ABSTRACT
The most controversial problem of the “positive approach” to ethnic conflicts is how to rationalize conflicts, to make it possible to understand what “produces” and “generates” them. There is one aspect which is particularly important within such an approach. Ethnonationalists regularly do instrumentalise history and have in mind a conflictual character of interethnic relations. Interethnic relations have been often intermediated either with their heritage or with aspirations. The weakest point actually became its capacity to link competing national ideologies with realities of interethnic relations. The positive approach includes, two quite contrary attempts to either forget the past or to “deethnicise” interethnic relations within a broader perspective of modernization, necessarily including an open, complex and, in particular, interethnic dialogue of past, present and future interethnic relations in varieties of conflicts, conflict management, reconciliations, and cooperations. It is in the interest of the international community to participate in such a long-term project of establishing interethnic research and education in Croatia.
