CULTURE AND POLITICS

Currently one of the most renowned Croatian commentators, Boris Buden, looks behind the real and imaginary differences between cultural trends in Croatia and Serbia, in the November 1997, issue of the revamped Zagreb magazine 'Arkzin' .

Ustshis and culture ? What is the relation between these two phenomena ? Do they mutually exclude each other, as is believed by the majority of democratically oriented Croatian citizens, or do they, by some miracle, mutually support each other ? The answer to this question is not simple at all and could start from very curious thesis: In contemporary Croatia, there is no Ustashi ideology without culture, but there is also no culture without Ustashi ideology ! How come ?

The whole thing evolves around the phenomenon of contemporary folk music (?narodnjaci?). As it is known, with the arrival to power of Croatian state formers, ?Narodnjaci? have been exiled from the Croatian media and the Croatian culture in general. This is not only because of their supposed low cultural quality. The second, and more important reason for the exile of 'narodnjaci' from the Croatian scene was the belief that they belong exclusively to the Serbian (un)cultural identity. Serbs, and not Croats worship ?narodnjaci?, which is another proof of their primitivism, their culturally less worthy national character, their Balkanism, etc. First then, where ?narodnjaci? exiled from Croatian culture, which was rationalized as a high cultural act, but then, as the continuation of the same, political and military means, were exiled also the concrete, as identified in the ethnic sense, Croatian Serbs. Which is quite logical and consequential, since here the politics was most often nothing else but the continuation of culture by other means.

So, 'narodnjaci' are coming back, and lets say it immediately, that is good news. Good in the cultural sense, because the political one is of secondary interest here. It is hard to say what is more important among the numerous positive moments that are brought to us again by 'narodnjaci': is that cultural vitality, dynamics, inventiveness of the expression, spontaneous erotization of the ideologically sub limited cultural and living surroundings, cultural anti-elitism, democratic elements, libertarian passion which exits with ?narodnjaci? on the cultural scene - from the underground, from the obscure ghetto of the fringe where they were exiled by the ideology of pure cultural and ethnic identities. It is a matter of culturally deprived, it is a matter of a real small cultural revolution.

The Balkan inn, liberated from the pressure of the elitistic hypocrisy and self-pitying culture-pessimistic outrage is shown here in its best light - as positively charged metaphor which suggests emancipation, and even in the midst of Balkans, the female one.'

Against this background of lively cultural identification which fully establishes the continuity with the past and a connection with the future, come as pitiful and base ideologically motivated project of forceful division of national cultures.'

But what about our Ustshis ? The journalist of /state- favouring/ 'Slobodna Dalmacija', who wrote on the subject, sees as the only guarantee that newly reborn love for ?narodnjaci? will not take us back into new Yugoslavia , the open favoring of Ustashis of these Crots who are ?falling into exctasy as soon as they hear Dragana or Brena?. They are sincerely in love with (Serbian) 'narodnjaci', but this is no pro-Serbian stance, since they are convinced Ustshis, meaning the most exposed haters and stoppers of Serbdom. Ustashi stance has been liberated here of any political meaningful content. It is a pure label, brand on a cultural product enabling its distribution, in the rank of veterinarian control, some form of an ideological customs declaration which comes along with a cultural import. Everything is ok, consume freely, no danger of contamination.

The Ustshi stance is here their mask turned towards the Other, meaning the Serbs, in difference to which Croatian cultural and national identity has yet to be constituted as a specific entity. That is why it is not strange that Croats do not see their Ustshi stance, because it does not exist for them, as it does not exist by itself. It is even less strange that Serbs in every Croatdom see an Ustshi stance, because Ustshi stance is nothing else but Croatdom directed towards the Serbs, Croatdom for Serbs, a mask which shows the threatening convoluted death wish of the Croatian national culture. But, behind the mask there is no real, true face of the Croatian culture, since the Ustashi stance is no unlucky and bumbling deviation of the of the pure political wish for national independence. Behind the mask - there is nothing !, there is nothing substantial. National identity is nothing essential, but historically derived and historically passing symbolical construction, whose authorship belongs to the national cultural and political elite. The representatives of this elite are those that need a political framework - national state - so that they could be able to establish their intellectual identity. Without Croatdom, they are nothing. But even that Croatdom is nothing without a radical and complete separation from Serbdom. Ustashi stance is an ultimate tool of this separation and in that, a form in which the Serbs see a Croatian message, a specific Croatian medium of communication with the Serbs.

The Ustshi stance is a message which the Croatian national culture sent to the Serbs so that, in a violent political separation it would succeed in establishing its particular identity. Under the Ustshi stigma, this message is rebounding - as the message of a living cultural unity. The Ustashi political mask of Croatian cultural urge of death brought back the Eros which is connecting and unifying.

This is a big difference to the stance represented by the elite national culture in Croatia and its most renowned institutional and individual representatives, the stance that the Serbian culture is in itself foreign and strange to us ! On the contrary, the fact that ?nothing Serb is strange to us? is a spontaneous discovery of the devalued, marginalized and excluded mass popular culture. Today in Croatia, it is the only place of reproduction of those basic humanistic principles on which main cultural, political and civilisational values of the modern world are based. Even when it is functioning under the Ustshi label.

'Serbs are also people' is uncovered to us by the culture of the folk music. But we should be even more grateful to it due to the epochal discovery that so are the Croats. Only in that discovery is that positive charge which definitely turns us towards the future, life and the world, and not towards the national culture of death.