A Short Survey of Croatian History

Croatia is located in southeastern Europe and extends along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. This area makes up littoral Croatia. The Dinaric mountains extend parallel to the Adriatic coast, and this area is called Dinaric Croatia. In the north, Croatia comprises a large part of the Pannonian plains, and this region is called Pannonian Croatia. All three regions comprise a geographic unity, and the diversity of Croatia is such that the areas complement each other.

Today the majority of the Croatian ethnic territory is administratively and politically included in two republics: SR Croatia and SR Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both of these republics comprise an entity historically, culturally, linguistically and economically. Their area is 107,667 km² and their population is 8,692,000, according to the 1981 census.

Historians and anthropologists trace the first home of the Croatians to a region called "Harauvat-is" located in present-day Afghanistan.

500 B.C.
Croatian name first mentioned on the inscription of Persian ruler, Darius the Great.

375 A.D.
Croatians move northward to the Carpathian Mountains in present-day southern Poland. In this area they establish a powerful state called White Croatia with its capital "Hrvat" (present-day Krakow).

620 - 640
Croatians arrive in present-day Croatia and adopt Christianity.

679
First international treaty between Croatian Duke Borko and Pope Agathon.

810 - 823
Duke Ljudevit Posavski establishes powerful state in northern Croatia.

845
Duke Trpimir establishes the Trpimirovic dynasty in southern Croatia.

852
First Croatian state document written in Latin.

925
Croatian duke Tomislav crowned King.

1058 - 1076
United Croatia under Petar Kresimir.

1102
Representatives of 12 Croatian clans elect Hungarian King Koloman as their ruler ("Pacta Conventa"). Croatia remains independent.

1354 - 1391
Bosnian ruler Stjepan Tvrtko rules over Bosnia and Croatia.

1409
Dalmatia (southern Croatia) occupied by Venetians

1463
Bosnia occupied by Turks (Ottoman). Croatia in constant battles with Turks. Croatia sustains tremendous casualties while fighting the Turks.

1527
Croatia turns to the Habsburgs for help in her battles with the Turks, and one part of Croatia ruled by the Habsburgs. Massive emigration of Croatians (especially to Burgenland, Austria and Molise, Italy).

1671
The two most distinguished noble Croatian families Zrinski and Frank- opan are extinguished with the execution of Petar Zrinski and Frane Krsto Frankopan in Austria. Croatia falls under direct military rule of Austria.

1797
Napoleon abolishes the Republic of Venice and rules over Dalmatia.

1808
With the arrival of Napoleon's troops in Dubrovnik (Ragusa), a repub- lic free for centuries loses its independence.

1815 - 1848
All Croatian lands except Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian autocratic rule.

1842
"Matica Hrvatska" cultural and publishing institute founded in Zagreb, capital of Croatia.

1848
Abolition of serfdom in Croatia.

1867
Habsburg Empire becomes Dual Monarchy of Austria and Hungary. Dalmatia and Istria under direct rule of Austria, northern Croatia under Hungarian rule, and Bosnia and Herzegovina under Turkish rule.

1871
Eugen Kvaternik instigates a rebellion in Rakovica for the inde- pendence of Croatia.

1878
Ante Starcevic officially proclaims the "Party of Croatian Rights" which practically existed since 1861.

1878
Following the Russian Turkish wars and the Berlin Congress, Bosnia and Herzegovina annexed by Austria.

1883 - 1902
The Hungarians through the "Croatian" Vice-Roy Károly Khuen-Héderváry use the Serbian minority in Croatia to deny Croatians their right to their language and nationality.

1903
Anti-Hungarian and anti-Austrian riots. Some 50,000 Croatians leave their homeland for America.

1904
Founding of the Croatian Republican Peasant Party by Stjepan and Antun Radic.

1915
By secret treaty in London, the Allies promise a large part of the Croatian territory to Italy for having sided with them during the war. A Yugoslav Committee (Jugoslavenski odbor) is founded in London.

29.X.1918.
Croatian Parliament (Sabor) during an historic session severs all ties with Austria and Hungary and proclaims the independence of Croatia.

1.XII.1918.
Pro-Yugoslav faction goes to Belgrade to bring Croatia into the King- dom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes without consulting the Croatian Sabor or the Croatian people. Stjepan Radic referred to them as silly geese not knowing what they were doing.

1918 - 1919
Serbian army by means of murder and terror "pacify" Croatians, Mon- tenegrins and Macedonians.

1918 - 1928
Stjepan Radic struggles for a "neutral Croatian peasant republic".

1920
Workers' Socialist Party of Yugoslavia founded in Belgrade.

1923
Stjepan Radic goes to France, Great Britain and Soviet Union to ad- vocate the Croatian cause.

1925
Croatian Peasant Party outlawed. Radic imprisoned.

20.VI.1928
During a session in the Belgrade Parliament, the radical Serbian rep- resentative, Punisa Racic, assassinates Croatian deputies Pavle Radic and Djuro Basaricek and fatally wounds Stjepan Radic. King Alexander Karagjorgevic is behind these assassinations.

8.VIII.1928
Stjepan Radic dies from wounds suffered after being shot in the Bel- grade Parliament.

6.I.1929
King Alexander disbands all political parties and proclaims a dictator- ship. This same year the country is officially named Yugoslavia.

1929
Dr. Ante Pavelic, member of the "Party of Croatian Rights" and former deputy in the Belgrade Parliament, founds the Ustasha Movement. In Sofia, he signs an agreement with Bulgarian and Macedonian nation- alists for a common struggle against Belgrade. Croatian patriots are persecuted, imprisoned, and executed. Intellectuals are particularly the objects of this oppression. Personalities such as Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann as well as organizations such as the League of Nations protest against such conduct by Belgrade. "The league should muster all possible aid to protect this small, peaceful and highly civilized people", said Einstein in his protest against terror in Croatia in his letter to the International League for the Rights of Man. (The New York Times, May 6, 1931.)

9.X.1934
While on a state visit to France, King Alexander is assassinated by Croatian and Macedonian revolutionaries in Marseille.

1934 - 1938
Police brutality and many uprisings in Croatia. Ustasha Movement ac- tive in Croatia despite strictest prohibitions and terror by Belgrade.

1938

Opposition parties led by Vlatko Macek obtain more than 1,300,000 votes i.e. absolute majority over the pro-fascist government of M. Stojadinovic, despite government threats and terror.

1939
Just before the outbreak of WW II Cvetkovic Macek government.Croatians obtain some autonomy with the creation of the so-called "Banovina of Croatia".

25.III.1941
Yugoslavia joins the fascist countries within the "Tripartite Pact".

6.IV.1941
Germany attacks Yugoslavia which capitulates after only a few days.

10.IV.1941
Proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Dr. Ante Pavelic returns from Italy and takes over the government in Croatia. One part of Croatia under Italian rule; while the other is under German and Hungarian rule.

1941
Serbian nationalists under the leadership of Draza Mihajlovic, so-called Chetniks, carry out horrible massacres in eastern and southern parts of the Croatian state. Throughout that year, they executed tens of thousands of Croatian Catholics and Muslims.

22.VI.1944
Following Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, Tito's Partisans rebel against the Germans and the Italians and at the same time against the newly created Croatian state.

1943
Western Allies stop aiding the Chetniks under D. Mihajlovic and supply massive aid to Tito. With the capitulation of Italy, the Partisan Movement in Croatia rapidly grows in strength.

1944
Ivan Subasic, former Croatian Vice-Roy during the short-lived Banovina of Croatia, becomes President of the Yugoslav government in exile. Subasic's agreement with Tito makes it possible for the Communists to take over the government.

6. - 15.V.1945
Massive numbers of Croatian soldiers and civilians withdraw from Croatia and march towards southern Austria to surrender to the Western Allies. They arrive in the small village of Bleiburg where the British hand them over to Tito's Partisans. The infamous "Death Marches" result in the most horrible slaughters in the history of Croatia.

1946
Archbishop of Zagreb and later Cardinal, Alojzije Stepinac is sentenced to 16 years imprisonment (he died in jail in 1960). It is only this year (1985) that his prosecutor Jakov Blazevic admits publicly that Stepinac's trial was entirely unjust and that this high-ranking ecclesiastic was tried only because he refused to severe thousand year-old ties between the Croatians and the Roman Catholic Church.

1948
Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia formally expelled from the Comintern by Stalin.

1948
Leading Croatian Communist Andrija Hebrang imprisoned and murdered.

1949
Western powers, particularly the U.S.A., begin supplying massive aid to Yugoslavia "in order that Yugoslavia maintain her independence from Moscow". Far more than "maintaining her independence from Moscow" this aid to Yugoslavia served to suppress every national tendency for freedom and all desire for human rights and democracy.

1953
Tito begins acting the role of the non-aligned leader, siding neither with the East nor with the West, but receiving aid from both sides. The U.S.A. particularly stand out in profusing aid to the Yugoslav dictatorship as, after all, to many other dictatorships.

1956
Tito hands over the Hungarian revolutionaries to the Soviets (even the leader of the revolution in Hungary, Imbre Nágy) denouncing them as"fascists and reactionaries".

1964
Yugoslavia establishes diplomatic ties with West Germany. Hundreds of thousands of workers from Croatia leave for Western capitalist countries to earn a living.

1966
The most powerful man of that time in Yugoslavia, Alexander Rankovic, is removed from power. Among his many positions, he was chief of the notorious Yugoslav secret police, the UDBA. It was then learned that out of 5 million Croatians, some 1,300,000 were blacklisted by the UDBA.

1967
"Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary language" signed by 19 leading scholarly and cultural institutions and some 140 linguists, writers and scholars.

1970
Savka Dabcevic-Kucar and Mika Tripalo emerge as the leaders of the liberal Communist Party of Croatia which demanded more autonomy and national rights for the Croatian republic.

1.XII.1971
At a special meeting of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia at Karagjorgjevo, Serbia, Tito strongly denounces nationalism and the "rotten liberalism" in Croatia which results in the dismissal of the Croatian leadership of the time.

3.XII.1971
Strikes by tens of thousands of students. As police and troops converge on the Croatian capital, Zagreb, the students and workers end their strike, avoiding possible bloodshed. This is the end of the "Croatian Spring", and thousands of young people, artists, writers, scholars and intellectuals of most diverse profiles are imprisoned. Some get long-term imprisonments, others die under very mysterious circumstances (e.g. the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia, Pero Pirker, general Viktor Bubanj and one of the leading columnists Neda Krmpotic, for whom it was officially reported that "she died suddenly following a serious illness"). Cultural organizations such as "Matica Hrvatska" are banned. Eighteen newspapers and magazines are forbidden.

1971 - 1972
Between two and three months, over 1,600 people imprisoned.

1972
Guerrilla activities "Bugojno" in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1972
Several prominent Croatian intellectuals escape to West European countries. Some of them later assassinated (one of the most significant Croatian journalists, Bruno Busic). The same fate will befall some who fled some ten years later to the West, e.g., Stjepan Djurekovic.

4.V.1980
Tito dies in Ljubljana, buried in Belgrade.

V.1980
Armed insurrection by Albanians in Kosovo which due to varied intensity and diverse forms, lasts until today (1985).

22.IV.1990
First multiparty, democratic elections in Croatia since World War II: Communist Party loses in favor of the Croatian Democratic Union.

30.V.1990
New, democratic Croatian parliament formally established; a new constitution is proclaimed.

17.VIII.1991
Military intervention of the Yugoslav Army, Serbian irregulars and Chetniks in Croatia.

Sadrzaj - Foreword - Croatian Holocaust - A Short Survey of Croatian History