The Construction of a Political Community: Croatian Political Emigrants after 1945 as Performative Actors

This work was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Competing interests: no competing interests have been declared. Publisher: Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 PL License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/), which permits redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, provided that the article is properly cited. © The Author(s) 2019. Angelika Zanki Institute of Slavic Studies Polish Academy of Sciences http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2511-8086


The Construction of a Political Community: Croatian Political Emigrants after 1945 as Performative Actors
Based on the example of the journalistic activity of Croatian political emigrants in Hrvatska revija magazine in the period 1951-1966, the aim of this article is to examine the process of constructing a political community using performative practices. For me, the theoretical basis for making the assumption that journalistic activity is a kind of performative practice is Ewa Domańska's observation that " […] performativity is understood as a conviction that a language not only presents reality, but also causes changes in it" (Domańska, 2007, p. 49). These words clearly refer to John L. Austin's well-known and well-established speech act theory (Austin, 1993), in which he noted that a language becomes an action in the hands of a subject who creates what he or she names, thus making the performative function of speech visible -he or she can shape reality and create facts. Austin stressed that "the issuing of an utterance is the performing of an action -it is not normally thought of as just saying something" (Austin, 1993, p. 555). Performative utterances that are activities in themselves create and transform the world. In this context, we should look at Croatian political emigrants as performative subjects who, by means of the written word, aspire to shape a community founded on a specific axiological system.

Croatian political emigrants
The beginnings of Croatian emigration appeared as early as in the period from the 15th to the 18th centuries, a time when the Ottoman Empire was gaining more and more influence in Croatian lands. The migrations of groups such as the Burgenland Croats (Gradišćanski Hrvati), the Molise Croats (Moliški Hrvati), the Croats in Romania, Slovakia, Bunjevci and Šokci began at that time. However, only during the next emigration wave from around 1880 to the First World War did journeys to other continents take place: to Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. In the interwar period , people decided to move around the territory of Europe (Germany, France, Belgium), but both Americas still remained a popular destination for migration. The next wave of departures happened in . At that time, the Croats sought asylum in Europe, the USA and South America, and particularly in Argentina, which was independent of the Allies, and that is why the political emigrants who had managed to flee hoped that they would not be turned in to the Allies because Croatia had supported the Axis powers in the Second World War. During Juan Perón's presidency, thirty-five thousand people were granted permission to settle in the initial phase (Sinovčić, 1991, pp. 22-23). It should also be highlighted that positive references, thanks to which Croatian prisoners from camps in Austria, Germany or Italy could obtain travel documents, were prepared by Catholic priests (e.g. Blaž Štefanić) who actively participated in the post-war transfer of the Croats to South America. At the turn of 1947 and 1948, representatives from Argentina even came to the Fermo Camp in Italy to offer the Croats who lived there the opportunity to settle overseas (Šprljan, 2005, p. 93).
Central State Office for Croats Abroad (Središnji državni ured za Hrvate izvan Republike Hrvatske) estimates that nowadays approximately half a mil-lion Croats live in South America: 250,000 in Argentina, 200,000 in Chile, 20,000 in Brazil and 6,000 in Peru; there are also 5,000 in each of the countries of Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, and 4,000 in Ecuador (Hrvatski iseljenici u prekomorskim i europskim državama i njihovi potomci). However, it is difficult to estimate how many people emigrated in any given wave as statistics were not kept systematically for many years; when statistics became obligatory, the Croats were registered (depending on the political situation and possible renaming of the country to which Croatia belonged) as Austrians or Hungarians during the first wave of emigration, when Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also as Dalmatians, Slavs or Yugoslavs1.
The term "political" was first used after 1945 with reference to emigrants and all ways of life of Croatian groups outside Yugoslavia, especially those formed by emigrants for political reasons, and also those who started to be ideologically active in their country of settlement. Emigration after 1945 was not only a way of escaping the consequences of being involved in the activities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which was subordinate to the Third Reich. The political profile of this group also includes opposition to communism -probably for various reasons. Maciej Falski writes with reference to artistic circles that "the collapse of the NDH resulted in a large emigration wave, including authors actively associated with the authorities of the Ustaše quasi-state and those who did not support the ideology of Pavelić2 but who were active in 1941-1945 and feared Tito's new communist rule" (Falski, 2004, p. 85). The Croatian writer and political activist, Vinko Nikolić, one of the most important figures in Croatian emigrant circles after 1945, reasons that Argentina became a destination for Croatians not because of the rule of 1 Those who ideologically supported Austria-Hungary were called Austrians in South America; the majority of them acquired citizenship in the countries in which they settled. In turn, emigrants with a strong local identity who were attached to their place of origin stressed that they were, e.g., from Dalmatia, calling themselves Dalmatians, etc. Such a wide division appeared due to the fact that some emigrants had arrived in South America before the national revival movement won, i.e. the struggle between autonomists (autonomaši) and annexationists (narodnjaci) regarding, among others, the question of whether Dalmatia should remain independent (Antić, 1988, p. 427).
2 Ante Pavelić was leader of the Ustaše movement and the Independent State of Croatia (1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) and was responsible for the extermination of Jews, Serbs and Romani during the Second World War. Supported by the Catholic clergy (in particular by Alois Hudal), he moved to South America in 1947, where he carried out intensive political activity. Juan Perón, who sympathized with fascist movements, but because this lightly populated country was willing to accept a new labor force, potentially emigrants (Nikolić, 1993, p. 18)3.
The year 1945 turned out to be the beginning of migration to South America: consecutive waves which were caused by internal tensions in the state of Josip Broz Tito took place in the 1950s and 1960s. Emigration was treated as illegal at that time, and when the Yugoslav authorities finally opened the borders emigration was called "temporary work trips". The next stage followed the socalled "Croatian Spring" (1971): the protests, which were in fact an attempt to free Croats from Serbian centralism, were conducted under the slogan of the need to introduce large-scale reforms in the Yugoslav state. Berislav Jandrić emphasizes that the emigration wave after the suppression of the protests of the participants of the "Croatian Spring" was caused by the brutal terror and severe prison sentences that threatened the participants of the movement, as well as the ongoing political trials of intellectuals and cultural activists (Jandrić, 2003, p. 443). This essential political context allows us to understand why these emigrant circles are defined as "political organizations, politically active groups and individuals who from 1945 to 1990 operated abroad to overthrow the communist Yugoslavia and to create a free and sovereign Croatian state" (Žižić, 2013, p. 61). This is also well illustrated by the activities undertaken by these groups.

Spaces of action
The political emigrants in question were organized around several main institutions and parties. One of them was the Croatian Republican Party (Hrvatska republikanska stranka -HRS), which was established in Buenos Aires in 1951 by Ivan Oršanić4 and which published the "Republika Hrvatska" 3 Vinko Nikolić (1912Nikolić ( -1997 was a Croatian writer and political activist. In 1942, he worked in the NDH military unit dealing with upbringing and education. In 1946, he was granted the status of a political emigrant. He began his doctoral studies in Rome, which he gave up due to his trip to Argentina. After returning to Croatia in 1991, he was active in the Matica iseljenika and Matica hrvatska organizations. 4 Ivan Oršanić , politician, journalist and NDH activist. During the Second World War he fled with his family to Austria, then Italy, and reached Argentina in 1948. newspaper. The Christian-democratic conservative Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska seljačka stranka -HSS) was also of great significance: it was outlawed in the country in 1941 and was active in exile (it returned to Croatia in 1989). It should be pointed out that this party was in opposition to the Ustaše movement and criticized all forms of support for this movement. The HSS's activities consisted in trying to convince Croatian emigrants that their unification was possible only under its wings. This obviously led to the polarization of attitudes and the intensification of conflicts in emigration circles, thereby preventing any political unification. The opposite ideological pole was represented by the Croatian Liberation Movement (Hrvatski oslobodilački pokret -HOP), which was established in 1956 in Buenos Aires and had an extreme right-wing, radical, anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav character5. This movement cultivated the Ustaše traditions that had been transferred to Buenos Aires; it was led by Ante Pavelić and supported by politicians who held leading positions in NDH authorities during the Second World War.
A vital aspect of the activity of emigrant circles was their press activity, which took place on the pages of magazines-institutions, for instance Hrvatska revija and Studia Croatica6. Examination of the former publication and the texts published in it is motivated not only by the fact that it was the most recognizable Croatian emigration magazine: I intend to show that this magazine helped make extremely expressive and uncompromising attempts (they seem to have been successful) to shape a political community in exile, while at the same time promoting a defined world view and its assessment of the political situation in communist Yugoslavia. The written word that was used by the authors of the texts published in the periodical significantly molded the thinking of certain circles in the country and abroad; it also consolidated the community, which was founded on the same system of values and crossed geographical borders. Using much more modern language, we can say that it constituted a virtual community of views and ideas.
Hrvatska revija magazine had a rich pre-war tradition. Established in 1928, it operated as a literary quarterly of Matica hrvatska7 and published texts by authors of very diverse ideological profiles (for instance, Miroslav Krleža and August Cesarec). Only in 1933 did it became apparent that it was becoming favorable to the political right wing. In 1945, it was closed down by the new communist authorities and in 1951 publication resumed in Buenos Aires, edited by Antun Bonifačić8 and Vinko Nikolić. In 1955, Bonifačić left the magazine, while Nikolić ran it until 1997. In 1966, it was moved to Paris, then to Munich, and later to Barcelona. This wandering perfectly illustrates the fate of Croatian emigrants. In 1991, the magazine returned to Zagreb, which is of great symbolic significance in the context of the country regaining its independence; it is now published under the auspices of Matica, just as it was at the very beginning. As a matter of fact, Vinko Brešić stressed that this magazine was also called the "small Matica" (Brešić, 2013). In his meaningfully titled work Bitka za novu Hrvatsku (The Struggle for the New Croatia), which sums up the journalistic activity of Croatian emigrants, Jakša Kušan emphasizes that Hrvatska revija "rejected totalitarianism in any form […], believing in the power of the political and cultural plan which would be actively carried out by emigrants […]" (Kušan, 2000, p. 8). Although the first part of this statement, which concerns the alleged rejection of all forms of totalitarianism, seems to have been formulated beforehand due to the ideological background of the editors of the periodical, the second part, which highlights the conviction of fulfilling a unique political and cultural mission, certainly does not depart from the truth. Admittedly, some actions were feigned that were aimed at cre-7 Matica hrvatska is the oldest national institution and was founded in 1842. Its main goals are to promote the Croatian national and cultural identity in the fields of art and science.
8 Antun Bonifačić ) was a Croatian writer and political activist. During the Second World War he was the cultural affairs representative of the NDH Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the deputy chairman of the Croatian Writers' Society. After the war, he emigrated first to Rome (1945-1947), then to Brazil (1947-1954, and finally to Chicago (1954). From 1975 to 1981, he was the chairman of the Croatian Liberation Movement, whose members mostly cooperated with the Ustaše movement.
ating the impression of dissociation from the legacy of the NDH; for example, the principle of phonetic notation was introduced, negating the traditional etymological spelling used in NDH times (the so-called korijenski pravopis), which shows the differences between the Croatian and Serbian languages. I interpret this move as an attempt to achieve a symbolic and apparent dissociation from the cultural policy of the Ustaše state, and thus from the state as such. The new community, which was, nota bene, formed on the basis of a language, was to have a different tradition; nevertheless, this did not go hand in hand with the content of the texts published in the magazine.

Ideologeme 1: Community of Bleiburg victims
The two most important topics discussed in Hrvatska revija magazine in the years 1951-1966 concerned the events of Bleiburg in 1945, their consequences and significance for the Croatian nation, and the events of the Second World War that were related to the attitude, role and fate of Bishop Alojzije Stepinac9.
Polemic about the events in Bleiburg was a key part of almost every issue of Hrvatska revija magazine and became a founding ideologeme of Croatian emigrants in Argentina. This should come as no surprise because near Bleiburg, a small place on the present Austrian-Slovenian border, the so-called way of the cross of the Croatian nation (Križni put hrvatskog naroda) began. During it, anti-communist groups, mainly of Croatian and Slovenian nationality, who were accused of collaborating with fascists and were handed over to the Yugoslav authorities by the Allies, were killed in the marches of redemption in 1945 (Falski & Rawski, 2013, p. 203). Those who were escaping from Croatia in the face of the lost war (troops, members of the Ustaše movement, fascist regime collaborators and, partly, civilians) hoped for the rescue they had sought in the British-American occupation zone. Contrary to their hopes, the Allies handed the prisoners over to Tito's partisan units, who forced them to go on a grueling march during which they were eliminated. To this day, researchers have difficulty in establishing the number of victims and missing persons, but the estimates suggest that between 40,000 and 100,000 people died (Jelavich, 2005, p. 286). The number of victims became the subject of numerous debates in the emigration magazine. Moreover, the question of who was responsible for these events and the process of expunging this subject from public life by the Yugoslav authorities were also animatedly discussed.
The authors who wrote for Hrvatska revija magazine usually quoted higher numbers than other studies, undoubtedly trying to highlight or even exaggerate the size of the tragedy. Branimir Jelić stated that during the Second World War and immediately after it, one million Croats had been killed (Jelić, 1952). Dragutin Kamber claimed that at least 200,000 Croats had died during the war (Kamber, 1951, p. 127). Srećko Karaman wrote that 120,000 Croatian soldiers had been imprisoned (Karaman, 1963, p. 257). In turn, Jure Petričević pointed out that 150,000 Croatian soldiers had died (Petričević, 1956, p. 224). Two decades later in the article Tito i srpski generali slave masovno klanje Hrvata 1945. Suprotnosti između prosvjetskih i "nesvrstanih" snaga u vodstvu Jugoslavije, this author wrote that the number of victims was much higher -even several hundred thousand people (Petričević, 1975, pp. 435-449).
But other authors such as Ivo Korsky stressed that the number of people killed is not the most important matter: it is much more important to unambiguously indicate those who contributed to these deaths, namely Tito's partisans and Serbian nationalists, who -according to the author -planned the systematic liquidation of Croats (Korsky, 1965, p. 1). Jure Petričević also addressed the issue of who was responsible for Bleiburg, seeking the cause of the events in a much earlier time (Petričević, 1956, pp. 213-239). He blamed Vladko Maček's policy10 (who, according to the author, did not support 10 Vladko Maček (1879-1964) was a Croatian politician and leader of the Croatian Peasant Party. In 1939, he signed an agreement with the Yugoslav government under which the Croats received comparative autonomy within a single state, their own parliament and their own leader. He was a supporter of the so-called "policy of waiting", and he rejected alliances with partisans and the Ustaše. In April 1941, he rejected the proposal made by the representatives of the Third Reich to separate Croatia from Yugoslavia. The proposal was accepted by the Ustaše movement.
Croatia's aspirations for independence) and Ante Pavelić himself (accusing him mainly of the Nazification of the state, as well as the fact that he did not establish a homogeneous and independent army but brought it under the German forces; he also gave Dalmatia to Italy and finally had blood-stained hands and was responsible for the repressions against the Serbs, including setting up a camp in Jasenovac). The author stressed that the Croatian nation was only interested in independence. In another article, the same author emphasized Pavelić's sole responsibility as a person holding full political and military power (Petričević, 1965, pp. 278-281). Stjepan Buć expressed similar opinions: he claimed that Pavelić was a usurper and had handed the country over to fascists (Buć, 1960, p. 218), thus preventing the establishment of a strong state that would protect the Croats against communists (Buć, 1960, p. 226). There were also appeals to take revenge on the Croatian army and to call to account those who did not react to the events at Bleiburg (Kordić, 1966, p. 116).
These voices unequivocally show that Hrvatska revija significantly revised its assessment of the activity of the NDH. Apart from the explicitly affirmative opinions there were also moderately critical stands. Petar Bareza pointed out that, after all, immigrants in Argentina supported the Ustaše movement, the activity of which became the cause of the so-called way of the cross of the Croatian nation. Interestingly, he reproached the Serbs, communists and the whole world for not having reacted to this at the right moment (Bareza, 1960, pp. 31-43).
For Croatian emigrants, Bleiburg became a holy place that commemorated the victims of the war -a destination for pilgrimages which must be made by every "true Croat" in order to bow before the victims (Perica, 2011, p. 116). Nowadays, these victims are politically overused mainly by right-wing radicals. The quoted opinions illustrate well the process of building the myth of the innocent victims of the events of 1945; this process consists not only in exaggerating the scale of the tragedy, but also in the authors of these opinions' ostensible (?) distancing of themselves from the NDH regime and discerning guilt on the side of the then authorities, especially Ante Pavelić. The aforementioned studies do not mention the members of the group that escaped from Tito's partisans in 1945; the inhumane behavior of the Allies and the bestiality of partisans are more willingly emphasized.
Sabina Giergiel observes that "the official remembrance of the socialist Yugoslav state did not include Bleiburg for obvious reasons, since recalling the events of spring 1945 would clearly undermine the moral purity of guerrillas and would also be a potential threat to the decreed unity. The remembrance of the massacre could also give rise to Croatian national aspirations" (Giergiel, 2016, p. 141). The Croatian political emigrants became the upholder of the memory of Bleiburg -modified, transformed, revised, and subject to constant change. This emigration created an image of Bleiburg as a place where innocent people were turned in to communists. The Croatian diaspora in Argentina felt morally responsible for preserving this memory. The representatives of emigrants spoke of themselves: "We are the Croats, the members of our homeland, and that is why we continue the Croatian fight for the liberation of Croatia and the creation of a sovereign and independent state […]. In this fight, we do not plan to carry out any individual activities but to coordinate this fight with the fight of the Croats in their homeland. We want to say clearly and respectfully what they cannot say because they would lose their lives" (Omrčanin, 1976, p. 129). Emigrants stressed that the prohibition of talking about the dishonorable end of the Second World War in Yugoslavia somehow obliges them to take on the role of a "carrier of truth", which they finally began to embody, construct and perform as well.
During a series of meetings organized in 1993 by the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Zagreb, entitled "Intellectuals in the Diaspora"11, the representatives of this group spoke about the reasons for leaving Croatia, about life and activities in exile and contact with the homeland. Vinko Nikolić emphasized that he had left his homeland "[…] not because fascism lost, but because Croatia was occupied" (Nikolić, 1993, p. 1). In a sense, he recapitulated on the environment in which he operated, saying that "the Croats in Argentina played a negative role apart from all the good they did, because due to the unreasonable leadership that hid and imposed itself there, they returned to the past and tried to lead Croatian emigrants to the wrong path" (Nikolić, 1993, p. 18).
Bleiburg, which became a symbol of the fight against the enemy and a founding myth of Croatian 20th-century martyrdom, was in the 1990s used by the radical right wing as a founding myth of independent Croatia that mobilized the Croatian national tradition in the face of external threats (Falski & Rawski, 2013, p. 204).

Ideologeme 2: Alojzije Stepinac
The other important topic discussed in Hrvatska revija emigration magazine was the case of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, a person who even today splits public opinion in Croatia on the one hand and consolidates right-wing and church circles on the other. In 1946 (i.e. during communist Yugoslavia), Stepinac was sentenced to prison and forced labor; he was deprived of his political and civil rights for five years for "acting against the nation and the state" (Goldstein, 2013, p. 347), specifically for cooperating with the Ustaše during and shortly after the war, participation in the forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism, spreading enemy propaganda, not to mention treason and war crimes.
Historical studies leave no doubt that Stepinac openly supported the establishment of the NDH state. This was primarily due to the fact that he was a radical anti-communist and supporter of Croatian nationalism (Goldstein, 2013, p. 315). However, the same studies state that although this clergyman made many controversial statements and sympathized with the Ustaše movement, he condemned the Ustaše policy of violence, racial persecution, and even took action to save Jews from extermination (Goldstein, 2013, p. 315). In 2016, the court in Zagreb revoked the judgment of the communist justice system of 1946: Stepinac had been sentenced as a collaborator and ally of the Croatian Ustaše, but he was found not guilty "of brutal violation of the rules of criminal law, both then and currently in force" (U cijelosti poništena presuda kardinalu Aloziju Stepincu, 2016). Much more symbolic, however, was the fact that in 1992 the Croatian parliament overruled Stepinac's conviction and sentence, and the Cardinal was then beatified by the Holy See in 1998.
However, Stepinac's rehabilitation process started much earlier. One media outlet that reported on the subject was Hrvatska revija. Like the Bleiburg events, Stepinac's case could not be presented in a critical light in communist Yugoslavia due to the purification of published content concerning elements of the Croatian national narrative. Hrvatska revija, which was beyond the reach of the Yugoslav authorities, was therefore the right place to spin such a narrative. Therefore, Stepinac was compared to John the Baptist (Žanko, 1951, p. 37), and his anger-filled speeches that he addressed to Nazis, communists, freemasons, and the Belgrade authorities were appreciated (Žanko, 1951, p. 41).
It is worth noting that even Ante Ciliga, a Croatian communist political activist and publicist who became a dissident, appreciated the great popularity of this clergyman among Croats, as well as his speeches in Zagreb Cathedral that criticized racism at the level of ideas and its embodiment in the politics of Hitler and Pavelić. These speeches apparently "were on everyone's lips" (Ciliga, 1951, p. 383). Stepinac was described as "a symbol of the Croatian resistance against communism, atheism and everything that is Yugoslav" (Žanko, 1951, p. 38) -a person who upheld the religious rights and liberties of the Croatian nation. He was defended by figures from opposite poles of the Croatian political scene. I mean, for example, Eugen Dido Kvaternik, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the commander of the political police in the NDH era, who emphasized in a not-so-convincing way that Stepinac did not support the NDH as a "despotic state which treated others in an inhumane manner" (Kvaternik, 1953, pp. 242-243). In a special issue devoted to Stepinac that was published on the tenth anniversary of his imprisonment, a text by the sculptor and architect Ivan Meštrović was published; before the Second World War he had been a supporter of the Yugoslavian idea, but then he became a critic of communism and Josip Broz Tito. The author stated that there was no person in Zagreb who would criticize the Ustaše movement more than the cardinal, and the representatives of the movement were fully aware of this (Meštrović, 1956, pp. 202-203). In 1960, after the death of Stepinac, Meštrović recalled that the Ustaše even threatened to kill the cardinal, but the clergyman remained unresponsive (Meštrović, 1960, p. 22). He was also said to have received warnings from Vatican circles, but he decided not to abandon his priesthood and his service to the nation; however, as Meštrović writes, he admitted he thought that he would be murdered by fascists or communists (Meštrović, 1960, p. 23). The magazine also published texts which proclaimed that the cardinal was a saint during his lifetime or presented him as a person appointed to perform a divine mission (e.g. the Jesuit Stjepan Krizin Sakač wrote a hagiographic text that described the life of the cardinal from his early childhood, highlighting the role of Stepinac's mother, who prayed that he would become a priest [Sakač, 1960, pp. 375-388]). The emigrant circle contributed significantly to the creation of Stepinac's image as a martyr who only supported activities that were undertaken for the benefit of the entire country, criticized the NDH regime, acted in favor of the Church and the faithful, and was a repressed clergyman. The consistent discussion of this subject in the periodical was an expression of the need to defend a symbol (of the persecution and injustice of the communist system against an innocent individual) which they themselves were creating at the same time. This stand was supported by arguments of a different origin, including the publication of opinions from Church circles such as a fragment of the speech of Pope Pius XII in which Stepinac's exceptional merits were highlighted and he was presented as an example of Christian strength (Pio XII, 1953, p. 3).

Summary
The way in which Bleiburg and Stepinac's ideologemes were presented, the logic of their argumentation, and their instrumentalization show that the group of people focused around Hrvatska revija magazine aimed to create and then cultivate a clearly defined axiological system of Croatian political emigrants in Argentina. This system was characterized by radical anti-communism, criticism of the Yugoslav regime, the building of a community on the strong conviction of the need to fight against the enemy, as well as the need to form a stable foundation on which the independent Croatian state would be based in the future. It is difficult to assess whether the partial dissociation from the activities of the NDH and the sometimes very critical assessment of the state's policy was only a rhetorical device intended to blunt the disgraced nationalist line, or whether it resulted from a real process of revision after the final collapse of the state.
It is worth adding that after 1990 the Croatian diaspora played a significant role in shaping the policy of the new state. The diaspora was a significant financial (mainly groups from the United States and Canada) and ideological base (South American emigrants). In this light, the circle of people actively operating around the described magazine can be considered a performative actor with a causative force that triggered a change in reality and affected other participants of this interaction, and finally "played the same role in front of the same audience on different occasions" (Goffman, 2008, p. 45). The consistent playing of this role -presenting, promoting and cultivating the attitude of the defender of the Croatian nation -contributed to the fact that a group with an initially heterogeneous world view was formed as a defined community thanks to journalistic and publishing activity. This group claimed the right to not only question the political reality of Yugoslavia, but also to interpret recent events and exercise its right to practice "deconstruction as an unconditional right to ask critical questions" (Derrida, 2002, p. 204). As Jacques Derrida wrote, this deconstruction consists in the affirmative and performative production of events (Derrida, 2002, p. 204). Therefore, political emigrants strived to consolidate certain interpretations within the circle of their recipients, thus influencing the consciousness of the community they constructed. The consistent consolidation of this position from the beginning of the 1950s gave them the right to take an important place in the collective imagination of independent Croatia. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, political emigrants became heroes, regardless of their criminal or terrorist past (Perica, 2011, p. 117). Ewa Wróblewska-Trochimiuk observes that as early as in the late 1980s the diaspora in Croatia was regarded as a patriotic community and recognized as a victim of the fight against communism (Wróblewska-Trochimiuk, 2019). This author also stresses that in the period of building a modern Croatian state, the ideologization of the diaspora concept was used so as to create the myth of the power of the national community, minimizing the complex of this socalled small nation and evoking a feeling of greatness and strength. Therefore, political emigrants became a symbol used by successive authorities.