User talk:Peter Z./Wikipedia & Political Agendas

Is Wikipedia taking on a darker tone? Where are the ethical and moral issues involved in creating articles with old communist propaganda rhetoric and it's false information? Is this the next Great Soviet Encyclopedia. This part of Wikipedia is not encyclopaedic work, pure and simple. The Wikipedia Point of View-History

• Wikipedia’s Communist Propaganda Articles!
• Wikipedia & Political Agendas

Research on Wikipedia’s Communist Propaganda Articles (former Yugoslavia)

The Balkan World According to Wikipedia: According to Wikipedia if a Commander happens to lose 100 000 POWs after WW2, it is not that important. Sixty years later it was established that they were murdered and place in old mine shafts, caves and forests. The information is not to be mention in his biography as it is irrelevant.

On the 23rd of April in 1948, in a speech Harry Truman (the President of USA) stated:

"I am told that Tito murdered more than 400 000 of the opposition in Yugoslavia before he got himself established there as a dictator"

Reference from: Keeping Tito Afloat by Lorraine M. Lees & Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman: Mission and Power in American Foreign Policy by Anne R. Pierce (declassified documents from the 1990s)

• R. H. Markham: Tito's Imperial Communism
• Christopher Bennett: Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences

"Tito was a Stalinist in his own right" . Bennett, a British journalist who has the good fortune to speak both Slovenian and Croatian, a skill that has enabled him to draw heavily on literature of the region that would be unavailable to most American or British journalists.

• Vladimir Tismaneanu: The Crisis of Marxist Ideology in Eastern Europe: The Poverty of Utopia. "Tito was a season Stalinist"
• Adam Bruno Ulam: Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn-Titoisam
• Vesna Pusic-Croatia at the Crossroads/Journal of Democracy - Volume 9, Number 1, January 1998, pp. 111-124 "Tito, a Croat and a Moscow-trained communist, ...... While his was a single-party, totalitarian regime, Tito was more a shrewd pragmatist than an ideologue. "

Notes on References

Contemporary views of Josip Broz that are clealy referenced:

• Lorraine M. Lees is an associate professor of history at Old Dominion University in Virginia, USA.
• Anne R. Pierce Ph. D. Political Science from the University of Chicago. Independent Scholar & Author/USA Author's Web Site*

• BBC.UK/History Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941 - 1945 By Dr Stephen A Hart

The article is written in the post Berlin Wall world. The Wiki article does not have the BBC as its source. This encyclopaedic articles clearly state the dark truth about Tito and his Army-Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941-1945

• Dr Stephen A Hart is senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is the author of The Road to Falaise: Operations "Totalize" & "Tractable" (Alan Sutton, 2004), "Montgomery " and "Colossal Cracks": The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe, 1944-45 (Praeger, 2000).

• Zdravko Dizdar [1]: In Mr Dizdar's Scientific Journal-An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross -Hrcak Portal of Scientific Journals of Croatia states that Tito asked the "Croatian Home Guard" to surrender or face the consequences of not surrendering. After the war ended POWs who did not surrender were slaughter on mass, estimates are about 100 000 victims in total.

• Encyclopaedia Britannica -The article is written post Berlin Wall but it's thin in terms of information, but does not hold back on economic realities: "At his death, the state treasury was empty."

The Wiki article has Encyclopaedia Britannica under its Notes section as its source, it might be just cosmetic.

• BBC UK/History by Tim Judah: "The economy was built on the shaky foundations of massive western loans." The article is also written in the post Berlin Wall world. The Wiki article does not have the BBC as it's source.

• Tim Judah is a front line reporter for The Economist and author. A graduate of the London School of Economics and of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University he worked for the BBC before becoming the Balkans correspondent for The Times and The Economist. Judah is also the author of the prize-winning The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, published in 1997 by Yale University Press.

• Michael Portamm: 2003-2005 Fellow of the ZEIT Foundation in Hamburg, doctoral studies at the University of Vienna (Dr. phil.). Author Profile

Professional activities: Since 2006, staff at the Historical Commission of the Academy, since 2008 Lecturer at the Universities of Vienna and Bern.[2]

• Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing: Genocide Carried out by the Tito Partisans: Hungarians & Italians [3]

Ref from: Communist Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After WWII . by Dr. phil. Michael Portmann

Other Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing: Genocide carried out by the Tito Partisans/Danube Swabian History (former Yugoslavia) 1944-1948 [4]

• David W. Del Testa has a Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Davis.

The below referenced information is from 'Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists: An Encyclopaedia of People Who Changed the World (Lives & Legacies Series)’ by David W. Del Testa.

Yugoslavia under Tito was a curious combination of relative economic and cultural freedom and total political repression and control. The lack of political freedom made debate on the role of ethnic identity in Yugoslavia impossible. Tito’s regime had created temporary stability in a historically unstable region. Treated almost as a mythic hero in his lifetime, Tito’s image began to decay in the years following his death, undermining the legitimacy of the regime so connected to his cult of personality.'

David W. Del Testa’s statement succinctly sums up Josip Broz and his political life. One could say it is well balanced in the objective sense.

• Ivo Goldstein:

“Self-management as system was only slightly more efficient than the Soviet model. It was bureaucratised and cumbersome and could not compete with Western economies. People could obtain so much free or for less than the market price (e.g. apartments) that they could be obtain without work. All this made the settling of accounts in the 1980s and in the post-socialist age more difficult.”

“In Tito’s system no interest or ideas could be expressed in a truly democratic way. This did most harm where feelings of ethnic identity were concerned because their suppression led to growth of extreme nationalism. Furthermore, the economic failure of Tito’s system, most clearly expressed in the protracted crisis of the 1980s, left people who even if they were not poor, were disillusioned and open to manipulation by demagogues. Finally Tito’s practical solutions ensured that he would retain unlimited power during his life time, but foreshadowed the problems would come after his death.”

This is a factual statement, written in Ivo Goldstein: 'Croatia A History'. Josip Broz and his fellow communist were committing economic management suicide. The Wiki article does not have Ivo Goldstein as its source.

The articles clearly state:

1. Josip Broz Tito’s failure in addressing ethnic tensions of the former Yugoslavia;

2. Failure in the economic management of the former of Yugoslavia;

Note: Ivo Goldstein is a Professor at the University of Zagreb. The university is the oldest (1669) and biggest in South-Eastern Europe. The university has 29 faculties, three art academies and the Centre for Croatian Studies. With its comprehensive programmes and over 50,000 full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students. The University is the strongest teaching institution in Croatia. It offers a wide range of academic degree courses leading to Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in the following fields: Arts, Biomedicine, Biotechnology, Engineering, Humanities, Natural and Social Sciences.

• Commission on Concealed Mass Graves in Slovenia-created by Government of the Republic of Slovenia.

Academics involved:

• Joze Dezman: Slovenian Historian-Director of the National Museum of Contemporary History-Ljubljana (Slovenian) National Museum of Contemporary History- Slovenia
• Mitja Ferenc: Slovenian Historian-University of Ljubljana

(Identification of Skeletal Remains of Communist Armed Forces Victims During and After World War II Croatian Medical Journal)

• Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission:

Reports and proceedings of the 8 April European public hearing on “Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency.

• Joachim Friedrich & Zbigniew Brzezinski (Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy): Characteristics of a totalitarian regime; a total ideology, a single mass party, a terrorist secret police, a monopoly of mass communication, all instruments to wage combat are in the control of the same hands, and a centrally directed planned economy. Totalitarian dictatorships emerge after the seizure of power by the leaders of a movement who have developed support for an ideology. The point when the government becomes totalitarian is when the leadership uses open and legal violence to maintain its control. The dictator demands unanimous devotion from the people and often uses a real or imaginary enemy to create a threat so the people rally around him.

Titoism & Totalitarianism:

• Abuse of national sentiment to carry out racial and class revolutionary projects;
• Cult of a great leader, who permits his fanatics to murder, steal and lie;
• Dictatorship of one party;
• Militarisation of society, police state – almighty secret political police;
• Collectivism, subjection of the citizen to the totalitarian state;
• State terrorism with systematic abuses of basic human rights;
• Aggressive assumption of power and struggle for territory.

Ref: Joze Dezman CRIMES COMMITTED BY TOTALITARIAN REGIMES page 197 Slovenian Presidency of the-EU 2008 European Commission

Mass killings without court trials:

The Main Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army had already called attention to respecting the Geneva Convention on 3 May in its order on the treatment of prisoners of war. However, despite this injunction, both prisoners of war and civilians were killed massively at the end of May and in the first half of June 1945 in Slovenia. Tito’s telegram on respecting the Geneva Convention was later revoked; however, it could only be revoked by the person who issued it in the first place, i.e. Tito himself.

The killings without a trial were most massive in the first months after the war in 1945 and continued until the beginning of 1946. How extensive these killings were is illustrated by the fact that 581 hidden graves of victims of post-war killings without a court trial have thus far been found in the territory of Slovenia.

Ref: Milko Mikola CRIMES COMMITTED BY TOTALITARIAN REGIMES page 163 Slovenian Presidency of the-EU 2008 European Commission

Note: Natasa Kandic [5] Call for Cross-border War Crimes ‘Truth Commission’ By Pedja Obradovic-30 November 2009

A broad regional coalition of civil society associations from the countries of the former Yugoslavia is planning to strongly pressure the succession countries into forming regional commissions to establish the facts on war crimes and other severe violations of human rights.

Natasa Kandic: Founder and Director, Humanitarian Law Centre, Serbia and Montenegro.

• Serbia to Uncover Mass Graves-Belgrade 13 August 2009 [6]

The Serbian Justice Ministry has announced that a state commission will be formed by September to mark out uncovered mass graves from 1944-46, daily Danas reported Thursday. The graves are thought to contain victims of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito's Partisans.

• Croatian Law: The first online newspaper of the party in Croatia -Recognition Regime Victims of the Totalitarian Communism, Fascism and Nazism in Europe!

• Dr. Zoran Bozic: Tito ordered massacre of the Croatian population in May and June 1945

The purpose of this presentation is to contribute to the formulation and established chain of command and composition of the genocide perpetrators of one sixth of the entire Croatian population in May and June 1945. In this preparation partisan sources were used exclusively.

Dr. Zoran Bozic an official of the Croatian Association of Victims of Communism.

(Mr Bozic is a Doctor from Zagreb -Croatia, Master of Medical Science and has done 20 years intensive research into partisan communists in the former Yugoslavia)

Mr Dizdar's Scientific Journal Study Notes

• Item A-An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross

Translated: Josip Broz Tito, the supreme commander of the NOV and PO-Yugoslavia and President of the National Committee of Liberation of Yugoslavia, sent on 30 August. 1944:

"Last call to all deluded servants of the occupiers and to all Domobrani Croatian, Slovenian Domobrancima and seduced Chetniks to leave the occupier and surrender to the National Liberation Army by September 15, 1944, with a threat to all those who do not, will be brought before a war court, judged as traitors and punished by the strictest punishment and concerning on the issue of the Allies, they will not interfere in our internal matters and that no one will not stop to punish the traitors of the people and servants occupying forces." (See: N. BARIC, 2003, 496. / faksimil letka/) page 121

• Item B- Z. Dizdar: An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross

According to the research of Z.Dizdar, Partisan General Aleksandar Rankovic [7] [8] was only answerable to Tito (page 128). Aleksandar Rankovic play a major role in these executions and the only person that could to give Rankovic such an order, was Tito. The report also states that there were huge Camps housing POWs, amongst them were women and children. On page 182 (66) it states that there were 24 422 children in the camps.

• Treba kazati kako su postojali još posebni logoru za folsdojčere, kojisu još 21. XI. 1944. od Predsjedništva AVNOJ-a proglašeni kolektivnimkrivcima i neprijateljima naroda, na osnovi cega je od nove komunistickevlasti izvršena konfisciranja njihove imovine te zapoceo njihov progon,uhicivanja i upucivanja u logore.130 Tako je 18. I. 1946. u jugoslavenskimlogorima bilo 117.485 folksdojcera (58.821 žena, 34.214 muškaraca i24.422 djece)

(Opširnije o tome vidi: V. GEIGER, 200)

Communist Propaganda & Cult of Personality Within the Former Yugoslavia

The Yugoslav Communist state propaganda machine shared much with the Soviet Union. The Soviet format was imposed and then slightly modified. Tito's cult of personality was no different. The Yugoslav Communist state used youth indoctrination (Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia[9]), which were all too similar to the Soviet Union (Young Pioneer of the Soviet Union [10]) and the People's Republic of China [11]. Communist political, historical and philosophical courses were all part of general education . They can be found in any Yugoslav primary school textbook from the 1970s. Media and arts were used as a powerful means of propaganda and were all placed under heavy censorship. Josip Broz Tito was the main subject. Images, monuments, towns, street names, endless awards were given and a never ending production of books, films and poetry were created. Financially a huge amount of resources were used to keep the Communist propaganda and political activities running on a daily basis. Glorification and hero worship of the charismatic figure, Josip Broz were a constant diet for the former peoples of Yugoslavia.

Most of Josip Broz’s images, monuments, town names and street names are now being removed. This started after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the break up of Yugoslavia.

• The below referenced information is from ‘Discontents: Post-modern and Post-communist’ by Paul Hollander [12][13].

“Virtually every communist system extinct or surviving at one point or another, had a supreme leader who was both extraordinarily powerful and surrounded by a bizarre cult, indeed worship. In the past (or in a more traditional contemporary societies) such as cults were reserved for deities and associated with conventional religious behaviour and institutions. These cults although apparently an intrinsic part of communist dictatorships (at any rate at a stage in their evolution) are largely forgotten today.”

“ Stalin, Maio, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Sung, Enver Hoxha, Ceascesu, Dimitrov, Ulbricht, Gottwald, Tito and others all were the object of such cults. The prototypical cult was that of Stalin which was duplicated elsewhere with minor variations”

Paul Hollander is an American scholar, journalist, and conservative political writer. (Ph.D in Sociology. Princeton University, 1963, B.A. London School of Economics, 1959 Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Centre Associate, Davis).

Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Tito & the Yugoslav Economy

Self-management as system was only slightly more efficient than the Soviet model. It was bureaucratised and cumbersome and could not compete with Western economies. People could obtain so much free or for less than the market price (e.g. apartments) that they could be obtain without work. All this made the settling of accounts in the 1980s and in the post-socialist age more difficult

In Tito’s system no interest or ideas could be expressed in a truly democratic way. This did most harm where feelings of ethnic identity were concerned because their suppression led to growth of extreme nationalism. Furthermore, the economic failure of Tito’s system, most clearly expressed in the protracted crisis of the 1980s, left people who even if they were not poor, were disillusioned and open to manipulation by demagogues. Finally Tito’s practical solutions ensured that he would retain unlimited power during his life time, but foreshadowed the problems would come after his death.

Professor Ivo Goldstein’s[14] work above proves that Josip Broz, put simply, was a bad economist and the Communists Party members were bad economists too. According to these and other references [15], this was one of the reasons that contributed to the break-up of Yugoslavia. As this was such a historical event, this information should be in the Wikipedia article in order to make it more encyclopaedic.

House of De Bona

House of De Bona (the proper name) vs the slavic, House of Bunic on Wikipedia. Link for Talk:House of Bunic

Family Member Statement

As a Croatian member of the de Bona family, I would like to remind everybody of the following:

The Bona name already appears in a document dated from the 10th century - this document can be seen in Dubrovnik. All Croatian identity documents show de BONA (even during Yugoslavia) All family records show the name BONA, never Bunic Tombstones show Bona, never Bunic.

Bunic predominantly appears in books written by "Yugoslav" authors or those using "Yugoslav" sources. Paintings in the Dubrovnik Museum show the name "de Bona" on all the paintings - description tags usually say Bunic and now also Bona in most cases (since Croatia's independence -- under Yugoslavia, nearly exclusively Bunic).

In Dubrovnik the family is known as Bona, not Bunic. The aristocracy wanted to distiguish themselves from the rest of the population and did not Slavicize their names (except two families of Slavic origin)...in some cases some people who wrote in Croatian or a form of it also used a Slavic version of the name...Additional proof needed for the Bona name. So far none seen. In MHO, this page should be known as House of Bona (aka Bunic) and all the names in the Slavic version should appear in parentheses next to the Bona name. As far as I know, there are no historical records with these Slavic names. All family records, always show the name Bona even when the rest of the text is written in Croatian.

A small clique is controlling all the info that goes into the Croatian pages. This is a fact. They are very determined that only info they accept can enter in Wikipedia. Otherwise, they do everything to make sure it's deleted -- often with no explanation --. If they don't like a user they will do everything to ban him.

In MHO, Bunic is only used to say it's "Croatian" versus "Italian"... I don't recognize myself in the Bunic name. It doesn't mean anything to me...but Croatian people, who don't know anything about the family, are telling everybody it's the name...with no proof to back it up. You make up your mind what the name of the House is... Debona.michel (talk) 10:46, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Ref for De Bona:

• Age, Marriage, and Politics in Fifteenth Century Ragusa by David Rheubottom

Book overview: This book combines the insights of history and anthropology with innovative techniques such as computer simulation to investigate the relationships between politics, kinship, and marriage in the late-medieval city-state of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik). At its heart is a reconsideration of `office' and the ways in which ties of kinship and marriage were mobilised to build electoral success.

• Our Kingdom Come: The Counter-Reformation, the Republic of Dubrovnik by Zdenko Zlatar
• Dubrovnik’s Patrician Houses and Their Participation in Power (1440-1640) by Zdenko Zlatar/hrcak.srce.hr/ page 49

Zdenko Zlatar is Reader in Slavic History at The University of Sydney. Address: Department of History, The University of Sydney, Sydney, N.S.W. 2006, Australia

• Dubrovnik Under French Rule by Stjepan Cosic page 113 hrcak.srce.hr/file/12648.
• Dubrovnik‎ by Barisa Krekic
• Journal of Croatian Studies: Volume 20 by Croatian Academy of America
• Quattrocento Adriatico: Fifteenth-Century Art of the Adriatic by Charles Dempsey
• Helias and Blasius De Radoano: Ragusa Merchants in the Second Half of the 14th Century by Barisa Krekic.

" In February of 1378 Blasius and ser Lucas de Bona had appointed two Venetians and a Ragusan" page 408

Note: Reference writing is based on unpublished and published documents from the State Archives in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

• From Dubrovnik (Ragusa) Florence: Observations on the Recruiting of Domestic Servants in the 15 Century by Paola Pinelli - hrcak.srce.hr/file/50677.page 63

"for slave trade companies continued to be founded, like the one established in 1445 between Marino di Bona of Ragusa and Benedetto Magrino for the trade of 12-15 male and female slaves."

• The Factions within the Ragusan Patriciate (17-18 Century) S. Cosic and N. Vekaric.

Table 1. Factions in the Great Conspiracy of 1610/12 by senatorship. page 23

Note: Stjepan Cosic, member of the Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Dubrovnik. Address: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, Lapadska obala 6, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Nenad Vekarie, head of the Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Dubrovnik. Address: Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU, Lapadska obala 6, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia.

(Dubrovnik Annals, No.6 Srpanj 2002.)

In Croatia:

• National Security and the Future. Editorial Office, Rudera Boskoviceva 20, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia:

" The Ragusan Archives document , "Speculum Maioris Consilii Rectores", showed 4397 rectors elected between September 1440 to June l806; 2764, (63 %) were from eleven "old patrician" families: Gozze, Bona, Caboga, Cerva, Ghetaldi, Giorgi, Gradi, Pozza, Saraca, Sorgo, and Zamanya. An 1802 list of Ragusa's governing bodies showed that 6 of the 8 Minor Council, and 15 of 20 Grand Council members were from the same 11 families."

• De Bona Consulting: Director: Mercy Bona Pavelic - DE BONA CONSULTING

E-mail: bona@de-bona.com, gsm: + 385 91 6374883, Zrinsko Frankopanska 5, Dubrovnik, Croatia fax: +385 20 311816 Pantovcak 8, Zagreb, Croatia, fax: +385 1 4821347 DeBona.com

• HUMANIZAM -hrv. književnost 14. i 15. st.

(Debona.michel: "Basically, we are dealing with a small group of mostly young, very aggressive, (extreme) nationalist/jingoist/chauvinist, passionate (24/7), degree-less students who have decided that Wikipedia is their domain/soap box and a no one should get in their way." - 8 January 2010)

While Visiting the Croatian Coast by 200.112.16.153

While visiting the Croatia coast (Dalmatia) of the Adriatic Sea, western journalists usually admire her ancient towns. They notice almost everywhere that the regional architecture is “heavily influenced” by a “Venetian” flavour. Years ago, a famous chef posing in front of a XVI century Dalmatian building for a documentary, claimed that its architecture was “quintessentially Croatian“. In the past, certain Western writers were almost convinced (and disgusted) that Croatians “imitated” Venetian and Italian Renaissance architecture in building Dalmatian towns. Today, Croatian and international tourist guides are presenting the rich artistic patrimony of Dalmatian coastal towns as essentially “Croatian” or “a reflection of Croatia‘s history“. They almost never mention the autochthonous Italians (about 80.000 in 1800s) who lived there since Roman times and who built those architectural jewels before disappearing in modern times. Where did they go? Almost all of them became refugees. They were the victims of the first ethnic cleansing documented in the Balkans.

The history of Dalmatia is compromised by strategic interests and political correctness. The current ignorance about the eastern Adriatic coast is appalling and widespread. It is, in short, the consequence of a “damnatio memoriae” of political nature. On one side, in the West nobody knows the real history of the region. On the other side, ”’today a phalanx of nationalistic Croatian historians, political leaders, journalists and tourist operators, profiting from this vacuum are erasing, falsifying and misappropriating the real history on an international level using books, newspapers, tourist propaganda and Internet sites”’.

The ethnic cleansing of the late 1800’s.

The ethnic cleansing of the autochthonous Italian population of today’s Croatian coastline started in the second half of the 1800’s Towns had Italian names:

• Zadar-Zara
• Split-Spalato
• Sibenik-Sebenico
• Trogir-Trau
• Dubrovnik-Ragusa

They had Italian communities in a dominant position and a cosmopolitan population (of Croatian, Serbian, Albanian, Greek & Jewish origin). Everybody spoke Italian and Venetian dialect, the “lingua franca” of the time. Helped by the Austrian government (then all Eastern Adriatic coastline was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Croatians launched a political campaign against the “Italian Dalmatia” to annex the territory. Since the beginning it was an integral part of the political national aspirations of Croatians struggling to form their own state. It continued to be so during the turbulent formation of the first, monarchic, Yugoslavia, when Croatia accepted willy-nilly the Serbian domination. The Serbs and the Croatians continued the assault, violent, almost a civil war-against all Dalmatian towns inhabited by ethnic Italians.

Following a first exodus toward the end of the 1800s, in 1905 in Rome a Dalmatian Italian Association to help the refugees was founded.

Then, after WWI tens of thousands of Dalmatian Italians abandoned their towns and villages in 1920-1930s and settled on Italian territory. During WW2 a third and final exodus: the winning Communist movement embraced the Croatian’s irredentist cause and included it in its war strategy and national political platform. The consequence was the violent expulsion of Italian speaking autochthonous inhabitants from the entire Eastern Adriatic coastline - from the southern Dalmatia to the Istrian peninsula - and the consequential erasing of two millennia of a very rich civilisation. Ethnic cleansing had happened in many parts of Europe in both old and modern times, so the demographic and cultural extirpation of Italian presence in Dalmatia, the Quarnero region and Istria is not really a new phenomena. But this slow, brutal and in 1945 also military operation had an unexpected development, something very peculiar. After erasing almost all the Italian speaking population in Dalmatia proper, without succeeding completely in the Quarner region and Istria, Communist Yugoslavia adapted a new form of genocide: the stealing of the “enemy’s” history in order to obliterate his memory and aggrandise the country. Completely ignored in the West, this skulduggery is a new Pandora’s box-Balkan style.

Croatia [16], a country of about 5 million inhabitants, has “nationalised” the history of her Adriatic coastline, a territory that had never been part of the Slavic hinterland, historically, politically and culturally. In order to totally “Croatianize“ the coastal territories, the country is manipulating their history and striving to “show” the world that Dalmatia, the Quarner region and Istria have “always” been Croatian. There is no actual political contingency to justify this operation: the old Italian irredentism ended up definitely in the dustbin of the history, and no other countries - except for Slovenia - have pressing territorial ambitions toward Croatia. Never methodically investigated, nobody knows how and when these history misappropriations started. In 1858-60 Ivan Kukuljevic Sakcinski, who belonged to Croatian nobility, published his “Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih”, an encyclopaedic dictionary of slav artists (then, Croatia was under Hungarian domination and Yugoslavia was still a dream). In this book among Slavic artists you can find the painter Vittore Carpaccio - born in Venice, 1460/65 ca. - 1525/26 ca. - only because Carpaccio used to create religious paintings commissioned by churches in Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia. Kukuljevic Sakcinski, a hot-headed nationalist, “opined” that the artist’s last name derived from a Croatian root: “Krpaci, Skrpaci or Krpatici”.

Republic of Ragusa

Take for example the history of the Republic of Ragusa, (officially the city is known as Dubrovnik only from 1919 on). Ragusa has been an independent republic governed since the Middle Ages by a Latin/Illyrian families. When it was abolished in 1808 by the Napoleonic army, the small but influential and immensely rich maritime republic left a gigantic archive in which all government documents were written, first in Latin, then in Italian “vulgar”(Dalmatian) and finally in modern Italian (the Republic had an office in charge of translations from Slavic vernacular). In the daily business of the government and in diplomacy - Ragusa had over 80 consulates in every major European and Middle Eastern city -, the official language of the small republic was Italian. Furthermore, The Republic of Ragusa is remembered as ”The fifth Maritime Republic of Italy” (with Venice, Pisa, Amalfi and Genoa). For centuries, the well-to-do Ragusan families sent their children to study in the Italian universities. Across the Adriatic sea, Ragusans had daily contacts with Italy. The celebrated libraries of Ragusa were full of Italian editions of every kind, but no books printed in Slavic languages. Today in some Croatian history books the real history of Ragusa disappears almost completely.

The historians maintain that Dubrovnik “is an important page of the history of Croatia”, although Ragusa had only commercial liaisons with a Croatian territory that has not been a state for nine centuries. They repeat obsessively that the maritime republic was Croatian “almost since the beginning of her history”, that her merchant fleet was completely Croatian. Every family of the town’s aristocracy - Basilio, Cerva, Ghetaldi, Luccari, Menze, etc. - is given arbitrarily “the equivalent Croatian name“. All Ragusan state institutions are receiving Croatian denominations; all monasteries in town are presented as “Croatian”, although the clergy was Italian. You find all these misappropriations in Wikipedia “the free encyclopaedia” site, where the authors (clearly Croats) are demonstrating how grotesque are their pretensions when, at a certain point, they report the list of Ragusan senators who attended the last session of their Greater Council, the one in which it was announced that the glorious republic was dissolved (Aug. 29, 1814): of a little over forty incontestable Italian names of the senators, only one is of Croatian origin: Marino Domenico, count of Zlatarich.

In 2006, with his book “Dubrovnik - A history” published in England and sold in every English speaking country, the British author did an unwanted favour to the extremely voracious Croatian nationalistic historiography. Using only Croatian sources and materials, he wrote an essentially extremely nationalistic Croatian book in English language. Explaining his readers the mystery of place, institutions and personal Italian names translated into Croatian, he wrote: “I have used the Slavic form throughout, simply because that is the one most commonly found in the historiography” (obviously Croatian). “No other significance - he pointed out - is implied”. And with this elegant explanation, the deontology of the historian took a vacation. A “patriotic mission”.

Some Croatian historians and researchers are a legion of agit-props engaged in the “patriotic mission” of promoting the grandeur of their homeland. Their patriotism obeys to a categorical imperative: the country comes first, at any cost, even lying. They “Croatianize“ everybody and everything. Literally hundreds of public figures, artists, scientists, and academics - Italian Dalmatia had in XIX century 32 newspapers and periodicals, a rich history, an incredible artistic, academic and literary life, and glorious maritime traditions - today are mentioned as “Croatian“.

In 1998, writing for “The Atlantic” magazine Robert D. Kaplan (author of influential “Balkan Ghosts”) seemed to be the first American essayist to reveal the truth about the suppression of the Italian past of Ragusa by Croatia (and by extension of Dalmatia). “A nasty, tribal principality, he wrote - who are attempting to transform, in the old Republic, its character subtly from that of a sensuous, cosmopolitan mélange into a sterile, nationalistic uniformity”. Of the original Italian speaking population of the town only about 40 individuals survived the ethnic cleansing. Unnoticed by academic authorities in the West, an implacable (first Panslavistic, then Pan Croat) “nationalization” of non-Croatian history continued for decades in a dramatic crescendo.

In the last half century it reached epidemic proportions:

• Andrea Antico, born in Motovun (Montona) in Istria, a composer and music publisher of the 1500s (he is studied in every music school of this globe), was re-baptised Andrija Staric (or Starcevic)
• The Renaissance painter Lorenzo De Boninis, born in Dubrovnik, is presented in Croatian history books and tourist guides as “Lovro Dobricevic”
• Nicola Fiorentino, an Italian born XVI century architect active for decades in Dalmatia, becomes the fake Croat “Nikola Firentinac“.

Writers

Giovan Francesco Biondi, a writer born in 1572 on the Dalmatian island of Hvar (Lesina) is introduced to the Western cybernauts as an improbable “Ivan Franc Biundovic”, although he was a diplomat (and maybe a spy) in the service of the Venetian Republic and with his three books is considered the first modern Italian novel writer. (The “super-patriotic” Croatians historians completely ignore the “Italian” aspects of his biography, reducing his creations to “an excellent history of the British civil wars while living in England” to be added to Croatian merits).

The case of Francesco Patrizi, a XVI century philosopher and scientist who was a teacher of “La Sapienza” university in Rome, is almost incredible. He became “Franjo Petric” (or “Petricevic”), that means a “Croat”, only because he was born on the island of Cres (Cherso) in the Quarner gulf. Croatian academic and political circles are so proud of “Franjo Petric” that almost every year they are holding in Zagreb, the capital of the country, and on “Cres“, an academic symposium dedicated to this magnificent intellectual mind. Many years ago they published one of his books printed in Italy in 1500s. They took the original, ornate volume, translated it into modern Croatian language and published it presenting the book as an anastatic edition of the original, in order to demonstrate the high level of their national civilisation in the 1500s (when Croatian capital Zagreb was still a village and Croatians in toto were still an agricultural/pastoral population). But they made a mistake: they used the Croatian diacritic signs (“accents” on certain consonants) invented only in the middle of the 1800s. Another example is that of Pier Paolo Vergerio, a catholic bishop and an historical figure in the turbulent times of the Reformation. He lived in Capodistria, a small town on the Istrian peninsula. In a Croatian history book, written by a Croatian academic and published in the USA, the bishop is presented as “Petar Pavao Vergerije”, without pointing out that he was Italian, that the town of Capodistria never had anything to do with Croatia, never had a noticeable Slavic minority among her population and today is part of Slovenia.

There is a Ragusan writer who, from 1909 up to today, underwent involuntarily to a name-change quiet a few times: Benko or Beno Kotruljevic, Kotruljic, Kotrulic or Kotrulj. Croatian historiographers do not care much in this regard. To them is important that this was “one of the first Croatian writers on scientific subjects”. “Croatian”, they repeated a hundred times in their essays on this historical figure. But that gentleman’s real name was Benedetto Cotrugli (or de Cotruglis). This is the way he signed his correspondence and also his famous book, “Della mercantura et del mercante perfetto.” one of the first manuals on merchandising, bookkeeping and “the good merchant”, published in Venice in 1573. This book is known in every university and a college with an Economy department. Cotrugli went to school and lived for all his adult life in Italy, serving as a diplomat the Kingdom of Naples and as director of the Mint in L‘Aquila. He never wrote anything in Croatian language. By the way, his book was published in Croatia only in 1963, five centuries after it was written. But he is considered “Croatian”. This kind of uncontrolled appetite is also directed toward classic antiquity.

Archeology

A reliable Croatian archeologist, Josip Vlahovic, studied a bas-relief in the Split Baptistery, portraying a Middle Ages king on the throne, with a crown on his head and holding a cross. At his side there is a figure, maybe a court official, and in front of him another figure prostrated on the floor. Examining the clothing, hairstyle and other details, Vlahovic concluded, honestly, that the bas-relief was ”most probably” created by a band of Longobards, who settled in Dalmatian interior in the VI century before moving out of the territory, in an uncertain period, and disappearing.

According to Daria Garbin, an archeologist living in Split, who wrote extensively about that Longobards, that the bas-relief king “could be” the Longobard Alaric. Finally, the elegant and rich book “Croatia in the Early Middle Ages - A cultural survey”, published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, printed in London in 1999, and distributed in all English speaking countries, is embellished by a magnificent, full-page picture of the same bas-relief. Beside the picture, there is the explanation: “Marble carving of a Croatian king (maybe Zvonimir)”. Here the Longobards do not receive any attention. One of the most frequent tricks in this “propagandistic history” is to find a couple of Croatian personalities and squeeze between them the Slavicized name of an Italian local personality in order to “demonstrate” that a Dalmatian town was, yes inhabited by “some” Italians, but was predominantly Croatian.

Take for example Trogir, known for a millennia as the Italian Dalmatian town of Trau, incredibly rich in arts and architecture, and since 1997 protected by the UNESCO. On a Croatian Internet site you can notice that a humanist and writer from Trogir, Koriolan Cipiko, active in 1500s is sandwiched between two Croatian historical figures that had nothing to do with him nor Trogir. Here the intention is to “neutralized” completely that gentleman, whose real name was Coriolano Cippico, a member of an illustrious centuries old Dalmatian dynasty (of bishops, writers, philosophers, army and navy leaders, you name it) of Roman origin.

Another Croatian site says that “during this period Italian citizens, until 1918 the ruling class and almost half part of the population, were forced to leave for Italy”. Forced by whom? The authors of the site cautiously don’t say it. In another Croatian site we find that in the same period Trogir had 16.000 inhabitants, that means that 8.000 were Italians. Today the Italians living in Trogir are only a handful. There are literally hundred of episodes and cases like these, in numerous Croatian history books and tourist guides published in English language and distributed in the West, and now also on Internet. Outright falsehoods, half-truths, tendentious presentations, patriotic rhetoric and grotesque nationalistic grandiosity are very common in them. This part of the Croatian academic world knows no limits in the national appetite for glory, veneration of patriotic heritage, and stealing of other people’s cultural icons to show off.

Marco Polo/Franz Joseph Haydn

Nowadays in Croatia (and through Internet in the United States also) they maintain that Marco Polo was born on Croatian island of Korcula (historically Curzola; up to 1920s the main town of the island was populated by an Italian majority) and that he was a Croat, not a Venetian, without any document to prove it.

They also appropriate Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Tuscan explorer who is considered to be the first European to have discovered the bay of New York, in 1524 (decades before Henry Hudson). For this primacy his name was given to the spectacular modern bridge that connects Brooklyn with Staten Island. But now Verrazzano is proclaimed “Croat”. Why? Because while exploring the Eastern Atlantic coast going North, he used to give some Dalmatian names to certain territories and islands he discovered during his voyage. So Verrazzano becomes “Vranjanin or Vrancic”.

The same destiny is reserved to an Austrian composer, Franz Joseph Haydn, only because he was born (in 1723) in an Austrian region inhabited by a community of Croatian origins who settled there in VII century A.D. during barbarian invasions of Europe. Certain Croatian nationalistic historiographers are busy creating for their country the desolating fake image of a civilized and highly spiritual nation, using the heritage of a civilization the country eradicated in the first historically documented, but still unknown, Balkan ethnic cleansing.

Today nobody is noticing and condemning this threatening phenomena. These charlatans with a master degree are doing a tremendous disservice first of all to their own country. They are also dangerous. In a region in the past tremendously violent and today with so many unsolved problems, this kind of piracy is very ominous and should be stopped.

• Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.112.16.153 (28 December 2009)

When ethnicity did not matter in the Balkans: a study of identity in pre ... By John Van Antwerp Fine

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