Nationalism and mythology
Croatian Parliament voted to cut its funding, and the site was subsequently vandalized during the conflict itself. 17
That this renewed nationalism, with its embrace of Croatia’s fascist past, was incompatible with other ethnic groups within Croatia, such as the Serbians living in the Krajina region, was affirmed by the concrete policy decisions that accompanied it. The Titoist polices that saw so many Serbians employed within the Croatian state bureaucracy were swiftly reversed by Tudjman, resulting in widespread redundancy amongst the Serbian population in Croatia, while at the same time their status within Croatia was demoted from that of a majority Yugoslav nation to a minority not mentioned by name in the 1990 constitution. 18 Literary Croat was pronounced the only official language of Croatia, with the Cyrillic script used only by the Serbian minority no longer permitted, while all dual-script road signs had their Cyrillic sections removed. 19 The rising popularity of national mythologizing within Croatia culminated in legitimizing these explicitly anti-Serbian policies, for if your history and culture are exclusive, and emphasize the role of a dominant ethnic grouping, it naturally follows that your concrete policy decisions should as well. Once it became clear through the re-purposing and rehabilitation of the NDH and Ustasha regime by Tudjman and others within Croatia that Serbians could no longer identify with or expect to support a distinctly Croatian entity, taking steps to make their exclusion official merely confirmed what was already the case. What is clear from this is that, for both Milosevic and Tudjman, the veneration of their national history, and the decision to place it once again at the fore of general public consciousness, was part of their desire to achieve much wider policy goals, goals that were legitimized through their couching in and justification through the memories of the past. In Serbia, Milosevic invoked his country’s long history of suffering, as well as its strong military traditions, in order to bring about renewed national outrage over treatment of Serbians across Yugoslavia that would necessitate the election of a staunch Serbian nationalist like himself. And, in Croatia, Tudjman sought to bring about a uniquely Croatian identity within the population, one that excluded other Yugoslav ethnic groups and by extension necessitated the revival of an independent Croatian state. The resurrection of national mythology, while not the end point for either of these figures, nevertheless served as vital means through which to achieve their broader policy objectives. Following the resurgence of nationalism described above, war broke out in Yugoslavia. Croatia sought to secure its independence, while Serbia attempted to maintain the integrity of the federal republic, or if that proved impossible, then, at the very least, to prevent those breakaway nations from taking the Serbianminorities within their countries with them. Bosnia, with its diverse mix of Croatians, Serbians and Muslims, was caught in the middle. Here too, the role of popular history was vital; it had a wide influence in both Serbia and Croatia, and served to motivate and direct the ensuing conflict. In Serbia, the legacy of Ustasha persecution during the SecondWorld War remained prominent, and was used by various institutions within the country to further Serbian war aims. The Serbian Unity Congress, an international organization set up for the purposes of promoting Serbian interests, in writing about the
17 Walasek, H. (2015): 84. 18 Glenny, M. (1996): 12, 13. 19 Ibid.
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