It seems that the narrative claiming Croatian interests are behind the organisation of protests in Serbia has taken root only within the leadership of the ruling party and, perhaps, within part of its core electorate.
Yet it persists, although, according to Hrvoje Klasić, professor at the Department of History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, it does not provoke any significant reaction in the neighbouring country. Nor, for that matter, do the protests themselves, at least not as they once did.
“At first, people in Croatia paid attention to what was happening in Serbia, but if you were to ask average citizens today to describe the situation in your country, especially with details such as the relationship between the opposition and the students or the support that the actors have or do not have, I think 99 percent of people would not know how to answer. As for the alleged involvement of Croatia in the protests, it is clear to everyone that this is one of Vučić’s long-standing spins, which, in fact, existed even before him. When a problem in Serbia cannot be explained internally, outside causes are sought, and for such purposes there exists a list of the usual scapegoats: one day it is the Muslims, the next the Croats or Albanians, the third day international centres of power under the common name of the West,” Klasić told Radar.
So, to be clear – the protests in Serbia are not being orchestrated by envious Croats?
“If I were to hear that Croatia’s Security and Intelligence Agency was not only willing but also capable of organising something like that, I would be shocked. Unlike in Serbia, where everyone I know personally mentions the word ‘service’ at least once in conversation, in Croatia people simply do not believe in a deep state. The Serbian service, from OZNA to BIA, is a kind of paradox, as it turns out to be the most famous incompetent service in the world. It is omnipresent, it keeps athletes, businessmen, politicians and artists under control, and then we are expected to believe that foreigners, including Croats, are running around organising months-long protests on its turf, which Serbian security services supposedly cannot handle.”
The authorities in Serbia decided to first try to suppress the State University in Novi Pazar, while Milorad Dodik and Aleksandar Vučić soon afterwards led the commemoration of the anniversary of Operation Storm in Sremski Karlovci. Do ethnic issues have anything to do with the impression that the regime is in a difficult situation?
“I’ll start from the end. Bringing interethnic relations into the equation is logical from the perspective of the authorities, since such manoeuvres have worked for them so far, but with the older generations and their existing electorate. With students, this has changed, and Vučić’s regime does not understand that. His goals, and therefore his methods, are no longer relevant. Students in Kragujevac, Niš, Belgrade, Novi Sad, and even Novi Pazar, have more in common with their peers in Zagreb, Sarajevo or Split than with SNS supporters. There is no room there for ethnic, religious, or even historical manipulation. That said, the student body is not homogeneous. They will not all vote for the same party tomorrow. Some are nationalists, some Russophiles, some pro-Europeans, some traditionalists, and some members of the LGBT community. Still, generationally speaking, they are not fertile ground for the divisions that Vučić and his political and media satellites have fuelled until now.”
At the end of July, Serbia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Serbian tourists not to travel to Croatia at the beginning of August. Thompson’s concert was cited as an argument for the rise of neo-Ustashism. Do you interpret that warning as the result of genuine concern?
“I often disagree with Croatia’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, but I think they responded well when they said that the warning was the result of internal circumstances in Serbia. When Serbia’s ministry issued it, I wondered whether it also applied to the 30,000 to 40,000 Serbs who work seasonally in Croatia each year. Neither before, nor during, nor after the concert did anyone take to the streets calling for Serbs to be expelled from the country. There are incidents, of course. My name is Hrvoje, I declare myself an anti-fascist and a leftist, and it happens that I face unpleasant situations when I go to Dalmatia. But I have also spoken to people in Dalmatia whose establishments employ Serbs and play Ceca’s music, and they still went to Thompson’s concert.”
Still, half a million people went to listen to “Bojna Čavoglave”?
“I would return to the differences in how generations perceive things. Thompson is a cultural phenomenon. He created his own style where he speaks about love for faith and homeland, and for his current audience, when he sings “Čavoglave” and shouts “Za dom spremni”, the Ustasha salute which, unfortunately, was legalised back in 1991, they do not see Maks Luburić before their eyes, but rather the war of the 1990s, which they perceive as a war of liberation. History acquires new layers over time, and this can be seen in the case of that musician. Croatia is one of the rare European countries without a far-right party in parliament. On the one hand, you have AfD, Austria’s Freedom Party, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, and on the other, our Homeland Movement, which fell apart after the elections. At the same time, most tickets for Thompson’s concert were sold in Zagreb, where the left soon afterwards won an absolute majority in the elections. The furthest right-wing party here is HDZ, which historically behaves as its leader does. Today, that leader is Andrej Plenković, a liberal politician. Moreover, HDZ has been in power the longest in Croatia, and for a large part of its rule, it governed in coalition with Serbs.”
Is there a danger that younger generations may unconsciously drift to the right? There was also the incident with Hajduk Split supporters chanting Ustasha slogans at Poljud?
“Young people will go to a Thompson concert, but they will spend every other weekend, and I emphasise this, singing along to Serbian musicians. They are not interested in Parni Valjak or Gibonni; they attend concerts of Serbian stars. After all, Aleksandra Prijović sold out five concerts in Osijek and then five in Zagreb. My generation sees things in binary terms; theirs does not. For them, it is no problem to go to Thompson, then to Prijović, then to Hladno Pivo or Let 3. I do not wish to downplay the problems – they exist, but they are multilayered. Just like musicians, football supporters are a separate subculture which, in my view, nurtures disastrous habits. The failure lies with the Croatian state for not punishing them. On that matter, I support Margaret Thatcher’s doctrine. If order could be restored in England, it could be done in Croatia too. To chant slogans linked to a state which, during the Second World War, handed over that very part of the territory to another country, Italy, in a stadium of a club that earned its glory as a Partisan club, is irrational and absurd. I think Ustasha sympathies in Croatia are mostly a matter of form. There is no deep-rooted anti-Serb, anti-Semitic, or racist substance. Here, neo-Ustashism has far more in common with anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav sentiment than with, for example, Serbophobia. However difficult that may be for someone in Serbia to understand and accept.”
Was there ever any room since the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for a mutual confrontation with history – for Serbia, for example, to accept Vukovar as a Croatian tragedy, and Croatia to see Operation Storm as a Serbian one?
“No. We often cite the Germans and the Japanese as examples of successfully dealing with the past, but we forget that those two countries were unambiguously declared responsible for the Second World War. In this region, no one wants to accept such a label. According to historians and court rulings, there is a consensus that Serbia under Milošević, from 1986, and especially from the antibureaucratic revolution in 1989 to the arming of Serbs in other republics, initiated the disintegration process, and that nationalists in other states then joined in. But from today’s perspective, thirty years later, Croatia, unlike Serbia, achieved its political and economic goals in the war. It joined the EU and NATO and now shares the destiny and concerns of the most developed countries in the world. Serbia, on the other hand, did not achieve its main goal – that all Serbs live in one state. Today they live in Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and elsewhere. Politically and militarily, it is caught in between, and therefore economically in no man’s land. It despises the West yet lives off it, leans on Russia even though Russia has never helped it as much as was hoped in Serbia. On top of that, it has an autocratic regime that mirrors Moscow’s – one man in power maintaining a cult of personality, with his party governing in almost all municipalities. Operation Storm clearly illustrates the difference between the current positions of Croatia and Serbia.”
How?
“For Zagreb, it was a military-police operation through which a third of the territory, over which there had been no control during the war and which was internationally recognised as Croatian territory, was liberated. Attempts at diplomatic negotiations had preceded it, but they bore no fruit. Belgrade left the leadership of SAO Krajina to its fate, even though it trusted Belgrade blindly, and a huge number of troops and civilians of that state – which, in terms of GDP, was the poorest in the world – abandoned it before the arrival of Croatian forces. The situation was unsustainable. For Croatia, it was the beginning of peace. For Serbia, it was an unquestionable tragedy, although I find it interesting that in Serbia there is a demand for sympathy for the victims of Operation Storm, yet almost no one mentions that the Krajina region had previously, in 1991, been cleansed of more than 100,000 Croats. Hundreds were killed, which we also have verdicts about. Milan Babić himself, in his repentance, admitted that he had done this together with Milošević and others…”
… out of fear of Jasenovac being repeated?
“Was Republika Srpska also cleansed of Croats and Muslims out of the same fear? It was a matter of different political goals, and Croatia won. That dictates how we view history. The shameful crimes against the Serbian population after Operation Storm unfortunately went unpunished before both Croatian and international courts. Now, this conversation is taking place on the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After the Second World War, there followed the retaliatory bombing of Dresden, Bleiburg, the mass rapes of German women by members of the Red Army… all of that happened, but no one in Europe or America will stop commemorating Victory Day because of it. And that is the reality of conflict. It is rare that after war, the warring sides reconcile with a handshake and agree to move on. The same is true in the case of Croatia and Serbia. We will never agree on who started first and who is more to blame. But we are not the only ones in that. Nevertheless, there should be no dilemma that victims and perpetrators must not be given a national label, regardless of the side they belonged to. The former deserve respect and reverence, the latter condemnation, in both cases without exception. That would be the first step to stop constantly confronting the past; otherwise, we will continue to confront the future as well. If today we are able to deny what happened in Jasenovac, Vukovar, Srebrenica, or after Operation Storm, we will do so tomorrow too, which leaves room, however small, that at some point we will once again take part in it or remain silent while someone else does it in our name.”
Is it possible to compare the position and status of Milorad Pupovac and Tomislav Žigmanov as politicians in Croatia and Serbia respectively?
“Serbs have always played a more important role in Croatian society than the other way around, and therefore Serbian politicians here have always been more influential than Croatian ones in Serbia. Mr Pupovac is not only the representative of Serbs here but also one of the wisest, most enduring, and indeed highest-quality politicians in Croatia. His conduct would serve as an example to anyone in any democratic society. His party has, on several occasions, been part of the Government where it played an important role, while it seems to me that Žigmanov in Serbia is Vučić’s passing façade.”
You mentioned Vučić in the context of Putinisation. Were students in Serbia really the only ones who could call his dominance into question?
“I always tell my students that their colleagues in Serbia saved the honour not only of Serbia, but of students anywhere in the world. They gave us all a lesson – from those whom no one expected anything. From the opposition in Serbia, expectations did exist, but I do not think it would be fair to dismiss its representatives, as many of them for years fought against autocracy, often at personal cost. I am often in Belgrade and I do not want anyone to misunderstand me, but the vast majority of people in Serbia mentally accepted a pre-set framework whose strength surprised me, as it erased the very possibility of different solutions. And then the students came and broke it with one sentence: Vučić is not competent. Incredibly simple and effective, but it had to be said by people with a fresh perspective and new demands of the society in which they live. Milanović says all sorts of things and behaves erratically, but his constitutional powers are his red line. Vučić erased that line. People got used to it.”
Will Kosovo – through the students – be Vučić’s downfall in the political sense?
“As with relations between Serbia and Croatia, both sides will be able to speak of historical injustices. But anyone thinking rationally will conclude that in the last 25 years a Serbian president cannot be removed there. That is the reality. And behind that reality stand the EU, NATO and the USA, on which Serbia, whether it wants to or not, depends. They are the ones who decide most here. That brings me back to Belgrade’s old tactical mistake. The leadership of Serbia and Knin could very easily have secured a favourable position for Serbs by adopting the Z-4 plan. Krajina would have become part of Croatia, but the Serbs there would have gained protection backed by those same Western powers. In 1991, hundreds of thousands of Serbs wanted nothing to do with the chequerboard, citizenship papers and passports, but four years later they were queueing up to collect those very citizenship papers and passports with the chequerboard. I would say it is a similar case with Kosovo. I think Belgrade thought more about the territory than about the people living on it.”
You mentioned Plenković and Milanović, who, among other things, said that “Kosovo was stolen”. As if he says things some in Croatia want to hear, but that are not the official policy of Croatia. How would you explain their relationship?
“Milanović is a very intelligent, educated enfant terrible of the Croatian political scene. I do not think he has a personal agenda, he reacts impulsively and attacks whoever is in his sights at that moment. In his madness, he is often the most honest man in Croatia. When he says Kosovo was stolen, he is not saying it should be abolished or returned to Serbia, but rather stating his own view – at the moment of its declaration of independence, it was done unlawfully. When he speaks about Russia, he has nothing against Zelenskyy or Ukraine, but he does not consider it inappropriate to criticise Kyiv on some points. When he speaks about Dodik, from whom he could hardly be more distant, he simply underlines that he is a legitimately elected representative of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that Croats must take that into account. I believe that in the dynamics between Plenković and Milanović there is also an element of the personal. They are close in age, come from upper-middle-class partisan families, have had similar career paths, and have their own egos.”
The verdict against Dodik further shook Bosnia and Herzegovina, because Dragan Čović from the Bosnian HDZ often flirted with him in order to prevent what was seen as majorisation. And yet Čović said at the beginning of last week that the court’s decisions in Sarajevo must be respected. Is there a desire in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the country to survive?
“For any state, it is not good if a large part of its population does not feel it is their own. Perhaps it is a mundane example, but when football national teams play, in Banja Luka they do not support Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Serbia. And if the politicians who lead Republika Srpska do not recognise the laws of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and openly say they want to secede from it, the room for problems grows. We will see whether those trends change once Dodik leaves the political stage. Things are not great in the Federation either. Croats are a minority without a political unit, so they cannot even speak of potential separatism, but I believe a good part of them would accept unification with Croatia. Perhaps not those in Sarajevo, in central Bosnia. The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina largely functions, however precariously, thanks to foreign political and economic assistance. Without a foreign representative, it is questionable whether any consensus could be reached. And I understand the local resentment towards the EU, but it also worries me. As with Serbia – if they do not want to be part of the EU, they should say they want to go it alone, with the consequences that may bring. The future is certainly not simple, which does not necessarily mean its dissolution. Still, if someone had asked me forty years ago whether Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia would collapse, I would have said no.
As for Čović and Dodik, their ties existed for purely pragmatic reasons. The Croats needed a joint partner in their dealings with Sarajevo, and that was Dodik. There are indications there were also economic, and I would say corrupt, links. However, Zagreb is part of the EU, and any call for the disintegration or non-recognition of laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina or elsewhere would cost it dearly. Belgrade is not, and I cannot recall anyone in Serbia criticising Dodik, especially not officially, for his statements on separatism. Never, not even now, in Sremski Karlovci. The furthest Vučić would go would be to remind people that Serbia respects Dayton Bosnia. I believe Čović, since he knows what to expect from Zagreb, also knows how he must act towards Bosnia and Herzegovina. Part of that is simply not defending a politician accused of violating its laws.”
(Radar, 18.08.2025)