We go out for a walk at night, the stars do not bring us closer or further away from each other. We walk, each remaining in his solitude...

Vlado often had the feeling that his dog Luki wanted to tell him something.

When he returned from prison after four years of imprisonment, Luki did not even recognize him at first. And then, when he recognized him, it was pure happiness! Luki fainted from happiness. When he regained consciousness, he did not move from the Government for three days and three nights! He neither ate nor drank, nor did he perform his physiological needs.

Although he died not long after, for Vlada every dog ​​he ever met was always - Luki.

This is what he wrote about his beloved dog:

"Anna's dog Luki and I are equally incomprehensible to each other at every moment. We go for a walk at night, the stars do not bring us closer or further away from each other. We walk, each remaining in his solitude and rejoicing in all this together. Only loyalty can transform such two loners to the community that protects them."

Vlado and Luki

Vlado

Mirogoj

Petra

With the Government, Vlasta lost its ideology, but not its ferocity. Vlado used to say about her: - Vlasta, my dear unyielding friend, not only my wife. –

In 1958, Vlado married Vlasta Beretić, an editor at Radio Zagreb and a translator from French.

The two came from two very different families. Vlasta was born into a wealthy family in Šibenik, and was a communist from an early age. When her father's company collapsed before the Second World War, she became an illegal at a very early age. She was in the Ustasha camp. Through family connections, they managed to get her out, after which she fled from Zagreb to join the partisans. At the end of the Second World War, she did not want any privileges. She got a job at Radio Zagreb, where she met Vlada.

At the moment she met Gotovec, she did not know that there were class enemies and the horrors that were happening in the Soviet Union. With the Government, Vlasta lost its ideology, but not its ferocity. Vlado used to say about her: - Vlasta, my dear unyielding friend, not only my wife. –

They were in a harmonious marriage until 1991, until Vlasta's death.

Vlasta, my unyielding friend

"Okay, where are you two? You're blathering on, and the buckwheat is getting cold!"

Do you remember your grandfather's famous speech in 1991, in front of the Command of the then 5th Military District on Krešimir Square?

- Well, I remember that very well. I don't know why, as if I had a premonition that he was preparing something important, I really wanted to go with him that time. We came to Krešimirov together, I was hanging out there and eating a sandwich, when he appeared on the balcony and started that speech. I listened to him and liked everything he said because he called for peace. When he finished, we headed home. We were late for lunch, which always had to be exactly at two in the afternoon, and grandma Vlasta was very careful about that. She was already very sick then. It was a few months before he would die. We entered the building and walked down the corridor towards the apartment, when she appeared angrily at the door in a dressing gown. She must have been listening to the broadcast of the speech, and said to Vlad: "Okay, where are you two? You're blathering on, and the buckwheat is cooling down!" –

Source: Bobanović, P. Maja Sever: My grandfather Vlado Gotovac is my life model. "Express.24sata.hr", November 5, 2017.

Buckwheat is cooling

And they must know that there is no mother, no children, no home for them on this earth. He will die in the wasteland of his dead heart.

Below is Gotovč's famous speech in front of the 5th command of the military region:

"I love you and I am proud of you. And if I had to choose whether to die with you or live with these scarecrows, I would choose death. Because a long time ago, in the other world, there is a wonderful verse by a great poet that says In Navarre dying of shame. If we Croats didn't have this dignity and if we didn't have this love, we would die of shame, but these people here have nothing to die for because they have neither dignity nor love.

If the generals had a family, if the generals had children, if the generals had loved ones, then they would never live in this building. But generals have no children, I assure you, because he who kills other people's children has no children. Because he who makes other people's mothers cry has no mother. Because he who destroys other people's homes has no home. And they must know that there is no mother, no children, no home for them on this earth. He will die in the wasteland of his dead heart. Their children will be ashamed of them, because they were not their fathers. Their wives will be ashamed of them, because they were the murderers of other people's children. Their families will be ashamed of them, because they destroyed other people's families.

We are standing here, dear citizens of Zagreb, do you know in front of which building? In front of the "Croatian Workforce", built so that Croatian students and the poor could get an education, so that Croatia would progress, so that Croatia would be a modern nation. That building was built by the bravest and poorest Croats to make Croatia worthy of Europe. And who is in it now, the remnants of communism, the killers of the Croatian people! They have the nerve to occupy our sacred buildings, our endowments, and talk about their property in Croatia. They threaten us to take what is theirs. They tell us that when they leave, they will leave behind desolation. And we know that they will only return with what they will steal, because they never had anything else. Everything they have, everything they eat, everything they drink, everything they wear is yours. You pay for it, you work for it, you suffer for it. They say they will steal, and I ask these gentlemen, where did they acquire the wealth that Croatia has been acquiring for a thousand years. Let them tell us where their cities are that are thousands of years old, where their castles are, where their palaces are, where their treasures are that we have here and that they threaten to destroy. Let them destroy their own, but it's easy for them, they don't need to destroy because they don't have any of that.

What they want, remember well, they want us to be equal to themselves, they want us to be wild like them, they want us to have nothing like them, they want us to be murderers like them, they want us to have no morals like them, they want us to sit in other people's homes and in other people's cities like them. We don't need that. We have our homeland, we have our cities, we have our culture, we have our nation. Let them get out of here!

Please, please, what kind of people are they, if we may talk about people at all, who sit in other people's houses, who warm themselves on other people's fireplaces, who live in other people's buildings, who enjoy other people's money and other people's bread, and dare to kill those who they give that. They would have died a long time ago if they had even a trace of man in them. They would die of shame, they would die of humiliation, they would die of what every honest man dies of when he has made a mistake. But demons move through history as if they were immortal. But let them not forget that the death that has come to them is definitive. What died in Moscow will die here, what dies with the Russian generals will die here. My colleague said, there will always be one feather left and someone will always say: no. The Croatian people will remain, we will remain here with hundreds, with thousands of pens, to show how much and how we have done throughout this history, to survive, to be human, to never agree to become moral scarecrows like those who claim to us that they protect us. Who are they protecting us from in our homeland? From U.S. Let them leave us alone, we will manage better than them.' Let them leave us alone, we will secure our freedom, our independence and our dignity.

And finally, you mothers and you women, who came here in a unique gathering that has ever been held in Europe, you once again show that in the depths of your heart, Croatia is the one that is educated and the one that is not educated, the one that is masculine and the one that is feminine, imbued with the same magnificent principle of love and dignity. And that's why I started with the fact that I love you and that's why I started with the fact that I'd rather die with you than live with them. And I know, I know for sure that I will live in this love and with this love, in this dignity and with this dignity even when I am gone, and that is my joy and that is my strength, like all of you.

And let that strength, let that love and let that courage guide Croatia, the armed and the unarmed, because we who are not armed are no less brave, no less proud, no less in love with our homeland.

If we do not have weapons, we have the strength of what is there, the strength of our love, the strength of our dignity, the strength of our willingness to die if we cannot live as people. And that's what we don't give! That's why I'm not afraid.

Croatia is alive, was alive and will live! Cheers!"

He who kills other people's children has no children

He was a poet, an intellectual and a political martyr. He said: - Protect Croatia from meanness and hatred! –

Vlado Gotovac was an engaged intellectual, speaker and publicist throughout his life. He was among the first in the region to open debates on nationalism, conservatism and freedom. He approached them starting from three fundamental beliefs: love for the homeland, freedom and respect for differences.

As a participant in the Croatian Spring, Vlado was sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment with a three-year loss of civil rights. He endured the entire prison term in Stara Gradiška without asking for pardon.

- In Stara Gradiška, I refused to sign the petition for pardon. I did it because that plea implies an admission of guilt. I would sign a lie about myself and others. And all this for ten months less imprisonment. I didn't do it out of arrogance and defiance. It was just consistency. –

In the first trial, Vlado was imprisoned and punished for an editorial in the Croatian Weekly, and the second time for an interview with foreign journalists. Vladi's stay in prison severely damaged his health and he had liver problems for the rest of his life. He was held as a convict in 5,023.

For a long time, the convict was strictly forbidden to write in the penitentiary. And yet, Gotovac secretly recorded his thoughts. He did it on various types of paper, including toilet paper. He was never silent.

On May 20, 1989, together with Dražen Budiša, Slavko Goldstein and Vlado Gotovec, he founded HSLS. At the beginning of the nineties, he became more actively involved in politics. He was disappointed with Franjo Tuđman's way of ruling and his policy towards Bosniaks, and he expressed his opinion publicly, despite numerous criticisms.

In 1997, he ran for president. He was savagely attacked during a speech in Pula in the same year. The attacker, a member of the elite brigade, inflicted minor physical injuries on him. The act of vandalism was strongly condemned by international organizations, and the Ministry of Defense suspended and detained the attacker.

Vlado eventually became disillusioned with HSLS, the party he created and decided to separate from it and found the Liberal Party.

He said about himself and his efforts: - The only meaning of my work is in the effort to ensure a real, humane, just and free community - for everyone and everywhere; a community that not only tolerates diversity, but also rejoices in it, just as the builders of the cathedral in Chartres rejoice when they assemble their religious rosettes from multicolored glass. Such a joyful and diverse world - that's my dream! If I have to be judged because of him, I agree to that because without that dream neither I nor my work has any meaning. –

Vlado fought for Croatia all his life. He believed in her until the end. He believed that it could become a human, just and free community, the way he saw it, despite the suffering it gave him. Finally, he said: - Protect Croatia from meanness and hatred! –

Vlado and Luki

We go out for a walk at night, the stars do not bring us closer or further away from each other. We walk, each remaining in his solitude...

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