ROUND TABLE

That the Serbs and the Croats are hereditary foes is a dangerous myth. It could at the very most be maintained during this century and would even then be doubtful. It is true that both are greatly influenced by their history or rather by the way many Serbs and Croats have interpreted theirs. Only for a short period in the Middle Ages was there a common frontier between them. True they speak a language which is similar like Swedes and Norwegian. Apart from that they had little in common, above all no common heritage. The Serbs looked to the South, the Croats to the West and North. The former were orthodox, the latter Catholics. Their culture was completely different.

It is true that they were both strongly influenced by their historic experience. This is particularly valid for the Serbs. They were for centuries under the strong cultural and political influence of the East Roman Empire and were even for longer periods subjects to the Emperor in Constantinople. Even when they became independent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there remained a strong Greek influence. This is best illustrated by the fact that their greatest monarch, Czar Dusan, proclaimed himself "Czar of Serbs and Greeks". His much lauded juridical legislation was clearly based on a Greek pattern. His own political expansion pointed to the South and South-East. If he had not died already in 1355 he might have tried to lay siege to Constantinople.

His death meant the end of the first Great-Serbian empire. Already some time earlier a new danger had appeared in the Balkans. It was a Turkish tribe, the Ottomans, which formed what one could call a military monarchy under the House of Osman. They soon proved to be superior to any force which tried to resist them. In 1356 they crossed the Helesponts and established a bridge-head on the European side. During the next decades the Ottomans, the Turks of our times, expanded over the Balkan countries. Their conquests were only temporarily stopped by Timur Lenk's victory at Angora in 1402. But the great Mongolian warrior's death shortly afterwards enabled the Turks to regain strength and continue. Already they had beaten the Serbs and their other Christian allies on the Kosovo Polje, the Thrush Field, in 1389. A few decades later the last Serbian principality was subdued. Practically all Serbs came under Ottoman rule for centuries.

The defeat of Kosovo Polje has remained a trauma to the Serbs. In the course of the centuries it was changed into some sort of a moral victory for those who lost. What happened to the losers was centuries of Turkish subjugation without hope to regain a state of their own. True, the Turks were fairly tolerant as long as the Christians of the Balkans did not act politically. Their autocephalous Orthodox Church and its monasteries were more of political institutions than religious and kept the national traditions alive. But even if the Serbs survived, the Ottoman regime made a deep and lasting mark on them. The mark was by no means favourable. It reinforced the tendencies of violence, for instance.

The beginning decay of the Ottoman empire at the end of the seventeenth century, accelerated by the defeat at the walls of Vienna in 1683 and the enforced retreat from the occupied Hungarian and Croat territories gave Balkan's Christians hope of a liberation through pressure from Austria ruled by the Habsburg family. When the Austrians could or would not intervene in the Balkans another power appeared, Orthodox Russia. But nothing of importance happened until after 1800.

Let me now turn to the Croats. To begin with they lived outside the Balkan area but were close to the historic frontier, the rivers Drina and Danula. Usually one counts also the old Rumanian Kingdom, the Regat, to the Balkan, which means drawing the frontier along the Carpathians up to the end of the principality of Moldova.

Croats have also cultivated their history although not getting obsessed in it the way the Serbs have been and are. But their problem was that there were too few Croatians. They had to seek protection from some stronger power. After the extinction of the Croatian royal family Croats accepted a union with a strong protector, Hungary, in 1102. In Buda the leaders had nothing against having associated to the Crown of St. Stephen a country which controlled at least a part of the valuable Dalmatian coast at the Adriatic Sea, all the more as the proper Hungarian territory was land-locked. The union, called Pacta Conventa, was not clearly defined and functioned rather badly. When Hungry was strong it was more of a legislative union, when Hungry was weak it was more like a personal union.

However, both to Croats and to the Serbs the nineteenth century meant a fundamental change when Nationalism in the modern sense appeared. It had started in Germany as a reaction against Napoleon. But while it did not lead to any fundamental change there it spread to other countries. At the beginning it was more a kind of literary Romanticism with interest in folklore and folk tales, but it gradually turned into Nationalism. It found a particularly favourable fertile soil in the Balkan countries under Turkish yoke. The greatest effect could be noted in Serbia. After Kara Djordje's insurrection against the Sultan in 1804 the Serbs had finally become an autonomous state in 1817, recognized by the Turks in 1830. It soon became a hotbed of Nationalism which aimed at a restoration of Czar Dusan's empire. The Polish anti-Russian revolutionaries soon discovered this and took up contacts with the Serbs. The nationalist programme, formulated by the member of the Serb government Ilija Garasanin, called Nacertanije, in 1844 was created with Polish inspiration.

The new nationalist tendencies also spread to Croatia. That country had earlier practically not had much contact with Belgrade. People there spoke a similar language. That had not played a great role. Everything else was different. But through the work of a Croatian author who supported the idea of some kind of union of South Slav peoples under the House of Habsburg people in Zagreb became interested in the Serbian neighbours. His name was Ljudevit Gaj and he managed to introduce a modern spelling in Croatia, based on the phonetic spelling on the Czechs. On the Serbian side a well known linguist, Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, introduced in his country a modern written language, based on the local dialect of Herzegovina. However, his real ideas became apparent when he used the term of "Serb" also to cover Croats. A Slovak teacher in Novi Sad (Neusatz), Safarik, defended the same thesis. This was bound to be resisted in Zagreb. Soon there was founded a Croatian nationalist party, Stranka Prava, whose leader was Ante Starcevic. He in his turn regarded all Serbs on Croat territory as "Orthodox Croats".

Croat disillusionment at the vacillating policies of Vienna brought about a change of ideas in Croatia at the beginning of the 20th century, in spite of misgivings about the political development of Serbia. It could be said with every justification when a well known politician died by a natural death in Serbia that the death was natural, as the opposite was the rule. Particularly tragic for the country was the assassination of Prince Michael Obrenovic in 1868. I wrote about him in my book "Serbs and Croats in history", that he was "both intelligent and energetic". He could have changed the whole destiny of the country. Now the tradition of violence continued. In 1903 King Alexander Obrenovic and his consort Draga were assassinated with unspeakable brutality. Why did the plotters not put him and his consort in a car and drive them to the nearest frontier? The murdered monarch was unintelligent and without a penny. But no, they had to kill him. The man who organized the assassination, then a captain, Dragutin Dimitrijevic, was in 1914 as a colonel Head of the Serbian intelligence services. In that capacity he organized another murder, that of the Austrian Hungarian successor to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort, Sophie Hohenberg. As we all know that started World War I. Dimitrijevic certainly was a dangerous man. One can easily imagine that neither the Serbian Crown Prince nor Prime Minister Pasic could sleep calmly at night as long as he remained alive. Not only that he knew all about the murders on June 28, 1914. Already that could have been dangerous. At the beginning of 1917 the War was not yet decided. But worse still, Dragutin Dimitrijevic was both a revolutionary and a born conspirator. If he had come to the conclusion that Crown Prince Alexander and Nikola Pasic were obstacles to his idea of how to create a Great-Serbia their lives would not have ended peacefully.

The outcome of World War I in South Eastern Europe was a triumph for the Serbian extremists. For the state which was created although at first called S.H.S., the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, was in reality a Greater Serbia. Why did the Croats send the delegation to Belgrade and offer a complete capitulation on December 1, 1918? I have heard several explanations. Probably there were several reasons, fear of Italian imperialism, expectation that the Serbs would annex the greater part of the country, etc.

When Yugoslavia was restored after World War II its character of Great Serbia was better camouflaged than it had been between the wars. But it still was a state completely dominated by the Serbs. But even they were not permitted to bring out Serbian problems. The whole matter of national questions was swept under the carpet. However, that did not mean that they disappeared. Tito was a clever politician, but he must have known that after him there had to be a fundamental change.