Ko je bio Alojzije Stepinac

Who Was Alojzije Stepinac is a book by the sociologist of religion Ivan Cvitković written in the late period of socialist Yugoslavia, when the question of the role of Alojzije Stepinac in World War II and the relationship of the Catholic Church to the Independent State of Croatia was the subject of intense political and historiographical debates.

The work is not a classic biography, but an analytical study in which the author considers Stepinac's life, his relationship to the Ustasha regime, the Catholic Church, the Vatican, Serbs, Jews, the communist movement, and the post-war trial. The book is based on archival materials, published documents, Stepinac's sermons, letters, and literature available at the time.

The work should be viewed in the context of the time in which it was written. It was published before the opening of numerous domestic and foreign archives, before Croatian independence, and before new research that significantly expanded knowledge about Stepinac's activities during the war and the post-war period. Therefore, the book reflects the methodological possibilities, but also the ideological framework of Yugoslav historiography in the 1980s.

At the same time, it represents a valuable source for understanding the then dominant view of Stepinac in socialist Yugoslavia and the development of the public debate about his historical role. Today, Stepinac's life is the subject of extensive international research and various historiographical interpretations, so Cvitković's work is primarily read as a document of one phase of the scientific and social debate, and not as a final or generally accepted interpretation of his biography.