The Croatian Spring of Discontent:20 Years Later

SAVKA DABCEVIC-KUCAR, presently at the Croatian National Party, former leader of Croatian communists 1971: The Croatian summer was the wide autonomous and autochthonous protest of the Croatian middle-class directed against the Serbian hegemony and the communist dictatorship and it was aimed at the formation of a free and democratic Croatia... We wanted Croatian statehood and equality within the confines of the then hegemony seeking and unitarian Yugoslavia. We even thought that some kind of democratic confederation was possible... The great victory of Croatia and the anticommunist alternative at the first democratic elections as well as the present struggle for peace, democracy and Croatian sovereignty have their roots in 1971 which not even the strongest storm could destroy... The demise of totalitarianism and communism in Europe has shed a new light on the international aspect of the Croatian spring. The world has finally recognized it as an early sign of the demise of communism, a "touch of freedom"...We are not nostalgic about our past, about 1971.

We are defending Croatia here and now, since no one has a monopoly over the fate of Croatia. Croatia which is bleeding now in the war which was imposed on it, Croatia which is waiting for its rightful international recognition, we and our Croatia will once again, like in 1971 prove ourselves in the battle for Croatia...

The citizens of Croatia are united in their struggle for a free, independent and sovereign Croatia. I believe that, regardless of all the difficulties our army is encountering at present, the history is, unlike in 1971, on our side. We wish for a just peace, and a modern, democratic, sovereign and independent state of Croatia.

IVAN ZVONIMIR CICAK, former president of the Croatian Farmers' Party, convicted for participating in MASPOK (abbreviation for MASovni POKret - Mass Movement) in 1971: What good are the celebrations when Croatia is fast disintegrating? What is the point of celebrating the past when the mortuaries are full of the dismal present... I am saddened at the fact that our celebration is short of the presence of Sime Djodan (former Croatian defence minister) and dr. Franjo Tudjman owing to our internal divisions. Has power divided us up to such an extent that we can not celebrate even our past brotherhood together... But at least the time has now come when we can no longer take sides, since we are confronted with the "other side" which doesn't let us breathe, make love, have children, the side which is like vociferous beasts tearing not the parts of our homeland, but of our unborn children. This is no time for words since after I visited Lipik which is no more, after I've seen the disintegrating corpses which our men are now collecting in the woods, our differences are bound to be negligible. Only the Croatia according to our criteria will win, and not the one where we will be the criteria. If an individual puts himself as the criteria for Croatia, then he becomes a killer.

MARKO VESELICA, the Croatian Democratic Party member, convicted to nearly ten years of prison for his political activities:

The Great Serbian, unitarian, military, bolshevik and dogmatic bloc in Croatia and in Yugoslavia as a whole has tried to thwart the progress of the Croatian democratic movement using all sorts of lies and tricks to disqualify it. Josip Broz Tito headed that bloc...

It is believed that criminal charges were brought against around two thousand people because of their involvement in the "Croatian Spring", and another several thousand were tried for minor offenses. Around a hundred thousand were persecuted in various ways, which is an extortionate figure for such a small nation. Croatia was turned into a concentration camp or, rather, into an Orwellian animal farm with the aim to destroy every idea of freedom and independence of the Croatian people.

We were supposed to become physical, spiritual, moral and political cripples which everyone would recoil from. The main instrument of the bolshevik Serbian regime with regards to the Croatian prison inmates, or the prisoners of conscience, was fear as a means of creating paranoia in the Croatian population. But it is precisely in prisons that most of us discovered our love for our homeland and the cross which it has to bear. We have come to know that the position of Croatia has been questioned from the moment the Croatian people inhabited these parts and that its most deserving sons and the nation as a whole are destined to fight for it. I think that the pain which Croatia has experienced was something most precious and beautiful which I had witnessed in my entire life and that suffering that pain is not a tragedy but a service to Croatia and the giving of oneself to its present and its future. I realized that as a mere mortal I would sooner or later have to leave Earth, but that my homeland, governed by its genius and bathed in blood and tears, will never disappear. This is why I have experienced the utmost joy in prison, when I realized that I can sacrifice myself to that future and that along with others, I can try to become a part of that eternal Croatia. The prison experience is forcing us, the Croatian convicts to stand up to any repression, neo-bolshevism and manipulation which seeks to establish itself within certain agents of the new Croatian government in the name of Croatian unity and its higher interests. Only the democratic Croatia can defeat the Great Serbian, Asian, neo-bolshevik, genocide strategy which wishes to destroy the Croatian people completely.