Zoran Pusić

"My direct involvement in politics began when, at Tuđman's direct request, the name of Sqate of the victims of fascism in Zagreb was changed. Until then, hundreds and hundreds of street names that had any connection with the national liberation struggle or people from the national liberation struggle had been changed. That was probably for two reasons: one is, if you are for radical nationalism, then you don't really have... then you don't really have much of a choice, then you have to find a group on which to direct the fear of the majority. Milošević did that, Tuđman did that later. This is what all nationalists do. And, it reminds me of Göring's defense in Nuremberg, who said... it is enough to show the people a minority, for example, pacifists, as a group that threatens the homeland and who are not patriots, in order to instill fear in the people and create homogenization. It works equally in every nation. And that was done."

"So, perhaps my first political, political engagement , if I haven't forgotten something, now that I think about it, was in the organization of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. So, that was... I remember that I wrote a poem at the university, we published the so-called Vertical newspapers. I wrote a poem against the war in Vietnam. And then we organized demonstrations. Peaceful demonstrations, we have always tried to show that through demonstrations are is possible, that it is important to behave the way you think you should, and that is without violence. My friend, who at that time studied physics and later switched to philosophy, Žarko Puhovski, when we were demonstrating in front of the American embassy, the American embassy was in Zrinjevac at the time, he explained that if we make posters, then it will only be legal if we buy a stamp of 50 dinars and then he bought stamps and on our posters, which read „Today Vietnam, tomorrow the whole world”, “The end of the war is coming”, etc., he stuck the stamps on those plane trees. And it was all peaceful. Afterwards, when the city organized a demonstration, it was quite wild and I was there again and I saw young people smashing the windows of the embassy with stones. And then I said, "So why are you doing that?" And they said: "Well, because we can." So, it always has two sides."