Franjo Tuđman

Franjo Tuđman (May 14th 1922 - December 10th 1999) was the first president of the republic of independent Croatia during the Années 1990.

The political party of Tuđman, the Croatian democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, HDZ) gained the first elections post-Communists and multi-party the May 7th 1990. He became president of the country then. One year later, he issued the independence of Croatia. He was re-elected twice and remained with the capacity until his death, fine 1999. Its name is sometimes written Tudjman .

Communist era

Franjo Tuđman was born with Veliko Trgovišće, a village of the Croatian area of the Zagorje, in the north of the Croatia.

During the Second world war, Tuđman fights side of the in favor of Tito. It is there that it meets his future wife Ankica Tuđman. It becomes in the Années 1950 one of the youngest generals of the Armée popular Yugoslavian. There exists a polemic about its military qualities, some estimating that it owes its rank with its area of origin (the Zagorje) in which few partisans were originating, others refute these charges and estimate that Tuđman was certainly one of the most educated generals of Tito. Its book, Rat protiv missed (the war against the war) by 1957, covering various military events of Hannibal to the in favor while passing by Napoleon, was the subject of study of many general futures of the Armée popular Yugoslavian. Tuđman left the active service in 1961 and founded the Institute for the history of the movement of the Croatian workers ( Institut za historiju radničkoga pokreta Hrvatske ) of which he was the director until in 1967.

The dissident

In addition to its book on the guerilla, Rat protiv missed , Tuđman wrote a certain number of articles criticizing the Communist party of Yugoslavia from which it was excluded. Its most important work of this time is Velike ideje I Mali narodi ( Grandes ideas and small nations ) in connection with the political history and the dogma of the Yugoslav political elite.

In 1971, it was condemned to two years of prison for its participation in the Croatian Printemps (it was released after 9 months). Croatian spring was a movement reformist preaching musculus rectus abdominis and a greater recognition of the Croatia within the socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia. The dispute was repressed by the police force and the army.

At this period Tuđman criticized the role of the centralism in Yugoslavia and also the ideology at the base of the Yugoslav State. This romantic idea of nation panslave which was born with 19th according to him was actually transformed by a Serb domination on the register, economy, culture and also in the army. He criticized also the enumeration of the victims of the Concentration camp of Jasenovac, which was the beginning of a long polemic (see Oustachis#Victimes) dividing historians, Serb and Croatian nationalists.

In connection with the Communism and idea of sole party, Tuđman remained in the line of the party.

Tuđman was condemned to 3 years of prison, in 1981, for nationalist activities after its interview by a Swedish television in which he spoke about the position of the Croatia within the socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia. It was released after 11 months.

Polemic around the Horrors of the war

In 1989, Tuđman published its most known book the Horrors of the war , in which he questioned the number of victims in Yugoslavia during the Second world war. This book, which mixes meditations on the role of violence in the history of the world and personal experience, denounces a hyperinflation of the number of Serb victims in the State independent of Croatia (NDH).

The historians announced that the number of Serb killed in the Concentration camp of Jasenovac ranged between 500.000 and 800.000. As research showed it (not sources), these figure are inaccurate and, handled and intensified, they were used by propaganda to denounce the Oustachis, one of the enemies of the Second world war, were overcome by the communist partisans. Franjo Tuđman affirmed that the purpose of these figures, protested as scientists, in particular by Serb intelligentsia, were to affirm the Serb domination on Yugoslavia post-Tito. Later, Tuđman put forward the idea to exhume the remainders of Oustachis and to place them in the concentration camp of Jasenovac, to force a reconciliation of the victims with their torturers. Tuđman affirmed that the number of the whole of the victims of the camp of Jasenovac (Serb, Juifs, Tziganes, Croats, and others) ranged between 30.000 and 60.000, which was quite lower than the official figures and started great polemics. Recent studies announce the number from 56.000 to 85.000 victims (see Oustachis#Victimes).

Another polemic relates to supposed the anti-semitism of Tuđman. In its book, being pressed on the figures of the German historian Weitlinger, he affirms that the number of Jewish victims of Shoah is at the neighborhoods of 4 million, and not between 5 and 6 million, frequently quantifies quoted. The April 22nd 1993, the NewYork Times announces that Tuđman would affirm that only 900.000 Jews perished in the Holocaust. Other passages of its book were interpreted like anti-semites, including one short description of the role of the Jews in the history, and a passage, based on the book of Ante Ciliga " Sam kroz Evropu U ratu (1939-1945) " /" Only through the war in Europe (1939-1945) " describing the life of a prisoner to the camp of Jasenovac and its relations with his/her Jewish companion of barrack room. He describes the Jews like the the least happy nation of the world, always victim of his ambitions and those of the others , and adds that whoever tries to show that they are the source even of their tragedy are arranged among the anti-semites and are the object of hatred on behalf of the Jews .

In 1990, Tuđman declared: I am content that my wife is neither Serb, nor juive".

The national plan

At the end of the Years 1980, whereas the socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia advanced towards its dismantling, Tuđman writes a national plan which one can summarize as follows:

the creation of a Croatian State-nation,
Even if the goal of Tuđman were independent Croatia, it thought that was to pass by a Yugoslav confederation with a great decentralization and democratization.
Tuđman saw the future of Croatia in a state capitalist nearer to the Central Europe and far away from the Balkans.
It affirmed that the JNA (Armée popular Yugoslavian) had been put under control of the Serb nationalists in less than 4 years, at the same time ethniquement and ideologically. The Serb ones which constituted 40% of the population accounted for 80% of the officers of the Yugoslav army.
Concerning the Bosnia-Herzégovine, Tuđman affirmed that Bosniens Moslems, or Bosnian, is Croatian of confession Musulman E, and that once released from Communism they would be affirmed as Croats, making of Bosnia a country mainly Croatian (with 44% from Bosnians, Croat 17%, and 33% the Serb ones). That did not occur.

President de Croatie

The tensions within the Communist party of Yugoslavia carried out the federal government to organize the first elections multi-party since 1945.

The bonds of Tuđman with the Croatian diaspora enabled him to create the Croatian democratic Union (" Hrvatska demokratska zajednica" or HDZ) in 1989, left which will remain with the capacity until in 2000. The party was a nationalist movement asserting the historical and cultural tradition Croatian and preaching the values related to the Catholicisme. The goal was to create a Croatian State-nation and to gain independence. The sympahisants of the Oustachi movement were formally invited to take part in the first assembly of the HDZ and the movement profited from a broad financial support on behalf of the Croats expatriates of which much supported the ideas of the Oustachis and from old the State independent of Croatia. This influence was found with the HDZ which called with the re-establishment of Croatia in its natural borders and histories , which would have included the Bosnia-Herzégovine and would be would extend to the river Drina. Tuđman decorated with the beginning of the year 1990 the former leader oustachi Ivo Rojnica - refugee in Argentina - which declared on this occasion: " All that I made in 1941, I would do it again ".

The HDZ gains more than 60% of the seats of the Sabor (see Croatian Parliamentary election of 1990) and following the modification of the constitution, Tuđman is elected President de Croatie the May 30th 1990. It forms a noncommunist government with at its head Stjepan Mesić. The republics of Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzégovine élirent also noncommunist governments, while the Communists kept the capacity in Serbia and Montenegro.

In October 1990 Croatia as Slovenia proposes to transform the Federal state into confederation of Sovereign states capped with an advisory Parliament, threatening to make secession if that does not occur. The December 21st 1990, Croatia adopts a new constitution, conferring the right to him to make secession.

Sunday March 31st 1991, the first incidents burst with the National park of the Lakes Plitvice between the Serb militia of the Krajina and the Croatian forces. The May 12th an illegal referendum is organized in Krajina, the Serb ones decide for a fastening with the Republic of Serbia if Croatia makes secession. The May 19th the Republic of Croatia organizes a referendum. Nearly 95% of the votes are for a Sovereign state and independent, free to join the other Republics of the Yugoslav Federation. The referendum obtains a participation of 70%, it is been sulky by the Serb minority (11% of the population). These events, as well as the declaration of the area of the Krajina proclaiming its fastening with the republic of Serbia, plunge Croatia in the war.

For the period 1991 - 1995 the Croatia is in war, to see the article Guerre in Croatia (1991-1995). Tuđman will prove to be a fine strategist on the diplomatic and military level and will manage to create a Croatian army. It benefits from the cease-fires to make pass the Croatian army of 7 brigades to 64 after twenty cease-fire, and this in spite of an embargo on the weapons. At the time of the war in Bosnia Tuđman meets Slobodan Milošević on several occasions to agree on the division of Bosnia, not which will carry out certain members of the HDZ to leave the party. In 1994, Stjepan Mesić leaves the HDZ to form a new party, the independent Démocrates Croatian (HND).

Tuđman follows a policy of privatization of the Croatian economy. Much reproaches him for having sold off the Croatian companies with war profiteers.

Authoritarian abuses

At the time of the Crisis of Zagreb in October 1995, it refuses to confirm the election of the mayor of Zagreb, as it has legally of it the right, the mayor of Zagreb being also governor, refusing to see the opposition settling in the Croatian capital.

The March 15th 1996, it passes a law founding the Violation of the press laws , making it possible to the president to prosecute the journalists carrying to him reached. In 1996, the drafting of Feral Tribune is questioned by the police force to have denounced the wish of the president to bury, in a memorial with the victims of the Nazism, skins of Croatian combatants fascistic. The firm weekly magazine Panorama for problems of hygiene in the buildings of the newspaper , Ivo Pukanić, of the weekly magazine Nacional, was accused for to have published information harming the brand image of Croatia . In spite of that of the civils servant of UNESCO underlined fine May 1996 that the situation of the press in Croatia is all the same more moderate than truly explosive

He was re-elected 2 times in 1992 and 1997. Reached cancer as of 1993, it died of an internal bleeding between the 9 and the December 10th 1999.

International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia

Tuđman died before it can be accused by the International penal court for ex-Yugoslavia, but the court identifies it like the chief of one presumedly undertaken criminal of ethnic cleaning of Croatia against the Serb ones.

On the case of the Operation Storm, 3 Croats were accused for the organization of the ethnic Nettoyage in the Serb République of Krajina, Ivan Čermak, Mladen Markač, and Ante Gotovina.

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