On Some Problems of the Policy of Croatian Peasant Party Regarding the National Liberation Movement in Croatia During 1943

The Croatian Peasant Party represented the most influential party in Croatia, but in the eve of the beginning of the war there started a differentiation among its members, it was getting stronger as the liberation war continued, mostly because the right members of the party decided to join the Ustaši movement. The CPC, struggling to gather all the patriotic elements around itself in order to enable itself to fight better the quisling ISC (»NDH«) as well as the occupiers, put up a vigorous fight to win over the members of the CPP which then represented the widest part of population. Though all bourgeois parties, the CPP as well, were prohibited, Ustaši lead somehow more elastic policy towards this earlier most numerous party. This was the reason for the right party members joining the Ustaši as early as the April War or as late as the outburst of the armed upheaval of the people of Croatia. At the same time CPC was trying to talk over the CPP members who did not compromise themselves when fighting against the national liberation movement. Such a policy soon showed good results already as early as 1942 uprising but especially during 1943. The largest number of CPP members joining YNLF was being noticed on the territories where NLM achieved top military successes. At the time the policy of the leadership of CPP grouped round Maček proved to be rather complicated because most activities were turned to joining in with all possible counter revolutionary forces as well as with the occupiers themselves, and to turn the population away from the liberation movement. The leadership of CPP kept untouched its relations with Government in emigration as well as with the Chetniks and Ustaši. However, the successful results of the NLM and the right tactics in gathering all the patriotic forces for YNLF influenced the differentiation among the members of CPP - with special results after the capitulation of Italy - in as much as to make it ever more intensive. On 12th October 1943 there was formed an Executive Council of all the most eminent members of CPP who joined the NLM; the Council took part in the Second sitting of "ZAVNOH" (Common Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia). At the session there were accepted a manifesto and a resolution stating as completely wrong and treache rous the policy of the leadership of CPP, and the members of that party were required to join the National Liberation War. The very creation of the Executive Council of CPP working for the YNLF and "ZAVNOH" proved the existing wide-range differentiation that touched the leadership of CPP itself. That, of course, was the result of the right tactics of CPC: not standing up against the CPP, but trying to renew its positive traditions, so well expressed in the ideology of Radić Brothers, thus persuading the members that the NLM was actually the bearer of such ideology as well as of the wishes of the Croatian peasantry itself