Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

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the catholic church and the
making of the croatian
nation, 1970–1984
A s a consequence of the liberal course of the Yugoslav communist
regime of the 1960s, the six-republic federation was
swamped by an upsurge of ethnic nationalism in all the republics and autonomous
provinces. 1 The carriers of this nationalism were not initially the
conservative anticommunist forces such as, the churches and surviving
World War II enemies of the Partisans but were “ethnonationally sensitive”
communist leaders in the republics and autonomous provinces. They demanded
more power and autonomy at the expense of the federation. Nonetheless,
they unwittingly became allies of conservative nationalists who saw
the process as a step toward their separatist ideal. Although secular forces
dominated these movements, religious institutions were not dormant.
The most massive of the Yugoslav nationalist movements of the late sixties
was the Croatian National Movement, also referred to by its supporters
as Croatian Spring, or, in the old regime’s jargon, the “Croatian Mass Movement”
(1967–72). The Croatian national movement, triggered by a Serbo-
Croatian linguistic dispute in 1967, expanded into spheres of culture, economy,
education, foreign and military affairs, interethnic relations,
constitutional politics, and so on. Croat communists and noncommunists
came together, bound by the appealing nationalist agenda. Thus, the secretary
of the League of Communists of Croatia, Miko Tripalo, said that
“national and class interests were the same as nation and class had become
identical.” 2 The movement’s leaders believed that Croatia without the rest
of Yugoslavia (especially if released from the “Balkan burden” of Serbia,
Kosovo, and Macedonia), would attain the prosperity of western European
countries. 3 The movement reached its pinnacle in the spring of 1971. Croatia
was on the verge of revolution. Street protests and strikes took place in
several Croatian cities. In December 1971, the unchallenged supreme authority
in Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, summoned the Croat communist leaders
who sided with the movement to his Karadjordjevo hunting lodge and
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