,
SLAVENKA DRAKULIC
385
Nevertheless, the opposition parties take the stand that while Croatia is in
a dangerous situation, they are morally obliged to support the govern–
ment's or the President's decisions. The opposition has little influence in
public life. As well, there are problems with the relations among the leg–
islative, judicial, and executive powers. There are serious estimates that
almost one-half of the "gray economy" in Croatia is controlled by a
mafia. And there is the problem of the
domovnica
-
the document issued
to prove Croatian citizenship and denied to many Serbs in Croatia.
Perhaps the most important and sensitive issue, consequently the least
discussed, is the fact that between 1941 and 1945 Croatia was a fascist
state. The new Croatian government has never clearly distanced itself
from this past, and its key figures, such as Cardinal Stepinac and Mile
Budak, have in fact been rehabilitated, if not deified, while the antifascist
past of the country consistently is being forgotten. Street names have been
changed, monuments destroyed or replaced, and one wonders whether
the process of erasing history is taking place all over again. This may ex–
plain why leading European intellectuals like Gunther Grass and George
Konrad did not publicly support Croatia in the worst days of Serbian
aggression: at the time, Croatia had not even started its process of denazi–
fication. Furthermore, at the beginning of the war there were many vol–
unteer soldiers wearing the insignia of the Ustasha army while top military
officials, the government, and public opinion remained silent.
Under what Jelena Lovrit calls "the production of fear," there is no
professional loyalty among people, and even personal friendships suffer.
The government continues to exploit for its own purposes the insecurity
entrenched by the war. Now, when independence has been won, the
most important questions for this country should be, "What kind of life
are we going to have here?" But the future seems to be such an abstrac–
tion that no one is willing to discuss it. Croatian social life appears to
contain traces of the "institutionalized insecurity" identified by Juan
Corradi in his book
Fear and Politics in Argentina,
where people become
afraid of uncontrolled violence, crime, poverty, inflation, loss of jobs.
Everything seems to be
deja
vu,
especially to those of the older generation
who compare the atmosphere to that of 1945 in Croatia - which doesn't
make me optimistic.
What finally constitutes the other side of our lives in a post–
Communist country is a fear not so evident on the surface. One of the
worst things that the Communist governments did to people everywhere
was to usurp their right to a future. Everyone knew that in the future
only a more "perfect" Communism was waiting for them, so no one
hurried to get there. Nevertheless, people did dream about the future, and
