From: rennos@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Re: Croatian postage stamps
Date: 5 Apr 92 17:06:03 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

In article <1992Apr4.170611.10728@src.umd.edu>, josip@src.umd.edu 
(Josip Loncaric) writes:
> In article <92094.011550BUAD5070@RyeVm.Ryerson.Ca> <BUAD5070@RyeVm.
Ryerson.Ca> (Tomislav Grgic) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr1.041136.5213@vax.oxford.ac.uk>, rennos@vax.oxford.ac.uk
>>says:
>>
>>>  Outwardly, the Starcevic stamp may be elegant. But are the Croats
>>>  happy with having an extreme nationalist and racist such Starcevic
>>>  inaugurating the mail of the Republic of Croatia? .....
>>
>>Starcevic was not a racist nor is he a controversial figure in any
>>negative sense.
>>
> 
> Agreed.  Anyone who has studied this period of Croatian history realizes that
> Starcevic has been an important figure, a Croatian counterpart to Serbian
> Vuk Karadzic, in the development of national identity of South Slavs of the
> Hapsburg Monarchy.  Starcevic was also a transitional figure, because history
> has moved on since 19th century, but he WAS important.  And he was most
> certainly not a racist.  Some of his ideas (eg. that there are only two
> south slavic nations - Croats and Bulgarians) are comparable to Karadzic's
> ideas (who claimed that Croats are simply "Serbs of Roman catholic faith").
> 
> Both concepts have been used to support the Yugoslav idea, since both
> Starcevic and Karadzic claimed the existance of only one nation, and whether
> this nation is called "Serbia" or "Croatia" or "Yugoslavia" seemed less
> important to the proponents of Yugoslavia.  However, history has shown 
> otherwise: nations are what people THINK they are, which is NOT the same
> as faith, language, or anything else.  Self-determination is the proper
> way to decide about national question 
  
  It's somewhat hard to follow this mixture of some evidence of historical
  truth with manifestly incorrect views. Yes, strictly speaking Starcevic
  was not racist in a narrowly-interpreted sense. But...'proponent of
  Yugoslavia' ! This goes above the top; in fact I'd expect a Croat to
  put things right. If Yugoslavism was a dogma based on the premise that
  Serbs Croats and Slovenes were in substance one large nation who
  could umify in a S Slav state, Starcevic was its ardent opponent. His
  Prava Stranka stood for a Great Croatia and bitterly opposed any form of
  cooperation with Serbia; furthermore he desired to 'swallow up' Serbs
  living in the Habsburg lands either by ignoring them or by naming them
  peasant element of Illyrian origin. And he was 'transitional' figure
  only in the sense that his successor Josip Frank further raised the
  racially-sounded tones of Starcevic and expressed undisguised hatred
  to anything that Serbia represented. Starcevic finds his parallel
  in the extremism of bishop Stadler in Bosnia, or in certain 'Great 
Serbers' in the ruling circles of Serbia; for God's sake not in
  Karadzic. Never did Starcevic engage in the reconciliatory and open-
  minded Jugoslav-oriented activities in which Karadzic did. He overstressed
  (in fact distorted and amplify) Serbo-Croat differences instead of
   de-emphasizing them. On the contrary, it was his contemporary Croat
   opponent, Franjo Racki who truly enunciated Jugoslavism and
   worked for it.

   
               ( *   *  *   *   * )

> Starcevic is a part of Croatian history and a strong advocate of Croatian
> statehood from an even earlier time.  As such, he was depicted on a stamp.
  Though not of my personal liking, fair enough.

> You have to put Starcevic in the context of his time to properly understand
> his role.  
  It's precisely in the context of his time, that Starcevic appears
  as an uncompromising extremist of Croatian nationalism vis-a-vis
  Racki and Strossmayer. 
 

                    (  *   *    *    *    * )

> dedicated to his beliefs, ethical in his ideology and writing.  His views
> are obsolete by now, but his historical importance is undeniable.

  That's true.

> 
> In conclusion, to deny Croatia the right to put Starcevic on a stamp is 
> to deny Croatia the right to her own history.  And as for his  
> 

  If you address this statement to me, certainly I didn't question
  this right of Croatia. I requested Croats to intimate to me personal
  views about an historical figure of whom obviously I don't think
  highly. ( '...are the Croats happy with having...?')
               
           (   *    *    *    *  )

> 
> The free world has abandoned its own principles by failing to support
> self-determination and the process of democratization in former Yugoslavia.
> Human rights of all non-Serbs are being completely ignored.  The gruesome
> carnage goes on, now flaring up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the "civilized
> world" watches effectively doing nothing.  What did all those observers see?
> They must know by now who is the aggressor and who is acting in self-defense.
> Just who among all these callous "mediators" will end up on a stamp, I wonder?
> 

  Would you expect the EEC countries to intervene in internal affairs
  of a long-established and sovereign European state and brake it up,
  before Croats and Slovenes themselves raised the Yu question as
  an international affair?
  
  Do Germany, Italy, the 'neutral' Aystria fell outside of the lines
  of 'the free world'? Has the hitherto 'thanks Germany' turned
  to grievances ?  :-)

> After such a dismal performace, the west has no moral right to criticize
> Croatia's respect for her own historical figures, whose role was morally
> superior anyway.  
>
  Please let me be categorically negative on this: critical mind on history
  knows no frontiers.
 
> Josip Loncaric

  Regards,

  Rennos

  Rennos Ehaliotis