Žarko Puhovski: We Got Rid of Tuđman and Milošević, but We Still Aren't Good Serbs and Croats

BELGRADE, (Patria) - Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb /retired/ Žarko Puhovski believes that Yugoslavia ceased to exist when, instead of individual rights, people started talking about the collective rights of the peoples in that country.

When asked when he saw that Yugoslavia no longer existed, Puhovski says he raised that question in 1987 at the promotion of Matvejević's book on Yugoslavism in front of about 600 people. 

„I said that we have a system in which there are Croat women and Croats, Serb women and Serbs, but that there are no Yugoslavs, they are a mistake in the system“, said Puhovski in an interview for Belgrade's Nedeljnik, reports the Patria agency.  

„One woman stood up and said: 'I am a Yugoslav woman, you are fantasizing.' I said: You are physically a Yugoslav woman, but politically you are not. 

At that time, collective rights existed, from the Serbs as the largest, to the Roma, who had rights like nowhere in the world. Everyone had collective rights, but individual rights were a problem“, added Puhovski.

Speaking about Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević, the former presidents of Croatia and Serbia, Puhovski said that there were hundreds of thousands of people who were worse than them, but that this is forgotten.

„We got rid of them. Now we are all good Serbs and Croats. It is not true. On several occasions, they disciplined some things. Some they could not, some they did not want to – mostly they did not want to, but the matter is not so simple as to be reduced to two people, no matter how great the manipulation was“, said Puhovski, among other things.