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Flirting with Fascism: The Ustaša Legacy and Croatian Politics in the 1990s

The collapse of the communist system in Eastern Europe the late 1980s created a political vacuum that was filled by resurgent nationalist movements, which proved fatal for a multiethnic country such as Yugoslavia, where the desire for democratic change was accompanied by independence efforts in the two northernmost republics, Croatia and Slovenia. The communist fall from power “breached the dams of memory and counter-memory, which fundamentally changed the collective identity present in the region.” In Croatia this was most evident in the renewed debate over World War Two, specifically the vilification of the communist- led, and multiethnic, Partisan resistance and the rehabilitation of the Ustaše as legitimate Croatian patriots. This “flirting with the Ustaše” (koketiranje s ustaštvom) not only revolted many of Croatia’s potential international allies, but seriously damaged relations with the country’s Serb minority, haunted by memories of Ustaše atrocities against them in the 1940s and already under the influence of Slobodan Milošević’s propaganda apparatus in Belgrade. This article examines the political context of Croatia in the 1990s which fostered the rehabilitation of the Ustaše as an expression of Croatian nationalism at a time of democratic transition across Eastern Europe. While debates over the Ustaša movement have extended into the spheres of education, monuments and public space, graffiti, symbols, commemorations and public rituals, and even popular culture, this article focuses on the role of this extreme nationalist organization in the political life of post-communist Croatia.

World War Two, Croatia, fascist symbols, Franjo Tudjman, radical right movements, Jasenovac, Ustaše

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