Stipe Šuvar

Infobox_President
name=Stipe Šuvar


caption=
nationality=Croatian
order=12th Chairman of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
term_start=June 30, 1988
term_end=May 17, 1989 (resigned being elected to the State Presidency)
predecessor=Boško Krunić
successor=Milan Pančevski
birth_date=birth date|1936|2|17|mf=y
birth_place=Zagvozd, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (present day Croatia)
death_date=death date and age|2004|6|29|1936|2|17|mf=y
death_place=Zagreb, Croatia
party=League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Socialist Labour Party of Croatia
spouse=Mira Šuvar

Stipe Šuvar (17 February 1936 – 29 June 2004) was a leading Croatian and Yugoslav sociologist and politician. Ostensibly the most prominent Croatian minister of education and culture of all times, he was also a titular leader of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) from 1988 to 1989. After the collapse of socialism in Yugoslavia, he remained politically active in his native Croatia, founded the magazine Hrvatska Ljevica in 1994 and founded the Socialist Labour Party of Croatia (SRP) on 25 October 1997, the first and still the largest socialist party in independent Croatia. Šuvar resigned as party president in 2004, shortly before his death.

Early political career

Šuvar was born in 1936 in a Dalmatian village Zagvozd. At the age of 19, he joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. He studied at the Law Faculty in Zagreb, where he received a doctorate in 1961.Between 1963 and 1972 he was a chief editor of the Zagreb monthly Naše teme. In 1969, Šuvar in the polemic with Matica Hrvatska functionary Šime Ðodan denied claims of the Maspok ideologists that Croatia was being exploited by other Yugoslav republics.In 1972, after Maspok had been defeated and the garniture of Mika Tripalo purged from the leadership of Croatian communist party, Šuvar was co-opted to the Central Committee of Croatian communists. Two years later he became Croatian secretary (minister) for culture and education and stayed at this position until 1982. [ [http://www.moljac.hr/biografije/suvar.htm Short biography of Stipe Šuvar (in Croatian)] ] [ [http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/80-4-5.shtml Slobodan Stankovic: PROFESSSQR SUVAR'S FINEST HOUR] ]

The "White Book"

From 1982 to 1986 Šuvar was a member of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Croatia, since 1983 he was responsible for the ideological section of the CC. Holding this office, in 1984 Šuvar organized a discussion about the ideological struggle on cultural front. Participants of the meeting were given a book containing citations from texts of 186 (mostly Serbian and Slovene) authors, which had been published in Yugoslav media between 1982 and 1984. The quoted works were named in the book as unacceptable, antisocialist and more or less openly nationalist. The document, nicknamed then "White Book" ("Bela knjiga") and "Flower of Evil" ("Cveće zla"), was roughly condemned especially by Serbian intelligentsia as a Stalinist attack on freedom of thought. [Dušan Bilandžić: Jugoslavija poslije Tita. Zagreb, 1986. P. 202-205.]

In Yugoslavian top bodies

In 1986 Šuvar was elected to the LCY Presidium as a representative of Croatian Party along with Ivica Račan. In June 1988, when a new chairman of the Presidium was about to be elected from Croatia, Šuvar won out over Račan that time with support of the chairman of Serbian communists Slobodan Milošević. However, only one month later controversies between Šuvar and Milošević started because of Šuvar's opposition to the anti-bureaucratic revolution organized by the Serbian leader. [Raif Dizdarević: Od smrti Tita do smrti Jugoslávie. Praha, 2002. P. 224] In October 1988, when a dispute between Šuvar and Milošević at one Presidium session got to the public, a campaign for Šuvar's dismissal took place in Serbia. [Dizdarević, p. 170]

In January 1989, a few days before the 20th session of the LCY Central Committee, a conference of the Vojvodinian communists attacked Šuvar and demanded his dismissal again, what was followed by a new inflammatory campaign in Serbian media and Party organizations. The Yugoslav Federal Presidency, afraid of the overthrow of the LCY leadership in the same way as it had happened with local party leaderships in Vojvodina and Montenegro before, proclaimed alert of the country's police forces and warned Serbian officials of possible declaration of the state of emergency if demonstrations took place in Belgrade during the session. The session itself went in a normal way but didn't bring any positive results. [Dizdarević, p. 223-229] Before the session Šuvar had promised that he would call the things their right names (what meant direct condemnation of Milošević's policy), but at the end he withdrew a sharp version of his report and presented a more vague one. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEFDF1F3CF932A05752C0A96F948260 The New York Times, 31 January 1989: Yugoslav Military Warns Feuding Politicians] ] [ [http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/Content/Article/1045346.html Interview with Stipe Šuvar for RFE (in Croatian)] ]

At the same time, Šuvar was a loud opponent of separatist movements, first of which was rising in Slovenia. In June 1988 at a party Presidium session discussing the case of Janez Janša Šuvar said: "Socialist forces in Slovenia are in defense in the face of the mass (i. e. nationalist) movement. This movement in Slovenia includes not only elitarian petty-bourgeois circles but also the youth. They regard the (Yugoslav People's) Army an occupier and Yugoslavia a burden and an exploiter. A phobia of the people from the country's South prevails here. Petty-bourgeois arrogance has assumed a racist dimension." [Dizdarević, p. 189] According to Šuvar himself, in June 1988 the three Slovene members of the Presidium voted for Račan to be a Presidium chairman. [ [http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/Content/Article/1045346.html Interview with Stipe Šuvar for RFE (in Croatian)] ]

In Spring 1989 the Croatian Parliament elected Šuvar a Croat representative in the Presidency of the Federation. In April 1990 multi-party parliamentary elections took place in Croatia, in which Franjo Tudjman's HDZ won with a separatist program. The new Croatian power asked Šuvar to resign but he refused to do it, so in August 1990 Croatian Parliament dismissed Šuvar from the Yugoslav Presidency, electing in his place Stipe Mesić (non-Communist). On that occasion, Šuvar delivered to the HDZ-controlled Parliament a speech of warning against a nationalist policy leading to break-up of Yugoslavia. [ [http://draxisblogging.blogspot.com/2004/06/rip-stipe-uvar-stipe-suvar-1936-2004.html RIP Stipe Šuvar (Stipe Suvar) (1936 – 2004)] ] [ [http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/Content/Article/1045346.html Interview with Stipe Šuvar for RFE (in Croatian)] ]

Late years

After he had left a political scene, he returned to Zagreb University as a professor of sociology. In 1994 Šuvar founded magazine Hrvatska Ljevica and in 1997, regarding Račan's Social Democratic Party not being a leftist one, he returned to the political scene creating the Socialist Labour Party of Croatia. Šuvar succeded to gather some respectable personalities around the party, but the party itself has never got more than 1% in Croatian parliamentary elections. He was its chairman until 2004, when, shortly before his death, resigned.

After 1990 Šuvar issued several books, such as "Hrvatski karusel" and "Nezavršeni mandat". He gave a number of interviews to the media, in which he reflected both his role in politics of former Yugoslavia and events after the country's break-up. Šuvar unlike many of his former communist fellows didn't leave the socialist ideals as well as stayed staunchly critical towards all kinds of nationalism, including the one of his own nation. [ [http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/258/intervju.shtml Interview with Šuvar for "BH Dani" (in Croatian)] ]

References

See also

* League of Communists of Yugoslavia
* Novi Plamen
* Socialist Labour Party of Croatia