BARTULIN'S TILTING AT WINDMILLS: MANIPULATION AS A HISTORIOGRAPHIC METHOD (A reply to Nevenko Bartulin's "Intelectual Discourse on Race and Culture in Croatia 1900-1945")

Open Access

Abstract

In this article, which is written in a polemical tone, the author is making an effort to problematize a point of view from which the ideology of Croatian nationalism, the Ustasha movement and the Independent State of Croatia are even today being obsereved by a part of historiography. According to the author, the ideology of Croatian nationalism has not suffered much vital modification since the mid-19th century until the end od the Second World War, rather it has kept itself occupied with justifying the right of Croats as a multiconfessional European nation to establish an independent state. Not just political manifestations, but also literary and cultural achievements of the nationalist ideology protagonists clearly speak in that direction. The geopolitical position of Croatian lands, as well as the influence of foreign powers have not made the achievement of such a right of Croatian people and the evolution of Croatian nationalist ideology possible. As a result, that same nationalist ideology sometimes takes on foreign ideological and political influences which are visible only on its surface and purely out of tactial reasons. The Ustasha movement, being one of the manifestations of Croatian nationalism, is also characterized by ideological eclecticism. Thus, different and sometimes contrastive statements made by the leading persona of Ustasha movement regarding their attitude towards the ideologies dominating Europe in the time after the First World War are therefore understandable.