Assistant Professor  Wolffy Krašić from the Department of Demography and Croatian Diaspora was a guest on the show Contrahistory, hosted and created by Associate Professor Hrvoje Klasić from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. The topic of their discussion was Croatian political emigration from 1945 to 1990.

In the program, the activities of the communist Yugoslavia’s security services against Croatian political emigrants were described, as well as the response of the Croatian emigration to the institutional violence from Yugoslavia. Professor Krašić explained that the propaganda of the Yugoslav communist regime, which claimed that young Croatian political emigrants turned to violence under the influence of older political exiles, was inaccurate. Instead, the radicalization of some Croatian political emigrants was a result of persecution—often brutal—and the marginalization of them and their families, carried out by the communist authorities. Professor Krašić also emphasized that numerous political emigrants, who were in no way connected with the planning, organizing, or carrying out of armed actions against communist Yugoslavia, were victims of the so-called offensive actions of Yugoslav intelligence services.

In addition to discussing Croatian political emigration during the communist Yugoslavia period, Professor Krašić spoke about the significant contributions of Croatian political emigrants to the process of Croatia’s independence and defense, as well as their varied assistance to the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Homeland War. He highlighted a certain paradox. Despite the significant help from emigration during this process, the influence of these former political emigrants on the organization and functioning of the Croatian state, as well as on its political and social life, remained negligible. Consequently, many Croatian political and social activists, who had for decades idealistically promoted the idea of Croatian state independence in the West, often at great personal sacrifice, felt disappointed by the political reality of post-Yugoslav Croatia.

The full program can be viewed at this link.