When one looks at what happened after Tito died, it’s no wonder the Soviets were all too happy to let him rule on his own. Stalin probably figured he’d never live out his days in power. After Stalin, the Soviets who succeeded him probably figured they couldn’t hold the country together any better.

I’ve never accepted the “conventional wisdom” that the Yugoslavian civil war was “all the Serbs’ fault” or “All Milosovic’s fault”.

2. I suggest you read Jovic’s account, I suggest that you also listen to Vojislav Seselj’s account when he bluntly stated that Milosevic would “request, not order” that his units engage in actions against Croatian (and later Bosnian) forces, and I suggest that you read “Knin Fell in Belgrade” by RSK military official Sekulic. This will more than disprove the notion that Slobo didn’t have anything to do with the attempt to grab Croatian land in 1991-92 and had nothing to do with RSK afterwards.

3. How else could that have been done without sending forces in like Slobo did through Frenki, Stanisic and gang? You’re being disingenuous.

4. The Serbs in the RSK were in majority Serb places and worked in the local factories and security services that they then controlled during the existence of RSK. Croatian rule there was not present, so Tudjman’s regime had no effect on employment policy there.

5. So far your subjectivity is quite obvious as you simply parade the Serb nationalist line. You’re very poor at actual balanced analysis.

7. Croatia’s Jews wholeheartedly sided with Croatia against Yugoslavia and Milosevic. You’ve just smeared an entire community as being pro-Nazi. I’ll be meeting with a few members of Zagreb’s and Dubrovnik’s Jewish community this July and will be sure to tell them about this. They’re definitely going to be laughing at that comment.

In short Caleb, you have a lot to learn and I’ll continue to assist you as I don’t think you’re entirely lost just yet

1) Notice that even in the 1848 flag there is not a whole sahovnica. A small segment of one is integrated into a larger crest. A full sahovnica was, prior to the Tudjman regime, unique to the Nazi government established in 1941.

2)It would be quite impossible for me to read Borisav Jovic’s account, as no English version exists. As I should think my name makes evident, I’m not a Slav of any sort, and accordingly have no command of the Serbian language.

4) The Italian example you cite is misleading, in that you’re equating a refusal to let Croatia secede unilaterally with Serbian expansionism. Yet, as the quote you selected evidences, the motivation was not territorial enlargement, but protecting their brothers from a people who history makes clear have a habit of butchering Serbs.

5)You raise a fair point about a fear not being the only factor. But to dismiss it in view of Croat actions seems absurd. What is more reasonable is to acknowledge that some fled for fear of their lives, and others, especially before the violence became widespread, fled due to joblessness. Of course, the unemployment issue was exacerbated by the government-induced discrimination laws reminiscent of those adopted by the Nazis decades earlier.

6) There is no issue of swallowing either side on the whole. I’ve done fairly exhaustive research on the region, and continue to read whatever material is available in English. Much of it is anti-Serb. My own position is informed by the careful weighting of information, which makes painfully evident a few things, foremost among them the utter victimhood of the Serbs.

7) Much as I appreciate you finding three Jews to name who were complicit in the Nazi regime of Tudjman, I’m not convinced that it changes anything. After all, there were Jews complicit with Hitler too.

So much for your “blatantly false information”.

I do not understand how having a nominal Jew on a Croatian cabinet erases Croatia’s storied Nazi and anti-Semitic past, let alone its proud heritage (see Marko “Thompson” Perkovic). A lesser mind may be inclined to believe such things, and an even lesser one may attempt to convince others of their validity.

How do you suppose that Caleb, who has obviously spent at least a cursory amount of time familiarizing himself with Croatian history and even more on basic argumentation, would be swayed, not only by a blatantly false argument, but also by blatantly false information? What Jewish cabinet members are you talking about? What “Croatian Jews” are you talking about?

Your first mistake:

“Regarding the flag, you could not be more mistaken. The sahovnica may have been around for centuries, but the only Croatia flags to feature it before the Wars of Yugoslav Secession was that adopted by the Nazi Croat government in WWII.”

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Croatia-1848.gif

Second mistake:

“Now, you’ll also notice my word choice is deliberate. I never implied that the national anthem (as an example) was invented by Nazi Croatia. Rather, I think it necessary to note that except during WWII, it had not been in use since 1918. ”

….because the Serbs banned it during the First Yugoslavia. Playing it or singing it was made a crime with a jail sentence attached to it.

Third mistake:

“niccolo, if you’re going to insist that he was aiming to build a Greater Serbia, and had such intentions from the outset, you would do well to include some form of proof, which you’ve not. My conclusion is based on his rhetoric and actions, both of which were outlined above. ”

I suggest you read the memoirs of Borisav Jovic, Slobo’s righthand man in those first years, who tells us that Slobo cut a deal with with Slovene leader Milan Kucan to get the JNA out of Slovenia and let them go so that he can then “protect” the Serbs of Croatia.

You can also consult Italian Foreign Minister Gianni DiMichaelis in “The Death of Yugoslavia” who was informed by Slobo that “Croatia would not be allowed to go as easy as Slovenia since there are 600,000 Serbs there”.

Mistake number four:

“My source for the 430,000 is the Trifkovic book mentioned in my article. Vreme News Digest # 151 (August 15, 1994) agrees. And, that speaks only to the Krajina, not the whole of Croatia, which included even more Serbs (albeit with less geographic concentration). Mind you, the point you inadvertently raise about the population being smaller in 1995 than in 1991 is illustrative of the fact that long before Operation Storm, the horrific actions of the Croatian government caused many Serbs to flee in fear for fear of their lives.”

How can the population spike from 300,000 to 430,000 and then down to 150,000? If you look at all the counties occupied by the Serbs and compared it to the last available census in 1991, the number is roughly 300,000 Serbs in those areas.

You do realize that it wasn’t “fear of Croatia” that had the population numbers drop in occupied Croatia during that time. It had much more to do with joblessness and no future. The unemployment rate in occupied Croatia was upwards of 80% as per the Serbian documentary “Pad Krajine”. Many Serbs also fled because they didn’t want to fight. Please consult that same documentary to see Serbs like Arkan and Mandic threaten Serb males from Croatia who fled to Belgrade and refused to fight.

You need to be a lot more balanced in your research since you seem to swallow the Serbian position whole.

My source for the 430,000 is the Trifkovic book mentioned in my article. Vreme News Digest # 151 (August 15, 1994) agrees. And, that speaks only to the Krajina, not the whole of Croatia, which included even more Serbs (albeit with less geographic concentration). Mind you, the point you inadvertently raise about the population being smaller in 1995 than in 1991 is illustrative of the fact that long before Operation Storm, the horrific actions of the Croatian government caused many Serbs to flee in fear for fear of their lives.

Now, you’ll also notice my word choice is deliberate. I never implied that the national anthem (as an example) was invented by Nazi Croatia. Rather, I think it necessary to note that except during WWII, it had not been in use since 1918. The story of the kuna is much the same. To my knowledge (though if you’ve got a better source, I’d love to see it), the kuna died out by the end of 17th century, not restored until the first and then second Nazi regimes of Croatia. In other words, they archaic nationalist relic revived by the Nazis, and then decades later, revived by the Nazis who helped run the secessionist republic.

Regarding the flag, you could not be more mistaken. The sahovnica may have been around for centuries, but the only Croatia flags to feature it before the Wars of Yugoslav Secession was that adopted by the Nazi Croat government in WWII.

Slobo was intent on creating Greater Serbia as testified by his closest cohorts when he decided to let Slovenia go (to the frustration of JNA officials like Kadijevic) and instead focus on depriving Croatia of 1/3rd of its land.

When the Carrington Commission dropped its bomb to allow for sovereignty of all republics, Slobo had to retrench. But during this time he still remained in control of RSK. RS was a different matter as Karadzic and Mladic were much more autonomous in their actions and their refusal of the Vance-Owen plan put Slobo in a bind.

Have you seen the documentary “Fall of Krajina/Pad Kraijne”? Insightful stuff.

You say:

“Before Operation Storm, which ethnically cleansed the region, Krajina had an estimated 430,000 Serbs.”

This of course is incorrect.

The “Kraijna” region had in 1991 around 300,000 Serbs, but by 1995 only some 120-150,000 remained. 80,000 Croats had been cleansed from this area in 1991 by the Serbs.

You also say:

“the government restored to prominence of the pro-Nazi Ustashe regime and adopted its flag, currency, and anthem. ”

The anthem is from the mid-19th century, the currency was around from medieval times, and the flag hundreds of years old and purposely differentiated from the version used by the Ustasha regime in WW2.

I suggest that you do some more fact checking since you seem to not have a good grasp of it.

I’ll read and comment on the rest later because it’s obvious that you could use some correction.

You have an outstanding blog. You give me renewed faith in students at Washington University, my own alma mater, at a time when I am completely disgusted with the activities of such groups as Universal Beatz. Their reasoning is comparable only to that of an inebriated person.

Keep fighting the good fight.

No Francis, there is no huge conspiracy to falsify data, there’s just a ton of people whose entire livelihood, their life’s work, and EVERYTHING THEY’VE BEEN TAUGHT, requires that the data looks a certain way. The earth is flat, and nothing you tell them will show them differently, and they’d sooner see you dead than admit they could be wrong. Welcome to humanity.

When there are billions of dollars riding on it, you MUST ensure the data comes out the way you want, especially when you are dogmatic on the subject. Do you want to ensure that you receive government funding? Make the data match the desired outcome. Just because a glorified opinion poll came from a group “associated with the DOJ” doesn’t make it any more or less reliable. However, after laws are based on the flawed data, it becomes politically embarrassing to say “we got scammed”, so it gets bandied about circles of people who wouldn’t know science if it bit them in the face.

http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-in-four-lie-demolished-once-and-for.html

There, PROOF over the course of those pages, through other professors, and even a direct redaction by the author of the study, that the study is flawed and should not be used for forming any opinion on the subject. Are you going to keep fighting for it? Or just admit the fact that 1 in 4 is not just a lie, but a damn lie, and move on?

The first researchers, Strauss, Gelles, Steinmetz, also received death threats and got lobbied against to be denied funding, denied positions, petitioned against their giving presentations, etc. for the crime of doing research showing women were just as violent as men.

Then, there’s also the attempt to push through the “2% false rape” figure by feminists, which is a complete fabrication. Here’s a paper that explains how feminists attempted to pretend it was true, then debunks it:

http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue3/greer.pdf

Excerpt: “commencing in 1989 in cases of rape and rape-murder where there has already been either an arrest or an indictment, the FBI has conducted large numbers of DNA tests “to confirm or exclude the person. In 25 percent of the cases where they can get a result, they excluded the primary suspect.”

You should collaborate your ideas with some right-wing nutjob blogs – I’m sure you guys could help each other with denying reality and reforming it to suit your personal needs and beliefs (no real scientific research necessary!, just ask an anti-feminist doctor of philosophy to make ignorant and irrelevant critiques of a 3-decade old study).