Croatia will always have a special place in my heart because it was the first European country that I visited. I spent three months there from November 2020 through January the following year. I stayed just over a month in the capital city Zagreb and the rest of the time was spent slowly traveling from Pula south to Dubrovnik. The country has undergone significant structural changes since the brutal conflicts of the 1990s and has successfully integrated with the Western World. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1868 but was still ruled by the Habsburg Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary Kaiser und König, who held the title of "King of Croatia and Slavonia.” Since the threat of an Ottoman invasion was no longer possible after World War One, Croatia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, eventually changing its name to Yugoslavia in 1929.

In 1941, the country fell under Nazi control and became a puppet state, ironically called the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Its leader was Ante Pavelić, who was the head of the brutally oppressive fascist Ustaše party. After the war ended in 1945, Croatia became one of the six republics that comprised the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) led by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. President Josip Broz Tito changed the Yugoslav Constitution in 1974 and granted a great deal of autonomy to the six republics as well as greater autonomous status to the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo.

Tito was able to hold the SFRY together mostly by quelling any burgeoning nationalist movements and purging politicians who were sympathetic to those nationalistic views from their respective republics. That began to change after his death in 1980 when Serbian nationalist politicians began disseminating nationalist propaganda targeting the other republics. With a rise in nationalism and declining economic conditions, protest across Yugoslavia began to gain traction and would eventually lead to the dissolution of the SFRY.

The Communist Party began fracturing in January 1990. Later that year, the first multi-party elections were held in Croatia, with nationalist Franjo Tudman winning the presidency, which he served until his death in 1999. Tudman’s government declared independence on June 25th, 1990, beating Slovenia’s declaration for independence by a few hours, and went into effect on October 8th, 1991, and would later be officially recognized as a country by the United Nations the following year. The Serbian-controlled Yugoslav National Army (JNA) led by President Slobodan Milosević and Serbian paramilitary groups responded by killing, torturing, and expelling Croats from regions in Croatia with majority Serb populations. The Croatian military retaliated with their own forms of violence and discrimination against ethnic Serbs living in the eastern regions of the country, with Tudman denouncing the actions and continually denying that it was part of the official government policy.

The Yugoslav wars would be in full effect and would last until 2001, but Croatia’s involvement ended in August 1995 after reclaiming its original borders from the JNA.

Today, Croatia’s economy is flourishing due to its amazingly beautiful coastline being one of the top summer tourist destinations in the world. The country ranks in the top 20 in terms of lowest wealth inequality and ranks slightly ahead of the United States in terms of press freedom, according to the latest annual report from Reporters Without Borders. Unfortunately, the demand for tourism has turned it into the most expensive country in the Balkans by far, but I highly recommend visiting if you ever get the chance.