Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

and contribute to the resolution of the crucial Croatian statehoodnationhood
issue. During World War II Church leaders came to believe that
the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) should have the Church’s legitimation.
The only currently available alternatives were another Serbdominated
Yugoslavia similar to the interwar kingdom or—in the eyes of
the Church, even worse—a new Yugoslav state ruled by the communists.
From the clerical point of view, it was reasonable to believe that a Croat
national state, while it might not be a paradise on earth, still could not be
worse than another kingdom under a Serb dynasty or a communist republic.
Yet somehow the NDH was even worse. Nevertheless, the clerical assistance
in the Ustasˇa government and the domestic Church leaders’ legitimation of
the state helped the NDH to function as a state and survive for four years.
After 1945, the NDH legacy seriously damaged both the image and national
interest of the Croatian people. Nonetheless, the Church was never prepared
to learn from history and recognize clerical policies toward the NDH as a
mistake. Instead, like most religious organizations, Croat church leaders
sought to substitute myth for history. After the collapse of communism the
Catholic Church in Croatia again became a kingmaker of sorts. As described
in chapter 10, both reform-minded communists and their ethnic nationalistic
opponents wooed the Church in the hope that clerical support would
decide the elections. This time the Church had relatively easier task than
during World War II because there was no communist alternative to compel
the Church to side with the nationalists. Nevertheless, the Church helped
the coming-to-power of the nationalistic historian Franjo Tudjman and his
Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ). This time the legitimation was not
even ambiguous, as it had been during the World War II. After the domestic
church helped Tudjman’s electoral campaign, on 14 January 1992 the Vatican
led several Western countries to recognize Croatia as an independent
state. Yet again, as in the case of the NDH, the Tudjman regime proved
another failure in the Croatian quest for statehood, nationhood, and a good
reputation in the community of nations. Paradoxically, both zealous worshipers
of the nation—ethnic nationalists and the Church—thus have eventually
earned their stripes in national history within the same camp as empires,
foreign invaders, and others responsible for the Croatian curse of
missing or bad nationhood. And the Church, instead of confession and repentance,
will again try to suppress this historical fact with new myths.
A new grand myth arose in Croatia as soon as the nationalists defeated
the coalition led by the reformed communists in the spring of 1990. Tudjman’s
1990 election victory was advertised by the winners as the fulfillment
of the nationalist myth of “Croatia’s return to the West” after some kind of
a Babylonian captivity in the multiethnic federation dominated by atheistic
communists and Orthodox Serbs. In numerous interviews Tudjman talked
about his country’s return in the sphere of Western civilization. In his address
on the occasion of the promulgation of Croatia’s new Constitution on
22 December 1990, the new president mentioned the terms “Europe” and
the twilight of balkan idols 187