Croatian Americans

CROATIAN AMERICANS. The Croatian American community included a significant left-wing orientation that grew out of both Old Country politics and the American experience. Socialists pioneered labor mobilization and secular education. Especially during the 1930s–1940s, the Left provided much of the community’s leadership. Throughout, radicals played important cultural roles. After World War II, American cultural and political influences, along with the burgeoning of a powerful Croatian American Right, cut many of the old ties. Unlike that of most other European communities, however, Croatian American cultural life retained roughly social-democratic influences of enduring significance.

The Croatian Left was deeply rooted in the historical conflicts of the Old World. An internally diverse group, Croatians had struggled for a thousand years to rule themselves. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had abridged their freedom in the nineteenth century, and the Serbs took control after World War I. A radical peasant movement developed in response, pursuing economic justice and political democracy as much as national autonomy. Participants in this movement emigrated to America, and organizers frequently visited the “colonies” to proselytize and raise funds. They helped form radical culture clubs—especially around the famed Tamburitza (mandolin) orchestras—which grew up in Croatian American neighborhoods and which, like the German American Turnvereins before them, effectively bridged the gap between recreational activities and socialist politics. In 1907 a Croatian socialist movement, the Croatian Workers Organization and Political Association, officially formed, with Radnička Straže (Workingman’s Guard) its Chicago-based organ. Croatian immigrants, numbering perhaps a quarter-million in the United States, were handicapped by their widespread lack of education; unlike the Slovenes, their sister nationality, they had little exposure to European urban life and education. Jurisic Glumac, a noted Croatian intellectual who came to the United States to edit their paper, helped Croatian American socialism make its first significant progress.

Drawn primarily to three industries—coal, steel, and meat-packing—and to such associated districts as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago, Croatians became active in the radical industrial unionism of the 1910s and in the all-Yugoslav (but in practice, mostly Croatian and Slovene) South Slavic Socialist Federation. Members affiliated with the Socialist Party of America, or in the case of Cleveland’s Radnička Borba (“Workers’ Struggle”) followed DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party. Their industrial lives, dominated by large corporations, high injury rates, and low wages, instilled the need for strong mutual-benefit associations and job protection. It also inspired, to a considerably greater degree than the more politically minded Slovenes, a spirit of syndicalism or revolutionary unionism. This experience, and the events in Europe, evoked a deep sympathy with the new Soviet Union.

Of the South Slav groups, only Croatians joined the Communist movement in considerable numbers, publishing Radnik (Worker, 1922), Glas Radnika (Voice of the Worker, 1935), and Radnički Glasnik (Workers’ Herald, 1936), which became the official organ of the Croatian section of the CPUSA headquartered in Pittsburgh. Directed by Frank Borich, Leo Fisher, Stejpan Lojen, Anthony Minerich, the paper was renamed Narodni Glasnik (People’s Herald) in 1940 and was published until 1973. Croatian American Communists were a driving force in industrial unionism and increasingly visible in political activities within their communities. At sponsored rallies and lectures, prominent concerns about the growth of fascism and demands for peasant empowerment in the homeland were meaningfully connected to life in the U.S. The Croatian Benevolent Fraternity of the International Workers Order saw steady growth in over 80 lodges under the leadership of Anton Gerlach, and in addition to providing fraternal insurance, it arranged social and cultural activities that promoted a multi-ethnic radicalism for fairer unions, expanded welfare, and racial equality.

During and after World War II, transnational, ethnic working-class issues and interests were promoted by the Croatian section of the Party and other Croatian American organizations. Croatian leftists were organizers of the first All-Slavic Congress and elected to the board of the American Slav Congress (ASC) formed in Detroit in 1942 as an anti-fascist organization and to highlight Slavic groups’ crucial roles in defense industries. The ASC’s Croatian Congress declared its full support for the Yugoslav Partisans and Croatian American newspapers reported on fundraising activities conducted in union halls and fraternal lodges. Croatians supported the United Committee of South Slavic Americans led by Louis Adamic, which advocated for a Communist Yugoslav federation under Tito, and they donated to the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief headed by Zlatko Balokovic.

Unique in another sense, Croatian radicals remained active within the generalized, secular, and ostensibly nonpolitical Croatian Fraternal Union (CFU), whose leadership shifted from one broad orientation to another without demanding adherence at the local level. The CFU, ardently supporting industrial unionism and the New Deal, helped unite Croatian Left and mainstream industrial workers in common tasks of labor and politics. Later, the CFU’s ardent support of Tito and its participation in the American Slav Congress caused it to be placed upon the attorney general’s list of subversive organizations as a Communist-linked group. Obtaining legal extrication from the list, the CFU went on to prosper in future generations of Croatian Americans, noted for its large membership (more than 100,000 in the middle 1980s), its Tamburitza bands, and its mildly left-of-center national leadership. Its national weekly, Zajedničar (Fraternalist), continued (in Croatian and English) for a long period to urge upon its readers a generally progressive perspective. In the face of conservative, post–World War II immigration from Yugoslavia, the growing strength of the Croatian Catholic Union, and later, with the Yugoslav Wars, the survival and positioning of the CFU was, along with that of its sister Slovene National Benefit Society, unique within the European American ethnic world. After the fall of the East Bloc, the tensions and brutal conflicts in the Balkans and the assimilation of Croatians in American life fairly ended the progressive leadership of the CFU and its sister SNPJ. The two organizations struggled on as social networks, with disappearing political outlooks.

Barrett, James, Rob Ruck, and Steve Nelson. Steve Nelson: American Radical. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1982.

Kraljic, John. “The Croatian Section of the Communist Party of the United States and the ‘United Front’: 1934-1939.” Review of Croatian History (Zagreb) 5 (2009): 137-67.

Rachleff, Peter. “The Croatian Fraternal Union in the Great Depression.” In The Ethnic Enigma, edited by Peter Kivisto Philadelphia: Balch Institute, 1989.