Franjo Tudjman

Reuters

AT THE end of Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina”, her lover, Count Vronsky, goes off to fight for the Serbs, perpetuating a romanticised view of Balkan nationalism long held by many outsiders. In 1941, when the Germans occupied the Balkans, they were sufficiently moved by myths of Croatia's 1,000-year struggle for independence to allow it self-government, albeit by fascists. The Croats promptly set about exterminating or deporting the minority Serbs in their new state with a barbarism that shocked even the war-hardened German troops.

Franjo Tudjman, although a Croat, declined to collaborate with the Germans. At 19 he joined the communists, the most successful guerrilla force of the second world war. When Tito, the communist leader, became ruler of the six-nation Yugoslavia after the war, he made Mr Tudjman the army's youngest general. But the general did not much care for his fellow officers, most of them Serbs, or for the communists' line that their ideology would protect the unity of Yugoslavia.

After leaving the army he published a number of books about Croat nationalism. He had come to the view that wartime Croatia was not simply a quisling state, but “an expression of the historical aspirations of the Croatian people”. It had been unfairly depicted, he said: fewer than 60,000 Serbs and others died in Croatia's main death camp, Jasenovac, not the 500,000 claimed. His revisions were challenged by independent historians, but they helped Mr Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union to win the election of 1990. In June 1991, amid the general falling apart of Yugoslavia, Croatia declared itself independent. It adopted the flag of the wartime state, which for the 600,000 Serbs in Croatia (and many Croats) was like restoring the swastika.

Skirmishes between the two communities led to full scale battles. Serbia joined in, thousands died, and about a quarter of Croatia was taken over by the Serbs. There was to be much more fighting in the years to come, both in Croatia and elsewhere. But this was how the ever-spreading Balkans war of the 1990s was fuelled by Mr Tudjman, later luring in the well-intentioned Vronskys of the outside world.

The white exterior

There is not a lot of trustworthy information about Franjo Tudjman's early life, which was probably that of a poor village lad. His writings, and articles about him in crony newspapers, provide only a mirror that flattered him. He liked to dress up in a white uniform ornamented with gold braid and medals he had awarded himself. He sought to copy the style of his old boss Tito, living in Tito's former house in Zagreb and his holiday home on Brioni island. He sought to gain acceptance as a scholar. A dissertation submitted to Zagreb University for a doctorate was rejected, but in reference books he claimed one anyway.

In his public actions he was inconsistent. Despite his attacks on Serbs, verbally and physically, he told his principal enemy, Slobodan Milosevic, that he had no quarrel with them. The people he really disliked, he said, were Muslims, whom he saw as a threat to Europe. He coveted their state, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and had planned to seize a slice of it once the United Nations' peacekeepers pulled out. On the other hand, he said that Bosnians needed sympathy: they were really Christians who had had to convert to Islam when they were ruled by the Ottoman empire. He professed no religion, but nevertheless had the strong support of the Roman Catholic church.

There was, therefore, in Mr Tudjman, in one human being, a composite of nearly everything that has made the Balkans one of the world's least endearing places: the clash of Christianity in various forms with Islam; the legacy of oppression from former masters; the new scent of freedom and the accompanying greed for your neighbour's territory. Released from the grip of Tito, the Balkans resumed their wayward ways. People are again recalling Bismarck's deathbed gasp, “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” The Germans, of all people, may have been damned silly in backing Mr Tudjman. It was German arms, albeit smuggled ones, that kept Croatia fighting in 1991, and Germany that pushed prematurely for recognition of Croatian independence. But all of Europe, the United States, and, through the United Nations, much of the rest of the world have become deeply and messily involved in the affairs of Croatia and its neighbours.

His country gave Mr Tudjman a state funeral this week, and then turned quickly to a pressing temporal matter, the parliamentary general election on January 3rd. This will be followed by an election to find Mr Tudjman's successor. Our correspondent in Zagreb notes that the liberal opposition would like to shift to parliament some of the extensive powers at present afforded to the presidency, which, in Mr Tudjman's hands, have been at the root of the worst abuses of power in recent years. It does not sound the sort of valedictory that normally attends the obsequies of a head of state. But this is the Balkans.