Vladko Macek (1879-1964) was born in a small Croatian village and
received his law degree in 1903 from the University of Zagreb. One
of the early members of the Croatian Peasant Party, he was closely
associated with its founders, Ante and Stephen Radic. After the
dissolution of the Habsburg empire, Croatia became a part of the
new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and the Croatian
Peasant Party emerged as one of the strongest political factions.
Elected to the Belgrade Constituent Assembly in 1920, the author
became head of the party when Stephen Radic was assassinated in
1928. But King Alexander established a personal dictatorship the
following year, and Macek was imprisoned until after the king
himself was murdered in 1934. During the latter half of the decade,
the Croatian Peasant Party cooperated with several Serbian parties,
and despite rigged elections, the combined opposition almost ousted
the government in 1938. The deteriorating international situation
finally forced composition of Serb-Croat differences, and Croatia
was granted substantial autonomy in the sporazum (agreement) of
August 1939. Macek became vice-premier in the Belgrade government,
and Yugoslavia's worst internal problem seemed solved. But with the
collapse of France in 1940, the threat from Hitler and Mussolini
became acute, and Yugoslavia was finally forced to adhere to the
Tripartite Pact (Germany-Italy-Japan). When a coup d'etat by
pro-Allied officers in Belgrade reversed the situation on March 27,
1941, Macek at first refused to have any part in the new
government. At the same time he rebuffed all Axis approaches and,
as the German consulate in Zagreb reported on April 3,
"categorically rejected any discussion about an independent Greater
Croatia." That afternoon he agreed to resume his old post as
vice-premier. Germany attacked Yugoslavia three days later,
however, and on April 16 the government fled to Greece. But Macek
refused to leave the country and instead returned to Croatia, where
he remained in prison or under house arrest until May 1945, when he
and his family were able to flee to Austria and the protection of
the U.S. Army. After the war the author settled in Washington,
D.C., where he helped found the International Peasant Union,
representing the suppressed peasant parties of eastern Europe. "Few
memoirs are so revealing and rewarding as these," writes E. C.
Helmreich; "there may be those who differ with him, but his account
of what happened rings true." Not the least of the rewards are
Macek's judgments of men and politics, as relevant in 1969 as they
were in 1939-for example, his observation that "peasants are the
least tempted to become leftists: long political experience has
taught me that it is the educated, or semi-educated people, who are
most apt to become extremists either of the left or of the right."
Or his defense of a voting age of twenty-four in the Croatian
electoral law: it "may seem reactionary to some people. But I was
convinced then that young people do not have enough experience to
size up a given political situation and objectively decide
intricate political issues. The fact that Hitler, Mussolini,
Pavelic and the Communists recruited their most ardent followers
among immature youngsters has done nothing to change my opinion."
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