{"id":3407,"date":"2025-05-08T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T06:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cok.hr\/en\/?p=3407"},"modified":"2025-05-08T21:07:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T19:07:15","slug":"1945-in-zagreb-liberation-or-enslavement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cok.hr\/en\/1945-in-zagreb-liberation-or-enslavement\/","title":{"rendered":"1945 in Zagreb: Liberation or Enslavement?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The continued use of the word \u201cLiberation\u201d (Oslobo\u0111enje<\/em>) for what occurred in Zagreb eighty years ago, when Partisan forces took control of the city, is intellectually indefensible. Croatia and Yugoslavia, like most of the rest of Eastern Europe, passed in the period immediately after the Second World War from control by one totalitarian ideology, some version of fascism or National Socialism, to control by another, Communism. Given that approaching 100 million people world-wide are estimated to have lost their lives because of Communism, the idea that it liberated Croats is to say the least improbable.<\/p>\n

The Soviet model applied to the Yugoslav system<\/h3>\n

Only the historically ignorant and counter-factual assessment that Tito was \u201cdifferent\u201d and Yugoslavia \u201cliberal\u201d allows this nonsense to gain any credibility. The truth is that the system applied by the Yugoslav Communists was modelled on that practised by Stalin in the Soviet Union. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from Cominform in 1948 did not mean a break with the main features of that system, whose ideology and repressive system were retained. Self-management (samoupravljanje<\/em>) was not intended to slow the path to socialism, to the contrary. Only later, after the fall of Aleksandar Rankovi\u0107 in 1966, and with increased economic contact with the West, did life under Communism become less brutal and controlled.<\/p>\n

The nonsense about Liberation in 1945 is, however, dangerous. The misuse of fundamental philosophical and political concepts always brings with it dangers. In this case, the intentional or just sloppy misuse of the term \u201cLiberation\u201d has the effect of legitimising Yugoslav Communism as a system and suggesting that those who, from whatever standpoint, opposed it were \u2013 and still are \u2013 on \u201cthe wrong side of history\u201d, and thus do not deserve a hearing or respect.<\/p>\n

1945 in Zagreb: the distorted truth<\/h3>\n

Characteristically, the report in Vjesnik<\/em>, of the reception given to the Partisans on 8 May 1945 significantly distorts the truth:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnits of the glorious, victorious Yugoslav Army entered liberated Zagreb\u2026The more than a hundred thousand citizens of Zagreb – men, women and young people – gathered at that mass meeting are yet another proof that Zagreb belongs to Tito.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, as the now well-known photograph of Partisan units marching in single file across an otherwise empty Ban Jela\u010di\u0107 Square proves, there was no spontaneous public enthusiasm \u2013 unlike that displayed (and captured photographically) when German troops entered Zagreb in April 1941. A concentrated effort by the Party leadership was required to mobilise the population for the first demonstrations of enthusiasm, culminating with that mass meeting in Jela\u010di\u0107 Square on 13 May.<\/p>\n

The Exodus fuelled by fear of Partisan revenge<\/h3>\n

By contrast, although the NDH authorities certainly did seek to encourage it, to promote their importance with the Allies, the exodus of thousands of men, women and children, Usta\u0161e, Domobrani and civilians, not just from Zagreb but from elsewhere in Croatia, on 6 and 7 May was for the most part spontaneous. The common factor was fear of Partisan revenge alongside a misguided hope that the West \u2013 especially the British \u2013 would offer refuge. Archbishop Stepinac later recalled the scenes:<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw those poor people, advancing out of Bosnia, Srijem, Slavonia, in long columns. An old horse pitifully pulling a cart; women and children on carts\u2026Cows tied behind the carts, and such sights. Where was that poor crowd off to! They would kill them, those that did not die on the way\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

These people rightly assessed that the future for them and their families did not involve Liberation.<\/p>\n

Of course, a limited people were, indeed, liberated, namely those held in NDH prisons and camps. The Zagreb Jews were not mainly among them, having been dispatched to Auschwitz for liquidation on Himmler’s instructions in 1943. Only those married to gentiles (Christians) had been spared, because of Stepinac’s and the Church’s interventions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What happened to the national minorities?<\/h3>\n

The other sense of the word Liberation \u2013 and the Party deliberately now and later confused the two to burnish its patriotic credentials \u2013 was the removal of control by the Axis \u201cOccupiers\u201d of significant stretches of Croatian territory. Croatia within Socialist Yugoslavia expanded in Istria and obtained Rijeka, Zadar, some of the islands, Baranja and Me\u0111imurje. Of course, what happened to the national minorities in those areas \u2013 Italians, Hungarians and Germans hardly amounted to Liberation, but rather expulsion, imprisonment, persecution and often death.<\/p>\n

The entry of the Partisans into Zagreb on 8 May had been meticulously prepared, as a range of publicly available documents demonstrate. From the foundation of the OZNA<\/a> (Odjeljenje za za\u0161titu naroda<\/em> \u2013 Department for the Protection of the People) secret police in May 1944, the Party \u2013 and all OZNA members had to be Party members \u2013 had fashioned a powerful weapon to enforce revolution and repression. With Rankovi\u0107 in overall charge and Ivan Kraja\u010di\u0107 Stevo<\/a> as head of the Croatian OZNA, the organisation had well before 8 May 1945 drawn up a detailed model of how to gather and deploy information about the Party\u2019s enemies and then to isolate, suppress and eliminate them.<\/p>\n

Mass graves in Slovenia and Croatia<\/h3>\n

The detailed plan prepared for taking Vara\u017edin drawn up at the end of March 1945 undoubtedly had its equivalent (now lost) for Zagreb. It listed all the important buildings and institutions to be secured and, most important, those who were to be arrested. In Zagreb, any remaining leading HSS figures were ordered to be seized as a priority.<\/p>\n

The full account of how many were killed in these early days will have to await the completion of the work initiated by the Commission for the Determination of War-time and Post-War Victims (Komisija za utvr\u0111ivanje ratnih i poratnih \u017ertava<\/em>) whose politically motivated closure is one of the many scandals associated with the suppression of the truth about Partisan crimes. Enough is known, however, about the contents of mass graves in Slovenia (Tezno, Huda Jama and elsewhere) and some in Croatia (Jazovka in \u017dumberak) to show what was done.<\/p>\n

The prisons and camps in and around Zagreb \u2013 Kanal, Jankomir, Pre\u010dko, Maksimir, Sesvete \u2013 temporarily held \u201cenemies of the people\u201d, who were taken out of them for (at best) summary trial and execution and burial or moved on along the Kri\u017eni put<\/em> (\u201cWay of the Cross\u201d).
\nThe proceedings in Zagreb were initially not harsh enough for Rankovi\u0107, who on 15 May addressed a severe rebuke to Kraja\u010di\u0107:<\/p>\n

\u201cYour work in Zagreb is unsatisfactory. In ten days in liberated Zagreb only 200 bandits were shot. We are astonished at this indecisiveness in purging Zagreb of villains\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the days that followed, the industrial scale of killing should have started to satisfy him.<\/p>\n

Party leadership had no intention of honouring their promises<\/h3>\n

The Partisans had made a series of promises before they gained power which foretold the birth of freedom \u2013 a genuine Liberation. These were, of course, flagrant lies that no one in the Party leadership, at any rate, had any intention of honouring, and which were primarily directed at the Allies. At its Third Meeting, at Topusko on 9 May 1944, ZAVNOH (Zemaljsko antifa\u0161isti\u010dko vije\u0107e narodnog oslobo\u0111enja Hrvatske<\/em> \u2013 Country Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia) issued a \u201cDeclaration on the Fundamental Rights of the People and Citizens of Democratic Croatia\u201d (Deklaracija o osnovnim pravima naroda i gra\u0111ana Demokratske Hrvatske<\/em>). Among its pledges were:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo every citizen is guaranteed the security of the person and property. The right of ownership and private initiative in economic life are guaranteed\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cTo all citizens are guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom of conscience\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cTo all citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of contract and freedom of association\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters in Democratic Croatia exercise their right to vote by secret ballot on the basis of general, equal and direct voting rights\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It would take too long \u2013 and the facts are, anyway, well enough known \u2013 to demonstrate how all these promises were broken. But briefly the facts can be enumerated.<\/p>\n

The facts: how promises were broken<\/h3>\n

First, private ownership and private business were not respected. The confiscation of property quickly proceeded partly through outright seizure of city flats, but more systematically by application of the 24 April \u201cDecision of the Presidency of ZAVNOH about the Protection of the National Honour of Croats and Serbs in Croatia\u201d (Odluka predsjedni\u0161tva ZAVNOH-a o za\u0161titi nacionalne \u010dasti Hrvata i Srba u Hrvatskoj<\/em>), which set up special courts, applying a very wide definition of collaboration with the enemy, as a device quickly to seize businesses and property.<\/p>\n

Second, there was no respect for freedom of conscience or the right to worship. Priests were killed or imprisoned. The Church was subject to marginalisation, confiscation, repression and infiltration. A bitter ideological war against Christianity was fought in the classrooms and among the country\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n

Third, any exercise of the right to free speech could quickly result in imprisonment. The Party censored and soon alone controlled the newspapers. Public gatherings without Party approval \u2013 except initially pilgrimages \u2013 were rendered impossible.<\/p>\n

No sincere attempt to install democracy<\/h3>\n

Fourth, there was no sincere attempt to install democracy. The creation of a one-party state was achieved by splitting and intimidating the HSS, the only important alternative to the Communists, and then creating the conditions in which it was unable to campaign. Indeed, the Communist Party of Croatia \u2013 under its various names, finally called the Stranka demokratskih promjena<\/em>, Socijaldemokratska partija<\/em> (Party of Democratic Changes, Social Democratic Party – the SDP) only accepted the possibility of multi-Party elections when it had no alternative, and while it still hoped by manipulating the voting arrangements to win them \u2013 which in 1990 proved its final miscalculation.<\/p>\n

An authoritative list has been published of those who were executed in Zagreb in 1945 and 1946. There are 1555 names on it. Some are well-known, a few notorious, but most of the victims are forgotten. Some categorisations are revealing of the Party\u2019s intentions. 60 were executed before any sentence was passed, which illustrates the new rulers\u2019 haste and uninterest in justice. 35 were priests, nuns and other religious functionaries. Religion was to be singled out for persecution. 94 of those sentenced to death were women. Many other women endured long sentences under barbaric conditions in Po\u017eega women\u2019s prison and elsewhere. Thus, did Communism liberate women.<\/p>\n

Probably the most active judge of the military court of Zagreb, which sentenced so many to death, was Captain Vlado Ranogajec. He is honoured for his contribution to sport with his own street in Zagreb. More appropriately, perhaps, he should be remembered for sentencing, on 16 October 1944, a sixteen-year-old girl to be shot as a spy. But, then, forgetting the truth and propagating lies is what the insistence on the myth of Liberation by the Communist Party entails.<\/p>\n

Author: Robin Harris, the President of COK<\/a> and author of Croatia: A History \u2013 From Revolution to Independence<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The continued use of the word \u201cLiberation\u201d (Oslobo\u0111enje) for what occurred in Zagreb eighty years ago, when Partisan forces took control of the city, is intellectually indefensible. Robin Harris describes why in his latest text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,244,245],"tags":[329,330,335,331,300,296,336,328,334,304,332,338,333,95,339,320,337],"class_list":["post-3407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-croatia","category-history","category-robin-harris-en","tag-1945-in-zagreb","tag-aleksandar-rankovic","tag-alojzije-stepinac","tag-cominform","tag-communist-party","tag-ivan-krajacic-stevo","tag-krizni-put","tag-liberation","tag-ndh","tag-partisans","tag-samoupravljanje","tag-sdp","tag-second-world-war","tag-tito","tag-vlado-ranogajec","tag-yugoslavia","tag-zavnoh"],"yoast_head":"\n1945 in Zagreb: Liberation or Enslavement? 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