Croatian Spring

The Croatian Spring (Hrvatsko proljeće, also called masovni pokret or MASPOK, for "mass movement") was a political movement from the early 1970s that called for greater rights for Croatia which was then part of Yugoslavia.

The things were set in motion when a group of influential Croatian poets and linguists published a Declaration on the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language in 1967. After 1968, the patriotic goals of that document morphed into a generic Croatian movement for more rights for Croatia, and it was beginning to receive grass roots support and many student organizations actively started to voice their support for the cause.

Among the main demands were civil rights of the Croatian citizens, among these rights the right to take pride in one's nationality was prominently featured. This irritated Tito's communist government which had made every attempt to suppress and erase all such notions ever since World War II, fearing loss of stability and eventual breakup of the country due to ethnic tensions. The banning of national symbols was intended to suppress all fascist ideological symbols such as the Ustaša or Četnik markings, but it also extended to banning most patriotic songs and customs.

Some in the movement also voiced demands for decentralization of the economic system which would allow the republic to keep more of the profits made from tourism within Croatia. On average, over 50% of all foreign currency that entered Yugoslavia came through Croatia, but Croatia itself kept only 7% of it. An independent National Bank of Croatia would have allowed for a fairer distribution of profits, but if it waived the right to use the federal bank of Yugoslavia, the republic would then also have to waive its right to use the federal fund for the underdeveloped regions. Croatia used 16.5% of the money from the federal fund between 1965 and 1970, while Serbia used 46.6%. Concerns were also raised about the monopoly of the Yugoslav Investment Bank and the Bank for Foreign Trade from Belgrade on all foreign investments and trade.

The Croatians also protested against general economic issues such as the increased economic emigration into Western Europe, and that the government did too little to curb such trends. Among issues raised was the fact the Yugoslav People's Army sent people for mandatory military service into different republics than the one they originated from.

There were also attempts to bring the notion of including Herzegovina into Croatia to the attention of the authorities (similar to the Banovina Hrvatska that existed 1939-1941), but this was far from anything that the movement leaders were proposing. In fact, such red herrings were often used in anti-nationalist propaganda to discredit the demands which were related to decentralization and autonomy as expansionist and ultimately separatist.

The movement organized demonstrations in 1971 and thousands of Zagreb students publicly protested.

Three Croatian linguists (Stjepan Babić, Božidar Finka and Milan Moguš) published a spelling/grammar book in 1971 called Hrvatski pravopis (note hrvatski–Croatian rather than srpskohrvatski–Serbo-Croatian or similar) which was summarily banned and all copies of it were burned. However, one copy managed to get smuggled to London and get printed there.

The Yugoslav leadership interpreted the whole affair as a restoration of Croatian nationalism, dismissed the movement as chauvinist and had the police suppress the demonstrators. Many student activists were detained in December 1971 and some were even sentenced to years of prison. Some estimate that up to two thousand people were criminally prosecuted for participation in these events.

The leadership of the Croatian Communist Party, Vladimir Bakarić, Milka Planinc and others were keen on punishing the dissidents and they did indeed expel and imprison several members of the Communist student organizations and members of the Communist Party itself, mostly including university professors and the like (in January 1972). However, some of the high-ranked members of the Communist Party from Croatia such as Savka Dabčević-Kučar and Mika Tripalo also supported these ideas so the government couldn't sweep it all under the rug.

In 1974, a new federal Constitution was ratified that gave more autonomy to the individual republics, thereby basically fulfilling the main goals of the 1971 movement. One of the provisions of the new constitution was that each republic officially had the option to secede, an option which most of them utilized twenty years later.

Several student leaders from the Croatian Spring later turned out to be influential political figures. Ivan Zvonimir-Čičak became the leader of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. Dražen Budiša became the leader of the Croatian Social Liberal Party. Savka Dabčević-Kučar and Mika Tripalo became founding members of the new Croatian People's Party.

The fourth edition of the Babić-Finka-Moguš Hrvatski pravopis is nowadays an official definition of the Croatian language.