Ante Ciliga facts for kids

Ante Ciliga (born February 20, 1898 – died October 21, 1992) was a Croatian politician, writer, and publisher. He was one of the first leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). In the 1930s, he was sent to forced labor camps in Stalin's Gulags during a time called the Great Purge. After this, he became a strong Croatian nationalist and was against communism. He also supported the fascist Ustaše movement.

Early Life and Political Beginnings

Ante Ciliga was born in a small village called Šegotići in Istria. At that time, Istria was part of the Austrian Littoral, which is now in Croatia. Even though he was a Croat by language and culture, he was an Austrian citizen until 1919. Then, he became an Italian citizen until 1945. His family were farmers. His grandfather taught him to care about Croatian culture and the fight for national freedom against the Italian city dwellers and the German-Austrian government.

Joining the Communist Movement

From 1918 to 1921, Ciliga studied in Prague. He was very interested in the October Revolution in Russia, which was a big change in how Russia was governed. He started a club for young Yugoslav Marxists and helped edit newspapers like Komunist.

In 1919, Ciliga took part in the Hungarian Soviet Republic revolution. He was later sent to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which became Yugoslavia). There, he joined a military uprising in Varaždin. In 1921, he helped organize the Proština rebellion in his home region of Istria. This was one of the first times people in Europe stood up against fascism, a type of strict government. After the rebellion failed, groups of fascists burned his home village of Šegotići.

By 1921, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) was made illegal in Yugoslavia. Ciliga continued his political work from Vienna, where many party members lived in exile. In 1923, he became the main editor of Borba, the KPJ's official newspaper. He wrote a lot about the "national question," which was about the rights of different ethnic groups. In 1924, he earned his doctorate in Zagreb while still actively organizing secret party activities.

He quickly became an important leader in the party, serving as the Regional Secretary for Croatia-Slavonia. By December 1924, he was part of the Central Committee of the KPJ. He also edited Organizovani radnik (meaning Organized Worker), a newspaper for workers' unions that was published legally until 1929.

Life in the Soviet Union

Because of his political work, Ciliga was forced to leave Yugoslavia in 1925. He moved to Vienna and then to the Soviet Union, where he lived from 1926 to 1935. For three years, he taught at a school in Moscow for Yugoslav Communists who had moved there.

In 1930, Ciliga taught at the Communist University of Leningrad. However, he was arrested by Stalin's secret police, the GPU, because he disagreed with the Soviet government's policies. He was then sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia. He had already been removed from the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1929.

In his book The Russian Enigma, published in 1938, Ciliga wrote about his five years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. He strongly criticized Stalin's strict government and its harsh actions.

World War II Experiences

In late 1941, Ciliga returned to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which was a state allied with Nazi Germany. There, he was arrested by the Ustaše, a fascist group, and held for a year in the Jasenovac concentration camp. Ciliga later described Jasenovac as a place where people were killed quickly or over time. He said it was similar to Auschwitz, but with more basic and brutal cruelties. He also wrote that his experiences in Stalin's Siberian camps were not as physically terrible as what he saw in Jasenovac.

After being released from Jasenovac in December 1942, Ciliga wrote for Spremnost, a magazine that supported the Ustasha ideas. In 1944, he moved to Nazi Berlin, staying at the NDH embassy.

After the War

After World War II, Ciliga lived in Italy and France as a political exile. He edited publications that were against communism and against Yugoslavia. He stopped being a communist and became a very strong Croatian nationalist.

He wrote books criticizing the government of Tito in Yugoslavia, such as State Crisis in Tito’s Yugoslavia. He also wrote against Serbs. He even criticized Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Ustasha movement, saying that Pavelić's actions divided Croats, united Serbs, and helped the Communist Partisans win the war.

Years later, Ciliga said, "I was for the Ustasha state, I was for the Croatian state. And I defend that idea. The Ustasha state needed to be changed, not destroyed."

Ciliga was criticized for some anti-Jewish comments in his writings about Jasenovac. These comments were later repeated by Franjo Tuđman in his own book, which also caused a lot of criticism. After Croatia became independent, Ciliga returned home and died in 1992.

Works

• The Russian Enigma (1940, 1979)
• The Kronstadt Revolt (1942)
• Štorice iz Proštine (1944, 2004) (Published under the name Tone Valić)
• Lenin and Revolution (1948)
• Sibérie, Terre de l'Exil et de l'Industrialisation (1950)
• The Southern Slavic people between East and West, in La Révolution prolétarienne (1950)
• Dokle ce hrvatski narod stenjati pod srpskim jarmom? (1952)
• La crisi di stato nella Jugoslavia di Tito (1972)
• State Crisis in Tito’s Yugoslavia (1974)
• Sam kroz Europu u ratu (1954, 1978)
• U zemlji velike laži (2007)
• Posljednji hrvatski argonaut dr. Ante Ciliga – razgovori – publisher Matica hrvatska Pazin (2011)