Croatia, Croatia!

Croatia is the most wonderful country in the world. There is only one problem. It is inhabited by the Croats. The Croats are wonderful, diligent, inventive, and enterprising people -- outside Croatia. Inside Croatia they are lazy, mean, spiteful, and quarrelsome. Well, not all, but surely many. How to solve the problem? I may offer some suggestions as we go along.

I must say immediately that those six months plus were among the most lavish of my life. You may be surprised to hear that I made a lot of money. I more than doubled my full professor's salary (ca.$1150 before taxes) by the activities I listed above. I worked hard, more than here -- but if you have skills, will and time, you can find work! I ate out once or twice a week, I sat in cafes with intellectuals, the literati, the shoengeists, politicians, businesspeople, and above all wonderful women of all ages at least three times a day. I bought them flowers. I bought good food. I ran my gas heat full-speed (it was darn cold!). I went to operas, dramas, and concerts. And I sent about 2/5 of my earnings to the States! Of course, I have an apartment of my own, no car, do not buy fancy clothes (on the way people dress a few words later), do not have expensive friends (it is now becoming fashionable to have lovers and mistresses in Graz, Vienna, Milano, Budapest...).

To make a long story short, an American with his inborn (or in-trained) lust for work and nose for value, can live quite well in Croatia. Actually there are people who do. They are, of course, hated by the crowd. I am not talking about the "tajkuns" who are in fact bad businessmen and mostly criminals, and who succeeded because they were protected by the mighty, but about thousands of small or not so small entrepreneurs in any walk of life -- from medicine to money- changing to fish-growing -- who have grasped what capitalism is all about: work and save -- and who practice exactly what I preach ("tajkuns" have done their best to make capitalism a dirty word; politicians have done the same for "democracy").

Unfortunately, the dominant trait is still "You cannot pay me so little, that I cannot work still less". The biggest dream seems to be how to retire as early as possible, on as much money as possible. It seems better not to work, have little, and complain, than roll up one's sleeves and have more. Government is everybody's milking cow -- subsidies, guarantees, hand-outs! Minister Fizulic recently offered to cancel debt to the government to a series of plants, so they can reorganize and start from scratch run by new managements of workers' choice. The offer was rejected because this would mean being free and responsible (I understand that in some cases the offer was enforced -- good for Fizulic!).

If not a pension, give me a sinecure. I will not comment on the place of my work, but it seems that in Zagreb there are more "Institutes" than houses (second only to omnipresent bakeries). There is obviously a big job ahead to change the mentality. Government is not helping by trying to induce prosperity by lowering salaries and wages, or by cutting out a few truly unnecessary governmental positions. It can be done only by increasing production, and this means saving and investment. But tell a Croat to cut back a little on smoking cigarettes and save that money! The country has resources, and both natural and human potential. Without investment, it will get nowhere. We cannot count on any hand-outs from "Amerika" (more later), so the prospect is either to languish or to allow in the funds of dubious characters -- speculators and money- launderers. These would try to make quick buck and disappear. A group I worked with (a core of a potential future NGO?) suggested that we should look for a group of strategic Croatian investors from the diaspora, who would bring along their foreign partners and friends, under special conditions and guarantees offered by the Government. A Croatian businessman wants to make profit and wants security for his investment. Yet, he/she would have more understanding. We believe they would try to indeed build and create, not to make the money and run. But this is a part of a much bigger issue: of trust between the motherland and the diaspora, which is currently at a very low level. More about it tomorrow.