POLITICAL TRIALS AGAINST FRANJO TUĐMAN IN SOCIALIST FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

Abstract

Franjo Tuđman (1922-1999), who participated in the anti-fascist partisan movement from the beginning of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, in his military career, reached the rank of general. However, in 1961 he abandoned the military service, dedicated himself to historiography and became the first director of the newly established Institute of History of the Labor Movement. For his views and papers in which he reflected on some historical events, he came into conflict with the communist authorities who accused him being "non-Marxist" and nationalist. In 1967 he was expelled from the League of Communists and forced to retire. However, he did not stand still thus began his career as dissident – he was publishing papers on the history of Yugoslavia and Croatian status in the Federation. During the period of Croatian national movement, known as the Croatian Spring, he expressed his views on the Croatian national question in Yugoslavia even more clearly. This led to his arrest, political trial and his conviction to two years in prison in 1972. In 1981 he was sentenced to three years in prison and a ban on every public activity in the period of five years because he gave some interviews to the Western media. Based on so far published court records of the County Court in Zagreb where Tuđman was convicted both times, Tuđman's memoirs and various literature, this article will reconstruct Tuđman's trials and explain their primary role - to silence any dissident activity and to eliminate alternative view on the history and the national issues within Yugoslavia. The documents from the trials show the pattern of mounted political processes in which the verdict was set in advance. But this case will also show that these political processes had counterfeits significant for the collapse of communism in Croatia.