Patriots, Villains, and Franjo Tuđman*
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE UDK 32-05 Tuđman, F. Patriots, Villains, and Franjo TUđman* James J. SADKOVICH** Patriots and Nationalists Asked in April 1993 what he thought of a poll by Globus which conclud- ed that it would be “difficult” to list him “among Croatia’s patriots,” Franjo Tuđman replied that he considered himself a patriot (rodoljub). “Patriotism,” he said, “I hold as a worthy phenomenon in life, in the feelings of peoples and nations. It is another thing,” he added, “when it turns into chauvinism, impe- rialism.” But in Croatia, he continued, the chauvinistic parties had obtained fewer votes than elsewhere in Europe. He believed this had occurred because under his leadership the Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica – HDZ) had projected a positive image, attracting voters across the ideological spectrum.1 But the Croatian President refused to concede the man- tel of patriot to his more vociferous opponents. Some, like Zvonimir Čičak, a student leader during the 1970s and a human rights activist in the 1990s, Tuđman dismissed as unable to accept the idea of a sovereign Croatia. Others, he explained, opposed the new democratic order and criticized his govern- ment because they could not accept anyone in power but themselves.2 Nor, many of his critics might counter, could Tuđman.3 His image of himself was clearly not consonant with the image others held of him. Seeing past the image of any political leader is difficult; in Tuđman’s case, it is doubly so because he was branded as a radical nationalist by the Yugoslav regime, and he was consistently portrayed as a dangerous nationalist when he emerged twenty years later as the leader of the HDZ.4 Most people in public *I would like to thank the Woodrow Wilson Center and IREX for their support of my research on Franjo Tuđman, as well as Sabrina Ramet, the Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelije univer- siteit (NTNU), and those who have commented on this paper.
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