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Matija Gubec goes to Spain: Symbols and Ideology in Croatia, 1936-1939

In 1930s Croatia, radical political ideologies on the left and right gained increasing support as the unresolved “national question” and international events challenged the Croatian Peasant Party’s position as the dominant political force. Both communists and the extreme right began using the symbol of Matija Gubec, the leader of a sixteenth century peasant revolt and icon of the Peasant Party, to mobilize their own followers in the years preceding World War Two. This article traces how each of the political forces in Croatia reinterpreted the Gubec legand to fit their own radically different ideologies, paying especially close attention to the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), when communist-led volunteers from Croatia in the Republican Army established a unit named after Gubec and set a precedent for similar units in the partisan resistance in the 1940s. All sides realized the potential of Gubec as a Croatian national symbol, including the communists, who sought to counter their opponents’ claims that they were internationalists in the service of foreign powers. The essence of Gubec remained ; however, his role as a fighter for peasant rights, and in the interwar period, the majority of Croats remained peasants who easily could relate to such an explicit political symbol.

Spanish Civil War ; Croatia ; Matija Gubec

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