BOOK "MODERN HISTORY OF CROATIA" BY DUSAN BILANDZIC PRESENTED

ZAGREB, Nov 10 (Hina) - The book "Modern History of Croatia" by academician Dusan Bilandzic was presented at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) in Zagreb on Wednesday. Bilandzic scientifically analyses the period from 1941 to 1990, i.e. to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism. The book also deals with Croatia within the Hapsburg monarchy and Croats as part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS). The epilogue includes a scientific commentary on events between 1990 to 1999, since a historiographic analysis was not possible without the necessary passage of time, academician Alica Wertheimer-Baletic said. #L# A book's editor Hrvoje Matkovic said Bilandzic introduces himself in "A Word to the Reader", where he speaks sincerely about his education, his ideological forming and his distancing from the ideology he believed in. Bilandzic's book also contains previously unknown documents and notes from secret sessions, which bear witness to the depth of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. The book will be interesting to both experts and the general public, Matkovic said. Another editor, Ivo Petrinovic, said Bilandzic was a historian by vocation although by education he was a lawyer, with a doctor's degree in economic science. In the 17 chapters of the work, which has more than 800 pages, Bilandzic deals very seriously with an extensive literature on Croatian history until 1941. The author also grants insight into data according to which the makers of the Second Yugoslavia had estimated that the state would disintegrate and they therefore initiated confederation processes, which were later the basis of independence of the Yugoslav states, Petrinovic said. The book was published by the Zagreb publishing house "Golden marketing" and its publishing was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the HAZU. (hina) jn rml