Milan Sufflay
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Milan Sufflay (Šufflay in Croatian) (November 9, 1879 - February 18, 1931) was a Croatian historian and politician of Hungarian heritage.
Sufflay had a Ph.D. in history, specialised in albanology and became internationally known for his work in this field.
Sufflay led the Pure Party of Rights, a right-wing Croatian political party in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with a political programme similar to the one of the Croatian Party of Rights, but inspired by the work of a fervent nationalist Josip Frank. The party had reportedly not managed to win more than a few seats in the 300-strong legislative.
Sufflay was the first to promulgate the premise that the border between the Western and the Eastern civilization lies on the Drina river. The same thesis subsequently became well known in Croatia and was used by various national ideologues, particularly those antagonistic towards Serbia.
In 1921, Sufflay was indicted for revolutionary activities and sentenced to three and a half years in jail. After serving over half of his sentence, he was released from prison. In 1924 Sufflay became a member of the leadership of the Party of Rights.
In his work "Croatia in the light of world history and politics" (Hrvatska u svijetlu svjetske historije i politike, published 1928), Sufflay wrote about the "destinal border line on the Drina river on which the mighty Roman Empire snapped into two ... a border spiritual and cultural". He further elaborated:
- "The Croatian people have passed through the Roman-Western retort, while the Serbian people passed through the Byzanzine-Turkish. Therefore the psyche of the two peoples is essentially different, even if the languages are similar. Unification of the two peoples would mean neutralization and careful constraining. To centralize here would mean to make Croatia a guinea pig for vivisection experiments. It is my thesis that the Croatian nation, as a citizen of the great empire of the western civilization, has the right to raise its voice against any oppression"
- "Those who know history know that the Yugoslav idea has no dynamics. It is nothing compared to the mighty Croatian idea. In Croatia, the Yugoslav idea is a shallow wreckage under which the Croatian national vulcano boils; only a subtle push is necessary to make it erupt"
- "To me personally, as a philosopher and an open-minded Croat, it is the same to sit in the small shackles at the Judgement table or some other penitentiary, compared to exiting to the superficial freedom, actually going to the large dungeon in which - thank God only temporarily! - wallows the Croatian nation!"
Sufflay was beaten to death with a steel rod in 1931 in Zagreb. Four men from an organization called "Young Yugoslavia" were implicated in the planning of the murder, including one Branko Zwerger who was accused of the act itself.
This was during the Yugoslav royal dictatorship, so Croats thought that his death had a political background and blamed it on the royal gendarmerie that was composed of Serbian officers. The chief of police was implicated in the planning of the murder, but the authorities denied any knowledge of the assailants and banned activities related to Sufflay's funeral.
Following his death, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann sent a letter to the International League of Human Rights in Paris appealing for protection of Croat scientists from the Serbian regime. Curiously, they named one "Nikola Jukitsch" as the murderer, which contradicts the local findings about Branko Zwerger.
The Ustaša propagandists, including their leader Pavelić who was Sufflay's attorney in the 1921 trial, later hailed Sufflay's claims about the cultural border on the Drina as the basis of their ideology, elevated his death because it was at the hand of their enemies, the Serbian establishment, and subsequently placed the eastern border of their puppet state on the same river.
External link
- New York Times article about the death of Sufflay (http://www.hr/darko/etf/nyt.html)
- Einstein/Mann appeal (http://www.hr/darko/etf/einste.html)de:Milan Šufflay