Talk:Croatia

GAR

Croatia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delist as doesn't meet GA criteria 2 or 3 (insufficient citations and lack of recent updates). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:17, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Article has "This section needs to be updated" tags in five sections: Economy, Transport, Demographics, Education, Sports, and As of 2019, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration employed 1,381[needs update]. It also has "needs additional citations for verification" tag for Sports, and a 'citation needed' in Healthcare section. 'clarification needed' is in Independent Croatia (1991–present) section. With 6 big orange templates article needs work to remain a GA. Artem.G (talk) 19:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

• Slightly longer than preferable, and with some oversubsectioning. However, overall not a bad article as far as country articles go, hopefully this can be fixed. CMD (talk) 07:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
• Delist: sections need to be updated, while citations are needed in selected places. As CMD noted, should be fairly easy to get back to GA standard, should someone wish to. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:17, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments and questions

1. The article says "During the 5th century, the last de jure Western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos ruled a small realm from the palace after fleeing Italy in 475."

However, it's not clear what is the "palace" in question. I assume it's Diocletian's palace which is the likely residence of Julius Nepos during his nominal continued reign in Dalmatia (as stated in the article on Julius Nepos).

2. The section "Personal union with Hungary (1102) and Habsburg Monarchy (1527)" ends with WWI.

It does not say anything more than that. At least it should explain how it started. I believe a short paragraph is needed since WWI was a major event in Europe (not only Croatia).

3. The image of the Danube river is pointless.

4a. The image in the "Climate" section was previously showing the bora but some genius removed it and placed an image that shows something completely unrelated to the bora. Please fix image and caption as necessary. It does not make sense.

4b. The "Climate" section mentions bora and bura. Let's try to stick to a single spelling for better clarity and uniformity.

5. The text says "As of May 2019, the Croatian military had 72 members stationed in foreign countries as part of United Nations-led international peacekeeping forces. As of 2019, 323 troops served the NATO-led ISAF force in Afghanistan. Another 156 served with KFOR in Kosovo."

It should be updated to 2024.

6. The text says "As a result of the war, economic infrastructure sustained massive damage, particularly the tourism industry."

What war is it? This is ambiguous. There is a lack of clarity.

7. The text says "The population decrease was greater a result of war for independence."

Is this even grammatically correct?

8. The image of the Šibenik Cathedral is ugly and it can be replaced with a better one with a better angle (from the front of the building).

9. The text says "Twenty of these schools got specialised assistance in the form of gear".

What does "gear" mean in this context? I speak English and it does not make sense to me.

10. The text says "As of January 2021, there are thirteen nationwide free-to-air DVB-T television channels, with Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) operating four, RTL Televizija three, and Nova TV operating two channels, and the Croatian Olympic Committee, Kapital Net d.o.o., and Author d.o.o. companies operate the remaining three."

The are too many instances of "and". They are redundant/repetitive.

11. Chess is included in the sports section. It's not really a sport. It's not physical but mental. Football, racing and swimming are sports.

12. Some genius replaced the 4 images of traditional Croatian food with a single image of Zagorski štrukli. The previous image offered more national variety and it was a better choice.

13. The text says "Croatian athletes won 16 gold medals at world championships".

I find "world championships" very general.

ICE77 (talk) 23:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Alternate English Pronunciations

There are alternate pronunciations of the English word "Croatia", including "krow-AH-tee-uh" (common in England), "KROW-tee-uh" (common among the African American community), and "KRAY-sha" (usually associated with Australia). These should be represented in the article, possibly as a footnote. 166.196.79.79 (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I had previously removed this question as it seemed to be a weird troll. In case it's not clear, these claims seem like blatant violations of WP:OR and WP:HOAX. Anonymous user, if you want to be taken seriously, please cite sources. --Joy (talk) 07:52, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

On the Ustaše

The Second World War brought immense polit- ical change to Europe. Yugoslavia was no exception to this change, as the country was invaded and partitioned in 1941. A unique geopolitical situation followed, leading the Ustaša, a Croatian fas- cist organization, to found the In- dependent State of Croatia (NDH).1 While there was an already sizable Croatian nationalist movement within Yugoslavia, the Ustaša were not popular in the pre-war period because they were considered rad- ical in their ideas on identity and race. While in control of the NDH, the Ustaša capitalized on existing theories and conceptions of race to achieve its political and geopolitical goals. The Ustaša was in control of Cro- atia from 1941 to 1945.2 The organi- zation was formed in 1929 by Ante Pavelic, an ethnic Croatian born in modern-day Bosnia. He embraced the cause of Croatian nationalism from a young age, and later, became an influential member of the Croa- tian Party of Rights before the for- mation of the Kingdom of Yugosla- via, where he quickly became more radical in his views and methods.3 After the Yugoslavian King Alex- ander I established his dictatorship in 1929 and banned political par- ties, Pavelic fled Yugoslav authori- ties to fascist Italy, where he found his most influential ally, Benito Mussolini.4 It was during this time in Italy that Pavelic created and es- tablished the Ustaša. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia fell on April 10, 1941, and The Independent State of Cro- atia was created after the joint Ger- man-Italian invasion of the region. The Independent State of Croatia was granted sovereignty over al- most all of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia, although Germany and Italy continued to maintain occu- pation over some of these regions.5 The Ustaša’s appointment to power by the Axis powers gave them a lot of influence over the NDH and the state-building process in Croatia, which allowed the organization to pursue its political goals. The Ustaša had clearly defined ethnolinguistic ideas of the Croa- tian nation, as most other Croatian nationalism movements of the time; however, what defined the Ustaša was their definitions of nationhood centered around race. The Ustaša developed very strict and segment- ed definitions of race, which were influenced by previous Balkan the- ory and, later, by Nazi ideas of “Ary- anism.”6 This was not necessarily unique to the Ustaša however, as racial “science” and theories domi- nated the political circles of the in- terwar Balkans, and even the whole of Europe. Our modern conception of race is very different from the definitions used by many theorists before and during the Second World War. Ra- cial science regarded race as a bio- logical attribute, defined by physical characteristics, blood lineage, and broader aspects such as anthro- pological findings and ideas such

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as the ‘spirit.’ As Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state, both national- ist movements and Yugoslavists searched for reasons or ‘justifica- tions’ that legitimized their nation's claim to a state and the unification of Southern Slavs.7 As such, there was much discourse on racial iden- tities in the Balkans prior to World War II and even before the forma- tion of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavist in- tellectuals were often motivated to formulate their theories on race by their ideology, where they legiti- mized Yugoslavia on a racial basis. These theories were set against the reality of the Serb-dominated state, where Yugoslavist intellectuals fo- cused on the Serbian people as the main component of the races of the Balkans.8 The synthesis between Yu- goslavist theories and Serbian na- tionalism could be seen best within the works of Jovan Cvijic, one of the leading Yugoslav intellectuals on the subject of race at the advent of Yu- goslavia’s creation. Cvijic embraced the idea of a ‘Dinaric' racial identity of the Yugoslavs, where the South Slavic people of Yugoslavia shared a racial identity.9 However, the com- mon identity he preached placed the 'Serbian Type' above all others, stating that "the best example of the really pure patriarchal Dinaric type is certainly the Serbian Variety."10 Cvijic identifies specific psycholog- ical characteristics that he connects to the true 'Dinaric man,' character- istic that he states are most preva- lent amongst the Serbs and lacking in most Croatian regions, further emphasizing the racial hierarchy constructed by his theories.11 Croatian theories followed a sim- ilar train of thought and embraced many of the same ideas as those of the Yugoslavists. While Croatian nationalists and intellectuals ac- cepted the notion that there exists a shared 'Dinaric' race between Yu- goslav peoples, the Croatians sought to distinguish themselves from the other Southern Slavs, proving their 'exceptionality.'12 They also hoped to legitimize the Croatian nationalist movement as there would now be a racial basis for their independence. The Anti-Yugoslav Croatian intel- lectuals of the pre-war period fo- cused on several main features, such as: physical characteristics, western connections, and distinctions be- tween themselves and neighboring peoples.13 Ćiro Truhelka, a nota- ble early 20th century Croatian ar- chaeologist, wrote an article titled Croatian Bosnia: We and They over There, which intended to display Bosnia as a Croatian region through the study of racial characteristics.14 This study, although well before the inter-war period, exemplifies many of the ideas that would be explored by later intellectuals, such as the ac- ceptance of the Dinaric racial group and the attempts to distinguish Croatians from Serbs and other Southern Slavs. Truhelka’s lasting contribution was his assertion that Bosnians were racially Croatian, which would become a main tenet of many successive racial theories utilized by the Ustaša. 15 The inter-war period brought with it a wave of new theories, ideas, and nationalist fervor, fueling fur- ther racial studies in the Balkans. Historian and theorist Filip Lukas became the leading Croatian nation- alist intellectual of the inter-war pe- riod and espoused some of the main ideas that inspired the elements of the Ustaša's ideology.16 Lukas di- rectly critiqued Cvijic's theories on the Serbian racial exceptionali- ty and adopted an opposite stance. He accepted the idea of the Dinaric race and its extension of most South Slavic people, but argued that, as op- posed to Serbs, Croatians were the “purest” form of the Dinaric race. To ‘support’ this claim, Lukas used findings from the Swiss anthropolo- gist Eugene Pittard, who used phys- ical characteristics to racially sepa- rate Serbs and Croatians while also defining Bosnian Muslims as racial- ly Croatian.17 In the 1930s, Lukas fully embraced Croatian national- ism and began his focus on Croatian connections to the West. While he uses the ideas of an East-West rela- tionship to describe the ‘superiority’ of Croatian culture and civilization, he also uses it to explain the racial origins and admixture in both the Croatian and Serbian peoples. Lu- kas described Croatia as a gateway between the East and West, where the Dinaric peoples of Croatia had interbred with Germanics, Romans, and Illyrians, which resulted in a VOL VIII || ISSUE I || FALL 2022

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racially distinct and ‘civilized’ Cro- atian people.18 The Serbians, he ar- gued, had interbred with different peoples such as Vlachs, Thracians, and Near Eastern immigrants.19 The arguments of pre-war racial theo- ries, the ideas of Lukas in particular, set the framework for Ustaša’s racial ideology.

Upon its formation, the Ustaša quickly embraced and refined these preexisting theories of Croatian ra- cial identity. Dr. Mladen Lorkovic, a leading Ustaša ideologist, published his study “The Nation and Land of the Croats” in 1939, which reflect- ed the Ustaša racial ideology more clearly as it focused on the “Aryan” origin of Croatians.20 While Lukas had argued that Croatians were the ‘purest’ of the Dinaric race, Lorkovic was concerned with the theories of Iranian origins and the warrior elite, which quickly became the main te- nets of the Ustaša racial thinking.21 The most important distinction between inter-war Croatian racial theory and that prevalent in the NDH was that Ustaša intellectuals embraced the idea of “Aryanism,” relating Croatians to Gothic-Irani- ans and adopting Nazi racial theory. While there was certainly variation among intellectuals, the prevailing idea adopted was that some group of warriors (typically Indo-Iranian, but occasionally Nordic) became the ruling class of ancient Croatia, which ruled over a “Slavic major- ity.”22 The Croatian ethnographer Mirko Kus-Nikolajev stated in his publications to the Ustaša state pa- per that “Racial psychology gives the Dinaric race a high life and cul- tural value. The strengthening of the Nordic element in the Dinaric race would also mean the strength- ening of the positive features in our nation.”23 While Kus-Nikolajev re- fers directly to the ‘Nordic element’ present in Croatia, the prevailing views on the Nordic and Indo-Irani- an aspects of Croatian race were al- most identical. The Ustaša believed that the ancient Indo-Iranian war- rior ruling class of Croatia imbued the Croatian peoples with their ‘su- perior’ attributes, a trait that was not displayed by the Serbs in the south who had admixture that was pri- marily Vlach or Asiatic.24 Another major element of Ustaša racial theo- ry in the NDH was its stance on Jews in Croatia. While aforementioned theorists such as Ciro Tuhelka and Filip Lukas had defined the Jews as ‘racially foreign,’ the Ustaša took a harsher stance stemming from the anti-communist stance of the Ustaša.25 This stance viewed com- munism as a largely Jewish enter- prise, and the Ustaša organization desired to become closer allies with the Nazis in Germany. The Ustaša adopted a harsher stance against Jews to conform more closely to their fascist ideology and to earn the favor of Germany, despite not being entirely reflected in previous racial theory. It is important to understand not only the Ustaša’s racial ideology, but their political goals as well. These goals were based on two main ideas: that an ethnically distinct Croatian nation existed, and that it had a his- toric right to statehood. 26Pavelic and the Ustaša made it clear that those not considered racially fit would be excluded from political life, and that many in the Ustaša desired a racial- ly pure Croatia.27 As such, when the Ustaša gained control over Croa- tia, they had already achieved their most pressing goal: an independent Croatia. They then decided to go af- ter many different political pursuits, such as religious unity and econom- ic reformation, but their long history of racial and biological justifications manifested itself in the institutional- ization of these racial ideas and the beginning of mass killings. In addi- tion to the ‘purification’ of Croatia, the Ustaša, as the rulers of the NDH, endeavored to redefine or ‘recreate’ the Croatian nation.28 The efforts to redefine the Croatian nation caused the Ustaša to commit abundant re- sources into promoting what it saw as the rightful and legitimate Cro- atian culture, often focusing on the Croatian’s “Warrior past.” Both po- litical goals were pursued through many means, but race was a primary and integral aspect to the methods of their realization. Once the Ustaša had practically been given control over almost all of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia, they were able to pursue their po- litical ambitions through the NDH. The Ustaša had already established

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sophisticated racial theories and hierarchies, and they were quick to implement it within the NDH. The first implementation of these racial ideas was in the Aryan Race Laws which closely resembled the Nazi Nuremburg Laws. On April 30, 1941, many laws were passed con- cerning race, ethnicity, and citizen- ship, but the “Law decree on racial affiliation” and the “Law decree on the protection of the Aryan blood and honor of the Croatian nation” were the most racially charged.29 In these laws, the legal concept of the “Aryan” was introduced, a term that was used by Nazi theorists and came to define ethnic and racial Croa- tians.30 The term Aryan, while used primarily by the Nazi race theorists, was used as an encompassing term for the Croatian race that pre-war Croatian Intellectuals had defined. The Dinaric and Nordic races that were the main subjects of discussion by those theorists both became de- fined as Aryan, while Jews, Serbs, and Romani people all fell outside of this category. In practice, the dis- tinction institutionalized many of the pre-war theories created by Cro- atian nationalists, such as the identi- fication of the Croatian people with a Nordic or Indo-Iranian “core.” This defined Bosnian Muslims as racially Croatian (and thus Aryan) and ex- cluded Jews and Serbs as separate races.31 Much of the distinction re- lied on the racial definitions, but it was slightly more forgiving than the policies of Nazi Germany, as a select few Jews were seen as “integrated” and granted status of a honorary Aryan.32 Nonetheless, the racial dis- tinctions that were defined by Croa- tian Ustaša intellectuals became law and helped initiate the oppression and eventual mass killing of Jews and Serbs. The Ustaša then implemented different methods to achieve a “ra- cially and ethnically pure” Croatia and utilized their racial rhetoric and theories to justify it. There were different methods used to perse- cute the Jews and the Serbs, the two main targets of the Ustaša’s discrim- ination. The persecution of the Jews was implemented in Croatia much like it was in Nazi Germany, by identifying Jews and excluding them from social, economic, and other general activities. In the Aryan Race Laws of 1941, Jews were prohibited from marrying Croatians, and ex- tensive law was published to deter- mine who, by blood, was considered Jewish or Aryan.33 Thus, Jews in the NDH were excluded from nor- mal life in an attempt to keep Cro- atia ‘racially pure’ by preserving the Aryan blood of the Croatian people. The treatment of Serbs in the NDH was different from that of the Jews, as this dynamic was uniquely Croatian and was not based on Nazi law or theory. In June 1941, the Ra- cial-Political Committee of the Min- istry of Internal Affairs was created in the NDH with orders to “prepare proposals and drafts of laws, law de- crees, and regulations that concern the areas of racial biology, racial politics, and racial hygiene and eu- genics.”34 While most of their work entailed the identification and mon- itoring of Jews and Romani people, some of the work published by Boris Zarnik, a prominent inter-war racial theorist and the primary author of the NDH race laws, was centered around the pre-established ideas of Aryanism and the Indo-Iranian warrior class.35 His work, drafted un- der the Racial-Political Committee, did not classify Serbs as non-Aryan directly but instead identified them as “Greek-Easterners,” in reference to their Orthodox faith. Serbs were thus primarily identified by their adherence to the Orthodox faith, but Ustaša racial theorists classified them in racial terms.36 The NDH continued the ideas from the in- ter-war period concerning the Ser- bian race, since they were a mixture of eastern peoples such as Vlachs and Greeks, which made them de- cidedly less Aryan in the eyes of the Ustaša.37 Many Ustaša members publicly espoused the idea that the Serbs, as well as the Jews, were “en- emies of the people” and drew con- nections between Serbs and past invasions or hardships.38 The idea was bolstered by the geopolitical situation of the NDH, as it faced two major partisan adversaries: the Chetniks and the Communist Par- tisans. Both, at least initially, were composed primarily of Serbs, which bolstered anti-Serb propaganda and sentiment in the NDH.39 When the VOL VIII || ISSUE I || FALL 2022

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Ustaša began the mass killing and deportation of Serbs from Croatia, it used the Orthodox faith to iden- tify Serbs and justify the killings, but racial definitions were used when determining whether conver- sion or assimilation was ‘possible.’ Many Serbs and Orthodox Croats were converted to Catholicism by state endeavors, thus being consid- ered “Croatian”. Some Serbs were deemed to possess sufficient Aryan features and thus were considered fit to assimilate.40 It was with this justification that the Ustaša carried out its program of mass killing, con- version, and deportation, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs and displacing many more, all to achieve its goal of a racially and ethnically ‘pure’ Croatia.

The racial ideology of the Ustaša was not only used to justify and in- cite mass killings, but also to pro- mote certain types of behaviors and activities in the “New Croatian Man.”41 As was previously stated, the definition of race in the period be- fore the Cold War was much more fluid and open to redefinition. His- torical, anthropological, and cultur- al trends heavily influenced how race 1. Pino Adriano, Giorgio Cingolani, and Riccardo James Vargiu. Na- tionalism and Terror: Ante Pavelić and Ustashe Terrorism from Fascism to the Cold War. (Budapest: CEU Press (Central European University Press), 2019), 169-175. 2. Ibid, 174. was defined. Many inter-war theo- rists pointed to the Croatian warrior spirit or the supremacy of the ruling Indo-Iranian warrior class, and the Ustaša translated these sentiments into policy. The Ustaša attempted to inspire a “cultural revolution” of sorts as many fascist leaders had, drawing on the ancestry and his- torical myth of the Croatian people. Pavelic himself said that Croats were “by blood” soldiers, and the official Ustaša newspaper attributed many of these “superior” characteristics to race.42 The racialized idea of the “warrior spirit” was then utilized to organize and mobilize the Croatian people militarily. The Ustaša had long been anti-communist as al- most all fascist organizations were, so when the German invasion of the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941, the Ustaša seized the oppor- tunity.43 A Croatian infantry regi- ment was sent to the eastern front to fight the Soviet Union on behalf of Germany, called the Croatian Legion.44 The Croatian legion was used to demonstrate the Croatian warrior spirit and the model of the ideal Croatian man while fighting the Soviet Union. Ustaša state media References 3. Ibid, 5-6, 32-33. 4. Ibid, 52-54. 5. Ibid, 174-180. 6. Nevenko Bartulin. “Intellectual Discourse on Race and Culture in Croatia 1900-1945.” Review of Croatian History VI, no. 1 (2010), 195-197. heralded the warrior characteristics seen through history in Croats and those seen in the Croatian legion to encourage the desired cultural changes. Theorists such as Filip Lu- kas stressed this racial element in their publications.45 While the ini- tiative to establish a “New Croatian Man” may have failed to drastically change cultural trends, the racial ideology of the Ustaša certainly fa- cilitated its pursuit. While the Ustaša used many dif- ferent methods and ideas to achieve their political goals, they had a de- cidedly racial aspect to their ideol- ogy. This racial aspect was adopted from the existing ideas and theories on race existing in the Balkans and Europe as a whole. The Ustaša used this adopted racial ideology to ‘justi- fy’ their actions, primarily the mass killing of Serbs and other groups in- side the Independent State of Cro- atia. These actions by the Ustaša not only altered the distribution of ethnicities in Croatia and Bosnia, but also influenced future Croatian and Serbian culture and defined the antagonistic relationship that would later manifest itself in the Yugoslav wars and even in conflicts today. 7. Nevenko Bartulin. The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Cro- atia: Origins and Theory. (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 28-30. 8. Ibid, 72-73. 9. Ibid, 74-75. 10. Ibid, 75. 11. Ibid, 75-76.

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12. Ibid, 93.

13. Bartulin, “The ideal Nordic-Di- naric racial type,” 189-190, 193. 14. Ibid, 194 15. Ibid, 204-205. 16. Ibid, 199-200. 17. Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, 95-96. 18. Ibid, 97-100 19. Ibid, 101. 20. Bartulin, “The ideal Nordic-Di- naric racial type,” 197. 21. Ibid, 197. 22. Ibid, 197-198. 23. Ibid, 204. 24. Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, 134- 136. 25. Ibid, 137-138. 26. Ibid, 138-140 27. Ibid, 139. 28. Ibid, 120-123. 29. Bartulin, “The ideal Nordic-Di- naric racial type,” 201. 30. Ibid, 201. 31. Ibid, 201-203 32. Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, 154- 155. 33. Ibid, 148-149 34. Bartulin, “The ideal Nordic-Di- naric racial type,” 202. 35. Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, 152- 153. 36. Ibid, 203 VOL VIII || ISSUE I || FALL 2022 37. Ibid, 204-205. 38. Ibid, 207-208 39. Ibid, 208. 40. Ibid, 213-214. 41. Ibid, 161. 42. Ibid, 162-163. 43. Ibid, 165-166. 44. Pino Adriano, Giorgio Cingola- ni, and Riccardo James Vargiu. Na- tionalism and Terror: Ante Pavelić and Ustashe Terrorism from Fascism to the Cold War. (Budapest: CEU Press (Central European University Press), 2019), 240. 45. Bartulin, The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, 168- 169. SuckMySerbAšš (talk) 07:03, 12 December 2024 (UTC)