The last Croatian defender of brotherhood and unity – Miloš Žanko. A story of desperate courage and political responsibility

Abstract

The article examines the issue of how, under the conditions of growing nationalism in the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the late 1960s, Miloš Žanko, one of the Croatian leaders, bravely opposed the political trends, which threatened both the region and his country. In the newspapers and magazines, at the Party congresses, he entered into harsh polemics with Croatian nationalists, who were exposing their insidious schemes and defending the idea of brotherhood and unity. However, Žanko did not anticipate how deeply nationalist ideology was rooted and how strong it was in Croatia, at what a high level of the establishment this ideology was supported, and what price the person who was daring to oppose it would have to pay.