History

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History

Croatian Origins: The documented history of Croatia begins with Greek colonies established along the Dalmatian coast after 600 B.C. Migration of the Croats (Chrobati, Hrvati) is said to have occurred during the early 6th century A.D. from white Croatia, (now known as Ukraine) between the Southern Bug and Dnieper rivers, to the lower Danube valley. They continued toward the Adriatic, where they conquered the Roman strongheld Salona in 614. After settling in the former Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia where they spent approximately 10 years,(around 626 and 635), to completely defeat the Avars, moving them towards the north of the river Danube. After the defeat of the Avars, Emperor Heraclius enacted a law (Keleusis, iussio), giving the conquered lands to the Croats and under the power of the Byzantine Empire. The Croats then began to develop independently. The farming Croats continued their former way of life under their zupani or tribal chiefs, who performed administrative, judicial and military functions.

In the 7th century, when they were converted to Christianity. Shortly afterwards they received the privilege of using their national language in church services. Under pressure from the neighboring Frankish and Byzantine empires, the tribal organization of the Croats gradually gave way to larger units, and there existed two Croatian worlds, one in Dalmatia along the Adriatic coast, the other in Pannonia. After the Frankish-Byzantine peace of 812, Pannonian Croatia became a part of the Frankish empire and the Dalmatian empire recognized l Byzantine.

In the middle of the 9th century the Pannonian Croats liberated themselves and joined the Dalmatian empire , which also shook off foreign domination. By 880 Branislav (879-892) became the first independent dux Croatorum.

The Croatian Kingdom: Tomislav (910 - 928) was the first ruler of a unified Croatia. During the next 180 years, Croatia enjoyed strength and prosperity under its own kings. Tomislav, one of Branislav's successors, annexed the Dalmatian cities and in 925 received the royal crown from Pope John X. Tomislav and his heirs made strong efforts to defend their kingdom both from the Bulgarian empire in Pannoia and from Venice, which was spreading its power along the Dalmatian coast. After Tomislav's death, a series of civil wars weakened central authority and lost territories including Bosnia. The Byzantines helped Stjepan Drzislav (969-997) to liberate the coastal towns from Venice but instead succeeded in re-establishing their own influence on the Adriatic. Peter Kresimir changed this situation, by breaking off relations with Byzntium, strengthening Croatia's ties with the papacy and enlarged the state boundaries. Croatia then reached the peak of its power. It spread southwards along the Adriatic coast from the river Rasa in Istria to the rivers Tara and Piva in Montenegro, eastward to the Drina and northward to the Drava and to the Danube. Kresimir's policy divided the nation into a Latin group which upheld the king and a national group which enjoyed popular support in opposing the king's policy. This division became fatal during the reign of Dimitrije Zvonimir, who was crowned in Split by the legate of Pope Gregory VII. Zvonimir was invited by the pope to participate in a war against the Seljuk Turks, and convened a great assembly to win his subjects over the campaign. The people accused him of being a papal vassal and killed him. Anarchy and civil war followed, and with it the decline of the Croatian Kingdom. The death of King Zvonimir in 1089 or 1090 without heirs evidently led a group of Croatian nobles in 1091 to conclude the Pacta Conventa with Hungarian King Ladislaus, conceding him the Croatian crown in exchange for Croatian autonomy. Another group of Croatians opposed the Hungarian king, but were defeated by Ladislaus successor Kalman.

Ladislaus' deputy Almos founded a bishopric at Zagreb in 1094, and this soon became the centre of ecclesiastical power. Petar Svacic was proclaimed king by the Dalmatian Croats in 1093, but the pope considered him a rebel and invited King Kalman of Hungary to unseat him. King Kalman invaded Croatia, and Svacic fell in 1097 in the defense of his country. He was the last king of Croatian blood.

The Pacta Conventa became the basis for a Croatian struggle of centuries, with varying success, to maintain its autonomy first under the Hungarian crown, and later under the Habsburg emperors.

The people elected Kalman and he pledged himself to respect Croatian state rights. In 1102 Kalman swore that Croatia and Hungary would remain two independent kingdoms under St. Stephen's crown and that the king would personify this union. Only Bosnia, a part of the Croatian kingdom, refused to submit to a foreign monarch.

Union with Hungary: For eight centuries Croatia was connected with Hungary. Their relationship often changed. The reign of the Hungarian national dynasty, the Arpads, was instrumental in introducing feudalism on a western pattern in Croatia. In 1301, on the extinction of the Arpads, the Croats crowned Charles Robert of Anjou-Naples as their king at Zagreb. This broke the relationship with Hungary until the Hungarians also accepted him in 1310 (as Charles I of Hungary). After the death of Louis I of Hungary and Croatia and several years of dynastic conflicts, the Croats in 1403 crowned the Neapolitan prince Ladislas at Zadar. The appearance of the Turks in the Balkans in the 15th century imposed a period of hard struggles on the Croats.

By 1420 Venice controlled virtually all of Dalmatia except Dubrovnik. Venice restricted education, so that Zadar, the administrative centre of Dalmatia, lacked even a printing press until 1796. Despite centuries of struggle for dominance of the region and exploitation by Venice, Dalmatia produced several first-rate artists and intellectuals, including the sculptor Radovan, Juraj Dalmatinac, an architect and sculptor, writer Ivan Gundulic, and scientist Rudjer Boskovic.

The Habsburg Period: Turkish invasion istigated a partial change in the ethnic aspect of Croatian lands. Large numbers of Croats abandoned their homes and moved northward seeking safety, some even going out of Croatia altogether into Austria. As the Turks were driven back in the 17th century the Habsburgs revealed absolutist tendencies. They attempted to curtail the state rights and autonomy of Croatia and Hungary and to reduce them to mere provinces under centralised royal power.

The Rise of Croatian Nationalism: After the fall of Napoleon relations between Croats and Hungarians soon became critical. To strengthen their opposition to the germanising policy of the Habsburgs, the Hungarian revolutionaries strove to consolidate the lands of St. Stephen's crown and to establish a Magyar national state from the Carpathians to the Adriatic. The Croats refused to renounce their nationality or to accept any violation of their autonomy in the national interest of the Hungarians. In open defiance of Hungarian claims, Count Juraj Draskovic proposed in 1832 to the Hungarian parliament a national and cultural program for Croatia. It expressed the ideas of the "Illyrian movement," organised by Ljudevit Gaj, which aimed at he union of all South Slavs (Yugoslavs) within the Habsburg federation. After 13 years of imperial absolutism and political lethargy a reorganisation of the Habsburg empire was planned by the centralist patent of Feb. 26, 1861. In 1868, the Croats and the Hungarians concluded a compromise of their own, the nagodba, whereby the triune kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia was recognised as a distinct political nation with its own territory, though still part of the Hungarian as opposed to the Austrian unit. Dalmatia was not united with Croatia-Slavonia and remained an Austrian province. The local government was headed by a ban proposed to the emperor by Budapest but responsible to the Croatian diet. The Croatian language was given official status throughout the land. The year 1903 was a turning point in Croatian politics. The political leaders in all Croatian provinces became intensively active, seeking to concentrate their forces and to organise them into new parties and initiating co-operation with the Serbs in Croatia. In 1906 the Croatian-Serbian coalition won a sweeping electoral victory and henceforth became an important political factor.

Political movements in Serbia, notably the Radical Party of Nikola Pasic, tended to be influenced by goals of uniting all the lands where Serbs were a majority or to which they had an historical claim. But pressured by the Allies during World War I, Pasic, as Serbian Prime Minister, consented to work for a union with the Croats and Slovenes

The Yugoslav Union: Serbian and Montengrin victories over the Turks in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 encouraged the Croats to envisage freedom in an independent Yugoslav union that would include Serbia and Montenegro, but in 1914, when the arch-duke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo, relations between the Croats and the Hungarians appeared to be calm, thanks to the policy of compromise pursued by the Croatian-Serbian coalition, which in 1913 became the government party in Croatia. With the outbreak of World War I the Austro-Hungarian authorities introduced measures of extreme severity throughout their South Slav provinces. The emperor Charles made clear in his coronation speech in 1916 that he recognised Croatian integrity in relation to Hungary, thereby establishing the equality of both countries under St. Stephen's crown. On Oct. 29, 1918, the Croatian diet broke off all ties with Hungary and Austria and proclaimed an independent Croatia which entered into a state union with other South Slav provinces of the empire, to be governed by a national council. On the request of council's emeissaries, on Dec. 1, 1918, the Serbian prince regent Alexander proclaimed the union of this state with Serbia and Montenegro. Yugoslavia came into being. After the election of 1920 the Peasant party (HSS) under Stjepan Radic led Croatian opposition.

A nation mourns: the funeral of Stjepan Radic in Zagreb in August 1928.

The assassination of Radic and some of his political collaborators in the Belgrade parliament on June 20, 1928, produced serious crisis, but the HSS continued its activism under Vlatko Macek. Finally, as conflict between Serbs and Croats was preventing the consolidation of Yugoslavia, the Belgrade government had to give in.

The Independent State of Croatia: Croatian nationalists who aimed at complete independence remained dissatisfied with the sporazum. In World War II, after Yugoslavia had been occupied and dismembered by the Axis powers, and Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed in Zagreb on April 10, 1941, and recognised four days later by Hitler and Mussolini. Since Vladimir (Vladko) Macek, the leader of the Peasant party, refused the German offer to head the new state, it was entrusted to Ante Pavelic (1889-1959), head of the Fascist terrorist organisation Ustaša. A nationalist fanatic, Pavelic re-entered Croatia from Italy, where he had spent 12 years of exile plotting revolution. He introduced a dictatorial regime characterised by methods of extreme brutality and violence. An attempt was made in 1944 to bring Croatia over to the side of the Allies, but it was mismanaged; its leaders, Ante Vokic and Mladen Lorkovic, were arrested and shot by Pavelic's henchmen. The Independent State of Croatia survived the capitulation of Germany for a few days only. Pavelic fled to Austria in May 1945 and later to Argentina. The puppet state gave place to the people's republic of Croatia within Communist Yugoslavia.

With the collapse of Nazi Germany, and the approach of communist forces toward Zagreb in 1945, most Ustaša leaders, as well as Macek and many other Croatians, fled toward areas occupied by American and British units. A contingent of the Ustaša military and home defense also fled into Austria, but were captured by the Allies at Bleiburg, then returned to Yugoslavia where most evidently were executed by Tito’s forces.

At the end of the war, Tito (A Croatian Communist who fought against the Italian-back Ustaša regime) reconciled all the various parts of Yugoslavia and created a Yugoslav federation with Croatia as one of the constituent republics. By the terms of the peace treaty with Italy in 1947, most of Istria, formerly part of Italy, was included in Croatia.

Tito's new authoritarian government ruthlessly suppressed any sign of ethnic nationalism, with all power given to the multi-ethnic (in theory, non-ethnic) communist party.

During the 1960s and 1970s Croatia's beautiful Adriatic coastline attracted tourism, which contributed to Yugoslavia's economy. Croatians began to agitate for greater autonomy as they saw their tourist revenues being used to stamp out Croatian nationalism.

Constant attention was required to maintain the suppression of nationalist expression. Croatia was an area of special concern, as the center of the strongest nationalist movement in pre-war Yugoslavia. The most serious challenge to the system during Tito's lifetime was probably the Croatian Spring or Mass Movement of the late 1960s, which was ended by the removal by Tito of most of the Croatian leadership in late 1971, and a parallel removal of accused nationalists in Serbia, Slovenia and Macedonia. (One of those jailed in Croatia during this period was the former partisan General Franjo Tudjman.) However, the system of control began to break down after Tito's death.

Following Tito's death in 1980, tensions between Croatia and the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government worsened.

When nationalist Croat politicians, notably Franjo Tudjman, advocated a reduction in ethnic Serb representation in the Croatian police, or argued that the number of victims at Jasenovac had been inflated, the Serbian press repeated and embellished such positions to prove to Serbs that Croatia was returning to the days of the Ustaše, and that Serbs had to take up arms to defend themselves. The fact that some of the new political figures did, in fact, advocate a positive view of the Ustaša movement made still easier the job of the Serb nationalists. By the time of Franjo Tudjman's 1990 election victory, most Serbs in rural areas appear to have been convinced that their lives were in danger.

With continuing stalemate, word spread that Serbias government was printing a massive amount of Yugoslav banknotes, without central government authorization. In this manner, Serbia was moving to undermine the economic program of the Federal Premier. There were other factors as well, but this may have been critical in Slovenia's decision unilaterally to declare independence on 25 June 1991. Once Slovenia left, the other opponents of Serbia would find themselves in a minority on the collective Presidency. If Tudjman had not in any case preferred independence, this incentive well might have moved him. In May, Croats voted by referendum in favour of independence and on 25 June 1991 Croatia declared its independence (as did Slovenia).

On April 13, 1997, elections were held in east Slavonia (Vukovar area); these elections should conclude the reintegration of this part of Croatia (but still occupied by Serbian militias) into the republic.

Eastern Slavonia back to Croatia's control - January 15, 1998. For the first time in more than six years, Croatia has control over all of its territory, after Eastern Slavonia was formally returned Thursday (15 Jan 1998) by the United Nations. The Croatian government estimates that it will cost $2.5 billion to reconstruct Eastern Slavonia. It is seeking much of that money from international sources, including the European Union.

Tito, Josip Broz (1892-1980), president of Yugoslavia, who established a Communist state independent of the USSR after World War II, and later became a leader of the nonaligned nations.

Originally named Josip Broz, he was born on May 7, 1892, in Kumrovec, Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary), of a Slovene mother and a Croatian peasant father.

Rise to Power: Tito served as a noncommissioned officer in the Austrian army during World War I. Wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians, he became a Bolshevik at the time of the Russian Revolution (1917), and after the war he returned to Croatia (which had become part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia) to work as an illegal Communist party organizer. After serving a prison term (1928-1934) and taking the name Tito as an alias, he went to Moscow to work for the Communist International (Comintern, later the Cominform).

In 1937 the Comintern sent Tito back to Yugoslavia to purge the Communist party there. During this period he faithfully followed Comintern policy, criticizing Serbian domination of other Yugoslav nationalities and agitating for the breakup of the Yugoslav state.

After Nazi Germany attacked both Yugoslavia and the USSR in 1941, Tito formed an all-Yugoslav Partisan force to resist the Germans and their Croatian Fascist allies. Tito primarily fought defensive battles when the Germans attacked him. In 1942 he formed a Communist-dominated provisional government, which brought him into conflict with the Chetniks, a Serbian resistance movement that favored the restoration of the prewar monarchy. After unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the rival groups, the Allies gave their support to Tito in 1944. By the end of 1945 the Germans were defeated, and the war-torn country was united, leaving Tito's government in full control. Without holding a referendum on whether to restore the monarchy or make Yugoslavia a republic, Tito set up a one-party dictatorship.

Leadership of Yugoslavia: At first Tito was a loyal follower of Joseph Stalin, but when the Soviet leader criticized some of his actions he rejected Stalin's criticism. Consequently, the Yugoslav party was expelled from the Cominform in 1948. This extreme action left Tito with two options: surrender or fight. He fought back. His aides, Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Djilas, revived Marxist humanism (the concept of workers' self-management) and recommended liberal economic reforms and decentralization of party and governmental power (the first step toward emergence of hidden nationalist tendencies within republics). In the 1960s Tito joined with leaders of African and Asian countries to promote the concept of nonalignment (independence from both the USSR and the U.S.).

In 1953 the Croatian Tito married his fourth wife, Jovanka Budisavljevic, a young Serbian Partisan aide, in 1953, thus symbolically uniting two of the largest and most antagonistic nationalities of Yugoslavia. A partial reconciliation with the Soviet Union (1955) further enhanced Tito's prestige at home and abroad. Nevertheless, Yugoslavia's independence remained an irritant to the Soviet leaders and a challenge to their domination over Eastern Europe. Tito supported the Soviet policy of détente with the West, but protested against the USSR's invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). His independent stance preceded and influenced the Chinese, Albanian, and Eurocommunist challenges to Soviet supremacy in the Communist world. Tito died on May 4, 1980, in Ljubljana after a prolonged illness and was buried on the grounds of Tito's Museum in Belgrade.

One of the last influential manipulators of postwar global power politics, Tito controlled Yugoslavia for 35 years. In foreign affairs he was a persistent promoter of détente, global nonalignment for the Third World, and pluralism within the international Communist movement. At home, he permitted some liberal reforms, but maintained the Communist party's monopoly of power. Tito's policies, however, encouraged separatist and nationalist tendencies among rival republics, which helped to sow the seeds for bloody civil war in the 1990s, some ten years after his death.

Chronology

1882 Josip Broz (later known as Tito) born at Kumrovec, 7 May

1907 Goes to work in industry

1913 Joins Austro-Hungarian army

1915 Captured in Russia

1918 Unified Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes proclaimed, 1 December

1920 Tito returns home from Russia

1927 Becomes secretary to Zagreb KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) Committee

1929 Begins to serve prison sentence; King Alexander abolishes parliamentary government; name of country officially changed to Yugoslavia

1934 Tito released from prison; King Alexander assassinated

1935 Tito sent to work for Comintern in Moscow

1937 Called to Paris to head caretaker KPJ leadership

1940 Confirmed as secretary Central Committee KPJ

1941 Axis powers invade Yugoslavia, April; collapse, occupation, partition and civil war follow; Tito calls population to aid Soviet Union, July; leaves Belgrade to join partisans, September

1943 Negotiates with German command, March; holds Jajce congress to lay foundations of future Communist régime, November

1944 Returns to liberated Belgrade, October

1945 President of Provisional Government, March

1948 KPJ expelled from Cominform

1953 Tito formally head of state

1955 Bulganin and Khrushchev visit Belgrade, reconciliation with Soviet Union formalised

1956 Relations strained again after Hungarian revolution crushed

1961 Belgrade Conference of Non-Aligned States

1963 No limitation of mandate for Tito under new Constitution

1968 Tito condemns Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, and faces students' revolts and other mass demonstrations

1971 Initiates 'Counter-reform', purges and 'feudalises' Party apparatus

1974 Another Constitution fixes new concept of eight-unit quasi-confederation under Tito's life presidency

1978 Tito implements collective leadershiop

1979 Last pilgrimage to Moscow

1980 Dies in Ljubljana, 4 May

On 6 April 1941, Germany declared war on Yugoslavia. Sirens were heard in Belgrade as it was being bombed by the Luftwaffe. German armies streamed into Yugoslavia from Bulgaria and from Hungary. Macek and the other Croat ministers, who had been staying in the Hotel Bristol, fled to Vrnjacka Banja in southern Serbia, while the King and General staff set up base Zvornik, in eastern Bosnia. The government continued to move on to Nikšic, in Montengro, to Anthens and then to London. Two days later war was declared, Macek decided to return to Croatia. Macek returned to see Croatia in chaos. On 8 April, he made a radio broadcast from Zagreb in which he assured the nation he would remain. Anti-serb mobs, furious at being dragged into war with Germany by the Serbs, had taken to the streets and were wrecking Serb shops and businesses. As soon as the German invasion began, Ustashe supporters in the Yugoslav army revolted against their officers and proclaimed Croatia's independence. On april 10, as the first German tanks arrived in Jelacic Square in Zagreb, Slavko Kvaternik, a former colonel in the Austro-Hungarian army and Pavelic's most important supporter in Croatia, proclaimed the establishment of the Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia, HDH), on Zagreb Radio.

Minutes later there was another broadcast on Zagreb Radio by Macek. German officers had arrived in his home in Kupinec and ordered him to give authority of the Peasants Party over to the Ustashe. He agreed and told his supporters to 'co-operate sincerely with the new government'. Macek was surrounded by German soldiers and later claimed he had no choice.

The Italians moved quickly to ensure that Pavelic gainied control of Croatia as soon as possible. The Italians feared that the German invasion of Yugoslavia would get in the way of their own plans for Dalmatia, which is the reason Mussolini was so eager to get Pavelic to Zagreb. He was concerned in case the Germans give Croatia to Macek. The training camps had been closed down and most of the 700 or so Ustashe in Italy imprisoned on the island of Lipari. From Oct. 1934 to Mar. 1936, Pavelic himself had been in jail.

Kvaternik had no idea that his own father proclaimed Croatia's independence and had named Pavelic as poglavnik (leader). In Zagreb on 12 April, Colonel Kvaternik formed a provisional government.

Pavelic: 'Ustashe! We have won. We won because we had faith. We won because we held out. We won because we fought. Ustashe! We won because we were always za Dom Spremni (Ready for the Homeland).

D. Sagrek, Zagreb 1941-45, Zagreb, 1995, p.62

NDH made it clear that the new state was to be a carbon copy of Nazi Germany. Some acts that we issued were: on the 26th the use of Cyrillic was forbidden, and in June a decree forbade Jews to shop or to trade with non-Jews. The Jews were easily dealt with, by 1941 they numbered about 14,000 in Bosnia and 23,000 in Croatia, and were easy to round up. The Jews were quickly rounded up and transported to camps for extermination, either in Croatia or in Germany. Most were caught and by the end of the war, over 80% of the Jewish population in Bosnia and Croatia had been killed. In 1943 the SS complained that at least 5,000 Jews were still alive in the NDH and that thousands of others had emigrated, by buying 'honorary Aryan' status.

The Serbs were a more difficult target. Altogether, of the 6.3 million inhabitants of the NDH, about 30% were Serbs and only just over 50% Catholic. The Ustashe solution was to weld the Catholic and Muslim communities together. The orginal plan was for about 20,000 Slovenes from the German-ruled portion of Slovenia to go to Croatia, while a corresponding number of Serbs would go to occupied Serbia. But the Slovenes were sent to Serbia, and not Croatia. The Germans later demanded a complete halt to the operation, although about 300,000 Serbs had been deported or had fled to Serbia by the end of the war.

The end came on 6 May, when Pavelic was informed that Germany was about to surrender and was given command over the remaining Axis forces in Croatia. As the NDH army surged northwards to the Austraian frontier, Pavelic and his son Velimir, driving in a big black Mercedes. They had to drive fast, as the roads were already partially blocked by advancing Partisan forces, and they had to dodge heavy gunfire. Evading his captors, he and his family slipped into Italy and from there to Argentina. He survived several assassination attempts carried out by Tito's secret police and died in his bed in Spain in 1957.

The most important information about the Ustashe were extracted from:

Tanner, Marcus. 1997, Croatia - A Nation Forged in War, USA.

the national anthem is played behind as background music