Facilis Decensus Averno

In: Politicka misao, Band 49, Heft 3, S. 48-73

Abstract

The text provides an overview and evaluation of the strategy and tactics of Croatian politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The analysis focuses on the historical Tenth Session of CK SKH (Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia) held in 1970, which defined Croatian politics with regard to economic and social reform, as well as to centralist unitarism and Croatian nationalism. The Tenth Session was conceived and held on the initiative of Vladimir Bakaric, a great figure and a veteran of Croatian politics, who was the uncontested master of Croatia from the end of the war to 1969. With the fall of Rankovic (1966), the symbol of "neo-Stalinist centralism, bureaucratism and Great-Serbian hegemonism", one of the principal obstacles to modernization and democratization of Yugoslav communism was removed. The finest advocates of economic and political liberalization of the regime, of decentralization and of a stronger position of the republics were Bakaric and his disciples, an intelligent and well-educated generation of communists (Tripalo, Dabcevic-Kucar, Pirker). They are the ones who would eventually become symbols of the struggle against the Party's dogmatic conservatism and Stalinist voluntarism. The author puts forward a series of elements which make it possible to understand how the political career of this generation of dynamic and popular politicians, recognized and successful representatives of socialist democracy and national equality, came to a tragic end marked by accusations of flirting with chauvinism, of using "neo-Stalinist" methods against opponents and colleagues, and of attempting to establish a quasi-fascist state, in which the dictatorial rule of the clique of (former?) communists and nationalists, in alliance with the new middle class of managers and "technocrats", would be masked by socialist rhetoric and pseudo-mobilization of the masses deluded by nationalism into believing that members of some other nation are to blame for all problems. Adapted from the source document.