Franjo Tudjman is widely credited with having secured the independence of Croatia. In reality, according to the author of The Death of Yugoslavia, herself Croat-born, his aims soon diverged radically from those of his people. FRANJO Tudjman, who died last week at the age of 77, will be remembered not only as the first President of an independent Croatia but also for his autocratic rule during the first decade of that independence, half of which was spent at war. During this time his name became practically synonymous with that of his country, but in reality the interests of the nation and of its President became so radically divergent that it would be no exaggeration to describe Tudjman as a menace to his people.

It is not that his presidency ? as opposed to the enormous additional powers he soon accumulated in his hands ? was illegitimate, since the Croatian electorate kept returning him to power. But doubts as to whether Tudjman was indeed Croatia?s friend have troubled the country from the start of its independence. The soldiers at the front could not understand his conduct of war; the civilians ethnically cleansed from the Serbian-occupied areas of the country were treated by him with indifference; and the ethnic minorities came to fear his blinkered nationalism. Later there were the industrial and agricultural victims of his corrupt economic policies, including young qualified people who left Croatia in droves; women whose hard-won rights came under attack; old-age pensioners who joined an ever-increasing pool of the impoverished; the emasculated legal profession pushed into his straitjacket of a new political probity; university professors and secondary school teachers; writers, theatre and film directors; the fans of Zagreb?s main football team Dinamo, whose name Tudjman altered to Croatia; the journalists whose wings were drastically clipped as soon as they had begun to enjoy the demise of Communist control over the media.

That he remained in office for so long can be ascribed mainly to the abnormal situation in which the nation found itself after its proclamation of independence in 1991. The Serbian aggression against Croatia which followed a few days afterwards inevitably strengthened Tudjman?s domestic position. At the same time, the Western policy of appeasing the dictator in Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic, helped to nurture a sense of insecurity in the region and limited the possibility of political change in Croatia. The country, indeed, became a pawn in a wider game of power, involving all the major international players, despite their insistence that the former Yugoslav area had no strategic significance. The early bright dream of a new Croatia turned into a nightmare.

Croatia is an old state, though it has not been independent since the Middle Ages. For much of its history it has been included in wider associations: the Byzantine and Carolingian empires, the lands of the Hungarian crown, the Habsburg monarchy, and finally Yugoslavia. It was Croatia that gave birth to Yugoslavia in the first place, and Croatia remained faithful to the Yugoslav option ? despite many misgivings ? for much of Yugoslavia?s existence, including in the dark days of the Second World War, when the Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia, with the appalling outrages it committed, was a product of German and Italian occupation. From the early decades of the nineteenth century and until almost the end of the twentieth, in fact, Croatian politics moved between two poles: Yugoslavia and independence. It was only in the late 1980s that it swung fully and uncompromisingly towards the latter.

The nation entered the war in 1991 united, not so much by its rejection of the Communist past (in the first parliamentary elections, held in 1990, a substantial proportion of the electorate voted for the reformed Communist party or SDP), nor ? contrary to a widespread perception in the West ? by its endorsement of nationalism (despite the growing Serbian threat, Tudjman?s nationalistic HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), founded in 1989, won only a minority of the popular vote), but by its desire for independence. It was fear of Milosevic?s Serbia that erased the Yugoslav option from Croatia?s political horizon.

Indeed, had Milosevic been removed from power in 1991, whether by forces acting within Serbian society or as a result of outside pressure, a pro-Yugoslav party of some credibility would most likely have re-emerged in Croatia. But if the Milosevic factor helps explain the amplitude and momentum of Croatia?s swing away from Yugoslavia, it does not explain the impulse itself. Events in Serbia, clearly, only hastened an internal Croatian evolutionary process that in 1990 was to crystallise around the declaration of independence.

The initial close identification of this independence-seeking Croatia with Franjo Tudjman was a by-product of the first-past-the-post electoral system chosen by the departing SDP, which had hoped to profit from it, but which in the event gave the HDZ an overwhelming parliamentary majority. Tudjman?s prestige appeared to grow further as a result of the mounting Serbian invasion, when the nation seemed to be closing ranks. In reality, however, Tudjman was at his most vulnerable precisely at the start of the war, when it became clear that he had failed to equip the country with the basic means of self-defence. It was not an HDZ Government, in fact, but a Government of Democratic Unity embracing the main opposition parties which organised Croatia?s successful resistance to Serbia in 1991. (Tudjman dismissed them, together with most of Croatia?s military talent, soon after the end of the fighting in Croatia, when he no longer needed them and saw them as an obstacle to the realisation of his absolute rule and his designs on Bosnia-Herzegovina.) At a more fundamental level, the resistance was the work of the population itself, with tens of thousands of unarmed volunteers, including hundreds of former JNA (Yugoslav Army) officers, rallying to the country?s defence. Croatia?s survival in this crisis is due above all to this broad-based war effort, against an enemy that was far better armed but much more poorly motivated.

The implied threat which this posed to Tudjman?s quest for total power opened a breach between the interests of the nation and those of its President. While the people were concentrating on the struggle for survival, its President and his intimates were engaged in another, more private and far less noble, effort. Their own war aims, in fact, were in such radical dissonance from those that moved the people that they had to be pursued in secret, bypassing the parliament and even the Croatian army?s general staff. They included not only complete control over Croatia?s economic assets, but also the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia ? in collaboration with Belgrade and, it seems, some Western states too. Another secret aim which Zagreb shared with Belgrade was to drive out non-Croats and non-Serbs respectively in the parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina they coveted for a greater Serbia and a greater Croatia. Non-Serbs also became victims of the policy of ethnic purification implemented by Milosevic in the parts of Croatia he held at this time, while Tudjman hoped to achieve a reduction in the number of Serbs living in the parts of Croatia governed by Zagreb.

The realisation of these secret aims demanded a prolonged war. Accordingly, the Croatian President renounced a victory that by the end of 1991 was within the country?s grasp. War then soon spread into Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the connivance of Western governments. British politicians, for example, continue to blame Tudjman for his role in dividing Bosnia, conveniently forgetting their own government?s sponsorship of negotiations aimed at securing precisely this outcome.

Initially, when Serbia appeared likely to be an all-out winner in Bosnia, the collaboration between Tudjman and Milosevic appeared to weaken; but it revived once it became clearer that the Bosnians were not going to surrender. However neither Milosevic nor Tudjman could have pursued their dirty wars without support from outside. In view of Bosnia?s extraordinary resistance, they could not on their own have produced the realities on the ground which in 1995 led to Bosnia?s division, with the blessing of the United States, Britain, France and Germany, into formally two territories (the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation and Republica Srpska), but in reality three, for the federation is itself divided into two parts ? an ethnically pure Croat Herceg-Bosna and a predominantly Bosnian Muslim area.

THE war?s continuation and expansion set the stage for Tudjman?s effective dictatorship in Croatia. It enriched the President?s family and the narrow circle around him, helped to silence the opposition and delivered the country to rule based on graft and naked self-interest. The liberation of the territory controlled by Serbia in the summer of 1995 in a swift engagement of the Croatian army which, aided by successful action of the Bosnian army in Bosnia itself, laid the groundwork for the Dayton conference, boosted Tudjman?s prestige at home and abroad, but it was not translated into a positive policy capable of meeting the challenges of peacetime. What had been one of Yugoslavia?s most advanced republics suffered in consequence a momentous economic as well as moral decline.

The Pope visited the country twice, in 1994 and again last year. He came not only to help his Church, but also out of compassion for the people and with a message of the need for renewed friendship between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Inside Croatia itself, the Catholic Church failed to offer the lead that might have been expected. The Church?s desire to see the restitution of its sizeable property nationalised by the Communists after the Second World War, and the restoration of its influence in such matters as education, marriage, divorce, abortion and sexual morality clearly influenced it to remain largely silent on wider issues of social injustice and public corruption flourishing in Tudjman?s Croatia.

If a good deal of responsibility for this outcome rests with the Serbian and Western capitals, most of it inevitably must be laid at the door of the country?s chief executive, Franjo Tudjman. It would be comforting to think that his departure will bring about a change for the better. It is unfortunately more likely that his legacy will be upheld where Bosnia-Herzegovina is concerned by Western governments fearful of any change in the established status quo. Croatia certainly deserves a better future. Its recovery is crucial to the development of the region as a whole. Tudjman?s departure will put to the test Western rhetoric about the need for a democratic transformation in Croatia and the rest of the former Yugoslav area.The Death of Yugoslavia, herself Croat-born, his aims soon diverged radically from those of his people.

FRANJO Tudjman, who died last week at the age of 77, will be remembered not only as the first President of an independent Croatia but also for his autocratic rule during the first decade of that independence, half of which was spent at war. During this time his name became practically synonymous with that of his country, but in reality the interests of the nation and of its President became so radically divergent that it would be no exaggeration to describe Tudjman as a menace to his people.

It is not that his presidency ? as opposed to the enormous additional powers he soon accumulated in his hands ? was illegitimate, since the Croatian electorate kept returning him to power. But doubts as to whether Tudjman was indeed Croatia?s friend have troubled the country from the start of its independence. The soldiers at the front could not understand his conduct of war; the civilians ethnically cleansed from the Serbian-occupied areas of the country were treated by him with indifference; and the ethnic minorities came to fear his blinkered nationalism. Later there were the industrial and agricultural victims of his corrupt economic policies, including young qualified people who left Croatia in droves; women whose hard-won rights came under attack; old-age pensioners who joined an ever-increasing pool of the impoverished; the emasculated legal profession pushed into his straitjacket of a new political probity; university professors and secondary school teachers; writers, theatre and film directors; the fans of Zagreb?s main football team Dinamo, whose name Tudjman altered to Croatia; the journalists whose wings were drastically clipped as soon as they had begun to enjoy the demise of Communist control over the media.

That he remained in office for so long can be ascribed mainly to the abnormal situation in which the nation found itself after its proclamation of independence in 1991. The Serbian aggression against Croatia which followed a few days afterwards inevitably strengthened Tudjman?s domestic position. At the same time, the Western policy of appeasing the dictator in Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic, helped to nurture a sense of insecurity in the region and limited the possibility of political change in Croatia. The country, indeed, became a pawn in a wider game of power, involving all the major international players, despite their insistence that the former Yugoslav area had no strategic significance. The early bright dream of a new Croatia turned into a nightmare.

Croatia is an old state, though it has not been independent since the Middle Ages. For much of its history it has been included in wider associations: the Byzantine and Carolingian empires, the lands of the Hungarian crown, the Habsburg monarchy, and finally Yugoslavia. It was Croatia that gave birth to Yugoslavia in the first place, and Croatia remained faithful to the Yugoslav option ? despite many misgivings ? for much of Yugoslavia?s existence, including in the dark days of the Second World War, when the Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia, with the appalling outrages it committed, was a product of German and Italian occupation. From the early decades of the nineteenth century and until almost the end of the twentieth, in fact, Croatian politics moved between two poles: Yugoslavia and independence. It was only in the late 1980s that it swung fully and uncompromisingly towards the latter.

The nation entered the war in 1991 united, not so much by its rejection of the Communist past (in the first parliamentary elections, held in 1990, a substantial proportion of the electorate voted for the reformed Communist party or SDP), nor ? contrary to a widespread perception in the West ? by its endorsement of nationalism (despite the growing Serbian threat, Tudjman?s nationalistic HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), founded in 1989, won only a minority of the popular vote), but by its desire for independence. It was fear of Milosevic?s Serbia that erased the Yugoslav option from Croatia?s political horizon.

Indeed, had Milosevic been removed from power in 1991, whether by forces acting within Serbian society or as a result of outside pressure, a pro-Yugoslav party of some credibility would most likely have re-emerged in Croatia. But if the Milosevic factor helps explain the amplitude and momentum of Croatia?s swing away from Yugoslavia, it does not explain the impulse itself. Events in Serbia, clearly, only hastened an internal Croatian evolutionary process that in 1990 was to crystallise around the declaration of independence.

The initial close identification of this independence-seeking Croatia with Franjo Tudjman was a by-product of the first-past-the-post electoral system chosen by the departing SDP, which had hoped to profit from it, but which in the event gave the HDZ an overwhelming parliamentary majority. Tudjman?s prestige appeared to grow further as a result of the mounting Serbian invasion, when the nation seemed to be closing ranks. In reality, however, Tudjman was at his most vulnerable precisely at the start of the war, when it became clear that he had failed to equip the country with the basic means of self-defence. It was not an HDZ Government, in fact, but a Government of Democratic Unity embracing the main opposition parties which organised Croatia?s successful resistance to Serbia in 1991. (Tudjman dismissed them, together with most of Croatia?s military talent, soon after the end of the fighting in Croatia, when he no longer needed them and saw them as an obstacle to the realisation of his absolute rule and his designs on Bosnia-Herzegovina.) At a more fundamental level, the resistance was the work of the population itself, with tens of thousands of unarmed volunteers, including hundreds of former JNA (Yugoslav Army) officers, rallying to the country?s defence. Croatia?s survival in this crisis is due above all to this broad-based war effort, against an enemy that was far better armed but much more poorly motivated.

The implied threat which this posed to Tudjman?s quest for total power opened a breach between the interests of the nation and those of its President. While the people were concentrating on the struggle for survival, its President and his intimates were engaged in another, more private and far less noble, effort. Their own war aims, in fact, were in such radical dissonance from those that moved the people that they had to be pursued in secret, bypassing the parliament and even the Croatian army?s general staff. They included not only complete control over Croatia?s economic assets, but also the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia ? in collaboration with Belgrade and, it seems, some Western states too. Another secret aim which Zagreb shared with Belgrade was to drive out non-Croats and non-Serbs respectively in the parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina they coveted for a greater Serbia and a greater Croatia. Non-Serbs also became victims of the policy of ethnic purification implemented by Milosevic in the parts of Croatia he held at this time, while Tudjman hoped to achieve a reduction in the number of Serbs living in the parts of Croatia governed by Zagreb.

The realisation of these secret aims demanded a prolonged war. Accordingly, the Croatian President renounced a victory that by the end of 1991 was within the country?s grasp. War then soon spread into Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the connivance of Western governments. British politicians, for example, continue to blame Tudjman for his role in dividing Bosnia, conveniently forgetting their own government?s sponsorship of negotiations aimed at securing precisely this outcome.

Initially, when Serbia appeared likely to be an all-out winner in Bosnia, the collaboration between Tudjman and Milosevic appeared to weaken; but it revived once it became clearer that the Bosnians were not going to surrender. However neither Milosevic nor Tudjman could have pursued their dirty wars without support from outside. In view of Bosnia?s extraordinary resistance, they could not on their own have produced the realities on the ground which in 1995 led to Bosnia?s division, with the blessing of the United States, Britain, France and Germany, into formally two territories (the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation and Republica Srpska), but in reality three, for the federation is itself divided into two parts ? an ethnically pure Croat Herceg-Bosna and a predominantly Bosnian Muslim area.

THE war?s continuation and expansion set the stage for Tudjman?s effective dictatorship in Croatia. It enriched the President?s family and the narrow circle around him, helped to silence the opposition and delivered the country to rule based on graft and naked self-interest. The liberation of the territory controlled by Serbia in the summer of 1995 in a swift engagement of the Croatian army which, aided by successful action of the Bosnian army in Bosnia itself, laid the groundwork for the Dayton conference, boosted Tudjman?s prestige at home and abroad, but it was not translated into a positive policy capable of meeting the challenges of peacetime. What had been one of Yugoslavia?s most advanced republics suffered in consequence a momentous economic as well as moral decline.

The Pope visited the country twice, in 1994 and again last year. He came not only to help his Church, but also out of compassion for the people and with a message of the need for renewed friendship between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Inside Croatia itself, the Catholic Church failed to offer the lead that might have been expected. The Church?s desire to see the restitution of its sizeable property nationalised by the Communists after the Second World War, and the restoration of its influence in such matters as education, marriage, divorce, abortion and sexual morality clearly influenced it to remain largely silent on wider issues of social injustice and public corruption flourishing in Tudjman?s Croatia.

If a good deal of responsibility for this outcome rests with the Serbian and Western capitals, most of it inevitably must be laid at the door of the country?s chief executive, Franjo Tudjman. It would be comforting to think that his departure will bring about a change for the better. It is unfortunately more likely that his legacy will be upheld where Bosnia-Herzegovina is concerned by Western governments fearful of any change in the established status quo. Croatia certainly deserves a better future. Its recovery is crucial to the development of the region as a whole. Tudjman?s departure will put to the test Western rhetoric about the need for a democratic transformation in Croatia and the rest of the former Yugoslav area.

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