Suchergebnisse

Using the most recent archive sources, the author describes the organization of the judiciary and the courts in Zadar and Dalmatia after the Italian occupation in 1918. In violation of the Ceasefire agreement, the Italian occupational authorities reorganized the judiciary institutions, defined the new territorial jurisdiction of courts in order to establish judiciary control over both the occupied and the unoccupied parts of Dalmatia. The purpose of this new organization of the courts and the constant propaganda was to prove that Zadar and Dalmatia belonged to Italy - culturally, civilisationally, and politically. (SOI : S. 222)

The author surveys the public activities of Slavko Kvaternik, one of the leading Croatian nationalists of the 1930s, and for a time, minister of the Croatian Home Army during the Second World War (1941- 1942). The article states that Kvaternik occupied a peculiar position with respect to the radicals grouped around Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Ustasha regime. Kvaternik was not an ideologue of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), nor did he agree with Pavelic's repressive internal policy or Pavelic's dependence on fascist Italy. Because of this conclict, Kvaternik was pushed out of office and left Croatia at the end of 1942. None of these facts prevented the communist Yugoslavian government from proclaiming him a "war criminal" and carrying out the death sentence in 1947. (SOI : CSP: S. 398)

The Light Transport Unit of the Croatian Legion (Legione Croata Autotransportabile) was a unit of the Croatian Legion which fought with the Italian army on the Eastern Front in World War II. The unit was trained in Croatia from July to December, 1941. After being equipped in Italy in Riva del Garde from December 1941 to March 1942, the Unit was deployed in the East as part of the Italian Expeditionary Corps (Corps di spedizione italiano in Russia C.S.I.R), and after July, as part of the Italian 8th Army as truppa di armata (armoured troops). The unit took part in the battles on the Don from April until December 1942, when it together with a large part of the Italian 8th Army was destroyed by the Russian offensive well known in the annals of the War as the Battle of Stalingrad. (SOI : CSP: S. 203)

In this study the author looks at the life of Istria's small Jewish community during the first half of the twentieth century. He sheds light on the process of socialization and acculturation that took place in urban environments during the period of industrialization. He examines the complex relations between the Jewish and Christian communities. He studies the role played by the Jewish community in the socioeconomic and cultural life of Istria. In particular, he examines the issue of Jewish self-identity before and during the period of fascist rule. He especially studies the effects of racial laws. He also writes about the differences between Italian fascist and nazi anti-semitic policies, especially apparent after the capitulation of Italy, when German forces undertook a policy of extermination of Jewish communities on the Italian territories they occupied. Parallel to this, the author tries t show the conditions in which Jews lived at that time, when they were reduced to the status of non-citizens. (SOI : CSP: S. 95)

The complexity of the partisan movement between 1941 and 1945 cannot be understood if one does not equalize it with the communist ideology. Also, one should be reminded of the fact that the winning world powers did not recognize the independent Croatian state. In 1945. Croats had to confirm their integrity within the supranational Yugoslavia. As the Independent State of Croatia stood next to Germany and Italy in foreign policy, that problem was indirectly associated with the defeat of fascism. On the contrary, the partisan movement gained the antifascist status. Croatian antifascism was not only verbal, it had also its historical causes. wing of the Croatian Peasant Party, trying to eliminate their political rivals. Parallelly, in Territorial Antifascist Council of National Liberation of Croatia conflicts began to occur in connection with the strengthening of the national aspirations. Thus, at the end of 1944, A. Hebrang, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia, was removed. (SOI : CSP: S. 439)

Since his student days in Zagreb, Milivoj Magdic, one of the leading Croatian political publicists in the first half of the twentieth century, was well-disposed towards Marxism. On a result, he gained a prominent place in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. But in his writings he soon divorced himself from official communist ideology. As a result, he was proclaimed a traitor to the party and a provocateur in the pay of the police. He nevertheless remained a committed Marxist until Stalin's purges in the USSR in 1935 left him disillusioned. Thereafter, he became the Yugoslavian communists most dangerous ideological opponent. Magdic' believed that Marxism was flawed because it attempted to build socialism by controlling people, because it left the responsibility of establishing socialism exclusively at the feet of one social class, and because, most fatally, it relied too heavily on materialism. For holding ideas such as these, the communists at one point even atempted to murder Magovac. During the period of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) he wrote mostly for the periodical Spremnost (Readiness), but he held no political office. At the end of the Second World War he emigrated across Austria to Italy, but he was arrested in Rome in 1947 by the English and handed over to the Yugoslav government. He was proclaimed a war criminal, brought before the court, and sentenced to death. This was primarily due to his writings against communism and Marxism. (SOI : CSP: S. 116)

The Croatian Constitutional Court by its decision of June 24, 1992 partly rejected a reqest to start proceedings, and partly terminated already started proceedings, to determine the constitutionality of some thirty emergency decrees passed by the President of the Croatian Republic during the undeclared war with Serbia and the Yugoslav People's Army in the second half of 1991. The Court backed its decision inter alia by the following arguments: the President has the power to pass emergency decrees without declaring first the state of emergency; presidential emergency decrees can be retroactive since Croatian Constitution does not forbid specifically their retroactivity. The Court's reasoning which endorses a permanent coup d'etat, is very probably a corollary of the idea, which is taken for granted by some Croatian constitutional lawyers, that the Croatian Constitution has been modelled on the Constitution of the French 5th Republic so that the sweeping powers of the French President belong also to his Croatian counterpart. The paper challenges the idea and discusses the relevance of comparative constitutional theory for Croatian constitutional practice. The first three sections demonstrate that, despite political similarities between the early years of the French 5th Republic and the Croatian Republic the two semi-presidential systems differ in several important constitutional and legal respects so that the powers - especially emergency powers - of the French President cannot be used as a persuasive authority to interpret powers of the Croatian President. Section four indicates that if anything in French law is authoritative in interpreting Croatian constitutional provisions on the state of emergency it is the effort of the French Conseil d'etat to control, even though in a very limited way, the legality of presidential emergency decrees. The last section points out that assumptions with which Croatian Constitutional Court interprets presidential powers are more in accord with the Weimar Constitution than with the Constitution of the 5th French Republic. The paper ends with the warning that the unrestrained exercise of presidential powers in Croatia may lead, as it did in Mussolinni's Italy and in the Weimar Republic, to a dictatorship. (SOI : PM: S. 165)