Slaven Letica (28 June 1947 – 25 October 2020) was a
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
University of Zagreb
The University of Zagreb (, ) is a public university, public research university in Zagreb, Croatia. It is the largest Croatian university and one of the oldest continuously operating universities in Europe. The University of Zagreb and the Unive ...
Faculty of Economics in 1971. In the 1980s, Letica was a professor of
sociology of medicine
Medical sociology is the sociological analysis of health, Illness, differential access to medical resources, the social organization of medicine, Health Care Delivery, the production of medical knowledge, selection of methods, the study of social ...
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
, working on health service management projects in a number of countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
In late 1980s, as the Communist grip on public discourse weakened, Letica began to use new freedoms to advocate various reforms. In doing so, he wrote many articles and columns and he began to appear in television talk shows and town hall meetings, quickly becoming one of the most popular and the most recognisable intellectuals in Yugoslavia.
In May 1990, after the first democratic elections,
Franjo Tuđman
Franjo Tuđman (14 May 1922 – 10 December 1999) was a Croatian politician and historian who became the first president of Croatia, from 1990 until his death in 1999. He served following the Independence of Croatia, country's independe ...
made him his personal advisor. During negotiations which Tuđman pursued with the leader of the Serbs in Croatia,
Jovan Rašković
Jovan Rašković ( sr-cyr, Јован Рашковић, ; 5 July 1929 – 28 July 1992) was a Serbs of Croatia, Croatian Serb psychiatrist, academic and politician.
Early life
Rašković was born in Knin in 1929. During World War II in Yugoslavia ...
, Letica leaked the transcript of the secretly recorded conversation between Tuđman and Rašković to the Croatian media, hoping that some of Rašković's controversial remarks would give offense to his fellow Croatian Serbs and turn them away from his secessionist policies. As a consequence, however, the comparably moderate Rašković was replaced by Serb radicals, which hastened the start of the war in Croatia. Letica and Tuđman parted ways in March 1991 due to disagreement about Croatian politics towards
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...
.
In the following years Letica continued to appear in the Croatian media as a commentator, espousing opposition views, and became a regular columnist for '' Globus'', a popular
news magazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or new ...
. During his time at ''Globus'' he gained significant notoriety due to an unsigned 1992 opinion piece (which he eventually admitted to have written), titled "Croatian Feminists are Raping Croatia", in which he attacked five Croatian feminist writers ( Slavenka Drakulić, Vesna Kesić, Jelena Lovrić, Dubravka Ugrešić and Rada Iveković), accusing them of betraying Croatia. The article was a source of significant controversy which ultimately resulted in a successful defamation lawsuit against the magazine.
Political career
In the
2000 Croatian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Croatia in January 2000,Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p410 the third since independence in 1991. They were also the first early presidential elections, as the ...
, Letica ran as an independent candidate. Although he finished fourth, the relatively high percentage of votes he won (4.14%) made him desirable to the
Croatian Party of Rights
The Croatian Party of Rights (, HSP) is an Extra-parliamentary opposition, extra-parliamentary Croatian nationalism, nationalist and Neo-fascism, neo-fascist List of political parties in Croatia, political party in Croatia. The word "right(s)" i ...
(HSP), a right-wing party in desperate need to tone down its negative far-right image. Letica, with his reputation of a refined urbanite and European intellectual, served this purpose very well and on the
2003 Croatian parliamentary election
Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on 23 November 2003 to elect all 151 members of parliament. They were the fifth parliamentary elections to take place since the first multi-party elections in 1990. Voter turnout was 61.7%. The result ...
, as a candidate on HSP's list, won a seat in the Sabor (Croatian Parliament).
He also associated at one point with the Croatian True Revival, a one-time political project of Miroslav Tuđman and Nenad Ivanković that failed to gain major traction in Croatian politics.
The HSP nevertheless used Letica again as their candidate in the
2005 Croatian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Croatia in January 2005, the fourth such elections since independence in 1991. They were the first presidential elections held after the constitutional reforms of November 2000, which replaced a semi-presiden ...
. When Letica won fewer votes than in 2000, 2.59%, he accused the HSP of not supporting him enough. He quit the party midway through his term and remained in the Sabor until January 2008 as an independent.
In the
Selected books:
* ''Zdravstvo u Hrvatskoj: razvoj, stanje i perspektive'' (1981)
* ''Kriza i zdravstvo'' (1984)
* ''Zdravstvena politika u doba krize'' (1984)
* ''Intelektualac i kriza'' (1984)
* ''Četvrta Jugoslavija'' (1989)
* ''Obećana zemlja'' (1992)
* ''Divlje misli'' (1993)
* ''The Road from Paradise'' (1993, co-author)
* ''Habits of the Balkan Heart'' (1993, co-author)
* ''Postmoderna i genocid u Bosni i Hercegovini'' (1997, co-author)
* ''Političko pleme'' (1999)
* ''Strašni sud'' (2002)
* ''Medicinska sociologija'' (2003, co-author)