easy Fortune, and Luck; Why Relations Among the American Countries Are Not More Cordial; and Civil Liberty and Constitutional Guarantees. From Charlemagne to Roosevelt, and finally, Less Government and More Freedom.

With the passing of Dr. Rodolfo N. Luque, "La Prensa" loses a prestigious contributor, the Argentine Republic loses one of its tireless fighters for liberty and the rule of law, and America loses one of its most fervent supporters of brotherhood.

J. R.

In memoriam of three distinguished friends of Croatia

Giuseppe Dalla Torre (1875-1967)

On October 17th of this year, in Rome, Giuseppe Dalla Torre del Tempio, a dignitary of the papal court and former director of the newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, passed away. Dalla Torre distinguished himself early on as a journalist and organizer of the Catholic press in Italy, which is why Pope Benedict XV entrusted him with the editorship of L'Osservatore Romano, a position he held for 40 years. In addition to his demanding daily duties, Dalla Torre authored notable works on the Catholic movement in Italy. His memoirs on Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, and John XXIII are well-known. An opponent of all totalitarian regimes, he was clear and precise in his exposition and defense of papal social doctrines. For many years, he served as president of the International Federation of Catholic Press.

Here we would like, first of all, to briefly address his relations with Croatia, especially with the Croatia subjugated by communism and with the trial staged in 1946 against the Archbishop of Zagreb, Monsignor Aloysius Stepinac. During this "most sorrowful trial" (Pius XII), Count Dalla Torre, the Primate of Croatia, demonstrated that Yugoslav communism, in the person of Stepinac, had put the Croatian people in the dock, denying them individual and national rights and freedoms.

For months and years, L'Osservatore Romano published, as a rule on the front page, echoes, acknowledgments, and praise for Archbishop Stepinac that reached its editor's desk from all over the world, including from non-Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and atheists. Two years ago, on the fifth anniversary of Stepinac's death, Dalla Torre published a profound article on the meaning of the imprisoned cardinal's struggle and sacrifice, entitled "Silenzio que non tace" (The Silence That Remains Unbroken), in the journal Novi Zivot, published by Croatian priests in Rome.

Monsignor Joseph Patrick Hurley (1894-1967)

This American prelate was born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, home to a large Croatian and Slovenian immigrant community. He served in the Vatican diplomatic corps. At the end of World War II, while serving as Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida, Pope Pius XII appointed him, under extraordinary and extremely difficult circumstances, as the Holy See's representative to the communist government in Belgrade.

In those tragic years, Bishop Hurley made great efforts to alleviate, at least somewhat, the precarious situation of the Catholic Church in Croatia and Slovenia, which was subjected to the relentless and systematic persecution of the communists who sought to suppress it. Bishop Hurley was present at all the public hearings of the trial against Archbishop Stepinac. Upon entering and leaving the courtroom, he greeted the innocent man with reverence and evident respect. He also informed the Yugoslav communist authorities that all those directly involved in this unjust and monstrous trial had been excommunicated by Pope Pius XII.

Having completed his mission in Belgrade, Bishop Hurley returned to the United States of America, where he spared no effort in spreading the truth about the martyr of Croatia and the Catholic Church. In his speeches, addresses, letters, and articles, he extolled Stepinac's example, his sacrifice, his unwavering faith, and his merits. He tried to assist Croatian bishops and priests, as well as Croatian refugees, to the best of his ability. He befriended the Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, a great admirer of Stepinac. His name will forever be etched in the memory of the Croatian nation.

Cardinal Francis Spellman (1889-1967)

Cardinal Francis Spellman, an interesting and multifaceted figure, Archbishop of New York (died November 2, 1967), was one of the principal and most dynamic architects of American Catholicism. Of humble origins and with a late priestly vocation, he rose through the ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy on his own merits.

From 1925 to 1932, he worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State, and for several years his immediate superior was Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. Opposed to all totalitarian and materialist currents, he became a very popular figure in the United States, especially as Vicar General of the U.S. Army. It was primarily due to his skill and efforts that relations between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII were established during the war.

Spellman never hid his sympathies for the Croatian nation and its just cause, for he was aware of the sacrifices made by the Croatian people and their aspirations. Together with Cardinal E. Pacelli, he opposed the dictatorial, anti-Catholic, and anti-Croatian policies of monarchical Yugoslavia, a stance faithfully reflected in the book *Huit ans au Vatican* (Eight Years in the Vatican), written by F. Charles-Roux, the French diplomatic representative to the Holy See.

Spellman was particularly concerned about the fate of the Catholic peoples of Central Europe in light of the imminent Soviet invasion. He shared his concerns with President Roosevelt, who unfortunately lacked the historical perspective to fully appreciate the implications of the Soviet troops' presence in Central and Eastern Europe and the Kremlin's imperialist ambitions.

Spellman was also one of the most dedicated and determined defenders of the Primate of Croatia, Archbishop Stepinac, and of his nation. He named one of the most modern schools in the Archdiocese of New York, in White Plains, after Stepinac. He commissioned the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic to create a statue of the Croatian martyr and of the Catholic Church. He spearheaded the campaign in North America to alleviate the plight of the gravely ill prisoner Stepinac. Furthermore, the persecuted Church in Croatia and Slovenia owes him considerable material and moral support, as do numerous Croatian political refugees.

Croats do not forget their friends, especially those who offered them understanding and support in difficult times.

Professor Leopoldo Ruzicka, Nobel laureate in chemistry, turned 80.

Leopoldo Ruzicka, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry in 1939, retired professor of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), and now a Swiss citizen, celebrated his 80th birthday on September 13, 1967. Studia Croatica joins in the numerous congratulations, wishing the distinguished scientist and professor emeritus many more years of a happy and productive life.

The prestigious Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in its morning edition of September 13, 1967, published a warm article by A. Eschnmoser about Ruzicka, his life, and his work, from which we reproduce some passages.

Ruzicka was born in Vukovar, Croatia. He completed his primary and secondary education in his homeland and studied Chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He then went on to the ETH Zurich, where he earned his doctorate. He then served as an assistant and full professor at the same school, later taking charge of a major laboratory for odorous materials. For a time, he held the chair of organic chemistry at the University of Utrecht. In 1929, at the invitation of the Swiss authorities, he resumed his professorship and the directorship of the organic chemistry laboratory in Zurich, where he remained until his retirement in 1957. Ruzicka was a great scientific researcher, an excellent professor, and the founder of a unique institute. Since 1959, he has lived and worked at his home in Zurich as one of the "eminence grises" of Swiss chemistry.

Important discoveries in the field of organic chemistry will forever be linked to the name of L. Ruzicka (terpins, steroids, high molecular weight carbohydrate compounds in odorous materials, and the first artificial synthesis of the male sex steroid hormones androsterone and testosterone). His pioneering work forms the basis for new research in the fields of medicine and biochemistry.

Alongside this vast and fruitful work in the scientific and industrial spheres, Ruzicka founded the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Zurich University of the Arts, one of his greatest achievements. In the construction, structuring, and organization of this institute, Ruzicka broke new ground. Only now are similar approaches being adopted in other parts of Europe. His successor in the chair and at the institute is Professor Vladimir Prelog, a Croatian, who also enjoys an international reputation as a researcher.

A great lover of the fine arts, Ruzicka amassed a valuable collection of paintings by 17th-century Dutch masters over the years. In 1948, he donated this collection, known as the "Ruzicka Foundation," to the Zurich Art Hall (Kunsthaus). It has been open to the public ever since.

A. Eschenmoser concludes his article on Ruzicka in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung thus: "A Croatian by birth, Ruzicka very early on acquired Swiss citizenship. This did not make him what one might call a typical Swiss man. But as he was an extraordinary man, so too were his contributions to the university, science, industry, and artistic life of our country."

In 1967, Ruzicka added a new scientific distinction to his numerous titles: he was elected an honorary member of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. His highest distinction is the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to him in 1939. He also holds honorary doctorates from several universities and colleges, and is an honorary member of renowned academies and institutes, such as the Pontifical and Soviet Academies of Sciences.

As a complement to this brief overview of Ruzicka's life and work, we reproduce some interesting information that Ruzicka provided to the Swiss illustrated weekly Schweizer Illustrierte (April 17, 1967). This weekly interviewed six celebrated naturalized Swiss citizens, including Ruzicka and the well-known Austrian-born writer Carl Zuckmayer. The interview is titled "Willkommener Zuzug" (Welcome Influx).

Professor Ruzicka stated, among other things:

"I grew up as an orphan in Croatia and was a fervent patriot, which is why I could no longer tolerate the situation in the former Austrian Empire. My patriotism, which I transferred to Switzerland, manifested itself in a prudent and useful way: I dedicated all my efforts to training skilled chemists who will render great service to our industry, that is, to our country. Naturalization, as is well known, involves various procedures, sometimes ridiculous ones."

"However, I would like to emphasize that I like Switzerland, that the Swiss are well-mannered, realistic, and reasonable people... I was a passionate mountaineer. I am a passionate art collector. When I was awarded the Nobel Prize, I invested the entire sum in purchasing paintings by Dutch masters, whose authenticity I was able to verify myself thanks to my meticulous knowledge of the subject. I would have had to pay 350,000 francs in taxes, which led me to create the foundation and make these works of art accessible to the public."

Book Review

Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Volume XIII, the war Years, June 23 - December 11, 1941; Ed. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1964, pp. L - 1035.

The editors of "Documents Relating to German Policy" (published simultaneously in Washington, Paris, and London) emphasize in the preface their scientific commitment to historical accuracy and their complete objectivity in selecting the diplomatic documents found in the archives of the Third Reich Chancellery.

It is obvious that the deliberate or unintentional omission of certain documents and the consequent inclusion of others can completely alter the picture of certain political relations or circumstances. Nevertheless, we do not doubt the good faith of the editors of the documents under examination.

Studia Croatica, in its assessment of the complex Yugoslav problem in general and of Croatian-Serbian relations in particular, is guided by the same principle of veracity, scientific rigor, and objectivity—the only path that leads to knowing the truth. Politically, he equally repudiates exaggerated nationalism, whether Serbian or Croatian, and maintains that the poisoned Croatian-Serbian relations can only be healed through democratic methods, by applying the principle of self-determination for each people.

The cancer of the Yugoslav state is that the Serbs, as the dominant people, never allowed free elections. The intensity of the discontent is so profound that even the elections held under terror and corruption between the two world wars demonstrated that the Croatian people want to live in their independent and democratic state.

Certain authors and historians present the creation of the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War as the work of Hitler and Mussolini, which contradicts historical truth. Hitler did not seek the disintegration of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia; on the contrary, he was quite pleased with the close economic cooperation between Yugoslavia and the Third Reich. This is clearly inferred from the documents published in volume XII of the same series (cf. Studia Croatica, nos. 1-2, 1964, 168-169). In a meeting with Ante Pavelić, then head of state of Croatia, Hitler told him bluntly that he "did not intend to take action against Yugoslavia" and that the creation of an independent Croatia was not part of his program. In his interview of November 27, 1941, with Dr. Mladen Lorković, Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hitler insisted on the same topic (p. 866).

The Croatian revolution took place in the first days of April 1941 when the Croatian people rose up and disarmed the army. The Croatian revolution had a single aim: to liberate themselves from the Serbian yoke. It was a plebiscitary and revolutionary act through which the will of the Croatian people was expressed. Therefore, it is neither correct nor truthful to maintain that the creation of the Croatian state was the work of the Axis powers. The Croatian government that was subsequently formed was an ally of the Axis, but this fact does not invalidate the previously expressed popular will to break state unity with Serbia. It is objectionable, then, when the editors, in their brief preface, indicate that under the heading "Yugoslavia" are also found the documents concerning "the government established by the Axis in Croatia and the occupation regime in Serbia."

From the documents included in this volume, it can also be inferred that Germany refused to restrain the imperialist appetites of Fascist Italy for Croatian national territory (doc. 219, p. 343).

The historical value of the selected diplomatic documents to which we refer is inestimable for historians. Even for those without a professional interest, reading them provides a vibrant and realistic picture of the tragic period of a generation and has the impact of a non-stop thriller. At the same time, they constitute a repudiation of monstrous totalitarianism, and the reader shudders to see the extent to which human dignity can be degraded when all power is concentrated in the hands of a single man, idolized and deified, be he Adolf Hitler, Alexander Karageorgevic, Joseph Stalin, or Josip Broz Tito.

Angel Belic

John C. Campbell: American Policy toward Comunist Eastern Europe: the Choices Ahead, Minneapolis, The University of Minnesota Press, 1965, p. 136.

Since the end of the last war, the fate of communist Eastern Europe has been the primary concern of those responsible for American foreign policy and of the American people. Before China fell to communism, anti-communism in the United States was directed toward Eastern Europe. It took two forms. Because certain American ethnic groups originated in Eastern Europe, public pressure and popular sentiment were directed toward communist Eastern Europe.

This often highly emotional disposition influenced the American press and Congress and thus shaped public opinion. But American diplomats dismissed the emotionalism of such popular sentiment and pursued a more "objective" and detached policy, tending to avoid a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union and its satellite bloc. There was, therefore, a contradiction between popular attitudes and pressures and those who made official decisions.

However, a democratic society encourages criticism of its domestic and foreign policy. For most Central and Eastern Europeans, this contradiction remains difficult to understand. Europeans believe that the United States' policy makes concessions to communist governments in Eastern Europe. For some, this signifies confusion; for others, naiveté, a lack of realism, and inefficiency.

Historical perspective helps us understand this confusion and the resulting criticism. The misjudgment of Soviet policy immediately after 1945 led the United States to make concessions to the communists that were, in fact, unnecessary and imprudent. American power was mismanaged when the revolutionary Soviet army destroyed agreements, such as the Yalta Conference, and imposed a foreign system on 120 million people.

The subsequent policy of containment considered communist authority in Eastern Europe permanent and was viewed by the older generation of Eastern Europeans as little more than the weak and vague cordon sanitaire established after World War I. Internal pressures on the Washington government to support the liberation of Eastern Europe proved incapable of altering the policy of containment. The United States did not take advantage of the frequent weaknesses of communist power. Political planners feared that military support would weaken Western Europe and considered the stability of that area more vital than the liberation of Eastern Europe. Fallacious liberalism insisted that, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, the peoples of Eastern Europe lacked a genuine democratic tradition and would therefore necessarily adapt to authoritarian Soviet Marxism.

In 1948, when Moscow broke with Tito, the American government supported Tito without demanding modifications to his totalitarian regime and clarified that its aid was directed only against Soviet imperialism and not against Tito's Marxism-Leninism. The anti-communist uprisings of 1953 in East Germany and Poland did not elicit a serious response from the United States. Such a response was deemed unnecessary. Three years later, during the Hungarian Revolution, the United States remained a spectator rather than a participant, even though direct American aid would have been less costly and a more efficient anti-communist strategy than the subsequent intervention in Southeast Asia. Containment—despite its rhetoric of "liberation"—meant acceptance of the legitimacy of communist power in Eastern Europe.

The peoples of Eastern Europe realized that American policy meant the continued existence of communist power in their countries. Talk of "liberation" aroused false hopes, and these hopes were dashed as the reality of Washington's policy became clearer and more evident.

American policy planners argued that the inevitable structural changes in communist Eastern Europe would satisfy the captive populations and serve American interests by weakening Soviet influence. For the communists, however, this policy represented a resounding victory and allowed them to maintain that American rhetoric about "liberation" was illusory.

The abstract theories of American political scientists and experts—devoid of any moral obligation—clearly demonstrated to Eastern Europeans that discourses about "liberation" were empty words. The previous idealism of American foreign policy had faded and been replaced by Machiavellianism for power, supported by both liberals and conservatives who took the permanence of communist rule as a given.

"Building bridges" with Eastern Europe did not imply a structural change in communist power. As a result, and due to the absence of organized internal opposition, the communist authorities were free to make internal adjustments to strengthen their power and better prepare for future confrontations with the West.

The grave crisis that is currently shaking the communist world caught the United States unprepared. The crisis demonstrated that Marxism offered an inadequate solution to the long-standing national and socio-economic problems of Central and Eastern Europe. The communists failed to solve the same problems that the "bourgeois" political parties of the pre-1939 era had struggled with ineffectively.

What the pre-war Marxist intelligentsia believed feasible proved impossible. Instead, the old contradictions became even more acute. In Yugoslavia, for example, the communist leaders were unable to solve the organic national problem. Moreover, the economic crisis is forcing the ruling class to resort to the dictatorial methods of the repudiated pre-war regimes.

Edward Kardelj, Vladimir Bakaric, and Tito himself admitted in many recent statements that the national crisis is as acute as it was before 1941. The last Party Congress, convened primarily to resolve this problem, failed. Conflicts between nations threaten the very existence of socialist power. However, Washington's foreign policy remains reluctant to capitalize on the crisis in Yugoslavia (and also in other Eastern European nations), thereby discouraging the repudiation of communist power.

These reflections arise from reading Dr. John C. Campbell's recent book, "originally prepared to serve as a basis for discussion" at the Seventh Midwest Seminar on U.S. Foreign Policy, held on May 15 and 16, 1964, in Wisconsin. Dr. Campbell is a distinguished expert on Eastern European and Middle Eastern affairs, a former State Department official in charge of Balkan affairs, former director of the Bureau of Eastern European Affairs, and a member of the Policy Planning Staff. Currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Campbell possesses profound knowledge of the region, is entirely objective in his approach, and writes lucidly. It reviews the historical development of the region, highlighting its internal similarities and differences, and clarifies for North Americans the recent political and economic processes in Eastern Europe.

The most valuable part of Campbell's work is his insightful exposition of the collapse of Soviet monolithic power in Eastern Europe over the last two decades. He clarifies the consequences of this collapse in the respective countries and the complexities of "national communism."

To fully examine this development, the author analyzes two cases in detail: Poland "within the bloc" and Yugoslavia "outside the bloc." In addressing the Polish phenomenon, he emphasizes geography over ideology and argues that Poland's position is fundamentally determined by its relationship with the Soviet Union and Germany. Poland's future will depend on its location, and Western policy must adapt to this primary circumstance.

In contrast, Yugoslavia, distant from Russia and more accessible to the West, is more permeable to Western ideological pressure and influence. However, it is a curious case that the Polish Marxist intelligentsia developed a more impressive revisionism than its Yugoslav counterpart. Except for Milovan Djilas's complete break with dogmatic Stalinism, Yugoslav revisionism remains narrowly localized. (The author was unaware of the later and highly significant critical stance of the Zagreb-based journal Praxis.) Relations between national and ethnic groups are a major concern for most Yugoslav Marxist intellectuals and, consequently, hinder the development of significant revisionist thought. Polish intellectuals, though geographically less advantageous, have developed a more systematic critique of Stalinist orthodoxy, including Marxist orthodoxy.

The most heated, though also the most debatable, part of Campbell's study concerns the "alternatives" facing American policymakers in shaping foreign policy toward Eastern Europe. Campbell foresees no dynamic change in this policy. He reviews previous facets of US policy (shaped by the Atlantic Charter, the Declaration of the United Nations, and the Yalta Agreement) that implied that nations liberated from Nazi domination "should restore their independence under governments of their own choosing."

It was expected that these governments would be "broadly representative" and that free elections would be held. This position, for the United States, took on a principled character. The right to self-determination would guarantee free choice and independence for these nations. But the Red Army penetrated that region and discarded the principles upon which the new Europe was to be rebuilt. Campbell argues that the United States had not established "any real agreement with Stalin" and that there was no "firm policy from the West as to whether and how to prevent Soviet domination."

The United States and Great Britain remained passive, witnessing the establishment of "permanent Soviet hegemony." Later, as the process of Sovietization advanced, the United States faced several alternatives. One was to prevent the Soviets from taking over all of Europe, which required a strengthened military position. The United States increased its military power, but nevertheless came to accept the reality of communist authority in Eastern Europe.

Washington did not use its accumulated military might to alter this reality and took no significant initiative without first considering the attitude of the Western European nations, which were unwilling to "automatically" follow American policy. Changes in Eastern Europe, such as the Stalin-Tito conflict and the Hungarian rebellion, were the result of its "own dynamics" and not of pressures exerted by Western powers. Consequently, Campbell argues that any improvement or change in Eastern Europe stemmed from forces within that region and were not imposed by Western policy. The "constraints" of Washington's and Western European policy made this possible.

The United States merely changed its tactics as conditions in Eastern Europe changed, but did not alter its strategy. Sometimes, Washington encouraged satellite nations to exhibit greater "independence" from Russia; at other times, it advised the Soviet government to adopt a more conciliatory policy.

When the governments of Eastern Europe, evidently encouraged by the Soviet government, adopted a freer and more flexible attitude toward the West, those directing American policy replaced the tactic of emphasizing military power with one of stimulating economic and cultural contacts, hoping that these governments would become less dependent on the Soviet Union. Closer contacts between the United States and the nations of Eastern Europe improved relations between the states, but did not radically alter the status or increase the freedom of the peoples of Eastern Europe.

This useful book by Campbell ends on a pessimistic note. The author does not expect any sharp changes in American policy. Those in the European Axis can gradually improve their conditions through their own internal means and methods. American policy offers them no easy panacea, only hope and patience. The United States will not act—for the historical reasons that shaped its policies and attitudes—as a Western European power of the last century would have acted in similar circumstances.

The United States will not initiate a broader military or diplomatic strategy to liberate Eastern Europe from communism, however limited, to deal with the communist authorities and alter their conditions. The illusions of "American rhetoric" should not be confused with the realities of Washington policy. Campbell's book makes this point clear, a point the peoples of Eastern Europe must bear in mind and understand.

For too long, these peoples have been the victims of the power struggle between great nations. Their own national leaders offered them little and erred far too often. And they had waited too long because of their illusory faith in the West. Sooner or later, they would find their own way to free themselves from their tragic condition. Campbell's study provides compelling evidence that the solution to their difficulties depends first and foremost on themselves.

Bogdan Radica

Farleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey

Dr. O. Dominik Mandic: Etnicka Povijest Bosne i Hercegovine (The Ethnic History of Bosnia and Herzegobina), Ed. The Croatian Historical Institute, Rome 1967, pp. XVI-554.

This is the third and, apparently, final volume in the series "Bosnia and Herzegovina: Historical-Critical Investigations." The first volume, entitled "State and Religious Affiliation of Bosnia and Herzegovina," was published in Chicago in 1960 (see review in Studia Croatica, vol. 7-8, pp. 241-42). The second volume, "The Patarene Church of the Bosnian Christians" (Bogomilska crkva bosanskih krstjana), was also published in Chicago in 1962. Subsequently, and up until the publication of the third volume, D. Mandic published several valuable studies, some related to the problems of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the most important of these works were published in the book entitled "Studies and Contributions to Old Croatian History" (reviewed in Studia Croatica, vol. 10-21, pp. 178-179).

Bibliographical information about this distinguished Croatian scholar of the older generation, who has lived and worked abroad for over 30 years, was included in reviews and especially in the special edition of our journal dedicated to "Bosnia and Herzegovina" (vol. 16-19, p. 344), which contains his extensive study entitled "Bosnia and Herzegovina - Croatian Provinces" (pp. 153-223). In that work, Mandic anticipated several findings and considerations from the third volume of his trilogy on Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Starting from the sound premise that the question of the national composition of these provinces is of paramount importance both historically and in the present day, the author devoted particular attention to their ethnic history. He summarized the results of his vast and painstaking research in this book, which is also noteworthy because, until now, no one has thoroughly addressed the national question of Bosnia from a historical perspective, and we know the extent to which this problem was reflected not only in Croat-Serb relations but also on the international stage.

The claims of the Kingdom of Serbia in the period leading up to the assassination in Sarajevo and the First World War (1914-1918) are among the main causes of the European crisis that still persists. As is well known, the Entente powers, in their confrontation with the Central Powers, accepted Serbia's claim to Bosnia as justified, since it was supposedly an ethnically Serbian territory.

Indeed, this position was supported by Tsarist Russia and later by its Western allies without adequate investigation. Many books and propaganda articles were published along these lines, so that international public opinion was poorly informed about this issue.

This is, therefore, one of those cases where the flawed approach to the national composition of a territory is of paramount importance in the overall process. We can say without exaggeration that world public opinion, after the assassination in Sarajevo in 1914, when the decision regarding war or peace hung by a thread, would have reacted differently had the problem of the ethnic composition of Bosnia and Herzegovina been clarified by serious scientific studies; that is, if it had been unequivocally established then that the Serbian expansionist claims were neither justified nor well-founded, since it was not ethnically Serbian territory but predominantly Croatian. This is of great importance when we add the fact that Bosnia is geographically and economically linked to the other Croatian provinces.

Elsewhere, and equally importantly, as Mandic also points out in his book, the responsibility for the confusion regarding Bosnia's national identity is also shared by the official political and scientific circles of Vienna and Budapest. The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, until then a Turkish vilayet, by Austria-Hungary by virtue of the resolution of the European powers gathered at the Congress of Berlin (1878), occurred at the time when the multinational Danubian community was constituted as a dualist monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

These powers, in order to maintain their predominance over the other peoples of the monarchy who constituted the majority and to preserve the precarious balance among themselves, did not want Croatia to be strengthened, to which Bosnia should have united by virtue of its historical and national rights, but instead sought a solution by maintaining and deepening the existing contrasts of a national, cultural, and religious nature. The Hungarians, above all, to weaken Croatian resistance to their supremacy, promoted Greater Serbian propaganda through the Orthodox Church and later upheld a strange theory about a supposed Bosnian nationality.

They sought to paralyze, or at least delay, the natural process of the awakening of Croatian national consciousness, especially among the Muslims, the ruling class in the Ottoman era, by exploiting the religious and cultural differences, resulting from historical processes, between Catholic and Muslim Croats, and by fostering the formation of Serbian national consciousness among the Orthodox minority.

This was extremely important in such a sensitive territory, where, as Mandic says, "nowhere did religious affiliation change so much or influence national affiliation so much... In less than a thousand years, the ancestors of most of the current indigenous people of Bosnia and Herzegovina fundamentally changed their religion five times, which had a profound impact on their national identity."

The author attempts to investigate and elucidate these changes more fully, drawing on contemporary sources from the arrival of the Croats in these regions in the first half of the 5th century to the present day.

In the first part (The Ethnic Profile of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Middle Ages), Mandic establishes, using contemporary documents, that Bosnia and Herzegovina was populated in the Early Middle Ages by Croats; that Bosnia—which at that time comprised only a small part of its current territory, while the other parts formed part of other Croatian provinces—during the Middle Ages first formed part of the Kingdom of Croatia, and then successively became a Banat and a vassal kingdom of the Croatian-Hungarian Kingdom.

Socially and culturally, Bosnia at that time did not differ from the other Croatian regions, which were developing culturally and politically within the sphere of the Western world, while in Serbia the political and cultural influences of Byzantium prevailed. Religiously, the population of Bosnia was Catholic and Bogomil. In medieval Bosnia, until the Turkish invasion, there were neither Orthodox Christians nor Serbs. Mandic, as mentioned, addressed the phenomenon of the Bogomil heresy in the second part of his Bosnian trilogy, a phenomenon analogous to the Patarenes of northern Italy and southern France.

In the second part, Mandic considers the problem of the "Islamization of Bosnia and Herzegovina." This problem is important because today Bosnia and Herzegovina has nearly a million Muslims, almost a third of the population of this "socialist republic" within communist Yugoslavia.

The official theory of the dominant regime—despite the apparent federalism that, nationally, favors the conception of Yugoslavia as if it were an enlarged Serbia—states that the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina are not Croats, but a "nationally undefined" group. In this way, the inclusion of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the "socialist republic" of Croatia, where they should be due to their ethnic Croat majority, was avoided. Only Bosnia, among the six "socialist republics" that make up the Yugoslav federation and which were constituted, in principle, according to national criteria, has the character of a nationally "mixed" federal unit. This was possible only by virtue of the theory of "nationally undefined" Muslims.

From Mandic's account of the Islamization of a portion of the population after the fall of the Kingdom of Bosnia (1463), it can be inferred that the Muslims of Bosnia are almost entirely descended from the indigenous Croats, Catholics, and Patarenes, who gradually embraced Islam during the Turkish rule that lasted until 1878. Mandic describes in detail how and why the Islamization of Bosnia and Herzegovina occurred within the Ottoman Empire, which for a time occupied two-thirds of Croatian territory.

When the Turks gradually withdrew to present-day Bosnia, numerous Muslims from the other liberated regions of Croatia, officially a Catholic country, came with them. The proportion of Muslims of Asian and Aromanian origin is only 4-5%. The Orthodox Serbs, who enjoyed religious autonomy with political privileges within the Ottoman Empire, did not convert to Islam. In contrast, Catholics, in solidarity with the Christian West, from which they hoped for liberation and where they sought refuge en masse, endured great Turkish pressure.

In the third part, Mandic argues that even during Turkish rule, there was an awareness of the Croatian ethnic composition of the Muslim and Catholic populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He proves this by providing numerous historical facts and documents from national and foreign sources, including Turkish ones. On the foundation of this tradition, the Croatian national movement developed in the last century among Bosnian Catholics and Muslims, encompassing all Catholics and the vast majority of Muslims, despite understandable difficulties.

In the fourth part, "The Origin and Arrival of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Mandic notes that Serbs appeared in the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Middle Ages in very small numbers, due to the expansion of Serbia. Serbs only began migrating to the then ethnically pure Croatian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Turkish occupation. However, it is necessary to distinguish between Orthodox Christians and ethnic Serbs.

According to Mandic, who draws his conclusions from a rigorous study of documents, the current Orthodox population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which comprises slightly more than 40%, consists of heterogeneous ethnic elements, mostly non-Slavic Aromanians (50-52%), followed by Catholics who were forced to convert to Orthodoxy (30-32%), Bosnian-Herzegovinian Patarens who converted to Orthodoxy (2-3%), Greek, Armenian, Albanian, and Zinzar immigrants (6-7%), and ethnically Serbian immigrants, comprising only 8-10%.

Mandic's considerations on the reasons for and methods of the conversion, mandatory in most cases, of Catholics to Orthodoxy are particularly interesting. His conclusion is that Bosnia and Herzegovina, even today, are ethnically Croat regions.

Mandic also clarified the delicate issue of the servitude of the Orthodox through the Serbian national church, which, compared to the Catholic Church, was favored not only during the Ottoman Empire but also during the period of Habsburg occupation, despite the historical merits of the House of Austria in support of the Catholic Church.

In the supplement, Mandic provides further information on the extinction of the Bogomil sect.

The book offers an extensive bibliography, two maps, and an index of names and subjects.

Although it deals with issues that provoke nationalist controversies, Mandic, in both form and content, maintains the appropriate standard of a solid historical researcher. He always supports his arguments with documents, making his conclusions credible. He sheds new light on the national question of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The virulent Serbian nationalism, directed against the rights of the Croat majority in Bosnia and Herzegovina, lacks foundation and historical justification in light of Mandic's rigorous research. Most Bosnian Orthodox Christians, influenced by Greater Serbian propaganda and, regrettably, by the Orthodox Church serving the Serbian nationalist ideology, are fervent supporters of the untenable thesis regarding Bosnia's Serbian character. They are, by origin, not Serbs but Aromanians (remnants of the population from Roman times) or are related to Catholic Croats.

It is to be hoped that, with the passage of time, as this truth takes root among the masses, there will be less friction between Croats and Serbs, two neighboring peoples, and that Serbian claims to Bosnia will disappear, along with the stumbling block. Catholics and Orthodox Christians living together in Bosnia will become more aware of their shared origins and interests.

Mandic's study can undoubtedly also serve as an impetus to strengthen the ecumenical ideal and thus work towards eliminating the divisions that exacerbated the cruel nature of the national conflicts between Serbs and Croats in the modern era, particularly during the last war—conflicts so skillfully exploited by the communists.

Ivo Bogdan

Buenos Aires

Arthur Conte, Yalta or the Partition of the World, Madrid 1964, pp. 446 (Original French title: "Yalta, ou la partage du monde", translated by Juan Francisco Torres).

The author, drawing on American diplomatic documents, memorial works, literature in general, and newspaper reports (pp. 43-441), described in his book, divided into three parts and subdivided into twenty-two chapters, the major political and military events around the world during the first days of February 1945 (Part One: The Universe, with 11 chapters), the organization of the Yalta Conference, its three protagonists with their respective delegations (Part Two: The Delegations, in four chapters), and finally, he described the conference itself, day by day, hour by hour, from February 5 to 11, 1945, recounting both the meetings of the chiefs of staff and foreign ministers and the plenary sessions in which Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin resolved all outstanding issues and problems, those they had reserved for themselves, or those on which the military and diplomats disagreed (Part Three: The Conference, with eight chapters). chapters).

The author, Arthur Conte—former French minister, former president of the Assembly of the Union of Western Europe, and delegate to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—summarized the events and their protagonists surrounding a single day, February 1, 1945, of which Churchill could rightly say "that never has the fate of so many men depended on so few," and which culminated in the final protocol of the plenary meeting after deliberations in sessions for which no minutes were taken.

Conte explicitly states: "In no session during the entire week was there the slightest stenographic record of the debates and, consequently, as is logical, no approval of the minutes. The Conference, which is undoubtedly the most important in all of history, will have no other official texts than the few sentences of its final communiqué and the few pages of its secret protocol" (p. 313).

Hence the indescribable feelings of those who were absent and whose absence was the subject of the deliberations, followed by discontent and criticism, especially from the French and Polish exiles, when the Yalta conclusions were partially published. In 1955, alarm spread when the Americans, in mid-March of that year, published their version of the Conference without prior consultation with their allies (see Buenos Aires Herald, March 18, 1955, "The British Government's reservations in Parliament after the Americans published the hitherto secret protocol").

The author observes a highly critical attitude toward Roosevelt and the American delegation, whose primary aim was to end the war with Germany as quickly as possible, absolve Europe of responsibility for world events, and establish a solid and lasting agreement with the Russians. Conte highlights three phases of the American-American divergences: the first when Roosevelt, guided by the idea of a swift end to the war with the Germans and opposing Churchill's view, expressed his idea of unconditional surrender to journalists on January 24, 1943, in Alfa, after the Casablanca conference, where unconditional surrender was decided.

Neither Stalin nor Churchill were able on repeated occasions to change Roosevelt's attitude regarding the German "satellites." The second phase of the disagreements in early 1943 concerned the landing sites in Europe. Churchill advocated for Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Bulgaria—the author emphasizes—so that the Western Allies could reach Belgrade, Vienna, Prague, and other capitals of Central and Eastern Europe before the Russians. He did not succeed.

In the third phase, after the Normandy landings (Operation Overlord) in June 1944, when it came to encircling the German troops, Roosevelt and the Pentagon proposed a landing in Provence (Operation Anvil), a relatively modest solution of the "small pincer movement," while Churchill and Alan Brooke, supported only by Norstadt, an American air general, insisted on the idea of a massive offensive against Italy, Dalmatia and Greece" (p. 89), that is, the "big pincer movement."

Roosevelt's views prevailed once again. The author points out that the Russian-Polish border should be called the "Ribbentrop-Molotov Line" (p. 96) and not the "Curzon Line," since it never served as a border until September 28, 1939, but only afterward, by virtue of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and after the Yalta Conference, which ratified it in its communiqué of February 11, 1945 (p. 409).

It is interesting to note that the author describes Marshal Pétain impartially, or even with a certain degree of sympathy, without the irony or details that cast an uncomfortable light on him, as often occurs with other political figures of that era. This contributes to the narrative's engaging style but not always to historical accuracy.

Of course, these are not egregious errors when he describes the Japanese ambassador, General Oshima, as "a very tall Japanese man" and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hadj Mohamed Amin al-Husseini, as having "a long beard" (p. 54), nor when he states in Chapter Six of Part One, under the title "Death Camp" and "Distinguished Guests," that in Kitzbühl "all of Germany's former Balkan friends have been evacuated," especially "Neditch, who has just left Belgrade with the German troops, and Pavelitch, who has just fled Zagreb" (p. 78), since Oshima was not tall, the Grand Mufti did not have a long beard, and Pavelitch did not leave Zagreb during the Yalta Conference, but rather on May 6, 1945.

It is important, however, to correct the fact that the Slovak Republic was not founded on October 6, 1938, a few hours after Munich (p. 172), but March 14, 1939, while the Munich Conference was held on September 29. Despite a considerable number of inaccuracies and numerous errors in the transcription of German, Russian, and other place names and surnames, this book is very enjoyable to read, and one gets the impression that the author, with the exception of France, tried to be as objective and thorough as possible.

However, it seems that his impartiality is limited by political opportunism. When discussing Allied war crimes, the author falls short. Here are two specific examples. In Chapter V, under the title "The Day in Germany," Conte writes (p. 693): "Dresden is overrun by hordes of dozens of fugitive soldiers." The refugees camped in the Great Garden, in the Exhibition Palace, or on the banks of the Elbe.”

In theory, his account ends with the day of the Yalta conference, which can be taken as a technical excuse for not having noted that two days later, on February 13/14, 1945, Dresden, and especially the refugees, were attacked by Allied bombers. At the time, it was estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 people had died. German historians now estimate that 60,000 people perished on that occasion (Ploetz: Auszug der Geschichte, 26th ed., Würzburg 1960, p. 116).

Another example concerns Croatia. On p. 175, chapter 10, entitled “Eastern Europe,” the author ends the passage on the military situation in Yugoslavia: “In the Bosna Valley, the partisans They seize Siroki Brijeg." It is more than likely that the vast majority of readers are unaware that a Franciscan monastery with a well-known high school exists in that location, and that communist guerrillas, invading the town in mid-February 1945, killed 28 Franciscans, 15 of whom were burned alive. (Cf., Martyrium Croatiae, Typis Staderini, Rome 1946, p. 13; The Croatian Nation in its struggle for freedom and independence, Chicago 1955; the work of Dr. K. Draganovic, "The biological extermination of Croats in Tito's Yugoslavia," p. 305; The Tragedy of Bleiburg, ed. Studia Croatica, Buenos Aires 1963, p. 203). However, the author did not fail to mention the crime committed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk and its influence on the Kremlin's relations with the Polish government. exiled in London. Here neither the date of the announcement of the crime nor the number of victims agree with the data that appear in historical works (according to Conte: 11,000 corpses; according to Ploetz: 4,143, while during the war the figure of 10,000 officers killed was used).

Although this book is not conceived as a rigorously scientific, historical, or political work—which makes it easier for the average reader to understand—the lack of references and mention of classified literature, at least in cases where the author quotes verbatim, eliminates the possibility of verifying and delving deeper into some controversial topics.

For example, on pp. 127-129, the author describes Pope Pius XII's mood on the day of the Yalta Conference, based on the report Cardinal Spellman sent him about his conversation with Roosevelt, "the very afternoon of his return from the Quebec Conference, on September 2nd..." (which is impossible since this conference took place from September 11th to 16th, 1944), an occasion on which Roosevelt presented his plan for dividing the world, a plan that left Spellman astonished and perplexed.

To Spellman's direct question: "Would Austria, Hungary, and Croatia fall under a similar Soviet protectorate?", Roosevelt replied: "Yes." The author then quotes: "Winston is in favor of the status quo ante. I am against the resurrection of Yugoslavia, and in favor of an independent Croatian state and an independent Slovenian state." (This passage may be quoted from "The Cardinal Spellman Story" by Rev. Gannon, New York Herald Tribune, March 16, 1962, an article listed in the bibliography.)

In the third part of the book, Roosevelt's stance at the Yalta Conference is revealed. Although on the first day, February 4, 1945, Roosevelt toasted at the banquet "to respect for the rights of small nations," encountering opposition from Stalin, and although the Big Three, in the Declaration on Liberated Europe, expressed their willingness to lend assistance... "to the peoples of the former Axis satellite states in Europe to resolve, through democratic procedures, the urgent political and economic problems of such states," at the conference Yugoslavia was the only reality, so that the Western Allies were concerned solely, after the liberation of Belgrade by the Red Army on October 20, 1944, and the formation of the government headed by Tito, with implementing the Tito-Subasic agreement of December 1, 1944, after Tito obtained Moscow's approval, on the condition that the former members of Parliament be included in the AVNOJ (Agency for National Liberation of Yugoslavia) and that its resolutions be confirmed by the Constituent Assembly, elected by universal and secret ballot.

Stalin accepted these conditions, and this resolution was included in Chapter VII of the Communiqué and Chapter VIII of the Protocol on the Work of the Crimean Conference, signed on February 11, 1945, by the Big Three, or as the document states on page 401: "...between caviar and roast beef... setting aside glasses and plates, they signed one of the most important documents in history."

Despite these reservations and omissions, which are certainly numerous, the book under review contributes to the understanding of the recent past and perhaps even more so of the present, which the world lives in the shadow of Yalta.

Milan Blazekovic

Buenos Aires

Ernest Nolte: Die faschistischen Bewegungen (Los movimientos fascistas), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1966, pp. 306.

Roberto Koehl, in his study "Zeitgeschichte and the New German Conservatism" (Journal of Central European Affairs, vol. XX, no. 2/1960), refers to the "Institut für Zeitgeschichte" (Institute for Contemporary History), its origins, organization, purposes, and the ideas of its principal collaborators. Regarding these collaborators and their connection to National Socialism, he states that for them, National Socialism and related phenomena "are the consequences of structural errors in the organization of European states, both internally and as a community, and are equally—perhaps even more substantially—the consequence of the European way of thinking and valuing."

Dr. Ernst Nolte, Professor of Modern History at Philipps University of Marburg an der Lahn, addressed this problem, approaching it as a general European phenomenon in his book "The Fascist Movements," echoing the aforementioned idea of R. Koehl. The editors of "Dtv-Weltgeschichtedes 20, Jahrhunderts," Martin Broszat and Helmut Heiber, published this book as the fourth volume of the planned 15.

Martin Broszat is a member of the aforementioned "Institut für Zeitgeschichte" and, together with Ladislaus Hory, published *Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941-1945* (Stuttgart 1964, p. 183; see review in *Studia Croatica*, no. 20-21, year VII, pp. 185-186). This book, together with Gilbert In der Maur's work ("Die Jugoslawen einst und jetzt", Vienna-Leipzig 1936), Werner Markert's book ("Jugoslawien", Osteuropa Handbuch, vol. 1, Cologne-Graz-Vienna 1954), Rudolf Kiszling's work ("Die Kroaten, Der Schikalsweg eines Südslawenvolkes", Graz-Cologne 1956) cited in the extensive bibliography (pp. 317-324) and the Political Archive of the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich (Yugoslavia, reports of 1/6/1932 and 20/12/1934), as well as "Deutsche Aeitung in Koratien" of 24/8/1941, cited in the notes (pp. 306-316), served Professor Nolte as Source and reference in the sections of his book relating to Yugoslavia and Croatia.

According to the author's epilogue, his work is neither an extract nor a supplement to his book *Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche*, published in 1963, translated and published in England, Italy, and the United States. It is an independent exposition, written with rigorous scientific method, of historical interdependencies in general. His first book provided him only with the methodological structure and the historical-spiritual foundations.

The book in question consists of two parts: the first—*The Outline of the History of Europe in the Age of Fascism*—with a preamble (*The Precarious "Victory of Democracy" and the Internal Possibility of Fascism*), is subdivided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with the immediate premises of fascism; the second addresses the beginnings of fascist movements; The third part is titled "Fascism and Antifascism since 1933," and the fourth "The War and the Collapse of Fascism."

In the second part, Nolte writes about "National Fascist Movements" and at the same time provides a concise overview of the political, economic, and social situation in each country where the "fascist" movement appeared in different forms. This part—also subdivided into four chapters—is more interesting than the first due to its specific nature and will surely be subject to more criticism and discussion.

The first chapter covers southeastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Hungary, and Romania); the second chapter extends to eastern Europe and the Baltic states (Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland); the third chapter covers central Europe (Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, and Germany); while the fourth refers to northern and western Europe (the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, France, Spain, and Portugal).

While the first part follows a chronological and evaluative approach to fascist movements, the second part applies a geographical criterion, which broadly reflects the process of increasing industrialization with the corresponding decrease in the rural population (80% in Albania and Yugoslavia in the 1930s, while in England it was barely 10%). The author states that, in general, the social conditions for fascism were not present in the first two groups, and they no longer existed in the fourth group; only in the third group (the heart of Central Europe) did fascism find the basic conditions for its full development.

Fascism, as a new phenomenon between the two world wars, exhibits, in the author's opinion, the following six characteristics:

1. It arises in the context of what was then the most serious crisis of the liberal system, when the historical groups were fighting each other in parliament and wearing themselves down, while the premature extension of universal suffrage prevented the necessary adaptation;

2. Fascism was born out of war, and its first formations were the associations of war veterans who championed the principles of the First World War (in Italy, the Fiume question, which they attempted to resolve by force);

3. Fascism's relationship with the bourgeoisie is one of "non-identical identity," meaning it became the standard-bearer of the basic bourgeois intention: to combat Marxist revolutionary attempts with forces and methods alien to the bourgeois way of life and thought;

4. A visible affinity between fascism and its adversary is evident due to the large influx of socialists and trade unionists and their influence on fascism's relationship with the masses;

5. It champions nationalism or takes it to its extreme (not the nationalism of a Mazzini, but that of Enrico Corradini, who had no scruples regarding South Tyrol and Istria, and saw only "our sea" in the Mediterranean); 6. The propensity for ideology, arising from the need to create its own interpretation of Marxism and to provide fertile ground for the adversary—its anti-Marxism—in place of the liberal system, a system that harks back to anti-Semitism and a certain anti-Christian Catholicism.

All these characteristics may not be uniquely Italian, but rather European in general; fascism as such is not limited to specific Italian conditions, but is primarily defined by its early triumph in this country. Of course, differences exist in each case, but as long as they manifest themselves within the six characteristics listed, the application of the concept of "fascist" can be considered justified.

According to these criteria, all parties, movements, and tendencies that are to the right—that is, in relation to the rise of communism—are classified as fascist. These are more radical than the right-wing parties before the First World War, but contain a greater degree of leftist elements than the pre-war right-wing parties.

Viewed from the outside and pragmatically, writes Nolte, these parties and movements are recognized by their inclination towards uniforms, their caudillo-like principles, and their open sympathy for Mussolini and Hitler, or both. When some of these traits are clearly delineated, it is referred to as pro-fascism or semi-fascism; when a single trait (for example, the principle of an armed party army) is manifested in a party with other roots, it may be a characteristic of pseudo-fascism.

While the first part follows a chronological and evaluative approach to fascist movements, the second part applies a geographical criterion, which broadly reflects the process of increasing industrialization with the corresponding decrease in the rural population (80% in Albania and Yugoslavia in the 1930s, while in England it was barely 10%). The author states that, in general, the social conditions for fascism were not present in the first two groups, and they no longer existed in the fourth group; only in the third group (the heart of Central Europe) did fascism find the basic conditions for its full development.

Fascism, as a new phenomenon between the two world wars, exhibits, in the author's opinion, the following six characteristics:

1. It arises in the context of what was then the most serious crisis of the liberal system, when the historical groups were fighting each other in parliament and wearing themselves down, while the premature extension of universal suffrage prevented the necessary adaptation;

2. Fascism was born out of war, and its first formations were the associations of war veterans who championed the principles of the First World War (in Italy, the Fiume question, which they attempted to resolve by force);

3. Fascism's relationship with the bourgeoisie is one of "non-identical identity," meaning it became the standard-bearer of the basic bourgeois intention: to combat Marxist revolutionary attempts with forces and methods alien to the bourgeois way of life and thought;

4. A visible affinity between fascism and its adversary is evident due to the large influx of socialists and trade unionists and their influence on fascism's relationship with the masses;

5. It champions nationalism or takes it to its extreme (not the nationalism of a Mazzini, but that of Enrico Corradini, who had no scruples regarding South Tyrol and Istria, and saw only "our sea" in the Mediterranean); 6. The propensity for ideology, arising from the need to create its own interpretation of Marxism and to provide fertile ground for the adversary—its anti-Marxism—in place of the liberal system, a system that harks back to anti-Semitism and a certain anti-Christian Catholicism.

All these characteristics may not be uniquely Italian, but rather European in general; fascism as such is not limited to specific Italian conditions, but is primarily defined by its early triumph in this country. Of course, differences exist in each case, but as long as they manifest themselves within the six characteristics listed, the application of the concept of "fascist" can be considered justified.

According to these criteria, all parties, movements, and tendencies that are to the right—that is, in relation to the rise of communism—are classified as fascist. These are more radical than the right-wing parties before the First World War, but contain a greater degree of leftist elements than the pre-war right-wing parties.

Viewed from the outside and pragmatically, writes Nolte, these parties and movements are recognized by their inclination towards uniforms, their caudillo-like principles, and their open sympathy for Mussolini and Hitler, or both. When some of these traits are clearly delineated, it is referred to as pro-fascism or semi-fascism; when a single trait (for example, the principle of an armed party army) is manifested in a party with other roots, it may be a characteristic of pseudo-fascism.

That is accurate in its first point, provided that the collaboration of Italian fascism and German National Socialism with existing conservative parties in the struggle against Bolshevism or communism, and the triumph of fascism with the support of these forces, is called a "national revolution." In Croatia, there were no such organized forces. All of them disappeared and merged into the unstructured Croatian national movement, formally headed by the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, Dr. Vladko Macek, who therefore held the title of "leader of the nation" even more justifiably than Esteban Radic himself before the assassination attempt at the Skupstina (Parliament) in Belgrade in 1928.

The fact of the restoration of the Croatian state in April 1941, when the position of Italy and the Third Reich regarding the future of Croatia and its political and state leadership was still undefined, points to a true national revolution with the participation of all the paramilitary organizations of the Croatian Peasant Party (the Urban and Peasant Guard), with the complete abstention, of course, of their leaders. The subsequent collaboration of two-thirds of the national deputies of said party in the Croatian Sabor (Parliament) is also evident.

Arguments could be made, though they are not relevant here, that the Croatian state and its Ustaša structuring were, unfortunately, a great improvisation under the impact of wartime circumstances and Croatia's relations with its wartime allies. Under these conditions, the "Ustaša principles," the foundation of the movement of the same name, became the fundamental law of the Croatian state with record speed, unlike in Italy and Germany, as the author correctly observes and characterizes as a peculiar feature of the party's premature state totalitarianism in Croatia.

It is also inaccurate to say that Ustaša uniforms dominated public events at the beginning, with those of the regular army appearing gradually afterward. In the organization of the armed forces, the regular army (domobrani) initially had the advantage thanks to the influence of its commander-in-chief, Slavko Kvaternik, a former colonel in the general staff of the Austro-Hungarian army. One should not be misled by the large number of Ustaša uniforms at such events, as they were often the uniforms of party officials, of a non-military nature.

As another distinguishing feature, the author cites the close relationship with Catholicism, manifested in the decisive cooperation of Franciscan friars and other priests. If all fascism—the author affirms—can be defined by the characteristics of "anti-Christian Catholicism," then the faithful, that is, the Christian Catholic, cannot be a fascist. Nolte doubts that Pavelić and his adherents were Catholic.

For him, Catholicism was first and foremost an integral part of the national character, so that without theoretical interpretations, they distanced themselves from religious doctrine. "Therefore, the Ustaša movement can only be described as Catholic fascism with extreme caution," Nolte concludes. If this deduction and conclusion are accurate, then it is illogical to speak of "fighters for the faith" that Europe had not seen for centuries. It would be more logical to call them fighters for the Croatian cause or for nationality.

But if Croatia was to be inhabited only by the Croatians and at the same time had to be the Greater Croatia of King Zvonimir, so Nolte's insinuation that almost half the population—including Serbs, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Jews—had to convert to Catholicism or be exterminated is inaccurate. Even more inaccurate is an assertion, citing Hory-Broszat's work as its source, that "Croatia during the war effectively became an enormous baptismal temple and at the same time a gigantic slaughterhouse."

Firstly, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina are overwhelmingly Croats, and there is not a single known case of a Muslim being baptized or persecuted. Secondly, no Orthodox Christian, except for Serbs who, in those exceptional circumstances, deemed it appropriate, either voluntarily or under pressure, to convert to Catholicism, had to change their faith. The mere fact that the Croatian Orthodox Church existed—officially recognized—refutes the contrary claim.

Third, the persecution of Jews in Croatia should be attributed more to the German ally than to the Ustaše movement, since several of its main leaders were married to Jewish or mixed-race women, not to mention that racist antisemitism in Croatia was neither popular nor virulent.

Croatia, incidentally, became a slaughterhouse, but not because of religious or nationalist madness, but because, due to a confluence of circumstances, it became a battleground for eight regular, irregular, and partisan armies (Croatians, Germans, Italians, Serbs, and Communists), fighting for different political and social systems and ideologies. Nolte did not adequately highlight this crucial factor.

As we have indicated, the author's thesis regarding Muslims (p. 177) is untenable: "In Croatia, for the Ustaše, the fight against the Jews came long after the fight against the Serbs and Bosnian Muslims," as is his assertion on p. 202: "Similarly, but not as perfectly as Hitler solved the Jewish problem, Pavelić solved the Serbian and Muslim problem."

Although Nolte acknowledged to the author of this note (in the letter of June 2, 1967) that what he said about the Muslims was a "slip of the tongue" which he would correct at the first opportunity, the question remains: Where did Nolte find this information if it does not appear in this form in the sources he used? Where, for example, did he find a similar statement on page 109 of the 24th edition of "The History of the Second World War" (Geschichte des Zewiten Weltkrieges, A. G. Ploetz-Verlag, Bielefeld 1951), corrected in the 26th edition of the same work (1960, p. 1242)? Here, undoubtedly, the insistent war and postwar propaganda plays a role, against which, in certain cases, even scrupulous historians are not immune until counter-evidence is provided, which unfortunately always comes "post festum," after the work has been published.

It is worth crediting the author for referring to the "horrendous fate" of the Croatian military units at the hands of the communist guerrillas at the end of the war. However, neither this fate, nor all the difficulties faced by the Croatian state during the war, along with its Ustaše regime, justify the geographical and political status created by the imposition of the Croatian-Serbian union in 1918-19, if the Croatian people did not have the opportunity to legally express their right to self-determination, as actually occurred in Yugoslavia.

Considering the characteristics of the Ustaša movement and its evaluation in light of the features of fascism outlined by Nolte, and then taking into account that the various imitations of fascism and National Socialism primarily served Pavelić as a tactic in the German-Italian rivalry regarding Croatia, it does not seem entirely appropriate to include this movement—nor some other movements, parties, and tendencies—under the common label of fascism, as the author does.

Perhaps it is more appropriate to include the Ustaša movement within the general concept of "autocracy" and within this to distinguish three groups: militaristic regimes, monarchical dictatorships, and extremist movements, as Taylor Cole (European Political Systems, New York 1961, pp. 762-767) and C. E. Black and R. L. Braham do in Part Six of the book entitled "The Soviet Sphere: The People's Democracies of Eastern Europe."

These authors divide the last group into autonomist and fascist movements; Among the autonomists are the Ustaša movement, the IMRO, and the Slovak autonomist movement, while the Finnish Lapua, the Romanian Iron Guard, and the Hungarian Arrow Cross are considered fascist movements.

Despite these reservations and our disagreement on certain details, Professor Nolte's book is highly instructive, constitutes a scholarly work without preconceived bias, and deserves careful consideration and a broad, objective analysis.

Milan Blazekovic

Buenos Aires

Angelo Tamborra: Imbro Tkalac e Italia. Ed. Instituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italino (Serie II: Memorias, vol. XXIV), Roma 1966.

The monograph mentioned in the epigraph, very important for Croatians, was recently published by the renowned Italian historian Angelo Tamborra. In recent years, Tamborra has attracted attention with his remarkable studies and monographs on the relations between the Italian Risorgimento and the leading figures of Central Europe and the Balkans. His classic work is titled Davour e i Balcani (Turin, 1958).

I referred to this important book in a review published in the Journal of Central European Affairs, thus bringing it to the attention of specialized North American circles. In that book, Tamborra paid particular attention to Tkalac and Kvaternik and to the policies pursued first by Cavour, and then by other Italian statesmen, especially Visconti Venosta and Garibaldi, in response to the prevailing situation in the former Habsburg monarchy and the Balkans. In that book, as in the monograph we are reviewing, Tamborra relied primarily on the Italian state archives, which gives them special importance.

In this monograph, Tamborra focused on Imbro-Emerik Ignjatijevic Tkalac, born in Karlovac on May 6 (April 24), 1824. Tkalac spent his early youth in Croatia until he went to study in Germany. He then lived in Austria, where for a time he contributed to the Viennese magazine Ost und West. Expelled for political reasons, Tkalac settled in Italy, where he died in Rome in 1912, working for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Tkalac wrote numerous pamphlets in several languages, mostly German, French, and Italian. He also wrote a large number of political and literary studies and articles, under his own name or various pseudonyms, published in German, Austrian, French, and Croatian newspapers and magazines.

His youthful memoirs of Croatia, published under the title Jugenderinnerungen aus Kroatien (1749-1823; 1824-1843) and printed in Leipzig in 1894, attracted some attention. In Croatian, Tkalac wrote his well-known dissertation: Pitanje Austrijisko, Kome Kako i Kada valja resiti ga? Poslanica braci Hrvatima i Srbina (The Austrian Question: Who, How, and When Should It Be Resolved? A Message to Our Croatian and Serbian Brothers). This pamphlet was printed in Paris seven years after the publication of La Croatie et la Confédération Italienne de Kvaternik, with a foreword by the French publicist L. Léuzon Le Duc, who introduced that book to the French public at a time when Napoleon III's Paris was interested in national problems within the Habsburg monarchy.

During the years Tkalac was active in Italy, first in Turin, then in Florence, and finally in Rome, the Croatian revolutionary Eugenio Kvaternik was also in Turin and Florence. Like Tkalac, he traveled between Italy, St. Petersburg, and Paris, fighting for an independent Croatian nation-state, while Tkalac strove for the creation of a South Slavic union. Tkalac died in Rome as an employee of the Italian Consulta, while Kvaternik fell as a true revolutionary in 1871 in Rakovica.

There were no two Croatians as different as Tkalac and Kvaternik. The former was a measured, restrained, and cultured diplomat with encyclopedic erudition, who wrote perfectly in French, Italian, and German; cautious, born to be a diplomat. The latter, a plebeian, a true rebel, deeply familiar with Croatian constitutional law, a voracious reader, wrote in French in his own style, aggressive yet lively. I would say that Tkalac was more like the sharp-witted Cavour than Visconti Venosti, while Kvaternik was closer to Garibaldi.

For Tkalac, diplomacy was everything, and for Kvaternik, the struggle for national liberation was the alpha and omega of his worldview. Politically, Tkalac championed the liberation of all South Slavs and the creation of their common state, while Kvaternik fought for the establishment of an independent Croatian state stretching from Albania to the Karavanke Mountains. Kvaternik believed that with the liberation of Italy from Austrian rule, the state of Croatia could be created in parallel on the eastern Adriatic coast.

In his letters and dialogues with Italian statesmen, Kvaternik argued that the union of Croatia and Serbia would bring Byzantine-Serbian Orthodoxy to the Adriatic, thus threatening all South and West Slavic Catholics with Russian hegemony, and in fact endangering the security of Italy, the Mediterranean, and the West. While Tkalac believed in the concepts expressed in Garasanin's *Nacertanie* (secret program of Greater Serbian expansion), which foretold the creation of a Serbian Empire in which Serbs would be the dominant power and Croats merely an appendage, Kvaternik refuted this thesis and consistently advocated for the creation of an independent Croatian state.

Analyzing, albeit superficially, the Tkalac-Kvaternik conflict, Tamborra asserts that Italian diplomacy was entirely in favor of Tkalac and rejected Kvaternik's position. Italian diplomacy supposedly advocated for the unification of the South Slavs, supporting it to the best of its ability, and dismissed Kvaternik's thesis on the creation of an independent Croatian state. "The men who truly wield influence in Italy," writes Tamborra, "such as the king, Visconti Venosta, Cerrutti, etc., are in favor of the thesis on reconciliation between Serbs and Croats, previously put forward, with Yugoslav premises, by Tkalac."

"The men who really carry weight in Italy," Tamborra writes, "such as the king, Visconti Venosta, Cerrutti, etc., are in favor of the thesis on reconciliation between Serbs and Croats, put forward earlier, with Yugoslav premises, by Tkalac." Therefore, Tamborra concludes, upon the adoption of this thesis, Kvaternik recorded the encounter in his Diary in bitter terms: "I was in the anteroom of Cerrutti (Secretary General of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) when I saw the odious Tkalac. It pained me to the core to look at that animal, that disloyal being. We passed by each other without speaking, staring at one another like a lion and a tiger in a cage... We are children of the same people and yet so hostile..."

When Cerrutti asked him about Tkalac, Kvaternik replied: "I don't know him. In Croatia, besides Strossmayer, Jankovic, Starcevic, and myself, we don't know anyone else who has the right to speak on behalf of Croatia... I'll see who this one is." (All of this also appears in Kvaternik's Second Exile, which I don't have at hand and am translating from Tamborra's Italian text). For us, the current exiles, these incidents are not unknown and, therefore, do not surprise us.

But it is regrettable that Tamborra, while he grasped them, did not delve deeper into these Croatian alternatives, which are not of yesterday or today but constitute the constants of all Croatian politics since the beginning of the last century.

I tried to present Kvaternik's point of view elsewhere. In the last volume of the Journal of Croatian Studies (V-VI), I attempted, for the first time in English, to summarize the viewpoints of both figures through Kvaternik's encounters with Tommaseo, and I must acknowledge that Tamborra's earlier findings on Tkalac, extracted from the Italian state archives, proved useful, as I noted in detail in my work.

Contemporary Croatian historiography should pay close attention to this issue, as it seems to me that the time has come to clarify these alternatives in light of the tragic experience of Yugoslavia.

The Kvaternik case is present in the current struggles of Croatian youth; even our Marxists discuss it. In the most recent issue of the American journal Foreign Affairs, Dr. R. Bicanic published a highly interesting article on reform in Yugoslavia. While highlighting the role of Croatian communists in leading the reform, he also referred to the national crisis, emphasizing that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had admitted that the Yugoslav idea was unworkable.

At the end of his article, Bicanic warns that the decisive action of Croatian communists aimed at achieving greater independence should not follow the path of the "mad heroism" of Eugenius Kvaternik, who in 1871, after the tragic Rakovic massacre, prevented the federalization of the Habsburg Empire. Since this interpretation of Kvaternik's feat does not coincide with historical truth—the year 1867 unequivocally demonstrated that the Croats could not achieve state independence under Austrian and Hungarian hegemony—it is significant that Bicanic, always so cautious and committed, would resort precisely to Kvaternik's example, thereby acknowledging that this example is also prevalent among the current opposition of Croatian Marxists to Serbian Belgrade.

Bicanic, who is known to be close to Bakaric (the main communist figure in Croatia), must have been fully aware of what he wrote. I wouldn't make such a formulation if I weren't convinced that this is an idea circulating in the minds of Croatian Marxists. Marxist theorists know how and when to employ certain formulas, as this is fundamental to them.

However, one thing must be emphasized: the value of this monograph on Tkalac is enhanced by the fact that Tamborra added to his work the reports that Tkalac sent from Rome to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Florence during the First Vatican Council. These reports were written between January 20 and July 25, 1970, that is, when Rome was not yet the capital of the new Italy and when Florence was the seat of the Italian government.

Tkalac sent his letters from Rome through diplomatic channels for fear of the papal police. They were addressed directly to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Visconti Venosti. These letters are very interesting and demonstrate Tkalac's extensive connections, as well as Kvaternik's before him, and also Tkalac's exceptionally critical spirit.

These letters constitute a small masterpiece of Tkalac's diplomatic art. Why was Tkalac sent to Rome and not someone else? The answer could be multifaceted. Firstly, because he was not Italian but a foreigner, and thus would not stand out so much in the circles of the Roman Curia. I believe the main reason lay in Tkalac's friendship with Bishop Strossmayer.

Indeed, in his first letter, Tkalac emphasizes that he conveyed the greetings of the Italian government to Strossmayer and congratulated him on his conduct at the Council. Strossmayer was already not only well-known but popular in Italian and European liberal circles because of his stance against the "infallibilists," and, moreover, many European bishops, especially French and German ones, who opposed the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility, sympathized with him.

Strossmayer, moved by Visconti Venosta's greetings, emphasized that his intention was "to combat the evil that threatens the Church and society and that he will not tire of defending the rights of humanity against all tyranny, both spiritual and secular." At the same time, he stressed that no one less than himself, "leader of the national and liberal opposition in his country," appreciated "the services rendered by Italy to all oppressed peoples, inscribing on its flag the words of freedom and national independence."

Tkalac described the opposition, led by Strossmayer, as very strong among the bishops, and how each of his speeches at the Vatican contributed to increasing his enormous prestige. It is known that after each of his interventions, especially the French bishops, exclaimed "Long live Strossmayer!" and "Long live Croatia!", particularly Bishop Dupanloup of Orléans, the right-hand man of the Bishop of Djakovo.

Also present with Strossmayer were Bishop Darboy, Cardinals Rauscher and Schwarzenberg, Archbishop of Prague. But Strossmayer's opposition gradually waned. Tkalac records that in one session of the Council, these insults were also hurled at Strossmayer: "Behold the heretic, behold the Protestant, let us condemn him, let him be anathema," etc. Pope Pius IX did not sympathize with Strossmayer, mockingly calling him "Croatian" and "Croatian caposetta."

This occurred when Strossmayer, through the well-known English historian Lord Acton, established contact with the leader of the English Liberal Party, Gladstone. Pius IX called Lord Acton "that wretched man of Acton (...that scoundrel of Actonuccio)." Lord Acton, a Catholic and advocate of liberty, was entirely on Strossmayer's side, a point he also emphasizes in his well-known analysis of the Council. Tkalac, however, does not believe that Acton was an honest man, which is untrue. Seen from today's perspective, after the Second Vatican Council, Strossmayer's position at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) appears prophetic and more than intuitive.

Had the Church heeded his advice, it would not have taken a whole century to undergo its "aggiornamento," at least in part. Whatever our opinion of Strossmayer, there is no doubt that he was a brilliant clergyman who looked a century ahead into the future of the world and humanity. Tkalac's letters clearly demonstrate this. Moreover, Tommaseo himself, in his Cronichetta, confesses to being deeply impressed by Strossmayer's personality. He is the first Croatian who left him with the impression of a great prelate and politician. European. Labeled a liberal and a Pan-Slavist, a label Strossmayer was not ashamed of, he left a deep mark on an era that was deciding the fate of a new world. Finally defeated at the Council—a fact discussed at length in Tkalac's letters—Strossmayer explained his situation to his friend Racki in 1870 in the following terms:

"There is no freedom at the Council... I must adhere to my convictions and save my conscience and my honor before God and the world." He then continued: "...today someone proclaims himself God and we have to sign it." “I cannot bear that shame.” Tamborra did not delve deeply into Croatian sources, although he worked in the Zagreb archives. His monograph, supplemented by Tkalac’s letters on the Council, written in French, is invaluable for our current understanding. Moreover, anyone who reads Glas Koncila (The Voice of the Council), the most interesting text we have from Croatia, can easily orient themselves and find solace.

Bogdan Radica

New York, NY

Mandicev Zbornik ("The Mandichian Compendium" in tribute to R. P. Dr. Domingo Mandic on the occasion of his 75th birthday). Ed. Studia Instituti Chroatorum Historici Romae, vol. I-II, Romae MCMLXV, p. 320.

Father Domingo Mandic occupies a prominent place in Croatian national life and, above all, in Croatian historiography. He dedicated the best efforts and care of his long life to the Franciscan order, and his studies on Croatia's ancient past establish him as one of the most insightful and profound scholars of national history.

The obscurity that partially shrouds the most remote periods of the Croatian nation and the intentional distortions of facts to diminish or obscure its rights are two factors that prevent a complete understanding of the destiny and historical events of the Croatian people. Father Mandic stood against these two factors; his lucidity and erudition pushed back the obscurity, enriching our historical knowledge with new, reliable data, clear interpretations, and sound approaches. Tenacious and tireless, endowed with an uncommon analytical mind, Mandic was able to unravel the tangle of falsifications and half-truths, becoming a reliable guide for all those who hold historical truth as their supreme aspiration.

Mandic, born in 1889 in the village of Lise, near Siroki Brijeg, an important cultural center in the Croatian province of Herzegovina, entered the Franciscan order in 1906 and was ordained a priest in 1912 in Fribourg, Switzerland, where he was pursuing advanced theological studies.

His extraordinary talents, erudition, and firm character made him stand out very early on. From 1928 to 1934 he was the provincial superior, and from 1934 to 1939 the director of the Franciscan classical high school in Siroki Brijeg. The General Assembly of the Franciscan Order, meeting in Assisi in 1939, appointed him General Councilor of the Order, entrusting him at the same time with the highly important position of Bursar.

His extensive historiographical work dates back to 1909, when he published notable works on the history of the Franciscan Order, and even then, some notes on the history of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would later become the central theme of his historical studies and research.

The ambitions of Serbian imperialism toward these Croatian provinces spurred Mandic, a native of Herzegovina, to delve deeper into the history of his home province, and with his monumental work on Bosnia, he would become a living symbol of the integrity of Croatian national heritage. On the occasion of Mandic's 75th birthday, the Croatian Historical Institute in Rome published the Mandic Compendium (Mandicev Zbornik), a collection of historical works by Croatian and foreign historians. Some of these authors were students and collaborators of the honoree. The compendium was compiled by historians Ivan Vitezic, Basilio Pandzic, and Atanasio Matanic.

In the introduction, Father Basilio Pandzic provides a brief curriculum vitae of D. Mandic and a complete bibliography of his works. Following this is the study written in English by Vladimir Markotic, professor at the University of Alberta, USA, entitled Ho Ton Hraboton Theos (The God of the Croats) by C. Porphyrogenitus, in which he clarifies several aspects of the Christianization of the Croats in connection with the work of the Byzantine emperor and historian Constantine Porphyrogenitus, whose book De administrandi Imperio is one of the most important sources for the first centuries of Croatian history.

The highly esteemed Croatian Jesuit scholar Esteban Sakac is also represented with his work, written in Croatian, Ljutovvid, strateg Srbije i Zahumlja i njegova lokrumskka povelja, in which he analyzes a historical controversy concerning the authenticity of an important 11th-century document relating to the Benedictines of Lokrum in the vicinity of Dubrovnik.

The following work, also written in Croatian, entitled Isprave kralja Zvonimira i Stjepana II. splitskim benediktinkama, belongs to the prestigious historian Aurelio Tanodi, currently a professor at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina.

Marko Japundizic, from Rome, in his interesting dissertation Istocno-bizantinski obred u hrvastkim krajevima (The Eastern-Byzantine Rite in the Croatian Regions), analyzes some aspects of the penetration of the Orthodox rite in Croatia.

Rudolf Bonic, from Rome, in his study Srednjovjekovni grad Krusevac u Humu (The Medieval Fortress of Krusevac in Hum), examines the location and historical and military importance of the ancient stronghold of Krusevac.

Alexander V. Solovjev (Geneva), in his contribution written in French, *Le testament du Gost Radin*, discusses a dignitary of the Bogomili sect (a branch of the Patarenes sect in the Croatian province of Bosnia), whose testament sheds some light on the life and decline of this schismatic movement in Croatia.

*Das Demilov-Kreuz bei Kucinari (Herzegovina)* is the title of the work by Herman Gruber, Stuttgart, written in German. The German scholar attempts to decipher and analyze the signs and symbols found on the famous Kucinari Cross belonging to the Bogomili (Patarene) cult...

Marin Tadin, Paris, in his study in French, *Un nouvel exemplaire du Carême attribué á Saint Bernardin de Sienne*, recounts the curious story of a Lenten text, written in Glagolitsa, an ancient Croatian script, which is housed in the library of Porto, Portugal.

Atanasio Matanic, O.F.M., Rome, contributed his interesting work, written in Croatian, Apostolska vizitacija dubrovacke nadbiskupije god. 1573/4. Following the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545-1563), an apostolic visitation was carried out in the Archdiocese of Dubrovnik. The author recounts the characteristics and details of this important event.

The Franciscan Basilio Pandzic, in his study written in Latin, Relatio de provincia Bosnae Argentinae O.F.M. an. 1623. S. Congregationi de Propaganda Fide exhibita refers to the Franciscan missions in Bosnia and the assistance provided by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

José Buric, in his work, written in Croatian, entitled Ilirski Kolegij u Garganskom Gorju u 17. stoljecu, deals with the vicissitudes of a college founded in the 17th century for Croatian seminarians in the Gargantuan Mountains, in southern Italy.

Mirko Covic contributed to the tribute with his work, written in Croatian, Borda oko sinjske franjevacke gimnazije, u beckom carevinskom vijecu godine 1865, in which he details the struggle that took place in the Imperial Council of Vienna regarding the subsidy for the well-known Franciscan college in Sinj (Dalmatia, Croatia).

Also written in Croatian is the contribution by Ivan Vitezic, Vienna, Poceci organizacije katolicke crkve u modernoj srbiji i talijanski barnabita Ceare Tondini (Vienna, The Organization of the Catholic Church in Modern Serbia and the Talijanian Barnabite Cesare Tondini), which addresses interesting aspects of the beginnings of the organization of the Catholic Church in modern Serbia and the unfortunate role played by the Italian Barnabite Cesare Tondini.

The appendix to the compendium contains an analytical index and reproductions of several photographs and drawings.

The quantity and quality of the works consulted by the various authors of the compendium bear full witness to the erudition and scientific rigor with which the chosen topics were treated. New facts, previously unknown data, conclusive evidence, sound approaches, new deductions, and conclusions make this compendium a valuable contribution to Croatian historiography. The Rev. Father D. Mandic can be proud of this work, which he encouraged and inspired with his example of a selfless and rigorous researcher.

Daniel Crljen

Buenos Aires

Journal of Croatian Studies, V-VI, 1964-65, Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of America, Inc., New York, pp. 220.

Thanks to the dedicated work of its editors, Jerome Jareb and Karlo Mirth, the double volume V-VI of the Croatian Academy of America's yearbook for the biennium 1964-1965 was recently published. This volume, aside from notes, book reviews, and other information, comprises two extensive and well-documented works, which we will now summarize.

Bogdan Radica, professor of modern European history at Farleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, in his historical-political work entitled *Risorgimento and the Croatian Question - Tommaseo and Kvaternik*, provides new information on the activities of the ill-fated Croatian revolutionary, Eugenius Kvaternik (1825-1871). This information, some of it published for the first time, was found by the author in the archives of Niccolò Tommaseo (II Fondo Tommaseo), housed in the Manuscript Division of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.

In the first part of his study, Radica emphasizes the political and ideological influence of the Italian Risorgimento on the national movement in Croatia. "From its center, neighboring Piedmont, the Risorgimento proved extremely attractive to the South Slavs; it and its prominent figures, Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, often served as examples for the Croats and Serbs, determined to break away from the decadent Ottoman and Habsburg Empires."

For the Croats, however, union with Serbia was only one of numerous political alternatives. In the second half of the last century, the main and primary interest of Croatian politicians focused on the unification of all the ethno-historical Croatian provinces to be governed by the ban and parliament in Zagreb.

The most prominent revolutionary leader in Croatia was Eugenius Kvaternik, who fought in exile for Croatia's complete separation from the Habsburg Empire. Radica emphasizes that "Kvaternik opposed, with equal resolve, the integration of Croatian interests with Pan-Slavism, Illyrianism, and similar Yugoslav movements. He rejected all forms of Serb-Croatian union, and his sole objective was the formation of an independent Croatian state." Three times between 1858 and 1867, he sought asylum abroad. In 1861, he was elected, along with Dr. A. Starcevic, to the Croatian parliament (Sabor).

In exile, he engaged in intense political activity, advocating for the Croatian cause in Russia, Paris, Zurich, Turin, and Florence, seeking understanding and support for his rather romantic and politically unrealistic revolutionary plans. Radica illustrates his efforts to gain the support of the renowned Italian writer Nicola Tommaseo, of Croatian origin, whom he considered the spiritual link between Slavism and Romanism. Tommaseo exchanged letters with the most prominent figures in Croatia until his death in 1878. Radica also recounts interesting details about Tommaseo's origins. Born in Šibenik (Croatia) in 1802 to Croatian parents, he was born in Šibenik in 1802 to Venetian historian V. Mikelli. According to Mikelli, "his original surname was Tomasic and Tomasevic. Correspondence and other connections with Venice perhaps persuaded the family to give the surname an Italian ending."

Tommaseo even wrote a beautiful work in Croatian in 1841-42, Iskrice (Sparks), although his main work forms a substantial part of the Italian literature of his time. Radica highlights that great Italian writers and literary critics (Prezzolini, Croce, Papini) found in Tommaseo different, peculiar elements, distinctive traits, derived from his Croatian origin. What is surprising about Tommaseo is, on the one hand, his stubborn opposition to the integration of Dalmatia, the cradle of Croatia's political and cultural tradition, into its mother country, and on the other hand, his prophetic admonition that the Slavic Catholic countries can expect nothing from Russia, which presents itself as their supposed protector. Tommaseo advocated for the confederal unification of Central Europe.

Radica, in summarizing Tommaseo's life, analyzes his relationship with Kvaternik and the latter's efforts to convince him, and through him Cavour, Garibaldi, and other leaders of the Risorgimento, that the union and liberation of Italy would be more effective if Italy contributed to the solution of the "Croatian question." Kvaternik, in his pamphlet "La Croatie et la Confédération Italienne" (Paris, 1859), criticized the Congress of Paris of 1856 for neglecting Croatia and its interests.

Radica then highlights the difficulties Kvaternik faced, since the Croatian name in Italy and Paris was unjustly tarnished, as all the horrors and oppression of the Austrian occupation troops in Italy were attributed to Croatian soldiers. This opinion was not shared by Cavour, who once told Kvaternik: "Unfortunately, here they can't distinguish Croats from Austrians. Everything the Austrian barbarians did was attributed to the Croats."

The author details the relationship between Tommaseo and Kvaternik based on the documentation found, and clarifies the role of Imbro Ignatijevic Tkalac, another Croatian exile in Turin, highlighting their different temperaments and divergent political views regarding the future of Croatia. In Kvaternik's astute opinion, a Yugoslav state would inevitably lead Russia to the Adriatic, posing a serious threat to Italy and the West. "It is not my intention," Kvaternik writes to Tommaseo, "that the Croats should be traitors to their Slavic race, but rather that they should promote, through their independence and freedom, a wise Christian civilization, becoming the glory of the Slavic race just as the French are the glory of the Latin race."

Radica then summarizes the ideas outlined by Kvaternik in his treatise "La Nation croate et son avenir au point de vue de l'inviolabilité des traités, pretendue par l'Autriche" (The Croatian Nation and its Future from the Perspective of the Inviolability of Treaties, Claimed by Austria), and recapitulates the content of the first issue of the newspaper Glas Prvi (The First Voice), which Kvaternik published in Florence (in December 1859), with the help of N. Tommaseo and the Italian government, for distribution among the Croatian troops stationed there. in Italy and among the nationalist intelligentsia in Croatia. Kvaternik notes in his diary that four issues of this four-page revolutionary newspaper were published, but Radica was only able to find the first issue, misplaced among various letters and papers in Tommaseo's Archive.

The last years (1866/67) of Kvaternik's exile in Italy were extremely bitter. Disappointed, misunderstood, without any support, without funds, he complained and implored Tommaseo for help in his letters. Nevertheless, Kvaternik did not lose hope in the possibility of political change. "With a truly prophetic vision," the author emphasizes, "he outlines the future of Italy and Croatia amidst the strengthening of the Slavic world." Italy has only two alternatives: either it will have a free and independent Croatia as a good neighbor on the Isonzo, with all its historical and national provinces unified... or it will have, to its disadvantage, Russia dominating from the Adriatic to the Black Sea." Tommaseo, who died in Florence in 1874, was not surprised by Rakovica, Kvaternik's tragic and aborted insurrection of 1871, as he was convinced that the Croatian was a true revolutionary who would one day offer his life for his cause and his ideals.

B. Radica's work constitutes a valuable contribution to clarifying the relationship between Kvaternik and Tommaseo. His study earned the recognition of the American historians, Professors Kann, May, and Hans Kohn, who were impressed by the personality of Eugenio Kvaternik. Leo Valiani, a well-known Italian historian and writer, emphasized in L'Expresso of Rome on September 25, 1966, that Bogdan Radica's study is of great importance to the Italian historiography. "Bogdan Radica," continues Leo Valiani, "trained under Gaetano Salvemini and Guglielmo Ferrero."

Its documentary value is corroborated by the reproductions and facsimiles, including the English summary of eight letters from Kvaternik to Tommaseo, the outline of his treatise "La Nation Croata et son…" written in Croatian, and Kvaternik's memorandum to Tommaseo in response to an article published in Ill Risorgimento on December 11, 1959. The appendix also includes reproductions of drafts of several letters that Tommaseo sent to Kvaternik, to the exiled Hungarian colonel Esteban Türr, and the letter from Andrés Torkvat Berlic to Tommaseo, written in Vienna on March 24, 1848.

Cuadra notes that Radica dedicated his important study "to the memory of Rev. Cherubim Segvić, historian of the Croatian national movement, killed by the communists in 1945 for his loyalty to the ideals of Croatian independence."

In the second work included in the volume under review, entitled "The Croatian Circle 1902-1946: Chronology and Reminiscences, a Contribution to the History of Croatians in North America," José Kraja describes the activities of this important organization of Croatian immigrants in the United States, which also reflects the Croatian people's arduous struggle against Serbian domination and economic exploitation of Croatia.

According to the author, at the outbreak of World War I, more than half a million Croatians resided in the United States. Until then, they had only social and mutual aid organizations. They were organized around their parishes; there were numerous local sports and community groups. It wasn't until 1912 that the Croatian League, a national cultural association encompassing the entire United States, was established.

The bitter disappointment experienced by Croatia in its forced coexistence with Serbia resonated widely among the émigré groups in North America. Just two months after the treacherous assassination of Croatian national deputies in the Belgrade parliament (June 20, 1928), the Croatian Circle was founded. Its primary purpose was to promote Croatian culture among those living in the U.S. and to support their compatriots in their homeland against foreign oppression.

Kraja informs us that at the Second Convention, held in Ohio in 1930, the Croatian Circle issued an important declaration repudiating the crimes of the dictatorial King Alexander and demanding the right to national self-determination and individual freedoms. The author recounts the 1930 arrest in New York of engineer August Kosutic, a victim of the intrigues of the Yugoslav dictatorial government, and his immediate release, thanks precisely to the efforts of the author himself and Ivan Kresic, another selfless patriot. In April 1931, the first issue of Hrvatska Smotra (Croatian Review) was published in English and Croatian.

With the aim of uniting all Croatian immigrants, the Croatian Congress was held in October 1931. It adopted an important resolution in favor of the independence of their homeland and issued a vibrant appeal to the League of Nations, the governments of free nations, and all freedom-loving people, urging them to contribute to ending the suffering of the Croatian nation and demanding recognition of its right to self-determination. The Congress also protested against the cruel and exterminatory policies of Italy's fascist regime against the Croatian population of Istria and Rijeka, who, despite constituting the overwhelming majority of the total population, were annexed by Italy at the end of World War I.

At the Congress, the Croatian National Council was formed, which in 1933 organized a plebiscite in the United States and Canada among Croatian immigrants and presented its results in the form of a memorandum to the League of Nations in Geneva and to leading world leaders. This document, endorsed by 250,000 signatures, contained a brief summary of Croatian history, its colonial status in Yugoslavia, and the national aspirations and inalienable rights of the Croatian people. The memorandum's operative section demanded the re-establishment of Croatia as a free, sovereign, and independent nation.

José Kraja, a prominent figure in the activities of the large Croatian community in the United States, offers a concise account of the Croatian Circle's activities until its dissolution in September 1946, following the arrival in the United States of Dr. Vladko Macek, the renowned leader of the Croatian people and president of the Croatian Peasant Party, who was then a political exile.

Kraja's insightful and well-documented work is accompanied by the full text of the most important and significant documents issued by the Croatian Circle. The author, a printer, contributed greatly to the dissemination and defense of the Croatian cause in North America and collaborated extensively and on numerous levels in the cultural, economic, and political organization of Croatian immigrants in the United States and Canada.

In the Book Review section, Bogdan Radica reviews John C. Campbell's book, *American Policy toward Communist Eastern Europe: The Choice Ahead*, and Matthew M. Mestrovic discusses Victor Meier's work, *Yugoslav Communism*. Various other notes and information follow.

This new volume of the *Journal of Croatian Studies* is further proof of the vitality of Croatian exiles and their efforts.

Branko Kadic

Buenos Aires

CIRIL A. ZEBOT: Slovenia yesterday, today and tomorrow (Slovenija vceraj, danes, jutri), Klagenfurt, Austria, 1967; author's edition, book written in Slovenian, pp 172.

The author, originally from Slovenia, one of the six "Socialist Republics" that made up communist Yugoslavia, currently holds the chair of comparative economic systems at Georgetown University, Washington, with special reference to Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. During the last war, Zebot emigrated to Italy and since 1947 has been a professor in the United States.

Among Slovenian political exiles, he is known as one of the ideologues of the Slovenian Emancipation Movement, whose initiator was Dr. Lambert Ehrlich, professor of theology at the University of Ljubljana in the period between the two world wars and a very influential figure among the intellectual youth of his country at that time. Ehrlich was killed in a communist attack in Ljubljana on October 36, 1948.

The communists sought to thwart their plans for the formation of a Slovenian national resistance against the occupation by the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists (1941-1945). This resistance would have been supported by the clandestine organization of the majority, democratically inspired People's Party. Zebot emphasizes that this would have prevented the communists, under the pretext of a liberation struggle, from imposing themselves as standard-bearers of the Slovenian national resistance, wielding it merely as a tool to seize power.

Zebot dedicates his book to the memory of Professor Lambert Ehrlich on the 25th anniversary of his violent death. The work consists of twelve chapters, some of which can be considered independent articles. Without strictly adhering to chronology, the author addresses the events preceding the communist revolution and critically examines the communist regime.

He focuses particularly on Slovenia's prospects for establishing itself as a nation-state. In the appendices (pp. 139-168) are reproduced some of Zebot's articles on the Yugoslav process following the Stalin-Tito conflict, which were published successively in the New York Times and other American newspapers. The author's biographical information is found in the final pages.

Although Zebot, in his youth, was active in the ranks of the vigorous Slovenian Catholic movement, which, through its religious, cultural, educational, economic, and labor organizations, and especially through the Slovenian People's Party, was the main force in Slovenian public life, he now adopts a negative stance regarding the pre-war, wartime, and post-war conduct of this majority party, which still holds sway due to the desire to maintain national and religious harmony.

Although the Slovenian Emancipation Movement is composed mostly of people from the Catholic movement, it maintains a critical attitude toward its political leaders. Zebot reproaches them for their opportunism during monarchical Yugoslavia and for continuing to follow the same path with respect to the Italian occupation authorities even in the last war.

As is well known, Fascist Italy, upon the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1941, annexed most of Slovenia (Ljubljana province), while the Third Reich primarily annexed the Slovenian part of Styria and implemented measures typical of the Nazi regime for the mass deportation of the indigenous population with the aim of Germanizing the annexed regions as quickly as possible.

The Italian occupation was, in some respects, less severe, which also influenced the opportunistic attitude of Slovenian political leaders who tried to salvage what they could, hoping for their release from the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London, in which Slovenians were represented. As is well known, this did not come to pass, since the Western Allies gradually opted to support only the communist partisans, disregarding their ultimate goals.

Zebot, a close collaborator of Ehrlich, believes that this tactic was misguided, as is the current alliance with Serbian monarchist exiles. In contrast, the Slovenian Emancipation Movement, which he inspires, seeks the establishment of an independent Slovenian state. Its supporters criticize the leadership of the Slovenian People's Party for not clearly addressing the issue of establishing a Slovenian national state and, if necessary, breaking up the Yugoslavian framework:

The joint state with the Serbs at the outbreak of the last war failed in its duty to defend Slovenian national territory, and in postwar communist Yugoslavia, Slovenia is tremendously exploited economically in favor of Serbia and the southern regions of Yugoslavia that fall within Serbia's sphere of interest. On this point, Zebot provides irrefutable evidence, also citing competent foreign authors who believe that Slovenia, given its advanced economic organization, even though it is one of the smaller "socialist republics" of Yugoslavia, would be capable of achieving a standard of living higher than that of its western neighbors, Austria and Italy.

Zebot accuses the Slovenian communists of acting as instruments of Greater Serbian policy. However, given recent events, especially after the removal of Alexander Rankovic, a proponent of Stalinist methods and Serbia's unconditional support of the Soviet Union to ensure its dominance over the Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and the small Albanian minority,

Zebot does not rule out the possibility of an evolution in economic and political reforms. He requires the Slovenian communists, by virtue of holding power, to fulfill their national duty, namely, to prevent the ruthless economic exploitation of Slovenia and to act in favor of democratization and national emancipation.

To this end, the communists should: 1) vigorously support the decentralization of the economy through self-management, an institution so widely promoted but existing only on paper; 2) to end the Communist Party's monopoly in the interest of democratization, and 3) relations between Serbia and the other "socialist republics" of Yugoslavia should be arranged on the principle of confederation. With a view to gradual democratization, Zebot demands the end of the party's (Yugoslav Communist League) control over the Socialist People's Alliance of Yugoslavia.

Zebot's position, which favors achieving democratic and national freedoms through a gradual process, differs from the thinking of most of the exiles, inflexible opponents of communism, who conceive of liberation solely through a total ideological struggle. Therefore, Zebot's stance is criticized, especially by Slovenian political circles, which the Slovenian Emancipation Movement reproaches for national opportunism for not having openly declared themselves in favor of a Slovenian nation-state.

Now they object to Zebot, who, among other things, did not hesitate to recommend American aid to Tito's regime, for his leniency toward the communist leaders who have now banned his book from entering Yugoslavia. Among Slovenes, there is a long tradition of clearly defined ideological divides in national life, once between Catholics and liberals, and today between supporters and opponents of communism.

In that atmosphere, Zebot's attempt to engage in dialogue with the Slovenian communists from a patriotic, humanitarian, and pluralistic platform appears as a tendency to compromise at the expense of a clear anti-communist orientation. From there, it's only a short step to questioning even Zebot's national radicalism.

Indeed, it's not easy to understand, on the one hand, Zebot's position as an ideologue of the movement for Slovenian national independence, following the line of Western and Christian tradition, and on the other hand, his attempt at dialogue with the communists and their collaborators in Slovenia in order to force the evolution that would end the communists' political-party monopoly and lead to the confederation of six "socialist republics." In this way, Zebot believed, progress would be made in democratization and Serbian supremacy would be eliminated at the expense of the other peoples of Yugoslavia.

From Zebot's position, one can infer his political tactics: on the one hand, he pressured the Slovenian communists, and on the other, he credited them with having recognized Slovenia's right, at least in theory, to possess its own nation-state. It is important to remember that the Slovenes are one of the Central European peoples who, for centuries, lacked their own state.

During the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Slovenes were divided into several administrative units within the Austrian half, subjected to pronounced Germanization, and developed a vigorous cultural and economic resistance. With the collapse of the Danubian Monarchy and the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) at the end of the First World War, the vast majority of Slovenes were freed from German pressure and were able to develop education in their own language and perfect their economic and cultural organization.

Nevertheless, Slovenia was treated as an administrative unit without the attributes of a nation-state. Only the communists recognized this right, albeit theoretically, and insist that the "Republic of Slovenia" has the character of the Slovenian nation-state and even possesses the right of secession. The gradual "liberalization" of the communist regime after the Stalin-Tito conflict made it possible for Slovenes to exercise some of the autonomy rights enshrined in the constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, under the weight of events and public opinion, the Slovenian communists themselves are trying to accelerate this evolution.

But they are aided in this by the fact that Slovenia, along with Croatia, possesses most of Yugoslav industry, and that Croatia, located between Slovenia and Serbia, is the main pillar of resistance to pan-Servism and communism due to its cultural strength and state tradition. Consequently, Croatia bears the brunt of the pressure from pan-Servism and the communist system, leaving Slovenes somewhat "protected."

On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the growing resistance of Slovenian communists to Greater Serbian centralism also benefits Croatia. The common front of Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and the Albanians of Kosmet against Greater Serbian centralist tendencies—according to which Yugoslavia is simply an enlarged Serbia—is becoming increasingly clear.

The most visible exponent of this tendency was Alexander Ranković, and his downfall, among other factors, influenced Zebot's speculations regarding the possible evolution of communist Yugoslavia toward democratization and confederation.

The Croats follow all Slovenian resistance to Pan-Servianism with attention and satisfaction, although the Croatian exiles as a whole do not believe in the possibility of the democratization of the communist regime, nor in the realization of a Yugoslav confederation, which they do not even desire. The goal of the Croatian national resistance is to re-establish the Croatian state in accordance with the traditional aspirations of the Croatian people and to integrate it with the European countries of Western culture. In light of the contemporary European movement, promising prospects are opening up for realizing these aspirations through a dual liberation: from communist tyranny and from Serbian supremacy.

Ivo Bogdan, Buenos Aires

PRVISLAV WEISSENBERGER RAGANZINI: "Relations between Austria-Hungary and Chile", Part 1: year 1900; offprint from the Annals of the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, 1967, pp. 40.

The study of the epigraph relates to the same author's earlier work, "The Destiny of the Peoples of the Danube Basin," published in Anales in 1965 (See Studia Croatica, vols. 20-21, p. 208). Dr. Weissenberger is Professor of Philosophy of History and Deputy Head of the German Department in the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences at that University.

This is the first part of a larger work covering the relations between Austria-Hungary and Chile up to the outbreak of the Great War of 1914-1918. The author focuses on the period prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. It extensively addresses the repercussions of the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgteich) of 1867—which 100 years ago was the cornerstone of the dualism of the Habsburg monarchy—and especially the reactions of the Croatian community in Chile.

For the Croatians, subjects of Austria-Hungary, constituted the main, almost decisive, contingent of immigrants from the Danubian monarchy. For this reason, the author seeks the reasons for the Croatian discontent with the prevailing situation in the Monarchy, also drawing considerably on Croatian political literature, citing, among others, the works published in our journal. As 1968 marks the centenary of the Hungarian-Croatian Compromise, Dr. Weissenberger's study takes on even greater relevance.

BOGDAN RADITZA: "The Disunity of the Slavs", ORBIS No. 4, vol. 10 (Institute for Foreign Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania.

This issue is dedicated, as a special edition, to Professor Hans Kohn. Among the 26 most renowned contributors in the free world—such as C. Dawson, H. Butterfield, Carl J. Friedrich, etc.—is our contributor, professor, and writer B. Radica.

The publication of Kohn's book "Pan-Slavism" in 1953 marks a turning point in the approach to the problems of the Slavic world as a whole by Western historians. Until then, many were content with a superficial understanding without delving into the core issues. Hans Kohn, born in Prague and having spent many years in Russia, possessed all the necessary qualities to break with this tradition, dedicating himself with profound knowledge to the most varied aspects of the cultural problems of the Slavic world, stimulating reflection and further study.

The intellectual and cultural upheaval of the Russians and Slavs in general began when they decided to take a stand against the West and its political, cultural, economic, and social problems. Slavophiles versus the West. The impact that this world, with its imposing industrial progress, had on the mind of A. Herzen was the seed of subsequent general development, especially in Russia.

His book "My Past and Thoughts" has raised the issue with all its relevance. Herzen poses questions that trouble minds in his country and in many other Slavic countries. Herzen disliked bourgeois democracy and the compromise between legislative and executive power. He, like many others of the landed but enlightened intelligentsia, was enthusiastic about a populist solution, while the Western bourgeoisie tried to create a new world of legitimacy, forcing workers and peasants back to their jobs, terrified of a permanent and broader revolution.

This is why Herzen asks whether the introduction of Western industrial knowledge by Peter the Great or by Klushevsky was a wise move when he attempted to reconcile the benefits of an open society with Russian society still in the stage of slavery.

"Tocqueville versus Rousseau, Proudhon versus Marx, order versus revolution, order in opposition to anarchy"—these confrontations and questions, says Raditza, are found on every page of Herzen's book. Which path should the intelligentsia take: the one that leads to the West or the one that leads back to Russia?

The Slavophiles, especially Dostoevsky, answer these "damned questions" by rejecting the West. But this position was easier in theory than in practice. Many suffered from nostalgia for the West. Uncertainty about which course to follow has divided minds, giving rise to conflicts, wars, and revolutions. These events have demonstrated over the last 50 years, Raditza argues, that there is no single "Slavic civilization," as presented by Western historians seeking clean and clear categories for their knowledge.

"The political and cultural divide between Poland and Russia, for example, has not changed its meaning since the days of the Mickiewicz-Puskin controversy. All the fundamental influences of Western Europe (from medieval Catholicism, through Humanism and the Renaissance), which never reached Russia, were alive and vital for Poland. The old conviction of having been a bulwark of Christendom or Catholicism is not foreign to the Poles, nor is it alien to the Croats in their relations with the Orthodox Slavic East.

This conflict—Raditza continues—between West and East has become a tragic part of the existence of the South Slavs or the Yugoslavs. Here, the confrontation between Byzantium and Rome has been passionately revived. Moscow was unable to integrate various elements into a multinational state, and Belgrade was also unable to absorb the different nationalities that made up Yugoslavia."

The coexistence of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians over the past 50 years has revealed profound cultural differences among them, despite the idealistic dreams of the Croatian intelligentsia (Pribojievic, Orbini, Krizanic, Gaj, etc.) that Slavic unity could be achieved from the Urals to the Adriatic. "Nationalist youth" at the beginning of this century, under the influence of T. Masaryk and familiar with Russian populist ideas, contributed to the creation of Yugoslavia, but the violence in the life of the new state between the two world wars and the civil war during the latter shattered this romantic dream.

Yugoslav Marxists during the last war sought to revive the old dream, but reality proved stronger. Their policy of dividing Yugoslavia into six republics did not resolve the problem of the traditional cultural division. Power remained in Serbian hands, imposing a "democratic centralism" that forced even Miroslav Krleza, the most prominent Marxist thinker and writer in Yugoslavia, to acknowledge that the Croats in the last century had made great sacrifices for the sake of unity with the Serbs and Slovenes, but the latter did not accept such an idea.

Like the Illyrian movement of the last century, the Marxist attempt also went through a crisis of the idea of unity, now seeking something like coexistence or a common market. Serbian historians are beginning to recognize the culpability of Serbian policy for the failure of monarchical Yugoslavia (1918-1941). According to Vaso Cubrilovic, Garasanin's Nacertanije was not a program for the union of the South Slavs but for the formation of a Greater Serbia in the Byzantine tradition.

Nikola Pasic embraced this idea when dealing with the Croats (Trumbic and Supilo) during the First World War to form a common state. This Greater Serbian idea was pursued by him, King Alexander, and all the Serb-dominated Yugoslav governments. The Croats advocated a broader, more Yugoslav-influenced idea, while the Serbs, under the guise of Yugoslavism, imposed Serbian policy in its narrowest sense.

"That is why," says Raditza, "pre-war Yugoslavia had to perish, because the narrower concept of a Serbia and the broader concept of a Yugoslavia could not be reconciled. The current crisis of communist Yugoslavia is profoundly analogous to that of the former. The 'hegemony of Belgrade' hinders all attempts at a policy of 'unity and fraternity.' The Slovenes, Croats, and Macedonians wage a constant struggle against this hegemony. The Slovenes, the most developed part of the country, have achieved 'almost complete independence.'" Even E. Kardelj, the Slovenian Marxist theorist, acknowledges that the Leninist concept of a multinational state has not been realized, and this is what troubles present-day Yugoslavia.

Kohn, says Raditza, clearly saw the internal contradictions of the Slavic world, and the realities of life for South Slavs justify his fear for their future. Nationalism has achieved a status of apparent permanence in the world and will last for a long time to come, contrary to the anti-nationalist and Marxist views of the beginning of this century. Mazzini and Herzen were wrong to believe that the right to self-determination would guarantee peace in southern and eastern Europe and Asia.

Despite the harsh criticism of this right, especially from G. Ferrero, history marches on. The old world is stagnant. A new one must be built. Raditza is confident that the Slavic peoples will reconcile the traditional freedom of the West with the social justice advocated by the new Marxist generations. Polish and Croatian Marxist revisions, a "marriage between political freedom and social justice, could well contribute to the solution of Slavic difficulties and those of the rest of the world." Concluding his article, Raditza invokes the words of Djilas, which reiterate the idea of "a world... that does not erase but rather gathers and expresses the varieties and individualities of all nations."

It is our impression that Raditza is trying to get closer to the viewpoint and reality adopted and experienced by the relations between Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians, rather than to express the authentic viewpoint of our emigration, which firmly defends the right to self-determination for all, especially the Croatian people.

The article's conclusion, quoting Djilas, easily confuses the uninformed reader. The Montenegrin Djilas has never given any proof that he would recognize the right to self-determination of the Croatian people. Despite his momentary reputation in the free world, this Montenegrin-Serbian has caused almost irreparable damage to the Croatian people, without showing a single sign of goodwill to repair it.

F. Nevistic

JOSIP TORBARINA: Raymond Kunic and Alfieri: Roman Literary and Artistic Diversion in the Late 18th Century; offprint from volume 107 of Storia e Letteratura, Raccolta di studi e testi, Rome 1966, pp. 11-41.

In this study, Josip Torbarina, professor of English literature at the University of Zagreb (Croatia), sheds light on the relationship between the renowned Croatian humanist Raymond Kunic and the late 18th-century Italian playwright Vittorio Alfieri.

Raymond Kunic (Cunich in Italian, Cunichius in Latin) was considered one of the finest Latinists living and working in late 18th-century Italy. Kunic was born in 1719 in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and received his early education at the Jesuit college in his hometown. He then went to Rome where one of his patrons was the famous J. R. Boskovic, his compatriot and the father of atomic theory.

In fact, a small colony of illustrious Croatians from Dalmatia resided in Rome, contributing significantly to the progress of literature and science in Italy. Carducci speaks of the "notable colony of Dalmatian Jesuits, scientists, and Latinists" and adds with a touch of irony that "they didn't care about being Croatian." He names, among others, Boskovic, Kunic, Benedetto Stay (a philosopher who translated the philosophies of Descartes and Newton into Latin verse), and Bernardo Zamanja, who translated the Odyssey into Latin, as well as Hesiod and Theocritus, was a member of the Roman Academy of Arcadia (Academia degli Arcadi), and wrote epistles, elegies, epigrams, and two didactic poems. Kunic translated Homer's Iliad, Theocritus' Idylls, and several poems from the Latin Anthology into Latin. He also left behind a substantial collection of epigrams composed in elegant Latin, dedicated to the most distinguished artists, musicians, scientists, and writers who passed through Rome during those years and came into contact with Kunic. Several epigrams were dedicated to Vittorio Alfieri, the main subject of Torbarina's present work.

Kunic even dedicated thirteen epigrams to Anton Raphael Mengs, the prominent German painter who mostly resided in Rome. He probably also met Goethe there and became friends with the English poet Ellis Joseph Knight, who paraphrased a poem by the Croatian poet Ignatius Djurdjevic-Giorgi (1675-1737) in English. He composed some epigrams in praise of the writer Antonio Canova and others of the composer Domenico Cimarosa.

For Kunic himself, Torbarina concludes, these epigrams were a literary pastime, a "verse de société." As such, they have a certain literary and historical value insofar as they shed interesting light on the life and culture of Rome in the 18th century and give us insight into Alfieri and his stay in Rome between May 1781 and May 1783.

B.K.

GEORGE J. PRPIC: "Eastern Europe and World Communism - A selective annotated bibliography in English", Cleveland 1966, pp. (III) 147 (Ed. Institute for Soviet and East European Studies, John Carroll University).

Although the author of this selected bibliography, accompanied by notes on "Eastern Europe and World Communism," describes his work as a "modest bibliography" intended for graduate students who have completed a course in this discipline, those interested in the problems of Eastern Europe, now under communist regimes, must recognize that in practical use, the selection and limitation of this bibliography is its greatest advantage.

What good is a vast bibliography containing thousands upon thousands of works, notes, and articles on various problems if, due to the large number of journals and publications, they are inaccessible to most interested parties? Therefore, it seems the author limited himself to books, listing only twenty-two newspapers with the necessary bibliographic information. Regarding articles, the author cites the publication "World Communism: A Selected Annotated Bibliography," prepared by the Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, p. 394, which covers material up to September 1963.

Our attention is drawn first to the bibliography relating to Yugoslavia (pp. 130-140), both monarchist and communist, and to the bibliography concerning the nationalities within Yugoslavia: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. As in other chapters, the author also provides notes and annotations on certain works and writers regarding their orientation, veracity, and objectivity.

The chapter on the bibliography of nationalities in Yugoslavia contains 51 authors, of whom 27 (including two symposia) refer to Croatia, four to Montenegro (Djilas is represented by four works), twelve to Serbia (two of whom are Serbs or of Serbian origin), and eight to Slovenia (only one is not Slovenian or of Slovenian origin). The chapter on Croatia contains the works of Theodore Benkovic (The tragedy of a Nation), George W. Cesarich (Croatia and Serbia: Why is their peaceful separation a European necessity), Zvane Crnje (Cultural history of Croatia), Joseph Hecimovic (In Tito's death marches and extermination camps), Ilija Jukic (Tito between East and West), Stjepan Hefer (Croatian Struggle for freedom and independence), Ante Kadic (Croatian Reader with Vocabulary; Contemporary Croatian Literature) Vladko Macek (In the struggle for freedom), Basil and Steven Pandzic (A review of Croatian history), John I. Pintar (Four Years in Tito's hell) and Francis R. Preveden (A history of the Croatian people, two volumes), which proves that this bibliography is complete and that it is done in all seriousness.

M.B.

DR. STANKO VUJICA: "Croatia's struggle for independence", published by Croatian National Council in Exile (PO Box 152 Midtown Station, New York), New York, 1965, pp. 4-18.

Although this pamphlet is intended for North Americans, champions of national self-determination and anti-colonialism, and its purpose is to succinctly present the situation of the Croatian nation in Yugoslavia and thus draw the attention of the great nation of North America to injustices that cry out for redress, these pages will serve better than any encyclopedia those who wish to gain a concise understanding of the essence of the Croatian problem or the internal weaknesses of both pre-war monarchical Yugoslavia and the current communist one.

Professor Dr. S. Vujica states that Croatia, until 1918, managed to maintain the legal status of a sovereign nation with its own Parliament (Sabor) in Zagreb and with broad political and administrative autonomy. Although Croatia is one of the oldest European nations, today it is largely overlooked and relegated to the margins.

After a brief overview of Croatian history up to the formation of Yugoslavia in 1918, the author addresses the complexities of Croatian-Serbian relations in a few concise titles: Monarchical Yugoslavia Was De Facto Greater Serbia; Yugoslavia Is Collapsed; The Croats Proclaim Their Independent State; Serbian Communist Guerrillas (Chetniks) and Communists Attack Croatia; The Croats Lose Their Independence; Yugoslavia Is the Cause of the Serb-Croatian Tragedy; Who Needs Yugoslavia?; The Alleged Advantages of Yugoslavia; Did Tito Solve Yugoslavia's National Problem?; The Peaceful Separation of Serbia and Croatia Is Indispensable.

In this last title, the author asserts that the peaceful separation of Croatia and Serbia is beneficial not only to the Croats and Serbs but also to lasting peace in this part of the world. The problem of drawing borders between the two nations is extremely difficult, but not insurmountable. The essential point is that both peoples adhere to the principle of the peaceful settlement of territorial disputes.

If an agreement is not viable, other peaceful means remain: a plebiscite or arbitration by the United Nations or another international body. The alternative to peaceful separation is incessant fighting, mutual recriminations, the accumulation of hatred and resentment, and, at the first opportunity, a repetition of the tragic events of the Second World War.

The Serbs and Croats lived in peace and as good neighbors for more than a thousand years before becoming bitter enemies when they were forced to live under joint rule. When it becomes possible for each to live in their own nation-state, there will be no reason why they cannot be good neighbors. There is no reason why the principle of self-determination should not also apply to the Croats and the other captive peoples of Europe.

M. B.