It is rare for the intelligent gray heads of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts to make themselves known to mortals, rarely do they offer their advice, solutions, visions and wise sayings from their vast centuries of life and historical experience, so the nation was understandably shaken when last Thursday they announced from the palace on Nikola Šubić Zrinjski Square that they had published the Declaration after a large scientific gathering.
HAZU Declaration! This doesn't happen every Thursday, moreover, the national council of wise men - the best and smartest we have - has only publicly stated its opinion on important social issues of our young state once in all these thirty-five years of the Croatian state: some ten or twelve years ago, three distinguished academics, the very representation of the famous palace on Zrinjevac, led by the then president Zvonko Kusić, gave a joint interview to Jutarnji list, offering their, as it were, "vision of a better Croatia" with academic authority.
In all twenty-five years of the young Croatian state, no visionary wise words had been heard from Nikola Šubić Zrinski Square until then, so the entire nation impatiently plucked the morning leaves until it came to the interview on the double-decker bus. And what did the three walking busts from the auditorium of the national academy ultimately say, what did the three musketeers of Croatian intelligence and knowledge offer as a solution and a way out of the general crisis of Croatian society and the state as such?
Merchant navy!
Oh my god, I'm not kidding, and neither were the scholars and druids from the Academy. Seriously, if their eyelids under their thick white eyebrows hadn't even blinked, the greatest minds among Croatians proposed to the Government the formation of a merchant navy, which would supposedly conquer the world's oceans and put small but powerful maritime Croatia in the atlases of the world economy! With a well-thought-out strategy and a bit of historical luck, a strong merchant navy - the academics probably hoped - could make Croatia "the Republic on which the sun never sets". They even proposed naming the southernmost point of Africa the Cape of Good Hope.
It was the last historical moment for something like that, the world would not wait for us, warned the academic gentlemen, the last thing they had heard - a Venetian merchant passing by had informed them a moment earlier - was that the Portuguese had apparently actually circumnavigated Africa and discovered a sea route to India.
At a time when their colleagues from world institutes, academies and universities were discovering the secrets of human and space genomes, gravitational waves, photonic molecules, Higgs bosons, exotic hadrons and other subatomic wonders, and the world was facing a historic change in every single social, cultural and economic paradigm, the cocoon of Croatian intelligence, cocooned in the offices of the Academy, was drawing up plans for schooners and galleons on which the Ministry for Overseas Colonies would employ two hundred thousand Croats, eliminate the trade deficit with the rest of the world and sail away into the rosy horizon!
You see, Croatian academics did not propose a merchant navy as a solution five hundred years ago, when new lands were being discovered like bosons and hadrons are today, nor did they propose it one hundred and fifty years ago, when a shortcut to India was cut through Suez, nor a hundred years ago, when steam navies were drawing maps of world influence, nor even fifty years ago, when supertanker and container transport began a revolution in maritime trade. No: the merchant navy as a good idea slipped the minds of Croatian druids in the midst of a global economic collapse and probably the greatest crisis in the history of world maritime trade!
While Korean shipping giants were adding up losses the size of the Croatian budget and were shooting like Agrokor, academics from the famous maritime Croatia, which is not even able to reach colonies on its own islands with ferries, saw the only hope for society and the state in the merchant navy, some kind of national maritime-trade consortium, something like the Croatian West India Company, or - this is just a working proposal, it needs to be refined a bit - Hidrokor.
That's it - exactly five hundred years, a few years more or less - a deep, bottomless abyss between real life and the ghost house on Nikola Šubić Zrinski Square, whose heavy oak doors under Corinthian capitals are a time portal through which one enters from the frenzied, digital and artificially intelligent 2025 into the time of the struggle for supremacy on the oceans, great maritime discoveries, Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Croatian economic Renaissance.
Five hundred years have passed since that famous interview in Jutarnji List, and nothing has been heard from the palace on Zrinjevac since then. Yes, excuse me, twelve years. Twelve years have passed since that famous interview, in modern terms that is approximately five hundred years old, the world has changed more in the last twelve years than in all the five hundred years before that: there was no artificial intelligence, no Twitter, no Instagram, the PlayStation was still number 3, the iPhone was number 4, and the Chinese economy was competing with the British and French, Zoran Milanović and Vladimir Putin were prime ministers, Donald Trump was the host of some idiotic reality show on NBC, and Andrej Plenković was in the European Parliament, so you know when that was.
Croatia has also changed irreversibly in those twelve years, hundreds of thousands of people have fled our beautiful country and been replaced by hundreds of thousands of Nepalese, Filipinos and Indians, wild boars and foxes are roaming the deserted cities, broken English is spoken in neighborhood shops, the country is represented at the Eurovision Song Contest by a conservative gay Catholic, the SDP lost in Rijeka, and all this time the national council of wise men, the best and brightest we have, had nothing to say. The last thing heard from the palace on Nikola Šubić Zrinjski Square was when, last year, at the roll call of living members, they were horrified to discover that a woman had infiltrated their membership, and they expelled Julijana Matanović.
It is therefore understandable that the nation was excited last Thursday to hear the news that the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts had published the Declaration after a major scientific conference.
Declaration of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts!
The HAZU Declaration, fuck your heliocentric sun, it's not a joke, the HAZU hasn't published a Declaration in over twenty years - the last one it published was probably the Declaration on Knowledge from 2004, the afterword was written by Eugen Pusić, so you know when that was! - and the entire nation was now impatiently waiting to see what the wise gray heads from Zrinjevac, led by the president of the Academy Velimir Neidhardt, had been discussing all day, guessing what this now historic document was about, whether it was the Declaration on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the fate of Croatia in a globally flooded world or, I have no idea, the challenges and prospects of Nepalese-Filipino Croatia.
And what did the walking busts from the auditorium of the National Academy ultimately tell us, what did the musketeers of Croatian intelligence and knowledge announce on that historic Thursday?
That the initial field of the Croatian historical coat of arms can be red and white!
Majke mi, uopće se ne zajebavam, a uopće se zajebavali bogami nisu ni učenjaci i druidi iz palače Akademije. Najozbiljnije, da im kapci pod gustim bijelim obrvama nisu ni trepnuli, najveći umovi u Hrvata cijeli su taj dan raspravljali o jebenom prvom polju hrvatskog grba, o "recentnim pseudoznanstvenim tezama o početnom polju", njegovim "zlonamjernim medijskim problematizacijama" i "ahistorijskom pristupu koji isključuje petsto godina povijesti podjednake uporabe inačica toga hrvatskoga heraldičkog simbola", donijevši najzad historijsku Deklaraciju o povijesnom hrvatskom grbu, pa jednom za svagda proglasivši "kraj stigmatizacije različitih varijanata hrvatskoga povijesnoga grba".
The initial field of the coat of arms! In the midst of the undeclared Third World War, you see, at the very crossroads of the human race, the most learned Croatian minds spent the entire Thursday plowing the fucking first field of the Croatian chessboard with oxen!
At that time twelve years ago - now you've been told - when their colleagues from the world's academies were discovering the secrets of man and the universe, and the world was facing the change of each of its individual paradigms, the scum of Croatian intelligence in the Biedermeier offices of the Academy was planning the merchant navy and making designs for schooners and galleons with sails in red and white squares, stuck on the key question of Croatian science, the Mother of All Croatian Questions - which square, motherfucker, goes first?
So he spent the next twelve years figuring out how to do it either way.
Because while they are wasting time on the first square of the Croatian chessboard in Zrinjevac, there in the Galician shipyard in Pontevedra they have already laid the keel for the new building "La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción", a modern carrack of one hundred and fifty tons, and while the learned Croatian sideburns decide whether the first square on the ship's flag of their galleon is white or red, the "Santa María" will already discover America, and then goodbye to the Croatian merchant navy, goodbye to maritime dominance, goodbye to the Croatian economic renaissance. Croatia, you understand, there is no time, now is a historic moment, while China is looking for its historical Silk Road, Russia for a land route to Kiev, and America for Mars, the world's oceans are just waiting for the far-famed Croatian merchant navy with this or that recognizable starting square.
Even if that little Rimac discovers the steam engine, as is rumored in the corridors of the Academy, the Spaniards and English won't have a chance.
Bonus video:
