Abstract
Koren focusses on controversies on teaching about the wars that have taken place in Croatia since 1990. At that time, history served as a tool to re-examine and redefine identity. New textbooks firmly promoted the ideology of Croatian statehood, and the historical continuity of the state. The debate concerns changing representations of the ‘Homeland War’ in textbooks and curricula in the last two decades, which have continuously reflected the clash of interpretations and disparate memories of World War Two and the recent wars. While recent reactions demonstrate the ongoing political importance attached to history education, there are indications that society has become open enough to question dominant interpretations. These debates are far from over, however, and still have the potential to create conflicts in society.
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Notes
- 1.
The first multi-party elections after World War Two were held in April and May of 1990. The former League of Communists of Croatia, then renamed the Party of Democratic Change and now called the Social Democratic Party, lost. The elections were won by the right-wing nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, or HDZ), which remained in power through the entire 1990s.
- 2.
All translations are by the author unless otherwise specified.
- 3.
W. Höpken, ‘History Education and Yugoslav (Dis-)Integration’. In Öl ins Feuer? – Oil on Fire? Schulbücher, ethnische Stereotypen und Gewalt in Südosteuropa. Textbooks, Ethnic Stereotypes and Violence in South-East Europe (= Studien zur internationalen Schulbuchforschung 89), ed. W. Höpken (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996), 114; S. Koren, ‘Slike nacionalne povijesti u hrvatskim udžbenicima uoči i nakon raspada Jugoslavije [Images of national history in Croatian textbooks before and after the breakup of Yugoslavia]’, Historijski zbornik 60 (2007): 259–263.
- 4.
S. Koren, Politika povijesti u Jugoslaviji (1945–1960). Komunistička partija Jugoslavije, nastava povijesti, historiografija [The Politics of History in Yugoslavia (1945–1960): the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, History Education, Historiography (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012), 309–377.
- 5.
S. Koren and B. Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have after Eighteen Years of Democracy in Croatia? Transition, Intervention, and History Education Politics (1990–2008)’. In ‘Transition’ and the Politics of History Education in Southeast Europe, ed. A. Dimou (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009), 118–119; S. Koren, ‘Nastava povijesti između historije i pamćenja: hrvatski udžbenici povijesti o 1945 [History teaching between history and memory: Croatian history textbooks on 1945]’. In Kultura sjećanja 1945: povijesni lomovi i svladavanje prošlosti, ed. S. Bosto and T. Cipek (Zagreb: Disput, 2009), 241–245.
- 6.
For a list of some of the newspaper articles and historians’ analyses, see Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 135–140.
- 7.
Höpken, ‘History Education’, 96–105.
- 8.
In January 2000, the HDZ lost the parliamentary elections for the first time since 1990. A coalition of six political parties, led by the Social Democrats, formed a government (2000–2003). The HDZ again won the parliamentary elections in November 2003. Although there was no reversion to the positions of the 1990s after the HDZ returned to power (2003–2011), its educational policy in the field of history teaching generally remained ambivalent, either for pragmatic or ideological reasons.
- 9.
Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 105–118.
- 10.
Ibid., 108–111.
- 11.
This was reflected in recent political developments. In 2011, a coalition government led by Social Democrats came to power, while HDZ was the strongest opposition party. During the run-up to presidential elections in December 2014 and January 2015, with parliamentary elections scheduled for December 2015, history textbooks and teaching once again became a political issue. In speeches in 2015, Tomislav Karamarko, the leader of HDZ, outlined certain policies his party would implement if they were to win the next parliamentary elections. There were three main points: lustration, removal of Josip Broz Tito’s name from public spaces (streets, squares, etc.) and the unification of history textbook narratives dealing with twentieth-century Croatian history. He labelled existing history textbooks ‘quasi-Communist histories’ and described their interpretations of World War Two in Croatia, socialist Yugoslavia, the wars of the 1990s and the role of Franjo Tuđman as distorted and false. According to the HDZ leadership in 2015, current history textbooks portrayed the partisan movement during World War Two and within socialist Yugoslavia, and the role of Tito, too positively, while glossing over partisan crimes at the end of the war and not properly addressing the role of post-1945 Croatian political emigration. They also announced that both history textbooks and the Croatian Constitution would include a positive evaluation of Franjo Tuđman’s political doctrine. They also discarded the politics of national reconciliation during the early 1990s as an unsuccessful experiment because it was, as they put it, exploited by those ‘who never wanted an independent Croatia’ (usually labelled ‘Yugonostalgics’, that is, those in Croatia who allegedly want the restoration of Yugoslavia and communism). Behind these announcements was once again the notion of a school history that conveys only the ‘official history’ defined by the party in power. For the quotes, see S. Koren, ‘Twentieth-century wars in history teaching and public memory of present-day Croatia’, Studi sulla formazione 2/2015, 11–32 (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/sf/article/view/18013).
- 12.
In April and May 2012, for example, during a commemoration at the Jasenovac concentration camp, President Ivo Josipović declared that history textbooks did not present the ‘whole truth’ about World War Two. Additionally, the Croatian Parliament decided by a majority to abolish its sponsorship of the commemoration of the events at Bleiburg field at the end of the war, when Partisan forces committed mass murder of captured enemies, mostly soldiers of the NDH. This decision was made because this commemoration regularly served not only to pay homage to the victims, but for many participants also as a memorial celebration of the NDH.
- 13.
Tito’s name was removed from one of the main squares in Zagreb after a decision by the Zagreb city assembly in August 2017. See, for example, ‘Zagreb strips Marshal Tito name from square’, The Guardian, 1 September 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/01/zagreb-strips-marshal-tito-name-from-square-croatia.
- 14.
Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 122–124.
- 15.
Ibid., 123.
- 16.
S. Koren, ‘“Korisna prošlost”? Ratovi devedesetih u deklaracijama Hrvatskog sabora [‘Useful Past’? The 1990s wars in declarations of the Croatian parliament]’. In Kultura sjećanja: 1991. Povijesni lomovi i svladavanje prošlosti, ed. T. Cipek (Zagreb: Disput, 2011), 128–130, 141–142.
- 17.
Ibid., 131–141. For both declarations see Narodne novine, the official gazette of the Republic of Croatia: Narodne novine 102/2000, http://narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeni/2000_10_102_1987.html (Declaration on the Homeland War); Narodne novine 76/2006, http://narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeni/2006_07_76_1787.html (Declaration on Operation Storm).
- 18.
Subsequently, this commemoration became highly politically charged. In 2013, the state delegation, including the president of the republic and the prime minister, was prevented from participating in the commemorations by some veterans’ associations, who were frustrated by the government’s decision to introduce Cyrillic inscriptions to Vukovar. This decision was mandatorily implemented after the 2011 Croatian census, which showed that Serbs make up more than one third (34.8%) of Vukovar’s total population. L. Ostroški, ed., Statistički ljetopis Republike Hrvatske 2015/Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Croatia 2015 (Zagreb: Croatian Bureau of Statistics, 2015), 47.
- 19.
Koren, ‘“Korisna prošlost”?’, 141–142.
- 20.
Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 123.
- 21.
Ibid., 124–125.
- 22.
Ibid., 125–127.
- 23.
Mato Artuković, ‘Recenzija knjige “Dodatak udžbenicima za najnoviju povijesti” [Review of the book “Supplement to textbooks on recent history”]’. In R. Skenderović, M. Jareb, M. Artuković, Multiperspektivnost ili relativiziranje? Dodatak udžbenicima za najnoviju povijest i istina o Domovinskom ratu [Multiperspectivity or relativisation? The supplement to textbooks on contemporary history and the truth about the Homeland War], (Slavonski Brod: Hrvatski institut za povijest—Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje, 2008), 109–114.
- 24.
See newspaper excerpts in Jedna povijest, više historija. Dodatak udžbenicima s kronikom objavljivanja [One past, many histories. Supplement to textbooks with documentation], ed. M. Dubljević (Zagreb: Documenta, 2007), 43–65, https://www.documenta.hr/assets/files/publikacije/jedna_povijest_vise_historija.pdf.
- 25.
S. Razum, ‘Iskrivljavanje povijesne istine i kažnjivo upućivanje u nehrvatstvo [The distortion of historical truths and the punishable act of teaching un-Croatianness]’, Glas koncila (2005), 32–33.
- 26.
V. Katunarić, Državljanski/građanski odgoji i srodni sadržaji odabirnih europskih zemalja, interim project report on civic education in Croatian schools, 2006 (unpublished report in the possession of the author).
- 27.
For the 2008 round table conference, see Okrugli stol ‘Mediji, politika i nedavna povijest: pisanje udžbenika i prezentacija zbivanja iz novije hrvatske povijesti’, https://www.documenta.hr/en/okrugli-stol-mediji-politika-i-nedavna-povijest-pisanje-ud%C5%BEbenika-i-prezentacija-zbivanja-iz-novije-hrvatske-povijesti.html. For the 2009 round table, see Mato Artuković ‘Okrugli stol “Viđenja najnovije hrvatske povijesti”’. In Scrinia Slavonica 9 (2009): 593–614, https://hrcak.srce.hr/62175.
- 28.
Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 127–128.
- 29.
Nastavni plan i program za osnovnu školu [The national curriculum for primary school] (Zagreb: Ministarstvo znanosti, obrazovanja i športa, 2006), 291, http://www.azoo.hr/images/AZOO/Ravnatelji/RM/Nastavni_plan_i_program_za_osnovnu_skolu_-_MZOS_2006_.pdf.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Both letters are published in: ‘Povjesničari, udžbenici i nastava povijesti u suvremenoj Hrvatskoj [Historians, textbooks, and history teaching in contemporary Croatia]’, Povijest u nastavi [History in teaching] 9 (Spring 2007): 5–11, http://hrcak.srce.hr/24887.
- 32.
See Skenderović, Jareb, Artuković, Multiperspektivnost ili relativiziranje?, 50–53; also the open letter in ‘Povjesničari, udžbenici i nastava’, 8.
- 33.
See interview with Igor Graovac in ‘Povijest koju piše Haag [History written by the Hague]’, Zarez 166, 3 November 2005; Jedna povijest, više historija, 88; I. Đikić, ‘Hajka po Staljinovu modelu [It’s a manhunt like in Stalin’s time]’, Feral Tribune, 26 August 2005.
- 34.
Koren and Baranović, ‘What Kind of History Education Do We Have’, 126–128.
- 35.
Koren, ‘Twentieth-century wars in history teaching and public memory of present-day Croatia’, 24.
- 36.
For the latest proposal for the history curriculum (2016) and the response to the comments received during the expert discussion, see http://www.kurikulum.hr/8-6-2016-objava-nacionalnog-kurikuluma-nastavni-predmet-povijest-odgovora-pristigle-primjedbe-nakon-strucne-rasprave.
Further Reading
Baranović, B., B. Jokić and K. Doolan. ‘Teaching History in a Post-War Social Context: The Case of the Croatian Danube region’. Intercultural Education 18 (2007): 455–471.
Budak, N. ‘Post-socialist Historiography in Croatia since 1990’. In (Re)Writing History—Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism, edited by U. Brunnbauer, 128–165. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004.
Iveljić, I. ‘Cum ira et studio: Geschichte und Gesellschaft Kroatiens in den 1990er Jahren’. In GegenErinnerung. Geschichte als politisches Argument (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 61), edited by H. Altrichter, 191–204. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006.
Marić, D. ‘The Homeland War in Croatian History Education: Between “Real Truth” and Innovative History Teaching’. In History Can Bite. History Education in Divided and Postwar Societies, eds. D. Bentrovato, K. V. Korostelina, M. Schulze, 85–110. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016.
Najbar-Agičić, M., and D. Agičić. ‘The Use and Misuse of History Teaching in 1990s Croatia’. In Democratic Transition in Croatia: Value Transformation, Education and Media, edited by S. P. Ramet and D. Matić, 193–223. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007.
Pavasović-Trošt, T. ‘Ruptures and Continuities in Nationhood Narratives: Reconstructing the Nation through History Textbooks in Serbia and Croatia’. In Nations and Nationalism 24 (3) (2018): 716–740.
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Koren, S. (2019). Croatia. In: Cajani, L., Lässig, S., Repoussi, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Conflict and History Education in the Post-Cold War Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05722-0_14
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