ROUND TABLE

I would like to echo what my friends have been saying concerning how much we all enjoy being here again in Croatia. I love this country. It is a beautiful country, with charming people; and in fact I was saying to my wife, “What may very likely happen if England becomes too hot for me, is that we may move here.

It was Victor Hugo who wrote about 150 years ago that the English are very fond of liberty in their own country, and do their best to assist in suppressing it in others. That has not always been the case, but their record in Eastern Europe has not been good. I am old enough just to remember the last war, and certainly the Cold War. Even at the height of the Cold War what always struck me at an astonishing degree was the extent which people both privately and publicly in the press could not withhold their admiration for the Soviet Union and the communist system in Yugoslavia. Of course, they did not want it at home but it was very, very good for Russians and Yugoslavs, as they called people living here. You have to understand that I was often told very kindly that the Russians are rather primitive people, who need to be kept down by a firm hand. It looks so much neater on the map. I think quite a lot of the dislike for Croatian independence simply stems from this dislike of untidy maps. English people keep their homes clean and tidy, and they would much rather see the Balkans all one colour regardless of what colour it is. And you still hear people say how good it was when Tito was able to keep everything in order here.

In 1938, at the height of one of Stalin’s most vicious purges, he was planning some new atrocious move, when Litvinov said to him: ..."but what about Western, liberal opinion? You must be careful." Stalin smiled, took out his pipe, and he said: “Western liberals will swallow anything.” And we still see that attitude. We see it in its most naked and unpleasant form in the period to which I have devoted many years of studying. It was then that they not merely lent their voice to support tyranny abroad, but actually shipped millions of unfortunate people who had been fortunate enough to escape... from the tyrannical rule of Stalin and Tito, and sent them back to be slaughtered.

A friend of mine, the owner of Bleiburg Castle, was present when Brigadier Scott ordered British troops to be prepared to fire at the Croats and force them back into the hands of Tito. Apparently Brigadier Scott was very sympathetic to the Cossacks and tried to help them, but not the Croats. And I said to my friend, “...why do you think that was?” He replied, “I know why, because I heard the British officers talking. They just thought the Croats were wogs. That is the expression they used. And I suspect it is still an expression privately used in White hall. Enough is known now about the quality of British statesmen. And why the world still accepts them and pays them vast sums to come out here telling other people how to run their affairs, I simply cannot understand. In almost every single case the people whom we export to tell you how to run your lives in your own countries have been the most dismal failures in their own countries. We have the pathetic ex-doctor Owen. I do not know how successful he was as a doctor, but by his beady looks he could well have been a bungling abortionist. Lord Carrington looks very grand, as he travels abroad in his Royal Royce. Well, he is an impostor. His real name is Smith: his ancestors changed their name from Smith to Carrington. His ancestor made a Lord, not for some distinguished service on the battlefield or for governing the remote province of the Empire, but because he was a radical banker - Prime Minister Pitt thought he would placate the radicals by giving him a title. As for Douglas Hurd he is simply a very, very ignorant grey man, and I suspect that the interior of his brains is almost as foggy and grey as his exterior. I remember one of his wiser pronouncements when the war was going on. He declared that Britain must not become involved in what in Britain officially is still regarded as ”the Yugoslav civil war". “History tells us”, he continued. (I always think it is a good rule in England when you hear a English politician say “when history tells us” not to believe what follows.) History told Douglas Hurd that whenever Balkan states go to war with each other, the Great Powers get sucked in, and then a major European war develops. I wrote to the newspapers and inquired whether Mr. Hurd could tell us of a single European war, that ever started in this way. Needless to say he did not reply, because there never was such a war.

I was very glad to hear my friend, Professor Stone talking about the falsification of history in Britain. We still have a largely false history. One of the major reasons given for not intervening at a time which could have saved hundreds and thousands of lives, and halted the war in its tracks in 1991, was that Yugoslavia during the last war had proved so formidable military that it held down a huge number of German troops. As far as I can see Yugoslavia is supposed to have won the war single handled for the Allies. This is a history that owes its origins in large past to people like Sir Fitzroy Maclean. However, as Norman Stone has frequently pointed out in the British press, it is completely untrue. Virtually all the great Partisan offences in the last war were in reality Partisan retreats, when the Germans were desperately trying to find where Tito was hiding. The German forces here comprised a minority of Germans. There was one real front line fighting division, and the rest were Hungarians, Croats, Cossacks, Italians, and so on.

We often have expressions “Balkanisation”, which supposedly results from having small countries replacing larger dictatorships. I have never understood this argument. My ancestors come from the biggest country in the world but for my part I generally prefer small countries. They seem very often better to live in, and more congenial. I spent 5 years at a university in Ireland, which seemed to me to be one of the most happy countries to live in that you can imagine. This is not the view that British officialdom takes. I think consciously or unconsciously when they make pronouncements about former Yugoslavia, they dearly wish that “former” would go away. When they see Croatia obtaining her independence, they are glancing nervously over their shoulders, and wonder what will happen in Wales and Scotland. Wales in particular effectively ruled as an English colony, and no Welshman has been trusted to be a Secretary of State in Wales for many years now. It was within the lifetime of living people that Welsh was forbidden to be spoken in Welsh schools. Children were paraded with insulting placards for speaking in their own ancient language, which has the oldest vernacular literature in Europe, outside Greek and Latin. I fear that British officialdom intensely dislikes these small countries.

I just would like to end with a story about a country for which I have a great admiration. It is almost the smallest in Europe, and is called Liechtenstein. In 1945, when Britain, France, the United States and other nations were happily shipping back millions of my and your unfortunate compatriots, locked in cattle trucks and treated worse than cattle, there was only one country in the whole world which flatly refused to have anything to do with this disgraceful policy, and that was Liechtenstein. A whole battalion of Russian troops, 800 of them, marched into Liechtenstein just as the war was ending, laid down their arms, and were interned by the Liechtenstein authorities. Not long afterwards, arrived a deputation from the Soviet Union of SMERSH officers, just as they arrived in every part of Europe with the free co-operation of the western Allies. They demanded the return of these wretched people. But Liechtenstein, to the last man and women of the country, absolutely refused to send anyone back against his will. In the end about half of the Russians, unfortunate, deluded people, did volunteer to go back to Russia, and were never heard of again. But the remainder were retained at the expense of that tiny country, and were eventually given their passage to Argentina, where they settled. It was not for many years after that the German government paid compensation to Liechtenstein. When I was researching this topic, I asked the late Prince of Liechtenstein whether he was not nervous. After all, the Red Army at time was in Austria, and it was not known how much further west it might come. The Prince frowned, and looked almost surprised at what I said. He replied, “No, we were not frightened: we spoke to them firmly, and that is the language they understand."

I recommend that motto to Croatia, which has shown the world what a small but brave country can achieve when necessity requires.

Ante Beljo: Thank you Count Tolstoy. Next to speak is Mr. Lubomyr Luciuk, professor of political geography at a military college in Canada. His particular interest is in the nations that were formed after the fall of the USSR. He is the author of several books about the Ukraine and Ukrainian-Canadians.

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk