Vestnik MGIMO-Universiteta (Sep 2020)
«In Memory of the Innocent Victims…»? Bleiburg – controversial “place of memory” in Croatia
Abstract
The article is devoted to the Bleiburg myth in the politics of memory in modern Croatia. In mid-May 1945 the contingents which were trying to move to the West and avoid the possible reprisals against them by the victorious communists were transferred to the Yugoslav partisans by the British military administration. Among them prevailed the members of Croatian Ustasha and Slovene Home Guard, but there were also representatives of other nationalities of Yugoslavia. Soon after the war all the victims of the massacres that took place in 1945 and those who died from hunger and illness during the transfer were Croatized through the efforts of the Croatian emigration. After the collapse of Yugoslavia and during the war (1991–1995), the Bleiburg myth began to acquire official status. The return of Ustasha soldiers as heroes to the public sphere under F. Tudjman was due to the concept of «national reconciliation», which was carried out not through awareness of guilt and acceptance of responsibility for the crimes committed, but through their full or partial justification.The first part of the article reviews the research literature on the Bleiburg myth, the stages of its formation and functional significance. The second part examines the public debate around the Sarajevo mass for the murdered and other commemorative events in the anniversary in May 2020. They are compared with the evaluations of the Bleiburg narrative-ritual complex expressed in the literature.The 75th anniversary of Bleiburg commemorated in an atmosphere of fatigue from the restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic and on the eve of the Croatian parliamentary elections, demonstrated deep social division, the contested character of history and the political interest in discussing this tragedy. Comparison of the research literature with publications in the mass press indicates the obviousness of the functional model of the Bleiburg myth for a significant segment of Croatian society. Although the demand for renewal of the memorial repertoire seems to have increased, it is still not enough for the transition to the new politics of memory.
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