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According to one of
those mournful little jokes which used to do the rounds in Eastern
Europe before 1990, the definition of communism is that it is
the longest and most difficult route from capitalism to capitalism.
The joke was exactly wrong. After a decade of reform, it is now
becoming clear instead that the so-called "capitalism"
which has been so eagerly foisted on these countries by Western
governments is in fact the longest and most difficult route from
communism to communism.
Take
the case of Croatia, where the wheel is now turning full circle.
The parliamentary and presidential elections in January and February
of this year have brought to power a prime minister, Ivica Racan,
who is the former Ideology Secretary of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia, and a president, Stipe Mesic, who was the last president
of communist Yugoslavia in 1991. Although rivals, these two men
have together succeeded in dislodging from power the Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ), the party which led the country to the
first national independence it has enjoyed since the 12th century.
Because
the European Union and the United States are themselves convinced
that independent nationhood and state sovereignty are evil principles
which must be suppressed, the election of these old internationalists
has been greeted with euphoria in Western chancelleries. By contrast,
the HDZ's leader, the late President Franjo Tudjman, was so hated
in the West for his so-called nationalism that his funeral in
December was massively boycotted by Western leaders. The only
statesmen of note who sent the proper messages of condolence were
Slobodan Miloševic and Margaret Thatcher.
In
true communist fashion, Tudjman's opponents have devoted the last
decade to calling their enemies fascists. The late president was
regularly attacked as a dictator who wielded total control over
the country's media. In reality, all but a couple of newspapers
and the main TV news programme were his virulent opponents. Consequently,
Croatia's new leaders have lost little time in purging these last
outposts of the old regime. In the name of democracy and human
rights, all the media will henceforth be sympathetic to the new
government, a process of Gleichschaltung which is being
cheered on by the West.
The
first move was to sack the editor of the country's leading daily
broadsheet, Vjesnik. A new pro-Yugoslav editor has been
appointed in his place, a man who writes for the Belgrade daily,
Nin, and who is also the author of a profitable little
line in pornographic novels. Prominent pro-Croat and anti-communist
columnists have also been dismissed. Now, the only newspapers
which are even partially in opposition are the nationally-distributed
Slobodna Dalmacija and the small Zagreb cultural weekly
Hrvatsko Slovo. It is widely expected that the editor of
the former will be removed within the month.
Most
importantly, the chief executive of Croatian Television (HRT)
was sacked on Monday. Although it is true that the main news programme
under Tudjman was deferential to the president and the government,
political discussion programmes were free. With the new regime
at national television, the last pro-HDZ and pro-independence
voices in the country will now be extinguished. Meanwhile, the
dominant anti-HDZ media, which is in the habit of describing its
opponents as "shits", is indulging in an orgy of increasingly
fantastical allegations about the corruption of the outgoing regime.
At
the same time, widespread dismissals and internal putsches are
taking place across the country's other national institutions.
Victims to date include the head of the national electricity company;
the head of the country's largest oil company; and the entire
Zagreb city council, which was summarily dissolved last week.
The Foreign Minister has announced that 75% of the country's ambassadors
are to go. The head of the Institute for Croatian Studies at the
University of Zagreb now fears that his institute may be closed
down. Even the head of the main soccer team in Zagreb was given
the chop at the weekend. In the words of Branimir Lukšic,
the HDZ governor of Dalmatia, "There is a deep desire for
revenge and there are many backs to be scratched. These people
will never forgive us for having toppled Communism and Yugoslavia."
Certainly,
the European Union shows no sign of forgiving the HDZ for this.
A compliant pro-integrationist government in Zagreb is a key piece
in the jigsaw which the EU is painfully trying to assemble in
South-Eastern Europe. The EU's plan involves the creation of a
new super-Yugoslavia – including all the former Yugoslav
republics, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania – an entity which
goes under the cumbersome name of the "Stability Pact for
South-Eastern Europe". Acceptance of this plan is a condition
for becoming a candidate for EU membership. This is why, within
weeks of his election, the first trips abroad by the new Croat
president have all been to the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia,
Bosnia and Macedonia, while Robin Cook and Chris Patten have both
paid trips to Zagreb. And if the promises are to be believed,
Croatia is to be admitted to Nato quicker than you can say George
Robertson.
In
the EU think-piece which gave rise to the Pact, the EU's game-plan
for Croatia was explicitly described as "political normalisation
by January 2000" – the very vocabulary Leonid Brezhnev
used to describe the reassertion of Soviet power over the renegade
regime in Prague in 1968. Indeed, the EU specifically referred
to "the Slovak model" for Croatia, but it meant 1998
not 1968. In Slovakia as in Croatia, the architect of national
independence, Vladimir Meciar, was unseated after a long Western-sponsored
campaign of vilification against him. And as in Croatia, a senior
old communist, Rudolf Schuster – a man who recently accepted
a bottle of "Stalin's Tears" vodka from his erstwhile
comrades in the Communist Party of Slovakia and who declared afterwards,
"I am proud of what I did in the old regime" –
has been shoed in to take his place.
So
prospects of European integration became instantly rosier in both
countries. After all, European Union politicians find it easier
to deal with bureaucratically-minded internationalists like themselves
than with outdated old fogeys who believe in things like state
sovereignty and national identity. For ordinary Croats, by contrast,
the sad irony is that they support the process of European integration
because they believe it will take them out of the Balkans and
into Europe. Little do they realise that the European Union to
which they aspire bears an uncanny resemblance to the old communist
Yugoslavia from which they have just escaped, and that the ideals
for which they fought the war are as unpopular in Brussels as
they were in Belgrade.
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