2015-2020, PhD thesis: From Combatants to Civilians: Exploring and Re-thinking ‘Normal Life’ in Post-Conflict Croatia (1995-2017)

2018-2019, Gospic and Lika in the Second World War and after the war

The research had been conducted since 2006. The book was published in March 2019.

2017-2018, Biokovo-Neretva region in the Second World War and after the war

The research had been conducted since 2006. The first book was published in October 2017 and the second book in April 2018.

2017, POW Camp Gripe in Split (1944-1945)

The research was conducted in the State Archives of Split between 2006 and 2013. Research results were published in May 2017.

2012-2015, MPhil degree, Department of History, University of Warwick. Viva was held on 15 October 2015 (no corrections).

Thesis title:

Mass Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed by the Communist Regime against Croatian Citizens at the end and after the Second World War (1944-1945).

This thesis was published in the USA in October 2017 (Amazon).

ABSTRACT

Since the October revolution, when for the first time in history a Marxist party seized state power, communist regimes have influenced the lives of more than a billion people, caused millions of deaths and violated the human rights of countless people. However, in the Soviet sphere of influence and in Yugoslavia, investigating war and post-war crimes committed by communist regimes was not possible until 1990, after the democratic changes in Eastern Europe. Resolution 1481/2006 of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly strongly condemned human rights violations committed by totalitarian communist regimes and the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism stated that these crimes were comparable with Nazi crimes but, very few people have been tried for committing such crimes. Nevertheless, 25 years later, in former Yugoslav republics, this topic is still a matter of political and scientific debate.
The Communist Party in former Yugoslavia was an organisation that used all available means to seize and keep power, including terror and mass murder. The intensity of violence was strongest between autumn 1944 and summer 1945 when mass killings occurred across the country, but repressions were endemic to the very end of Yugoslavia.
This thesis has a combined chronological and thematic approach. It focuses on the events that took place in late 1944 and 1945. At that time the KPJ, assisted by the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav Army, the Department for the Protection of the People (OZNA) and the Corps of People’s Defence of Yugoslavia (KNOJ) conducted organised terror not only by intimidation, prosecution, torture and imprisonment, but also by the execution of a large number of citizens perceived by the KPJ as disloyal, passive, ideological enemies or class enemies. The aim is to provide an overview of the mass crimes committed in that period revealing previously unknown details about the most significant ones and trying to answer questions about the victims and perpetrators, including the most significant one: was the violence systematically organised and carried out under the command of the Yugoslav Army and the KPJ?
This thesis is based on documents kept in the archives of Croatia, Slovenia, the UK, and Serbia. Other sources are published collections of documents and testimonials. Documents of OZNA, KNOJ, the Communist Party and the Yugoslav Army kept in the Croatian State Archives, the State Archives in Split and the State Archives in Zagreb will be the backbone of this research. They provide information on the units which participated in war crimes and the geographical scope of their military operations. The archival documents will be correlated with testimonials of both survivors and Yugoslav soldiers.
The project will not only cover new ground in the research into communist war crimes at the end and after the Second World War but will also contribute to coming to terms with the past in the successor states of Yugoslavia by studying one of the most controversial episodes in the contemporary history of the Balkans.

2012 – 2013, The Victims of Solin (1941-1948)

The research was conducted in the State Archives of Split and Croatian State Archives, Zagreb. Research results are due to be published in the book “The Victims of Solin”.

2010 – 2011, The Victims of Dugopolje (1941-1948)

The research was conducted in the State Archives of Split and Croatian State Archives, Zagreb.
Research results were published in the book “The Victims of Dugopolje”, June 2011.

Review (in Croatian) available at: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/118182.

2006 – onwards, Croatian History 1941 – 1948

Independent research was conducted by the Croatian Society of Historians – Dr Rudolf Horvat and financed independently by the researchers. Research results were published in “The Victims of Dugopolje” in June 2011, and in several journals in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2011-2018).

2008 – 2011, War crimes committed against Croatian citizens at the end and after World War II (1944-1946)

The research was organised by the Croatian State Archives and conducted in the archives and museums in
Croatia and Slovenia. Research results were published or are due to be published in several journals.

2006, Andrija Hebrang (1941-1948)

The research in the Croatian State Archives for the filming of the documentary film and series “Hebrang”.