@article{85662bbb-09fb-49ad-b22b-980488f183f7,
author = {Wiesław Walkiewicz},
title = {Croats’ Troubled Search for Identity},
journal = {Central European and Balkan Studies},
volume = {2017},
number = {Tom XXVI},
year = {2018},
issn = {2451-4993},
pages = {29-42},keywords = {Croatia; Croatian identity; history of Croatia; collective memory; symbols of Croatian history},
abstract = {In the article, which is a continuation of the research emphasis, is built on Croatian identity without reference to (self)identification coincidences, splits, sometimes historical events, in way of ethnic communities that create a united continent. The leitmotif of the discourse is “screening” categories of defining Europe for showing different possibilities of perceiving it. The discourse summoned title translates into a continuity of the occurrence of national and trans-European matters and their mutual conditions and implications. Against this background and also in the context of articulating constituent features of European citizenship, the author conducts an analysis of central-east identity, in the same measure regional as exceeding local levels of identification.

	In the described social study, the analysis is based on the example of the “Balkan flank”, but more precisely on the casus of Croatian historical experiences and their projections relative to the position of the nation among others that are located around. An important place in the considerations is not so much taken by the matter of the difficult past (NDH, diverse attitude to the Tito regime, not shunning from terrorist actions) but a mythologized reflection on it and role of elites in the creation of a contemporary policy and formation of collective perception. The central accent of the study is the boundaries and memory as the possibility mental imprinting of this borderland at South Slavic reality–compensational myth creation and revision of the past. Reflections finds in inquirations root matters, but also need of building more positive external relations, with taking universal threats related to integrational processes in consideration. An important place in the discussion are the latest efforts of the elites over the Sava in defining the Croatian identity in terms of political correctness templates without actual constitutive features that are not necessarily well received in countries shut off from the authoritarian tradition.},
doi = {10.4467/2543733XSSB.17.021.8319},
url = {https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/ssb/article/croats-troubled-search-for-identity}
}