Josip Manolic, who was Croatia’s prime minister during its break from the collapsing Yugoslavia in 1991 and who helped mobilize forces as war engulfed the region, but also faced scrutiny for past political repression as part of the Cold War-era secret police, died April 15 at 104.
The death was announced by his family, but no other details were given.
Mr. Manolic’s role in Croatian affairs spanned generations, from the pro-Communist partisans that took power in Yugoslavia after World War II to the devastating wars in the 1990s that claimed at least 110,000 lives across the former Yugoslavia and forced millions of people to flee amid campaigns of ethnic cleansing.
After fighting broke out in Croatia, Mr. Manolic left the prime minister post to help rapidly build Croatia’s police and intelligence services — drawing from within his former security networks — as ethnic Serbs, backed by the Serb-led Yugoslav military, rose up in opposition to Croatia’s independence.
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Decades later, Mr. Manolic was called to testify in various investigations into alleged atrocities. He did not face charges, but the probes touched on some of the bloodiest moments in Croatia’s chapter of the Balkan wars.
In July 2006, as a witness before the U.N.-created International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Manolic was asked by a defense attorney how Croatian officials learned about the massacre in November 1991 in Vukovar, where prosecutors said Serb forces killed at least 260 Croatian defenders and others. The defense lawyer called the Vukovar massacre an “attack.”
“I beg your pardon. Not attack. Attack is too mild a word. … Bloody crimes took place,” replied Mr. Manolic, who was prime minister from August 1990 to July 1991. He left that post weeks after Croatia formally declared independence on June 25, 1991, the same day as another Yugoslav republic, Slovenia.
During questioning by war crime investigators, Mr. Manolic also was asked about the conduct of Croatian forces in strikes on ethnic Serb separatist enclaves and in neighboring Bosnia, where ethnic Croatian militias had the backing of Mr. Manolic and other leaders in Zagreb. Mr. Manolic was often defiant, underscoring the bitterness on all sides from the region’s wars and the aftermath. The United Nations tribunal brought more than 160 indictments on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and other allegations across the former Yugoslavia.
Croatia mostly rallied around Mr. Manolic and other leaders during the war. Yet Mr. Manolic also was a symbol of a polarizing past.
He was one of the last surviving links to Croatia’s struggles during World War II and the pro-Communist resistance that eventually took control of Yugoslavia, waging reprisals against suspected Nazi collaborators and perceived political opponents. (In later decades, Yugoslavia declared itself a nonaligned state that maintained ties with the West and the Soviet Union.)
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Mr. Manolic was a shoemaker apprentice when he joined the youth wing of Yugoslavia’s Communist Party in the late 1930s. He rose through the ranks. During World War II, Mr. Manolic was arrested by the Ustashe, a Croatian ultranationalist group aligned with Nazis and Italian fascists. He spent months in prison and then joined Communist partisan factions that waged guerrilla-style attacks on Ustashe targets and sympathizers.
When the war ended, Yugoslavia was under the control of partisan leader Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito, who crushed opposition including loyalists to the exiled king. Mr. Manolic was groomed to take over state security and run political prisons as one of Tito’s key enforcers in Croatia, then a republic within Yugoslavia.
Those held under Mr. Manolic’s watch included Zagreb’s archbishop, the Rev. Alojz Stepinac, who was convicted of treason in 1946 on claims of collaboration with the Ustashe. Stepinac’s many supporters saw the charges as an attempt to muzzle a powerful Roman Catholic voice that could challenge Tito’s grip. Stepinac served five years in prison and died in 1960, after being elevated to cardinal, while under strict travel restrictions.
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Stepinac was beatified, a last step toward possible sainthood in the church, by Pope John Paul II in 1998. The Simon Wiesenthal Center had asked the Vatican to postpone the beatification to allow further study into Stepinac’s actions during World War II.
Mr. Manolic remained unrepentant over the persecution in the postwar Tito era, leading some rights groups and political opponents to complain that he attempted to whitewash his roles in crushing dissent.
While still part of the secret police, he received a law degree in 1960 from the University of Zagreb. He became a member of Croatia’s parliament in 1965 and held other political positions in Yugoslavia’s government. In 1972, Mr. Manolic was ousted after internal political battles between communists and reformers known as the Croatian Spring.
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He found a way back into politics in the 1980s as a key ally of Franjo Tudjman, a former dissident who was a rising political leader in Croatia after Tito’s death in 1980. Tudjman was elected president of Croatia in 1990, while still part of Yugoslavia, and Mr. Manolic was soon named prime minister.
After Croatia declared independence, Mr. Manolic at first tried to calm Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade, describing the secession as a “long and gradual process.” Within days, his tone changed as ethnic Serbs took up arms and the Yugoslav army began to withdraw from Croatia in a sign of brewing war.
Croatia, he said, would defend itself “with all its means” and blamed Yugoslavia’s Serb-dominated leadership, including President Slobodan Milosevic, of rejecting “democratic change.” (Milosevic, who was on trial by the U.N. tribunal for alleged atrocities, was found dead in his jail cell near The Hague in 2006.)
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“Just like the Soviet army,” Mr. Manolic said. “They think they can solve all problems by force.”
Josip Manolic was born on March 22, 1920, in the Croatian village of Kalinovac in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He was a boy when his father died, and the family moved to Orlovac near Nova Raca, where he studied to be a shoemaker before joining the Communist Party.
Mr. Manolic served as the speaker of Croatia’s upper house of parliament from 1993 until 1994, when he was ousted in a political break with his former mentor Tudjman. Mr. Manolic joined an anti-Tudjman party, which was trounced in 1995 elections.
He then took on an elder statesman role as backer of pro-Western reforms that eventually led to Croatia joining the European Union in 2013. His autobiography, translated as “Politics and Homeland, My fight for a Sovereign and Social Croatia,” was published in 2015.
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Mr. Manolic’s first wife, Marija Eker, died in a house fire in 2003. He married Mirjana Ribaric in 2016, when he was 96, and she died four years later of lung cancer at age 64. He had three children from his first marriage. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
In a 1994 interview with the Belgrade-based news magazine Vreme, Mr. Manolic was asked about whether the ethnic rifts opened by the wars could ever heal.
“Those who took part in [attacks against Croatia] are surely not my friends,” he said. “That we used to be friends gives us a hope that we could be friends again.”
