Vasilije Dj. Kresti DOI: 10.

2298/BALC1445267K
Original scholarly work
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Belgrade

Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1848

Abstract: Since the early 1860s many Croat politicians, both prominent (from Ante
Starevi and Ante Paveli to Franjo Tudjman) and little known, have been openly
expressing the ambition to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia at a favourable
moment and under certain conditions, invoking Croatian state and historical right
in support of their pretensions. These pretensions, born out of the belief that the
unfortunately shaped territory of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia lacks the necessary
strategic depth, have led to a fully-fledged strategy for creating an ethnically and re-
ligiously pure Greater Croatia and to constant conflict with the Serb side which also
lays claims, predominantly ethnic, to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Keywords: Croatia, Greater Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, territorial pretensions,
Croatian state and historical right, Serbs, Serbia, geopolitics

T he alarmist thesis about the Serbs purported hegemonic intentions and

aspirations for a Greater Serbia, coming from Croatia for more than
a century and a half, has been a leitmotif threaded through every anti-Serb
public statement or action both at home and abroad.1 It seeks to depict both
the Serbs as a group and Serbia as territorially insatiable aggressors, while
concealing own aggression and own, ethnically and historically unfounded,
pretensions to someone elses territories. Although not new in Croatian
politics, this tactic has not been given due attention and explanation in his-
toriography. It is, in fact, a legacy of Austria-Hungary, whose vilification of
the Serb aspiration for freedom and unification was directly proportionate
to its territorial appetites in the Balkans and its growing support for the
German policy of eastward expansion. Austria-Hungary invariably labelled
whatever was Serbian as Greater Serbian in order to nip in the bud any at-
tempt of the Serbs to pursue their interests, which were at variance with its
own. This tradition of Austro-Hungarian politics, in which Croats partici-
pated and frequently led the way, has been perpetuated and Serbian politics
denounced and invariably branded as being Greater Serbian in all historical

1
For this see Izvori velikosrpske agresije, ed. B. ovi (texts by Miroslav Brandt, Boe
ovi, Slaven Letica, Radovan Pavi, Zdravko Tomac, Mirko Valenti and Stanko
ulji) (Zagreb: August Cesarec, 1991). To the same category of publications belong
Mirko Grmek, Mare Djidara & Neven imac, Le nettoyage ethnique. Documents his-
toriques sur une idologie serbe (Librairie Arthma Fayard, 1993) and Stjepan Murgi,
Tomislav Bogdani & Stipan Budimir, Kontrapunkt slobode (Zagreb: Pisanni Nikkal,
1997).
268 Balcanica XLV (2014)

periods since the 1848 revolution. Attacking Serbism and Greater Serbism,
which they saw as the main rival to Croatism and Greater Croatism, Croat
politicians were not just fantasizing about a Greater Croatia, they worked
towards that end persistently and consistently, convinced that all means are
permitted, including the genocidal annihilation of Serbs.
The aspiration for Croatias territorial enlargement is of an older date.
Numerically not too strong and territorially small, the Croat people har-
boured imperial ambitions. This can be clearly seen from the names such as
Alpine or Mountain Croats (Slovenes); Orthodox Croats (Serbs); indis-
putable Croats or the jewel of the Croat people (Muslims); or Turkish
Croatia, Red Croatia, White Croatia and Carantanian Croatia, refer-
ring to parts of Bosnia, to Montenegro, Dalmatia and Slovenia respectively.
Over time, these appellations have been carefully nurtured and planted into
the minds of Croats in order to instigate their belief in the greatness of
Croatia and the great numerical strength of the Croat population.
Imbro Ignjatijevi Tkalac warns as early as 1866 that states cannot
be founded on old title deeds and virtual territorial claims; but a policy
premised on state and historical right could not be other than Greater Cro-
atian. In 1861, the Croatian Diet invokes Croat state and historical right
to raise the claim of the Triune Kingdom to a portion of the Slavic lands
and to its provinces in the Ottoman Empire i.e. to Bosnia and Her-
zegovina which should be reunited with the Triune Kingdom in the
process of settling the Eastern question.2 In 187881, the Diet hails the
Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and expresses
hopes that conditions may be created for joining Bosnia and Herzegovi-
na to the Triune Kingdom within the dualist Habsburg Monarchy.3 Don
Mihovil Pavlinovi hails the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, hopeful that these lands may soon be annexed to Croatia,
and is disappointed when his hopes proved illusory.4 The scale of territorial
ambitions premised on Croat state and historical right can be seen from the
article What is the true Croat policy and who is its proponent published
in the newspaper of the Party of Right [Stranka prava / SP] Hrvatska (no.

2
Spisi saborski i sabora kraljevinah Dalmacije, Hrvatske i Slavonije od god. 1861, ed. and
pub. by Bar. Dragojlo Kulan and Dr. Mirko uhaj (Zagreb 1862), vol. II, 3234: I 16.
3
Vladimir orovi, Srbi i Hrvati prema bosansko-hercegovakom pitanju, in Srpski
pisci i naunici o Bosni i Hercegovini, ed. Z. Antoni (Belgrade: Slubeni list SRJ, 1995),
196 and 197; Mirjana Gross, Izvorno pravatvo. Ideologija, agitacija, pokret (Zagreb:
Golden marketing, 2000), 346.
4
Dragutin Pavlievi, Mihovil Pavlinovi o istonom pitanju i bosanskohercegovakom
ustanku 18601878, in Mihovil Pavlinovi u politici i knjievnosti, ed. N. Stani (Za-
greb 1990), 201 202.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 269

6, 1871): The lands encompassed by the state right of the Croats, by history
and by nationality, stretch: from Germany to Macedonia, from the Danube
to the [Adriatic] sea, and the names of the present-day individual provinces
are: Southern Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia, Istria, Croatia, Slavonia,
Krajina [Military Frontier], Dalmatia, Upper Albania, Montenegro, Her-
zegovina, Bosnia, Rascia, Serbia and all these go by one true name: the
State of Croatia. These lands extend over more than 4,000 square miles, and
the population numbers up to 8 million souls.
The stance held by Hrvatska was not lonely. It was not the product
of an irresponsible journalist or politician. Nor did it reflect a passing trend.
Rather, it was the natural result of a deep-rooted and widely accepted belief.
As early as 1869 Eugen Kvaternik, a key figure of the Party of Right along
with Ante Starevi, writes to Mihovil Pavlinovi that, should their party
policy be followed, should Croat state and historical right be acknowledged,
then soon the flag of pure, unspoiled Croatia will fly, not from the Drava to
the sea but from the Salzburg-Tyrol Alps to Kosovo and Albania!5 Kvater-
niks Greater Croatian ambitions which covered Styria, Carniola, Gori-
zia and Istria, almost all of Bosnia as far as Mt Romanija and Viegrad, and
half of [H]Erzegovina, as far as the rivers Neretva and Buna were clearly
stated in his book La Croatie et la confdration italienne (Paris 1859), and
were the reason why his contemporary, Alexander Hilferding, a renowned
Russian historian, ethnographer and linguist, levelled harsh criticisms at the
book, arguing that no historical right could entitle the Croats to take the
lands that were not theirs, that it would be sheer robbery inevitably pushing
the kindred Slavic peoples into a conflict.
Carefully analyzing Kvaterniks text, Hilferding comes to the conclu-
sion that the Croats have set themselves the goal of taking control of the
neighbouring areas with the assistance of Western Europe. That is why they
are humble before Western Europe, and arrogant and intolerant towards
their fellow Slavs. Hilferding advises the Croats not to humiliate them-
selves before Western Europe and not to harbour arrogance and intolerance
towards their fellow Slavs, but a sense of unity and love.6 Hilferdings well-
intentioned message, imbued in pan-Slavic feelings, received no response
from those it was addressed to.
Driven by expansionist territorial ambitions and armed with state
and historical right, the Croat academic youth, behind whom stood the
father of the homeland, Ante Starevi, saw not only Bosnia and Herzegov-

5
E. Kvaternik to M. Pavlinovi, Zagreb, 22 June 1869, reproduced in V. Kresti, Gradja
o Srbima u Hrvatskoj, 18481914 (Belgrade: BIGZ, 1995), vol. I, 143144.
6
Hilferdings review was originally published in the Russkaia beseda in 1860, and the
Belgrade-based Srbske novine brought a translation in a separate issue.
270 Balcanica XLV (2014)

ina as Croat lands, but also the whole of Albania, and the whole of Raija
[Raka/Rascia], and the whole of upper Moesia or present-day Serbia.7 A
proponent of this policy, which Franjo Raki termed specific Croatism,
writes that the Croatian king is called upon to set a cross on the church of
St Sophia in Constantinople.8
In late 1875 Croatian university students of Starevian orientation,
stating that Bosnia and Herzegovina are the hinterland of Dalmatia and
belong among the lands of the crown of Zvonimir, publish a map titled:
Croatian state, published on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the
coronation of Zvonimir, king of all Croats. Apart from what then was the
Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, the map also encompasses
Istria, Carinthia, Carniola, most of Styria, Bosnia and Herzegovina as far
as the Drina, as well as the area that would be incorporated into Montene-
gro in 1878.9 In his geography of Bosnia published in 1878, the historian
Vjekoslav Klai, a sympathizer of the Party of Right, describes the popula-
tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croat, including the Mohammedan
Croats. Referring to the Christian Croats (i.e. Roman Catholics) and the
Eastern-Greek Croats (i.e. Serbs), he says that they lost their free will as a
result of centuries of enslavement.10
In the book Croat Nationality or the Soul of the Croat People [Hrvatska
narodnost iliti dua hrvatskog naroda] published in 1879, the well-known
Croatian author Djuro Deeli, a follower of the Party of Right, states that
the following provinces are inhabited by Croats and therefore [are] Croa-
tian: all of present-day Dalmatia with Boka Kotorska [Gulf of Kotor], the
vilayet of Bosnia, i.e. Bosnia with Turkish Croatia and the Pashalik of Novi
Pazar (Rascija), present-day Herzegovina, which up to the source of the
Neretva was called Turkish Dalmatia as early as 1789, when Engel11 was
writing his history, and finally, Montenegro with Northern Albania.12
The pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina were so strong that bish-
op Strossmayer wrote an embittered letter to Raki in 1878: Our people

7
Arhiv Srbije [Archives of Serbia], Pokloni i otkupi [Gifts and Purchases], b. LX, no.
39, Open letter to the learned Mr Maikov, Moscow University teacher, Zagreb, 25 Jan.
1877; I. idak, Prilozi povijesti ranog pravatva, Historijski zbornik XXVXXVI (Za-
greb 197273), 281303.
8
Franjo Raki to Vatroslav Jagi, 22 Sept. 1876, in V. Jagi, Spomeni mojega ivota, vol. I
(18381880) (Belgrade: Srpska kraljevska akademija, 1930), 324.
9
Gross, Izvorno pravatvo, 331.
10
Vjekoslav Klai, Bosna. Podatci o zemljopisu i poviesti (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska,
1878).
11
Historian Johann Christian Engel (17701814).
12
See pp. 179 and 180 of Deelis book.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 271

stare at Bosnia and Herzegovina like a stork at its egg, forgetting that our
entire inner logic is against it. How can you expect to be liberated by the one
whod like to drown us in a drop of water13
Less than twenty years earlier, Strossmayer, still not disillusioned with
Austria and its policy towards Croatia and Croats, seeks, in his confidential
memoranda to the Austrian minister-president Count Johann Rechsberg,
to motivate political factors in Vienna to engage more actively in resolving
the Eastern Question, suggesting that Bosnia and Herzegovina would, with
the help of Croats and the Military Frontier, fall into their hands like a ripe
plum.14 The bishops offer of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria was mo-
tivated by his wish for them to be wrested from the Ottoman Empire and
annexed to Croatia when it would become possible. In 1879, he writes to
Marijan Markovi, bishop of Banjaluka: What is Bosnias is Croatias, and
what is Croatias is Bosnias.15 If one remembers that Strossmayer based his
entire politics on Croat state and historical right, his position on the issue
of Bosnia and Herzegovina becomes easy to understand.
The Greater Croatian aspirations are obvious in the programmes of
the Party of Right too. The first article of the party programme adopted
at the party convention held in Zagreb on 26 June 1891, and signed by
Ante Starevi with his 250 followers, states: The Party of Right will, on
the grounds of state right and the nationality principle, use all legal means
to have the Croat people, who lives in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, in
Rijeka with the kotar [district] and in Medjumurje, Bosnia, Herzegovina
and Istria, united into a single state body within the Habsburg Monarchy,
and it will support with all its might the striving of the fellow Slovenes for
the Slovenian lands to join this state body.16 The first article of the 1894
party programme states: Croat state and natural right must be exercised: by
establishing the wholeness of the kingdom of Croatia through the unification
of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Rieka, Medjumurje, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Istria, Carniola, Carinthia and Styria within the Habsburg Monarchy.17

13
Ibid.
14
V. Kresti, Koncepcije Josipa Jurja trosmajera o istonom pitanju, Istraivanja 5
(Novi Sad 1976), 400.
15
Ivan Mui, Hrvatska politika i jugoslavenska ideja (Split 1969), 29.
16
Iso Krnjavi, Zapisci. Iza kulisa hrvatske politike (Zagreb 1986), vol. II, 462.
17
Dr Sime Mazzura & Dr Marijan Derenin, Programi oporbenih stranaka u Hrvatskoj
(reproduced from the Obzor) (Zagreb 1894), 12 (italics mine). August Harambai, a
noted Croat poet and prominent member of the Party of Right, in a speech he gave
in 1890, expected the cheer Long live Croatia! would resound from Triglav to the
Timok, and from the Soa to the Balkans.
272 Balcanica XLV (2014)

The formulation establishing the wholeness of the kingdom of Cro-

atia and uniting it with the cited regions implies that these regions used to
be united at some point in the past. However, the desire to create a Greater
Croatia led the Party of Rights to falsify the past, and not only in this pro-
gramme but also in a number of other cases. Croatian territorial claims cov-
ered three categories of lands. One encompassed those that constituted the
real extent, or what then was Croatia and Slavonia with the city of Rijeka
and its environs; a second encompassed the lands claimed on the grounds
of the so-called virtual right: Medjumurje, Dalmatia, the Kvarner Islands, a
part of Istria, and parts of north-eastern Bosnia; while a third encompassed
the lands that Greater Croatian circles wished to see as part of Croatia on
the grounds of Croat state and historical right. The 1894 programme of
the Party of Right included Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and all of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, even though they had never formed part of Croatia. Any-
way, in the second half of the nineteenth century the project for the phased
creation of a Greater Croatia was fully developed, so that in the subsequent
decades, strategies and tactics for achieving the objective needed only to be
elaborated and supplemented.
In late 1902 the well-known Croatian politician, jurist and author
Marijan Derenin, advocating the expansion of Croatia, is ready to declare
the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while generously acknowledg-
ing Serbias right to expand towards the south.18
In early 1908, Iso Krnjavi, a prominent member of the Pure Party of
Right [ista stranka prava / SP], makes a suggestion to Zanantoni, chief
of staff to the Zagreb-stationed corps, that for the dynasty and monarchy
to forever have an unconditionally reliable and safe stronghold in all direc-
tions, towards the inside and towards the outside, Bosnia and Herzegovina
should be united into a single state body with Croatia, Slavonia and Dal-
matia, and placed under the administration of an absolutely reliable person
who would carry out Bosnias transition to a constitutional system in a way
similar to how Count Pejaevi, as ban and commissioner, annexed the Mil-
itary Frontier of Croatia back in his time.19 As for Krnjavi, he believes that
the Greater Croatia idea is nothing other than a bit shrunken Yugoslav

18
Iso Krnjavi (Zapisci, 234235) reacted in the following way: So, the merryman
[Derenin] is giving us Bosnia, plus the right to expand westwards. We havent even
fully digested the Military Frontier yet, and the Serbs who came with it, so what would
we do with the Serbs in Bosnia? Septemvirize them too? Bosnia hasnt been formally
ceded to our monarchy yet, there the sultan is sovereign. How has Dr. Derenin come to
appropriate someone elses property? Hed say: Sultan, so what! Bosnias ours!
19
Krnjavi, Zapisci, 510.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 273

idea which is easier to fulfil than the ambitious Yugoslav idea.20 In 1909, to
smooth the way for Croatia to take hold of Bosnia, he suggests that Josip
Stadler, archbishop of Vrhbosna seated at Sarajevo, should assume the of-
fice of bishop of Djakovo so that the unity of the clergy in Bosnia may be
achieved. He argues that Croats need Bosnians because the latter are hardy,
honest and reliable. From his perspective: Anti-Serbism is here what anti-
Semitism is elsewhere. Self-defence!21
During the crisis caused by the Austro-Hungarian annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Josip Frank, the leader of the Pure Party of Right,
advocates the reorganization of the Habsburg Monarchy in the trialist mode,
with Croatia enlarged with Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Greater Croatia,
constituting its third entity.22 He hails the annexation of Bosnia and Her-
zegovina, believing that it forestalls the possibility of their being annexed
by Serbia and paves the way for reshaping the Monarchy and for achieving
his party objective, that of unification of Croatia and Dalmatia with Bos-
nia and Herzegovina.23 Frank begins to muster volunteers for the so-called
Croatian Peoples Legion [Hrvatska narodna legija], which would repel Ser-
bias regular and paramilitary units allegedly planning to make incursions
into Bosnia and Herzegovina.24 Some of the Muslim members of Franks
party show readiness to shed their blood for the cause of unification of all
Croatian lands. At a conference held in Zagreb in November 1908, it could
be heard that thousands of Croatian Muslims [are ready] to rush to the
Drina under the Croatian flag to defend the Croatian holies and the legacy
of their ancestors.25 At the same time, the Committee of the religious and
cultural Croat Peoples Union [Hrvatska narodna zajednica / HDZ] draws
up a programme known as Points, explicitly stating that Bosnia and Her-
zegovina are Croatian lands in ethnic and state right terms, and that the
Bosnian-Herzegovinian Croats naturally aspire to unite Bosnia and Herze-

20
Ibid. vol. I, 212.
21
Ibid. vol. II, 504, 568 and 587.
22
Marko Trogrli, Hrvatska i Hrvatsko pitanje u korespondenciji Franka i Moritza
von Auffenberg-Komrova (1908.1910.), in Pravaka misao i politika (Zagreb: Hrvat-
ski institut za povijest, 2007), 168, 171174. As early as 1890 Frank, in a speech he gave
at the party club, advocated the unification of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria, the
Croatian parts Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Frank
saw them united into a state within a federally organized, i.e. trialist monarchy.
23
Zlatko Hasanbegovi, Islam i muslimani u pravakoj ideologiji: o pokuaju gradnje
pravake damije u Zagrebu 1908, in Pravaka misao i politika, 93.
24
On Franks mustering of volunteers to be used as a tool for Croatia to grab hold of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, see Krnjavi, Zapisci, vol. II, 546547 and 558.
25
Ibid.
274 Balcanica XLV (2014)

govina with Croatia, within the Habsburg Monarchy.26 The Croat Catho-
lic Association [Hrvatska katolika udruga], founded in 1910, also adopts as
one of its goals the article from the programme of the Party of Right relat-
ing to the unification of Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatia.27 The main
promoter of Franks version of Rightism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, espe-
cially during the First World War, Josip Stadler, archbishop of Vrhbosna,
advocates the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia.28
There have been all sorts of justifications historical, natural, ethnic,
geographic, economic, geopolitical etc. for each object of Croatian ter-
ritorial hunger (such as, say, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina, parts of
Slovenia, Montenegro), and a smoothly working mechanism developed in
their support. Every pretension or claim by others on what they staked a
claim themselves was fiercely criticized and condemned; a method which
has been in use since the mid-nineteenth century is the demonization of the
Serbs: the Serbs are described as a people of villains and brigands, byzan-
tinely cunning, primitive and devious; they are umadijan [central Serbian]
bandits and chetniks. Croats, on the other hand, are a cultured, humane
and peace-loving people; the territories they claim belong to them on vari-
ous grounds, whereas Serbs wish to seize them without any grounds, for
the simple reason that they are marauders, a disruptive factor, a source of
crises, unrests and wars.29 With amazing persistence, using proven methods,
unchallenged or even aided by Belgrades short-sighted policies, they raised
their Greater Croatian pretensions to the rank of a justified and legitimate
right. Once this was accomplished, they did not even try to conceal the
readiness to achieve their national and state demands at all costs, even by
brutal force.30 The Serbs failed to work out an appropriate response to such

26
Zlatko Matijevi, Politika i sudbina: dr. Ivo Pilar i njegova borba za samostojnost
hrvatskog naroda, in Pravaka misao i politika, 216.
27
Zoran Grijak, Doprinos vrhbosanskog nadbiskupa dr. Josipa Stadlera djelovanju
Stranke prava u Bosni i Hercegovini tijekom Prvoga svjetskog rata, in Pravaka misao
i politika, 181182.
28
Ibid. 188 ff.
29
Cf. e.g. L. V. Sdland, Junoslavensko pitanje (Zagreb 1943), 383; Dr Ante Paveli,
Putem Hrvatskog Dravnog prava (Buenos Aires Madrid 1977), 486; Petar Vui,
Politika sudbina Hrvatske. Geopolitike i geostrateke karakteristike Hrvatske (Zagreb
1995), 156.
30
As early as 1911, the Starevian youth emphasized, in article 7 of its Young
Croat Programme (Rije mlade Hrvatske, Hrvatskom djatvu i svemu narodu posveuje
Starevianska mladost [Zagreb 1911], 4; italics mine): Young Croats, as the staunch-
est champion of radical Greater Croatian propaganda, which will encompass all Croat
lands mentioned in the political programme, as well as all Croat settlements, will mostly
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 275

a challenge. Enthusiastic about the Yugoslav idea, genuine and gullible pro-
ponents of brotherhood and unity, they were always a step behind.
The newspaper of the Croat community of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Hrvatski dnevnik (Croat Journal), which held a purely racial stance on ter-
ritorial issues, brought a series of articles about the affiliation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The articles were assembled in a booklet titled Croatian Bos-
nia (Us and them over there) [Hrvatska Bosna (Mi i oni tamo)] published
in Sarajevo in 1907. The opening pages of this toxically Frankist-clericalist
[franko-furtimai] reading state:
A whole series of features of Bosnias geographic, ethnographic and histori-
cal situation clearly mark its political position in relation to the monarchy,
and the political symbolism of Croatdom in Bosnia even more clearly. It
represents a link between the monarchy and Bosnia which may have given
in the most difficult historical disasters but has never broken. It represents
the ethnic link between the territory where the Croat tribe founded its true
if still small state with present-day Croatia; it represents the link which
entitles our king, in state-right terms, to feel a ruler and not a mandatary
in Bosnia, briefly: only Croatdom, be it of the Christian or Islamic faith, is
the element entitled to span the gap that there is between Europe and the
Balkans.
This feeling is seething and living inside each of us, clearly setting us our
task in the course of historical and cultural development: first and foremost
to bring Bosnia closer to Croatia, to pave the way to the monarchy and into the
heart of Europe, the way which, wherever to you may go from Bosnia, leads
only via Croatia. In that way Croatdom will resurrect again, because the link of
blood is the link stronger than steel!
That we shall have to fight along the way is known to all: here we are, fight-
ing for a long time the eternal battle against the elements which gravitate to-
wards the other side of the fatal gap described above, which are being driven out
of the union with the monarchy by some irresistible centrifugal force, which only
yesterday met the authorities under the mask of loyalty, and today are weaving
webs and throwing them across the Drina, which call us, Croats, their brothers
so that they can, in the brotherly embrace, take away our historical rights and our
nationality, and sell them at Terazije [centre of Belgrade]!
But we are still on this side of the divide, and they over there will stay on
the other! [pp. 56; italics mine]
This is the kind of feeling that Greater Croatian circles were imbued
with. What relations were supposed to be like in the big country longed for
and fantasized about for centuries can be seen from the newspaper Hrvat-
stvo [Croatdom]. The first issue, released in Zagreb on 2 May 1904, brings,

rely on oral agitation and the press, as well as the founding of cultural institutions, with-
out refraining from other means in extreme cases.
276 Balcanica XLV (2014)

among other things, the following: We shall fight for the independence of
the Roman Catholic Church, for its rights and institutions, against every at-
tack, wherever it may come from. Our task will be [to ensure] that our entire
public social life is revived and reborn in Jesus Christ [] We shall strive to
ensure, through constitutional means, the organic extension of Croat state
right [] In the Croat lands, we recognize only one political people: Croat,
only one flag: Croat, only one official language: Croat.
Fiercely attacking the Croats willing to team up with Serbs, Hrvatstvo
wrote:
Here, Christ, there, the Antichrist. Here, pure and glorious Croatdom
under the Croat flag, there, a chaos of mindless principles and a muddle of
various flags. Here, pride, inherited from the ancient Croats, who would
not cede an inch of their land without bloodshed, and there, people who
are giving Croat lands dewed with Croat blood away like old rags, all in
the name of some ostensible concord, to those who would rather have
their right hand cut off than hear of any concord with their brother. Some
brotherhood indeed!
The gap between Serbs and Croats will grow deeper because of us! That is
what you are telling us too.
And who has ever spanned that gap? You? When and where? Youve had
plenty of time! So, where is that concord? The kind of concord some Serbs
want to strike with you is the kind every ox can strike with its butcher. All
it has to do is lay its head under his axe. We simply dont need that kind of
concord, because wed cease being what we are and what we want to be
Croats [] as for their [Serb] political usurpations, we cannot get along
with them until they acknowledge to the Croat lands that which belongs
to them according to the compromise [of 1868]: one Croat flag, one Croat
language, in a word, one political people, Croat.
Even towards the very end of the First World War, when it was obvi-
ous that the Central Powers were defeated and the Habsburg Monarchy on
the brink of disintegration, hopes that a Greater Croatia was possible were
not given up, as evidenced by a note that Iso Krnjavi wrote down on 25
October 1918: Ive spoken with the government secretary Andres31 today,
and he says theres been word in government circles that an imperial mani-
festo recognizing a free greater Croatian state is going to be announced to-
morrow. This state will encompass Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia with Rijeka,
and Medjimurje, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Perhaps Istria too.
And the emperor will allegedly visit Zagreb a few days later.32

31
Ivan Andres (18831959), a politician, lawyer and legal writer.
32
Krnjavi, Zapisci, vol. II, 806.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 277

Several prominent Croat politicians, besides those already mentioned,

openly expressed the intention to have Bosnia and Herzegovina annexed to
Croatia. For example, Stjepan Radi, having fled the country, had a writ-
ten proposal stating the demands of Croats vis-a-vis Serbs delivered to
a Briton. The proposal envisaged full independence of Croatia (Croatia,
Slavonia and Dalmatia) in a confederation with Serbia on the basis of the
Entente through an accord which would leave up to Slovenia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Baka, Banat, Montenegro and Macedonia to decide freely
by plebiscite if they wish to remain tied to militarist and centralist Serbia or
enter a federation with peaceful and neutral Croatia.33 At about the same
time (on 23 September 1923) Radi, still in London, asks of the Presi-
dency of the Croatian Republican Peasant Party (Hrvatska republikanska
seljaka stranka / HRSS) to have the Map: Croatia and Croats drawn up. Be-
sides Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Medjumurje, Prekomurje with Krka and
Kastav, the map was supposed to contain all former Austro-Hungarian
lands: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Baka, Banat and Baranja, and even Mon-
tenegro and Macedonia. In his instructions for drawing up this map, which
was obviously intended mostly for foreigners because it was to have annota-
tions in French or English, Radi stresses: In the area from Subotica to the
Adriatic Sea, all districts where Croats account for more than 50% of the
population are to be marked in (in Bosnia, Muslim and Catholic Croats are,
naturally, counted together) blue shades, and the Orthodox in red.34
By turning to the British and having the Map drawn, Radi obviously
wanted to internationalize the Croat question. His written proposal depicts
Serbia in dark colours as a militarist and centralist country which lacks
democratic liberties and rights, a country with which a country as freedom-
and peace-loving as Croatia cannot live in a state union. Presenting Serbia
as inept and incapable of keeping all the listed provinces together, he recom-
mends Croatia as the focal point around which these provinces Slovenia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Baka, Banat, Montenegro and Macedonia
could gather on a federal basis. This appears to have been an overt attempt
to break up the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and instead to lay
down the foundations of the long-yearned-for Greater Croatia of which
the Greater-Croatian ideologist Eugen Kvaternik had dreamt and written,
the one not from the Drava to the sea but from the Salzburg-Tyrol Alps to
Kosovo and Albania. That the latter conclusion is not far-fetched may be
seen from a report of the British minister in Belgrade and his remark that
there is in the mind of the pan-Croat a vision of a powerful province

Djordje Dj. Stankovi, Pai i Hrvati, 19181923 (Belgrade 1995), 310.

33

The original letter was in the possession of the late Dr Aleksandar Vlakali, through
34

whose courtesy it was made available to me.

278 Balcanica XLV (2014)

centred on Zagreb, which would consist of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, a

good part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Baranja, and a part of Baka.35 While
making drafts of a new party programme (1925), Radi also intended to
change the boundaries of Bosnia in such a way that the Bosnian Sava Valley
(Posavina) was annexed to Croatia. According to this project, the Gulf of
Kotor (Boka Kotorska) would be detached from Croatia, but Croatia would
be given parts of Herzegovina in return.36
After the end of the war in 1918, Ante Paveli also frequently re-
verts to the question of Croatias territorial extent. The programme of the
Party of Right of 1 March 1919, behind which stood Paveli, stresses that
the party will use all legal means to ensure that all Croat lands (Croatia,
Slavonia, Dalmatia, Rijeka with the kotar, Medjumurje, Prekomurje, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and Istria with the islands) are united, on the basis of
Croatian state right and the right to national self-determination, into one
independent Croatian state.37 In the Pro-memoria he submitted in 1927
to Roberto Forges Davanzati, a member of the Grand Council of Fascism,
Bosnia and Herzegovina are incorporated into Croatia. The Pro-memoria
on Consultations Held in Budapest on 31 October 1927 states that the
Croatian state encompasses Croatia with Medjumurje, Slavonia with
Syrmia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. The draft pro-memoria
of September 1928, which was supposed to be signed by representatives of
the Royal Italian government and the Croat people, and which called for
constituting a Croat state, states that the latter will be composed of Croa-
tia and Slavonia, Medjumurje, Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In
article 2, the Italian government is called upon to acknowledge Croatia and
Slavonia with Medjumurje, Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina as be-
ing historically Croat lands, and to support and help in every way the aspi-
ration of the Croat people for the creation of an independent state. Paveli
sees Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of Croatia in some of his published
writings as well, such as Die kroatischen Lnder und ihre Bevlkerung (1931),
or Die kroatische Frage (1936). In the former case, this Croatia of his had an
area of 107,753 km2, and in the latter about 107,000 km2.38

35
ivko Avramovski, Britanci o Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: godinji izvetaji Britanskog pos-
lanstva u Beogradu 19211938, vol. I: 19211930 (Belgrade Zagreb 1986), 44; Sofija
Boi, Srbi u Hrvatskoj 19181929 (Belgrade 2008), 45.
36
Zabiljeka Marije Radi, Zagreb, 23 March 1925, Bogdan Krizman, Korespondencija
Stjepana Radia 19191929 (Zagreb 1973), vol. II, 604605.
37
Mario Jareb, Ustako-domobranski pokret od nastanka do travnja 1941. godine (Zagreb
2006), 165.
38
Ibid. 169.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 279

In discussing the territorial extent of the Croatian state, Paveli and

his Ustasha followers invariably emphasize the Croat state and historical
right to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Croatia they envisage always stretch-
es east to the Drina. Characteristic in that respect is Pavelis article Bosnia
is ours published in 1932. Among other things, it says the following: as far
as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, let Belgrade know [] that these
are ancient Croat lands [] and that the Croat people will never let our
lands be severed from the motherland, Croatia, that we shall all die rather
than let the greater-Serbian moloch swallow them. Let Belgrade not forget
that ancient Duvno Field [Duvanjsko polje] is in Bosnia, let it not forget
that there is in Bosnia and Herzegovina a Croat Catholic-Muslim majority
[] and let Belgrade know that the whole of Croatdom will fight to the last drop
of blood for these lands of theirs, that they will surely cut off those covetous Bel-
grade hands that are reaching out for this Croatian jewel Bosnia is Croatian
and we will never give it up.39 In the pro-Ustasha press and books legally
published in the late 1930s and early 1940s Bosnia and Herzegovina are
openly referred to as a Croatian territory.40 The map on the front page of
the monthly Ustaa for July 1930 shows Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of
a Greater Croatia. A comparable example can be found in Pavelis book
published two years later,41 which contains a map titled La Croatie et les Pays
danubiens. Bosnia and Herzegovina are also shown as part of Croatia in a
map on the front page of Hrvatski domobran (Croat Home Defender) for
1933, and on a postage stamp issued by the Main Ustasha Headquarters in
Italy in 1934. The whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina is featured as part of
Croatia in the map titled Croats in Historic Croatia (according to the 1931
population census) in Mladen Lorkovis book Narod i zemlja Hrvata (The
Croat People and Land), published in Zagreb in 1939. Especially relevant
to understanding the scale of Greater-Croatian ambitions is a leaflet, il-
legally printed in 1940, which contains a map of all areas which were sup-
posed to be incorporated into the Independent State of Croatia: in addition
to Croatia and Dalmatia, these were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro,
Sandak, Slovenia, Syrmia, Baranja and Baka.42
Vladko Maek, the successor of Stjepan Radi, continued to pursue
his predecessors Greater-Croatian policy. Even before Radis death (1928),
in a speech he gave in 1923, he states that the Croatian idea has spread []
from the Mura to Montenegro, from the Adriatic Sea to Zemun, and that

39
Ibid. 169 (italics mine).
40
Ibid. 179.
41
Ante Paveli, La restauration conomique des pays danubiens. Le dsarmement. Belgrade
et Croatie (Geneva: Edition de la correspondance croate Gri, 1932).
42
Jareb, Ustako-domobranski pokret, 168183.
280 Balcanica XLV (2014)

now Bosnia too has joined Croatian Dalmatia, which has for centuries
wished to get in with her sister, Croatia.43 His goal is a state composed
of all former Austro-Hungarian South-Slavic provinces under Croatian
leadership and, possibly, tied to Serbia in the form of an association of
interests. Like Radi, he also advocates some form of plebiscite, motivated
by the wish to divide the Kingdom of Yugoslavia into two parts, with the
Drina as the boundary between them. According to a statement he made
in 1936, each province: Vojvodina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro,
Macedonia, even Dalmatia, may choose as they wish, i.e. as their represen-
tatives, elected in an election for a constituent assembly, should decide. In
other words: if Vojvodina wants [to come together] with Serbia fine, if
it wants [to be] out of it, fine, if it wants with Croatia, together or separately,
its fine again
A testimony to Maeks growing territorial appetites has been left by
Jovan Jovanovi Pion, leader of the Agrarian Party, who wrote down what
Prince Paul Karadjordjevi had told him. At a meeting between the Prince
and Maek held before the Cvetkovi-Maek Agreement (1939), the Prince
asked, What do you think Croatia is?, and Maek replied, The banovinas
of Primorje [Coast] and Sava. At another meeting, Maek claimed Du-
brovnik, and then Vrbas Banovina (with a ninety-percent Serb population).
At a third meeting, Maek laid claim to Syrmia as far as Ilok, Brko with its
environs, Bijeljina, Travnik, Fojnica, and Herzegovina.44
Even after the Cvetkovi-Maek Agreement of August 1939 created
Banovina Croatia, ceding to it parts of western Bosnia (previously within
Vrbas Banovina), Maek was not satisfied with the territorial extent of the
new Banovina. He thought of the agreement as being incomplete and
containing a number of debatable issues, notably territorial. Since, as he put
it, the agreement has not definitively settled the Croatian territorial ques-
tion, a provision was included that the definitive extent of Banovina Croa-
tia will be determined at the reorganization of the state union. And this is
only natural, Maek stressed, because the territory of Banovina Croatia
will look completely different depending on whether the reorganized state
union includes, say, an autonomous Vojvodina or not, an autonomous Bos-
nia or not, etc.45

43
Boidar Murgi, Dr Vladko Maek vodja Hrvata (Zagreb n.d.), 34. Given this
viewpoint of Maek, S. Boi, Srbi u Hrvatskoj, 49, rightly concludes that his idea of the
borders of Greater Croatia was not in any way different from the borders proposed at
the First Croatian Catholic Congress held in Zagreb in 1900.
44
Arhiv Jugoslavije [Archives of Yugoslavia], J. Jovanovi Papers, Notes of Jovan
Jovanovi Pion, Note of 26 March 1939.
45
Ranko Konar,Opozicione partije i autonomija Vojvodine 19291941 (Novi Sad 1995), 339.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 281

The aspiration to expand Croatia to the greatest extent possible con-

tinued at the time of the Independent State of Croatia [Nezavisna Drava
Hrvatska/NDH] as well. Dissatisfied with its size, the Ustasha establish-
ment sought to enlarge it through the mediation of Slavko Kvaternik,
Pavelis deputy. In a telegram of 14 May 1941, the German minister in Za-
greb Siegfried Kasche conveyed to his Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kvater-
niks request to expand Croat territories to the Albanian border, including
the towns of Priboj, Prijepolje and Pljevlja. Kasche supported the request,
arguing that Croat troops have already been stationed there. However,
Italy objected. Count Ciano described the request as Croat imperialism,
and in the diary entry of 30 June 1941, wrote: Now Paveli would like to
have the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. An absurd, groundless demand. Ive prepared
a letter of rejection signed by the Duce.46
According to a book on the activity of the German Intelligence Ser-
vice (Bundesnachrichtendienst/BND), one of the key figures in the Yugoslav
communist establishment, Ivan Stevo Krajai, drew up, and at the time
Josip Brozs unlimited power was in full swing, a plan for creating sovereign
Croatia with Bosnia and Herzegovina with borders matching those of the
Independent State of Croatia in 1941.47 This may be seen as yet another
proof of consistency in Greater-Croatian aspirations, especially those relat-
ing to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Political systems, state frames, forms of
government and political leaders have been changing, but not the policy
intent on drawing Croatias border along the Drina.
The geopolitical position of Croatia is involved in many issues that
burdened, and continue to burden, Croato-Serbian relations. According to
the generally held opinion of leading Croat politicians and geopoliticians,
past and present, Croatia resembles a banana, a crescent or, as the well-
known Croat historian Vjakoslav Klai described it, a sausage [its ends]
well straddled apart. In early 1909, hopeful to change it, Klai develops
a political programme according to which Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegov-
ina, Istria and the islands should unite, forming an entity in which Cro-
ats would constitute a majority, and they should join Austria.48 A banana-
shaped Croatia, in the view of practically all politically thinking Croats, has
no chance of survival and progress. Antun Radi explains that Dalmatia
united with Croatia would look like crusts of a bread loaf, and the inside
youd scoop out would be Bosnia and Herzegovina hollowed out of the

46
Smilja Avramov, Genocid u Jugoslaviji u svetlosti medjunarodnog prava (Belgrade 1992),
265.
47
Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Der Schattenkrieger (Dusseldorf 1955), 213; Smilja Avra-
mov, Postherojski rat zapada protiv Jugoslavije (Novi Sad 1997), 193194.
48
Krnjavi, Zapisci, vol. II, 561.
282 Balcanica XLV (2014)

Croatian bread [] and if we want to be fully fed, we need the inside, we

need Herzeg-Bosnia.49 For Antuns brother, Stjepan Radi, Bosnia is like
the bowels of the rest of Croatia. Well, take out a mans bowels and tell him
to live. In the view of Frano Supilo: Croatia without Bosnia will always
be a toy in the hands of whoever rules the presently-occupied provinces
[Bosnia and Herzegovina].50 Croat politicians believed that for economic
and financial independence to become permanent takes achieving new ter-
ritories. Hrvatski dnevnik wrote in 1940: Croatia in its present-day extent
cannot last in permanence, for it needs some more parts for its own eco-
nomic development.51
According to the most prominent and most highly esteemed Cro-
at geopolitician of the interwar period, Ivo Pilar (who also wrote under
pseudonyms L. v. Sdland, Dr. Juri and Florian Lichttrger), from the
geopolitical perspective, the triune [kingdom] has no chance of surviv-
ing in national-political and economic-political terms without Bosnia and
Herzegovina.52 Pilars view expressed in the book The South-Slav Question,
which saw four editions within a few decades, two in German and two in
Croatian, was that Croatia and Slavonia separated from Bosnia and Dal-
matia, their natural constituent parts, are a torso unable to survive.53 In a
booklet which considers the course the Croat people should take even be-
fore the end of the Great War, published in 1915 and republished in 1917,
Pilar let it be known in no vague terms what the strategic goal of the Croats
is and has to be: The Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia with its
long and narrow territory of very small depth, which stretches in two direc-
tions (Dalmatia, at places, only a few kilometres [deep]), are not at all able
on their own to be the scene of any state and political creation and, in this
form, have no future whatsoever as a national-political body. This realization
was, in our view, the cause of that frantic quest for a broader framework for
our national development before the year 1878; it was the cause behind the
emergence of Illyrianism and Yugoslavism. The Triune Kingdom will have
the basic requisites for existence only with Bosnia and Herzegovina joined
to it. The Croat people in the Triune Kingdom itself has little prospect of

49
Dom no. 7, 4 April 1901.
50
Frano Supilo, Politiki spisi: lanci, govori, pisma, memorandumi, ed. D. Sevi (Zagreb:
Znanje, 1970), 179.
51
Hrvatski dnevnik no. 1346, 30 January 1940.
52
Dr. Ivo Pilar, Politiki zemljopis hrvatskih zemalja: geopolitika studija (Sarajevo 1918),
21.
53
L. v. Sdland, Die sdslavische Frage und der Weltkrieg. bersichtliche Darstellung des
Gesamt-Problems (Vienna 1918), quoted after the translated edition: Junoslavensko pi-
tanje: prikaz cjelokupnog pitanja (Zagreb 1943), 391.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 283

survival, and Bosnia and Herzegovina emerge as an essential requisite for

the national survival and political development of the Croat people. Lim-
ited to the Triune Kingdom alone, the Croat people can only survive; it
will be able to live only if it has Bosnia and Herzegovina.54 In Pilars view,
Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia are the shell, and Bosnia and Herzegovina,
the core of Croatia.55
A statement Pilar made in a conversation with Iso Krnjavi, occa-
sioned on 1 June 1918 by Pilars intention to found, with the archbishop
Stadler, a new Croatian party in parallel with the Pure Party of Right, may
provide some insight into him as a person and politician, and into his views
of Serbs: Serbs ought not rule, they should be treated as a subordinate
nationality.56
In line with the shell-and-core view illustrated above, the fourth
volume of the Encyclopaedia of Yugoslavia published in 1960 by the Za-
greb-based Lexicographical Institute of the Federal Peoples Republic of
Yugoslavia, under the direction of Miroslav Krlea, contained the entry on
Croatia which was accompanied by a map of this republic with the whole
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, all the way to the Drina, joined to it. The map
accompanying the text on Serbia in the seventh volume of the Encyclopae-
dia released in 1968 followed a different approach. Serbia was halted at the
Drina, barely allowed to cross to the left bank of the river. In this, as in many
other cases, Croatian geopolitical mania for Bosnia and Herzegovina came
to the surface.
What the Lexicographical Institute did in the 1960s was neither new
nor unusual when it comes to Croatian territorial pretensions towards Bos-
nia and Herzegovina. The tradition is more than a century old. As early as
1862, Josip Parta prepared a geographic map according to a draft made by
Franjo Kui, titled Historic map of the whole of the Kingdom of Croatia
with boundaries of the now existing provinces and major ancient and more re-
cent places.57 The map shows Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, south-
western parts of Serbia and south-eastern parts of Slovenia as lands of the
Kingdom of Croatia.
At this point, it should be remembered that the First Croatian Cath-
olic Congress held in Zagreb in 1900 produced a map showing the eastern

54
Dr. Jurii, Svjetski rat i Hrvati. Pokus orijentacije hrvatskoga naroda jo prije svretka
rata (Zagreb 1915; and 1917), 65.
55
Pilar, Politiki zemljopis, 26.
56
Krnjavi, Zapisci, 796.
57
Historiki zemljovid cijelokupne Kraljevine Hervatske sa oznaenjem granicah sada
obstojeih pokrajinah i navedenjem znamenitijih starijih i novijih mijestah, printed in Za-
greb by the well-known printing house of Dragutin Albrecht.
284 Balcanica XLV (2014)

border of Greater Croatia stretching from Kotor on the Adriatic coast to

Zemun at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers: Croat historians
rolled up their sleeves and got down to proving that the entire area has
been a Croat ethnic space in history.58
As much in keeping with the Greater Croatian aspiration to have
Croatias eastern border on the Drina is an ethnographic map prepared by
Nikola Zvonimir Bjelovui in 1933, and published in his little book The
Ethnographic Boundaries of Croats and Slovenes released in Dubrovnik in
1934. With its by no means small territorial enlargement, this map, titled
Ethnographic boundaries of Croats in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and ad-
jacent countries, irresistibly resembles the Independent State of Croatia
under Ante Paveli. This Croatia incorporates all of Bosnia and Herzegov-
ina, the Gulf of Kotor and the Adriatic coast further south to Bar, western
parts of Baka, the Baja area in Hungary, parts of Hungary southeast of
Pecs, a long tract of land along the left bank of the Drava from Sveti Martin
in the east to Donja Lendava in the west, and all of Syrmia. Deliberately a
broad-brush and imprecise depiction, Bjelovuis map was an expression
of Greater Croatian territorial pretensions rather than a faithful reflection
of the actual ethnic proportions. It encompassed all lands which were seen
as belonging to Croatia by state and historical right. Ethnography was a
pretext for making a public statement of Greater Croatian political goals in
a blurred way.
With this summary overview of the subject which could otherwise
be extensively discussed, even readers unfamiliar with the Greater Croatian
ambitions harboured by earlier generations will not find it difficult to iden-
tify the sources and inspiration of the modern-day Croat politicians who
believe that Croatia should be defended on the Drina (such as, for example,
the late Dalibor Brozovi, member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences, or
Franjo Tudjman). They invoke Croatian state and historical right to claim,
say, the Gulf of Kotor or Baka, while at the same time wishing to preserve
the internal boundaries between the federal units of the former Yugoslavia,
popularly known as AVNOJ boundaries.
The answer to the central issue in relations between Croats and Serbs,
as well as the causes of their occasional conflicts and, eventually, a war reside
in the programme of the ideological predecessors of Pavelis Ustasha the
former Party of Right and the Frankists-clericalists which championed
a single flag, Croat, and a single political people, Croat, in one large Croat
state.
Croatian politics was steeped in the ideas of Ivo Pilar, constituting
the basis for its geostrategic goals and the national idea. Pilars geopolitical

58
Milorad Ekmei, Srbija izmedju srednje Evrope i Evrope (Belgrade 1992), 98.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 285

views and Greater Croatian aspirations found a consistent follower in the

historical work of Dominik Mandi, whose attention was also focused on
Bosnia seen as a Croatian land: With its mountainous ranges, river routes
and its entire geopolitical strength, B[osnia] and H[erzegovina] continue,
fill up and territorially connect the northern, Pannonian, Croat lands with
the southern, Adriatic, lands. Without B and H, Croat lands would be left
torn apart, lacking natural communications and territorial wholeness. The
river Drina with its deep bed and the surrounding high mountains closes
up the Croat lands and separates them from the Serb lands and the central
Balkans. It is the line along which the Romans divided the eastern and
western Roman Empire; it is there that the eastern and western churches,
western and eastern cultures are divided.59
That Franjo Tudjman harboured Greater Croatian pretensions much
before he became the president of Croatia can be seen from his 1977 Draft
of the Programme of the Croat National and Socialist Movement [Hrvatski
narodni i socijalistiki pokret / HNSP], published much later in his book
Usudbene povjestice (Zagreb: Hrvatska sveuilina naklada, 1995): It is true
that the leadership of the HNSP starts from the reality of present-day
boundaries of the republics, but it has to keep in mind that they were estab-
lished to the detriment of Croatia in every respect [] Syrmia and the Gulf
of Kotor were exempted from the historic borders of the Croatian (Triune)
Kingdom and taken away from Croatia, while the purely Croat areas in
B[osnia]-H[erzegovina] (which had been incorporated even into Banovina
Croatia in 1939) were not joined to it, nor was the Croat part of Baka
(with Subotica). Besides, while Vojvodina was joined to Serbia even though
the national programme of the C[ommunist] P[arty of ] Y[ugoslavia] in the
former [interwar] Yugoslavia demanded that it become a federal unit, B-H
was not incorporated into the Croat federal unit, although it is connected
with Croatia in every respect (geographically, economically, by transporta-
tion, historically and culturally) more than Vojvodina is with Serbia.60
When the Croat Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajedni-
ca/HDZ) led by Tudjman began its struggle for political power in Croatia,
the promotional campaign it offered contained all geostrategic, economic
and national-political ideas about Bosnia and Herzegovina which Ivo Pilar
and Dominik Mandi had left as a legacy. Insisting on Bosnia and Her-
zegovinas inseparableness from Croatia, the HDZ programme advocated

59
Dr Dominik Mandi, Hrvatske zemlje u prolosti i sadanjosti (ChicagoRome 1973),
167168.
60
Ivo Goldtajn, Hrvatska i rat u Bosni 19921995: jedan pogled iz Zagreba, in Ne
damo te lijepa naa, collection of papers from the conference Hrvati u BiH danas,
Banjaluka, 46 March 2011 (Banjaluka 2011), 109110.
286 Balcanica XLV (2014)

an economic, transportational, spiritual and civilizational association of

the Socialist Republic of Croatia and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina which constitute a natural, indivisible geopolitical whole and
whose historical destiny suggests their reliance on one another.61 Based on
such premises, the Croat emigration in Canada, led by Gojko uak and in
close contact with the HDZ leadership, by mid-1989 had already had a map
of Greater Croatia encompassing all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina,
Sandak and the Montenegrin Adriatic coast. At a Croat emigrant meeting
held that year in Vancouver, [these] maps of greater Croatia hung all over
the place.62
When it comes to the HDZs Greater Croatian pretensions, par-
ticularly significant is the Proclamation to the citizens and Diet of Croa-
tia and to all Croat people created in Zagreb on 29 November 1989.
Article 2 of the Proclamation (which was signed, among others, by ime
Balen, Franjo Tudjman, Dalibor Brozovi, Vladimir eks, Josip Manoli
and Branimir Glava) states: In opposition to the publicly communicated
plans for creating a Greater Serbia, within or without the SFR Yugoslavia,
and at the expense of the Croat and other non-Serb peoples, we put forth
the demand for the territorial wholeness of the Croat people within its
historical and natural borders. The Proclamation was meant to mobilize
Croatia against Greater Serbian aggression. There was no unanimity as
to the precise delineation of Croatias historical and natural borders, but
all agreed that they should encompass Bosnia and Herzegovina, and con-
siderable portions of Vojvodina. After much debate and several versions of
the borders, Manolis proposal was adopted not to go into delineating the
borders, but instead to simply state that there are historical and natural
borders of Croatia: Why go into discussing whether to take this corner
away from someone or to leave some other! We have stayed on the idea
of unspecified borders anyway. Neither the borders of Banovina Croatia,
nor the borders of the NDH, nor the AVNOJ borders! But simply
borders.63
As may be seen from Tudjmans talks with representatives of the
Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina and with his closest associates from
Croatia during the Yugoslav crisis and wars (19911999), he sought ways to
tie some parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as closely as possible to Croatia
in state and legal terms. At the meeting with a HDZ-BH delegation held
in Zagreb on 27 December 1991, Tudjman said, inter alia: So, it seems

61
Duan Vili and Boko Todorovic, Razbijanje Jugoslavije 19901992 (Belgrade 1995),
416.
62
Darko Hudelist, Tudjman: biografija (Zagreb 2004), 638.
63
Ibid. 656659 ff.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 287

to me, just like we exploited this historical moment to create an indepen-

dent, internationally recognized Croatia, so I believe it is the moment to
unite the Croat national being within the maximum possible borders. If
that would be exactly 30 municipalities or 28 is less important even from
this perspective Like Pilar, in fact following in Pilars footsteps, Tudjman
argued that the state of Croatia as it is [likened to an unnatural pretzel]
has no requisites for life, but a Croatian state even within the Banovina
borders [1939] has64 Intent on grabbing hold of some parts of Bosnia
and Herzegovina,65 Tudjman was ready to settle on the slightly expanded
1939 borders of Banovina Croatia,66 or to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina
with Serbia.67
Following in the ideological footsteps of the Rightists, Frankists-
clericalists and Ustashas, Tudjman, the good student of Ivo Pilar and Do-
minik Mandi, was adamantly opposed to the Muslims self-identification
as Bosniaks, insisting instead upon their being defined as Croats of Muslim
faith, with a prospect of gradual Croatization,68 just as the Serbs in Croatia
were constantly pressed into becoming Croats of Orthodox faith. He justi-
fied the pretensions towards Bosnia and Herzegovina by the claim that
constituting it as a republic after the Second World War had been a his-
torical absurdity, the restoration of a colonial creation formed between the
fifteenth and the eighteenth century.69
Tudjmans commitment to Pilars ideas can also be seen from a state-
ment he made on 17 September 1992 at a meeting with representatives of
the Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Gentlemen, the Bosnia-Herze-
govina question is one of the vital questions for the Croat people as a whole,
for the Republic of Croatia as a sovereign, internationally recognized state,
and all Croats in B-H should be aware of it. It is not just a problem of the
Croats in B-H, it is a problem of the Croatian state, of the Croat people as a
whole. Why? Because it is so connected both historically and geopolitically
with Croatia because of the unnatural borders of the present-day state of
Croatia, because of B-H, be it this way or that70

64
Goldtajn, Hrvatska i rat u Bosni, 111.
65
Stenogrami o podjeli Bosne, vol. I, ed. Predrag Luci (Split Sarajevo: Kultura & Ras-
vjeta, 2005), 8788.
66
Ibid. 118.
67
Ibid. 245.
68
For more on this, see vol. II of Stenogrami o podjeli Bosne, ed. Ivan Lovrenovi, 131,
145, 196, 217, 352 ff, 398 ff, 491 ff.
69
Goldtajn, Hrvatska i rat u Bosni, 111.
70
Stenogrami o podjeli Bosne, vol. I, 237.
288 Balcanica XLV (2014)

Tudjman was ready to go to war to achieve his goal as regards Bos-

nia and Herzegovina. In a conversation with representatives of the Croat
Defence Council (Hrvatsko vijee obrane/HVO) for the Sava Valley region
(Posavina) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the municipalities of Ravno,
apljina and Stolac, on 21 September 1993, he said, among other things:
A horrible thing such as war, that which is a tragedy for a person, for a family,
for some areas, the greatest tragedy that there can be, in a sense even produces, by
way of demarcation between peoples, some more favourable circumstances for the
survival of some peoples in the future.71 Just as he justified genocide in his
book Bespua povijesne zbiljnosti,72 so now he justified war and bloodshed in
the name of a better future for Croatia and Croats.
Even as the war was drawing to an end, at a meeting of Croatias
highest officials in late 1993, Tudjman argued these were the times when
borders of the future Croatian state are being defined. They will probably
be larger than any Croat ruler or king in history had ever had under his
control. [] The Croat Republic of Herceg Bosna will join Croatia. Croatia
will be stronger and more powerful.73 This is an interesting statement for
more than one reason, but there does not seem to be any doubt that the
obsession of the Croatian president and his team because of which he
went to war to break Yugoslavia and create an independent Croatia was
a Greater Croatia. While carefully concealing the ultimate goal, the Croa-
tian political leadership headed by Tudjman was using the well-known red-
herring tactic ruthlessly accusing Serbia of having started the war in order
to create a Greater Serbia.
The author of a book on Croatias political destiny argues without
any hesitation that, after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, and
the annulment of the Treaty of Rome,74 the Independent State of Croatia
(Nezavisna Drava Hrvatska / NDH) was territorially rounded out, that
Croatia achieved its geopolitical and geostrategic ideal in terms of size,
shape and position. The only problem was that this ideal Croatia had too
much non-Croat population.75 About the Ustasha state rounded out in
September 1943, the same author, Petar Vui, has to say the following:
Even though it largely remained an unattained ideal, it has nonetheless re-

71
Ibid. 337 (italics mine).
72
Published by Matica hrvatska in Zagreb in 1989; revised English edition: Horrors of
War (New York: M. Evans & Company, 1996).
73
Goldtajn, Hrvatska i rat u Bosni, 111.
74
The Treaty of Rome concluded on 27 January 1924 between the Kingdom of SCS
and Italy recognized Italian sovereignty over the city of Rijeka (Fiume).
75
Petar Vui, Politika sudbina Hrvatske: geopolitike i geostrateke karakteristike Hrvatske
(Zagreb: Mladost, 1995), 221.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 289

mained a lasting witness to a high state-building movement which, through

such a state-building project (albeit incompletely accomplished), became a
true successor of the Croat historical state-building ideal and thought.76
The line of thinking which is quite in keeping with the well-known state-
ment of Franjo Tudjman that the NDH was not merely a quisling creation
and a fascist crime but also an expression of the Croat peoples historical
aspirations for its own independent state as well as of the realization by in-
ternational factors [] of these aspirations of Croatia and of its geographi-
cal borders.77 The ill-informed may have been surprised and upset by this
statement, but it was fully in line with a century of aspirations and trends
of Croatian politics.
In Tudjmans case, these aspirations and trends are visible from his
public statements as well. So, for example, in the opening speech he gave at
the First General HDZ Convention held in Zagreb on 24 and 25 February
1990, he said the following: This demand of ours has been an expression
and continuation of the viewpoint of only such Croatian politicians of the
last and this century as the father of the homeland Dr. Ante Starevi,
then Mihovil Pavlinovi, Dr. Ante Trumbi and Stjepan Radi. All of them
spoke of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the viewpoint of their geopolitical
unity with Croatia and the West, having no doubts as to where their people
would decide it belonged at a referendum.78 Judging by this, Tudjman was a
true follower of the geopolitician Pilar, the historian Mandi and poglavnik
Paveli, as can also be seen from what he said at his meeting with the high-
est military officials held on 23 August 1995 in the Presidential Palace in
Zagreb. Tudjman clearly and without a second thought let his collocutors
know that the demographic issue in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Istria
should be resolved militarily because, he emphasized, it was the only way to
firm up Croatdom in those parts, adding that the Croat Republic of Herceg
Bosna and the HVO had been created specifically for that purpose.79
That a Greater Croatia with all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as far as
the Drina, has been an ideal of Croat politicians can also be seen from the
words of a priest uttered from the pulpit of the church of the Wounded
Jesus in Zagreb. He wished for a more beautiful, better, larger and happier
Croatia whose seat would be at Banjaluka, as the poglavnik had wished it to
be. The Dominican Vjekoslav Lasi also expressed his hope that the wish

76
Ibid.
77
Prvi opi sabor Hrvatske demokratske zajednice, Glasnik HDZ-a 8 (March 1990),
18.
78
Za Hrvatsku (Zagreb: Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Croatia), 234235.
79
Ivica Djiki, Stenogrami o etnikom ienju: Feral objavljuje sadraj tajnog sastanka
Tudjmanova taba nakon Oluje, Feral Tribune, 5 July 2003.
290 Balcanica XLV (2014)

would come true, even more so because the current shape of Croatia is a
little bit strange.80
Vjekoslav Matijevi, a lawyer and President of the Croatian Liber-
ation Movement (Hrvatski oslobodilaki pokret) founded by Paveli in
1929 after the Croatian Party of Right was banned said in an interview
in 1993 that the Croats had to be firm and adamant about the question of
our borders, and join forces to stop the Serbs from crossing the Drina81
Vui, the Dominican Lasi and Matijevi are not lonely fanatics.
They say what and how Croat political circles thought and still think about
the future of Croatia. A certain Radomir Milii joined them when he
wrote: Since the destiny of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the destiny of the
Croats in this state, is inseparable from Croatia, i.e. Croatia and Croats have
to do their best to let it separate from Croatia too much (because Croats are
a sovereign people there, and they can defend that right only with the help
of the Republic of Croatia), Croatia will have to keep and eye and ear on
that space which is so vital to it. The spaces that the Croats in Bosnia and
Herzegovina have organized and physically defended are a basis of Croat
sovereignty in that state, as well as proof that Bosnia cannot be built with-
out Croats.82
Finally, the very fact that an institute named after Dr Ivo Pilar was
founded in Zagreb not so long ago appears to show that his thought is still
well and alive in Croatia, and that it has a following.
As a result of the persistent demand for incorporating Bosnia and
Herzegovina into Croatia, so that the latter can live and not just vegetate,
the Croats, as Stjepan Radi believed, have been taught to think that there
can be no free and united Croatia without Bosnia and Herzegovina.83
The few examples of Greater-Croatian territorial pretensions towards
Bosnia and Herzegovina on the grounds of Croat state and historical right
presented here serve only as an illustration. However, all followers of the
policy of Eugen Kvaternik and Ante Starevi, who predicated their pro-
grammes on on old deeds and virtual territorial claims, had a rapacious
appetite for territory. There is no need today to waste time proving that the
Ustasha regime of Ante Paveli based its entire politics on Croat state and
historical right. That politics showed its dark face to the world during the
war years from 1941 to 1945. Even though the world was surprised and ap-
palled by its vicious brutality, it was a logical outcome of an ill-founded and

80
Damir Pili, Kako je otac Vjekoslav Lasi u crkvi Ranjenog Isusa u Zagrebu obo-
gotvorio ustakoga Antu Pavelia, Feral Tribune, 6 January 1997.
81
Hrvatski vjesnik no. 2122 (Vinkovci, Zadar), 15 May 1993, 1415.
82
Radomir Milii, Stvaranje Hrvatske: analiza nacionalne strategije (Zagreb 1995), 12.
83
Stjepan Radi, Politiki spisi (Zagreb: Znanje, 1971), 289.
 V. Dj. Kresti, Croatian Pretensions to Bosnia and Herzegovina 291

irrational policy which could have no other result than hatred towards the
Serbs, eventually leading to one of the most horrible genocides in history.
Franjo Tudjman also based his politics on Croat state and historical
right and planned to incorporate Bosnia and Herzegovina into Croatia,
because he was also taught to think, as Radi put it, that there can be
no free and united Croatia without Bosnia and Herzegovina. With this
politics Tudjman embarked on a war to break Yugoslavia and create a large
and independent Croat state. The result of this aspiration is an ethnically
cleansed Croatia. By creating a state without Serbs, Croatia has come closer
to its geostrategic goal as regards Bosnia and Herzegovina. Without Serbs
in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, without this internal factor of distur-
bance, it will pounce, with more energy and fewer obstacles and hurdles,
upon Bosnia and Herzegovina, upon Serbs and Muslims. As long as Croa-
tia and its politicians pursue the policy based on Croat state and historical
right, they will aspire to grab hold of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there
will be no peace and stability in the region.
UDC 327.2(497.5:497.6)1848-

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Nikola P. Pai
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