Slaven Letica

Who is Slaven Letica?

Slaven Letica is a Croatian author, economist, commentator and politician.

Native of Podgora, Letica graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Economics. In the 1980s, Letica was a professor of sociology of medicine at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine.

In late 1980s, as the Communist grip on public discourse weakened, Letica began to use new freedoms to advocate various reforms. In doing so, he wrote many articles and columns and he began to appear in television talk shows and town hall meetings. There he began to show a great talent for self-promotion, quickly becoming one of the most popular and the most recognisable intellectuals in Yugoslavia. Often, the ideas he floated at that time were nothing more than publicity stunts, including campaigning for President of Yugoslavia.

In 1990 after the first democratic elections, Franjo Tuđman took him seriously and made him his chief political advisor. During negotiations which Tuđman pursued with the leader of the Serbs in Croatia, Jovan Rašković, Letica secretly recorded tapes of some of the conversations. Subsequently, he leaked these tapes to the Croatian media, hoping that some of Rašković's remarks would give offense to his fellow Croatian Serbs and turn them away from Rašković's secessionist policies. The effort spectacularly backfired and contributed to the escalation of conflict into war. That and other gaffes finally prompted Tuđman to sack Letica in early 1991. As he left, Letica publicly stated that he would have served as a political advisor to Slobodan Milošević if compensated.