Difference between revisions of "User talk:Peter Z./Notes on the former Yugoslavia"

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The former ''Balkan'' State '''Yugoslavia''' is indeed a complex affair. Since the fall of the ''Berlin Wall'' evidence has emerged that portrays this country in totally different light.  
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The former ''Balkan'' State '''Yugoslavia''' is indeed a complex affair. Since the fall of the ''Berlin Wall'' evidence has emerged that portrays this country in a totally different light.  
  
 
The region has had a truly tragic history since the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918.
 
The region has had a truly tragic history since the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918.
 
* Parliamentary assassination of  Stjepan Radic in Belgrade (1928)
 
* Parliamentary assassination of  Stjepan Radic in Belgrade (1928)
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* The Jasenovac concentration camp of World War Two
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* The Jasenovac concentration camp <ref>[http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/yugoslavia  www.enotes.com "Yugoslavia." Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah L. Shelton. Gale Cengage, 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 26 Jun, 2010 ] Yugoslavia: Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity-Mark Thompson. </ref> of [[World War Two]]
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* Bleiburg, Way of the Cross and Foibe massacres (1945/46)
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* Way of the Cross,<ref>[http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=27516&lang=en Hrcak Portal of Scientific Journals of Croatia] by Mr Dizdar's Scientific Journal:
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* An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross. This paper dedicated to the 60th anniversary of these tragic events represents a small step towards the elaboration of known data and brings a list of yet unknown and unpublished original documents, mostly belonging to the '''Yugoslavian Military''' and Political Government 1945-1947. Amongst those documents are those mostly relating to Croatian territory although a majority of concentration camps and execution sites were outside of Croatia, in other parts of Yugoslavia. The author hopes that the readers will receive a complete picture about events related to ''Bleiburg'' and the ''Way of The Cross'' and the suffering of numerous Croats, which is confirmed directly in many documents and is related to the execution of a person or a whole group of people and sometimes non-stop for days.</ref> Bleiburg and Foibe massacres (1945/46)
 
* Srebrenica massacre of the early 1990s during the Bosnia  War (1992–1995)
 
* Srebrenica massacre of the early 1990s during the Bosnia  War (1992–1995)
  
 
'''Dictatorships''':
 
'''Dictatorships''':
 
* King Alexander I
 
* King Alexander I
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* Josip Broz Tito
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* [[ Directory talk:Josip Broz Tito|Dictator Josip Broz Tito]]
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----
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{{GKAdBrite}}
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== Croatia and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia==
  
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==Statement on Wikipedia==
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Croatia and the ''Communist Party of Yugoslavia'' is a subject that is not on today’s Western Scholars minds, at all. Yet the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had a profound effect on the region. So much so that it’s created today’s political and cultural scene.
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While visiting the '''Croatia''' coast (Dalmatia) of the Adriatic Sea, western journalists usually admire her ancient towns. They notice almost everywhere that the regional architecture is “heavily influenced” by a “Venetian” flavour. Years ago, a famous chef posing in front of a XVI century Dalmatian building for a documentary, claimed that its architecture was “quintessentially Croatian“. In the past, certain Western writers were almost convinced (and disgusted) that Croatians “imitated” Venetian and Italian Renaissance architecture in building Dalmatian towns. Today, Croatian and international tourist guides are presenting the rich artistic patrimony of Dalmatian coastal towns as essentially “Croatian” or “a reflection of Croatia‘s history“. They almost never mention the autochthonous Italians (about 80.000 in 1800s) who lived there since Roman times and who built those architectural jewels before disappearing in modern times. Where did they go? Almost all of them became refugees. They were the victims of the first ethnic cleansing documented in the Balkans.  
 
  
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The history of Dalmatia is compromised by strategic interests and political correctness. The current ignorance about the eastern Adriatic coast is appalling and widespread. It is, in short, the consequence of a “damnatio memoriae” of political nature. On one side, in the West nobody knows the real history of the region. On the other side, ”’today a phalanx of nationalistic Croatian historians, political leaders, journalists and tourist operators, profiting from this vacuum are erasing, falsifying and misappropriating the real history on an international level using books, newspapers, tourist propaganda and Internet sites”’.  
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The events of post ''World War Two'' are of Biblical proportion. As stated by Joze Dezman<ref>[http://internationallawobserver.eu/2009/06/22/responding-to-post-second-world-war-totalitarian-crimes-in-slovenia/ International Law Observer] Responding to post-Second World War totalitarian crimes in Slovenia
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Posted on June 22, 2009 by Jernej Letnar Cernic</ref> a noted Slovenian Historian (Slovenia a former republic of Yugoslavia).
  
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=== The the late 1800’s. ===
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:'"Killing civilians and prisoners of was ''after'' [[Second World War]] is the greatest massacre of unarmed people of all times in [[Slovenia|Slovenian]] territory. Compared to Europe, the Yugoslav [[Communists|communist]] massacres after the Second World War are probably right after the Stalinist purges and the Great Famine in the Ukraine. The number of those killed in Slovenia in spring of 1945 can now be estimated at more than '''100,000''', Slovenia was the biggest post- War killing site in Europe. It was a mixture of events, when in Slovenia there are retreating German units, collaborator units, units of Independent State of Croatia, Chetniks and Balkan civilians; more than 15,000 Slovenia inhabitants were murdered as well. Because of its brevity, number of casualties, way of execution and massiveness, it is an event that can be compared to the greatest crimes of Communism and National Socialism."''
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Today’s Croatian coastline in the second half of the 1800’s Towns had Italian names:
 
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*Zadar-Zara
 
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*Split-Spalato
 
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*Sibenik-Sebenico
 
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*Trogir-Trau
 
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*Dubrovnik-Ragusa
 
  
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They had [[Italy|Italian]] communities in a dominant position and a cosmopolitan population (of Croatian, Serbian, Albanian, Greek & Jewish origin). Everybody spoke Italian and Venetian dialect, the “lingua franca” of the time.
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'''The''' events were best documented in the European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" held in Brussels in April 2008. The commission was mainly the work of Brussels [[European Union]] and the [[Slovenia|Government of Slovenia]].
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== Totalitarian Political System of the Former Yugoslavia ==
  
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'''Helped''' by the [[Austria|Austrian]] government (then all Eastern Adriatic coastline was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Croatians launched a political campaign against the “Italian Dalmatia” to annex the territory. Since the beginning it was an integral part of the political national aspirations of Croatians struggling to form their own state. It continued to be so during the turbulent formation of the first, monarchic, Yugoslavia, when Croatia accepted willy-nilly the Serbian domination. The Serbs and the Croatians continued the assault, violent, almost a civil war-against all Dalmatian towns inhabited by ethnic Italians.  
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'''Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy''' by Carl Joachim Friedrich & Zbigniew Brzezinski:
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{{Cquote|Characteristics of a '''totalitarian regime'''; a total ideology, a single mass party, a terrorist secret police, a monopoly of mass communication, all instruments to wage combat are in the control of the same hands, and a centrally directed planned economy. Totalitarian dictatorships emerge after the seizure of power by the leaders of a movement who have developed support for an ideology. The point when the government becomes totalitarian is when the leadership uses open and legal violence to maintain its control. The dictator demands unanimous devotion from the people and often uses a real or imaginary enemy to create a threat so the people rally around him.}}
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===Former Yugoslavia===
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* Total '''ideology''': Communism & Titoism
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* A '''single''' mass party: Communist Part of Yugoslavia (''or'' League of Communists of Yugoslavia)
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* Terrorist '''secret police''': UDBA and OZNA
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* '''Monopoly''' of mass communication: Mass communication were all placed under '''heavy censorship''' of the Yugoslav Communist State. 
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* Directed '''planned economy''':Communist Part of Yugoslavia controlled the economy.
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* Leaders of a movement who have '''developed support''' for an ideology: Titoism & Josip Broz Tito (the great leader)
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* Leadership uses open and''' legal violence''' to maintain its control:Notorious Bleiburg massacre, Way of the Cross massacres and the Foibe massacres. Ethnic cleansing of Germans, Hungarians and Italians.  Communist concentration and work camps. Prison gulags: Goli Otok (Barren Island),KPH Zenica, Stare Gradiska and Sveti Grgur.
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* Demands '''unanimous devotion''' from the people:[[Directory:Josip Broz Tito|Dictator Josip Broz Tito]] was the main subject. Images, monuments, towns, street names, endless awards were given and a never ending production of books, films and poetry were created.
  
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Following a first exodus toward the end of the 1800s, in 1905 in Rome a ''Dalmatian Italian Association'' to help the refugees was founded. Then, after [[World War I|World War One]] tens of thousands of Dalmatian Italians abandoned their towns and villages in 1920-1930s and settled on Italian territory. During [[World War Two]] a third and final exodus.
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===European public hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”& former Yugoslavia"===
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===Yugoslav Communist===
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* '''Reports''' and proceedings of the 8th of April European public hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the [[European Union]] (January–June 2008) and the European Commission, stated the following: Totalitarian machines
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The winning [[Communists|Communist]] movement embraced the Croatian’s irredentist cause and included it in its war strategy and national political platform. The consequence was the violent expulsion of  Italian<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=RWZLZaxPUXQC&pg=PA17&dq=Communist+Retaliation+and+Persecution+on+Yugoslav+Territory+During+and+After+germans&lr=lang_en&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=true Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After WWII Dr. Ph. Michael Portmann] -The following article deals with repressive measures undertaken by communist-dominated Partisan forces during and especially after WWII in order to take revenge on former enemies, to punish collaborators, and “people’s enemies“ and to decimate and eliminate the potential of opponents to a new, socialist Yugoslavia. The text represents a summary of a master thesis referring to the above-mentioned topic written and accepted at '''Vienna University''' in 2002.</ref><ref>[http://books.google.be/books?id=hhD0R8DBr_UC&pg=PA89&vq=trieste&dq=%22In+Opicina,+after+a+bomb&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0 A Tragedy Revealed''] The Story of the Italian Population of Istria & Dalmatia by Arrigo Petacco & Konrad Eisenbichler. Page 89</ref> speaking autochthonous inhabitants from the entire Eastern Adriatic coastline - from the southern Dalmatia to the Istrian peninsula - and the consequential erasing of two millennia of a very rich civilisation. Ethnic cleansing had happened in many parts of Europe in both old and modern times, so the demographic and cultural extirpation of Italian presence in Dalmatia, the Quarnero region and Istria is not really a new phenomena. But this slow, brutal and in 1945 also military operation had an unexpected development, something very peculiar. After erasing almost all the Italian speaking population in Dalmatia proper, without succeeding completely in the Quarner region and Istria, [[Titoism and Totalitarianism|Communist Yugoslavia]] adapted a new form of genocide: the stealing of the “enemy’s” history in order to obliterate his memory and aggrandise the country. Completely ignored in the West, this skulduggery is a new Pandora’s box-Balkan style.  
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Let us mention briefly Fascism, National Socialism and''' Titoism''' in Italy, Austria and Slovenia (a former republic of Yugoslavia). Three Christian nations, with nationalist tendencies, were infected with totalitarianism. The descent into barbarism has comparable structural elements: <ref>[http://www.mp.gov.si/fileadmin/mp.gov.si/pageuploads/2005/PDF/publikacije/Crimes_committed_by_Totalitarian_Regimes.pdf European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes"] Reports and proceedings of the 8 April European public hearing on “Crimes committed
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by totalitarian regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of  
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the [[European Union]] (January–June 2008) and the European Commission.  
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'''Page 197'''. Joze Dezman:
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COMMUNIST REPRESSION AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN SLOVENIA 
  
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[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia Croatia], a country of about 4 million inhabitants, has “nationalised” the history of her Adriatic coastline, a territory that had never been part of the Slavic hinterland, historically, politically and culturally. In order to totally “Croatianize“ the coastal territories, the country is manipulating their history and striving to “show” the world that Dalmatia, the Quarner region and Istria have “always” been Croatian. There is no actual political contingency to justify this operation: the old Italian irredentism ended up definitely in the dustbin of the history, and no other countries - except for [[Slovenia]] - have pressing territorial ambitions toward Croatia. Never methodically investigated, nobody knows how and when these history misappropriations started. In 1858-60 Ivan Kukuljevic Sakcinski, who belonged to Croatian nobility, published his “Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih”, an encyclopaedic dictionary of Slav artists (then, Croatia was under [[Hungary|Hungarians]] domination and Yugoslavia was still a dream). In this book among Slavic artists you can find the painter Vittore Carpaccio - born in Venice, 1460/65 ca. - 1525/26 ca. - only because Carpaccio used to create religious paintings commissioned by churches in Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia. Kukuljevic Sakcinski, a hot-headed nationalist, “opined” that the artist’s last name derived from a Croatian root: “Krpaci, Skrpaci or Krpatici”.
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'''Additional chapter''': COMMUNIST REPRESSION Of “INTERIOR ENEMIES” IN SLOVENIA
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*In the greater part of this paper, the author deals with individual repressive measures that Communist rule imposed in Slovenia in the period from the end of the war in 1945 until the beginning of the 1950s. In this period, the Communist authorities in Slovenia implemented all the forms of repression that were typical of states with Stalinist regimes. In Slovenia, it was a time of mass killings without court trials, and of concentration and labour camps.  
  
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=== Republic of Ragusa ===
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*Property was confiscated, inhabitants were expelled from Slovenia/Yugoslavia and their residences, political and show trials were carried out, religion was repressed and the Catholic Church and its clergy were persecuted. At the beginning of the 1950s, Communist rule in Slovenia abandoned these forms of repression but was ready to reapply them if it felt threatened.
  
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Take for example the history of the '''Republic of Ragusa''', (officially the city is known as Dubrovnik only from 1919 on). Ragusa has been an independent republic governed since the Middle Ages by a Latin/Illyrian families. When it was abolished in 1808 by the Napoleonic army, the small but influential and immensely rich maritime republic left a gigantic archive in which all government documents were written, first in Latin, then in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatian_language Dalmatian] and finally in modern Italian (the Republic had an office in charge of translations from Slavic vernacular). In the daily business of the government and in diplomacy - Ragusa had over 80 consulates in every major European and Middle Eastern city -, the official language of the small republic was Italian. Furthermore, The Republic of Ragusa is remembered as ”The fifth Maritime Republic of Italy” (with Venice, Pisa, Amalfi and Genoa). For centuries, the well-to-do Ragusan families sent their children to study in the Italian universities. Across the Adriatic sea, Ragusans had daily contacts with Italy. The celebrated libraries of Ragusa were full of Italian editions of every kind, but no books printed in Slavic languages. Today in some Croatian history books the real history of Ragusa disappears almost completely.
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*Thus the regime set up political and show trials against certain more visible opponents later. In the case of an “emergency situation”, even the establishment of concentration camps was planned in Slovenia in 1968, where around 1,000 persons, of whom 10 % were women, would be interned for political reasons''. '''Page 161'''
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</ref>
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*Abuse of national sentiment to carry out racial and class revolutionary projects;
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*Cult of a great leader, who permits his fanatics to murder, steal and lie;
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*Dictatorship of one party;
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*Militarisation of society, police state – almighty secret political police;
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*Collectivism, subjection of the citizen to the totalitarian state;
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*State terrorism with systematic abuses of basic human rights;
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*Aggressive assumption of power and struggle for territory. (page 197.)
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===Wikipedia & former Yugoslavia===
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This is funny, Wikipedia states:
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* "The post-World War II Yugoslavia was in many respects a model [citation needed] of how to build a multinational state."
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*"The ethnic violence was only ended [citation needed] when the multiethnic Yugoslav Partisans took over the country at the end of the war and banned nationalism from being publicly promoted. "
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* "Most notable of the victories against the occupying forces were the battles of Neretva and Sutjeska."
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''Editor's notes'': Victories?
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* "Yugoslavia solved the national issue of nations and nationalities (national minorities) in a way that all nations and nationalities had the same rights."
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''Editor's notes'':  Thru the Way of the Cross, Bleiburg and Foibe massacres (1945/46)
  
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The historians maintain that Dubrovnik ''“is an important page of the history of Croatia”'', although Ragusa had only commercial liaisons with a Croatian territory that has not been a state for nine centuries. They repeat obsessively that the maritime republic was Croatian “almost since the beginning of her history”, that her merchant fleet was completely Croatian. Every family of the town’s aristocracy - Basilio, Cerva, Ghetaldi, Luccari, Menze, etc. - is given arbitrarily “the equivalent Croatian name“. All Ragusan state institutions are receiving Croatian denominations; all monasteries in town are presented as “Croatian”, although the clergy was Italian. You find all these misappropriations in [[Wikipedia]] “the free encyclopaedia” site, where the authors (clearly Croats) are demonstrating how grotesque are their pretensions when, at a certain point, they report the list of Ragusan senators who attended the last session of their Greater Council, the one in which it was announced that the glorious republic was dissolved (29th of August 1814): of a little over forty incontestable Italian names of the senators, only one is of Croatian origin: Marino Domenico, count of Zlatarich.  
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'''Now''' thanks to the Internet, this pseudo historical perspective that once was only know to Tito's Yugoslavia, has gone World Wide. This is truly disturbing because the former communist Yugoslavia encompassed peoples descendant of the Roman Empire, Republic of Venice, Croatia, [[Slovenia]], Serbia, Bosnia and so and so forth.
  
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In 2006, with his book “Dubrovnik - A history” published in England and sold in every English speaking country, the British author did an unwanted favour to the extremely voracious Croatian nationalistic historiography. Using only Croatian sources and materials, he wrote an essentially extremely nationalistic Croatian book in English language. Explaining his readers the mystery of place, institutions and personal Italian names translated into Croatian, he wrote: “I have used the Slavic form throughout, simply because that is the one most commonly found in the historiography” (obviously Croatian). “No other significance - he pointed out - is implied”. And with this elegant explanation, the deontology of the historian took a vacation. A “patriotic mission”.  
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''Editors Notes'': Well, one could say, what would you expect from a Totalitarian political system? It needs to do historical re-writes. Part of its existence is based on falsehoods. It's the nature of the beast. Now I'm not saying it's all pseudo historical but sections of it would have to be. The regime had to justify its existence. I suspect it's all derived from 19-century thinking, i.e., Marxism combined with extreme Nationalism & Darwinism. The theory of Evolution incorporated into history of Civilisation. It is based on the Great Union of Southern Slavs combined with Communism's grand plan for its people to evolve into a superior society (and a superior man) as a whole.
  
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Some Croatian historians and researchers are a legion of agit-props engaged in the “patriotic mission” of promoting the grandeur of their homeland. Their patriotism obeys to a categorical imperative: the country comes first, at any cost, even lying. They “Croatianize“ '''everybody''' and '''everything'''. Literally hundreds of public figures, artists, scientists, and academics - Italian Dalmatia had in XIX century 32 newspapers and periodicals, a rich history, an incredible artistic, academic and literary life, and glorious maritime traditions - today are mentioned as “Croatian“.  
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Yugoslavia had it all. Kids were all educated in this way and taught to '''love''' the ''great leader''. I'm not making this up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUZx70JDseU&feature=related
  
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In 1998, writing for “The Atlantic” magazine''' Robert D. Kaplan''' (author of influential “Balkan Ghosts”) seemed to be the first American essayist to reveal the truth about the suppression of the Italian past of Ragusa by Croatia (and by extension of Dalmatia). ''“A nasty, tribal principality, he wrote - who are attempting to transform, in the old Republic, its character subtly from that of a sensuous, cosmopolitan mélange into a sterile, nationalistic uniformity”''. Of the original Italian speaking population of the town only about 40 individuals survived the ethnic cleansing. Unnoticed by academic authorities in the West, an implacable (first Panslavistic, then Pan Croat) “nationalisation” of non-Croatian history continued for decades in a dramatic crescendo.
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Communist Yugoslavia ( & the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) has gotten off lightly when it comes to history. I would love to get my hands on scholarly works prior to 1945/46 and compare notes to what was written afterwards.  
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I'm not alone in these matters, there are others who share my view.
  
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In the last half century it reached epidemic proportions:
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== Hague ==
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*Andrea Antico, born in Motovun (Montona) in Istria, a composer and music publisher of the 1500s (he is studied in every music school of this globe), was re-baptised Andrija Staric (or Starcevic)
 
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*The Renaissance painter Lorenzo De Boninis, born in Dubrovnik, is presented in Croatian history books and tourist guides as “Lovro Dobricevic”
 
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*Nicola Fiorentino, an Italian born XVI century architect active for decades in Dalmatia, becomes the fake Croat “Nikola Firentinac“.
 
  
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===Writers===
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Centre for History, Democracy and Reconciliation-Hague:
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'''Giovan Francesco Biondi''', a writer born in 1572 on the Dalmatian island of Hvar (Lesina) is introduced to the Western cybernauts as an improbable “Ivan Franc Biundovic”, although he was a diplomat (and maybe a spy) in the service of the Venetian Republic and with his three books is considered the first modern Italian novel writer. (The “super-patriotic” Croatians historians completely ignore the “Italian” aspects of his biography, reducing his creations to “an excellent history of the British civil wars while living in England” to be added to Croatian merits).  
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* Myths and stereotypes of communism and nationalism which are still alive in our region (former Yugoslavia). Some historians still use these myths and stereotypes in their scientific work. CHDR will encourage researchers on the project "Myths in politics and modern history" to challenge these controversial aspects of the past which have been repeatedly manipulated for political purposes.  
  
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The case of '''Francesco Patrizi''', a XVI century philosopher and scientist who was a teacher of “La Sapienza” university in Rome, is almost incredible. He became “Franjo Petric” (or “Petricevic”), that means a “Croat”, only because he was born on the island of  Cres (Cherso) in the Quarner gulf. Croatian academic and political circles are so proud of “Franjo Petric” that almost every year they are holding in Zagreb, the capital of the country, and on “Cres“, an academic symposium dedicated to this magnificent intellectual mind. Many years ago they published one of his books printed in Italy in 1500s. They took the original, ornate volume, translated it into modern Croatian language and published it presenting the book as an anastatic edition of the original, in order to demonstrate the high level of their national civilisation in the 1500s (when Croatian capital Zagreb was still a village and Croatians in toto were still an agricultural/pastoral population). But they made a mistake: they used the Croatian diacritic signs (“accents” on certain consonants) invented only in the middle of the 1800s. Another example is that of Pier Paolo Vergerio, a catholic bishop and an historical figure in the turbulent times of the Reformation. He lived in Capodistria, a small town on the Istrian peninsula. In a Croatian history book, written by a Croatian academic and published in the USA, the bishop is presented as “Petar Pavao Vergerije”, without pointing out that he was Italian, that the town of Capodistria never had anything to do with Croatia, never had a noticeable Slavic minority among her population and today is part of Slovenia.
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(Link: http://www.centerforhistory.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=37)
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''Additional'': There was some good academic work done during the Communist era ( & post Communist). Experience has taught me that these writings are usually hardish to obtain and the information is generally disregarded by hot headed nationalism or Neo-Communists.
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There is a Ragusan writer who, from 1909 up to today, underwent involuntarily to a name-change quiet a few times: Benko or Beno Kotruljevic, Kotruljic, Kotrulic or Kotrulj. Croatian historiographers do not care much in this regard. To them is important that this was “one of the first Croatian writers on scientific subjects”. “Croatian”, they repeated a hundred times in their essays on this historical figure. But that gentleman’s real name was '''Benedetto Cotrugli''' (or de Cotruglis). This is the way he signed his correspondence and also his famous book, ''“Della mercantura et del mercante perfetto.”'' one of the first manuals on merchandising, bookkeeping and “the good merchant”, published in '''Venice''' in 1573. This book is known in every university and a college with an Economy department. Cotrugli went to school and lived for all his adult life in Italy, serving as a diplomat the Kingdom of Naples and as director of the Mint in L‘Aquila. He never wrote anything in Croatian language. By the way, his book was published in Croatia only in 1963, five centuries after it was written. But he is considered “Croatian”. This kind of uncontrolled appetite is also directed toward classic antiquity.
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[[User:Peter Z.|Peter Z.]] 01:55, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
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== Media links ==
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* [http://www.sta.si/vest.php?s=a&id=1378327&pr=1Slovenian Press Agency:] Columnist Says Silence on Post-War Killings Needs to End (Interview). Ljubljana, 1 April (STA) - Alenka Puhar, an author who has written extensively about Slovenia's Communist past (a former republic of Yugoslavia), has told STA in an interview that post-WWII killings need to be examined and discussed. ''"We need to talk about it and live with it, with this pain,"'' she said.
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*[http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/croatian-pm-pays-tribute-controversial-war-victims-news-494055 EurActiv Network] Croatian PM pays tribute to controversial war victims (Croatia a former republic of Yugoslavia).
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====Slovenia 1945====
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----
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*[http://slovenia1945.org/ Slovenia 1945 Book Official Site] - Memories of Death and Survival.
  
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===Archaeology===
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(Selected as "Book of the Year" 2005 in the Times Literary Supplement by '''John Bayley''', literary critic, retired Oxford University Professor and widower of Iris Murdoch. The authors wrote to Prime Minister ''Tony Blair'' asking for Britain to make a gesture of regret to Slovenia for sending back the surrendered soldiers.)
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{{Cquote| ''Quote'' [http://www.marcusferrar.org/reviews.html ''link'']: ''This book tells how the British Army in [[Austria]] forcibly repatriated surrendered Slovene anti-Communist soldiers to their deaths in 1945. Authors John Corsellis and Marcus Ferrar appealed to the government for a British expression of regret to Slovenia. Sixty two MPs signed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling for this. Then British Foreign Secretary '''Jack Straw''' wrote personally to the authors, and the head of a '''U.K. Parliamentary''' delegation to Slovenia did subsequently express regret.''
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SLOVENIA 1945 – sample reviews:
  
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A reliable Croatian archaeologist, '''Josip Vlahovic''', studied a bas-relief in the Split Baptistery, portraying a Middle Ages king on the throne, with a crown on his head and holding a cross. At his side there is a figure, maybe a court official, and in front of him another figure prostrated on the floor. Examining the clothing, hairstyle and other details, Vlahovic concluded, honestly, that the bas-relief was ”most probably” created by a band of Longobards, who settled in Dalmatian interior in the VI century before moving out of the territory, in an uncertain period, and disappearing.  
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*It has contrived wholly to avoid all the clichés of the genre …it presents us with a range of individuals as vividly seen and as sharply characterised as the multifarious inhabitants of ''War and Peace'' or A Dance to the Music of Time – 'Book of the Year' choice by John Bayley, literary critic, Times Literary Supplement, December 2005
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*An accessible, engaging read – The Catholic Herald.
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*This excellent book …raises a number of questions of profound historical and moral interest – The Tablet.
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*Part of a healing process …it is inspiring – The Friend.
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*Promises to contribute to our collective understanding of a terrible period of European history. It is right …that we too remember the tragedy which befell the [[Slovenia|Slovene]] people – Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary.
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*A valuable contribution to upholding the common values Slovenia and [[Great Britain]] share as members of the [[European Union]] – Janez Jansa, Slovene Prime Minister
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*Impossible to put down – Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto.
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*A wealth of precise information and balanced judgments presented in a clear and pleasant style … a serious and objective work – Cardinal Franc Rode, Vatican
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*An exciting and moving read – Michael Nelson, former Gen Mgr, Reuters.}}
  
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According to '''Daria Garbin''', an archeologist living in Split, who wrote extensively about that Longobards,<ref> [http://books.google.com/books?id=GqUrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA146&dq=Longobards&client=safari&cd=2#v=onepage&q=Longobards&f=false The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful... ] Volume 14 By Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain)</ref> that the  bas-relief  king “could be” the Longobard Alaric. Finally, the elegant and rich book “Croatia in the Early Middle Ages - A cultural survey”, published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, printed in London in 1999, and distributed in all English speaking countries, is embellished by a magnificent, full-page picture of the same bas-relief. Beside the picture, there is the explanation: “Marble carving of a Croatian king (maybe Zvonimir)”. Here the Longobards do not receive any attention. One of the most frequent tricks in this “propagandistic history” is to find a couple of Croatian personalities and squeeze between them the Slavicized name of an Italian local personality in order to “demonstrate” that a Dalmatian town was, yes inhabited by “some” Italians, but was predominantly Croatian.  
+
== Displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia ==
 +
Displaced persons from former Yugoslavia: {{Cquote|Around 6,000 of these displaced persons from the former Italian region of Venezia Giulia (Istra) and Zara (Zadar) resettled in Australia with the assistance of the IRO. After transfer of Trieste to Italy in 1954, another several thousand Giuliani were assisted to migrate to Australia. While most were classed as Yugoslav residents and citizens, an estimated 5,000 were ethnic Italians from the cities of Fiume, Pola and Zara (Gardini 2004). Given the difficulty of ascertaining the ethnicity of displaced persons from the names and nationalities listed on official IRO documents, it is unclear how many displaced persons who identified as 'Italian' settled in Western Australia. What is clear is that the Istrian 'Italians' came from different backgrounds and had different motives for leaving their homes compared with other Italian assisted passage or sponsored migrants.<ref>[http://www.italianlives.arts.uwa.edu.au/stories/martini/background The University of Western Australia] (Italian Lives www.italianlives.arts.uwa.edu.au)</ref>}}
  
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Take for example Trogir, known for a millennia as the Italian Dalmatian town of Trau, incredibly rich in arts and architecture, and since 1997 protected by the '''UNESCO'''. On a Croatian Internet site you can notice that a humanist and writer from Trogir, Koriolan Cipiko, active in 1500s is sandwiched between two Croatian historical figures that had nothing to do with him nor Trogir. Here the intention is to ''“neutralised”'' completely that gentleman, whose real name was Coriolano Cippico, a member of an illustrious centuries old Dalmatian dynasty (of bishops, writers, philosophers, army and navy leaders, you name it) of Roman origin.
+
Taken from Wikipedia:
  
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Another Croatian site says that “during this period Italian citizens, until 1918 the ruling class and almost half part of the population, were forced to leave for Italy”. Forced by whom? The authors of the site cautiously don’t say it. In another Croatian site we find that in the same period Trogir had 16.000 inhabitants, that means that 8.000 were Italians. Today the Italians living in Trogir are only a handful. There are literally hundred of episodes and cases like these, in numerous Croatian history books and tourist guides published in English language and distributed in the West, and now also on Internet. Outright falsehoods, half-truths, tendentious presentations, patriotic rhetoric and grotesque nationalistic grandiosity are very common in them. This part of the Croatian academic world knows no limits in the national appetite for glory, veneration of patriotic heritage, and stealing of other people’s cultural icons to show off.
+
{{Cquote|
  
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===Marco Polo/Franz Joseph Haydn===
+
*Below-Croatisation of Italy's Julian March and Zadar
  
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Nowadays in Croatia (and through Internet in the United States also) they maintain that '''Marco Polo''' was born on Croatian island of Korcula <ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzola#History Wikipedia-Korcula History]</ref> ''(historically Curzola; up to 1920s the main town of the island was populated by an Italian majority)'' and that he was a Croat, not a Venetian, without any document to prove it.
+
Even with a predominant Croatian majority, [[Dalmatia]] retained relatively large [[Italian people|Italian communities]] in the coast (Italian majority in the cities and the islands, largest concentration in [[Istria]]). Italians in Dalmatia kept key political positions and Croatian majority had to make an enormous effort  to get Croatian language into schools and offices.  Most [[Dalmatian Italians]] gradually assimilated to the prevailing Croatian culture and language between the 1860s and World War I, although [[Italian language]] and culture remained present in Dalmatia. The community was granted minority rights in the [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]]; during the Italian occupation of Dalmatia in World War II, it was caught in the ethnic violence towards non-Italians during fascist repression: what remained of the community fled the area after World War II. <ref>Društvo književnika Hrvatske, ''[http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=JlYZTMOvNsaj_Qa_4MGSDA&ct=result&hl=it&id=mX9lAAAAMAAJ&dqs&q=Croatisation+after+World+War+II#search_anchor Bridge]'', Volume 1995, Nubers 9-10, Croatian literature series - Ministarstvo kulture, Croatian Writer's Association, 1989</ref>
  
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They also appropriate Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Tuscan explorer who is considered to be the first European to have discovered the bay of New York, in 1524 (decades before Henry Hudson). For this primacy his name was given to the spectacular modern bridge that connects Brooklyn with Staten Island. But now Verrazzano is proclaimed “Croat”. Why? Because while exploring the Eastern Atlantic coast going North, he used to give some Dalmatian names to certain territories and islands he discovered during his voyage. So Verrazzano becomes “Vranjanin or Vrancic”.  
+
The history took its turn: while from 1919. - 1945. Italian Fascists stated by the proclamation that all Croatian and other non-Italian surnames must be turned to Italian ones (which they had chosen for every surname, so ''Anić'' became ''Anetti'', ''Babačić Babetti'' etc.; 115.157 [[Croats]] and other non-Italians were forced to change their surname),<ref>Hrvoje Mezulić i Romano Jelić ''[http://www.vjesnik.hr/Pdf/2005%5C12%5C10%5C34A34.PDF]''  (croatian)]</ref> the Italian community of Istria and Dalmatia were forced to change their names to Croats and Yugoslav, during Tito's Yugoslavia.<ref>Nenad Vekarić, ''[http://books.google.com/books?ei=KFgZTNfzEpCL_Aau86X7Cw&ct=result&hl=it&id=711mAAAAMAAJ&dq=&q=%22Croatization+of+Italian+family+names%22#search_anchor Pelješki rodovi]'', Vol. 2, HAZU, 1996 - ISBN 9789531540322</ref><ref>Jasminka Udovički and James Ridgeway, [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GuGe9fy4raoC&pg=PA287&dq=croatization+against+italian+-wikipedia&hl=en&ei=kr8HTJqhAYOBOMOI5Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=world%20war%20italian%20croatization&f=false Burn this house: the making and unmaking of Yugoslavia]</ref>
  
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The same destiny is reserved to an Austrian composer, '''Franz Joseph Haydn''',<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn's_ethnicity Joseph Haydn's ethnicity]</ref> only because he was born (in 1723) in an Austrian region inhabited by a community of Croatian origins who settled there in VII century A.D. during barbarian invasions of Europe. Certain Croatian nationalistic historiographers are busy creating for their country the desolating fake image of a civilized and highly spiritual nation, using the heritage of a civilisation the country eradicated in the first historically documented, but still unknown, Balkan ethnic cleansing.  
+
The same happened - but with lower incidence -  with Italians in Istria and [[Fiume]] who were the majority of the population in most of the coastal areas in the first half of the 19th century, while at the beginning of World War I they numbered less than 50%.
  
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Today nobody is noticing and condemning this threatening phenomena. These charlatans with a master degree are doing a tremendous disservice first of all to their own country. They are also dangerous. In a region in the past tremendously violent and today with so many unsolved problems, this kind of piracy is very ominous and should be stopped.
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After World War II most of the Italians left Istria and the cities of Italian Dalmatia in the [[Istrian exodus|Istrian-Dalmatian exodus]].<ref>Several estimates of the Istrian-Julian exodus by historians:
 +
*[[Vladimir Žerjavić]] (Croat), 191,421 Italian exiles from Croatian territory.
 +
*Nevenka Troha (Slovene), 40,000 Italian and 3,000 Slovene exiles from Croatian and Slovenian territory.
 +
*Raoul Pupo (Italian), about 250,000 Italian exiles
 +
*Flaminio Rocchi (Italian), about 350,000 Italian exiles
 +
:The mixed Italian-Slovenian Historical Commission verified 27,000 Italian and 3,000 Slovene migrants from Croatian and Slovenian territory.</ref> The remaining Italians were forced to be assimilated culturally and even linguistically during [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s rule of communist Yugoslavia.<ref>Luciano Monzali, ''[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zHQtAQAAIAAJ&q=croatizzazione&dq=croatizzazione&hl=en&ei=wEz5S96lGsjI-Qas-L3gCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA Antonio Tacconi e la comunità italiana di Spalato]'', Società dalmata di storia patria.</ref><ref name = "Darovec">{{cite web | author=Darko Darovec | title=''THE PERIOD OF TOTALITARIAN RÉGIMES - The Reasons for the Exodus'' | url=http://www2.arnes.si/~mkralj/istra-history/index.html}}</ref> Following the exodus, the areas were settled and heavily croatized with Yugoslav people.<ref name = "Darovec"/><ref>Liliana Ferrari, ''[http://www.issrgo.it/Liliana%20Ferrari.pdf Essay on Raoul Pupo]'', pag. 5, Rizzoli, Gorizia 2005</ref> Economic insecurity, ethnic hatred and the international political context that eventually led to the [[Iron Curtain]] resulted in up to 350,000 people, mostly Italians, forced to leave the region. The ''London Memorandum'' (1954) gave the ethnic Italians the hard choice of either opting to leave (the so-called ''optants'') or staying. These exiles would have been to be given compensation for their loss of property and other indemnity by the Italian state under the terms of the peace treaties.Who opted to stay, had to suffer a slow but forced croatisation.<ref>Sabrina P. Ramet, ''[http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=kr8HTJqhAYOBOMOI5Ag&ct=result&id=fIFpAAAAMAAJ&dq=croatization+against+italian&q=croatization+against+italian#search_anchor Balkan babel: the disintegration of Yugoslavia from the death of Tito]'', Westview Press, 2002 «...and since the sixties, those of the rest of Croatia. The Istrian Democratic Party demanded autonomy for Istria, as a protection against "the forcible Croatization of Istria" and an imposition of a coarse and fanatical Croatism[...] Furio Radin argued that such autonomy was vital for the cultural protection of the Italian minority in Istria.»</ref>
 +
Some sporadic Croatization phenomena still took place in the last years of 20th century after Croatian Indipendency, despites many towns were declared bilingual by Croatian Law.<ref>[http://www.anvgd.it/da/200805.pdf «Pola, no to Italian chorus in St. Anthony church»]'' in "Difesa Adriatica" year XIV n.5 - may 2008</ref><ref>Alex J. Bellamy, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=T3PqrrnrE5EC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=&source=bl&ots=VJ2s2U3pKl&sig=ExR_YxwvDP2dvYhRdajsLvHZ1zo&hl=en&ei=ylMZTO_GGsulsQb8qZnHCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=croatisation%20istria&f=falseT he formation of Croatian national identity], Manchester University Press, 2003, ISBN 9780719065026</ref>}}
  
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*Preceding unsigned comment added  on Wikipedia ''by'' ''IP 200.112.16.153'' (28 December 2009)
 
 
== References ==
 
== References ==
 
<references/>
 
<references/>
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== External links ==
 
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* [http://www.sta.si/vest.php?s=a&id=1378327&pr=1Slovenian Press Agency:] Columnist Says Silence on Post-War Killings Needs to End (Interview). Ljubljana, 1 April (STA) - Alenka Puhar, an author who has written extensively about Slovenia's Communist past (a former republic of Yugoslavia), has told STA in an interview that post-WWII killings need to be examined and discussed. ''"We need to talk about it and live with it, with this pain,"'' she said.
 
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*[http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/croatian-pm-pays-tribute-controversial-war-victims-news-494055 EurActiv Network] Croatian PM pays tribute to controversial war victims (Croatia a former republic of Yugoslavia).
 

Latest revision as of 09:41, 21 July 2011

The former Balkan State Yugoslavia is indeed a complex affair. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall evidence has emerged that portrays this country in a totally different light.

The region has had a truly tragic history since the creation of Yugoslavia in 1918.

  • Parliamentary assassination of Stjepan Radic in Belgrade (1928)
  • The Jasenovac concentration camp [1] of World War Two
  • Way of the Cross,[2] Bleiburg and Foibe massacres (1945/46)
  • Srebrenica massacre of the early 1990s during the Bosnia War (1992–1995)

Dictatorships:


Croatia and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia

Croatia and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is a subject that is not on today’s Western Scholars minds, at all. Yet the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had a profound effect on the region. So much so that it’s created today’s political and cultural scene.

The events of post World War Two are of Biblical proportion. As stated by Joze Dezman[3] a noted Slovenian Historian (Slovenia a former republic of Yugoslavia).

'"Killing civilians and prisoners of was after Second World War is the greatest massacre of unarmed people of all times in Slovenian territory. Compared to Europe, the Yugoslav communist massacres after the Second World War are probably right after the Stalinist purges and the Great Famine in the Ukraine. The number of those killed in Slovenia in spring of 1945 can now be estimated at more than 100,000, Slovenia was the biggest post- War killing site in Europe. It was a mixture of events, when in Slovenia there are retreating German units, collaborator units, units of Independent State of Croatia, Chetniks and Balkan civilians; more than 15,000 Slovenia inhabitants were murdered as well. Because of its brevity, number of casualties, way of execution and massiveness, it is an event that can be compared to the greatest crimes of Communism and National Socialism."

The events were best documented in the European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" held in Brussels in April 2008. The commission was mainly the work of Brussels European Union and the Government of Slovenia.

Totalitarian Political System of the Former Yugoslavia

Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy by Carl Joachim Friedrich & Zbigniew Brzezinski:

“ Characteristics of a totalitarian regime; a total ideology, a single mass party, a terrorist secret police, a monopoly of mass communication, all instruments to wage combat are in the control of the same hands, and a centrally directed planned economy. Totalitarian dictatorships emerge after the seizure of power by the leaders of a movement who have developed support for an ideology. The point when the government becomes totalitarian is when the leadership uses open and legal violence to maintain its control. The dictator demands unanimous devotion from the people and often uses a real or imaginary enemy to create a threat so the people rally around him. ”

Former Yugoslavia

  • Total ideology: Communism & Titoism
  • A single mass party: Communist Part of Yugoslavia (or League of Communists of Yugoslavia)
  • Terrorist secret police: UDBA and OZNA
  • Monopoly of mass communication: Mass communication were all placed under heavy censorship of the Yugoslav Communist State.
  • Directed planned economy:Communist Part of Yugoslavia controlled the economy.
  • Leaders of a movement who have developed support for an ideology: Titoism & Josip Broz Tito (the great leader)
  • Leadership uses open and legal violence to maintain its control:Notorious Bleiburg massacre, Way of the Cross massacres and the Foibe massacres. Ethnic cleansing of Germans, Hungarians and Italians. Communist concentration and work camps. Prison gulags: Goli Otok (Barren Island),KPH Zenica, Stare Gradiska and Sveti Grgur.
  • Demands unanimous devotion from the people:Dictator Josip Broz Tito was the main subject. Images, monuments, towns, street names, endless awards were given and a never ending production of books, films and poetry were created.

European public hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”& former Yugoslavia"

  • Reports and proceedings of the 8th of April European public hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission, stated the following: Totalitarian machines

Let us mention briefly Fascism, National Socialism and Titoism in Italy, Austria and Slovenia (a former republic of Yugoslavia). Three Christian nations, with nationalist tendencies, were infected with totalitarianism. The descent into barbarism has comparable structural elements: [4]

  • Abuse of national sentiment to carry out racial and class revolutionary projects;
  • Cult of a great leader, who permits his fanatics to murder, steal and lie;
  • Dictatorship of one party;
  • Militarisation of society, police state – almighty secret political police;
  • Collectivism, subjection of the citizen to the totalitarian state;
  • State terrorism with systematic abuses of basic human rights;
  • Aggressive assumption of power and struggle for territory. (page 197.)

Wikipedia & former Yugoslavia

This is funny, Wikipedia states:

  • "The post-World War II Yugoslavia was in many respects a model [citation needed] of how to build a multinational state."
  • "The ethnic violence was only ended [citation needed] when the multiethnic Yugoslav Partisans took over the country at the end of the war and banned nationalism from being publicly promoted. "
  • "Most notable of the victories against the occupying forces were the battles of Neretva and Sutjeska."

Editor's notes: Victories?

  • "Yugoslavia solved the national issue of nations and nationalities (national minorities) in a way that all nations and nationalities had the same rights."

Editor's notes: Thru the Way of the Cross, Bleiburg and Foibe massacres (1945/46)

Now thanks to the Internet, this pseudo historical perspective that once was only know to Tito's Yugoslavia, has gone World Wide. This is truly disturbing because the former communist Yugoslavia encompassed peoples descendant of the Roman Empire, Republic of Venice, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and so and so forth.

Editors Notes: Well, one could say, what would you expect from a Totalitarian political system? It needs to do historical re-writes. Part of its existence is based on falsehoods. It's the nature of the beast. Now I'm not saying it's all pseudo historical but sections of it would have to be. The regime had to justify its existence. I suspect it's all derived from 19-century thinking, i.e., Marxism combined with extreme Nationalism & Darwinism. The theory of Evolution incorporated into history of Civilisation. It is based on the Great Union of Southern Slavs combined with Communism's grand plan for its people to evolve into a superior society (and a superior man) as a whole.

Yugoslavia had it all. Kids were all educated in this way and taught to love the great leader. I'm not making this up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUZx70JDseU&feature=related

Communist Yugoslavia ( & the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) has gotten off lightly when it comes to history. I would love to get my hands on scholarly works prior to 1945/46 and compare notes to what was written afterwards. I'm not alone in these matters, there are others who share my view.

Hague

Centre for History, Democracy and Reconciliation-Hague:

  • Myths and stereotypes of communism and nationalism which are still alive in our region (former Yugoslavia). Some historians still use these myths and stereotypes in their scientific work. CHDR will encourage researchers on the project "Myths in politics and modern history" to challenge these controversial aspects of the past which have been repeatedly manipulated for political purposes.

(Link: http://www.centerforhistory.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=37) Additional: There was some good academic work done during the Communist era ( & post Communist). Experience has taught me that these writings are usually hardish to obtain and the information is generally disregarded by hot headed nationalism or Neo-Communists. Peter Z. 01:55, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Media links

  • Press Agency: Columnist Says Silence on Post-War Killings Needs to End (Interview). Ljubljana, 1 April (STA) - Alenka Puhar, an author who has written extensively about Slovenia's Communist past (a former republic of Yugoslavia), has told STA in an interview that post-WWII killings need to be examined and discussed. "We need to talk about it and live with it, with this pain," she said.
  • EurActiv Network Croatian PM pays tribute to controversial war victims (Croatia a former republic of Yugoslavia).

Slovenia 1945

(Selected as "Book of the Year" 2005 in the Times Literary Supplement by John Bayley, literary critic, retired Oxford University Professor and widower of Iris Murdoch. The authors wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair asking for Britain to make a gesture of regret to Slovenia for sending back the surrendered soldiers.)

“ Quote link: This book tells how the British Army in Austria forcibly repatriated surrendered Slovene anti-Communist soldiers to their deaths in 1945. Authors John Corsellis and Marcus Ferrar appealed to the government for a British expression of regret to Slovenia. Sixty two MPs signed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling for this. Then British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote personally to the authors, and the head of a U.K. Parliamentary delegation to Slovenia did subsequently express regret.

SLOVENIA 1945 – sample reviews:

  • It has contrived wholly to avoid all the clichés of the genre …it presents us with a range of individuals as vividly seen and as sharply characterised as the multifarious inhabitants of War and Peace or A Dance to the Music of Time – 'Book of the Year' choice by John Bayley, literary critic, Times Literary Supplement, December 2005
  • An accessible, engaging read – The Catholic Herald.
  • This excellent book …raises a number of questions of profound historical and moral interest – The Tablet.
  • Part of a healing process …it is inspiring – The Friend.
  • Promises to contribute to our collective understanding of a terrible period of European history. It is right …that we too remember the tragedy which befell the Slovene people – Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary.
  • A valuable contribution to upholding the common values Slovenia and Great Britain share as members of the European Union – Janez Jansa, Slovene Prime Minister
  • Impossible to put down – Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto.
  • A wealth of precise information and balanced judgments presented in a clear and pleasant style … a serious and objective work – Cardinal Franc Rode, Vatican
  • An exciting and moving read – Michael Nelson, former Gen Mgr, Reuters.
 ”

Displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia

Displaced persons from former Yugoslavia:

“ Around 6,000 of these displaced persons from the former Italian region of Venezia Giulia (Istra) and Zara (Zadar) resettled in Australia with the assistance of the IRO. After transfer of Trieste to Italy in 1954, another several thousand Giuliani were assisted to migrate to Australia. While most were classed as Yugoslav residents and citizens, an estimated 5,000 were ethnic Italians from the cities of Fiume, Pola and Zara (Gardini 2004). Given the difficulty of ascertaining the ethnicity of displaced persons from the names and nationalities listed on official IRO documents, it is unclear how many displaced persons who identified as 'Italian' settled in Western Australia. What is clear is that the Istrian 'Italians' came from different backgrounds and had different motives for leaving their homes compared with other Italian assisted passage or sponsored migrants.[5] ”

Taken from Wikipedia:

“
  • Below-Croatisation of Italy's Julian March and Zadar

Even with a predominant Croatian majority, Dalmatia retained relatively large Italian communities in the coast (Italian majority in the cities and the islands, largest concentration in Istria). Italians in Dalmatia kept key political positions and Croatian majority had to make an enormous effort to get Croatian language into schools and offices. Most Dalmatian Italians gradually assimilated to the prevailing Croatian culture and language between the 1860s and World War I, although Italian language and culture remained present in Dalmatia. The community was granted minority rights in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia; during the Italian occupation of Dalmatia in World War II, it was caught in the ethnic violence towards non-Italians during fascist repression: what remained of the community fled the area after World War II. [6]

The history took its turn: while from 1919. - 1945. Italian Fascists stated by the proclamation that all Croatian and other non-Italian surnames must be turned to Italian ones (which they had chosen for every surname, so Anić became Anetti, Babačić Babetti etc.; 115.157 Croats and other non-Italians were forced to change their surname),[7] the Italian community of Istria and Dalmatia were forced to change their names to Croats and Yugoslav, during Tito's Yugoslavia.[8][9]

The same happened - but with lower incidence - with Italians in Istria and Fiume who were the majority of the population in most of the coastal areas in the first half of the 19th century, while at the beginning of World War I they numbered less than 50%.

After World War II most of the Italians left Istria and the cities of Italian Dalmatia in the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus.[10] The remaining Italians were forced to be assimilated culturally and even linguistically during Josip Broz Tito's rule of communist Yugoslavia.[11][12] Following the exodus, the areas were settled and heavily croatized with Yugoslav people.[12][13] Economic insecurity, ethnic hatred and the international political context that eventually led to the Iron Curtain resulted in up to 350,000 people, mostly Italians, forced to leave the region. The London Memorandum (1954) gave the ethnic Italians the hard choice of either opting to leave (the so-called optants) or staying. These exiles would have been to be given compensation for their loss of property and other indemnity by the Italian state under the terms of the peace treaties.Who opted to stay, had to suffer a slow but forced croatisation.[14] Some sporadic Croatization phenomena still took place in the last years of 20th century after Croatian Indipendency, despites many towns were declared bilingual by Croatian Law.[15][16]

”

References

  1. ^ www.enotes.com "Yugoslavia." Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah L. Shelton. Gale Cengage, 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 26 Jun, 2010 Yugoslavia: Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity-Mark Thompson.
  2. ^ Hrcak Portal of Scientific Journals of Croatia by Mr Dizdar's Scientific Journal:
    • An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross. This paper dedicated to the 60th anniversary of these tragic events represents a small step towards the elaboration of known data and brings a list of yet unknown and unpublished original documents, mostly belonging to the Yugoslavian Military and Political Government 1945-1947. Amongst those documents are those mostly relating to Croatian territory although a majority of concentration camps and execution sites were outside of Croatia, in other parts of Yugoslavia. The author hopes that the readers will receive a complete picture about events related to Bleiburg and the Way of The Cross and the suffering of numerous Croats, which is confirmed directly in many documents and is related to the execution of a person or a whole group of people and sometimes non-stop for days.
  3. ^ International Law Observer Responding to post-Second World War totalitarian crimes in Slovenia Posted on June 22, 2009 by Jernej Letnar Cernic
  4. ^ European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" Reports and proceedings of the 8 April European public hearing on “Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission. Page 197. Joze Dezman: COMMUNIST REPRESSION AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN SLOVENIA Additional chapter: COMMUNIST REPRESSION Of “INTERIOR ENEMIES” IN SLOVENIA
    • In the greater part of this paper, the author deals with individual repressive measures that Communist rule imposed in Slovenia in the period from the end of the war in 1945 until the beginning of the 1950s. In this period, the Communist authorities in Slovenia implemented all the forms of repression that were typical of states with Stalinist regimes. In Slovenia, it was a time of mass killings without court trials, and of concentration and labour camps.
    • Property was confiscated, inhabitants were expelled from Slovenia/Yugoslavia and their residences, political and show trials were carried out, religion was repressed and the Catholic Church and its clergy were persecuted. At the beginning of the 1950s, Communist rule in Slovenia abandoned these forms of repression but was ready to reapply them if it felt threatened.
    • Thus the regime set up political and show trials against certain more visible opponents later. In the case of an “emergency situation”, even the establishment of concentration camps was planned in Slovenia in 1968, where around 1,000 persons, of whom 10 % were women, would be interned for political reasons. Page 161
  5. ^ The University of Western Australia (Italian Lives www.italianlives.arts.uwa.edu.au)
  6. ^ Društvo književnika Hrvatske, Bridge, Volume 1995, Nubers 9-10, Croatian literature series - Ministarstvo kulture, Croatian Writer's Association, 1989
  7. ^ Hrvoje Mezulić i Romano Jelić [1] (croatian)]
  8. ^ Nenad Vekarić, Pelješki rodovi, Vol. 2, HAZU, 1996 - ISBN 9789531540322
  9. ^ Jasminka Udovički and James Ridgeway, Burn this house: the making and unmaking of Yugoslavia
  10. ^ Several estimates of the Istrian-Julian exodus by historians:
    • Vladimir Žerjavić (Croat), 191,421 Italian exiles from Croatian territory.
    • Nevenka Troha (Slovene), 40,000 Italian and 3,000 Slovene exiles from Croatian and Slovenian territory.
    • Raoul Pupo (Italian), about 250,000 Italian exiles
    • Flaminio Rocchi (Italian), about 350,000 Italian exiles
    The mixed Italian-Slovenian Historical Commission verified 27,000 Italian and 3,000 Slovene migrants from Croatian and Slovenian territory.
  11. ^ Luciano Monzali, Antonio Tacconi e la comunità italiana di Spalato, Società dalmata di storia patria.
  12. ^ a b <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Darko Darovec. "THE PERIOD OF TOTALITARIAN RÉGIMES - The Reasons for the Exodus".
  13. ^ Liliana Ferrari, Essay on Raoul Pupo, pag. 5, Rizzoli, Gorizia 2005
  14. ^ Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan babel: the disintegration of Yugoslavia from the death of Tito, Westview Press, 2002 «...and since the sixties, those of the rest of Croatia. The Istrian Democratic Party demanded autonomy for Istria, as a protection against "the forcible Croatization of Istria" and an imposition of a coarse and fanatical Croatism[...] Furio Radin argued that such autonomy was vital for the cultural protection of the Italian minority in Istria.»
  15. ^ «Pola, no to Italian chorus in St. Anthony church» in "Difesa Adriatica" year XIV n.5 - may 2008
  16. ^ Alex J. Bellamy, he formation of Croatian national identity, Manchester University Press, 2003, ISBN 9780719065026
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