interview by Damir PILIC
That is correct, this was the first public debate to which I have been invited, and did not organize on my own. And I must immediately say that neither Franjo Tudman nor his secret police are to blame.
How do you explain that ostracism?
I have just started to explain that, since it all made sense to me in a way in the past. I tried to analyze that not only in my case but for example also using the well-known case of "the witches from Rio". Exactly today is the right time to go back to that case, not to shame someone but to analyze what happened to us and which processes were at work. In other words, how did the case of "the witches from Rio" happen? It is evident, if today we think about that and critically analyze that case that the state policy is not to blame for the "witches" case, nor is Franjo Tudman, nor the so-called Tudmanism, nor his secret police: they did not produce that case. That case started from a non-governmental organization, such as PEN, and truly developed in an independent newspaper, a free medium, and both of them were supposed to be exactly those segments of society that provide foundations for democracy. Furthermore, the case was arranged by an independent intellectual and presidential candidate who received almost five percent of votes in the last election. I suppose that that was the most famous article written in Croatia in the last ten years and in that sense Slaven Letica is the most famous Croatian author, since no other Croatian article received as much attention and comments abroad. Slaven Letica should be credited for that. And he even published that article in his book with a short note that in theory he had been right. I think that today is the right time to take his invitation to examine the theory by which he is trying to regain legitimacy. I think that it is time to see what kind of theory that was. Now when those times are behind us and when the presidential campaign is over, now we could examine whether Slaven Letica, as philosophers put it, was a knowledgeable subject, whether he had knowledge and what is his theoretical legitimacy.
It is necessary to analyze the case such as the "witches" case, not because it is the most important issue in the world, but because that analysis can spare us many illusions about, for example, the phenomenon of nationalism. But there is another danger: to blame HDZ, Tudman and all those directly involved in evil for everything that has happened [in the last ten years]. Some of the cultural workers have already stated that only those in power are to blame and that the rest of us are innocents.
If a Croatian soldier could not commit a crime in the Patriotic war, how can a poor cultural worker be guilty of any evil?
This does not have to do with guilt, since no one will be tried and jailed for crimes in culture; those who murdered and, a good number of them, are still free, should go to prison. This has nothing to do with crimes. It does have to do with a portion of social life that was not in principle spared of moral, political and general social responsibility. That question should be asked and answered not in order to purify our consciousness but to make sure we have a democratic future and to be able to participate in the life and problems of the contemporary world.
Would you agree that the last elections were an important step toward the civil society?
At this moment everyone is full of praise for the civil society that is winning, and there is also a theory that exactly the civil society and the young generation, rather than political parties, won the last elections. And now we reach that question and my concrete query: Under Tudman, was I able to write and publish whatever I wanted? I was! Not a single word was censored. I said and wrote anything I wanted. However, I did not dare repeat the things I wrote in a tram, or in a certain circle of friends with whom I had studied and intellectually matured and, finally, I did not dare repeat those things in front of a part of my family. We must not forget that the Catholic church is also a part of the civil society, and in normal circumstances it should not be anything more than a non-governmental organization, that a tram is a part of the civil society as well as all that spontaneity of the masses. We must not forget that spontaneity of the masses in the whole policy of Franjo Tudman was not something staged by an autocrat, but something produced by many cultural and religious factors, and even non-governmental organizations. That is the matter.
Now, of course, everything is different, as is always the case in this region when the government changes: people quiet down, shut up and cock up their ears, nose and all tentacles until they figure out which way the wind blows and what is the new worldview that will determine the next five, ten or whatever years of their life. Now nationalism in out, civil society is in, and no one is willing to recall and examine the fact that these two phenomena are inseparable and exactly that lack of separation between these two phenomena has determined our fate during the last ten years. That is what I have been talking about: the first thing we have to do is to fully bury Franjo Tudman, actually cover his grave, instead of leaving it open so that we can stuff everything that has happened during the last ten years, from crimes that should get processed in the Hague, over economic collapse to cultural shame, in that small burial crypt in Mirogoj cemetery. That crypt is too small to accept the whole ten years for which we, at this moment, do not even know what they represented in our so-called history.
Some analysts claim that the establishment of the independent Croatian state has after all been some sort of a step towards democratizaton of this region, since it included an introduction of a multi-party democracy, regardless of how distorted that democracy was in practice?
The Croatian state has never earned legitimacy as a democratic subject. That is the problem. Communism was not only a totalitarian system, but it also included a strong push towards modernization, not only in Croatia but also in other Yugoslav societies. Consider, for example, secularization. Communist atheism was not in itself an enemy of the Croatian people, but also implied modernization of the Croatian society in the direction of secularization and separation of religion and state, which is a characteristic of every modern society. That is something that we have abandoned in the last ten years, but not in the direction of further democratization. We went backwards, so that the next question that will impose itself is the role and place of the Church in Croatia during the nineties.
The Church could not restrain itself before the opportunity to grab secular authority, power and wealth. The classic Marxist criticism of the Church is based on the assertion that the secret of the religion is not in Heaven, and God, but in the material sphere of social life. The Croatian Catholic Church in the nineties only confirms that assertion. It set aside all values, including God; it forgot the value of Heaven and opted for the value of participating in the ideological and cultural hegemony of grabbing very concrete material goods, not only in the sense of the annulment of the Communist expropriation of its property but also in assuming a privileged position in the Croatian society. It is undeniable that in that it had to pay the price of giving up some of fundamental moral categories which should shape and be the essence of its message. Therefore, it had to set all of that aside. And without any internal problems, and sense of defeat and contradiction, without any dilemmas which should have appeared within the Church. And than we reach the example of Krajina and everything that happened after the operation "Storm". The murders are not the only problem. Huge plunder took place in the aftermath of the operation "Storm". That was a huge plunder, it was not conducted by a few gangs, or some small mafia, it was done by popular masses. Of course, they knew about that and observed it and it remains to be asked what they did regarding that question. Did they experience social phenomena as a part of their own religious responsibility? That is the question.
At a time, you stated that the Croatian problem is not in don Anto Bakovic, but in archbishop Bozanic, and in everything that was expected from him?
In the past I criticized the moment of a brief, but indicative democratic euphoria in connection with the Zagreb archbishop. When Bozanic spoke about "the sin of structures", a part of our public believed that that was the key moment in democratization and criticism of Tudman's rule. That was not only wrong (Bozanic never developed his assertion and moved from words to action and true criticism of "structures", although it was known what his opinion on that was), but he also never engaged in the criticism of Church structures which participated in Tudman's rule. Bozanic never questioned the fact that the Croatian Catholic Church provided ideological infrastructure for Tudman's authorities, but the main problem was that the Croatian society expected that an archbishop solve its problems with democracy and its burning questions. That was only an indication of the democratic impotence of that society.
We are again coming back to that question. No, that was not an opposition in the sense of political parties, but that was again a democratic segment of the civil society and independent media and people who were within: they had those expectations, they were obviously totally disappointed by party politics. And what was Ivica Racan's policy in the last ten years? That was exactly the policy which characterized him before the nineties: silence. Therefore, it has become evident that in Croatia it is enough to keep quiet for long enough and a person is bound to be handsomely rewarded. Racan is the best evidence for that. When discussing that, we should start from the violations of human rights. Neither SDP, nor HSLS, nor the parties of the "coalition of four", apart from IDS, at any time openly opposed violations of human rights. Politics of human rights was not taken seriously nor understood by any serious Croatian opposition party. And that is another problem which remains for the future.
In the past you have written that hardware of the national state is so obsolete that software of modern culture cannot even run on it. Do you think that with the recent electoral changes that fear has been removed? In other words, has the project of the national state been filed away?
I think that it has. The project of the national state was based on an illusion of the sovereignty of the Croatian state. The project of the establishment of a national state was led by the well-known motto: "No one between us and God!" And of course, that has turned out to be an illusion: today all presidential candidates, including Granic, even the future HDZ, are fully aware that between Croatia and God there are many elements of power, such as the European Union, NATO alliance etc. The idea about "a Croatian rifle on a Croatian shoulder" is total nonsense in view of the NATO intervention in Kosovo. The idea about "a Croatian wallet in a Croatian pocket" is also total nonsense in contemporary global capitalism. What was the third thing: rifle, wallet... I can't remember any more. Anyway, the sovereignty project has failed. The future Croatian policy will have to give up the sovereignty project; it will simply have to, as a whole nation, understand that either we shall be a part of that world, or we shall not be. Croatia is the same size as German state Bremen and its strength and significance do not make it a factor, economic or political, at all. The only politically interesting moment of Croatia at this time is a possibility of influence on Serbia, a possibility that processes which are at this time taking place in the political life of Croatia have some influence on the democratization of Serbia. In that sense, exactly Serbia, actually the present Yugoslavia, is in a way the target area of Croatian policy. Croatia can establish some sort of identity in Europe only with respect to that question. It needs to take an active rather than passive role in its solution.
The only rational future of Croatia, in political sense, is to join the EU. That is the only existing project. I do not know whether the former Yugoslavia could have joined the EU without a war and separation, but I do know that tomorrow both Zagreb and Belgrade will be parts of Europe and that the road between Zagreb and Belgrade will be an absolutely trivial European road, a road from one European city to another. That is the truth and if we want to be politically successful, we shall end up traveling toward Belgrade within Europe. Concerning the project of separation of the so-called primitive Serb, Balkan, Eastern Orthodox, later Turkish, Islamic and other identities from the authentic European Croatian identity, that project has been defeated. And exactly that was the ideological content of demands for the independent Croatian state, which had to separate from the Balkans in order to preserve its authentic European identity. Today, it will have to join the Balkans in order to save its Europeanism.
And then the world will recognize that we belong in Central Europe rather than in the Balkans?
And what exactly is the content of the Central European identity? I have been living in Vienna for ten years and still haven't figured out what that is. Is that the fact that the presence of Turks in Vienna is far more visible than the presence of any multicultural elements in Croatia? When one arrives in Zagreb and realizes that everyone here is white, Catholic and Croat, it is clear that the passenger has arrived in the heart of the Balkans. Zagreb is a pure Balkan provincial town. Exactly that relationship with respect to the Balkans, that the Balkans is a location of some authentic primitivism, barbarity etc., is something that is obsolete, lacks modernity and is un-European, and therefore essentially Balkan in its nature.
It does not matter who includes us in or excludes us from the Balkans. The key issue is that inclusion or exclusion cannot be a modern cultural or political movement, and in that there is no difference between Tudman and Gotovac. The question of who is responsible for the "Balkanization" of Croatia should not even be asked; both Tudman and Gotovac with their attitudes "Balkanize" Croatia and are factors of that process in this country. As far as Gotovac is concerned, his problem was that he persistently tried to discover some authentic identity of Croatia, something that would be absolutely unique in the world. As he put it - God's plans for the territory between Vukovar and Dubrovnik. Well, God has no special plans for this territory. On the other hand, there are very concrete European interests and very concrete actions taken by the Croatian authorities and very concrete ideological blindness and opportunism of the Croatian opposition: that is what determined the Croatian identity, not some irrational ideas.
Still, you cannot deny that the results of the last elections have nevertheless somewhat changed the identity of Croatia?
The saddest thing for Croatia, the worst possible outcome, is that Franjo Tudman was not replaced in elections, but that he died. And now, at the moment when everyone is seeking to legitimize that victory of democracy, the new age and euphoria as their own achievements - including the intellectual elite and former opposition parties about to assume power - they are forgetting that the bulk of the work was finished by mother nature, an illness. Now they would claim that they would have defeated Tudman even if he were healthy but that is not true. In that sense, we must not forget and have to face another truth: in this victory we must maintain awareness of our defeat.
I am absolutely at loss as to why I am labeled as a leftist, since lack of chauvinism, support for minority rights, awareness of global values of the contemporary culture are not as such leftist values. That is as if someone said that MTV is a leftist institution. However, it is true that exactly those, elsewhere trivial values, were not accepted by the overwhelming part of our cultural and political factors and, simply, the consequence of that is that for example we in ARKzin were labeled as leftist only to assure that we are excluded from the participation in the political debate.
The simplest response was to say: "They are leftist extremists!" Therefore, universal human rights are not our issue, that is that message. Was the UN Human Rights Declaration, whose 50th anniversary was recently celebrated, a leftist document? Is the secular nature of the society, and separation of religion and state, an extremist leftist position? Is it an extreme leftist policy to advocate the position that murderers should be in prison? No, it is not! Did we ever advocate expropriation of private property? No, we did not! Therefore an attempt to label you and me as leftists underlines the need to establish some sort of middle ground which is empty of content in itself and is established only by the exclusion of the so-called leftists and extremists. Why did that middle ground not include values of secular society and protection of human rights? In that whole story, we, together with the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) for human rights, few media such as Feral Tribune and negligible elements of the civil society such as women and anti-war movements, we turned out to be extremist leftist freaks, and actually did nothing more than the job that in normal circumstances should have been done by the civil society as a whole. The concern whether murderers are in prisons should not be the worry of HHO exclusively, but of all members of the society, since that is the question of survival of that society.
How will the new Croatia address the so-called Serb question?
The Serb question must be addressed as a problem of modern capitalism, which includes the right to private property, which means that a person has the right to live in the house he or she owns and use the means of production that he or she likewise owns. That is not a Serb question, but a standard of modern capitalism. The secret of the Serb question is in its existence and it is an absolute lie of modern Croatian history that there is some Serb question and that it must be solved in order to obtain a stable Croat state. We must respect private property. And when today the new authorities are telling the West that they will bring back the Serbs, they are actually saying: "Yes, we shall establish conditions for capitalism!"