Framing the narrative about communist crimes in Croatia

Abstract

This chapter examines the discourse about communist crimes through case studies of the most important and most visible commemorations of Bleiburg and Jazovka. Both sites of memory represent a symbol of Partisan crimes at the end of the war. The commemorations are highly politicized and often used for discrediting political opponents. After a post-communist regime was established in Croatia in 1990, a strong anti-communist discourse emerged. As part of this new discourse, the official communist history was challenged and revised. By analyzing commemorative speeches and contested media narratives around these commemorations, this chapter presents the main arguments about the communist legacy in Croatia. The debate about the communist legacy, including the two commemorations presented in this chapter, clearly shows how different frames are used not only to deal with the past and compete in the dynamic process of nation and identity building but also to discredit political and ideological opponents. In that context, confrontation with the communist past is not a marginal topic reserved for academic debates but a mainstream political topic, often present in political and public discourse in which commemorations are annually used to highlight the debate and reproduce the same cleavages, with the same framing and the same narrative.