Lipovac said that Tuđman's diaries and books reveal how he, as a trained historian, viewed the Czechs and Slovaks who had shared with the Croats a similar historical experience of living in multiethnic countries for centuries.
"Tuđman was intrigued by similarities between the status of Slovakia in relation to Czechia within Chechoslovakia and the status of Croatia in relation to Serbia within Yugoslavia. He was inclined to draw parallels between Czechia and Serbia and, as a Croat, he sympathised with Slovak aspirations for greater emancipation and autonomy within the common state with the Czechs," Lipovac said.
He noted Tuđman's condemnation of the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring democracy movement in his 1969 book "Great Ideas and Small Nations". He said Tuđman considered the occupation of Czechoslovakia as proof of the failure of the ideas of Pan-Slavism and socialist internationalism, which again proved to be a means of hegemony exercised by large nations over small ones.
As Director of the Institute for the History of the Workers' Movement of Croatia from 1961 to 1967, Tuđman established cooperation with similar Czech and Slovak institutions. During his visits to Slovakia, he delivered lectures, guested on television and made friends with many Czech and Slovak historians and intellectuals, Lipovac said.
Tuđman also established close contacts with General Ludvik Svoboda, who served as President of Czechoslovakia from 1968 to 1975, and in particular with Slovak politician Gustáv Husák, who led the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after the suppression of the Prague Spring and later served as President of Czechoslovakia.
When Tuđman was arrested in 1972, he faced a possibility of being accused of espionage and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment over his ties with Svoboda and Husák, but that did not happen.
"Tuđman believed that in addition to other influential persons Gustáv Husák also interceded on his behalf by writing to (Yugoslav President) Josip Broz Tito," Lipovac said.
Husák was succeeded by the first President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, with whom Tuđman met in his capacity as President of Croatia at international conferences, but the two failed to establish close and friendly relations. Havel visited Croatia only after Tuđman's death in 1999, and Tuđman never visited the Czech Republic or Slovakia as President, even though he met with Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar in Zagreb in 1996.
Lipovac recalled that in 1994 Tuđman, acting on the proposal of the Croatian-Czech Friendship Association, awarded medals to Češka Beseda Zagreb on the 120th anniversary of its existence and the Czech Alliance of Croatia on its 50th anniversary, saying that "the Croats and Czechs share the same destiny in their Croatian homeland by defending it together with arms, culture and education."