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Countless publications and conferences on post-communist politics of the past raise the question if comparison of “case studies” can be achieved by mere sequence or if this leads to obliterating particularities. This question is examined on the “case study” of Croatia – looking closely at historical particularities and the role of president Tu man fashioning himself as World War II historian during the 1990s. Generally, three phases of approaching the World War II past can be observed: the revisionist Tu man-era (1990–1999), the social democratic intermezzo, in which democratic transformation was followed by avoidance of demonizing concepts of the enemy (2000–2003), and the new HDZ-governance, when allowanced were made for integration into the EU – while “the Serbs” were depicted as the “new Fascists” of the last war by prime minister Ivo Sanader (2003–2009). Germany – the homeland of national socialism – paradoxically being Europe-wide seen as the role model for approaching one’s own felonious past in a critical way, it is not surprising that German historians and cultural scientists have been the ones who have advanced also the theoretical basis for reflecting the relationship between history, memory and national identity. Jan and Aleida Assmann have developed the concept of cultural memory, understood as the “body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image.” Memory theory highlights that individuals and collectives use memory only for present purposes; they remember only those events they can integrate into their picture of themselves or 1 J. Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity”, in: New German Critique, No. 65, 1995, 125–133, 132. (Translation of the German version: “Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität”, in: J. Assmann/T. Hölscher (ed.), Kultur und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt, 1988), 9–19). Ljiljana Radoni Istorija 20. veka, 1/2012 204 their in-group. On the national and state level the term “Vergangenheitspolitik”, politics of the past, aims at how democratic societies approach their felonious past on the political, judicial and cultural level. Those theoretical reflections go hand in hand with a vast number of publications dealing with the way the past has been approached in single European countries, often comprised as chapters of edited volumes, thus hoping to achieve a comparative perspective. Moreover, national case studies on memory and remembrance policies have been presented on numerous international conferences – focusing on post-communist countries in Europe after 1989 or in the most cases comparing them with the development in “western” states. This boom brought along the ability to discuss questions of historical revisionism concerning World War II at conferences in the USA, Great Britain or – when it comes to post-communist transformationalso in “western” Europe – almost as down-to-earth and matter-offactly as issues concerning ancient Rome. A completely different situation occurs if the same lectures or articles are received by an audience either in the country the “case study” deals with or in the broader area of closely connected but conflicting memories. Scientists usually teaching nationalism or identity theory suddenly insist that this particular case, “our” experience is different, being either especially understandable or especially brutish due to a specific historical constellation. Of course the different assessment depends on the question if one talks about crimes committed by what is considered one’s own collective or by the “constituent Other”, the everlasting enemy. This article examines the question of historical particularity vs. general mechanisms of approaching the past when it comes to Croatia’s politics of the past from 1990 until 2008 – analyzing first of all Croatian newspapers and schoolbooks. Have there been significant changes in this politics and how can they be explained? Keeping in mind the tension between the allegedly academic nature of such research in the course of a “memory boom”, which is conflicted by the still raging “war on memory” between the successor states of former Yugoslavia, the Croatian “case study” is conducted from the standpoint of what Volkhard Knigge has called “negative me2 G. Sandner, “Hegemonie und Erinnerung. Zur Konzeption von Geschichtsund Vergangenheitspolitik”, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 1 (2001), 5–17, 7. 3 See M. Flacke (ed.), Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerung (Mainz, 2004); B. Faulenbach/F.-J. Jelich (ed.), „Transformationen“ der Erinnerungskulturen in Europa nach 1989 (Essen, 2006); R. Fritz/C. Sachse/E. Wolfrum (ed.), Postdiktatorische Gesellschaften in Europa (Göttingen, 2008). 4 Lj. Radoni , Krieg um die Erinnerung. Kroatische Vergangenheitspolitik zwischen Revisionismus und europäischen Standards (Frankfurt, 2010). Croatian politics of the past – just one more post-communist case study 205 mory”: the remembrance of acts committed rather than suffered by the collective one is understood to belong to – hoping to advance this self-critical approach rather than to confirm simplifying preconceptions. Speaking about historical particularities in former Yugoslavia when it comes to World War II, one must mention the civil war between the Partisans, Ustaša and etnik raging after the partition and occupation of most parts of the country. The Yugoslav antifascist narrative tried to ignore this aspect of the war as well as any ethnically motivated crimes and thus was not able to provide an accurate collective memory for all the marginalized groups. Another aspect little known in Europe when it comes to World War II on the Balkans is who the people were who had been killed and out of what “reasons”. In “western” countries after the figure of the not ethnically defined resistance fighter and anti-fascist, the Jews have moved into the focus of World War II memory, but soon the Holocaust was dehistorized by focusing on the individual victim, the memory of the Shoa transformed into an universal imperative to respect human rights in general, a “container” for the memory of different victims. Thus, only few people outside former Yugoslavia – of course beside the experts in the history of the Balkans – are aware of the fact that beside the Jews and the Roma the Serbs had been the by far largest victim group in the “Independent State of Croatia” (NDH) 1941–1945. Another circumstance little known in European history concerns the role of the Ustaša in the NDH, who just like the Slovaks were given some kind of autonomy by Hitler and Mussolini. But unlike other Central East European countries they started running death camps on their own territory already in summer 1941 – of course inspired by the National Socialists, but operated on their own. While the Romanians run such camps in the newly acquired “killing fields” of Transnistria, the Ustaša chose places in Croatia under their civil administration (but under Italian military command), starting with Jadovno, Gospi as well as Slana and Metajna on Pag.

Croatian politics of the past - just one more post-communist case study?