Suchergebnisse

For over a century, rumours have been spread from Croatia about Serbia's intention to create a Greater Serbia and its aspirations to greater Serbian hegemony. This has been a constant refrain in all anti-Serbian speeches delivered both before the Yugoslav and international public. On the one hand, the Serbs and Serbia were presented as aggressors with great territorial appetites, whereas on the other, the aim was to conceal one's own aggression and territorial pretensions to the ethnic, state and historical territories that belonged to others. Though such tactics is a well-known and long-lasting feature of Croatian politics, it has not been given an appropriate place and explanation in Serbian and foreign historiography. Croatia inherited such political approach from Austria-Hungary which demonised and satanised the Serbian intentions aimed at liberation and unification all the more so as its appetites towards the territories in the Balkans increased and as it more strongly expounded the German Drang nach Osten policy. According to such tactical approach, everything that was Serbian was proclaimed greater Serbian in order to nip in the bud and thwart Serbian interests which conflicted with the AustroHungarian ones. Following in the wake of Austro-Hungarian policy, in which they participated and often played the leading role, in all historical periods – from the 1848 revolution to this day the Croats have been denouncing Serbian often labelling it as greater Serbian. By reviling Serbhood and greater Serbhood, in which they saw the main rival to Croatdom and greater Croatdom, Croatian politicians did not only dream about a Greater Croatia, but also worked on building it, with determination and consistency, faithful to the principle that such end justifies all means, including even the genocidal annihilation of the Serbs. The Croatian aspirations to territorial enlargement have a rather long history. Although small in numbers and in a small territory, the Croats have fostered great imperial ambitions. This may be well illustrated with the various names such as: "Alpine or mountainous Croats" (Slovenes), "Orthodox Croats" (Serbs), "indisputable Croats" or the "flower of the Croatian nation" (Muslims), "Turkish Croatia", "Red Croatia", "White Croatia" or "Carpathian Croatia", which were the territories of Bosnia, Montenegro, Dalmatia and Slovenia. These names have been carefully cherished and for centuries instilled in the consciousness of a Croat with the aim to develop the awareness of Croatia's greatness and the numerical strength of the Croats. With the present two studies, I wish to demonstrate and prove when, how, on what foundations and with what objectives the Croats have endeavoured, from the 1848/49 revolution until the present time, to get hold of some parts or the entire territories of Vojvodina and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As precious data on this topic are scattered in different places, it is hard to gain insight into the entirety of this national, state-legal and geopolitical issue. With this in mind, I have elaborated in these papers, in a chronological sequence, on all important Croatian territorial claims on Vojvodina and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have thus practically uncovered the decades-long greater Croatian politics and have provided concrete answers to the Croatian attacks at Serbia and the Serbs in regard to the so-called greater Serbian politics. I would also like to inform readers that this book is the second, supplemented and expanded edition of the book first published in 2012 in small print run (500 copies) and sold out a long time ago. Belgrade, 20 July 2016 Vasilije Đ. Krestić ; Посебна издања / Српска академија наука и уметности ; књ. 685. Председништво ; књ. 6

There are some time and geographical points, determinants before which decency calls solely for silence and bowed head, before which words and our ability to understand grow weary or actually, they lose any meaning. Jasenovac is undoubtedly such a place. Our language has one horrifying word – stratište (a place of execution). Simply, it is a place where anthropological, diluvial evil destroys the most valuable – life. The place whose impeccably unmasked and inevitable horror has not been anywhere else so tersely defined, it seems, as in the words of a Serbian old man addressing his executioner: "My child, do what you must". Why are we speaking today then, instead of being appropriately silent? Because the victims, the Serbs together with their fellow-citizens – the Jews and the Roma, those eternal culprits behind all evil, the disliked citizens of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), ask for a moment of remembrance. A moment of reverence. A bowed head before this place of execution called Jasenovac. It is because today we, not only as a nation, as a state, but as Homo sapiens, and finally as this scrap of civilization that remained for the mankind, do not have the right to be naive. We are obliged to recognize evil in its inception before it is too late, everywhere, far and wide. It is not the number of the murdered people (and the number is large) that determines the horror of Jasenovac, but the intention behind it. The executors of these crimes, with all the contempt that they deserve everywhere and in every place, were not the most horrible ones even in Jasenovac. The most horrifying is the political thought that sustains the deviance of perpetrators, the intention behind the idea of such places of execution, the pseudo-ideology of obliteration that justifies and redeems the sins of those intoxicated with blood. Nowadays, we do not point the finger at any nation or any religion. It would be an unpardonable simplification and primitivism beneath the dignityof this institution. We merely define ourselves in relation to the crime that happened, since it did happen. We do recognize it and remember it. With the ever present and often betrayed and unsuccessful idea not to let it happen again. To us, it remains to pursue the trace of Marko Miljanov's mythical sentence, as we cannot offer anything better even nowadays, which reads that heroism means defending oneself from the evil in others, but also defending others from the evil residing in oneself. Vladimir S. Kostić ; Посебна издања / Српска академија наука и уметности ; књ. 686. Председништво ; књ. 7