Croatia: A Historical Landscape Quiz

Answer: Provence

Dalmatia stretches along the Adriatic coast and claims the beautiful historic cities of Dubrovnik and Split. Istria is a peninsula on the Adriatic's north coast that borders Slovenia and Italy. Zagorje is an inland region around the country's capital Zagreb. Provence, I fear, is in France.

Answer: Diocletian

Diocletian was born in nearby Solin, Croatia around 244 CE. He is perhaps best known for splitting the Roman Empire into subdivisions governed by himself, fellow "Augustus" emperor Maximian, and their adopted sons, Galerius and Constantius. This division is usually reckoned as the cultural foundation of East and West Europe.

He retired to his palace in present-day Split in 305 and died there in 311.

Answer: The Slavs

The Slavic Croats became great emulators of the Romans, maintaining many Roman place names and converting to Christianity. They eventually joined the Eastern Roman Empire (popularly known as Byzantium) in 678. Charlemagne's forces moved into the area in 800, and the Byzantine Empire formally ceded the Croatian region of Dalmatia to the Holy Roman Empire in 812.

Answer: Hungary

In 1527, the Hungarian kingdom was joined with Austria's ruling line, the Habsburg dynasty. This period of Central European incorporation as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire left an indelible impression on Croatian culture. To wit, the country is solidly Catholic historically (though rates of church attendance these days are very low by US standards) and they use Latin script to write, unlike the neighboring Serbs who use the Eastern-oriented Cyrillic alphabet.

Answer: 1919-1991

The idea of a unified South Slavic state had been seriously promoted by Croatian intellectuals from the European Enlightenment on. The collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I left a power vacuum in the Balkans.

As the great conflict drew to a close, leading figures from the Habsburg Balkans (including Croatia, Slovenia, and occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina) formed the Yugoslav Committee in concert with the already independent Serbian parliament, eventually declaring a unified Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes with the Serbian King Alexander I as head of state.

This new country, which also included Serb-controlled Montenegro and Macedonia, was informally called "Yugoslavia" from the beginning.

The name was officially changed in 1929.

Answer: Ante Pavelic

The Ustashe (Croatian for "Insurrection") were a political force in Croatia throughout the interwar period, and they were widely acknowledged to have played a part in Yugoslav King Alexander's 1934 assassination. When Nazi Germany invaded in April of 1941, Ustashe supporters in the Yugoslav army revolted against their commanders, and that party declared an independent Croatia supported by the Axis powers. Pavelic returned from forced political exile to assume the title of 'Poglavnik', roughly analogous to Hitler's 'Fuehrer' or Mussolini's 'Il Duce'.

The Ustashe carried out violent exterminations of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, largely at their notorious death camp at Jasenovac.

Answer: Josip Broz Tito

Unlike many Soviet-dominated countries in Eastern Europe that, in the words of one historian, "came to revolution at the point of a gun," the Yugoslav communists were very much in control politically after the war. As such, Tito was not beholden to Stalinist dictates, and openly broke with the Soviet Union in 1947. Though Tito did come to friendly terms with the USSR in 1955 and the country did utilize many of the central planning strategies common to postwar communism, Tito was more generally a leader in the "nonaligned" movement.

These newly independent countries walked the middle ground though the Cold War, situating themselves between the USSR-led Warsaw Pact states and the allies of the United States, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership.

Answer: It was part of a bloody series of civil wars that killed thousands of people.

Sentiments for Croatian independence were present throughout postwar Yugoslav history, particularly in 1967 when a reform branch of the Croat League of Communists floated the idea in political circles, only to see it quashed in the succeeding years. Croatian nationalism became more evident after Tito's 1980 death. Following the loosening of Soviet influence around Eastern Europe, Franjo Tudjman and the Croatian Democratic Union party swept into office in the 1990 elections. This was mirrored in Serb elections by nationalist Slobodan Milosevic's ascent as Serbian Communist Party leader. After both Croatia and Serbia blocked elections for Yugoslavia's President in 1991, Croatia declared independence. Serbia, which controlled most of the Yugoslav military, struck at Croatia almost immediately, supporting Serb separatists in Croatia and carving out the Republic of Serbian Krajina from Croatian territory. Following years of conflict and genocide in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia regained the Krajina territory, and the war was brought to a halt by the Dayton Accords in 1995.

The above is only a cursory gloss over one of the most complex and tragic conflicts in post-World War II Europe, details of which are still open to (usually partisan) interpretation. Accounts of the war are prone to sensationalism from all sides. It pains me to say that I can very easily think of many books to avoid on the subject but have a hard time finding any studies I can wholeheartedly recommend to a beginning scholar. Like many of the battlefields of the war, the literature on the topic is still a minefield, and those reading about the war are advised to do so with a critical eye.

Answer: Croatia was a major petroleum exporter, and was a leader in OPEC.

Like many countries, Croatia was a net importer of petroleum, consuming an average of 70,000 barrels of imported oil per day in 2004-2005. Under three percent of the workforce was employed in agriculture, with about 30% of the workforce in production industry.

Answer: Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci

After anchoring Yugoslavia's Silver-winning Olympic team in 1988 and repeating that honor with Croatia's squad in 1992, Kukoc eventually migrated to the American NBA, where he was a pivotal player on the Chicago Bulls dynasty teams that won three straight championships (1996-1998). Ivanisevic was a longtime star on the court who reached the Wimbledon finals three times in the 1990s. By 2001, he was ranked out of the world top 100 in the sport and was considered washed-up by many.

He proved the critics wrong by finally capturing the Wimbledon title that year. Mirko Filopovic is affectionately known to his fans as 'Cro Cop'; this is in reference to his longtime service as a Croatian special forces police officer in addition to his service in the Croatian parliament from 2003 to 2007. Cro Cop has achieved great success in both kickboxing and mixed martial arts, winning the 2006 Pride open tournament under MMA rules and enjoying a reign as IKBF heavyweight Champion as a kickboxer. Great as she was, Nadia Comaneci performed for Romania, not Croatia.