Reclaiming the Croatian Flag

Abstract

The flag of the Republic of Croatia, which features the Sahovnica red-and-white chequerboard, aroused much attention in the British media, on account of the success of the Croatian team at the soccer world cup in France. According to these accounts, the Sahovnica is a fascist symbol, the waving of which reveals Croatia to be, 'the most disgusting small nation in Europe'. This article, which emerges from a post-Yugoslav revisionist perspective, contends that such interpretations of Croatia's flag is largely the product of Titoist and Serb nationalist historiography. Rather, it is argued, the Sahovnica should be seen as an ancient and ambiguous symbol of the Croatian nation, that was briefly hijacked by Croatian fascists, but was used simultaneously by the Croatian anti-fascist forces during the second world-war, and after. The call to 'reclaim' the Croatian flag is not only a call for a more sophisticated approach to Croatian historiography, but is also a political call for writers to disassociate the symbols of the Croatian nation, which have multilayered and ambiguous meanings, from those contemporary fascists who use them and claim to speak for Croatia.