Removal of bust of
Josip Broz Tito from
Office of the President – Croatia
Photo: Office of the President of the
Republic of Croatia
“Blessed are those who act justly,
who always do what is right” (Psalm 106:3)
Croatia’s President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has kept her promise and evicted Josip Broz Tito (the bust of Josip Broz Tito and other artifacts, legacy of Tito and his wife Jovanka) from the Office of the President, Yesterday 19 March 2015.
On Tuesday during her visit to Germany, about which I have written in my previous post, Croatian president held a lecture on Croatia and the European Community at the European Academy in Berlin where she participated in a discussion after the lecture and answered numerous questions, said among other things that Tito’s bust from the presidential palace is soon to be moved to another location.
“Tito was a dictator”, she said when asked about Tito’s bust, stressing that it will be removed from the presidential palace and, as a work of art, located in a suitable place, probably in the part of Croatia where he was born.
And so the president held her pre-election promise – that she will throw away the bust of Tito from her office.
Josip Broz Tito was the chief architect of the communist Yugoslavia, a socialist federation that lasted from 1943 to 1991-92 and from its decomposition new states emerged, Croatia being one of them.
“In accordance with the decision of the President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic the works of art in question will be committed to the use of the Museums of the Croatian Zagorje”, statement from the president’s office explained.
Not only the bust of Tito was removed from Pantovcak, however, but also the complete legacy of former Yugoslav President and his wife Jovanka Broz, which consists of more than one hundred works of art.
Tito’s bust in the highest Office of Croatia was a constant reminder of the oppression and totalitarian regime of communist Yugoslavia, Croatia freed itself from in the early 1990’s. It was a symbol of that to which Croatia should never rub shoulders with but it was also a symbol that also injected wind under the wings of those who remain nostalgic for Yugoslavia. To multitudes Tito’s bust displayed in such an important place was a reminder that one among the top ten mass murderers of the 20th century (Josip Broz Tito) still in a sense captured a respect he did not nor does he deserve and which sent chills through the veins of multitudes of innocent victims of communist regime .
To remove that symbol of communist existence and totalitarian regime from that office symbolises an open window to a new, freer future – a future Tito has no part in except to answer posthumously for his crimes or the crimes of his communist regime. I rejoice today immensely. Congratulations, brave President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)
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Well done!
Indeed, John – so happy
CAMPAIGN FOR CROATIA’S HUNGRY CHILDREN.
Removing TITO’S bust is nothing but a “fig leaf ” cover for Croatia”s ruling class and their ineptitude in resolving economic hardships in Croatia,
Same ruling class that was in existance during TITO and looted and sold every part of economic infrastructure that was worth anything, or borrowed against those assets.
They are now contemplating to sell new super highway (RJEKA-ZAGREB-SPLIT} to (foreign investors) after they sold everything else, banks ,INA ,PTT, SHIP YARDS ETC ETC
PredsJednica was in NY few weeks ago ,allegedly asking if diaspora can come to Croatian rescue again with money and investments.ARE YOU KIDDING ME?Fool me once shame on you ,foll me twice shame on me.
You are so right, Steve regarding the thieves from Tito’s time who continued after Tito – it was everywhere, big or small thievery and corruption widespread. Taking down Tito’s bust is symbolic that’s for sure but it represents a huge gesture and I think shedding communist past from everyday life will now see better days – after te new “antifascists” run out of puff that is. And yes the president was in US and met with expats etc but then she has been inviting people to return and/invest all the time. That is a good thing – but corruption and red tape will need to come tumbling down if any significant moves on the “return/invest” front are to be made
Now all Kolinda has to do is make sure that “working class” people of Croatia get paid for their unpaid wages and those who “inherited”(stole) industrial infrastructure that TITO and “his cronies” put in place FOR ALL, pay for.
How many young Croatians left since Croatia joined EU ?
100 000+
By the way,Kolinda does look great in bikini.
It’s Tito’s cronies and their followers that are the executive arms of Croatia (government) – they are the ones who actually have the power to do something about it, the president can only recommend and advocate…Steve. How someone looks in swimming gear is really unimportant but to look good is just another bonus especially with those who notice that or look for it 🙂
Just to add to my statement Those looters are not TITOS CRONIES ,most of them are born long after TITO was gone likes of Sanader and his generation of looters
Tito built that they stole.
Well actually many born after Tito’s death that stole were sons or daughters or nephews or nieces or neighbours…. of those that were corrupt during Tito’s time – the roots of corruption go back to Tito’s Yugoslavia and continued – thieves didn’t stop thieving just because Croatia became independent and Tito built with borrowed money that was to be returned in one way or another in the end… he built lots of companies that without foreign aid could not survive because there was among other things no sense of personal responsibility, it was like the state owed a living to all, or most anyway
Hurrah! Woohoo! Fantastic!
🙂
About time! Congratulations Croatia on this significant step forward
Congratulations indeed – I love this day in Croatia’s life, Richie
To quote the old poet “Rukavina” from the AOL Croatia board days: good riddens to bad rubbish.
A shame the bust was not made into several toilette seats and auctioned off for charity. I cannot say I a pleased with the hideous eyesore being in any Croatian museum.
Yep, I would do the same with the bust and everything else to do with Tito – help a charity sine he helped nobody bar his cronies while alive, therealamericro
Fantastic!
🙂
Viva Kolinda!
Indeed, Tomislava 🙂
me too. Next remove Milanovic / Pusic government and bring on lustration!
Wouldn’t that be just so amazing, Sunman – we pray the courage for lustration mounts up SOON 🙂
…and the lustration begins!!!
Yep – starting from the top, Zoran, now let’s pray for courage to get to the living and breathing communist garbage lustrated from real jobs and points of power
Wow about time. They took so much care in that photo, they should have smashed the bust and then vacuum up the debris, the true way that genocidal locksmith should have been dealt with. Hopefully this leads further changes such as the changing of street names and the tearing down of memorials to him and maybe even the history books actually portraying him and his Partisan movement as a group who sought to keep Croatia in another Serb dominated Yugoslavia.
If it were up to me, Anonymous, I would tear down all those memorials monstrosities in form of statues etc paying tribute to Tito’s regime and erect even bigger ones paying tribute to the Homeland War and independence
Finally. It’s about time. But it’s only a tiny start. I am disgusted that there are still people in Cro/BiH and abroad who revere this monster as a hero. Idiocy. I am amazed when foreigners know more about his evil crimes than residents and still some residents refuse to accept the facts. It’s like they want so desperately to live in their Potemkin Village.
Next step: remove his name from the Croatian National Theatre Square in Zagreb and on any street names across the country. They should rename the theatre square after Blessed, soon to be Saint, Aloysius Stepinac, the man who Tito is responsible for killing.
Amin agreement with you, completely, Erica
Excellent suggestion Erica.
wow seems like a big step
Big step would be to reduce 20% unemployment and stop
selling “roof over your head” to pay the bills and to line your own pockets.
Croatia DOESN’T PRODUCE ANYTHING THAT WORLD NEEDS OR WANTS.Adriatic coast is controlled by foreign banks and one would be hard pressed to buy any food stuff in Split ,Zadar ,Dubrovnik that is not made in Italy or somewhere else. Croatian farmers have NO MARKET FOR THEIR FOOD.in “their own ”
Country Tourists that do come to visit beutifull Croatia leave their money in German,Austrian or Italian banks,
now tell me is removing TITOS bust that importanf when structurally,economically Croatia is only the name on the map and distant memories preserved on the videoin “Croatio u srcu te nosim” (Croatia, I carry you in my heart)
This made me smile, finally a woman with some balls in the country.
What joy, Adriana 🙂
Personally, I wish she would place an awareness and emphasis on victims of sexual & domestic violence, especially those from the war. The mental health system is scarce and I know too many women suffering from this, yet cannot speak up or do anything about it. Perhaps oneday.
These women deserve attention and their plight acknowledged on all levels, Adriana. The government has done very little and mainly nothing of significance so I too hope that the new president will stir things forward too. Cheers.
Znao sam da su u Australiju otišli neškolovani, ali da su njihovi potomci bez ikakve opće kulture, zaista je razočaravajuće.
Translation of comment by Ivan Kordic: “I knew that the uneducated went to Australia, but that their descendants are without any general culture is really disappointing”.
REPLY: Stick to what you know, Ivan Kordic, rather than go about assuming you know everyone and everything. Descendants of those who went to Australia are I’m sure much more educated when it comes to democracy and why their ancestors left Yugoslavia particularly from 1950’s than what most in Croatia are brave enough and realistic enough to see. Their love for Croatia is second to none and that is perhaps what bothers you, like it bothered Tito so he and his paid killers went about murdering many.
If you are referring to Ina and Croat Aussies, writer Ivan Kordic, then I find it really rich you are referring to her as uneducated considering you don’t know know how to write in English.
Tko je sad coban?
As you may not know, Tito was a nothing, completely uneducated, paranoid bully, you know, a seljacina.
Mozda si mu nekakva rodbina?
Yes, Veronika, Tito was a big bully and user and abuser of people. Ivan Kordic can have him “boots and all”
What is meaning of being educated or uneducated? There are highschool and college dropouts that changed history and created new industries .and than there are DIPLOMA COLLECTORS that live with their parents until parents die, and never earned dime of their COLLEGE DEGREE.
MOST OF THOSE THAT ARE NOW RUNNING AND HAVE LOOTED CROATIAN INFRASTRUCTURE GOT EDUCATED BY TITOS REGIME AND SOME OF THEIR PARENTS WERE THOUGHT HOW TO READ AND WRITE BY SO CALLED TITOS COMMUNISTS,AND THOSE ARE THE FACTS
That’s the trouble Steve, the education content wasn’t always well balanced then and to be “street-wise” meant lots of learning how to steal or misappropriate
very interesting!!! 🙂
Tito and system that existed back in days unabled Kolinda to be exchange student in US and Fulbright scholar through her families party connections at the time when most people in YU. had a problem getting any visa to any country.
To be so hypcritical as to deny the fact that if there wasn’t TITO even more Croatians would be slaughtered by chetnics and Rjeka would be called FUME ,SPLIT,SPALATO,DUBROVNIK RAGUSA AND ISTRA WOULD BE ISTRIA.
Well. Steve, I also went to stufy at NYU in early 1970’s from Croatia and Tito had nothing to do with it, my family paid for everything just as Tito had nothing to do with Kolinda’s US studies – as you will recall Tito’s Yugoslavia opened its borders in 1962 and from then people were able to cross borders and travels. Tito slaughtered Croatians after 1945 – there was no need to get Chetniks to do that work but perhaps there were some :”Chetniks” in his communist party and secret police who did execute Tito’s orders for Croat purges.
Yes Ina,Tito had allowed people to go abroad as far back as 60’s
99% of those had to agree to spy on diaspora and infiltrate ranks of “emigracia” and to report back.
That is mainly why they were coming home twice a year.
Maybe you were to young at the time to be aware of those facts.
As far that there would be many more Croatians killed if it was not for TITO after WWII,we will never know.
I Visited Croatia IN 85 before YU fell apart and than in 2002.
I was shocked to see old men and women rooting through garbage bins on Tresnjevka trznica for trown out fruit and vegetables, unlike anything during so called “TITOS DICTATORSHIP”. as “BAD” that he was.
Yugoslavia opened borders in 1962 with freer travel to and fro and emigration was increased – economic especially, Steve. Not all who went out to study were spies but some were and they were suspected of that among diaspora anyway. Well in about 1985 it was actually quite bad but as far as digging in bins that phenomenon has spread throughout the world especially as dumpsters on streets arrived. The whole world has been affected by economic downturn and unemployment. Yu was destined to fall apart as time came to start returning loans – no money – and foreign purses tightened for Tito and his regime. It’s easy to live on a high standard with other people’s money and that is what Tito knew how to do best so his beloved communism could survive. He was a dictator and much worse no matter what you say. I had seen much poverty in Yugoslavia during Tito’s time and you must have been blind to it – so enjoy.
Steve, Tito allowed people to go abroad in the 1960s and called it ‘visak radne snage.’ You know, ‘extra workers.’ Imagine the idiocy?
Furthermore, my uncles worked in Germany but were harassed and had to pay bribes when they came home twice a year. Hardly freedom for anyone living or studying abroad.
Ina is not being hypocritical.
You sir do not like historic facts. It’s like Germans or Italians who claim their WW2 fascist leaders brought order and stability and ‘made the trains run on time.’ While it may be true, you cannot justify some semblance of order or alleged repatriated lands by the complete slaughter of innocents. To claim that ‘even more Croats would be slaughtered’ is sheer nonsense.
Speaking of unemployment in former YU. ,yes it’s true that there was substandard existanceand low pay,today my cousin Vesna, works sometimes for 2 Mts. befoe she gets little money to pay her utilities that are disproportionately high relative to income .
Since Cro. joined EU thousand of young people left Croatia to the point that many houses in small towns are abandened
for the even worst living conditions in Western Europe,waiting to be occupied by Koreans,Chinese or people from Africa that are flooding Europe.
It’s very sad, Steve, how unemployment has affected people and that the wave of emigration continues. Yugoslavia lost about 20% of its workforce to emigration during Tito’s times from 1962 and as you may well recall villages were more or less deserted and farming land as well as young people went to big cities to study or people simply emigrated and all that has been exacerbated during past decade as multitudes of companies went broke and could not sustain themselves once lack of foreign loans started kicking in and war ensued…Yugoslavia in essence left a shambles out of the economy and new investments or developments staggered terribly. It’s the same as when a head of family dies and the heirs find that there isn’t much of inheritance but mainly debts and ruins… If I look at the rural end of the country that started showing alarming abandonment during the seventies…
Forgot to say, Steve, I think the practice of non-payment of workers for months is a shameful thing and if you research you will find that it started occurring during the eighties and is more pronounced these days in the efforts to try and save companies that are evidently struggling, I think it’s a terrible practice
Bottom line to my argument Ina ,is that after horrible war of 90″s
PRIVATISATION/PIRATISATION of economic infrastructure
are majority of people better off with exeption of 1% ?My answer is NO
Much of privatisation was done corruptly, I agree Steve. And majority are not better off
DELETED/NO verifiable evidence for claims against individuals provided … lived of assets that TITO and people of Croatia and the rest of former Yu. put in place by selling them peace by peace ,they got rich by Cro. standards and at times more than that.
They sold of INA CROATIA OSIGURANJE ,BANKE, even VEGETA (PODRAVKA) that I used to make soup from as a kid
BACK IN 60’S coming home from school hungry ,and the list goes on and on
ALL IN ALL …DELETED
Was nice talking to you and all the best,Steve
Thank you Steve and all the best to you, Unless verifiable evidence is provided for claims against individuals as to how they obtained wealth and that they are in fact wealthy etc the com,ment is deleted as per this Blog’s policy.