Vlado Gotovac - 1991 speech

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Vlado Gotovac, was a leading dissident in Communist Yugoslavia and a powerful voice for democracy in the independent Croatia of the authoritarian Franjo Tudjman,
Ivo Banac, a Croatian historian who teaches at Yale University, praised Mr. Gotovac for courage that spanned decades. ''Nobody could challenge his primacy in moral leadership, which he retained to the end,'' Mr. Banac said. ''He belonged to the school of Central European dissidence that put primacy on individual example -- on the importance of disassociating oneself from tyranny. He believed that the individual mattered. This is his greatest heritage in a country that is morally ruined after decades of dictatorship, war and corruption.''

Mr. Gotovac was one of Croatia's most urbane, humane and elegant voices. He was a prolific author and the leader of the Liberal Party, a junior partner in the government coalition that took power from the late President Tudjman's nationalists in elections in January, just a month after Mr. Tudjman's death. That triumph came after Mr. Gotovac had already fallen ill and capped a life dedicated to attacking rulers who sought to limit personal freedom.

''In the name of the state all has become permissible,'' Mr. Gotovac told The New York Times in a June 1997 interview about Mr. Tudjman's government. ''All ethical, moral and spiritual values have been subjected to the power of the state.

''Crimes are committed and defended because they are carried out in the name of the state. Totalitarian regimes always justify repressive measures by appealing to the love of the homeland.''

Despite the long years of jail and isolation for his views, Mr. Gotovac did not succumb to bitterness and retained the warm, affable outlook of a befuddled college professor. He said his political mentor was Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. ''He warned us that we must be willing to carry out tasks in life where we have no chance of success,'' he said.

Mr. Gotovac was born Sept. 18, 1930, in Imotski in southern Croatia and grew up in poverty. His father was a gendarme in the royal Yugoslav state and his mother was illiterate. But their son went on to study philosophy at Zagreb University and later headed Matica Hrvatska, an influential association of Croatian writers and historians.

He was the most philosophical of Croatia's post-1945 poets, finding inspiration in urban society, despite his rural upbringing. He championed the integrity of the individual, and attacked communal passions such as those that inspired Communist and nationalist movements.

His blistering attacks against the Tito's Communist system and his widely read essays arguing for democratic freedoms and reforms landed him in prison twice and led to his dismissal from his state job.

He was first sent to prison by the Communist authorities in 1972, serving six years in Stara Gradiska in squalor with common criminals. He was released in 1976, but his outspokenness led to another arrest, in 1982. He served two more years in the Lepoglava prison.

In 1989, as the old Communist Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, Mr. Gotovac founded the Croatian Social-Liberal Party, part of a coalition that in 1990 lost Croatia's first multiparty elections to Mr. Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union.

The election of Mr. Tudjman led to Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia in June 1991 and to a bitter war of independence. Mr. Gotovac, while denouncing the Serbian regime in Belgrade, also opposed the eventual displacement of some half a million Serbs from Croatia. He made their return part of his political platform.

Mr. Gotovac was a member of all three parliaments elected since 1990, but he also devoted much of his time to the restoration of Matica Hrvatska, over which he presided from 1990 to 1996.

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[senki85]

jedan od najvecih ako i ne najveci Hrvat.Pocivaj u miru dragi nas Vlado

[dexterfox]

Svaka čast! Lep pozdrav iz Slovenije.

[nozdrvator]

Kakav krasan govor divnog i iskrenog čovjeka! Kakav krasan i ponosan početak i kakav strašan i jeziv rezultat nakon 20 godina. :( Da nam je barem bilo više Vladi Gotovaca, a manje Pašalića, Šušaka i Merčepa... Eh, da bar...

[TheAgramBoy]

jedan od najvećih hrvatskih političara i govornika....neka mu je laka hrvatska zemlja...

[Dra60oN]

@yugo91aesop kakav rasist vi biste se trebali sramit

[bculibrk]

Vlado jedan (na zalost) posten i neponovljiv. Da nam je dugo pozivio, a niko nema da ga nasljedi. Postovannje Vlado.

[agimus]

RIP dragi Vlado, jedan od doista rijetkih i moralnih političara u našoj pokradenoj i silovanoj domovini.

[DaleKRON]

@yugo91aesop

ne, trebali bi se ponositi ovim.

stvar je perspektive, prijatelju.

[yugo91aesop]

kakav rasist jebote trebali bi ste sramit ovo ga

[grga9]

Bože moj di su nam danas ovakvi ljudi...di je onaj ponos..di je onaj zanos koji je vodio ljude..di je ona ljubav prema Domovini..prema svakom čovjeku..danas više toga nema..

[Tenchek]

Ovo je jedan od najboljih, ako ne i najbolji hrvatski govornik IKADA. Jako je dobro uvježbao govor, odmah na početku je stekao naklonost publike i izgleda kao da upravo taj trenutak smišlja što će iduće reći.

[Slavoje]

Sereš.