The results of the Second World War and conflicts analogous to it cannot be changed – it is known who were the winners and who was defeated – but there is recourse to a direct revaluation of the conflicting parties: the war ended as it had already ended, but the tragedy is that the other did not win side. Although this conception has its advocates in Croatia and Serbia, it was basically shaped in the West. In this sense, revisionist schools are being formed in Germany, which are dedicated to questioning the causes and character of the Second (and even the First) World War, and the complete or at least partial rehabilitation of National Socialism, relativizing or even denying the extent of the Wehrmacht’s war crimes during the war, as well as the Holocaust. etc.
The title suggests that we are talking about two different strategies of historical revisionism. However, it is not only about strategies, but also about something more fundamental and deeper: about two mutually different conceptions of revising the image of the past. However, the term should be defined first historical revisionism, and the assumptions that enable the appearance of something like that in the first place. The term refers to the revaluation of important events in relation to the recent past, and in a narrower sense it refers to the revaluation of the participants in a recent civil war, internal conflict or international war whose actors are characterized by opposing value orientations, as well as in the revaluation of the results of that war; in doing so, as a rule, the established or ascertainable facts about the events that are the subject of the audit are falsified (and often falsified). Revisionism therefore refers to the interpretation and valorization of conflicts, but not all wars and other forms of violent conflicts, but only those that are not based exclusively on pragmatic interests, but are based and/or justified by antithetical ideas, values, views of the world, anthropological conceptions and visions of a desirable future.
The two conceptions and the corresponding two strategies of historical revisionism can be named as (neo)Francoist and as neo-fascist/neo-nazi strategy. The question arises as to how the Francoist (and neo-Frankist) differs from the neo-fascist or neo-Nazi approach to revising the past.
The first approach was named after Francisco Franco, the leader of the armed rebellion against the Spanish Republic in 1936 and then (from the defeat of the republic in 1939 until his death) to the caudillo restored monarchy. Name leader, leader or war leader, a title equivalent to the German term Führer and Italian Duce, Franco obviously took it from Latin American history, where a number of dictators were recorded who in various countries (mostly in Argentina) were designated by that name. After winning the civil war, Franco declared “national reconciliation” for all Spaniards (which then further legitimized the repression against all those who did not reconcile with his authoritarian – partially and totalitarian – dictatorship), which was symbolically expressed by the burial of the fallen members opposing sides in a common grave in the Valley of the Fallen, Valle de los Caidos. This is not about revising the results of the civil war, but about stating its results: the victory of the Falangists over the Republicans. In doing so, the victors grant mercy to the vanquished and receive them posthumously into the ranks of the reconciled Spanish nation. Of course, the question of what happened to those who were stripped of their ethnic identity, the Basques, Catalans, Galicians and others who did not feel like members of the unitary Spanish nation, but after their death, against their will, were included among the Spaniards, reconciled in death, was bypassed.
TRANSPLANTATION IN CROATIA: That Francoist model of posthumous reconciliation was directly applied by Franjo Tuđman in his version of the revision of the past. There are indications that Tuđman took the idea of the reconciliation of the opposing parties in the Second World War from Vjekoslav Maks Luburić, who, while living in Franco’s Spain, propagated the necessity of reconciliation for all Croats among the Croatian emigrants. The idea of ”national reconciliation” was elaborated gradually, and its foundations can be reconstructed on the basis of Tuđman’s key works for this issue. First of all, these are books The pathlessness of historical reality (1990) With faith in an independent Croatia (1995) and Criminal histories (1995). His proposal to bury the bones of partisans and members of the Ustasha militia together in Jasenovac was not met with enthusiasm by the public, and it must be said that resistance came from both sides, from those who remained committed to the partisan or anti-fascist tradition as well as from the pro-Ustasha side. therefore, this idea was not realized during Tuđman’s lifetime, but even today there are its advocates, so the Croatian Bishops’ Conference took the initiative to create “All-Croatian grave” near the Church of St. Mark in Udbina, where the bones of all unidentified victims from the Second World War would be buried.
The main difference between Franco’s reconciliation of the Republicans and Falangists on the one hand, and Tuđman’s idea of reconciling the Partisans and the Ustasha on the other is that in the first case it is not a question of revision, because it is clear who won and who suffered defeat in the Spanish Civil War. , while in this second case it is a question of revising the results of the Second World War, but not in such a way as to replace the roles of the winners and the losers, because one cannot deny the unambiguously established fact that The Second World War ended with the victory of the anti-fascist coalition (in the specific case: the victory of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia) and the defeat of the Nazi-fascist axis (in the specific case: the defeat of the armed forces of Pavelić’s Independent State of Croatia), rather than a reevaluation of the character of the war itself. It is about evaluating the anti-fascist-Ustasha conflict as a tragic misunderstanding caused by an international constellation. Unlike those who are inclined to declare the Croats who took part in the uprising against the Quisling creation of the NDH as national traitors (and especially those who base such an assessment on a positive assessment of the Nazi-fascist coalition and a unequivocally negative assessment of the anti-fascist coalition on the global level), Tuđman is, as before, Partisan refused to declare Croatian anti-fascists – if they are Croats – as anti-national and anti-Croat elements, but also to unequivocally evaluate negatively Pavelić’s work. He also saw a positive side in the Quislinga state: the realization of the age-old Croatian dream of an independent state, but in the tragic context of the necessary choice of the side in the world conflict that would suffer defeat in 1945. This is perhaps best illustrated by the statement of one of Tuđman’s closest associates, Andrija Hebrang Jr., otherwise the son of the eponymous partisan leader and later federal minister (who was arrested after the IB Resolution on charges of working for Stalin). Speaking about his father and Maks Luburić, he claims for the latter, the famous Jasenovac commander, that despite the wrong (Ustasha) party whose methods were fascist, Luburić “never fought against Croatia; he had his own vision of Croatia and for him it was the only right path”, and adds: “My father also had his own vision; his path led him to communism and anti-fascist action.” Therefore, according to Hebrang, there was – despite the tragic misunderstanding – fundamental agreement regarding the state-building idea between the Ustasha and Croatian partisans.
The resolution of that tragic misunderstanding between Croatian quislings and Croatian anti-fascists was made possible only by the establishment of an independent Croatian state, which only came about within the process of the disintegration of the SFRY. The Republic of Croatia, established and internationally recognized in the period from 1990 to 1992, is based on a constitutional provision (i) on the anti-fascist struggle in the Second World War, which was symbolically confirmed by the proclamation of June 22, the day when the first partisan detachment was founded in 1941 in the Brezovica forest near Sisak, on a national holiday called the Day of Anti-Fascist Struggle. This national holiday replaced the previous Day of the Uprising of the People of Croatia on July 27, which marked the uprising in Serbia (since that uprising was started by Serbs from Lika, it did not fit into the concept of all-Croat reconciliation, and was, on the contrary, labeled as Chetnik or “Chetnik -communist” uprising. New, by definition democratic, Croatia derives its European anti-fascist legitimacy from the Croatian partisan movement in the Second World War (purged on the other hand, such a decontextualization of the Croatian anti-fascist struggle in the Second World War enables Tuđman to shape a new synthesis, an ideal posthumous reconciliation of all Croats who during the time of the NDH, they fought on opposite sides, and the truth of whose antithetical advocacy for Croatia is made more serious by the establishment of the Republic of Croatia (which is materially manifested in the equalization of rights surviving members of all armed formations from the Second World War). This partially legitimizes the Quislin creation of the NDH: namely, its Quislin character is not rehabilitated, but only its fundamental state-building idea, which, due to international circumstances, it failed to realize in a valid and sustainable form. Therefore, the reconciliation of Partisans and Ustasha is based on their common belonging to the Croatian people and on their common statehood. Of course, it is an open question to what extent the Croatian state-building idea was really present among the Croatian partisans, and how much of it was subsequently attributed to them, either for reasons of embellishing certain biographies, or for reasons determined by the desire to (at least subsequently, even on the basis of fiction) ) established ethnic homogenization.
TRANSPLANTATION IN SERBIA: A similarity with the dominant type of historical revisionism in Serbia can be observed. First of all, the dominant assessment is striking, according to which during the Second World War and the German occupation of Serbia, due to a tragic misunderstanding, two anti-fascist movements clashed, the Partisan one and the Chetnik one. The image of the past, especially the image of the period of the German occupation of Serbia from 1941 to 1944, was drastically revised, primarily with regard to the insistence on the anti-fascist character of the Ravnogorsk movement. The revised interpretation of the Second World War also became a standard place in school textbooks, which resulted in a controversial attempt to equalize the material rights of the former partisans and the people of the Plains. According to advocates of national reconciliation (but also according to those who advocate another type of historical revisionism), the partisan uprising in Serbia began with “a Serb shooting a Serb”: namely, until 2009, July 7 was celebrated as Uprising Day in Serbia, the date when In 1941, one of the initiators of the anti-fascist uprising in Serbia, Žikica Jovanović, a Spaniard, led a partisan attack on gendarmes in the White Church near Krupnje. of the Quisling regime and killed one (another gendarme was killed in the attack). Among those who regard the partisan beginning of the uprising in Serbia as a tragic misunderstanding and insist on two equal (although “tragically conflicted”) anti-fascist movements, there is a distinctly present effort to establish a posthumous reconciliation of all Serbs, including those who served the occupier, either as members of the Quisling apparatus government of Milan Nedić, either as members of the fascist formations of Dimitri Ljotić. Admittedly, they were on the wrong side, but they wanted good for their people (to save them from occupation repression, etc.), and therefore they should be accepted in posthumous reconciliation. Admittedly, it is questionable whether there is room in this reconciliation for those anti-fascists who were not Serbian nationalists at the same time. And it is interesting that some advocates of this doubt claim that there was never fascism in Serbia until the neo-Nazi “National Machine”, which appeared at the beginning of this millennium.
With that, we are already moving to the terrain of another conception and another strategy of historical revisionism. The results of the Second World War and similar conflicts cannot be changed (it is known who were the winners and who was defeated), but there is recourse to a direct revaluation of the conflicting parties: the war ended as it had already ended, but the tragedy is that she did not win. the other side. Although this conception has its advocates in Croatia and Serbia (and it seems based on a number of indicators that it is becoming the dominant strategy of historical revisionism with a tendency to completely marginalize the neo-Frankist strategy), it was basically shaped in the West. In this sense, revisionist schools are being formed in Germany, which are dedicated to questioning the causes and character of the Second (and even the First) World War, and the complete or at least partial rehabilitation of National Socialism, relativizing or even denying the extent of the Wehrmacht’s war crimes during the war, as well as the Holocaust. etc. The most famous German representative of revisionism is Ernst Nolte, and along with him it is worth mentioning Michael Stürmer, Klaus Hilderbrand and Andreas Hillgruber. The emergence of revisionism caused an extensive debate in 1986, in which philosopher Jürgen Habermas, publisher Rudolf Augstein and a number of historians (Hans Mommsen, Joachim Fest, Eberhard Jäckel and others) disputed the justification of revising the Nazi regime and freeing the Third Reich from responsibility for World War II.
Although German historical revisionism is the best known, this phenomenon is by no means limited to Germany. Attempts to directly revalue the roles of the conflicting parties in the Second World War are recorded in a number of countries, including French attempts to relativize collaborationism during the period of German occupation and during the Vichy government led by Marshal Pétain, and, for example, the Norwegian reinterpretation of the role of Quisling and his collaborationist government. Revisionism in Norway is linked to the Institute for Norwegian Occupation History, where the understanding of Norwegian collaborationism led by Vidkun Quisling, as well as of the German occupation of Norway during World War II, is largely based on pronounced anti-Semitism. Quisling’s role was positively evaluated by the British author Ralph Hewins.
EVIL ROOTS AND NATIONAL MADNESS: It is interesting that, according to Domenico Losurd, the beginnings of historical revisionism must be sought in Burke’s assessment of the French Revolution in 1791. At the root of the revaluation of the parties that clashed in the Second World War is often (perhaps even as a rule) a negative evaluation of the Enlightenment, and especially of the French Revolution (which can already be demonstrated by the examples of the spirit that reigned in French integral nationalism at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as in German young conservatism during the period of the Weimar Republic). This spirit is dominated by a negative evaluation of modernity (where its secularizing character is under particular attack) and regret over the demise of the pre-modern organic community, on the basis of which ideas about the need to restore the lost organic order are formed. The ideas formed in the context of the French Action significantly influenced the profiling of Italian fascism and Spanish Falangism, while the conceptions of German young conservatism had a decisive influence on the creation of German National Socialism.
In the historical revisionism of our time, which is ideologically based to a significant extent on the mentioned tradition of the early 20th century, the indicated regret is transformed into the hope that the outcome of the Second World War does not represent the definitive defeat of the idea of the totalitarian national (and/or racial) state and the organic community. All this also applies to today’s historical revisionism in Croatia and Serbia (as well as in other post-Yugoslav countries, but also in other post-socialist states, for example in the Russian Federation, where radical right-wing circles express regret that Stalin’s followers fought against the German Nazis, and that he perceives the conflict of related ideologies and orders as a tragic misunderstanding). Thus, this neo-Nazi/neo-fascist variant of historical revisionism in Croatia (where it is concretely profiled as neo-Ustasha revisionism) condenses into the recognition of a single mistake of the Ustasha movement, which consists in aligning it with the defeated side in the Second World War (while, quite often, that defeated side, the Nazi-fascist coalition, explicitly or at least implicitly, sees as the side that was basically right). The relativization is explicit in every case (Jasenovac is justified by the Great Serbian repression of Croats during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, partisan crimes exceed or even significantly exceed Ustasha crimes, etc.), which opens up space for what certain authors who affirm this type of revisionism are clearly prone to: for a positive evaluation of the Ustasa regime.
It is similar to that type of revisionism in Serbia, which culminates in the revaluation of the figure and works of the leader of the authentic fascist movement in Serbia, Dimitrije Ljotić, the founder of the Choir. Thus, in the preface to Ljotić’s Collected Works (2001), very indicative and completely in line with the French sources of radical revisionism, it is emphasized, among other things, that the last two centuries of the rule of individualism and liberalism obscured the truth and led to the destruction of the “sacred Savanian being of the Serbian people”, and that it is precisely in Ljotić’s ideas that the path leading to liberation from the fog of the modern age is contained. In addition to the attempt to rehabilitate the president of the Quisling government, Milan Nedić, there is also a clear intention at work that – in contrast to the neo-Franco strategy (which ultimately turns out to be only an opening of space for the emergence of a neo-fascist/neo-Nazi concept) – of the “two anti-fascist movements”, only the one that was defeated in 1945, the Chetnik movement, while the other, the Partisan movement, should be labeled as traitorous. And that at the motivational root of that revisionism lies the more comprehensive intention of breaking with the emancipatory tradition, perhaps best illustrates the fate of the character and works of Dositej Obradović in the intellectual and ideological spheres where radical revisionism is nurtured. So in Lives of the saints Justin Popović can also be found: “Our Dositej Obradović, a slightly younger contemporary of St., also studied in Smyrna.” Nikodim, who, seeking knowledge and enlightenment for himself and his people, passed deaf and dumb by St. Gore and her wisdom. That is why his works were and remain filled with ‘poisonous drink’ (Njegoš). Thanks to the ‘dositejevština’, his people have been fighting on the side roads for more than a century, forgetting and despising in the face of their learned representatives Svetosavlja of Svetogorje and remaining untouched by the spirit of St. Koljivara.” Similar to the Croatian (but also German, etc.) version of revisionism, here too the criterion is the belonging to the nationally-metaphysically understood concept of a homogenized national community. Of course, there is no place for traitors.
It turns out, in the end, that the two strategies of historical revisionism are only apparently antithetical and only partially compatible: the neo-Frankist strategy only serves, it seems, to open space for radical revisionism, the one that ultimately aims at the abolition of everything emancipatory that the last two centuries have brought to humanity.
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Veselin Milić and Marko Kricak are from the same political bed, albeit on different paths. “Vreme” writes in the new issue that they are now in conflict
The big pink elephant in the room, which is still silent, is the question of the status of “Red Star” in Serbian football and how all those previously won titles and cups reflect on the possibility of the red and whites to make some results on the European level as well. An even bigger problem is the fact that it is somehow taken uncritically, for granted. And that a large number of sports journalists participate in this, who do not see anything unusual in the fact that a club is undefeated in 159 games in a row, and it is not about “Real Madrid” during the reign of Francisco Franco.
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