Thoughts on Branka Magaš' 'The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-up 1980-92'

Deftly avoiding the western media’s, some academics, and some historians, portrayal of the reasons for the collapse of the second Yugoslavia and the wars that followed, Magaš provides an ‘insider account’ which details the events as they occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Magaš charts in ‘real time’ the course of events during the 80s and early 90s with snippets of political and historical context that allows you to comprehend how she came to some conclusions on the actions that led to a notable events in this period. This may come across as somewhat repetitive as you near the end of the book, but understanding that this book’s writing was not a fixed event with the benefit of hindsight, but a commentary on events as they happened, explains her style. Thus she doesn’t resort to explanations of the current collapse of the State, Party, and descent into war on a return to ‘ancient hatreds’ or ‘unsettled scores’; but points to the immediate causal chain of events to set the ‘present’ event in context.

Focus of the book falls on the nature of relations between many actors, processes and events; the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and the state; the federal LCY party and the republican and provincial LCY parties; democratizing forces and orthodox Stalinist zealots; economic reform and adherence to self-management; the ‘Memorandum’ and the 14^th Party conference; and calls for decentralization and recentralization.

It is this latter tussle between centrifugal and centripetal forces and actors advocating these positions that provides the central theme in the text. This originates from the 1974 constitution in a political/legal manner regarding the distribution of power (in a post-Tito world), and the reactions of the federal and republican LCY parties and state bodies to the growing economic instability in the 1980s. However, Magaš places emphasis on Kosovo as the arena in which the post-Tito consensus began to waver. Disturbances in the region due to socio-economic factors, brought with it calls for martial law, and later calls for repatriation of the Autonomous Province’s powers, to the Serbian republican centre. Latterly, most Western blame lies on the doorstep of Slobodan Milosevic, and Magaš provides enough illustration later on in the 80s as to why he is largely the actor who is responsible; but at this moment it is the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the leaking of their infamous ‘Memorandum’ which draws her ire. 

Nationality and the ‘national’ question only come into play after this event in official political discourse. This event witnesses a chasm appearing, eventually turning into a gulf, between official federal LCY ideology epitomized by ‘Brotherhood and Unity’, and the Serbian party’s increasing nationalist rhetoric backed by its local media. Stambolic’s fall symbolizes the latter’s eventual take over and is parallel to the accession of Milosevic to power.

The arena of Kosovo and the linchpin of the Memorandum fused and led to the events that we are familiar with – the fall of republic and provincial LCY party leaders in three eastern regions, the centralization attempt of Milosevic at the federal LCY level, the counter response by Croatia and Slovenia to thwart this attempt, the deepening economic stagnation, and finally the collapse of the LCY after the Slovenes walked out of the 14^th Party congress. This final act, and the observation that the Party held the second Yugoslavia together, saw the Federal idea diminish. What then occurred was an acceleration of the centralizing forces of the Serb leadership (evolving onto calls for a ‘Greater Serbia’) being juxtaposed to the loose confederation idea espoused by Croatia, Slovenia, tentatively backed by Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. However, the former idea took the view of uniting all Serbs whilst discrediting the idea that republican borders were inviolable. The other republics saw them as such. On top of this was the role of the Army. If Yugoslavia ceased to exist, so would the Federal Army. They had a stake in the future of the state, and thus sided more with Milosevic in order preserve the external borders of Yugoslavia. Yet, not even a short war with Slovenia could prevent this. So the Army, with a lot of its officer corps being Serbian, backed Milosevic and the Greater Serb idea, as their preferred option was now redundant. Croatia was its next focus.

You can see Magaš’ tone change in the course of the text; initially it is the Party that needs to work together internally to ensure the return of economic and national stability. Yet as bureaucratic machinations prevented the effective functioning of the LCY (and thus the state) she comes to see that the Party is then the problem; and without economic reform and a democratic Federal Yugoslavia, she predicts that the state would collapse. The constant underlying anti-Albanian rhetoric from the Serbian leadership acts as the kindle for the future fire.

Magaš delivers a text that looks at the power struggles at the bureaucratic and elite levels, and the actors that interact with them, such as the media, at this level. With this in mind, it seems to suggest that nationality and the exploitation of socio-economic conditions were mere tools for certain actors to pursue their goals. And this relates back to the theme of a clash between centrifugal and centripetal forces. However, with this as the dominant theme of the text, its does not investigate from an anthropological perspective the events, actors and processes that either informed this clash or were in contradiction to it. An example would be that she looks at how national tensions were used by certain republican leaders (and tried to be quelled by federal leaders), but it doesn’t seek to inform us whether this debate was being had at the village or town level, or if national tensions were present prior to such inflammation at the republic/federal level. In saying that though, extensive attention was paid to family living standards decreasing in the 80s, with focus early on in the text looking at the non-nationalist actors who were agitating in the spirit of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. But this reinforces my critique that only those who were organized received any attention, so one could assume that the rest of the population were either ignored or lazily assumed to have ‘followed’ their co-national ‘leaders’. Overall, its power is in the descriptive observation of the collapse of the LCY and the second Yugoslavia, from a bureaucratic and elite level; providing a refreshing ‘event by event’ analysis detailing the causal chain context prior to each event and its possible implications in the future.

The dissolution of the Yugoslav polity – Thoughts on its demise

The question of the dissolution of the Yugoslav polity has led to varieties of theoretical explanations. These explanations vary from legacies of the former Imperial empires and the clash of civilizations, the incompatibility of the separate nations’ ideological goals during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, aspects of the Socialist structure of the second Yugoslav state, and the impact of intervention by foreign powers. However, I will focus on the actions of certain social and political actors within Yugoslavia during its demise, beginning in the 1980s - not because the other periods are unimportant, but because this decade immediately predates the collapse, and thus must witness certain events and actors that played a central role to its demise.

To investigate this I will initially provide a brief description of the events and battle of ideas that occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s. This will provide a context within which to view the events that occurred from the early 1980s onwards. Two political actors will receive particular attention, Slobodan Milošević and Milan Kučan, as these were the two significant individuals who led Serbian and Slovene political elites, respectively; and contributed to the tumultuous political discourse of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I will look at the intelligentsias of Serbia and Slovenia and their relationship to the rise and backing of more nationalist movements in their respective republics. I will also pay attention to the leaking and content of the ‘Memorandum’ of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the final extraordinary League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1990 as two events that spurred the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

In 1974 the new constitution of Socialist Yugoslavia was enacted that shifted power from the centre to the republics, appeasing some of the demands that Croatia and Slovenia had been requesting in the previous years in regards to decentralization. It proclaimed Josip Broz Tito as president for life and codified Kosovo and Vojvodina’s position as autonomous provinces from Serbia. Once Tito died in May 1980, the 9-member Federal Presidency governed Yugoslavia. Rajko Muršič (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) believes that the socialist revolution and federal constitution, along with Tito, were what kept the country together and that ‘As long as enough ordinary people acted as believers in self-management, one of the bases of support for the second Yugoslavia was affirmed. But when this confidence was lost…then questions about the pre-existing Federal Constitution inevitably came to the fore.’

Although a fatalist statement in its suggestion of inevitability, it does highlight the dominance of the League of Communists in the political life of Yugoslavia. Yet, the other party concept of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ had pressure exerted on it from events in Kosovo, according to Muršič, and I believe can be viewed as one departure point for the dissolution of Yugoslavia. A shift in demographics in the region over the decades since the establishment of Socialist Yugoslavia produced a commanding Albanian majority that left the Kosovan Serbs feeling sidelined by the local political apparatus, as Albanians took up the party positions, and thus began to agitate. This unrest was seen as a test of both ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ in post-Tito Yugoslavia and the Party itself.

Michael Palairet (in Cohen & Dragovic-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe, 2008) describes the economic situation in the 1980s as dire for the Socialist planned economic system that led to a test of its durability. From this emerged a shift in the debate about reinvigorating economic growth from one of funding an investment cycle by making those idle performers more efficient in a Yugoslav context, to one which charged the republics of finding their own way towards growth. This was viewed through the debate on the 1974 constitution over decentralization.  The excuse each republic used to justify their own misfortune was that of exploitation by the other republics. This led to resentment between the northwest republics and the southeast ones over distribution of federal funds.

A picture of the early 1980s can be characterized as being in flux with regards to political, economic and ethnic tensions and rivalries, which the federal system and LCY had to balance. The issue of decentralization re-emerged as different actors came to the fore to achieve their preferred remedy for the Yugoslav malaise.

The ‘Memorandum’ of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) was leaked to Večernje novosti in September 1986, and is the first event that led to the start of the renewed public interest in nationalist rhetoric that involved Serbia’s intellectual elite. It was seen as a document that reified already held nationalist beliefs, criticizing the state of the economy and decentralization. But Dr. Jasna Dragovic-Soso (Saviours of the Nation, 2002) sees it as a relatively conservative programme – one that harks back to the golden age of the 1960s. Its content chimed with the already developed notion of national victimhood suffered by the Serbs, epitomized by the loss of control over Kosovo. It blamed Slovenia and Croatia for wanting to maintain the status quo – and thus Serbia’s inferior position in Yugoslavia’s institutions. The ‘Memorandum’ didn’t advocate violence nor call for a greater Serbia but called for a revision of the 1974 constitution to re-establish federalism over decentralization.

Nick Miller (in Cohen & Dragovic-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe, 2008) believes the issue of Kosovo cemented the intelligentsia’s union with nationalism, with the ‘Memorandum’ acting as one of those events that highlighted this. Dragovic-Soso agrees and feels the Serbian intelligentsia turned towards a more national than civil cause, especially because of Kosovo. Stuart Kaufman (Modern Hatreds, 2001) sums up the importance of the ‘Memorandum’ by stating that ‘The fact that the respected Academy made such charges gave them a weight in public opinion that protestors in Kosovo lacked.’ However, Miller argues that ‘Their movement did not become political until a political figure emerged who would…embrace the picture that the intellectuals had created; Slobodan Milošević did this.’ Yet one must recognize that the document came first and Milošević ran with many of its ideas afterwards. However, Kosovo provided a link between the ‘Memorandum’ and Slobodan Milošević, and would later fashion an alliance between him and the Serbian intelligentsia.

There are two ways in which to view the development and progress of Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslav political life. One is that he had a set plan with goals to reach, and the other is a populist who saw emerging issues and took a lead on them. Sabrina Ramet (Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962 – 1991) felt that he had a four-stage plan. First was to establish control in Serbia, along with a ‘cult of personality’. Second was to reassert control over Vojvodina and Kosovo. He then sought to recentralize the state apparatus and reduce the powers of the 6 republics. Only then was he going to enact dubious ‘controlled democratization’ whilst consolidating political control for himself. The extent to which this was ‘a plan’ needs more research and questioning on events and conversations to uphold these claims, yet one can accept that the first two steps were achieved.

So how did he achieve the first two ‘goals’? His career in the LCY saw him aligned with Ivan Stambolić, which earned him the accolade of being the future Serbian President’s ‘right-hand man’. However, in April 1987 Stambolić sent Milošević to Kosovo to meet Party delegates there because of the unrest. At the supposed closed meeting, thousands of Serbs and Montenegrins converged on the meeting, and were beaten back by police. In reaction to this, Milošević went out and uttered the infamous words that Ramet felt ‘assured Milošević of a place in Serbian mythology. Bette Denich (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) places a lot of emphasis on the importance of the visit to Kosovo by Milošević. ‘That moment transformed Milošević from a Party bureaucrat into a mass leader.’ Months later, he made a decisive move and ousted his former mentor so he then commanded the Serbian party. Denich also believes that the mass public in Serbia was fed the image that Milošević was their natural leader, standing up for Kosovo, against the rigid bureaucratic establishment, with apparent popular support. The importance of this event led to a strengthening of his image in Serbia proper, and highlighted his ability to manipulate the Party machinery to his advantage.

What followed was the reassertion political control over the autonomous provinces. He had been leading on the Kosovo issue almost as a civil rights issue on the side of the Kosovan Serbs, but then sidestepped to be seen to take on the ‘establishment’. The ‘anti bureaucratic revolution’ was Milošević’s attempt to recentralize power in Serbia through ‘unity’, harking back to Titoist ‘Federalism’ via mass demonstrations. His campaign achieved the results that he desired and his allies were installed in Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro. On a constitutional level this was important as he could now rely on the support of 4 republics or provinces out of 8 with votes at the federal level. These processes wedded Milošević and the Serbian intelligentsia together. It instilled in the intelligentsia the idea that change was on the horizon, by combating the old guard of the LCY, yet have one of its members at the helm, i.e. Milošević, as the head of state. He tied it to the Kosovo issue and became outspoken on it. Dragovic–Soso believed it was this union that led the intelligentsia into the arms of Milošević.

Meanwhile, the Slovenian intelligentsia took a different approach to the Yugoslav state, and observed the Serbian developments with unease. The Slovenian intelligentsia grew out of the political and economic context of the early 1980s. It created an ‘Alternative Scene’, one more academic and cultural that gathered around various civil rights type issues. Dragovic–Soso believed that they centered on the notion of ‘Central Europe’ that ‘became the symbol of Slovenia’s national revival, with the Yugoslav ‘Balkans’ replacing ‘Asiatic’ Russia as the alien ‘Other’.’ With this in mind, during that period Slovenia viewed the crisis in Kosovo as a human rights issue on the side of the Albanians, which infuriated the Serbs in Kosovo.

This renewed friction between Serbian and Slovenian intelligentsias started in 1988 when the Serb political elite approached the Slovenes to agree to party reform. Slovenes said no and consequently criticized the Serb leadership. This led to an economic boycott of Slovene products. This then led to elements of the Slovene intelligentsia becoming involved in the Kosovo dispute by criticizing Army deployment there. A dispute followed between the Serb and Slovene Writer’s Associations leading to a declaration by the Slovene political leadership regarding the republics right to self-determination and its right to get involved with Kosovo. Serbia then promised to send the ‘anti-bureaucratic’ movement to Ljubljana but this was thwarted.

Therefore during the 1980s, two groups of intellectual elites in Yugoslavia didn’t come together to ensure that Yugoslavia remained united yet reformed its ways, but instead they retreated to within their respective republican borders and came to loggerheads on the question of self-determination. Slovenia wanted further decentralization for a move towards a more ‘Western’ and democratic path. It was willing to take Yugoslavia in this direction, but resistance was coming from Serbia who wanted to recentralize. Nevertheless, Slovenia’s developing democratization created a space within which to strength its civil society, one that expressed its opinions via cultural and social movements, which were ‘outside of the system’ thus neutering a more overt or dangerous nationalist one. ‘With the arrival of Slobodan Milošević on the Serbian political scene, however, recentralization became associated with Serb nationalism and Serbian interests.’ according to Ramet.

Milan Kučan was the person who took Slovenia on the path of democratization and nourished the new cultural expressions that were taking place, yet remained an LCY politician and leader. Kučan’s ability to hold on to the support of the intelligentsia, even to sacrifice Communist rule, showed his ‘common ground’ approach, according to Miller. The trial of journalists writing for Mladina magazine by a military tribunal in Serbo-Croatian emphasized the injustice of Slovene membership in Yugoslavia, characterized by Serb hegemony. The ‘Mladina affair’ united the Slovene people against Belgrade’s interference in internal matters and Kučan defended the rallies that followed. Although as this point his stance was not for independence, he was to play a crucial role in Yugoslavia’s demise.

And this is where I return to the point mentioned earlier regarding the dominance of the LCY in the life of the second Yugoslavia. The several pillars that provided legitimacy for the LCY had taken a knock, for example ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ and ‘Democratic Centralism’. The weakening economic situation had a severe effect on the citizenry, who now questioned the legitimacy of the regime because so long as living standards rose, political rights weren’t requested –this  was now being undermined. So Yugoslavia was stitched together by a party that was in constant conflict between its own power bases in their respective republics. However, the continuing debate over decentralization and centralization exploded within the LCY and culminated at the Fourteenth (Extraordinary) Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990. This is where Kučan came to the fore and locked horns with Milošević.

Eric Gordy (in Cohen & Dragovic-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe, 2008) writes that Milošević wanted to change the voting structure of the LCY from a republic vote to ‘One member, one vote’. Milošević, and Kučan for that matter, knew that Serbia and Montenegro together had 47% of the LCY membership and therefore could always count on winning the votes at the congress, even with minimal support from the other republic’s delegates. Every vote on a Slovene delegation policy was defeated. This humiliated the Slovenes. Even up to this point, Milošević must have wanted to retain the existing boundaries of Yugoslavia, and believed that the LCY was what kept Yugoslavia together. If not, then he wouldn’t have needed to go through the charade of a Party conference. His goal was simply the domination of the party. Yet, his proposal and the actions he took to secure it pushed the Slovenes to the limit. The Slovene delegation, led by Milan Kučan, proceeded to walk out of the congress auditorium, never to return. The Croats followed suit ensuring no quorum for the congress to continue. Days later the Slovenes left the LCY.

This event was the culmination of all the events that came before it. The rise in nationalist agitation by the Serbian intelligentsia endorsed and carried forward by Slobodan Milošević. The troubles occurring in Kosovo matched with the Slovene intelligentsia’s growing interest in civil rights issues. The economic decline throughout the 1980s and a dominating debate regarding the power and structure of the federal state and the fight to dominate. This led to the final questioning of the role of the LCY, and a loss of faith in the party to control the situation. The 1974 constitution presumed the dominance of the LCY in order to govern the country. Now that the Slovenes walked out, there was no all-Yugoslav party. Ramet, Gordy and Jovic (in Cohen & Dragovic-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe, 2008) all point to this congress as being a defining moment in the decline of the Yugoslav polity. So according to Ramet’s theory, Milosevic failed at the third step, thus the possibility of a smooth ride to the fourth was rendered void. He only achieved this in a rump Yugoslavia.

In summary, there are a many hundred contributing factors that led to the demise of the Yugoslav polity, and it would be unfair to assume that only the points I have covered are the full sum of those. I have provided a brief description of the events that occurred to place in context my reasoning for those people or groups that I feel played the most significant parts in the polity’s collapse. I feel that Slobodan Milošević, Milan Kučan and the intelligentsias of Serbia and Slovenia are the main political and social actors that most contributed to this, for reasons I have outlined. But an annex to this is the role of the League of Communist of Yugoslavia. One may debate whether it is a social actor or not, but the party’s influence on the life of the people and of its fundamental role in the institutions of the federal and republic institutions, leads me to conclude that so long as the party survived, so did the state. The culmination of events during the 1980s led to the eventual clash of two republican leaders in the arena of the 1990 LCY party congress, which ultimately sealed Yugoslavia’s fate as a functioning and unified.

Why South East Europe?

Perhaps it is best to start off my blog with the reasons for my subject matter being the region of ‘South-East Europe’, and then go on to set out what I will be writing about in the future.

I have been fascinated with maps for as long as I can remember. They were the only books I would ‘read’ as a child, possessing many in my pre-adolescent years. Perhaps I was drawn to the order that borders gave states, yet curious as to how they changed over time. I don’t recall remembering different regions, but was obviously drawn to those areas where borders altered.  Hitherto, my view of the world was flat.

South-East Europe first made its impression on me via the British media reporting the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. My memories of these reports on the siege perhaps turned my flat view of the world into a three dimensional one. One that involved real people. My focus may not of been on the region, per se, but this acknowledgement of the region at an early age stuck, and when a BBC documentary appeared in the mid-1990s called The Death of Yugoslavia, I recall asking my parents to record it. Disregarding the more critical eye upon which I can now view the content of the programme, the images and (hi)story of the region that it displayed provoked my now growing curiosity. Fundamentally, the only question I asked was – why do people want to kill each other?

A basic question, I give you that, and one not just angled towards South East Europe, but it was one I sought an answer to (or as it turns out, still am seeking). The conflict in Kosovo and the bombing of Serbia in the late 1990s underscored my interest in the region, yet added further dimensions, as I had grown more socially aware.

Coincidentally, my interest in South East Europe ran parallel to my burgeoning need to ask and get answers to other questions. This took form in my interest in politics. So I went on to study this at college, then university at Manchester Metropolitan. It was here that I was able to begin my more academic interest in the region, but also study adjacent themes (as I saw them at the time, now I see them as integral), most notably political ideologies. Here I grew interested in Socialism, was drawn to Communism, but also conscientious of Nationalism. The latter ideology, along with a couple of courses I took, came together and began to partially answer my fundamental question. But conversely, it also threw open the door to other questions - ones on identity, belonging, violence, nations, borders, boundaries, history, culture, ethnicity, and much more.

So this explains my interest in South East Europe – but up to the point of leaving university, it was more a fascination than a determination, and so can’t explain why I am here writing about it. This comes from where my main interest at the time, politics, took me. I subsequently went on to become a member of, and then employed by, the Labour Party. My career with them spanned almost five years. Yet, I had always carried the urge to go back to university and study for an MA degree. In what, I was unsure. After a working trip to Skopje, South East Europe became a favoured subject.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy provides funds to UK political parties to help their sister parties in emerging democracies. I was naive as to the history of both Macedonia and our sister party – the Social and Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) – but was excited to be asked to develop and present a training weekend on the theme of ‘What it means to be a Social Democrat’ in their Skopje headquarters. I soon discovered that the SDSM was the former League of Communists of Macedonia who ruled Macedonia since World War II. So this piqued my interest in Macedonia and the SDSM’s history, with the city also catching my attention on my visit. After this I was more adamant to study for an MA.

I was still unsure about what to study and where. Returning to Manchester Metropolitan was a choice I considered, as I wanted to study Nationalism and Nazism in Germany between the wars. But I was then made aware of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (UCL). Reading their varied and innovative syllabus whet my appetite to study there. I was sold. Prior to my studies, I embarked on a tour of South East Europe, taking in Thessaloniki, Skopje, Nis (due to missing a connection), Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Slovenia. Albeit cities, images and thoughts you are preloaded with are brushed aside when you actually experience the region. I knew I had made the right decision to make this area my academic focus.

I went on to study for a year, which culminated in they third trip to Skopje to interview people for my dissertation. My choice of topic was easy, fusing my Labour Party experience and contacts with my affinity to Macedonia. I chose to examine the nature of social democracy in Macedonia. This looked not only at the SDSM, but also the wider social democratic movement, and circulated around the legacies of nation building, communism and democratization. And this is where I am today.

I want to use this knowledge and experience, as limited or expansive as you may judge it, to have my say on the past, present and future of a region I have grown fond of. I may tend to focus on Macedonia when commenting on current political/social/economic events, but will endeavour to expand to other countries (noting the links between these states will inevitably lead me to do so). I will provide my thoughts on certain themes, or ideas, from a critical academic point of view, for example irredentist movements, syncretism, economic transformation, symbolism and identity, and so on. I will also comment on books I have read, or programmes I have watched, regarding states in the region at present and their predecessors – providing my thoughts on their content and conclusions. But to begin with, I will present edited versions of the essays I submitted as part of my MA programme. These will not be presented as ‘academic’ in their layout, but I will obviously accredit quotes and ideas to their rightful owner. Until then, here’s a quote to provide you with a flavour of my ideological bearing…

“No serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist... Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.”

Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780