{"id":1594,"date":"2026-01-26T08:39:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T07:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2026-01-29T09:38:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:38:34","slug":"brigadiru-ima-tko-pisati-tko-je-ubio-antu-paradzika","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/brigadiru-ima-tko-pisati-tko-je-ubio-antu-paradzika\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Writes to the Brigadier: Who Killed Ante Parad\u017eik?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another political scientist, Kre\u0161imir Petkovi\u0107, concludes: \u201cOn the other hand, with regard to the crackdown on the far right and the parallel army it had established, several failed assassination attempts on the president of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), Dobroslav Paraga, are worth highlighting, as well as successful liquidations of leaders of the radical right: the founder of the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS), Ante Parad\u017eik, was killed at the entrance to the capital (21st September 1991), and near Mostar, on the territory of a neighboring state, Bla\u017e Kraljevi\u0107, the \u2018commander of HOS in Herzegovina\u2019, was killed (9th August 1992).\u201d Petkovi\u0107 also bases his claims on reporting by Nacional and Wikipedia, as well as on interpretations of these events offered by a number of Tu\u0111man\u2019s political opponents and personal enemies. He particularly emphasized the fact that Tu\u0111man pardoned the police officers convicted for Parad\u017eik\u2019s killing. Had Petkovi\u0107 read the cited article by Tomislav Jonji\u0107, he would have known the background of the \u201cseveral failed assassination attempts\u201d on Paraga; and had he based his work on some other newspapers or other online portals, he might have arrived at substantially different, yet equally erroneous, conclusions. By referring to newspaper articles and accusations selected according to other criteria, he could, for example, also have concluded that \u201cParad\u017eik\u2019s killing involved his former party colleague and fellow combatant Ante \u0110api\u0107,\u201d as claimed in a criminal complaint submitted to the State Attorney\u2019s Office by the leadership of the Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights [A-HSP]\u2014a claim that \u0110api\u0107 dismissed as nonsense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A fragment of my own somewhat older study Dr\u017eava i zlo\u010din: politika i nasilje u Hrvatskoj 1990-2012. [State and Crime: Politics and Violence in Croatia 1990\u20132012]<\/em> (Petkovi\u0107, 2013) has found its way into one of the controversies in which the 1990s, within subsequent combative politics of history, are once again being reinterpreted. This gives me an opportunity to appear as a polemicist rather than a probl\u00e9matisateur\u2014thus, as an interested party who, as far as possible, seeks to defend what he once thought and wrote.[1]<\/a> Namely, in the article \u201cThe Political and Security Circumstances of the Death of Ante Parad\u017eik,\u201d published in the Journal of Contemporary History<\/em>, Ivica Lu\u010di\u0107, a historian and wartime member of the intelligence community, explicitly included me\u2014incidentally, as a political scientist\u2014among those who offer \u201csuperficial and tendentious interpretations\u201d of Ante Parad\u017eik\u2019s death. Lu\u010di\u0107, namely, interprets that death, similarly to the celebratory case of \u017du\u0107o, the Hunter\u2019s Dog, in \u0106opi\u0107\u2019s Hedgehog\u2019s Home<\/em>, as a \u201cdemise\u201d [pogibija] (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016).<\/p>\n

Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s article on Parad\u017eik\u2019s death is thorough and meticulous. A great deal of work went into it. It is historiographically valuable\u2014at least for those who know how to read it. With truly unusual energy\u2014whose basic purpose is to show that the killing of a politician from the same area as the author himself (both are from Ljubu\u0161ki), who found himself on the opposite side of an internal national political conflict, was at once politically logical and entirely accidental\u2014Lu\u010di\u0107 collected archival sources on the killing of Ante Parad\u017eik, pointed to the wartime psychosis of the early 1990s, to inflammatory tabloids, police unprofessionalism, the need to investigate various cases of death and violence separately rather than casually fitting them into political narratives, as well as to other methodological problems associated with researching the 1990s, a decade of collective conflicts, full of distortions and political myths whose caricatured media logic we unfortunately still live with today, in the discursive repetition of a tragedy that, fortunately, for now remains only a farce.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, reading Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s article reminded me of the political-media m\u00e9lange I had to confront as a researcher, and of the untidiness of my own study, which often draws factual material from the same or similar sources and analyses discourse. Indeed, however difficult\u2014and sometimes almost impossible\u2014it may be in studies of broader scope, one ought to invest research time and energy into every controversial fragment of the 1990s. Ideally speaking, no single episode should be deprived of \u201cthorough research and insight into the original documentation\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 384) if one is to write a responsible and serious political history. In this, Lu\u010di\u0107 is right, regardless of the fact that historiographical and political-science studies are not the same.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other hand, it seemed to me that precisely in the case of the killing of Ante Parad\u017eik I had written nothing incorrect. Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s strongly politically colored critique struck me as biased and misguided, and toward my study\u2014which he incidentally treats in the quotation highlighted at the outset (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 382)\u2014as unjust and poorly argued. Nonetheless, it remains worthy of response, if only because of the indicated qualities of the article and the deeper problems it raises, beyond polemical passions or, more finely put, the culture of public debate. Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s critique begins with two formalistic remarks that do not speak to \u201cwhat is\u201d but to \u201cwhere\u201d something is recorded. In that genre, he offers an attack on a solid investigative article written for Nacional<\/em> by Orhidea Gaura (2010) and on my analytical use of Wikipedia\u2019s discourse on Bla\u017e Kraljevi\u0107,[3]<\/a> whose factual substrate in the case of yet another HOS \u201cdeath in action\u201d is not in dispute.[4]<\/sup><\/a> This is followed by a non-specific ad hominem<\/em> (I allegedly rely, according to Lu\u010di\u0107, on a handful of \u201cTu\u0111man\u2019s political opponents and personal enemies,\u201d but he does not specify which ones, nor what they say) and a call to read a text from the rich genre of Party of Rights schismatic literature\u2014an appeal doubly misplaced: despite Paraga\u2019s political histrionics, which can certainly be debated, as well as the (non)sense of his politics, claims about assassination attempts can be questioned but are by no means unfounded, especially in the context of the killings of Parad\u017eik and Kraljevi\u0107; moreover, the source that I should, according to Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s benevolently patronizing tone, have read appeared in the same year as my book, possibly after it.[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

All in all, over the past decades Lu\u010di\u0107\u2014who is more media-popular than his own brother\u2014has offered a superficial and by no means subtle treatment of a fragment of a larger study.[6]<\/a> It seems that the pen of one of those institute historians whose archival diligence fails to compensate for theoretical illiteracy has in this case allied itself with palpable political passion, forcing a peculiar interpretation at odds with the fact of a killing. In contrast to detailed yet selective documentation of events, Lu\u010di\u0107 succeeds in concluding his construction with a caricatured, unspecific reference to an \u201cindependent collective body\u201d that conducted the procedure of pardoning Parad\u017eik\u2019s killers (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 382). Leaving aside the clich\u00e9d interpretative acrobatics at the end of the text, devoted to the \u201cremnants of communist structures and their ideological followers\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 383),[7]<\/a>when the article descends from politicized archivistics into an unspecific political reckoning and an inability to reflect on the fact that sources generated within the state apparatus and judicial procedures are part of the story of the case rather than the whole story, the already suggested central problem of the article becomes clearly visible.<\/p>\n

Lu\u010di\u0107 has harnessed his research energy to a contradictory interpretation that simultaneously wishes HOS to be extremist, irresponsible, and dangerous\u2014politically harmful to state-building efforts\u2014emphasizing Parad\u017eik\u2019s pro-Usta\u0161a rhetoric (a problem \u201cfrom the right\u201d for established sovereign power, within theoretical frameworks combining Foucault and Schmitt, about which Lu\u010di\u0107 evidently knows nothing and therefore leaves them aside),[8]<\/a> and that one of the leading figures of that same HOS was shot dead with Kalashnikov bullets in a car after being amicably waved through the first checkpoint on the road from Kri\u017eevci to Zagreb,[9]<\/a> allegedly, according to Lu\u010di\u0107, as a mere consequence of general wartime psychosis. The tragicomic conclusion begins with the sentence: \u201cThe death of Ante Parad\u017eik at a police checkpoint in Sesvete on 21st September 1991 was the result of a series of unfortunate circumstances\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 384), and ends with this one: \u201cA victim of the overall state of society and the state was also Ante Parad\u017eik, who \u2018found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time\u2019\u201d (ibid<\/em>., 385). I was not there, nor, as far as I know, was Lu\u010di\u0107\u2014but it seems to me unlikely. It appears that in the 1990s many people managed, by political key, to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.<\/p>\n

If we step outside the confines of the article itself, symptomatic of ideological bias is Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s inconsistency in applying state formalistic criteria in establishing truth.[10]<\/sup><\/a> When it comes to the death of Franjo Tu\u0111man\u2019s father Stjepan and his stepmother Olga, Lu\u010di\u0107, speaking in another episode of the documentary series The President<\/em>, does not accept the official version given by the \u201cinvestigative authorities\u201d (\u201cmurder and suicide by firearm\u201d due to \u201cnervous breakdown\u201d), but instead claims: \u201cwith very brief procedures, possibly involving some checks if they were carried out at all or deemed necessary \u2026 swift trials or killings were conducted, or killings followed by trials\u2026\u201d.[11]<\/sup><\/a> How does Lu\u010di\u0107 know that OZNA killed Tu\u0111man\u2019s father on the basis of a \u201clist of enemies\u201d he has not seen, while Parad\u017eik\u2014riddled with bullets at an official checkpoint after having passed through one earlier\u2014is killed by a combination of \u201cunfortunate circumstances\u201d? If he seeks the answer in the character of the regime, this opens the question of how to characterize the regime of the 1990s in Croatia;[12]<\/a> yet even beyond that, not even the famed advanced liberal democracies in their peacetime can unconditionally rely on a judiciary that infallibly distributes truth and justice. Political killings committed at the end of the Second World War and thereafter, and the scale of repression through and beyond the criminal justice system, are hardly comparable in scale and intensity to the moment of violent political action by sovereign power in the 1990s: someone\u2014unlike me\u2014may argue that their political essence is not the same,[13]<\/a> \u00a0but what matters here is the difference in criteria for assessing truth.<\/p>\n

In other words, let us assume that Lu\u010di\u0107, naively speaking, knows neither\u2014the full circumstances of the deaths of Stjepan Tu\u0111man Sr. and Ante Parad\u017eik\u2014but we can see that the methodological criteria he chooses as a foothold of truth are selected according to the political friend\u2013enemy logic. Yet that logic, an object of structuring the field of research on politics of force, violence, and punishment, and an interpretative principle of political polarization, is not a logic of truth, nor a legitimate historiographical method, any more than patriotism\u2014however much it may warm our hearts. Form becomes the site of truth when it suits us politically: that is the ironic Schmittian point. It seems that even Schmitt can be invoked against Kelsen when needed\u2014although this is a sentence Lu\u010di\u0107, despite being a lawyer by original academic training, cannot understand due to his lack of political-theoretical education. His criteria are Schmittian, which is understandable but not scientifically justified; indeed, it is hypocritical, both humanly and academically. Is it not more honest, like Nathan R. Jessup\u2014the character from a film by Rob Reiner, a recent victim of parricide\u2014whose military logic Ivan Veki\u0107 followed (Petkovi\u0107, 2013: 137), to tell the truth, or at least to remain decently silent when everything has long since passed?<\/p>\n

Those deemed undesirable and dangerous, even if nationally \u201cours,\u201d were swept aside in matters central to national politics, sovereign power, and its collectivization. That is how it was, and that is how, in retrospect, it could only have been, because war and the operation of power within it have their own logic. What remains for us is to explain, perhaps to draw a lesson for the future; or at least to attempt something of the sort\u2014and that cannot be done by lying. Just as in Cercas\u2019s modest lesson, which applies both to history and to good fiction, and, after all, in Budi\u0161a\u2019s speech at Parad\u017eik\u2019s funeral, which Lu\u010di\u0107 cites: lies lead nowhere; truth should not be buried, even if it is sometimes complex and forces us collectively to confront what we were and what we are today.[14]<\/a> If someone like Lu\u010di\u0107 was already an active and relevant participant in the events in one way or another, is it not more honest at least to open the possibility\u2014if not already to acknowledge\u2014Machiavellianism, akin to Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s language of strategies and tactics with which he so naturally interprets the 1990s, rather than to anniversary-produce energumenic political forgeries that arrive at the conclusion that the deaths of political figures are, like social ownership in the former regime\u2014everyone\u2019s and no one\u2019s?<\/p>\n

It is difficult to exit political logic.[15]<\/a> The approach of St Francis, well depicted in Rossellini\u2019s film, as Hesse noted, does not fare well in politics.[16]<\/a> Yet in the end, it may not be misguided to add a humanistic suggestion to a political mind such as Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s. Courage can be divorced from humanism, politics can be pursued cynically and in silence, but a little compassion does no harm\u2014at least in the sense of Jaspers\u2019s metaphysical guilt\u2014not only when it comes to members of one\u2019s own nation, but to human beings and living creatures in general. Something akin to Williams\u2019s book on the senseless mass slaughter of the buffalo, which carries broader metaphorical potential: \u201che came to see \u2026 destruction \u2026 not as a lust for blood \u2026 or even at last the blind lust of fury that toiled darkly within him\u2014he came to see the destruction as a cold, mindless response to the life \u2026 And he looked upon himself, crawling dumbly\u201d (Williams, 2007: 137).<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bjelakovi\u0107, Neboj\u0161a, Strazzari, Francesco, 1999. The sack of Mostar, 1992\u20131994: The politico\u2010military connection.\u00a0European Security<\/em>,\u00a08 (2): 73-102.<\/p>\n

Cercas, Javier. 2017. Prevarant<\/em>. Zagreb: Fraktura. [Eng. ed. The Impostor: A True Story. New York: Knopf. 2018.]<\/p>\n

Despot, Zvonimir. 2011. \u201cTU\u0110MAN U DNEVNIKU \u2018Udba mi je ubila oca i pomajku, a naredba je stigla iz Zagreba\u2019\u201d [TU\u0110MAN IN HIS DIARY: \u2018The UDBA Killed My Father and Stepmother, and the Order Came from Zagreb\u2019], 10th Dezember. https:\/\/www.vecernji.hr\/vijesti\/udba-mi-je-ubila-oca-i-pomajku-a-naredba-je-stigla-iz-zagreba-354693<\/a><\/p>\n

Filipovi\u0107, Luka. 2015. \u201cNekad mo\u0107nog Hercegovca danas progone vjerovnici i istra\u017eitelji\u201d [Once a Powerful Herzegovinian, Today Hounded by Creditors and Investigators], T-portal<\/em>, 30th October, https:\/\/www.tportal.hr\/biznis\/clanak\/nekad-mocnog-hercegovca-danas-progone-vjerovnici-i-istrazitelji<\/a><\/p>\n

Foucault, Michel. 1990 [1974]. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 et les formes juridiques<\/em>. Chim\u00e8res. Revue des schizoanalyses<\/em>, 10: 8\u201328. [Eng. ed. \u201cTruth and Juridical Forms,\u201d in: Power, James D. Faubion (ed.), pp. 31\u201345. New York: New Press. 2000.]<\/p>\n

Gaura, Orhidea. 2010. \u201eLjudi koje je 90-ih trebalo ukloniti\u201c [People Who Were Supposed to Be Eliminated in the 1990s]. Nacional<\/em>, 741, 26th January. https:\/\/arhiva.nacional.hr\/clanak\/76462\/ljudi-koje-je-90-ih-trebalo-ukloniti<\/a><\/p>\n

Golek, Kristina, Petkovi\u0107, Kre\u0161imir. 2017. Kazna u Krajini. Prilog istra\u017eivanju povijesti politi\u010dke mo\u0107i i ka\u017enjavanja na podru\u010dju Hrvatske 1991. \u2013 1995 [Punishment in Krajina. A Contribution to the Study of the History of Political Power and Punishment in Croatia, 1991\u20131995], \u010casopis za suvremenu povijest<\/em>, 49 (1): 29-57.<\/p>\n

Hayek, Friedrich August von. 1988. The Fatal Conceit<\/em> (ur. W. W. Bartley III). London: Routledge.<\/p>\n

Hesse, Herman. 2015. \u201c<\/em>Eine Bresche ins Dunkel der Zeit schlagen!\u201c \u2013 Die Briefe 1916-1923<\/em> [To open a breach in the darkness of the times: Letters 1916-1923] (3rd from 9 volumes, ed. Volker Michels). Frankfurt a\/M: Suhrkamp.<\/p>\n

Hrvatske Obrambene Snage. 2018. \u201cHOS: Vinkovci 1991 ubijeni pripadnici HOS a atentat na dr Paragu\u201d [HOS: Vinkovci 1991 \u2013 HOS Members Killed and the Assassination Attempt on Dr Paraga], 3rd March. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ypx7a9XkAA<\/a><\/p>\n

Index.hr<\/em>, 2015. \u201cA-HSP kazneno prijavio \u0110api\u0107a zbog ubojstva, \u0110api\u0107: Na takve se gluposti krstim lijevom i desnom\u201d [A-HSP Files Criminal Charges Against \u0110api\u0107 for Murder; \u0110api\u0107: \u2018I Cross Myself at Such Nonsense with Both Left and Right Hand\u2019], 27th January, https:\/\/www.index.hr\/vijesti\/clanak\/A-HSP-kazneno-prijavio-Dapica-zbog-ubojstva-Dapic-Na-takve-se-gluposti-krstim-lijevom-i-desnom\/797719.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

Index.hr<\/em>. 2025. \u201cBla\u017e Kraljevi\u0107 17. rujna 1947. - 9. kolovoza 1992.\u201d, 17th September. https:\/\/www.index.hr\/vijesti\/clanak\/tko-je-ubio-blaza-kraljevica\/2589149.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonji\u0107, Tomislav. 2013. Sporovi i rascjepi u obnovljenoj Hrvatskoj stranci prava 1990. \u2013 1992. (pogled iz provincije) [Disputes and Schisms in the Re-established Croatian Party of Rights, 1990\u20131992 (A View from the Provinces)] In: Jelaska Marijan, Zdravka, Matijevi\u0107, Zlatko (eds.), Prava\u0161tvo u hrvatskome politi\u010dkom i<\/em> kulturnom \u017eivotu u su\u010delju dvaju stolje\u0107a [The Party of Rights in Croatian Political and Cultural Life at the Turn of the Centuries] <\/em>(pp. 541\u2013563). Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest.<\/p>\n

Kasapovi\u0107, Mirjana. 2001. Demokratska konsolidacija i izborna politika u Hrvatskoj 1990.-2000. [Democratic Consolidation and Electoral Politics in Croatia, 1990\u20132000]. In: Mirjana Kasapovi\u0107 (ed.), Hrvatska politika 1990.-2000.: izbori, stranke i parlament u Hrvatskoj [Croatian Politics 1990\u20132000: Elections, Parties and Parliament in Croatia] (pp. 15\u201340). Zagreb: Fakultet politi\u010dkih znanosti.<\/p>\n

Kasapovi\u0107, Mirjana. 2020. Bosna i Hercegovina 1990. \u2013 2020.: rat, dr\u017eava i demokracija<\/em>. Zagreb: \u0160kolska knjiga. [Eng. ed. Bosnia and Herzegovina 1990\u20132000: War, State and Democracy. Zagreb. \u0160kolska knjiga. 2024.]<\/p>\n

Lalovi\u0107, Dragutin, 2000. O totalitarnim zna\u010dajkama hrvatske dr\u017eave (1990.-1999.) [On the Totalitarian Characteristics of the Croatian State (1990\u20131999)], Politi\u010dka misao<\/em>, 37 (1): 188-204.<\/p>\n

Lu\u010di\u0107, Ivica, n.d. \u017divotopis. [Curriculum Vitae]\u00a0 https:\/\/www.sabor.hr\/sites\/default\/files\/uploads\/%C5%BDivotopisi\/PV_HRT\/Ivica_Lucic.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Lu\u010di\u0107, Ivica. 2016. Politi\u010dko-sigurnosne okolnosti pogibije Ante Parad\u017eika [The Political and Security Circumstances of the Death of Ante Parad\u017eik], \u010casopis za suvremenu povijest<\/em>, 48 (2): 355-388.<\/p>\n

Lu\u010di\u0107, Ivo. 2017. Vukovarska bolnica: svjetionik u povijesnim olujama hrvatskoga istoka<\/em>\/Vukovar Hospital: a Lighthouse in Historic Storms of Eastern Croatia<\/em>. Zagreb: Hrvatska lije\u010dni\u010dka komora i Hrvatski institut za povijest.<\/p>\n

Petkovi\u0107, Kre\u0161imir. 2013. Dr\u017eava i zlo\u010din: politika i nasilje u Hrvatskoj 1990-2012. [State and Crime: Politics and Violence in Croatia 1990\u20132012]<\/em>. Zagreb: Disput.<\/p>\n

Petkovi\u0107, Kre\u0161imir. 2017. Discourses on Violence and Punishment: Probing the Extremes<\/em>. Lanham, MA: Lexington.<\/p>\n

Petkovi\u0107, Kre\u0161imir. 2023. Nacionalizam, federalizam i suverenizam: od protubirokratske do protubriselske revolucije? [Nationalism, Federalism, and Sovereigntism: From the Anti-Bureaucratic to the Anti-Brussels Revolution?] Politi\u010dka misao<\/em>, 60 (1): 29-50.<\/p>\n

Petkovi\u0107, Kre\u0161imir. 2026. A Brief History of Sovereign and Disciplinary Power in Croatia. In:\u00a0Judith Pallot (ed.), Continuity and Change in the Prison Systems of the Former Soviet Union, East Central Europe, and the Balkans<\/em>. London: Palgrave Macmillan (a chapter accepted for publication in an edited volume).<\/p>\n

Poskok.info<\/em>. 2024. \u201cUSTA\u0160A KOJEG KOMUNISTI VOLE: 11.688 dana UDBA od Kraljevi\u0107a poku\u0161ava na\u010diniti nacionalni mit a njegovu smrt prikazati misterijom\u201d [THE USTA\u0160A LOVED BY COMMUNISTS: For 11,688 Days the UDBA Has Been Trying to Turn Kraljevi\u0107 into a National Myth and Present His Death as a Mystery] 9th November. https:\/\/poskok.info\/ustasa-kojeg-komunisti-vole-11-688-dana-udba-od-kraljevica-pokusava-naciniti-nacionalni-mit-a-njegovu-smrt-prikazati-misterijom\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The President<\/em>, 2020. Documentary series in 10 episodes by Gordan Mali\u0107 and Miljenko Manjkas [The President] https:\/\/tvprofil.com\/serije\/8824588\/predsjednik<\/a><\/p>\n

Sedlo, Tomo. 2015. \u201cDr\u017eavno odvjetni\u0161tvo dvadeset i tri godine \u0161titi ubojice hrvatskih branitelja\u201d [The State Attorney\u2019s Office Has Been Protecting the Killers of Croatian Veterans for Twenty-Three Years]. Hrvatsko pravo: prve online strana\u010dke novine u Republici Hrvatske<\/em>, 19 March. http:\/\/www.hsp1861.hr\/vijesti2015-3\/19032015-1.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sprinzak, Ehud. 1999. Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination<\/em>. New York: The Free Press.<\/p>\n

Williams, John. 2007. Butcher\u2019s Crossing<\/em>. Zagreb: Fraktura. [Eng. ed. The Impostor: A True Story. New York: Knopf. 2018.]<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Criticizing, in 2026, a text from 2016 that deals with a book from 2013 does not exactly seem attuned to the accelerated rhythm of global communications, but rather to the prose of Karl May, where one sometimes waits a very long time to return a blow. Fortunately, however, this is not a matter of any kind of vengeful scalping. The polemical opportunity lies in the fact that I am finally completing the book Republic of Punishment: Politics of Violence and Punishment in Croatia 2013\u20132025 [Republika kazne: politika nasilja i ka\u017enjavanja u Hrvatskoj 2013-2025],<\/em> which continues where State and Crime: Politics and Violence in Croatia 1990\u20132012<\/em> left off, and this text\u2014adapted for the Annals of the HPD blog\u2014is one of the parts of that study. I might just as well have entitled it \u201cA Letter to the Professor,\u201d since Ivo Lu\u010di\u0107 is also a professor\u2014moreover, we received the state science award in the same year for our respective books (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2017; Petkovi\u0107, 2017): in December 2018, they were presented to us on behalf of the state by the Speaker of Parliament, popularly known as \u201cNjonjo\u201d [Noodle]. Given the subject matter, however, I opted stylistically for a military rather than an academic rank, entitling the note to the brigadier in a Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2013like fashion\u2014although, fortunately, the brigadier does have someone to write to, unlike the writer\u2019s colonel, who knows that hope cannot be eaten, but that it is the only thing one can live on. As for ranks, I opted for the more sonorous brigadier (HV), although the biography also mentions the rank of major general (HVO), along with Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s other qualities such as his \u201cconsistent commitment to dialogue, respect for and advancement of human rights, and the development of a democratic society and solidarity\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, n.d.). I therefore trust that he will appreciate this contribution to the public debate on the legacy of the 1990s with special accent on human rights and democracy.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Reasonable academic fact-checking does not, for the purposes of what one seeks to establish with sufficient probability, always need to reach the standards of high-quality and impartial investigative journalism, conscientious archival work, or an independent criminal investigation\u2014although, ideally, at the level of a dense description of the subject matter, and with appropriate methodological caveats, one should be familiar with the events one writes about, so that the logic of the broader picture the researcher seeks to demonstrate is not imposed, by force or negligence, upon the diversity and disorder of contingent and sometimes chaotic social life.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cIn an extensive Wikipedia article on Bla\u017e Kraljevi\u0107, his demise is described together \u2018with eight HOS adjutants,\u2019 as well as the cynicism of state policy that posthumously awarded him a decoration for wartime merits\u201d (Petkovi\u0107, 2013: 98). I do not know what is problematic here within a discourse analysis that operates with sources ranging from Kurosawa and Kantorowicz to Ve\u010dernji list and Wikipedia\u2014except perhaps the term \u201cdemise\u201d [pogibija], which, with its fateful epic tone, conceals more banal political operations of power.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> The \u201cdemise\u201d of Bla\u017e Kraljevi\u0107\u2014yet another native of Ljubu\u0161ki, born in Lisice and killed in Grabovica, both near Ljubu\u0161ki\u2014is politically equivalent to the killing of Ante Parad\u017eik roughly a year later, in the context of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 (for the narrower context relating to the HSP and HOS, see the study by \u201cyet another political scientist\u201d: Veselinovi\u0107 2019: 147\u2013169, 178\u2013185; for an overview and interpretation of the broader context, concerning the war and its impact on society and the political community, see (another political scientist): Kasapovi\u0107, 2020; on HOS and Croatian policy in BiH: ibid<\/em>.; 35, 54\u201364, esp. note 11, p. 56). The subject of legends and divergent interpretations that speak to contemporary political identity, as well as of differing evaluations and responses to fundamental ethical and epistemological dilemmas regarding the relationship between subject and community, and political sacrifice, structure, fate, and agency\u2014especially in war\u2014nevertheless leaves the factual substrate essentially uncontested, both on Wikipedia pages and in the history of what actually happened, in facts in the basic Rankean historical sense of \u201chow it really\/actually was\u201d (wie es eigentlich\/tats\u00e4chlich gewesen ist<\/em>). Bla\u017e Nikola \u201cEro\u201d Kraljevi\u0107, commander of HOS and also a general of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, decorated in December 1996 by President Franjo Tu\u0111man with the Order of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan with gilded interlace, on the proposal of Defense Minister Gojko \u0160u\u0161ak, was\u2014together with his entourage\u2014by no means epically but quite mundanely riddled with bullets by members of \u201cTuta\u2019s Penal Battalion\u201d [Tutina ka\u017enjeni\u010dka bojna]: Kraljevi\u0107 and eight HOS members were \u201ckilled in an ambush by HVO troops led by Mladen Naletilic, allegedly acting on orders from Zagreb\u201d (Bjelakovi\u0107 and Strazzari, 1999: 84). It would nevertheless be an exaggeration to claim that he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time\u2014except perhaps in the very general sense that applies to all who are killed. See over 200 comments with vivid interpretative twists and political coalitions around Bla\u017e\u2019s specter beneath a commemorative article (Index.hr<\/em>, 2025), as well as a more freely written critique of the perspective offered by the text\u2019s discursive frameworks (Poskok.info<\/em>, 2024).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> The conference was held in 2011. Unfortunately, I was not present, since the history and politics of the Party of Rights are not a narrower focus of my scholarly research interests. Jonji\u0107 writes: \u201cIn August 1990, Dobroslav Paraga finally arrived in Croatia from the USA, which marked, one might say, the beginning of a period of a series of assassination attempts against him: hardly a week would pass without news appearing in the press of a press conference or a party statement announcing that the party president had once again been the victim of an assassination attempt from which, by God\u2019s miracle, he had emerged unharmed. Public accusations against Tu\u0111man followed, with the state leadership being accused of betrayal\u201d (Jonji\u0107, 2013: 550). Jonji\u0107 is witty, and the sheer frequency leaves room for skepticism; however, humor\u2014especially in the context of the biased narrative of politicians in conflict with Paraga and Parad\u017eik (and the secretary Kre\u0161imir Paveli\u0107), as the text itself attests (ibid<\/em>., esp. 555\u2013563)\u2014still does not amount to a refutation of various more or less drastic claims about assassination attempts, let alone a historiographical or political-science study. Nor does it change anything about the essence of a fatal political reckoning, expressed in the language of Sprinzak\u2019s study of intra-ethnic political violence in the formation of Israel as \u201cbrother against brother\u201d (Sprinzak, 1999). For at least one possible event interpreted as an assassination attempt\u2014in which three people were killed and eleven HOS members wounded in an explosion at the HOS headquarters in Vinkovci in 1992\u2014see Hrvatske obrambene snage, 2018; Sedlo, 2015. Regarding the criminal complaint against \u0110api\u0107 in 2015, \u0110api\u0107 stated that he had \u201ccrossed himself with both left and right hand\u201d and, unlike Lu\u010di\u0107, who wrote an entire article on the topic, concluded: \u201cI have no comment, because every word would only desecrate the memory of Ante Parad\u017eik, a Croatian knight and hero\u201d (Index.hr<\/em>, 2015).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Given that my academic work has also dealt with revolutions (Petkovi\u0107, 2023), it is academically proper to note that Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s brother Milan was linked in the media to the introduction of \u201cinternet revolution\u201d in Croatia (Filipovi\u0107, 2015).<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ironically, what he wrote about his nebulous opponents also applies to Lu\u010di\u0107 himself: \u201csystematically ignoring facts and reality \u2026 Such people seek simple (and to them acceptable) answers to complex social questions\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 383).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> See Petkovi\u0107, 2013: 41\u201388. Prediction within a theoretical framework and parallels with other comparable aggregate cases do not in themselves constitute factual proof of a particular killing, but they do shift the burden of proof and open up strong suspicions, especially given its unusual circumstances and its wartime and political context.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> See Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s narrative of the three \u201ccheckpoints\u201d\u2014Dugo Selo, Sesvetska Sela, Sesvete (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 363\u2013368).<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> I recommend to Lu\u010di\u0107 a neo-Nietzschean epistemological classic from the 1970s on this issue, devoted to truth and juridical forms, which addresses the manner of \u201cproducing truth, establishing juridical truth\u201d [produire la v\u00e9rit\u00e9, d'\u00e9tablir la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 juridique<\/em>] by linking knowledge to the struggle for power: \u201cPolitical power is not absent from knowledge; it is interwoven with it\u201d [Le pouvoir politique n'est pas absent du savoir, il est tram\u00e9 avec savoir<\/em>]\u201c (Foucault, 1990: 12, 28). Leaving aside Oedipus, the psychoanalytic problem, and general epistemological questions concerning the relationship between knowledge and power, in this case and with regard to Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s political interpretative method, this remains a valid maxim.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> The President<\/em>, HTV 1<\/em>, 27. sije\u010dnja 2020. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rp1uTgeQwQI<\/a>, 24:00-28:10.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> On assessments of the 1990s regime from the contemporaneous perspective of normative political theory and comparative politics in Croatia, with regard to distinctions between liberal democracy and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, see Lalovi\u0107, 2000: 202; with editorial note, 188; Kasapovi\u0107, 2001: 17\u201324.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> See Tu\u0111man\u2019s diary narrative of the event to which Lu\u010di\u0107 refers (Tu\u0111man, 1986 in: Despot, 2011). It is not my intention to enter into a debate about the facts of that event, but rather to point out Lu\u010di\u0107\u2019s inconsistency in accepting official narratives\u2014indeed, in that case his interpretation seems to me more convincing, unlike the one concerning Parad\u017eik. On moments of the exercise of sovereign power throughout history, from the Habsburgs through the Yugoslav royal regime, the Usta\u0161a and communist regimes, to independent Croatia, through a \u201cSchmitt\u2013Foucault\u201d interpretative lens, I discuss in: Petkovi\u0107, 2026. In parallel with Croatia (Petkovi\u0107, 2013), the same interpretative framework is illustratively applied to the insurgent Serb regime; see Golek and Petkovi\u0107, 2017.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> In his funeral speech for Parad\u017eik, Budi\u0161a stated: \u201cwith you, not a single lie must be buried in the grave, nor any concealed truth\u201d (Lu\u010di\u0107, 2016: 370). If one may paraphrase Cercas\u2014although, unlike him, I believe it is more likely that reality saves and fiction kills (the colonel would agree that hope is not fiction; about the brigadier, I am not sure): although great art undoubtedly does this, the task of science is to bring us closer to truth, \u201cto show us the complexity of life, with the aim that we ourselves become more complex; to analyze how evil functions so that we might avoid it, perhaps even how good functions so that we might learn it,\u201d and the scholar, after all, does not have \u201cpermission to lie\u201d (Cercas, 2017: 16, 18). Cercas\u2019s book about the syndicalist Enric Marco is, in my view, one of the finest books on historical memory and the industry surrounding it: through the theme of a pathological liar who for a long time successfully deceived the public into believing he had been a survivor of Flossenb\u00fcrg, he speaks about the general conditions of political lying within a nation that bears many interesting similarities to Croatia, with one crucial difference\u2014the fascist side won the war against the communists, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> I note, lest it be misunderstood\u2014as in State and Crime <\/em>(Petkovi\u0107, 2013: 73\u201374)\u2014that the interpretation of the 1990s is not a normative debate of hindsight or facile political moralizing about the past in the service of present conflicts, nor about the justification of particular wartime policies in which many people on different sides and in different circumstances lost their lives. Whatever republic one constructs today and seeks to defend normatively is itself an expression of possibility, of a peacetime context, of a moment that can hardly escape political logic, which, as Hobbes and Schmitt knew, is the logic of the political. The Schmittian\u2014and in my case (in contrast to Hobbes) Foucauldian because of types of power and technologies of governance, hence Foucauldian\u2013Schmittian\u2014matrix is analytical, not normative. People embedded in collectives struggle for power, and there are connections between war and politics, with politics being at least as much a continuation of war (Foucault) as war is a continuation of politics (Clausewitz). This is therefore not a justification of various failed ideological conceptions in a seismically unstable field of civilizational, national, and imperial conflicts, nor even of a utilitarian policy of a national collective that, in self-preservation, sacrifices individuals who endanger the whole\u2014which, as in the logic of lapot, a ritual killing of the old and weak members of the group, must be preserved beyond the peacetime vulgate of human rights (cf. Hayek, 1988: 152). It is a matter of truth in the most basic sense, in which statements must not falsify or circumvent facts that do not suit them.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Hesse\u2019s politically lucid remark in a letter to Rolland was that the application of love to political matters is doomed to failure (Hesse, 2015: 105).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another political scientist, Kre\u0161imir Petkovi\u0107, concludes: \u201cOn the other hand, with regard to the crackdown on the far right and the parallel army it had established, several failed assassination attempts on the president of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), Dobroslav Paraga, are worth highlighting, as well as successful liquidations of leaders of the radical right: the founder of the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS), Ante Parad\u017eik, was killed at the entrance to the capital [\u2026]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analihpd.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}