“The UN Security Council has never taken a stand regarding that issue. Consequently, some entities abroad are drawing unacceptable conclusions, that here, in the last ten years some Balkan tribes had a brawl,” government official bitterly confided to the journalist, revealing the good old mental mechanism that produced the new initiative: “unacceptable interpretations” are possible only if there is no mandatory “political view” of the uppermost power center, whose “official thought” obliges everyone. Only when it is clearly stated what sort of “interpretations” run afoul of the decree of the powerful authority, sources of “unacceptable interpretations” will be exposed to appropriate repression. A shining example of sanctions because of the refusal to subject oneself to “the official thought”, for example, came up after the adoption of the “Declaration about the Homeland War” in the parliament – a stinking forgery in which, in the classic Stalinist manner, the role of Croatia in the aggression on Bosnia-Hercegovina was “deleted” – when Vesna Pusic, since she alone dared sing a dissonant note, was subjected to a public denunciation and forced to apologize.
Precise ideological “definitions” of certain events, however, as a rule are needed only when the very event is rife with so many unfortunate details and “logical cracks” that it opens space for unwanted discussion and simply asks for unnecessary search for the truth. During 50 years of Communism Bleiburg could have been discussed outside the context of the prescribed saga about the glorious popular liberation struggle – therefore as a killing field that was a the result of a carefully planned crime – only if the owner of such an “unacceptable interpretation” was determined to seek accommodation in the prison camp on the island of Goli Otok or another official reformation institution. Traces of the truth started coming to the surface in the late eighties, while a spectacular turnaround took place in the nineties. Bleiburg became a mythical spot of centuries-long Croatian suffering, source of statehood and key evidence that the whole popular liberation struggle was nothing but a huge criminal conspiracy. Thus, “the official thought” is until today the only reason no one has discussed Bleiburg considering truth and justice whose hand, right?, should reach those who committed and instigated the crime.
The hushed underline of crime, as a “logical crack” in the marble surface of the totem in front of which the nation is supposed to kneel in supplication, totally discredits Government’s demands, because “the official thought” about the Croatian Homeland War is sought for one reason only: to obtain an officially sanctioned mitigating circumstance for the crimes that undoubtedly took place. This is a conscious political justification of crime, with a very pragmatic outcome. When the Central Committee of the international community decrees that our War was a just and liberation war, then we’ll have sufficient justification to refuse to send our officers to the Hague.
Regardless of delicate political rhetoric, masochistic search for legal loopholes and desperate attempts to buy time, with which the government is trying to save itself from “Bobetko case”, this endeavor is on the whole based on the infamous theory of Milan Vukovic – Tudman’s president of the Supreme Court – who concluded that Croats could not commit war crimes because they were defending themselves. Irony has it that the aforementioned theoretician, now as a member of the Constitutional Court, will soon participate in the realization of the Government’s proposal to declare that the indictment of Bobetko is unconstitutional. Thus the axis Racan-Vukovic (naïve among us may have thought that it has ruptured a few years ago) is functioning impeccably and marching forward to nationalist songs in uncertain hope that it will withstand the most difficult historical trials.
It will, of course, inevitably fail. The pathological Croat obsession with “the world” – which is traditionally against us and whose only purpose is to keep us perpetually surrounded by enemies – will get yet another practical example. But that predictable failure “on the external plane” is paradoxically only going to contribute to the national unification for internal use. For the authorities which during their opposition phase practiced its canines on Milan Vukovic as a typical specimen of nationalism and destruction of the rule of law and are now working hard on implementing Vukovic’s ideology, that is not an insignificant achievement.
The problem is that our problem is much deeper and obviously cannot be resolved with this or any future political leadership. The zeal with which they insist on the dictatorship of the “official thought” when virgin purity of the liberation struggle is concerned, in itself attacks the myth about the sacred character of the Croatian Homeland War, because it reveals the same sort of lack of scruples that – both in war and peace – erase the difference between true and imaginary enemies. That is the story in which civilians always end up as victims. If you want to reveal that you are a damned traitor you are only permitted to loudly keep your mouth shut when it comes to the “Declaration about the Homeland War”. Respecting that rule, keeping our mouth shut, like disciplined patriots, we are left no choice but to quote a little known author from the end of the twentieth century: “The fundamental characteristic of the freedom won in the Homeland War is that it cannot be freely discussed.”