By Stefan Slavković
If someone had told Franjo Tuđman (the late Croatian president) back then that, at the end of 2025, the political party he founded – HDZ – would still be in power in Croatia, and that Serbophobia would be more vigorous than it had been for a long time, he would probably have been pleased.
If someone had informed Slobodan Milošević that some would compare the possibility of Serbia’s isolation to that of the 1990s, he would have been puzzled. How did Vučić end up as president; were there not better candidates? Is Dačić really leading the socialists, and how did the SPS become an appendage of the “radicals who wanted to learn”? Perhaps he would feel some relief if he were to read any of the statements issued by those in power, because he would realise that the rhetoric of the 1990s has not only failed to fade away but has in fact been sharpened, refined, and, it seems, further stripped of any sense of responsibility.
As was the case before the signing of the Erdut Agreement three decades ago, which initiated the integration of Baranja, eastern Slavonia and western Syrmia into Croatia’s constitutional order – and, for that matter, throughout the entire existence of the former Yugoslavia – the main drivers of nationalism in the Western Balkans, despite tough competition, have been and remain official Belgrade and Zagreb, two cities once connected by the Motorway of Brotherhood and Unity, physically separated by around 390 kilometres, although politically the distance is much greater. Though there are similarities as well…
As in Serbia, there exists in Croatia a degree of hostility towards other communities, especially the Serb community, which can be manipulated for day-to-day political purposes. Much like the SNS, Croatia’s HDZ finds it convenient for the far right to show itself from time to time. These are sister parties, both members of the EPP, and it was no accident that the HDZ lobbied most strongly for the SNS to remain an associate member of Europe’s conservatives. Although far-right parties are not strong in either Croatia or Serbia, their potential voters enjoy political representation within the ruling parties.
Naturally, problems arise when certain boundaries are crossed, because the genie of hatred cannot be forced back into the bottle. In Croatia, it is easy to move from an anti-Serb stance to an anti-Dalmatian one, and there are parallels in Serbia, where the perceived problem is not only Croats but also Bosniaks and Albanians. In addition, migrants are increasingly present on both sides, and existing national and social frustrations are generally heightened, Jovo Bakić, professor of sociology at the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, tells Radar.
Preparing the ground
It is possible, of course, to view Marko Perković Thompson’s concert in Zagreb in July as a relatively harmless music event with a political undertone, as some in Croatia did. But neither is the first association with his oeuvre kitschy sentimentalism in the vein of Bijelo dugme, nor was he shouting the Ustasha slogan “Za dom spremni” before 500,000 attendees unaware of the NDH or Operation Storm. One of his greatest hits is, after all, “Bojna Čavoglave”. Be that as it may, the authorities of the Croatian capital banned the use of Ustasha slogans and symbols at events under the city’s jurisdiction on 11 November, but it remains to be seen how future gatherings will be policed effectively. Equally powerless and certainly less willing to intervene will be the Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, who shared the stage with Thompson in July in the presence of his children. During the sound check, granted, but still.
The music of Croatia’s increasingly right-leaning court artist served as a template for other local outbursts of intolerance. Football supporters have never been the most tolerant members of society, but it is also a fact that Torcida, the supporters’ group of Split’s Hajduk FC, has revived numerous contentious slogans, however folkloric or declarative they may be. Veteran fighters interrupted the Benkovac festival in August, where a “tribute to empathy and peace in an atmosphere of a swinging pendulum of war”, as the programme stated, was to be delivered among others by musician Damir Avdić and theatre director Oliver Frljić.
Masked men attempted to disrupt the opening of an exhibition dedicated to Dejan Medaković (a Zagreb Serb and one of the architects of the SANU Memorandum), and in Split their counterparts succeeded in shutting down a musical evening. The exhibition “Serb Women, Heroines of the Great War” was postponed in Vukovar, one of the symbols of suffering from the 1990s. Finally, a group of thugs was prevented from attacking Serbian karate competitors participating in a local tournament.
Media treatment of these incidents ranged from silence to critical analyses from the independent part of the socio-political scene. Thus, Hrvoje Klasić, a history professor at the University of Zagreb, noted in an opinion piece for Croatia’s 24 sata that criticism of the perpetrators was brief, quickly turning into justification and then support. The problem was no longer the escalation from verbal to physical violence, but rather the Serbs themselves, who were cast as provocateurs, which resulted in the remaining events within the Days of Serbian Culture being placed under police protection. As was, we might add, once the case with the “Mirdita – Good Day” festival in Belgrade, at least while it was still held.
Finally, is it not abnormal, or even more, foolish, Klasić concluded, that Croatian right-wingers are attempting to portray Medaković – who in the 1980s believed that the work of Serbian cultural societies in Croatia was being obstructed, that the use of Cyrillic was being hindered, and who, as a victim of the Ustasha regime, warned of the dangers of Croatian nationalism flirting with Ustashism – as a malicious Serbian nationalist by calling for bans on Serbian cultural events and the use of Cyrillic, while expressing Croatian patriotism through the celebration of Ustashism? Bravo for the Croatian right-wingers! They have chosen an excellent way to prove that Serbian nationalists were wrong. Even the Belgrade establishment, neither that of the Memorandum era nor the present one, could not have devised anything better.
A report on the work of Croatia’s Ministry of the Interior showed that 75 hate crimes were committed in the neighbouring country in 2024 – roughly one every five days – and the motives were, in order: the victim’s national origin, skin colour, sexual orientation, and religion. There are indications that some hate crimes were reclassified as other criminal offences. A chronic problem is becoming acute.
Loud silence
Tensions soon took on a political, even personalised form. Milorad Pupovac, president of the SDSS party and the Serb National Council, received death threats, and this time Plenković reacted, sharply condemning both the attacks and the threats on the platform X. President Zoran Milanović responded similarly. On the other side, Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić – as well as many of his nationalist pursuers such as Aleksandar Vulin and Vladimir Đukanović – largely refrained from commenting. Except that, predictably, he redirected the attacks onto himself, partly by implicitly repeating the parallel between the “blockers” and Croatian security services, and partly by confirming, perhaps inadvertently, that he equates Serbia, Serbs, and himself.
He also missed the opportunity to remind the public that he had once not been permitted to visit the Jasenovac concentration camp – and although Croatia’s political leadership certainly would not have hosted him, they could not, strictly speaking, have barred his entry into the country had he only announced his visit officially, according to protocol. In Zagreb it is said that this incident, more than others, worsened relations between the two governments, as it came closest to producing an unnecessary scandal, while the indictment issued by Serbian prosecutors against four Croatian pilots for the crime committed on the Petrovačka Road in 1995 is scarcely mentioned at all.
Vučić’s silence, undoubtedly a consequence of recent reprimands from Brussels, left the hot chestnut to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Serbian public was spared yet another round of Vučević-style scolding directed at citizens of Serbia who spend their summers on the islands.
Expected or not, no one in Serbia had officially commented on, let alone condemned, the threats addressed to Pupovac, at least by the time this issue went to press.
Washing hands
Part of the narrative about regional reconciliation and confronting the past is the thesis that each of the formerly warring sides must clean up its own backyard. This paraphrase from Voltaire’s Candide – which concludes that one “must cultivate one’s garden” – stands in ironic counterpoint to the novella’s subtitle, “on optimism”; in reality, the history of relations among Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia suggests that ethnically motivated hatred piles up like waste on illegal dumps, until it spills over state borders, where it likewise tends to create an ideological and sanitary problem. After all, were Croatian fans not chanting “Kill the Serb” at a match on Monday – in Podgorica?!
At such moments ,it becomes almost irrelevant who started first and who is leading in backwardness.
“International circumstances do not allow for a war in the Balkans, but the spread of hatred is always present and can cause problems for ordinary people. It is certainly convenient for both ruling structures, because when they find themselves in trouble, they toss each other the ball for a smash or a volley. Instead of dealing with the question of how much money has been stolen, let us deal with the history of Serb–Croat problems, and in doing so we shall also acquire the moral right to react similarly before our voters,” Bakić explains.
Yet Croatian and Serbian nationalism differ significantly in one dimension in 2025. The former is the nationalism of a state completed in a war understood as liberational, and which, through membership in NATO and the EU, has accomplished its strategic goals. Sovereigntism has been dressed up as Serbophobia, which in turn is disguised as anti-Yugoslavism. The presence of “foreign elements” who read and write Cyrillic is understood as a provocation. Serbian nationalism is the nationalism of a territorially disputed state whose geostrategic interests are subordinated to a government made nervous by diminishing room for manoeuvre at home and abroad. Here, domestic traitors and foreign mercenaries are not mere irritants but a permanent threat which, with a change of government, would allegedly detach Vojvodina, recognise Kosovo’s independence, and let Republika Srpska drift away, as Milošević did with the Republic of Serbian Krajina. In short, if Croatia protects its constitutional ban on new unifications in the Balkans, Serbia, in its 2006 preamble, insists that Kosovo is part of its territory.
Thus Plenković only needs to “condemn in the strongest terms”, while for Vučić not even the far-right figures – the Minister of Information Boris Bratina and the Foreign Minister Nikola Selaković, nor Milorad Dodik nor Milan Knežević, nor the numerous declarations on preserving Cyrillic, national culture and the Serbian nation – will be enough.
(Radar, 24.11.2025)
https://radar.nova.rs/politika/odnosi-srbije-i-hrvatske-mrznja-na-volej/