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Epilogue: Ordinary People between the National Community and Everyday Terror

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2021

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Summary

“Revolutionary times demand revolutionary methods,” Aleksandar Seitz wrote in Put do hrvatskog sozializma (The road to Croatian socialism). In the Ustasha state, he reminded his readers, it was not enough to seek “social justice” or to think “socially”: the new worker in the Ustasha state had to be socialist too in thinking and actions. Seitz stressed that Croatian socialism was distinguished from both “Anglo-American and Jewish” capitalism and “scientific” Marxism, having been formulated specifically for the economic and social requirements of the national community; as such, it was an expression of the “national soul.” What this meant in practice, he explained, was social solidarity and reciprocity: everyone who did his or her duty to society would receive benefits from it in return. An attitude of duty, discipline, and order, meanwhile, would be forged through the construction of the “ethical person of work,” a figure embodied not just in the factory worker but also the peasant, office worker, intellectual, and soldier. The construction of a socialist state would, Seitz envisaged, lead to the withering away of all class divisions and social barriers; no longer would economic and social life be characterized by conflicts between workers and bosses; instead, society would be divided between the dutiful and disciplined new national class of worker and those anational “social parasites” who idled, cheated, and lived offthe toil of the national community. Furthermore, in the new socialist society the Ustasha state was bringing into being, private property would no longer belong exclusively to the individual; instead, the principles of Croatian socialism dictated that private property would be classified as a public good for which the private owner was responsible to the people, state, and, ultimately, the national community. As such, should owners not dispense their duties properly, their property and assets could be taken away from them. In short, the demands of the individual had to be harmonized with those of the “national community [narodna zajednica].” If Croatian socialism envisaged a revolution in social and economic relations, it also assumed a transformation in collective ideology, embodied in the concept of the national community.

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The Utopia of Terror
Life and Death in Wartime Croatia
, pp. 284 - 299
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

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