Croats in Emigrant Organizations from Central and Eastern Europe during the First Half of the Cold War: International Peasant Union and Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations

Based on relevant literature, emigrant press and Croatian archival sources, the paper presents and compares the activities and the attitudes of Croatian political emigrants in organizations of emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe in the period of the first half of the Cold War from 1945 to the end of the 1960s. Two main groups were active within the Croatian political emigration at that time. One group was gathered around the leadership of the Croatian Peasant Party, the strongest Croatian pre-war party, while the other group was made up of former members of the Ustaša movement, the Nazi war ally. Members of both groups had to go into exile at the end of the Second World War as opponents of the new communist regime. By coming into exile, they very quickly began to connect with other political emigrants from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe on an anti-communist basis. The group gathered around the Croatian Peasant Party found its activities within the International Peasant Union and organizations sponsored by American Free Europe Committee, while the group close to the Ustaša movement found its platform for action in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the history of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Cold War activities of political emigrants from that area, through the activities of Croatian emigrants within international emigrant organizations.