Letter From Zagreb / The Croatian Nation's Pulse
Raditsa, Leo
The Croatian Nation's Pulse by Leo Raditsa T he people appear more alive on the streets of Zagreb than just after their first elections three years ago. Then, their words were euphoric but their...
...they answered one word—"Gorbachev...
...And of the 300,000 people still in Sarajevo, between 10 and 30 percent are Bosnian Christian Serbs...
...They are learning to speak freely after years of swallowing their words, of lowering their voices at the sight of a policeman, changes that take time and pain, as if each word had to be wrenched from captivity...
...0 44 The American Spectator January 1994...
...now, they really walk, or stroll...
...An alliance of Bosnians and Croatians would be capable of driving the Serbians out of Bosnia and also out of the Krajina and Slavonia in Croatia—in the judgment of one of the best generals of Croatia...
...Then, their words were euphoric but their looks wooden, stunned...
...By "backing," I mean fighting alongside the Bosnians, instead of against them...
...It has not turned out to be so simple," a cousin of mine said, smarting at his own words...
...The news clips on evening television showed Serbian soldiers in Bosnia as if they were a regular army, not the random killing in Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Tuzla, and other towns...
...For the "Muslims" of Bosnia are either Serb or Croat...
...People insisted on a news story that held that British U.N...
...The destructive consequences of Tudjman's acquiescence in the partitioning of Bosnia show already in exacerbation of differences within Croatia, not only between Croatians and Serbs, but also among the Croatians, especially the Croatians of the coast, Dalmatia, Istria, and Primorje...
...They meant, I now realize, that they did not take their freedom for their own work, and didn't know what to do with it...
...Three years ago they wandered around aimlessly like travelers who awake not knowing where they are...
...I mean that Tudjman should back the independence of Bosnia, not of the "Muslims" as he has come to call the Bosnians since Easter, even condescendingly calling the Bosnian president "Ali" on television...
...I have seen some of these apparatchiks gaze stupefied at the work in the raw you can see on the streets of New York, the involuntary contempt on their faces making it plain they had never seen real work before...
...I came to Croatia ready to argue for a full-scale American and European intervention with ground troops...
...The lines in front of the American Embassy tell of people who want out—but this time not because of oppression...
...T he alternative Croatia now faces is not between war and peace but between self-destructive unlimited killing of women, children, and old men, with "humanitarian" campaigns in Europe on television every night, and an outright war for the independence of Bosnia that would also assure Croatia's independence...
...I now understand that it is more important first to face the Croatians with the responsibilities of independence, to get them to adopt a rational policy with limited goals that should win wide support in the world—and to supply them, and the Bosnians, with arms...
...Something is beginning to stir tentatively in the country, and they cannot stand it...
...It is coming home to people that they The American Spectator January 1994 43 are going to have to work for a living...
...Such a war for Bosnian sovereignty would also show the 400,000 Serbians in Croatia (300,000 outside the seized territories) that the Croatian government can be trusted, for a country that fights for the rule of law abroad will respect its minorities...
...It centers around Tudjman's March 1991 deal with Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, before Serbia attacked Croatia and Slovenia, to divide up Bosnia with the Serbs...
...John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, is the author of Prisoners of a Dream: The South African Mirage...
...There are already some thirty thousand small businesses, heavily taxed by a government with little economic sense...
...For the partition of Bosnia, Tudjman's unstated (because indefensible) policy, will lead inevitably to the division of Croatia, already about one-third out of the control of Zagreb, and to random killing that will not end without the destruction of both Serbia and Croatia...
...it shows that Communism can still undo you after you have renounced it—the leaders in former Yugoslavia cannot get away from its unscrupulousness even though they no longer believe in it...
...More than once I met people who wanted to open up their own businesses...
...The equation of "Muslims," a category invented by Tito, with Bosnia represents another distortion...
...The tension is palpable: the city is ablaze in cigarette smoke...
...And independence for Croatia will mean little more than hatred of the Serbs...
...Such a policy would lend the Croatians the honor and self-respect they yearn for...
...At the time I heard this disinformation repeated, 200,000 Croatians had been driven from central Bosnia...
...They cannot conceive of decency...
...Such an alliance would not only earn Croatia the title of republic—for a country that knows independence and the rule of law defends the independence of its neighbors—it would also give it a chance to survive...
...Average monthly wages that run about $70 dollars bear 110 percent tax...
...forces had led the "'Muslims" against Croatians in Central Bosnia despite firsthand accounts, including those of Jonathan Randal in the Washington Post, that showed Croatiansstarting the fighting around Vitez...
...This distance also shows itself in Croatian president Franjo Tudjman's repeated boast that Croatia has taken the most refugees from Bosnia, as if Croatia had no more to do with Bosnia than Great Britain—and, most importantly, as if it were not implicated in the killing there...
...But now there is visibly more feeling on people's faces...
...Communism throttled anything that stirred on its own in this country, with the result that hate tempts people: they take it for relief...
...This killing betrays the insides of Communism...
...Almost everybody I met, including people in government, denied the existence of the deal, reported in most important international newspapers...
...But it is hard to know what these alignments mean in a country where nobody knows what is private and what public...
...But the denial goes much deeper...
...Communism was degrading and murderous, but more comfortable, just as today's killing is comfortable, the ultimate in European self-indulgence and self-destructiveness, killing for those narcissisms of little differences that betray all of Europe's exquisite cruelty...
...If I were a Serb living now in Croatia, I would be afraid...
...Without the defeat of the Serbs in Bosnia on the battlefield, not even the rudiments of peace will come to former Yugoslavia...
...The few people that mentioned Bosnia in conversation sounded as if they were admitting something reluctantly, as if they were awakening from a deep dreamless sleep...
...Leo Raditsa, a historian who teaches at St...
...When I asked them Why the changes, finally...
...But only if Croatian public opinion shows its disgust with this deal instead of denying it exists...
...The streets looked empty, uninhabited, as if the people were repossessing them after a generation's siege—just as I remember Italy in 1948...
...Tudjman's readiness to deal with Milosevic behind his people's back displays a typically Communist mixture of naïveté and brutality, a self-destructiveness worthy of Milosevic and his commander in Bosnia, Myladic—except that Tudjman still has his way out...
...was struck that Bosnia seemed much farther away from Zagreb than from Rome or Geneva or New York...
...In fact in the days I was there, a journalist from the European argued on a popular late night program that anybody who had wanted could have learned of the deal since he had learned of it immediately after it had been done...
...The greatest devotees of the free market and Croatian independence in the government are former Communists...
Vol. 27 • January 1994 • No. 1
