Research, Bosnian Politics, and Football in Zagreb.

Well, I promised everyone who asked about it that I would write about my research here. I haven't writen much about it so far for a couple of reasons. First, part of the reason I am doing this blog is to unwind and write about something other than my research. Second, I am a little frustraited at the moment with how things are going. Now, let me take a step back and fill everyone who doesn't know what my project is about in on what I am actually trying to accomplish.

This all started with my facination with a particular statue. This statue actually wasn't here when I was in Zagreb in 85/86, but everyone knew it had been here, and they would tell you that if you gave them the chance. Then, when I came back in 2001 for a summer language program, the statue was back. Now, that was a pretty neat trick, considering it was supposed to have been destoryed.


In fact, it was learning in 1986 that this particular statue hadn't been destoryed, but was being hidden, that crystalized in my mind the fact that Yugoslavia wasn't going to last.

So, from that beginning I am now looking at how the statue and the square it is in, relate to the entire Croatian national project and the transformation of Zagreb into "The Croatian Metropolis" over the last 150 years.

So, now why I am a little frustraited with my research. My plan was to use some general histories of the city to find specific event, then look at how those events were portrayed at the time in newspapers, magazines, and books to see how significant a role the square played in them, and to see how that is presented. My problem is that Croatian history, at least history of the city of Zagreb is an exercise in avoiding talking about the 20th Century in any meaningful way. So, I find fotographs that are described as "people gathering for a demonstration" but no one ever mentions any popular demonstrations in their histories. There are three main histories of Zagreb (well, two actually, because the third is just a re-write of one of the others), and they all pretty much avoid talking about anything after 1850. Out of roughly 1,200 pages of writing, I've managed to gather about 20 pages that are at all relevent, and they really don't give me the kind of information I need.

Now, it's not all bad. They are amaizing archivers here of old newspapers, so I will almost certainly find what I need, but I'm going to have to go through pretty much every day of news for the last 150 years to find what I need (well, probably not quite that bad, but it's starting to look pretty close to that). And, I've made some amaizing finds in the "antique" book stores, including a primary school geography book just about Zagreb published in 1995, and a copy of a special edision publication of 30 years of the urban institute of Zagreb from 1957 - 1987, which talkes about urban planning and development in socialist Zagreb. I also found a copy of an exibision publication of the Statue when it was first put on display in pieces in 1990, which includes copies of lots of original documents relating to the statue (and it is in much better shape than the libraries copy I had checked out).

So, that's my research so far. More updates as the situation warrants.

Now, on to the local reaction to the Bosnian elections (because I know some of you really want to know). Well, after the first couple of days here, things pretty much calmed down and Bosnia fell of the front page of the local papers. Jutarnji list had a nice map with voting statistics last wednesday (like I said, they are very "USAToday" in their presentation), and it is pretty clear why the Croatian politcians (and population) are unhappy about the outcome. In the four Zupanjas that are overwhelmingly Croatian, it looks like the SDP got less than 1% of the vote in 2, 5% in one, and 7% in the fourth one. So, Komsic is the Croatian member of the presidency with about 3% of the Croatian vote (which means he was basically voted into office by the Muslim population who apparently voted for SDP over SDA or SBiH). A big part of this is due to the fact that it looks like HDZ in Bosnia has split into two parties, HDZ and HDZ-1990. I have no idea what HDZ-1990 is, but I have a feeling its to the right of HDZ (they got 30% of the vote in Western Herzegovina and Glamoc). Now, the elections basically dissapeared from the papers until Saterday, when Večernji list ran a special insert of analysis on the Bosnian elections, with the overall conclusion that the Croats in Bosnia are in such sad shape because their leaders are, well, idiots. So, it looks like even the mainstream nationalists in Croatia have given up on the Bosnian Croat political leadership.

Well, this is already a pretty long post, so I will hold my thoughts on the NFL on Croatian TV until later, but I will say this to my friend James; give the NFL a call. They are obviously looking at exspanding into this market, and one of the guys doing the play by play here had about the same level of experience playing the game as you did, so there may be openings in the near future.

P.S. Sorry for any typos or bad spelling. I am going to publish as is and go back and spell check later since it's been a few days since I posted.