The bitter heritage of the Ustaša

Marko comments on the relationship between the Ustaša and wider Croatian society here -
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/ in the aftermath of the funeral of Dinko Sakic, one of the commandants of Jasenovac. This event, the laying down of a foul murderous individual has been taken up by some of the Croatian far right as an opportunity to push their re-evaluation of the NDH as a legitimate part of Croatian national inspirations. Marko rightly points to the nihilistic and self-destructive creedo of Pavelic, Bubak and Kvaternik leading to a Croat Golgotha but I believe fails to recognise how such ultra-nationalism can still maintain a legitimate place within a wider, less radical nationalist discourse.

A few points.

Marko gives a sophisticated recap of a long standing interpretation of the roots and origins of Croatian fascism. Within this, Pavelic's followers and his ideology are foreign imports, nurtured in Italy and Horthy's Hungary and then given the opportunity to run an independent Croatia after Hitler had failed to find an alternative. The treaty of Rome is demonstrative proof of the Ustaša 'treachery' and their disconnection from 'kosher' Croatian Nationalism, leaving many thousands of Croats under a ruthlessly Italianising regime in Dalmatia. The Ustaša tragedy of tension against the Yugoslav regime in the thirties was aimed at 'disgracing and undermining Croatia' rather than 'liberation'. This historiographical trend, which includes Fikreta Jelić-Butić and Bogdan Krizman and more recently Mark Biondich, Aleksa Djilas and Hoare himself draws a line between the fascism of the Ustaša and that of the wider Croatian Nationalist milieu. I believe it is an overly sharp distinction and mistake the nature of nationalism in general.

The Ustaša were a tiny party before the takeover in 1941. Estimates by Srdjan Trifkovic and Ivo Goldstein put their numbers in the very low thousands. The Ustaša were the very antithesis of the NSDAP or the PNF in opposition. Yet this issue of size before the seizure of power does not support the 'foreign import' thesis as fully as first glance might suggest. Pavelic believed that mass agitation was foolhardy given the nature of the Yugoslav regime. After the death of the leader of the HSS, Radic at the hands of a Serbian nationalist on the floor of the Yugoslav assembly, Pavelic's more radical and confrontational ideology stood little chance of mass mobilisation or of creating a open volkpartei. Instead he sought to create a fighting organisation in the mode of the Macedonian IMRO or a Leninist Vanguard. That is to sat a small disciplined unit that would be able to strike violently at the Royal dictatorship. The Ustaša could not form as a 'classic' fascist mass movement because they faced a determined traditional authoritarian regime, willing to use force and violence to defeat its internal enemies.

Yet it's violent actions and terrorist activities were praised by a wider audience. Stipe Devcic, a Ustaša militant who faced with capture, killed himself with a hand grenade was lionised not only by the small Ustaša press but in the catholic and some of the HSS papers too. The Ustasa were not beyond the pale, they were within the nationalist coalition against Serbian hegemon, misguided and overly romantic, but still 'good' Croatian boys. As Radic's successor, Macek sought to gain increasing autonomy within Yugoslavia, the Ustasa gave an alternative vision of total Independence, one that saw their numbers increase as chaos seem to encamp in central Europe. By the point of takeover, the Ustasa had as many as 10000 members in Croatia and a significant hold over much of the nationalist community

The division between Macek and Pavelic's visions and conceptions of Croatia were deep rooted. Macek was a pan-Slavic believer, he believe in the joint heritage of Croat and Serb but wanted to defend and define Croatian 'uniqueness' within a federal Yugoslavia. Pavelic and various other ideologues on the other hand believed that Serbs were ethnically different from Croats, the formers being Slavs and 'oriental', the latter being of Dinaric/Gothic/Iranian (mythical constructs one and all). Croats were a princely class, invested with a civilising mission in the harsh valleys of the Drina. Thus on the one hand, Macek's nationalism was cultural, linguistic, inclusive and demo-centric, Pavelic, supported in part by Ante Starčević and Ivo Pilar was racial, belligerent and ethno-centric. This divide within national identities, concerning the defining contours of a people, of a volk remain. Indeed they are universal poles of national identities.

To give one case study, Max Bart's micro-study of the small Bosnian community of Medjugorje demonstartes how small scale levels of ethnic strife were transformed and the Ustasa ideology popularised as tension wiped away middle ground. The Slavas, intra-community meeting places were abandoned as the ethno-cratic forms of expulsion and annihilation of the Ustasa and to a certain extent, the Cetniki took over.

The power of the Ustasa was their powerful and bloody reinterpretation of a popular and authentically Croatian strand of nationalist discourse, of Serb otherness and accompanying corruption, of purging and remaking. That link should not be ignored.

Facsism is a natural part of the European experience of National identity. It is systemic to nationalism, although thankfully not in any way inevitable. It explains why when the forming of national identity as a primary collective experience was a european wider project (1860-1930), the seeds of fascism were sown.