Soviet Union – Croatia, the War, and the Future

A Croatian Reprimands EU’s Impudence For Supremacy Over National Laws Of Member States

October 23, 2021 by inavukic 15 Comments

Earlier this month of October 2021 Poland’s constitutional court ruled that parts of EU law are not compatible with the Polish constitution, which Poland evidently and, as far as many are concerned, rightfully places above the EU constitutional charters. This has developed in a dramatic escalation of a battle between Warsaw and Brussels. The EU disagrees with the Polish court rule and this disagreement has sparked questions about Poland’s long-term future in the EU, with the government’s critics at home and abroad accusing it of setting the country on course for “Polexit” while the government at the same time enjoys enormous support and agreement with the constitutional court rule at home and internationally.

The battle and disagreements between the EU and Poland overshadowed the EU summit of the 27 member states in Brussels this week. The summit opening day media spotlights flickered between Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, president of the European Commission Von der Leyen, Germany’s exiting Chancellor Angela Merkel, prime minister of Hungary Victor Orban and several others, giving a clear picture that not all is well with the union and harmony regarding embracing the “Union” that would homogenise member nations into a concoction similar to former federation of communist Yugoslavia as opposed to retaining national identity and sovereignty of each member state. The political pull for the EU to be a federation of sovereign states has certainly gained momentum this week largely due to the ruling of the Polish constitutional court, placing Poland above the EU in certain matters of law.

Whether money will talk is a matter of Poland’s response to Brussels’ moves that look terribly like blackmail: EU officials have said that the Polish court ruling constitutes breaches of EU values and has now commenced withholding approval of Warsaw’s application for €36bn in Covid-19 recovery funds. The European Commission is also under increasing pressure to deploy powers that would allow it to hold back Poland’s regional development funds worth up to €121bn over the next six years.

European Union officials have late this week left us with a clear impression that the EU is facing an unprecedented situation in which a member (Poland) is directly challenging a founding principle of the bloc (EU): the primacy of EU law over national legislation. Some analysts also argue that Poland’s refusal to change its views may pose a bigger threat than Brexit.

EU President Ursula Von der Leyen described the Polish tribunal’s ruling as “a direct challenge to the unity of the European legal order”.

“E.U. legitimacy is at stake: if there’s no primacy of European law over national laws, what’s the point of having a union?” said Sophie Pornschlegel, a senior policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre.

Didier Reynders, the EU’s justice commissioner, said after the ruling that Brussels would act to protect the primacy of EU law over national law and the binding nature of the European Court of Justice’s rulings on national governments.

“We are very firm on the different principles, and we will use all the tools at our disposal to be sure that it is possible to protect them,” Reynders added.

As far as Croatia’s input or opinions with view to this escalating battle for supremacy of EU laws one does not expect to hear much from the official government at this stage. That is evidently because the ruling HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) is a member of the European People’s Party/EPP bloc that is said to have pioneered the EU project and whose current president is none other than Poland’s former prime minister Donald Tusk, also ex-president of European Council, whose political party now represents one of the strongest oppositions to the ruling PiS party in Poland. We have seen protests in Poland recently and we are sure to see more as Tusk calls those who will listen to rise and help save Poland (against Morawiecki of course). In his day of power Tusk fumbled through European Council’s corridors like a man who has grown too big for his boots, and he continues stirring fear among the Polish people. Thankfully those that listen to him are fewer and fewer by the day. In people’s mind, surely, there is nothing wrong with fighting to retain one’s sovereignty. Tusk is a “Yes” man for EU, while Morawiecki is evidently not. With this battle to retain superiority over EU laws having arisen in Poland so strongly next general elections due late 2023 will show for certain where most Poles stand on this if matters don’t progress to a resolution.

It was very interesting and confidence-boosting to see that Croatian members of the European Parliament did have a say on the topic of Poland and its insistence on the supremacy of its national laws over the EU. The independent Member of the European Parliament Mislav Kolakusic called out, loud and clear, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her administration at a European Parliament session this week on October 19 for constant baseless attacks on sovereign EU member states: ” Poland has always been in the heart of Croatian citizens and we have always shared the same sense of law and justice. The fact is that those who govern the European Union today want to impose their ideologies on all sovereign states behind that illegitimate goal. The only goal of this Kafkaesque process is to overthrow the legally elected sovereign government and bring in a puppet government. Do not forget that the Polish people fought against every oppression, both against Nazism and against communism, and they will certainly not bow their heads now against these new forms of committing (oppression). The European Union must become an equal community of sovereign states, or its future is more than questionable. Stop dishing out lessons to the proud Polish people with no real arguments. Thank you,” said Kolakusic and his speech can be followed in this video record from EU Parliament:

_{EU Parliament 19 October 2021}

EU’s insistence that its laws have supremacy over national laws of its member states has existed always but this time the issue is catapulted into the public arena with escalated vigour, leaving multitudes in various EU member states perhaps more than ever inclined to consider who and what they are, where are they going as a distinct nation – into strength or oblivion. Certainly this whole issues brings back bitter memories for nations made subservient to communist regimes of former Yugoslavia and USSR where individual nations and states had to conform to a federal ideology and practice that did not recognise or uphold their individual values and worth. During the time for former Yugoslavia the regime came up with a nationality called Yugoslav that people were expected to embrace and abandon Croatian, Serb, Montenegrin, Slovene, Macedonian…nationality. It was individual national pride and protection that eventually made Yugoslavia a failed experiment in unity. Similar in USSR/Soviet Union where all members of the union had to comply with what Moscow says and does and collapse was imminent as was for communism that bases its ideology on equality of people but riddled with rotten human ego that builds terrible inequality instead of equality.

The fatal flaw of EU’s idealism within a “Parliament of Nations” that would work towards lasting peace within and among nations was and is its false assumption that national identities and nationalism are toxic, in need of institutional guard rails to check their dangerous rivalries. Perhaps and as planned by some by giving up some national sovereignty to the bureaus and agencies of the E.U., a more efficient and just political order could be achieved. But it hasn’t worked out that way. First, even though the EU boasts that it has values to which all member states should adhere, it has not been clear what the core beliefs are that could unite such diverse and various cultures, histories, folklore, national interests, and customs tightly enough to ensure efficient functioning and cohesive loyalty. Europe was created in the first place by the Greco-Roman and Christian civilisation. With religion fading in much of Europe, and patriotism looked down upon, the love for one’s own people, language, and culture demonised as incipient fascism, what’s left to unite the peoples under the E.U. banner into a cohesive people who are willing to fight together and die for their European identity? Nothing much! When the member states filled with people that are patriotic to their individual nations experience being labelled as nationalistic fascists because they are a patriot you have a big problem! People will rise in one way or another, sooner or later, to defend their personal honour of belonging to a particular nation.

Hence, in many ways the issues developing along the question of EU supremacy over individual member state’s ability to bring decisions and make laws that suit its own local (national) needs without regard to compliance to EU laws will more likely than not provide a fertile ground for decisions and contemplation about EU membership in several countries. As Croatian government intends introducing the EU Zone common currency – euro – soon, the enormous adjustment costs in this process will highlight the bad side of the EU concept and create greater poverty than what there is now. In former communist Yugoslavia the “big pot” of money into which each member state of the federation contributed reminds one of the EU “big pot” of money and the flaws and resentments that arose in relation to the “big pot” operational undercurrents in former Yugoslavia are surfacing in the EU. The EU is starting to blackmail or threaten its members states with cut or withdrawal or redistribution of funds if a member state misbehaves or does not comply. The member countries that contribute more to that “big pot” than other member countries are already behaving as having a political or decision power advantage over others. Such union that creates politically elitist echelons is already on life supports – unless of course the sovereignty of each member states is respected and upheld particularly in dealing with local welfare, laws and economic development. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: can EU survive, Communist Yugoslavia, crisis in EU, Croatia, EU Parliament, Fall of Soviet Union, Fall of Yugoslavia, Mateusz Morawiecki, Mislav Kolakusic Supremacy od EU Laws over national laws of member states, Poland Polexit, Soviet Union, Ursula von der Leyen, USSR

Croatia: Goldstein – Pundits Of Totalitarian Regimes’ Victims Discrimination

September 8, 2013 by inavukic 33 Comments

Slavko and Ivo Goldstein and their book
“Jasenovac and Bleiburg are not the same” –
Photo: Zarko Basic/Pixsell
YES THEY ARE and WHAT’S MORE “BLEIBURG”
REPRESENTS MANY MORE DEAD
INNOCENTS AT THE HANDS OF COMMUNISTS

In very recent days Slavko Goldstein, founder in 1989 of Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) and writer, has given an interview to Croatia’s Novi List in which he states in no uncertain words that EU remembrance day of victims of totalitarian regimes should not be held on the same day (23 August) for victims of Nazi regime (Hitler) and victims of Communist crimes (Stalin) because it equates the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and that, he said, is “in contradiction with the entirety of historical truth”.

Given that Goldstein was a Partisan in the communist led Yugoslav troops of WWII one is not surprised at such views of his. After all, Stalin and Europe’s communists (including Yugoslavia’s Tito) were aligned with the Allies and they wrote the history to which Goldstein refers, leaving out of the historical spotlight the equally atrocious crimes perpetrated by communists as were those perpetrated by the Nazis.

Goldstein goes on to say that both Hitler and Stalin were criminals, but not of the same kind! “Hitler,” he says, “ from beginning to end pursued his criminal politics. Stalin commenced his criminal politics during 1920’s, which culminated during 1930’s with the massive purges, but from 1941 to 1945 he was the main carrier of battles against Hitler… unfortunately he resumed his purges after the war ended…”

In a commentary to this interview given by Goldstein, R.Horvat of HRSvijet portal writes: “And despite the estimates by which modern European historical account considers that communism is responsible for the death of more than 100 million people, of which 50 million victims are attributed to Mao Tze-Tung, 40 million to Stalin, 4 million to Lenin, 2 million to Pol Pot and 1 million to Tito, while 20 million deaths are attributed to Hitler, Slavko Glodstein wants to convince the Croatian public that it’s out of order to equate Hitler’s national-socialism with communism”.

Slavko Goldstein nevertheless admits that communism perpetrated crimes but he continues defending the role of Stalin and Soviet Union.

To me, Goldstein’s conviction is nothing more than blatant discrimination between victims. Does it really matter whether the majority of Stalin’s victims fell in brutal and atrocious sweeps by the totalitarian regime before and after, but not during WWII? No, it does not!

23 August was chosen to coincide with the date of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (23.08. 1939/ a.k.a. Nazi-Soviet Pact, non-aggression pact), in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed to divide Eastern Europe between themselves. Both of these countries at the time had the worst forms of totalitarian regimes in the history of humanity. Hence, the very appropriate date chosen by the EU to remember victims of totalitarian regimes. The two subsequently collided with vicious and atrocious force. Essentially, one could say that Stalin was the front man for the Jews and Hitler was the enemy of the Jews.

Furthermore, the truth of history when it comes to Stalin is not as Slavko Goldstein says (i.e. that Stalin steered away from crimes during the war). “In Stalin’s Gulag some 516,543 people died between 1941 and 1943, sentenced by the Soviets to labor, but deprived of food by way of German invasion. Were these people victims of Stalin or of Hitler? Or both? … Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds. Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people—tens of millions, it was often claimed—in the endless wastes of the Gulag. For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory. Even historians of the Holocaust generally take for granted that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, thus placing themselves under greater pressure to stress the special character of the Holocaust, since this is what made the Nazi regime worse than the Stalinist one.” (Timothy Snyder, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who was Worse?” 2011)

According to Slavko Goldstein, it transpires that victims of both totalitarian regimes must not be treated the same essentially because there’s a few years of time difference between the two mass slaughters, even if they all fall under the insignia of victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes 23 August has been designated to remember them all by.

Or, is Slavko Goldstein saying: victims of the communist regime are less valuable than victims of the Holocaust?

Why fear the equating of victims of Nazi and Communist regimes? Could it be that Goldstein fears that perpetrators of horror on both sides will be seen as equally brutal and beastly? History so far has more or less spared the communist regime from the harsh but utterly just destiny the Nazis had been put through after WWII.

Whether Goldstein, or those who are like-minded agree or not, the fact is that both of these totalitarian regimes were equally brutal and beastly, and if we count the number of victims as a measure of brutality then communism wins hands down. And this could very well be the root of Goldstein’s pathetic reasoning regarding the 23 of August.

“The 23rd August (1939) pact between Nazi Germany and Communist USSR opened the door towards the East for Hitler, but before then, on 30th September 1938, England and France had already opened that door with the Munich agreement which handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler. England and France share the guilt for 23rd August. So, that date is one of the milestones of the war and war crimes, but not their main symbol”, Goldstein argues in his interview.

But let’s call a spade, a spade! On reflection, the West and the Communist countries have always hated Adolf Hitler after WWII. Joseph Stalin, however, was once their favourite (in Yugoslavia Tito ditched him in 1948 and became himself a certain favourite during the years of the Cold war). Only in recent couple of decades, especially, has Stalin acquired some of the reproach and outrage once reserved for Adolf Hitler – and only half-heartedly. What is the explanation?

Could it be because some see Stalin’s crimes as committed on behalf of the Jews and Hitler’s crimes were committed against the Jews?

Joseph Stalin now enjoys a bad reputation. Tito’s should follow suit. But Stalin is never seen as bad as Adolf Hitler and ‘The Holocaust’. And certainly, it seems that Slavko Goldstein would want us to believe that.

Forty five million dead at the hands of Stalin (communist totalitarian regime across Europe while he was the head figure) cannot be compared with the recognised six million dead Jews across Europe, indeed! Discussion of numbers can blunt our sense of the horrific personal character of each killing and the irreducible tragedy of each death. The reality is that the difference between zero and one is infinity. Every single victim is as important as the other no matter at whose hands, how and when he/she became a victim.

To keep the appalling discrimination between victims of totalitarian regimes within the Goldstein family, Slavko with his historian son Ivo Goldstein published a book in 2011 “Jasenovac and Bleiburg Are Not The Same” (Jasenovac being the symbol of pro-Nazi killings in Croatia during WWII and Bleiburg being the symbol of Communist killings). In essence they consider “Jasenovac” crime of genocide and “Bleiburg” crime against humanity or war crime. Yet both of these crimes comprised of systematic killings and deaths attributed to communist crimes far outweigh those of pro-Nazi crimes!
“Holocaust scholars have criticized a growing tendency in central and eastern Europe to equate the Shoah (Holocaust) with Communist oppression, a trend which they consider ‘the gravest threat to preserving the memory of the Holocaust’ as it served to exculpate populations complicit in the extermination of their Jewish minorities, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper ‘Haaretz’. Professor Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University called equation attempts ‘campaigns to marginalize the Holocaust’,” said the World Jewish Congress in 2010 and concluded: “To be sure, no one can or should minimize the untold suffering caused by Communist tyranny, of which Jews were also victims, but common commemoration will only serve to disfigure memory and history.”

It would seem to me that the only disfigurement of memory and history is pursued by those who maintain that victims of the Holocaust should have a place of piety and justice above any place the victims of Communist crimes of the same totalitarian regimes era should have. Furthermore, insisting or suggesting that the victims of each of the totalitarian regimes should be remembered on different days only prolongs the abominable discrimination against victims of communism the world has been served with since WWII. Separating the two, as has been the case, will continue to feed the false impression, and perhaps conviction, that one criminal was better than the other, when in fact, and in terms of humanity – both regimes were regimes of murder and intolerance. Separating the two groups of victims also seems to leave an ever bitter taste that victims of the Nazi regime were perhaps more valuable human beings than the victims of the communist regimes. This of course should not be and must not be tolerated any longer. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Adolf Hitler, communist crimes, communist purges, Croatia, Gulag, Holocaust, Ivo Goldstein, Joseph Stalin, Josip Broz Tito, Nazi Germany, Slavko Goldstein, Soviet Union, Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, Yugoslavia

What if Hitler won the War?

April 3, 2012 by inavukic 2 Comments

A new edition of Robert Harris’s classic bestselling thriller Fatherland, to celebrate its 20th anniversary is hitting the bookshop shelves and online stores.

It’s set in an alternate 1964, in a universe in which Hitler and the Nazis won World War II. Harris would not be the first to imagine an alternative history and fictionalise about how things might have panned out had the “other” side won a war. Harris’ “speculative fiction” though enters into historical scenarios that lead to different outcomes to those we know as accepted recorded history – often without question or critique, for often a critique is looked down upon as historical revisionism; as something bad or negative. Very often, indeed, we hear and read the phrase that “victors write the history” with hidden facts and twisted truths.

John Mullan writes in the Guardian, last weekend:“One wonders if this book’s success was one reason for the proliferation of “counter-factual” histories in the last couple of decades. What this genre plays on is our sense of contingency. There is no divine plan. No outcome is inevitable. Evil is as likely to triumph as good. Harris’s axiom is German victory over the Soviet Union, its remaining forces driven back beyond the Urals. The US is too powerful to be defeated, but with the conquest of Britain there can be no D-Day. The conceit behind the book is a nightmarish one: not only that the Nazis have won, but that, with the old leaders dead or ageing and a smoother new generation taking over, détente with this monstrous regime becomes necessary. The plot of Fatherland is set in motion by Heydrich’s efforts to insure that those entrusted with knowledge of the “final solution” – die Endlösung – do not emerge to stand in the way of a rapprochement with the United States. The grimmest speculation plays by the rules of a German idea: realpolitik.”

While many may pass Harris’ Fatherland of as speculative fiction, a good thriller to read curled up in the sofa on a rainy afternoon, the one thing of truth that it strongly represents is that millions of murders (more murders than what the Nazi regime committed) by the Communists still remain buried with little mention and absolutely no punishment.

Perhaps in this lies an underlying effort by Harris to remind the world – with a new edition of his bestselling novel – that more needs to be done in pursuit of justice for all victims of WWII. That justice still to be served upon Communist crimes must not remain some counter-factual mindset that has no other outcome except unceasing bitter debates as to which mass murders were justified and which were not. When the truth is that none must remain unpunished. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Writer Robert Harris discusses how realpolitik may have led western governments to gloss over the Nazis’ crimes if Hitler had won the Second World War. This is an excerpt from Harris’s discussion of Fatherland with John Mullan at the Guardian Open Weekend festival on 24 March 2012: