Mate Meštrović

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Dr. Mate (Matthew) Meštrović (born 1930 in Zagreb) is an American journalist and academic , Croatian lobbyist , politician and ambassador . He is the son of the renowned Croatian (Yugoslav) and American sculptor Ivan Meštrović.

He attended grade school in Zagreb before his family moved to Italy in 1942. The family lived in Switzerland from 1943 to 1946 where he finished 'Ecole Internationale de Genève . The family moved to the United States of America the following year where his father continued his work as an artist and where Mate would spend most of his life.

He graduated from university in 1951 and the following year received a Master's degree in history at the University of Syracuse. From 1954 to 1956 Dr. Meštrović served as a lieutenant in the US. Army PsyWar in the Pacific , he is a Korean War veteran . He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University 1957. He worked as a Contributing Editor of ”TIME” and wrote many articles for American and European newspapers and magazines , including “The Commonweal”, “The New Leader”, the North American Alliance news syndicate, “The Intelligence Report” of the London Economist, etc. He taught as professor of Modern European history at New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1968 to Croatian independence in 1991.

In 1986 he was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor, together with such outstanding leaders as Gerald Ford, Madeleine Albright , Zbigniew Brzezinski , Henri Kissinger, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger , Hillary Clinton , etc.

Mate (Matthew) Meštrović was active for the cause of Croatian independence during its time in Communist Yugoslavia. Meštrović led the Croatian Academy of America.^[1] He visited Communist Yugoslavia for the first time in 1969.^[1] During this visit he made contacts with members of Hrvatski književni list and Matica hrvatska.^[1] From 1982 to 1990 he served as president of the Croatian National Council, an umbrella group of Croatian emigrant organizations which lobbied for Croatian independence.^[2] From 1982 to 1991 he was president of the Croatian National congress, a world wide organization with chapters in a score of countries championing the right of the Croatian people to sovereignty and democracy. He lobbied on behalf of Croatian serf determination in Washington ,Western Europe and Australia . In this capacity he was received by and Germany’s President Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker , the State Department, Quai d’Orsay, European Parliament, the British Foreign Office, etc.

Matthew Meštrović is the author of several books in English and Croatian, notably “ What you should know about Communism and why ? ”, “ The struggle for Croatia” and “In the whirlpool of Croatian Politics “ . He published in the US Dr. Franjo Tudjman’s book “Nationalism in Contemporary Europe” and Venko Markovski’s “Goli Otok – The Island of Death.”, etc. He authored several political tracts, notably “Violations of Human and National Rights of the Croatian People in Yugoslavia,” and “Croatian Response to the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Science and Art “ .

Meštrović returned to Croatia upon its independence. Dr. Meštrović was a deputy in the Croatian Parliament (1993-1997) , member of Croatia’s delegation to the Council of Europe and the Interparliamentary Union and ambassador in Bulgaria (1997-2000) . He is recipient of Croatian and Bulgarian decorations. Because of his father's and his own political anticommunist believes and commitment to freedom was declared by the Yugoslav regime enemy Number One of the Yugoslav State and a top CIA agent .