Vitaly Portnikov. Winners: Vlado Gotovac

Winners: Vlado Gotovac
Vitaly Portnikov

Publication date: December 13, 2000

A few days after the death of the Croatian politician, philosopher and writer Vlado Gotovac (1930 - 12/7/2000), Croatian President Stipe Mesic awarded him one of the highest orders of the republic. During his lifetime, Vlado Gotovac had few differences - he received mostly only sentences, beatings and ostracism from the Croatian political elite, who did not forgive him for his uncompromising rejection of authoritarianism. However, the higher in society was the moral authority of Gotovac, this Croatian Sakharov, who once wrote: “The only sin that we can discover in ourselves is Croatia . ”

Saying goodbye to Vlado Gotovac, the Croatian press called him the founder of European Croatia. Indeed, the fact that Croatian society has comparatively painlessly parted ways with the authoritarianism that existed during the era of the country’s first president, Franjo Tudjman, is a considerable merit of Gotovac. Born into the family of a gendarme, Gotovac rebelled against the gendarme in his own nation - and even in socialist times. His first encounter with the authorities occurred in the gymnasium, from where he was expelled in 1947 for criticizing the leadership of the local Komsomol. Penniless, he came from his native Dalmatian town to Zagreb, where he graduated from high school and entered the university. Here Gotovac met one of the largest Croatian lyricists of the second half of the century - Tin Ujevic, under whose influence Gotovac himself began to write his philosophical intellectual poems. In 1955 he began working for Radio Zagreb , one after another his poetry collections were published... But Gotovac’s time truly came in the late 60s, when the leaders of Croatia Miko Tripalo and Savko Dabcevic-Kucar, at their own peril and risk, began liberalization in one single republic of the SFRY. Gotovac publishes a series of essays on the absurdity of political censorship. “A person is most destroyed when he is destroyed from within ,” he announces his verdict on authoritarianism.

It is hardly surprising that after Josip Broz Tito decides to put an end to Croatian liberalization and remove the reformers from leading the republic, Vlado Gotovac becomes one of the victims of the demonstrative reprisal against the “nationalists”: he is sentenced to six years in prison. In 1982, Gotovac was arrested again: he was imprisoned for another two years. In the prisons of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the philosopher contracted hepatitis: he struggled with the consequences of this serious illness until the last day of his life.

In the new Croatia, Vlado Gotovac becomes a politician, one of the founders of the Social Liberal Party (HSLS). He turns out to be the most consistent opponent of Franjo Tudjman's regime, criticizing the country's president for authoritarianism, corruption of the elite, and imposing false values ​​on Croatian society. He does not agree with the Bosnian policy of Tudjman, who, as is known, signed a secret agreement with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Croatia - yes, but not just any kind” - this is the title of one of Gotovac’s most famous speeches. The situation in Croatia was so tense at that time that during the 1996 presidential election campaign - and Gotovac spoke against Tudjman - a soldier of the presidential guard beat up an elderly philosopher! But perhaps an even stronger blow for Gotovac was the split in the party he created: Drazen Budisa, once a popular student leader during Croatian liberalization, sought a compromise with the authorities, while Gotovac rejected such a compromise. As a result, he had to leave the HSLS and create a new party - the Liberal Party of Croatia. From that time on, one might say, his active political activity ceased. Gotovac became, as they like to say in Russia, a marginal politician - despite the fact that his party joined the coalition of opposition organizations that defeated Tudjman's party, first in the parliamentary and then in the presidential elections. Gotovac did not take up any positions in the new government; he was already seriously ill and spent most of his time in his apartment in Rome, where he died. “My struggle has continued for 55 years to help individuals and society become free ,” he said in his last, November, interview with the Croatian weekly Globus .

Today, the Croatian political elite seeks to pay tribute to the philosopher and poet who never became part of it, but rather stood next to it (or perhaps above it?). Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who awarded Gotovac the order, claims that Gotovac was not only a writer, but also a politician, and above all, a humanist. “It’s hard to imagine Croatia without Vlado Gotovac’s speeches in parliament, without what he wrote about Croatian politics and culture ,” Mesic told the Zagreb newspaper Vijesnik .

Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Račan calls Gotovac “a moral and human reference point for Croatian society.” And the literary critic Branimir Donat noted that Croatia is generally deadly for honest people, calling Gotovac a person who always responded to human needs with human answers... This is probably the fate of every humanist - to be unrecognized and persecuted during life and revered and extolled after death.