An Old Man's Dream

Before they pose their questions to Franjo Tudjman, journalists are given instructions by the Croatian President's chief of protocol. They are, among other things, warned at what distance from the president they should sit, as well as who may sit at the main table and who must stand at a prescribed distance. The master of ceremonies recently criticized a British radio team for coming with only two small cassette players, and not with the obviously expected more impressive quantity of equipment which would correspond to the importance of the figure being interviewed.

The endless vanity of the first president of the independent state of Croatia offers equally vast opportunities for political cathartic mockery. Perhaps precisely because of his way of smiling, the president is lately mostly taken deadly seriously. "A man freezes in his presence," one US diplomat summed up his impressions.

The dream, allegedly a thousand years old, of a state of Croatia has turned into an icy nightmare, with Tudjman in the main role. Like Alice in Wonderland, the people of Croatia and other parts of Yugoslavia are caught in the new reality in which everything that had been recognizable and harmless until yesterday, is now grotesquely transformed and frequently lethal.

In this distorted reality, Tudjman, like his Belgrade colleague, is on his own turf. They created it. Both, as New York journalist John Newhouse put it, "belong to a time best forgotten." Therefore, the American journalist adds, the world was for a long time prepared to underestimate them, and is now terrified because the break-up of Yugoslavia has turned out to be a "threat to any semblance of a coherent world order after the Cold War."

Describing Zagreb, as he could just as well have been describing Belgrade, Christopher Hitchens, another American journalist noticed all around him "ancient signs, totems, feudal coats of arms, talismans, oaths, rituals, icons and kitsch." He recognized in this "a society long sunk into political stagnation, but nevertheless one which had stepped well into the modern era, in convulsions: throwing up large rancid pieces of undigested barbarism." He mentions an atmosphere of the thirties when "sadism had the approval of the state."

Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic have succeeded in turning the "forgotten times" into the present. Belgrade students remarked the "stench of death" in Milosevic's presence; this is the same "freezing" the American diplomat felt near Tudjman.

The fact that Tudjman now gladly signs agreements with his "natural enemy" completely fits in with the rules of the existence of that overturned and deathly world. The agreements in Geneva are for him stops on the way to achieving the "national goal," to which he actually gives form just as he negotiates. When, in alliance with the other Yugoslav national leaders, he began to destroy the state order that he found, there was no way he could have known what would arise from it in the end . National movements such as his can describe the future only with the help of the hazy dictionary of the ideologized past. From this arose the demands for national states in their "historical boundaries." To demand the re-establishing of something which had allegedly once existed, for example onetime ethnic boundaries, leads directly into the destruction of the present.

During the entire duration of the Serbian-Croatian war, the leaders in Belgrade and Zagreb maintained contacts at the Brussels and other conferences. Both knew that in that war, no-one could be defeated to such an extent as to sign a capitulation, nor be so superior as to dictate conditions. This would not have been permitted by other countries either since it would be a bad example for other post-communists. Peace, even at the end of a years'-long third Balkan war, will be established by a treaty whose writing began at the same moment when the first man was killed in this war. The slaughterhouse in Bosnia and attempts to cheat at the green table are parts of the same action.

It is highly unlikely, as Zagreb journalist Marinko Culic said, that Tudjman "compensates for the holes in internal policy... with the ambitiousness of his foreign policy." (By foreign policy, this journalist implies contacts with Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia.) Because, like other national politicians whose ideology is rooted in "the time of the intolerant," as Andrej Mitrovic described the rise of fascism in Europe, Tudjman is not interested in prosaic matters such as inflation, standard of living, or a state ruled by law. Daily life is the core of internal policy which the leaders are leaving to insignificant figures. "We are a democratic country, we have freedom of the press and the state of democracy here is quite good," Tudjman recently told the BBC with indifference.

The cocktail comprising nation, territory and history is the adrenaline for over-aged hearts with a by-pass. The "great " meetings in Geneva, the spectacular airport statements to the press, the attention of the world media - that is the stage on which national leaders play history. Regular handshaking with Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic at this moment helps Tudjman in pushing into temporary oblivion the concern expressed by Slobodna Dalmacija commentator: "The question of how to return 'temporarily lost' territory from the rounded off territory of greater Serbia always crops up as a cancerous wound of Croatia's strategy."

Tudjman negotiates with the Serbian side because he knows that the international community expects this of him and that without its support he cannot preserve even that which has been achieved so far. Perhaps one day the North Atlantic alliance may even actually pose an ultimatum to the Krajina people that they submit to the Croatian state. More probably it will not.

Tudjman is faced with two dilemmas here. The first is whether the "world," just as it had at one stage given up defending Yugoslavia's unity, will write off the idea of Bosnia as an independent state and so leave the president of Croatia empty handed if he gives up the "Croatian" part of Herzegovina. The second is that this same departure from earlier stands be applied on Croatia itself if territories are needed for bartering for Kosovo. The answer can only be found through negotiations with the "enemy" under the auspices of the international community.

CIA reports put the figure of Croatian soldiers fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina at 26,000. Since the killing in Croatia has stopped, many in the west are more closely scrutinizing the "young democracy" in that state. The European, a paper which had for a long time nurtured open sympathies for the authorities in Zagreb, on October 15 wrote: "Serbia is run by terrorists and thieves. Croatia has the same, but in a somewhat prettier packing." But packing is not lasting.

Democracy will be conceived in Croatia only when the Croats become aware that the dictatorial nationalistic order is doing precisely what it constantly claims to be defending the nation from: threatening its "biological" survival. Proof of this is precisely what is happening in Serbia: the war has made many of the best and most intelligent flee and the quarantine in which it has found itself threatens to separate it for a long time from the human community.

However, as long a Croatia is exposed to the "threat from the East," as long as it does not understand that the first and most dangerous "aggressor" in the war were the authorities which the crazed citizens of Serbia and Croatia elected for themselves, it will live in the tearful dream of itself as the "victim."

The condition for Serbia and Croatia to become civilized again is for any kind of peace to be concluded between them. That can at this moment only be done by their national leaders. The oldies Tudjman and Cosic are welcome to each other as negotiators because they are even prepared to make certain concessions so that they may live to see that everything they have done has an end.

If, however, they sign an agreement on peace or at least a lasting cease-fire, what should ensue is the awakening of society from national-chauvinistic unconsciousness. The agreement of the national leaders to stop the war is the pre-condition for overthrowing them. Therefore the elections in Serbia will also mark the beginning of changes in Croatia.