Franjo Tudjman’s authoritarian regime in Croatia and the territorial expansionist policy of his HDZ’s ruling party during the bloody destruction of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s were not noticed at all by the Western politicians, academicians and the global mass-media who, in contrast, accused “dictator”-President of Serbia Slobodan Miloshevic.
Tudjman’s personal efforts to make stronger his own political (authoritarian) position in Croatia at any cost of liberal democratic institutions are obvious and very similar to his counterpart in Serbia in the 1990s with one difference: Tudjman was more successful in destroying liberal democracy in Croatia in comparison to Miloshevic’s efforts to do the same in Serbia.
During the last quarter of a century, the global mainstream media unanimously accused Serbia and the Serbs of the national chauvinism as the main cause of the bloody wars on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. However, the role and direct impact of the other Yugoslav republics and nations in the process of killing the common state was not taken into the consideration.
The ideology of Pan-Croatianism created by Pavao Ritter Vitezović, who developed the ancient theory upon derivation of all Slavs from the Balkans, was a historical construction and a political program as a protest against long-time fragmentation of alleged Croatian historical and ethnic territories.
Basically, Vitezović’s idea was to ideologically pave the road to the creation of a unified Croatia with the help of the Habsburg foreign policy as all South Slavs and their lands were already before the Great Vienna War considered by Vienna to be within the Habsburg sphere of interest.
The real ideological source for such a division of the whole world was the Slavic idea which decisively influenced Vitezović who recognized that all Slavs belonged to a single ethnolinguistic community.
The “Idea of Union” in a single national state had deep roots in the historical development of political ideas among the South Slavs. This idea had several stages of development and the features of expression but, basically, the supporters of the “Idea of Union” primarily understood the Serbo-Croatian cultural, national and political cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity and finally unification as a “backbone” of any kind of a South Slavic state’s organization.
There were many variations of the project of the unification of the South Slavic or Yugoslav lands towards the end of the 19th century. However, in all of such projects of a Greater Yugoslavia, Serbia was seen as a Yugoslav Piedmont with Belgrade as the “Serbian Bismarckism”.
The development of the “Idea of Union”, i.e. of bringing all South Slavs into one state, originated from the idea of South Slavic common ethnic, historical and linguistic origins, which can be historically traced from the end of the 18th century.
A spat between two former Yugoslav Republics is shaping out to be a pivotal event that could determine the future trajectory of EU-Intermarium relations.
(Please read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV before this article) The research thus far has thoroughly explained the Hybrid War context in the Balkans and the specific regional vulnerabilities that are ripe to be exploited. This penultimate section will thus briefly elaborate a bit more on […]
(Please read Part I, Part II, and Part III before this article) Part III heavily detailed the three most explosive regional factors currently threatening the Balkans, whereas this current chapter will look at three less imminent, but no less impactful, ones that could also throw the region’s stability into jeopardy. […]
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