engleski

The new Croatian political elite of the 1990s and the acceleration of history

The new Croatian political elite was formed at the beginning of the 1990s under extremely complex circumstances characterized by the extraordinary tempo of events and social change at the global and regional levels. The deterioration of the bipolar structure of international relations after the fall of the Soviet Union was superimposed upon the collapse of the Yugoslav state. Croatia’s move toward independence and its international affirmation as an independent state proceeded parallel to a series of wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The aggression against and occupation of Croatia and its liberation in what in Croatia is called the Homeland War were accompanied by radical social changes after the introduction of political pluralism in 1990. Under such conditions, a new political elite was formed around a core of Croatian communist dissidents of the 1960s and 1970s together with former political émigrés. The central figure who left an imprint on the 1990s was Franjo Tuđman, the first president of independent Croatia. His political profile and ideas, characterized by historicism (ideas steeped in the past), greatly influenced the formation of the new Croatian political elite and, as result, recent Croatian history. In this context, an analysis is conducted of the policies employed under these new dynamic events and changes which turned to an obsolete understanding of government, the state, and so forth, and solutions such as reconciliation of surviving ideologies, ‘humane resettlement’ or the introduction of ‘predatory’ forms of liberal capitalism.

Croatian Political Elite; Franjo Tuđman; HDZ; National Reconciliation

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