Dr Franjo Tuđman and 1989

In collective human memory, there have always been years that are remembered for the major political and social changes that took place during them. Thus, 1918 and 1945 were the years when the two world wars ended, and their outcomes shaped the political architecture of the world for many years. We can consider 1989 another such historical year, because it marked the collapse of a decades-long bipolar political world order. In 1989, the democratisation process began in communist Croatia, during which Franjo Tuđman became the key personality of the newly established non-Communist opposition. Tuđman’s political ascent can today be reconstructed very easily with the help of the available documents from the former State Security Service of the Republican Secretariat of the Interior of the Socialist Republic of Croatia and the relevant literature. The main chronological divide in this paper is 17 June 1989, when the Croatian Democratic Union was established in a non-public space, and Franjo Tuđman was elected its first president.