The present book came as a result of several years of study of the history of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, and the history of Serbo-Croat relations. Its aim is, on the basis of unimpeachable sources and from all possible standpoints, to shed light on one-and-a-half century long Croatian policy towards the Serbs. The book offers answers to many hitherto unexplained and officially obscured questions.

I have tried to explain how and on what basis hatred grew within the Croatian community towards the Serbs, with what aims in view it was continually intensified until it reached a paroxysm of bloodshed for the innocent Serbian and orthodox inhabitants.

The facts which I have disclosed prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the basis of all misunderstandings between the Croats and the Serbs is the "Croatian state and historical right". On the basis of this right, Croatian politicians continually, from the 1948-49 revolution to this day, strove to create a great, ethnically pure and catholic Croatian state. Because the Serbs were not prepared to renounce their national singularities and their Serbian orthodox religion, they were all the time the butt of Croatian political parties and many prominent individuals who based the Croatian national idea on the so-called state and historical right. The reader will note that ideas of the genocidal annihilation of the Serbs, of a great, ethnically and catholically pure Croatia, have outlived all their state, political and social systems. These ideas have stubbornly persisted from Ante Starcevic, Eugen Kvaternik, Mihovil Pavlinovic, Josip Frank, Frane Supilo, Stjepan Radic and Ante Pavelic to Franjo Tudjman.

In this book I have attempted to clarify the idea of the genocidal destruction of the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia for historical, ideological-political, national, geopolitical, religious, sociological, psychological and other reasons. Thanks to the abundance of seminal information, such an approach enabled me to throw light upon the problem of genocide and greater-Croatian aspirations from different angles, which has not been done so far by historians.

In view of the plethora of documents, the book could well have been much more voluminous. However, it would then be less readable. My wish is that this book, without a great intellectual and physical effort, should be perused by the greatest possible number of readers. My intention is not to inflame passions but to bring out scientifically verified evidence, to unmask untruths, and to make the well-meaning but insufficiently or badly informed people see the light. New scholarly knowledge should stand in the way of any possible new delusion about Croato-Serbian relations. I believe this to be necessary before a new wrong move is made in relations with the Croats and Croatia, thereby causing new bloodshed. It is my duty to say this because there are absolutely no encouraging signs whatever that anything is being changed in the present policy of Croatia. On the contrary, this policy, like one hundred years earlier, relies in everything on state and historic right, on the institution of Croatian "political" people, on aspirations to create a greater, ethnically and religiously pure Croatia. As long as it is so, it is clear that Croatia will not be able to free itself of genocidal ideas and will not renounce its long-standing aspiration to enlarge its state boundaries at the expense of the neighbouring ethnic and national regions, in order to improve its own not very happy geopolitical position.

I am aware that the gloomy subject of this book will not cheer the readers, but I believe that it will clear up their notions about brotherhood, unity, concord, togetherness, coexistence and Yugoslavism. As its author, I do not entertain the illusion that I shall succeed overnight in changing prejudices and systematically instilled feelings. However, as a scholar and writer, I have felt an irresistible need to write this book and save my soul. I believe that, as an historian, I have no right to be silent in the face of truth, however painful and ugly it is. I have told the truth without hatred, with a noble aim to point out the evil, so that it should be stigmatised, stopped and uprooted.

Belgrade, October 1997.

Vasilije Dj. Krestic