Anticommunist “Reactionaries” in Dubrovnik and the Activities of Frano Kolumbić

Abstract

In the first post-war years, military and political forms of anti-communist resistance operated in most of the Croatian territory. Although the activities of guerrilla crusader groups would end in the early 1950s, illegal political organizations continued to operate even after this period. This paper dwells on one such group that operated in Dubrovnik in 1953 and 1954, and whose members were exposed in July 1954 and then sentenced to prison. Prominent Dubrovnik HSS member Frano Kolumbić, whose file is kept in the State Archives in Split, was convicted with this group. Based on the data analyzed, it can be concluded that Kolumbić’s case needs to be positioned in the broader context of Croatian political anticommunist resistance in the 1950s, especially from the perspective of “ideological building” of the post-war generation of university students in which a significant role could have been played by former HSS members.