chapter two

Ante Starčević: Historic state right and Croat blood

Introduction

Ante Starčević was born of a Catholic father and an Orthodox mother in the region of Lika in the Military Frontier in central Croatia. He is still considered by many non-Croat historians to be the father of modern exclusive Croatian nationalism.1 The Ustasha movement, for its part, con- sidered Starčević and the party he founded in 1861, the Croatian Party of Right (Hrvatska stranka prava, HSP), as its direct ideological predecessor. Starčević was adamantly opposed to Yugoslavism and his ultimate aim was the establishment of an independent Croatian state (outside of the Habsburg Monarchy), but his political ideas were quite different in certain key areas to those of the Ustashe. Starčević was, for example, devoted to the democratic ideals of the French Revolution and possessed a deep contempt for German-Austrians and German culture in general. Croatian historians are therefore right in arguing that the Ustashe misconstrued much of Starčević’s ideology to suit their exclusivist and totalitarian agenda.2 However, while there is no doubt that the Ustashe wilfully mis- interpreted many of Starčević’s ideas and writings to legitimise their poli- tics, Starčević’s ideas on nation and ‘race’ did exert a marked influence on Ustasha racial nationalism.

The Slavoserbs and the Vlach Question

Alongside his demand for full Croatian independence from both Austria and Hungary, Starčević was also an avid opponent of pan-Slavism in any form. According to Starčević, notions of Slavic reciprocity were ‘empty words, because for those dreams without any content, there is no basis

1 See, for example, Gumz, ‘Wehrmacht Perceptions of Mass Violence in Croatia’, 1025, and Srdjan Trifković, ‘The First Yugoslavia and Origins of Croatian Separatism’, East European Quarterly, XXVI, No. 3 (1992): 365. 2 See Jelić Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 23 and Goldstein, Holokaust u Zagrebu, 90. 34 chapter two in history, no reason in the present, and no perspective in the future.’3 Pan-Slavism was ‘barbarism’ and a threat to European civilisation.4 In Starčević’s eyes, Slavic barbarism was linked to the slave-like nature of the Slavs. Although committed to the ideals of the French Revolution, Starčević departed from the idea of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ in one impor- tant respect. In line with the Aristotelian justification of slavery, accord- ing to which certain individuals and peoples (‘barbarians’) were slaves by nature, Starčević developed the idea that there were similar ‘slaves’ in his time: these were people who were unfit for democratic life because they did not understand true freedom and the needs of the nation.5 In this respect, Starčević was first and foremost thinking of those Croats who ‘served’ foreign powers and ideologies, whether Austria, Hungary or pan- Slavism. Starčević referred to these ‘slaves’ as Slavoserbs, a term previously used by Ján Kollár. In contrast to Kollár, Starčević gave this name a negative connotation, deriving the words ‘Slav’ and ‘Serb’ from the Latin words sclavus and servus, both meaning ‘slave.’6 An etymological associa- tion between ‘Slav’ and ‘slave’ had also been made in Western European languages.7 Starčević divided the Slavoserbs into five categories: the first consisted of a people of ‘impure breed’ discovered in Thrace by Aristotle; the next two categories consisted of the intelligentsia and those Croats who had sold out their country for money; the fourth category was made up of foreigners who could not speak Croatian, while the fifth group was a col- lection of people who simply followed whatever the majority thought and said.8 Starčević identified the first category with the Serbs and the nomadic Balkan population (i.e. Vlachs).9 In his 1876 essay, Pasmina Slavoserbska po Hervatskoj (‘The Slavoserb Breed in Croatia’), Starčević recounted the arrival of the nomadic Orthodox Vlachs into Croatian lands during the Ottoman invasions and their perceived propensity for looting, murder and other criminal deeds. According to Starčević, these Vlachs

3 Ante Starčević, ‘Bi-li k Slavstvu ili ka Hrvatstvu? Dva razgovora.’ In Djela dra. Ante Starčevića, Josip Bratulić ed. (Varaždin: Inačica, 1995): 6. 4 Ibid., 17. 5 Mirjana Gross, Izvorno pravaštvo: Ideologija, agitacija, pokret (Zagreb: Golden market- ing, 2000), 18. 6 Ibid., 221, 230. Also see Wolf Dietrich Behschnitt, Nationalismus bei Serben und Kroaten 1830–1914: Analyse und Typologie der nationalen Ideologie (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1980), 182. 7 Poliakov, The Aryan Myth, 17. 8 Gross, Izvorno pravaštvo, 249–250. 9 Ibid., 341.