The great American cultural anthropologist and philosopher Allan Stewart Konigsberg, better known to the scientific community as Heywood Allen, aka Woody, summed up the whole truth of our world in that famous sentence: "I don't know the question, but the answer is most certainly sex."
What is sex in Woody Allen's life, for Croats in a historical sense, clearly, is Yugoslavia. Although on average they only have it twice in a hundred years, and although the last time they had it was thirty years ago, for the Croats, Yugoslavia - in every single pose from Kama Yesterday, as monarchist, communist, revolutionary, partisan, self-governing or Udbaska - is the source of all suppressed frustrations and an answer to every question. Ready to look everyone in the eye at any moment, they barely wait for the end of the question before interrupting the interlocutor: "Dear sir, I don't know the question, but the answer is most certainly Yugoslavia."
Minister of Health Milan Kujundžić showed us how it looks in practice, when journalists dug up his sloppily filled property card - discovering that it was not stated where he got the money for the recently bought new house on Zagreb's Maksimir - and through that crack, new scandals started pouring in every day. : it was discovered that he also bought the family house in Markuševac for a small sum from his wife's liquidated company, that he forgot to include in the property card also about eighty square meters of apartments in Pag and a nice piece of arable land in Novi Zagreb, and that the grandfather's property card - about a hundred square meters of an old family house without a garden in Ivanbegovina near Imotski - actually a luxury villa twice as large with a swimming pool on a plot of one thousand square meters.
And as Milan Kujundžić explained at the press conference where he got his money, apartments, plots of land, arable land and villas around Zagreb, how did he explain where he got the double-sized house in Ivanbegovina?
"The house in Ivanbegovina is standing there as it was twenty years ago, the house is the same, anyone can see it, I have nothing there. And by the way, you can buy as much land in Ivanbegovina for one euro as you want, unfortunately no one will, but my heart is there, I am drawn there. Now I will tell you a little about my Ivanbegovina. That's a good question. Unfortunately, Ivanbegovina is symbolic of numerous Croatian villages, places that have been abandoned. And one of the reasons why Ivanbegovina was abandoned is that the partisans killed forty-six boys in 1944 and 1945. And now Beljak and Bernardić are calling out, 'you didn't kill them enough'!"
Let's repeat, for those who thought that the Minister of Health explained the illogicalities in his property card with the liquidations of Croats in 1945: when asked why he listed a luxury villa of two hundred square meters in his native Ivanbegovina - on a plot of one thousand square meters with a swimming pool - as an old house in the property card of one hundred square meters without a garden, Minister Kujundžić replied that the partisans killed forty-six young men in that village at the end of the Second World War.
If I understood correctly - and Mr. Kujundžić will correct me if I made a mistake - things continued to go like this: Ivanbegovina was left without male heads after the massacre, the elderly soon died, the children went to Zagreb for medicine, the village was deserted, real estate came for nothing, and land prices fell to euro square. The right question is not the minister who forged the property card, but the right question - quite logically - is Krešo Beljak who says that the partisans did not kill enough Croats. That is, as you know yourself, "I don't know the question, but the answer is definitely the partisans". Ever since they understood, accepted and advanced Allen's concept of the universal answer - the ontological holy grail - Croatian philosophers, as you can see, have been doing very well. There are no more awkward questions for them, neither difficult nor provocative.
"Mr. Prime Minister, do you agree that corruption is the most difficult systemic problem?" "I don't know the question, but the answer is most certainly petty capillary corruption developed in Yugoslavian socialism!" "Mr. President, how do you comment on the pre-election support of a convicted terrorist and plane hijacker?" "I don't know the question, but I was born on the other side of the Iron Curtain, there were no fruit yogurts in Yugoslavia!" dare to say you are Croatian!" "Mr. General, who is to blame for the disastrous situation in the Croatian Air Force?" "I don't know the question, but the answer is most certainly Udba." "Your honor, do you intend to legally recognize the paternity of the three children you have with Mrs. L. from Tajtavrlja Donja?" "Young sir, in Tajtavrlja Donja the partisans liquidated all the male heads in 1945!"
Try it yourself, the game is simple and fun, and it works every time. "Mr. Prime Minister, what did you agree on at the summit of the heads of government of the European Union member states?" "I don't know the question, but the answer is most certainly Yugoslavia." "Your role models, one personal question: when was the last time you had unpaid sex?" "No I know the question, but the answer is definitely Yugoslavia." "Was socialist Yugoslavia or independent Croatia better for the Croats?" "I don't know the question, but the answer is definitely Yugoslavia."
Why, however, are Croats so sickly obsessively attached to partisans, communists, Udba and Tito? Why is Yugoslavia to blame for everything, even thirty years after it broke up forever? I don't know the question, learned people would say, but the answer is most definitely sex.
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