Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

Israel by revising his historical studies on World War II while Croatia also
issued official apologies regarding the persecution of Jews in the Independent
State of Croatia. 40 Nevertheless, the pressure from Jewish organizations continued
and reached an apex in 1998 in numerous attempts to block the
papal beatification of Cardinal Stepinac.
In the 1990s, numerous reports critical of Croatia’s government were
released in the West. 41 Croatia’s infamy mounted in December 1999 as the
international community accused the Zagreb regime and its extended arm
in Herzegovina of sabotaging the peace process in Bosnia-Herzegovina by
spying on the peacekeepers and undermining interethnic cooperation. 42 A
U.S. congressman called Croatia one of gravest disappointments among the
former communist countries in the transition to democracy. 43 On the occasion
of Tudjman’s death, world leaders chose to boycott the 13 December
1999 burial in Zagreb. 44 Thus, during the decade of Tudjman’s rule, the
Catholic Church was the only foreign friend of his regime. Small wonder
that Tudjman’s last foreign policy move was his October 1999 visit to the
Vatican.
After the January 2000 electoral triumph of the coalition of Croatian
social democrats and liberals, Croatia seemed to have finally begun its real
“return” to the West. Twelve heads of state and 60 foreign delegations attended
the inauguration of Croatia’s new president, Stipe Mesić, on 18 February
2000. The U.S. secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, traveled twice
within three weeks to Zagreb, to congratulate, support, and encourage the
change in Croatian politics. Yet the new government inherited a ruined
country.
The 2000 elections in which Tudjman’s regime was defeated caused
much worry in the Church. According to the priest-sociologist Ivan Grubisˇić,
Archbishop Bozanić had to tour Church communities to calm down clergy
and convince them that the winning coalition of social democrats and liberals
was not the same as the old communists and that 1945 would not be
repeated. 45 A Croatian daily published a protest letter written to Archbishop
Bozanić by a group of lower clergy in which the new government was called
“atheistic and evil,” the archbishop was said to be a communist sympathizer,
and the new premier Ivica Račan was accused of atheism, polygamy, and
drug abuse. 46 Račan, however, was a former communist bureaucrat happy
to be in power again and seemingly determined to retain the status quo. On
Statehood Day, 30 May 2000, the new Premier Račan (who had been chairman
of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia in
the 1980s) dutifully attended the Mass for the Homeland. Over the mass,
Archbishop Bozanić sermonized about what he saw as 10 years of freedom
and democracy. The archbishop also spoke about the legacy of communist
totalitarianism and Croatia’s martyrdom in the recent Balkan wars. Premier
Račan promised in a statement to the press that he would regularly attend
Church services. Račan did not indicate that he intended to question the
Tudjman cult and the Church’s privileged status in society.
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