On the 18th November Croats remember the fall of the town of Vukovar in 1991. This year having a special moment with the discovery of the body Jean-Michel Nicolier. In late October this year the body of the killed French foreign volunteer Jean-Michel Nicolier was found in a mass grave with other Croatian soldiers killed in the Ovčara massacre. His family had been looking for his body since late 1991 when he was taken out of the Vukovar hospital and killed with other Croatian patients, both civilians and soldiers. This sad ending reminded us that Vukovar is not just a symbol of Croatian, but also European and Christian defiance against the last remnants of Communist rule.
In 1991 with the start of Croatian and Slovenian independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia started the falling of the last bricks of the Communist Iron Curtain. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 in most cases, the communist regimes fell apart with ease, making a return of European and Christian values in those former nations which accepted democratic rule and free speech. For a moment people thought the same would happen in Socialist Yugoslavia in which a specific national or ethnic differences guided foreign politics.
It all started with Croatia and Slovenia first adopting democratic rule and principals ending socialist regime after decades of brutal dictatorship. Generations of Croats and Slovenes were free to confess their religion, return to traditional national values and start a new political life in a democratic and a free forms of government. In Croatia on the 25th July 1990 after the first multiparty elections the majority of the Sabor (traditional name for the Parliament) voted on amendments to the constitution which would lead to abolishment of socialist symbols, laws and even Croatia removing its title as a “Socialist Republic.”
These euphoric times would soon change as democratic values would be attacked by the remnants of the last Socialist Army in Europe. At that time Socialist Yugoslavia which was headed by Serbia head also political changes which introduced democracy and with it, nationalism, but unlike its western neighbours they still retained communist ideology. The leading Communist Party of Serbia now headed by Slobodan Milošević, the later war criminal, was replaced with the Socialist Party of Serbia created on the 17 July 1990.
The new Socialist ideology that would lead Serbia and the rest of Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milošević from 1990 until 2000 would combine socialist principals and ideology, communist values and nationalist propaganda. It was a deadly combination built upon a Greater Serbia project as all ready outlined in the memorandum of the SANU (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) created in 1985 and leaked to the public in 1986 with its sources coming from a similar viewpoint of combining nationalism, socialism and communism during the times of Stalin which attacked Poles, Ukrainians and Baltic nations in a double effort of both russification as well as hard socialist changes of both governmental and social establishments. Even when communist and socialist dictatorships fell in most of Europe,
Yugoslavia would be the place of the rebirth of socialism in combination of controlled democracy and ethno-nationalism. With the full might of the communist Yugoslav People’s Army as well as nationalist paramilitaries, a war of aggression began.
After the failed plan of preserving Socialist Yugoslavia in its fullest with the ten day war in Slovenia and the victory of Croats against the socialist Yugoslav Peoples Army in the War for barracks, a full scale aggression with the plans of creating Greater Serbia would start. In the middle of the attack plan in the Eastern part of Croatia stood the town of Vukovar, an old lovely and historic town on the banks of the Danube river. A town of the castles of the Countly Eltz family, beautiful baroque architecture known as a tourist spot in the Syrmia region would soon turn into a hellscape often called the Croatian Stalingrad due to the town itself being destroyed with not a single building standing undestroyed by artillery shells or close combat battles. In that time politics would become a reason why Vukovar soon became not just a symbol of Croatian but Christian and European defiance to the horrors of the remnants of Communism.
At that time the three main political blocs in Croatia would compose our of the Croatian Democratic Union which was a centrist, liberal-democratic and Christian democratic political party with the political majority under Franjo Tuđman, who would be elected President of Croatia.
The second was the Social Democratic Party of Croatia with its centre-leftist and social-democratic politics under Ivica Račan. And the third largest actor in the 1990’s would be the Croatian Party of Rights which was a right wing conservative political party with its roots as one of the oldest political parties in Croatia, dating back to 1861.
Among the three main parties the Croatian Party of Rights was the only one which did not accept ex – communist into its ranks. That fact made it a hub of not just Croatian but international interests as it also
started to create its volunteer army for defence of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina called the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS). Croatia at that time, in a difficult position with no arms, was protected by a poorly created regular army and many smaller volunteer units who defended the frontlines against both Yugoslav Socialist regulars and Serbian nationalists which formed irregular units. The world saw Croatia now again as the Antemurale Christianitatis (Bulwark of Christendom) defending those Christian values against the last communist army in Europe. This attracted 800 up to even 1000 volunteers from European countries which primarily came to Croatia to fight communism, mostly being built upon either Christian or conservative personal views.
They were mostly tied as volunteers of the Croatian Party of Rights which since 1990 openly adopted conservativism and Christian social teaching becoming the main right wing and conservative party in Croatia. Due to the history of Croatia tied with WW2 many leftists especially in support of the Socialist Yugoslav and Serbian aggression would callout both the party as well as its foreign volunteers as fascists, reactionaries, radical right wingers in failed attempt to washout the main source as a truly anti-communist political party and volunteer unit.
The Battle of Vukovar lasted for 87 days in which civilians and soldiers were under full encirclement without proper equipment, food and medicine. It became a place of legends, where soldiers would destroy entire tank columns on the Trpinja road next to the Borovo suburb of Vukovar. A place of pure heroism in the face of the enemy which was represented by the Communist Red Star. A symbol which even today among Croats is not just a sign of decades of communism but also its brutal war crimes and full aggression in the early 1990s. Among the soldiers volunteers of the Croatian Defence Forces of the Croatian Party of Rights would play a key role. Among them soldiers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries fought side by side with Croats to defend this town, which became a symbol of Christian and European values being bled and crushed by the last Communist army in Europe.
As Vukovar soon came under full encirclement and its fall came into reality on the 18th November 1991 this symbol of defiance became a site of the largest war crimes seen on the European continent after the Second World War, at that time. The Yugoslav Socialist regulars and Serbian nationalist irregulars started a campaign of mass killings of Croatian civilians and POW. Among them Ovčara became a place of pure Hell on Earth as patients and even medical staff from the Vukovar hospital were taken there killed and buried in mass graves (later hidden in secondary mass graves). Among them was a young French volunteer of the HOS, Jean-Michel Nicolier. He was already known across of Europe for being filmed in his days of battles showing that the Croatian cause and the defence of Vukovar was not just a Croatian national symbol, but a symbol for all Christian and European values which were under attack by those remnants of Communism in Europe.
This November, a couple of days prior his mother and family, after searching for 34 years, finally buried their son, their family member in a proper Christian funeral, a marked grave and honours. On this day, the 18th November we remember all the fallen Croatian soldiers and killed civilians in War for Croatian independence, as well as 85 foreign volunteers who fell for our freedom. Vukovar is not just a Croatian symbol, its a testament to heroic defiance of a Christian Europe against the evils of Communism and Socialism.
“Navik on živi ki zgine pošteno” He who dies with honour lives forever, Croatian proverb, 17th century.
Ante Brešić pl. Mikulić, PhD student of Humanities and Master of Fine Arts, with published works and research in the fields of Art history, History, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Ideology, as well as subfields of Heraldry, Genealogy and Phaleristics. Mikulić comes from an old Catholic noble family from Croatia, is a member of several cultural national and international organisations in Croatia and Europe. He is a member of the Croatian Party of Rights, as well as an advocate of traditional values in art and culture. Mikulić is a supporter of strong conservative and Christian social views.
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