May 1945: Josip Broz Tito/Yugoslavia – A Mass Murderer/Croatia – A Graveyard of Slaughtered Patriots  

During the past week on 4th May one could still find quite several praises and celebrations of former communist Yugoslavia and its leader Josip Broz Tito, who died on 4th May 1980! Accolades from former communists or their children or grandchildren polluted the air Croatians who fought for freedom from communism and democracy in 1990’s breathe. At times the pollution is unbearable. And the accolades continue despite Tito’s communist regime of Yugoslavia now being confirmed as one of top ten mass murderers of its people in the 20th Century! The Yugoslav communists held the key to state archives until 1991 and of course it was only after the archives became freely available to researchers that the world learned what a murderous butcher Tito was; 1,700 mass graves or pits so far unearthed there, 1,000 of these in Croatia. The alternative to not showering the memory of Tito with accolades would be to stand before the truth and stare into the faces of many mass murderers who carried out Tito’s orders for purges of all political opponents of communism. Most who have stood by that communist regime will not switch against it now – they cannot switch against their grandfathers, fathers, mothers, uncles… who murdered for the “glory” of communism…they cannot vacate the villas and ill-gotten wealth their families thrived upon as corruption thrived in former Yugoslavia. They are the ones who praise former Yugoslavia as being a “great country to live in”, if not the greatest…

And today 8th of May, the former communists of Yugoslavia and their children, grandchildren and deluded followers will tell you that the Yugoslav Army of communists/Partisans marched in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia and liberated it (from fascists)! No they did not! They made sure Croatia continued imprisoned in the Serb-led concoction of a country forcefully and deceitfully stitched together after WWI led by the Serbian Monarchy related by marriage to the English Queen Victoria royal apparatus.  

Today, 8th May 1945 the First and Second communist armies entered the city of Zagreb … “soon mass killings began, the establishment of detention camps for opponents of communism and pillaging … the Canal camp at the main train station, old Zagreb disappeared … they are still with us today. Balkan bluffers, Yugo-nationalists … just look at the content of the Parliament, and how soon have we forgotten all of it … the torment of that dragon that is still among us needs to be put to an end. God and Croats…” General Zeljko Glasnovic as a Member of the Croatian Parliament for the Diaspora said in parliament in May 2020 and these words still stand as truth.

General Zeljko Glasnvic in Croatian {arliament May 2020

Let’s be real and realistic: Yugoslavia these pro-Tito people admire, and respect was not a successful state. Tito was not a modest, democratic, and generous, popular ruler, as he is still presented today by these and some media. Tito was not a saint protector from fascism who would probably still be here if he were not there, but an ordinary communist dictator who declared himself lifelong president, whose merit we were not part of the Western, democratic world but the repressive and economically unsuccessful socialist bloc, the primitive who built an unprecedented cult of personality in the world and carried Tito’s baton (phallic symbol) as part of the ritual of ultimate collective obedience to the demigod, and man to whose recklessly luxurious life that included private islands with a safari park, dozens of castles, Rolls, Mercedes and yachts and thousands of people who took care of everything went a good portion of the country’s GDP.

Josip Broz Tito was a dictator and a mass murderer. Tito did not liberate Croatia in World War Two, he basically fought for the introduction of a communist dictatorship across what was the previously false union of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Stalin’s empire. To portray Tito in a historical context exclusively through the prism of “anti-fascism” and to pay tribute to him for Croatian independence is a mere intelligence spin that benefits only those who thieved the Croatian public goods and purged hundreds of thousands of those who did fight for independence of Croatia during World War Two.

All of those who shower the memory of Tito today always mention how grand his funeral in 1980 was! How many world leaders, presidents, kings, princes, prime ministers attended his funeral in Belgrade! They say that such attendance is and was proof of how a great person and leader Tito was! The truth is that had Tito’s communists not falsified history, had they not kept the keys to state archives, Tito’s funeral would not have been attended by world’s respected leaders but by mass murderers such as Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, King Leopold II of Belgium, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Augusto Pinochet and so on.

“Tito built hospitals, roads, railways, schooling and health care was free,” says the pro-Tito mantra even today in Croatia! During Tito’s life in Zagreb and Rijeka, however, no new hospitals were built, although the population increased. True, the people of Zagreb “voluntarily” paid two so-called self-contribution to the university hospital, but never built. A self-contribution was also taken for the highway to Split, but it was declared nationalist and never built. In Yugoslavia corruption started, one simply did not visit the Council nor the doctor without a blue envelope with cash for bribe.

When we went to the doctor in Yugoslavia, the doctor’s examination was often waited on for months, and the operation waited on for years if you did not have a relationship or gave a bribe –  but it was free.

Zagreb had only one dialysis machine that was more often broken than it worked, diabetics were dying – but it was free.

As a matter of record and interest, the last public hospital (KBC Rebro) built in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, was built by the regime of Ante Pavelic, WWII Independent State of Croatia!

During Tito’s Yugoslavia a highway was built from Zagreb to Karlovac, about 45 kilometers, the only one after the end of World War Two until Croatia’s independence in early 1990’s. Other roads were from Napoleon and Maria Theresa, full of potholes and poorly maintained, and Croatia had less railways in 1990 than in 1940.

The factories were ours; everything was ours, says the pro-Tito mantra. In truth, they served as living rooms for workers who waited for months for minimal and raw materials, to produce something that ended up in a warehouse or, at best, crammed into the Non-Aligned countries for fictitious clearing of dollars. They produced mostly pollution and losses and swallowed irretrievably hundreds of millions earned on tourism (largely in Croatia) and remittances from guest workers (diaspora), but they were “ours” whatever that meant.

They produced alumina in Obrovac, in which there was no raw material, no port or railway, with a loss that did not exceed the planned hundred million dollars a year, and coke in the most beautiful bay of the Adriatic. It has often been said that “they can’t pay me as poorly as I can work poorly.” By 1974 some 94% of workforce wages in Yugoslavia were paid from foreign debt or subsidised by successful industry such as tourism, but not from workers’ productivity. We pretended to work, they pretended to pay us.

True, most of them were not really hungry, with work on the black and a bit of leasing of rooms in the house or apartment little roommate, a family would cover themselves for their monthly living expenses, smuggling stuff from Trieste, Italy, even better. The “middle class” in the 1970s lived quite tolerably from the grey economy, like “Del Boy Trotter”, and in social housing like his. For some, such flats, such as those given by the governments outside Croatia to social or welfare cases for free, are still today a notion of the middle class that has allegedly destroyed after the fall of Yugoslavia. “Comrade Tito, you stole, but you also let us steal” says a graffiti – and you already have a strong foothold for the claim that “life was better in Yugoslavia”.

Substandard work, two or three-hour brunches and lunch breaks and mass paid sick leave while working elsewhere such as seasonal field work, counter workers, tellers, who are always on a break, stealing from firms ranging from cement bags to dollar bags, depending on location. A system in which people learned to “navigate” in one way or another – most often in another. Those who knew how to “get along”, the Byzantine-Balkan way, was not so badly off. Whoever wanted to solve everything in a regular way, through completely dysfunctional and extremely corrupt institutions of the system, would quickly fail. Private individuals, cafe owners and money launderers, foreign exchange smugglers, shopkeepers, comrades from the Communist Party Committee, thieving socialist directors, guest workers who were millionaires with money earned in Germany on building sites, and  room-letters on the Adriatic – these are the categories of the population anti-fascism was generally good to.

Socialism protected the workers?  No, it sent them to Munich to get German Marks. Socialism, to be honest, protected the unemployed and those who did not want to work.

And then everything got sold out, destroyed, says the pro-Tito, pro-Yugoslavia mantra. It did not fail because socialism failed, and with it the entire Eastern bloc, nor because there was no market for socialist products anywhere, it did not fail because of theft and corruption, but because of the hated capitalism, nationalists, those who wanted independence and democracy, and Franjo Tudjman. Petrol vouchers and queues that mark 1980’s communist Yugoslavia were quickly forgotten, smuggling fake jeans from a flea market in Trieste and going by bus to get laundry powder in Graz, electricity reductions and coffee shortages, hyperinflation and perpetual stabilisation and normalisation after which everything was even less normal – all quickly forgotten. The fact that one could not even secure the services of a plumber, or another tradesperson, without connections to someone in the SIZ/ Self-governing interest community – was quickly forgotten also.

Tito’s Yugoslavia was not organised and successful as pro-Titoists see it today. Its declared bankruptcy in 1983 meant that Yugoslavia could not service its debts. Bankruptcy was accompanied by shortages of everything imported, power cuts, petrol vouchers and a complete collapse of the economy. And still, the Tito die-hards will tell you these absolute facts are made up – not true! Humanity can truly sink to the depths of despair and depravity. Nothing confirms this as the pursuits of communists and former communists who defend blindly and stubbornly the indefensible. Ina Vukic

Happy Birthday Zeljko and Davor Glasnovic

Zeljko Glasnovic (L) Davor Glasnovic (R)

This year, 2022, marks yet another jubilee to celebrate in the realisation of freedom for Croatia – the May 1992 front door entry as member state of the United Nations. Between 1990 and 1995 thousands of Croatian freedom fighters descended upon the battlefields of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from all over the world, sacrificing their lives and millions of them struggled to drive away the utterly cruel Serb and communist Yugoslavia aggression. The victory against the cruel and genocidal aggressor was glorious for Croatians and it was to usher in democracy centred around all people in Croatia and beyond. How the Croatian nation has fared, without shedding communism and its mindset from all of its public administration, social and political milieus, as promised it would the very day of announcing secession from communist Yugoslavia in 1991, over the last 30 years is something we sadly and bitterly resent, knowing we cannot change that past, but the future is in our hands. Communist mindset, corrupt behaviour in public institutions and government still hold the reins that keep Croatia back from becoming a full democracy.

It is a nation’s duty to remember not only the heroism but also the suffering that fight for independence that were and are etched in the history of its existence and its hopes. And such memory is stronger when heroism and suffering are personified in people we live with, people we know and people we trust. And so, today, 24 February happens to be the birthday of twin brothers Zeljko Glasnovic and Davor Glasnovic, who had at time of raging war of aggression in Croatia come from Canada to lend a crucially helping hand in the creation of the independent state of Croatia on the battlefields and to take a heavy load of suffering through wounds and in Davor’s case – unspeakable torture as prisoner of Serb concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today still, they serve as example of steadfast hope and determination that Croatia will one day be strong enough to decommunise; to rid itself of the insufferable canker that communism is.

I wish Zeljko and Davor Glasnovic a very happy birthday and know that many join me in these wishes.

Zeljko Glasnovic is a general of the Croatian Army (HV) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and a politician.

Zeljko Glasnovic spent five years in the Canadian army, and a year and a half in the French Foreign Legion. In August 1991, he came to Croatia and joined the National Guard Corps. During the war he fought in Lika and on the Southern battlefield, and after the fall of Vukovar he moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Tomislavgrad where he had to train new units.

In April 1992, he took part in the fighting in Kupres, where he was seriously wounded. He received a bullet near his heart, and it was said that he told his comrades-in-arms to leave him with a bomb he could use on himself should Serb enemy approach and start drawing. However, his comrades did not listen to him, so they dragged him across the snow-covered mountains to the Franciscan monastery on Šćit in Rama, from where he was transferred to Split Hospital. He spent two months in a hospital in Split, after which, still not recovered, he escaped and returned to the Kupres battlefield. In October 1992, he took over the King Tomislav Brigade. At that time, his twin brother Davor was captured in Kupres and tortured in Serbian camps.

He was first politically engaged in the November 2015 parliamentary elections. He is known for his firmly right-wing political views, especially in the area of the need to decommunise Croatia, and until July 2021 he was a member of the Croatian Parliament for the Croatian Diaspora.

Zeljko’s twin bother Davor Glasnovic also returned to Croatia from Canada to contribute to the defence of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the war of Serbian aggression. He was a member of the Special Unit of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia / SP GSHV Battalion Frankopan. On July 31, 1993, he was released after 13 months of torture in that Serb concentration camp, without one ear, in plaster, with a traumatised body that included having his knees drilled with electric drill, skin on his back torn away and an unbroken spirit for the freedom of Croatia.

Here is what Zeljko Glasnovic wrote about his brother Davor on July 31, 2021:

“On this day in 1993, after months of torture and Golgotha in a Serbian camp, my brother was released. The DORH (Public Attorney) never did anything against his torturers, nor were Croatian institutions interested in talking to him. They were not interested in where he was but instead, he was on the Serbian list of war crimes suspects in an area where he had never been during the period he was in their captivity.

While our defenders with fabricated indictments are sent to The Hague, executed, called war criminals, their dignity mocked, their victimhood belittled and forced to pay compensation to the families of killed aggressors who attacked our country, amnestied Chetniks and their families have special privileges, pensions, statuses, honour, reputation and even power. They are victims! This is a paradox that will last until lustration is implemented and final liberation of the Croatian home, which is still in the jaws of Yugozomboids, in which all defenders will be restored to their dignity and in which all victims will be able to tell their stories out loud, their abusers will be punished, and justice will at least partially be satisfied. For there will never be true justice for the fate of all victims, at least not in this world.”

God bless and Happy Birthday!
Ina Vukic

Croatia: International Recognition 30 Years On – The Grim Road Nobody Saw

Croatian Postage Stamp Honouring 30th Anniversary of International Recognition

After the newly inaugurated Parliament of the Republic of Croatia passed the Constitutional Decision on the Sovereignty and Independence of the Republic of Croatia on June 25, 1991, and the Decision on the Termination of State-Legal Relations with communist Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991, Croatia became an international recognised state on January 15, 1992. As at that date some 30 countries had officially recognised its independence. On January 16th, 1992, Australia had recognised Croatia’s independence thus becoming one of the first non-European countries to do this and by May 1992 some 77 countries had followed suit.  International recognition came in wartime conditions after Croatian military and police forces successfully defended much of the state’s territory from Greater Serbia aggression and suffered ethnic cleansing of Croats from one third of Croatia’s territory, mass murder, genocide, rapes, horrific tortures of Croats, with many villages and towns suffering devastation and destruction.

For 30 years, Croatia has established itself internationally, becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union and numerous international organisations, and has made a significant contribution to building world peace by participating in peacekeeping operations. 

On 15 January 2022, we also mark the 24th anniversary of the successful completion of the process of peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube region into the constitutional order of the Republic of Croatia.

It must also be noted that for 30 years Croatia has failed miserably at completing its transition from communism into democracy. The central values of the Homeland War that brought its independence have not been upheld to any noticeable degree. It must be noted that Croatian authorities have consistently been pushing Croatian independence activists out of the picture starting with forced retirement of some 18 Army Generals in 2000 and ignoring, or rather, purposefully omitting to give due respect and recognition to all who have contributed in the creation of the independent Republic of Croatia and its diplomatic relations and missions across the world. Croatia’s diplomatic and consular missions have consistently ignored to invite to their stately celebrations and functions in the diaspora the majority of the individuals who sacrificed so very much for Croatia, even the many holding Croatia’s Medals of Honour for taking significant part in the creation of the independence are consistently shunned and ignored and “new” faces brought to functions and celebrations who were never seen at crucial activities for independence but kept a safe distance from it all. This is not to say that “new” faces are not welcome, but it becomes deeply disturbing to a Croatian patriot when the people who sacrificed much even in the establishment of Diplomatic-Consular Missions are not respected as a group and given the respect they deserve. The “fashion” it seems for the last 22 years is that one or two such persons are chosen symbolically and invited to stately functions and rest ignored because they may have criticised the government for inefficiency in the transition from communism! I recently asked a very prominent person in the creation of Croatia’s independence and help for the war effort to defend Croatia if he were invited to a recent function the Croatian Embassy had organised and his response was: “No Ina, I have not towed the Party line, their line, for quite some time so I am not welcome there …”.     

Former communists or their offspring have persistently held power since year 2000. ensuring lustration does not proceed, hence, ensuring corruption and nepotism rooted in communist Yugoslavia thrive – still to this day!

Zeljko Glasnovic

To demonstrate the above persistence in keeping the communist mindset thriving in Croatia I found the best evidence in retired General Zeljko Glasnovic’s Fabebook posting the day before the 30th anniversary of the international recognition of Croatian independence in which he quoted the stark and awful reminder by Don Vinko Puljic about the terrifying facts of the Croatian communist-laced powers in control of the country. The quote goes like this:

Tomorrow, the Croatian state will celebrate the 30th birthday of its international recognition.

Many will remember many great moments and achievements on this occasion, so I decided to make a modest contribution to saving from oblivion at least some of the works (of corruption and grand theft) that have marked and defined modern Croatian society over these three decades:

Prime Minister: Prison. ✔

Deputy Prime Minister: Prison. ✔

Head of the Prime Minister’s Office: Prison. ✔

Minister of Economy: Prison. ✔

Minister of Agriculture: Community work sentence. ✔

Minister of the Interior: Prison. ✔

Minister of Defence: Prison. ✔

Minister of EU Funds: Prison. ✔

Minister of Culture: Prison. ✔

Minister of Construction: Prison. ✔

Minister of Administration: Awaiting criminal trial. ✔

Secretary of State: Prison. ✔

SOA (Security and Intelligence Agency) Director: Prison. ✔

VSOA (Military Security and Intelligence Agency) Director: Prison. ✔

VSOA Deputy Director: Prison. ✔

Permanent Representative to the UN: Prison. ✔

Mayor of the capital city: Prison. ✔

Mayor, miscellaneous: Prison. ✔

Mayor, miscellaneous: Prison. ✔

Prefect, miscellaneous: Prison. ✔

Deputy Mayor, miscellaneous: Prison. ✔

Member of Parliament, various: Prison. ✔

Party president, miscellaneous: Prison. ✔

Executive President of Dinamo: On the run from prison. ✔

President of Hajduk: Prison. ✔

President of Rijeka: Prison. ✔

President of Osijek: Prison. ✔

President of the largest company in the country: Prison. ✔

Dean of the Faculty of Law: Prison. ✔

Director of City Cemeteries: Prison. ✔

President of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce: Prison. ✔

Director of Croatian Roads: Prison. ✔

Director of Croatian Motorways: Prison. ✔

President of the Board of the Croatian Railways: Prison. ✔

President of the Board of Croatian Forests: Awaiting criminal trial. ✔

Director of Hrvatske vode (Croatian Water): Community labour sentence. ✔

Croatian TV HRT director: Prison. ✔

Director of JANAF (Adriatic Oil Pipeline): Prison. ✔

Director of the Croatian Lottery: Prison. ✔

Director of HEP (Croatian Electricity): Prison. ✔

Director of INA (Croatian Naphtha Industry) : Prison. ✔

Member of the Supervisory Board, various: Prison. ✔

Congratulations to all the others who are not mentioned, and who have also in these 30 years in a similarly selfless and generous way built and shaped the land we have dreamed of for centuries and will leave to our children.”

To compound the problems Croatia has created for itself via its inept governments through these past three decades, heavily laced with communist mindset and corruption, the Late 2021 Census now reveals that Croatia has lost just under 10% of its population within 10 years which loss is mainly reflected in the mass exodus of young or working-aged people to other countries in search of employment and better living standards. True, there have been quite a number of Croats returning to live in Croatia from the diaspora but still about 400,000 have vanished and Croatia’s population now officially stands at 3.88 million.

One may hope that the coming decade will see a move in the right direction designed to eradicate corruption and theft to attract more people back into Croatia. For a multitude of Croatian patriots including those who actively participated in the creation of its independence the past 30 years could easily be described as horrible and gut-wrenching. Perhaps that is the price of abandoning communism and paying in blood for that? In any case this anniversary is the best thing that happens in the lives of Croatians who helped deliver independence! Congratulations and thank you to all involved! Ina Vukic  

Disclaimer, Terms and Conditions:

All content on “Croatia, the War, and the Future” blog is for informational purposes only. “Croatia, the War, and the Future” blog is not responsible for and expressly disclaims all liability for the interpretations and subsequent reactions of visitors or commenters either to this site or its associate Twitter account, @IVukic or its Facebook account. Comments on this website are the sole responsibility of their writers and the writer will take full responsibility, liability, and blame for any libel or litigation that results from something written in or as a direct result of something written in a comment. The nature of information provided on this website may be transitional and, therefore, accuracy, completeness, veracity, honesty, exactitude, factuality and politeness of comments are not guaranteed. This blog may contain hypertext links to other websites or webpages. “Croatia, the War, and the Future” does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of information on any other website or webpage. We do not endorse or accept any responsibility for any views expressed or products or services offered on outside sites, or the organisations sponsoring those sites, or the safety of linking to those sites. Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinion regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion or agreement with the subject in posts or other commentators. Personal or other criticism is acceptable as long as it is justified by facts, arguments or discussions of key issues. Comments that include profanity, offensive language and insults will be moderated.
%d bloggers like this: