Political scientist and former Croatian ambassador to Italy, Damir Grubiša, in his book “Diplomatic Diary”, recounted indiscretions and behind-the-scenes stories of Croatian politics.

After his mandate as ambassador of the Republic of Croatia to Italy ended in 2017, Damir Grubiša, a renowned political scientist, wrote a diary about his experience. Thus was published “Diplomatic Diary - a Rijeka citizen in Rome” (he was born in Rijeka, to an Italian mother and a Croatian father), published by Gammarò with a title and subtitle inspired by his predecessor, the Istrian Drago Kraljević, ambassador to Rome from 2000 to 2005, but with a very different tone: Kraljević's is more reserved than his, which is full of indiscretions, which I would not hesitate to define as courageous and anything but diplomatic.

What is the reason for this choice of yours, Ambassador?

The difference between me and Kraljević is that he was appointed ambassador in a climate of optimism and euphoria over the victory, in the 2000 elections, of the non-nationalist center-left over the HDZ, the nationalist party that, with President Tuđman, who died shortly before the elections, had held power for a decade. I remember that HDZ, in Croatian, means: Croatian Democratic Community, but it is not a “community” at all but an old-fashioned party, and more than democratic I would say autocratic, but, on the other hand, very Croatian! That said, Kraljević's approach was one of initial expectation of those democratic reforms that, unfortunately, the government of the social democrat Ivica Račan did not carry out. The fact is that after a short interval of three years, things went back to how they were before, with the nationalists back in government, albeit in a new "Europeanist" guise as the new HDZ leader, Ivo Sanader, had wanted to present himself, who then, as we know, ended up in prison for corruption, abuse of power and illicit appropriation.

Coming to me, I too was appointed by a center-left government and, moreover, by President Ivo Josipović, a professor of private international law and a world-famous composer, but, unlike Kraljević, I encountered during my mandate a relapse of the country into the hands of right-wing nationalists and a state apparatus inherited from the period of the 2013s, recruited with clientelistic and ideological methods. Suffice it to say that the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was recruited without public competitions, there was only one, and it was enough not to know, for example, what the inscription INRI was to be immediately rejected. My optimism – of the Gramscian type, that is, pessimistic by intellect and optimistic by will – was based on the fact that Croatia had joined the European Union in XNUMX, precisely when I was in Rome. Well, instead of writing this “Diplomatic Diary” I could have analyzed all the dysfunctions of the Croatian political system in the form of a political science essay, but I don’t think it would have aroused much interest, also considering the fact that, of this type of publications, there are already others written by other colleagues of mine. So I preferred to bring a personal testimony with which I hope to reach more readers, relying on the story of often bizarre and grotesque episodes that, by themselves, help the reader to draw his own conclusions!

The rumors, as his answer already partly reveals, they concern a bit the entire Croatian political class, ministry, diplomats, presidency of the republic, with names and surnames… It's as if they wanted to take a few stones off their shoes. Are you afraid of reactions?

Actually, I just wanted to show my readers that the background of a transitional society, like the Croatian one, is very different from what appears, from the stage set shown in front of the spotlights. However, I do not draw conclusions, I only try to tell what happened and how, in this regard, the so-called "protagonists" behaved. I am a political scientist, and I had the privilege of studying political science in Zagreb, at a time - the second half of the Sixties - in which Yugoslavia seemed to be on the way to important reforms, which however materialized only at the end of the Eighties, with the government of the reformist Ante Marković, that is, by then too late. The virus of nationalism had already infected the whole country, including the post-Titoist leadership, which had used and exploited nationalism for their political purposes, namely to remain in power and to transform social and state property into private property.

The study of political science, in my time, was a new academic direction, modeled on the examples of the French “sciences po” and the critical philosophy of the Frankfurt school, imbued with a Marxist current around the magazine “Praxis”, very critical of Stalinism and dogmatism that prevented Yugoslav society from modernizing and starting reforms of the market and the political sphere. This “critical political science” on which I was trained requires first of all the systematic criticism of politics, political institutions and the hubris of political professionals, in order to then access “institutional engineering”, as Giovanni Sartori, one of my teachers whom I followed during his courses at Columbia University in New York, claimed. And so, from my first steps I developed this critical criterion towards institutions and the political class, and if I was recruited for “important” positions, as you define them, it was always on the basis of my critical analysis of politics, published in magazines, volumes and books, and openly expressed in public.

There are also many references to Italian politics, and to certain situations that are incredible, such as the parts concerning, for example, honorary consuls that bring to mind the novels of a Graham Greene. And we are talking about positions that in the collective imagination appear to be of high representative profile, while in his pages they appear as real caricatures...

When I began working in the diplomatic service I could not help but see the critical nature of this profession, the black spots that do not appear sufficiently on the surface. For years I have been preparing to write a text on the "splendor and misery of diplomacy", as Balzac titled his novel about courtesans. I had already understood this in New York, where I spent some important years for me, and where I had glimpsed the weak points of this profession, with the abuse that some make of it to secure material goods, or prestige and fame, or a lucrative career in international institutions that are full of people who have ended up there only to secure a privileged existence, and not to serve the "common good".

The example of honorary consuls reveals one of the anachronisms of this profession. Some time ago, in the last century, honorary consuls had a precise and useful role in the framework of consular specialization. Now, in the era of digital diplomacy, they are outdated as a category, and unfortunately they offer ideas for the caricaturization of the entire category, as can be seen from the examples, some truly grotesque, cited in my book.

His diary also contains a criticism of a sort of "deep state" which, beyond the popular will expressed with regular elections, conditions or, in any case, influences the functioning of the institutions themselves, with a policy in which friends and friends of friends count a lot. I ask the political scientist: how can we break this vicious circle that, if it does not prevent, slows down the path of reforms?

This is a central problem of politics, especially democracy. The formal power of political authority is contrasted by informal power, made up of clientelistic networks, interest groups and pressure groups that tend to influence power and divert its decisions towards objectives that allow them, the informal power, to control resources and their distribution. Therefore, it is about the prevalence of the "partial good" or private good over the "common good". The groups that gain power through elections and that look to their own interests before the interests of their voters, tend to connect with the holders of economic power, and thus create a plutocratic union, that is, a political system of the "deep state" in which these networks of interests decide the fate of the entire society, naturally grabbing resources and thus contributing to the gap between rich and poor. This is made even more possible by the manipulation of information technology, whereby criticism and dissent are marginalized and any source of resistance is crumbled. In Eastern Europe this process is even more visible in the oligarchic nature of societies, where the concept of “illiberal democracy” and of single thought triumphs, very similar to the communist system, but now with a new legitimacy, that of formal pluralism and elections which in many cases are the elections of a minority by another minority, because there is no obligation to vote and abstentionism is now a fact in all contemporary societies.

I confess that, while I was reading your Diary, I found in your criticism of the Croatian ruling class a lot of similarity with that which many of us express towards the Italian one, which is also too self-referential and permeated in my opinion by too many vested interests and cliques that undermine, not surprisingly, trust. And yet, you often show admiration or, at least, a tolerance that in my opinion is undeserved. Is that the case or is there also a lot of… diplomacy?

No, it is not about diplomacy at all! It is about the comparatist syndrome, which often affects those who deal with comparative politics. Therefore, comparing the two societies, the Croatian and the Italian one, I find that democracy in Italy works, despite everything, better than Croatian democracy. It has a longer historical tradition, there is a pluralist political liveliness, a vibrant public opinion, and despite the repercussions it is a “stable” and consolidated democracy, while Croatian democracy is still a “non-consolidated democracy”, as defined by the international non-governmental organization Freedom House. Even if the political pathologies I spoke about before also afflict Italian society, it is enough to look at the estimates of corruption in Italy and Croatia, regularly made by Transparency International, another authoritative NGO. And then, we must also look at the historical context. Civil republicanism, the ancestor of democracy, arose precisely on Italian soil, in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Democracy is always in the balance, and can always be threatened by authoritarian tendencies, and here the organization of civil society and of the citizens themselves who must control the political sphere is important, elections and parliamentary pluralism are not enough. Finally, in 2007 I published a book that was the political critique of the Italian political system, and it was entitled: Berlusconism. Italian political dossier, while in academic journals I have published a series of articles: from the role of the President of the Republic in the Italian political system, to the analysis of endemic corruption in Italy.

Speaking of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, you are also known for being a great scholar of Niccolò Machiavelli, whose main works you have translated and commented in Croatian. Your interest in politics stems from these studies, and since the time of Yugoslavia you have been involved in roles that are anything but secondary, such as, to name a few, chief of staff of the Yugoslavian and then Croatian Foreign Minister, director of the Yugoslavian Culture and Information Center in New York, and other roles. In practice, what did you bring that was… Machiavellian?

Machiavelli is the father of modern politics, he taught us to distinguish appearance from substance, from the "effective truth of the thing", which would be politics. He taught us that "political living" can only be "civil living" and "free living", and that citizens, and not subjects, are those who, all together, decide the fate of their political community. Therefore, there cannot be a representative democracy without a direct democracy, in which all citizens must take part. If you are not a citizen, you are not a man, as Remigio de' Girolami, a Florentine in some ways a precursor of Machiavelli, said when he theorized the "common good". My interest in politics developed precisely from reading Machiavelli, whose works I had found in my grandfather's library, and when my professor of history of political doctrines discovered that I read Italian, he made me study "Machiavellian studies". But I had enrolled in the Faculty of Political Science to become a journalist, a passion of mine that was never realized, only that then, under the influence of Machiavelli, who was a perfect “civil servant”, an example of integrity as a civil servant, I found myself following in his footsteps. Machiavelli, on the other hand, like me, never aspired to “do politics”. All my assignments started from the fact that I was a political scientist, an expert in politics, but I always refused any role as a political protagonist. I wanted to be only someone who analyzes politics, politicians and their pathologies, to be able to make politics work better for the sole interest of the members of society: the citizens.

In his diary he also recounts his past as a refugee river, ended up in one of the 109 refugee camps set up by the government of the time to welcome the Julian-Dalmatians who were fleeing from their lands annexed to Yugoslavia. This experience is certainly the basis of his commitment to the hard and controversial recognition of the exiles, both Yugoslavia first e Croatia then, they persisted in defining, officially but hypocritically, optants. The same goes for your commitment to have the Croatian ambassador participate in the Quirinale in the celebration of the Day of Remembrance of the Foibe and the Julian-Dalmatian exodus. In the end you succeeded. What did all this inspire in you, not only on a political level but also on a personal level?

My experience as an exile, however brief, was very important. As were the vicissitudes of my Italian family, victims of persecution by the Yugoslav communists in the immediate post-war period, as well as the misfortunes of my Croatian family, victims of fascist persecution and later, also Yugoslavian, at least until the situation in communist Yugoslavia more or less normalized. For this reason, I wanted my Croatian homeland to recognize the wrongs and honor the Italian victims of persecution in the immediate post-war period and also afterwards, during the exodus. Until the situation somewhat normalized, even if the wounds remained. This path was finally completed in 2013, during the state visit of Croatian President Josipović to President Napolitano. On that occasion, President Josipović expressed his regret for the injustices suffered by the Italians under the communist regime, just as Italian President Napolitano expressed his regret for the oppression suffered by the Croats during the fascist dictatorship. An important path for the reconciliation of the two peoples, and I am happy to have been able to give my, albeit modest, contribution to this process.

Are you thinking of publishing a Croatian edition of your Diplomatic Diary? I believe that, if that were the case, there would be quite a few reactions, and perhaps not only from the chancelleries most directly involved. What do you think?

Of course I have thought about it, but I don't want to put my potential Croatian publisher in an embarrassing situation. Croatian publishers are very dependent on the Ministry of Culture because books of this type, non-fiction and memoirs, must receive state subsidies in order to be printed. And I foresee that the politicians who hold power in Croatia today may not be very enthusiastic about what I have written. This is unfortunately the atmosphere in Croatia today: the regime of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is a nationalist one that develops a single way of thinking through the hypertrophy of Croatian patriotism, it has not yet come to terms with Croatian fascism, with the Ustasha of the Second World War (and for this they are criticized by the Jewish community of Croatia). The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović, although of social democratic origin, conducts a strange populist policy and is flirting with nationalism, so that, despite everyone declaring themselves pro-European, they remain prisoners of anachronistic patterns of thought and behavior. Fortunately, there is a different atmosphere in Rijeka and Istria: here, now, there is an “effective” pluralism, with the exception of the city of Zagreb where in power there is a Croatian variant of “Podemos”, which is called exactly that in Croatian, people of a new generation. Let's hope they are the future of Croatia.

Interview by Diego Zandel a Damir Grubiša
Source: Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa – 16/06/2022