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Croatian Spring: The Croatian National Reform Movement in Socialist Yugoslavia (1967–1972)

This chapter gives a historical overview of the Croatian Spring, a socio-political movement from the second half of the 1960s to the early 1970s in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which was one of six republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The movement emerged in the 1960s as a wave of heterogeneous processes, usually called liberalization in Croatian historiography. The emergence of the movement was facilitated by a conflict within the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia that split into two wings. The reform wing advocated for the decentralization of Yugoslavia and a greater autonomy of its republics, and the dogmatic wing of the party which sought to preserve a rigid and centralized model of governance. The movement gained mass support from the Croatian people and was in opposition to the centralist policy of the federal authorities in Belgrade. In addition to the reform-oriented wing of the ruling party, the movement included two different social circles. The first one included Croatian intellectuals gathered around the most prominent cultural institution of the Croatian people, called Matica hrvatska (Matica in further text). The second circle of the movement were students of the University of Zagreb whose participation ensured the movement’s growth in size. The Croatian Spring was a struggle against centralism and unitarism. The actors of the Spring criticized the socialist regime because of its economic, political, demographic, and cultural failures. They advocated Croatian cultural integration, political and administrative decentralization of Yugoslavia, a fairer distribution of state revenues, and the liberalization and democratization of political and economic life. The Croatian Spring represented a trend to introduce a wider circle of citizens into politics, which was contrary to the Stalinist view of the role of the party. The liberalization of the system would call the communist political monopoly into question. At the end of 1971, a political coup overthrew the reformist leadership in Croatia, followed by repression against the most prominent Croatian Spring figures. The liberal wing of the party was crushed, and numerous intellectuals and students ended up imprisoned for long-terms. The destruction of the Croatian national movement will also mark the ultimate failure of democratization in the Yugoslav communist system.

Croatian Spring ; reform movement ; Croatia ; Yugoslavia ; League of Communists of Yugoslavia ; League of Communist of Croatia ; Croatian intellectuals ; student protest

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