THE LONG ROAD TO COMMUNISM
Croatia 's new government is purging the opposition with the blessing of the EU and the USA, observes John Laughland
ACCORDING to one of those mournful little jokes which used to do the rounds in Eastern Europe before 1990, the definition of communism is that it is the longest and most difficult route from capitalism to capi- talism. The joke was exactly wrong. After a decade of reform, it is now becoming clear instead that the so-called 'capitalism' that has been so eagerly foisted on these coun- tries by Western governments is in fact the longest and most difficult route from com- munism to communism.
Take the case of Croatia, where the wheel is now turning full circle. The parliamentary and presidential elections in January and February of this year have brought to power a prime minister, Ivica Racan, who is the former ideology secretary of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, and a president, Stipe Mesic, who was the last president of com- munist Yugoslavia in 1991. Although rivals, these two men have together succeeded in dislodging from power the Croatian Demo- cratic Union (HDZ), the party which led the country to the first national independence it has enjoyed since the 12th century.
Because the European Union and the United States are themselves convinced that independent nationhood and state sovereignty are evil principles which must be suppressed, the election of these old internationalists has been greeted with euphoria in Western chancelleries. By con- trast, the HDZ's leader, the late president Franjo Tudjman, was so hated in the West for his so-called nationalism that his funer- al in December was massively boycotted by Western leaders. The only statesmen of note who sent the proper messages of con- dolence were Slobodan Milosevic and Mar- garet Thatcher.
In true communist fashion, Tudjman's opponents have devoted the last decade to calling their enemies fascists. The late pres- ident was regularly attacked as a dictator who wielded total control over the coun- try's media. In reality, all but a couple of newspapers and the main television news programme were his virulent opponents. Consequently, Croatia's new leaders have lost little time in purging these last out- posts of the old regime. In the name of democracy and human rights, all the media will henceforth be sympathetic to the new government, a process of Gleichschaltung which is being cheered on by the West.
The first move was to sack the editor of the country's leading daily broadsheet, Vjes- nik. A new, pro-Yugoslav editor has been appointed in his place, a man who writes for the Belgrade daily Mn, and who is also the author of a profitable little line in porno- graphic novels. Prominent pro-Croat and anti-communist columnists have also been dismissed. Now, the only newspapers even partially in opposition are the nationally dis- tributed Slobodna Dalmacija and the small Zagreb cultural weekly Htvatsko Slovo. It is widely expected that the editor of the for- mer will be removed within the month.
Most important, the chief executive of Croatian Television (HRT) was sacked on Monday. Although it is true that the main news programme under Tudjman was def- erential to the president and the govern- ment, political discussion programmes were free. With the new regime at national television, the last pro-HDZ and pro-inde- pendence voices in the country will now be extinguished. Meanwhile, the dominant anti-1113Z media, which is in the habit of describing its opponents as 'shits', is indulging in an orgy of increasingly fantas- tical allegations about the corruption of the outgoing regime.
At the same time, widespread dismissals and internal putsches are taking place across the country's other national institu- tions. Victims to date include the head of the national electricity company; the head of the country's largest oil company; and the entire Zagreb city council, which was summarily dissolved last week. The foreign minister has announced that 75 per cent of the country's ambassadors are to go. The 'Yes, I'm held up.' head of the Institute for Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb now fears that his institute may be closed down. Even the head of the main soccer team in Zagreb was given the chop at the weekend. In the words of Branimir Luksic, the HDZ governor of Dal- matia, 'There is a deep desire for revenge and there are many backs to be scratched. These people will never forgive us for hav- ing toppled communism and Yugoslavia.'
Certainly, the European Union shows no sign of forgiving the HDZ for this. A com- pliant, pro-integrationist government in Zagreb is a key piece in the jigsaw the EU is painfully trying to assemble in south-eastern Europe. The EU's plan involves the creation of a new super-Yugoslavia — including all the former Yugoslav republics, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania — an entity which goes under the cumbersome name of the 'Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe'.
Acceptance of this plan is a condition for becoming a candidate for EU membership.
That is why, within weeks of his election, the first trips abroad by the new Croat president have all been to the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedo- nia, while Robin Cook and Chris Patten have both made trips to Zagreb. And, if the promises are to be believed, Croatia is to be admitted to Nato quicker than you can say George Robertson.
In the EU think-piece that gave rise to the pact, the EU's game-plan for Croatia was explicitly described as 'political normal- isation by January 2000' — the very vocabu- lary Leonid Brezhnev used to describe the reassertion of Soviet power over the rene- gade regime in Prague in 1968. Indeed, the EU specifically referred to 'the Slovak model' for Croatia, but it meant 1998 not 1968. In Slovakia, as in Croatia, the archi- tect of national independence, Vladimir Meciar, was unseated after a long Western- sponsored campaign of vilification against him. And, as in Croatia, a senior old com- munist, Rudolf Schuster — a man who recently accepted a bottle of 'Stalin's Tears' vodka from his erstwhile comrades in the Communist party of Slovakia and who declared afterwards, 'I am proud of what I did in the old regime' — has been shoed in to take his place.
So prospects of European integration became instantly rosier in both countries.
After all, European Union politicians find it easier to deal with bureaucratically minded internationalists like themselves than with outdated old fogeys who believe in things like state sovereignty and national identity. For ordinary Croats, by contrast, the sad irony is that they support the process of European integration because they believe it will take them out of the Balkans and into Europe. Little do they realise that the European Union to which they aspire bears an uncanny resemblance to the old commu- nist Yugoslavia from which they have just escaped, and that the ideals for which they fought the war are as unpopular in Brussels as they were in Belgrade.
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