Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

orists and practitioners, and third, those who possessed expertise in rival
faiths such as Serbian Orthodoxy and Islam. Thus, the two largest archdioceses
in Croatia, Zagreb, and Split-Makarska, acquired bishops selected according
to the first two criteria. While Kuharić’s successor Josip Bozanić was
a cautious churchman unsympathetic toward any form of radicalism and
extremism, even anticommunism and anti-Yugoslavism, two candidates for
the seat of the archbishop-metropolitan of Split-Makarska were selected
among notable anticommunists. Thus, Petar S ˇ olić, who served as auxiliary
bishop of Split until he was killed in a 1993 traffic accident, had had troubles
with communist authorities in the mid-1980s for organizing provocative
marches of Catholic youth. The incumbent archbishop of Split, Marin Barisˇić,
was attacked by the old regime’s press and pursued by the police in the
early 1980s for his alleged nationalistic agitation among students of the
University of Split. The Vatican also appreciated prelates’ being knowledgeable
about rival faiths and ecumenical affairs, which resulted in the appointments
of Ratko Perić at Mostar (Herzegovina) and Mile Bogović in Lika.
interestingly, the “expert on communism” Marin Barisˇić, together with the
expert on Serbian Orthodoxy, Mile Bogović, and the military vicar Juraj Jezerinac,
had emerged by the end of the decade as among the leading ethnonationalistic
“hawks” in the Croatian episcopate. Regarding Croatian
Church leaders in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, the hopeless situation
in this ruined country, especially the disappointment with the Dayton
Accords and rapid erosion of the ethnic Croat population, has transformed
the archbishop of Sarajevo, Vinko Cardinal Puljić, from an intelligent moderate
churchman similar to Archbishop Bozanić into an ethnonationalistic
hawk like Barisˇić, Bogović, and Jezerinac. It is also noteworthy that the
communist-era “media warrior,” the ex-editor of Glas Koncila, Z ˇ ivko Kustić
(a Greek-Catholic or Uniate priest), has remained during the past two decades
the most outspoken of all Croat clerical “hawks.”
The West to which Tudjman’s country was supposed to belong could not
embrace such a regime. Croatia was popular in Germany only briefly, during
the Serbian aggression on Croatia and Bosnia in 1991 and 1992, and was
never popular in the United States, France, or Britain. By 1995, public opinion
in all western democracies, including Germany, despised Tudjman’s
country, viewing him and Milosˇević as two of a kind. Tudjman’s foreign
ministry found it nearly impossible to arrange official state visits for the
Croatian president. Few if any world statesmen came to Croatia during Tudjman’s
reign expect to apply pressure and demand concessions regarding the
Balkan peace process. Tudjman’s Bosnia policy, dictatorial manners, faltering
democracy, corruption, and reminiscences of World War II Ustasˇism angered
many in the West even among the most conservative circles. Influential
Jewish organizations in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere agitated
against the Zagreb regime. 38 This pressure resulted in the trial of one Ustasˇa
war criminal and the dismissal from diplomatic service of another ex-Ustasˇa
leader. 39 Tudjman sought to appease Jewish groups in the United States and
the twilight of balkan idols 195