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For the young in Croatia, the European Union is not some abstract imposition but a potential source of support for the rule of law, democracy and secular modernity. They cannot understand why anyone would want to leave it. But for the elite it’s a source of funding, which pours into projects that often seem to benefit their own electoral base. In a parallel universe, the EU might have tried to build up democracy in Croatia before allowing it to join. Jean Claude Juncker is now busy trying to get Serbia and Albania into the EU, after which corruption and organised crime will be as scandalously neglected as they are in Croatia. In a bar thick with cigarette smoke, I sit with young journalists and bloggers watching social democracy getting eviscerated in the Italian election results. A bunch of xenophobes and political fraudsters are high-fiving each other. Where Italy is heading, Croatia has already arrived.
We drive through a steep valley, blanketed in snow, to Kumrovec — birthplace of Josip Tito. It’s a well-preserved peasant village from the early 20th century — thatched roofs, basket-weaving sheds, blue tits pecking at corn cobs hanging from the eaves of cottages. Tito’s statue is reassuringly life-sized and, like the country he once ruled, un-Soviet. Last year the Croatian government erased Tito’s name from a square in Zagreb — and all commemoration of the country’s socialist past is heavily disputed. Yet some among the young dream that, if Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro eventually join the EU, they can reform a kind of virtual Yugoslavia, just as an economically united Ireland has evolved over time. The memorial in Tito’s cottage is quite restrained: his binoculars and uniform are in a glass case alongside a photograph of his funeral, showing Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and Prince Philip among the dignitaries. It was from here, amid the wine-presses, that a peasant’s son took it on himself to liberate Yugoslavia from fascism. ‘Find me the man who is killing the most Nazis,’ Churchill told the MI6 spy Fitzroy Maclean — and it was Tito. My host invites me to write something in the condolence book — but it is so cold that the pen doesn’t work. What I would have written is: ‘Thank you, comrade, for your heroism during the anti-fascist war, but…’
Paul Mason and Andrew Adonis debate Labour’s Brexit on The Spectator Podcast.
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