The Feast of St Blaise celebrated on 3rd February is kept throughout the Catholic Church, with the blessing of throats as an accompaniment, but in Croatia it is, primarily recognised as the feast-day of Dubrovnik\u2019s patron saint. The history of Dubrovnik\u2019s attachment to St Blaise (Sveti Vlaho) is otherwise fascinating, but it is perhaps the continuity, stretching over centuries, that is most historically significant.<\/p>\n
One might imagine that the Partisans who \u201cliberated\u201d Croatia in 1945 would have been reluctant to encourage the ancient practice. That was, however, far from the case. The reasoning of the Communist authorities provides an instructive insight into the mixture of brutality and subtlety with which the Catholic Church and ancient custom were treated in Tito\u2019s Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n
In October 1944 the Partisans arrived. The secret police, OZNA (Odjeljenje za za\u0161titu naroda \u2013 Department for the Protection of the People), came, as elsewhere, with previously prepared lists of those who were to be eliminated. The killings were conducted quickly, either without trial, or with summary justice. In some cases, entirely fictitious proceedings were retrospectively invented and posted on public notices. Those killed on the nights of 25 and 26 October on the island of Daksa, who included the famous Jesuit hymn-composer Father Petar Perica, fall into that category.<\/p>\n
Dubrovnik was regarded with deep suspicion by the Party. It was too bourgeois, too old fashioned, too self-confident, potentially disloyal. A letter dated 25 October 1944 from Ante Jurjevi\u0107 \u201cBaja\u201d, Organising secretary of the Regional (Oblast) Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia for Dalmatia, which refers en passant<\/em> to extra-judicial killings, also observes:<\/p>\n \u201cThe people in this city are odd and to some extent incomprehensible, starting with the nobility (gospari<\/em>) to the common folk. They are full of their own peculiarity, which is very close to that of our enemies, and indeed for those reasons Dubrovnik has become, and will remain unless we purge it and commit our full attention to it, the centre of spies not only for Dubrovnik or the Southern part of Dalmatia but for a large part of Yugoslavia, especially Montenegro, Dalmatia and Herzegovina.\u201d<\/p>\n The authorities in Belgrade clearly thought that OZNA was too lenient in Dubrovnik. In early December 1944, they complained: \u201cOur institutions (organi<\/em>) are inactive in Dubrovnik, usta\u0161e, \u010detniks i ma\u010dekovci do whatever they want. Increase your vigilance there.\u201d<\/p>\n OZNA, however, understood that it was possible to practise selective terror and systematic liquidation, without trampling upon local feeling. Accordingly, when advice was sought whether the Feast of St Blaise should go ahead, Nikola Sekuli\u0107 \u201cBunko\u201d, undoubtedly reflecting the judgement of Ivan Kraja\u010di\u0107 \u201cStevo\u201d, head of the Croatian OZNA, replied on 20 January 1945:<\/p>\n \u201cAllow the Dubrov\u010dani to celebrate the Feast of St Blaise as they have done hitherto. Avoid measures which distance us from the people\u2026We shall hold to account anyone who because of his behaviour weakens the people\u2019s sympathy for the People\u2019s Liberation Struggle (N.O.B\u00a0 Narodnooslobodila\u010dka borba).\u201d<\/p>\n Paradoxically, it was a section of the clergy who opposed conducting the St. Blaise celebration and procession with what the Communist authorities interpreted as a new normality. How much the subsequent accusations against them were well founded, and how much they were an excuse for supporting flimsy charges of hostility to the People (and the Party), it is now impossible to tell. But pressure was clearly placed by some of the clergy upon the acting Bishop of Dubrovnik, Pavao Butorac, to refuse to accommodate the Party\u2019s wishes and cancel the event \u2013 pressure which he resisted.<\/p>\n Butorac, as subsequent reports from OZNA suradnici<\/em> (collaborators) testify, was personally hostile to Communism, but he had no faith in the possibility, either inside Yugoslavia or in the international sphere, of resisting it. In the event, the proceedings on the Feast went off quite smoothly, despite some attempts at disruption. Allowing for the political slant, the report from Major Ljubo Krstulovi\u0107 \u201c\u0160imi\u0107\u201d, deputy head of OZNA for the Region of the VIIIth Corps of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ \u2013 Narodnooslobodila\u010dka vojska Jugoslavije) of 10 February, can be taken at face value:<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time of the celebration of St. Blaise there were no shows, posters, declarations, recitations etc. recalling the People\u2019s Liberation Struggle, nor any of the changes that the Liberation had brought to Dubrovnik. Everything passed as though nothing had happened. The Dubrov\u010dani justify that, the celebration must be in the traditional spirit, without a trace of the new. They insisted that on the special leaflet for the programme there should not be the Star (petokraka<\/em>) and that the Theatre was not that of the District (okrug<\/em>), but the City etc.<\/p>\n The Friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the nuns, sabotaged St. Blaise, they tried to get the bishop to do so, but he would not, and he acted according to the traditional Church custom. The celebration was organised by the institutions of our government, and afterwards there erupted commentary from the Reactionaries, to the effect that the Partisans had had to yield, but that it was just tactics. Others said that the Partisans went to the celebration, but they did not want to feed the hungry people, they just wanted to deceive them. They criticised the fact that our army which wore the Star was part of the procession with the symbol of Communism. Apart from that, the enemies of the People\u2019s Liberation Struggle used the celebration to distribute leaflets, they did it three times\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cNobody has yet spoken with the priests, although everyone maintains that all the hostility in Dubrovnik comes from them\u201d.<\/p>\n The last quoted sentence of the OZNA report gives an indication of what would happen once the public events of the Feast of St. Blaise were out of the way. In Dubrovnik, as elsewhere in Dalmatia, a two-pronged policy was pursued by the Party authorities. On the one hand, a modus vivendi was sought with cooperative senior clergy, whose words and actions were closely monitored by a huge number of informers.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the process of liquidation or, now more frequently imprisonment of the uncooperative priests, mostly in Stara Gradi\u0161ka, was pursued alongside a sustained focus on elimination of Catholic education and devotion among the laity, especially the young. A description of that process would lead far beyond the scope of this brief reflection on the events of 1945 in Dubrovnik, but some personal details about the victims must suffice.<\/p>\n Among those arrested and sentenced to death for their participation in the movement to stop the Sveti Vlaho ceremonies going ahead – also for alleged communication with anti-Communist fighters (\u201c\u0161kripari\u201d) – was the Dominican priest Dominik Bara\u010d. A formidable intellectual, Bara\u010d was an inevitable target of Party revenge. His book, Socijalna filozofija bolj\u0161evizma<\/em> (The social Philosophy of Bolshevism) was deemed dangerous as a critical dissection of Communism from a Thomist perspective. Bara\u010d seems to have been possessed of extraordinary courage and serenity.<\/p>\n He encouraged the devotion of those incarcerated with him, first in Dubrovnik and then in Trogir, until he was led off to be shot. Another Dubrovnik priest there, Father Ivo Bjeloko\u0161i\u0107, was first tortured, then sentenced to death, but unlike Bara\u010d, had his sentence reduced to twenty years’ hard labour which he spent in Stara Gradi\u0161ka prison. Leaving as a mental and physical wreck in 1957, he returned to his priestly vocation to end his days in 2001 as Rector of the Church of Sveti Vlaho in Dubrovnik.<\/p>\n The above account shows how, in Dubrovnik as elsewhere, the Partisans shamelessly dishonoured article 5 of the Declaration of the Third Session of ZAVNOH (Zemaljsko antifa\u0161isti\u010dko vije\u0107e narodnog oslobo\u0111enja Hrvatske \u2013 The Country Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia) on the Fundamental Rights of the people and citizens of Democratic Croatia, adopted in Topusko on 9 May 1944, which reads:<\/p>\n \u201cTo all citizens is guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom of conscience\u201d.<\/p>\n Sveti Vlaho is not the only martyr who should be venerated in Dubrovnik.<\/p>\n Author: Robin Harris, the President of COK<\/a> and author of Dubrovnik: A History<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Sources and further reading:<\/p>\n \u2013 BJELOKOSI\u0106, Ivo, Sve\u0107enik mati\u010dni broj St. Grad. 2019. Dubrovnik: Hrvatsko dru\u0161tvo politi\u010dkih zatvorenika Podru\u017enica Dubrovnik, \u2013 MATKOVI\u0106, Blanka; PA\u017dANIN, Ivan, prir. Zlo\u010dini i teror u Dalmaciji 1943.-1948. po\u010dinjeni od pripadnika NOV, JA, OZN-e i UDB-e. Dokumenti (1. izdanje), Zagreb: 2011, https:\/\/znaci.org\/00002\/410.pdf<\/p>\n \u2013 RADICA, Jo\u0161ko, Sve na\u0161e Dakse, Hrvatski jug u vrtlogu Drugog svjetskog rata i jugokomunisti\u010dke strahovlade, Doprinos istini. Dubrovnik: Matica hrvatska Dubrovnik, 2003<\/p>\n \u2013 RUPI\u0106, Mate; GEIGER, Vladimir, prir. Partizanska i komunisti\u010dka represija i zlo\u010dini u Hrvatskoj 1944.-1946. Dokumenti, knjiga 4, Dalmacija. Slavonski Brod: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Feast of St Blaise in Croatia is primarily recognised as the feast-day of Dubrovnik\u2019s patron saint. In 1945, it was seemingly allowed by the Communist Party, once the public events were out of the way, terror ensued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[299,300,269,305,301,302,306,303,307,304,308],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-croatia","tag-catholic-church","tag-communist-party","tag-crimes-of-communism","tag-dubrovnik-en","tag-feast-of-st-blaise","tag-fr-dominik-barac","tag-ivan-krajacic-stevo-en","tag-ivo-bjelokosic","tag-ozna-en","tag-partisans","tag-petar-perica-en"],"yoast_head":"\nSelective terror and systematic liquidation<\/h3>\n
Feast of St Blaise “as though nothing had happened”<\/h3>\n
Martyrdom of Fr. Dominik Bara\u010d and Ivo Bjeloko\u0161i\u0107<\/h3>\n
\n
\n2002<\/p>\n