体制転換期クロアチアにおける 第二次世界大戦をめぐる記憶の政治 ──「和解」の論理と「ヨーロッパへの回帰」──
Croatian Politics of Memory of the Second World War in the Period of Democratization: The Logics of Reconciliation and the “Return to Europe”

Summary/Abstract: With growing interest in the politics of memory of the Second World War (WWII) in Central and Eastern European countries, scholars of Croatian politics and contemporary history have explored the historical revisionism that flourished under President Franjo Tuđman in the 1990s, changes in the official narrative after 2000, and the resurgence of nationalism after Croatia’s entrance to the EU. Still, little attention has been paid to a dispute over the idea of reconciliation in the early 1990s. This article focuses on this politicization of WWII memory in the early period of democratization. In doing so, I address the discourse of “returning to Europe” and the calls for reconciliation made by a broad range of political actors in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Upon the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941 with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the far-right Croatian nationalist organization Ustaša ruled this puppet state and engaged in the mass killing of Serbs, Jews, and Roma during the war. Yugoslavia was liberated by the Yugoslav Partisans under the command of communists in 1945, who also committed atrocities during the war and in its immediate aftermath. The official narrative of WWII in Socialist Yugoslavia juxtaposed the heroic Partisans against the fascist and collaborationist enemies. During the socialist period, the WWII veterans’ union SUBNOR played a key role in shaping the official narrative. In the 1980s, the official narrative gradually lost its legitimacy and fierce debates over WWII ensued. New political parties that emerged in Croatia from 1989 to 1990 shared a consensus in favor of Croatian integration into Europe, although the strategies of achieving this goal differed significantly among them. While nationalist parties claimed Croatia as an essential part of Western Europe and devoted themselves to building the Croatian nation-state, liberal parties and the reformed communists insisted on making a democratic state embracing such Western values as liberalism and human rights. After the victory of the nationalist party, the Croatian Democratic Union (hereafter “HDZ”), at the election in the spring of 1990, memory politics took on a nationalist proclivity. The opposition parties often chastised the HDZ’s politics of memory, which was epitomized by their protests against the renaming of the “Square of the Victims of Fascism” in Zagreb as the “Square of Croatian Great Men.” This article identifies three groups involved in the disputes over the narrative of WWII in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The first group was those adhering to the official communist story enshrining the heroic Partisans and stressing “brotherhood and unity” among the nations in Yugoslavia. SUBNOR continued to promote this ideal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which did not help them keep their prestige. A split in the WWII veterans’ union in Croatia and the subsequent controversy between SUBNOR and the newly formed veterans’ association UHRV also indicate that the legitimacy of the communist narrative withered in the early 1990s. The second group was those nationalists promoting “national reconciliation” among the Croats both at home and abroad. This discourse of “national reconciliation” eventually dominated the official policy of memory in the 1990s. Its proponents attempted to solve the ideological conflict between the Partisans and Ustaša by arguing that both forces had struggled for a common goal of building a Croatian state. This argument could lead to the relativization and rehabilitation of the Independent State of Croatia and Ustaša. The third group was the reformed communists calling for “civil reconciliation” with a view toward encompassing all Croatian citizens regardless of their ethnicity. In July 1990 after the rise of controversy over the exhumation of those inhumed in the Jazovka Pit, the reformed communist party, League of Communists of Croatia–Party of Democratic Change, announced a draft of an appeal for civil reconciliation, but ultimately failed to implement it. The crux of “civil reconciliation” was to condemn both fascists and communists for their crimes, while endorsing anti-fascism as the foundation of modern and democratic Europe. Liberal politicians and intellectuals also denounced nationalists’ policy of memory as escalating the oblivion of anti-fascism and the rehabilitation of Ustaša. Yet the liberals did not come to a consensus on reconciliation, either: while some at least temporarily accepted the idea of national reconciliation, others were afraid of equating victims of fascism with those of communism without taking the relevant historical contexts into account. Thus, these three groups used the notion of anti-fascism and the discourse of “return to Europe” in distinct manners. The nationalists reinterpreted anti-fascism in Croatia as a movement for Croatian national independence and attached it to “national reconciliation.” Tuđman justified the act of “national reconciliation” by invoking precedents of national reconciliation elsewhere in Europe. In contrast, SUBNOR, the reformed communists, and the liberals regarded anti-fascism as making Croatia a modern and democratic European country. Meanwhile, most of the Croatian Serbs, the largest ethnic minority in Croatia, did not comply with the calls for reconciliation in Croatia. While the separatist Serbs claimed that the policy of the HDZ government was similar to that of the Independent State of Croatia, more moderate Serbs accused the Croats of allowing the rehabilitation of fascism. Although the appeal for civil reconciliation should have embraced the Croatian Serbs, they dismissed it as equating the victims of fascism with those of communism. The Croats’ aspirations to commemorate all victims deterred the Croatian Serbs from supporting the calls for “national reconciliation” and for “civil reconciliation.”

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