Croatia: 20 years after the Berlin Wall

19/11/2009

As Europe celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Croatia's view of the last two decades is somber.

By Natasa Radic for Southeast European Times in Zagreb --19/11/09

Former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman addresses the UN General Assembly in 1992. [Getty Images]

Unlike other former communist countries in Europe, Croatia and the Yugoslav republics did not see a peaceful political and economic transition to democracy with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The weakening of the communist regime in the late 1980's allowed a rebirth and expansion of various nationalist tendencies in the former Yugoslavia. The country's League of Communists was slowly dissolving and a number of new political parties were emerging.

In 1989, still as part of Yugoslavia, Croatia was celebrating the Eurovision Song Contest victory of the Zadar-based pop group "Riva". The country was hopeful that the following year Zagreb would host the Europe-wide musical event and thereby boost the rising spirit of independence in Croatia.

The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, established in June of 1989, won the first democratic pluralist elections in 1990, and would play a crucial role in the fight for Croatia's independence.

Today in Croatia, some miss life under communism, regretting the loss of the highly socialised former Yugoslav system. "We had free health care, the state provided apartments, guaranteed free education, and our social security was established. Now, under capitalism, one has to pay for everything, " Marija Ancic, 66, a retired professor from Split, explains.

Ante Tomic, a journalist for Croatia's daily Jutarnji List, differs. "There is no such thing as the 'good old days'. For the most part, they never happened. The Berlin Wall was controlled only from one side."

"That was the side with the barbed wire, reflectors, German Shepard dogs and soldiers. In the former East Germany, life was so great that it was necessary for the soldiers to protect the Wall with machine guns to prevent escape. As much as we would like to believe that socialism was better, we should tell the truth -- people wanted to jump over only from one side of the Wall."

As Europe marks two decades of post-communism, Croatia is commemorating a decade since the death of its first president, HDZ leader Franjo Tudjman, who died on December 10th 1999.

"Tudjman was a pure and clear symbol of Croatian democracy. It is wrong to perceive him in any other way," says Milan Beslic, a member of the board of Matica hrvatska, a Croatian cultural and heritage organisation.

Tudjman's legacy is controversial. Many consider him the father of Croatian independence, but as his critics often point out, he faced war crimes allegations, he was a nationalist hardliner who allied with Slobodan Milosevic on the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and created a new political climate in Croatia based on corruption, which in turn produced capitalists loyal to the Tudjman system.