ABSTRACT
This chapter argues against the popular view that Croats and Croatia were forced back into Yugoslavia at the end of the Second World War by some external power and that socialist Yugoslavia was one long and dark ‘prison’ for the Croatian nation.1 On the contrary, a combination of factors, including the legacy of the Second World War and the ability of Yugoslav communists to successfully address the Croatian question, led to Croats and Croatia accepting the new state. The role of Josip Broz Tito – the founder and main leader of socialist Yugoslavia and an ethnic Croat through his father’s side – was of crucial importance in this process. Moreover, it is argued in this chapter that Croatia was amongst the last Yugoslav republics supportive of the Yugoslav status quo, even in the late 1980s when Kosovo, Slovenia and Serbia had already significantly challenged not only the communist political system but also the purpose and sustainability of any Yugoslavia. In the last years before the break-up of the Yugoslav federation, Croatia remained one of the most conservative (i.e. pro-communist) and the most pro-Yugoslav parts of the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, even after declaring independence from Yugoslavia (in June 1991) Croatia has continued relying on what it interpreted as a letter and spirit of Yugoslavia’s 1974 Constitution. Not only that, the official discourse claimed that declaration of independence (25 June 1991) was legal because the Constitution confirmed the right of all Yugoslav nations to self-determination, but in a more contemporary context (in 2008) Croatia justified its recognition of Kosovo’s unilaterally declared independence by its own reading of the 1974 Constitution.2 Much of the communist interpretation of recent history – especially of the character of the interwar Yugoslavia – survived as the official discourse in the new independent Croatian state. The first president of the Croatian Republic, Franjo Tudjman remained largely positive in his several assessments of the role of President Tito, especially with regard to the status of Croatia in socialist Yugoslavia.3 Hence, it is not surprising for example that Marshal Tito’s Square in Zagreb survived several attempts by more extreme nationalists in Tudjman’s government to rename it. This is all in sharp contrast to what is today often heard as interpretation of Croatian history in the twentieth century, including by some of Croatian leading nationalist historians.
