Thoughts on The Death Of Yugoslavia by Laura Silber and Allan Little

My reading of this text, in a way, ‘bookends’ my knowledge and study of South East Europe. It was my original viewing of the series The Death of Yugoslavia that drew my attention to the region two decades ago. So in this book I was seeking to find a deeper portrayal of events by the authors.

This text does not seek a theoretical understanding of the conflict, and it only fleetingly calls upon historical or anthropological perspectives on why events may have unfolded as they did. This is rather different to the TV show, whose audience included those not familiar in the history of the region, so could have led one to believe that their analysis of events was the classic ‘ancient hatreds’ paradigm. The start of the book clearly indicates this as not being so. Instead, the book walks the reader through a series of key events that the authors see as being essential to fueling the subsequent wars and ethnic cleansing.

Echoing the same timeline as the TV show, you get further insight to some of the events and key players in the drama that was taking place in the 1980s and 1990s. It cleverly portrays the balance between the agency of individuals and those of institutions, which led to the Yugoslav state’s collapse. 

Symbolic individuals are familiar; Milosevic, Tudjman, Izetbegovic, Kucan – all heads of the republics/states they sought, and eventually came, to control. However, the spotlight also moves onto other individuals who were aggressors, and even those trying to calm the rising ethnic tensions. Borisav Jovic was Milosevic’s right hand man. Holding various functions at the Serbian and Federal level, Jovic was one of the key disciples of Milosevic’s attempts initially to centralize power in the Yugoslav state, then into the goal of uniting all Serbs. Milan Babic and Milan Martic are two individuals in Knin who took on the Serb Nationalist mantle once independence was sought by Croatia. What began as the Croatian states’ attempts to impose law and order, soon escalated to Serbian defense of their villages and towns, drawing battle lines in the process.  The Croat Josip Reihl-Kir, regional police chief in eastern Croatia, continuously tried to halt small skirmishes between Serb militia and Croat police from developing into a civil war, all the while facing pressure from above in the form of the hawkish HDZ officials.

Aside from individuals, the portrayal of institutions and forces as agents in the descent to state collapse and war are superbly woven into the story. As mentioned, the contest between centrifugal and centripetal forces for power in the Yugoslav state began in earnest once Tito died; although under him they had precedent. The multi-member presidency effectively reified the implication that republics were now the keepers of their resident nations, with a couple of notable and dangerous exceptions to that logic. Economic decline and social strife fuelled this polarized debate – symbolized by the western republics of one side, and the eastern on the other, or richer versus the poorer states. However two institutions kept them together, the League of Communists and the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA). ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ was still the central plank to their worldview. Any violation to the sovereignty and territoriality of Yugoslavia was verboten. It was the former that was to go first.

At the seminal, and what was to be the final, conference of the League of Communists in January 1990 (I have covered this in a past blog piece), it was Kucan as head of the Slovene delegation that led the walkout that saw the end of the League of Communists.  The centripetal forces had won. The JNA on the other hand clung on, even after the loss of Slovenia and Croatia. However, by that time, its Serb contingent moved from working under the JNA banner in Croatia then Bosnia to local Serb units. The detail of the movements on the ground are vividly portrayed, with lines of communication – either between Croatian Police forces and the leadership in Zagreb, or the Serb militias and the ‘Yugoslav’ leadership in Belgrade – explained concisely.

Further on, the details of the war and sieges on the ground, and the pathetic response by world community, is despairing. Hindsight only makes you question why the EC and UN did not do more. Initially wanting to keep Yugoslavia intact, splits developed in the international community that led to different directions and approaches on how to stop conflict emerging. Within Yugoslavia, the tussle of whether 'self-determination' should be exclusive to the republics or the nations fed into the splits in the international community. The price paid was ethnic cleansing.

What gives this book its power is the knowledge garnered from the active participants. Although written in 1996, and with the participants possibly not giving a full and frank account, the authors weaved a compelling account from numerous actors and actions of institutions, to describe the events and processes that took hold of the former Yugoslavia from the early 1980s. How it slowly describes the ethnic untangling of peoples is a daunting prospect for us in communities that are ever becoming more multi cultural. However, the book doesn’t give, nor does it need to, an account of how to stop this. Instead this book is more a warning, a warning to those who seek political power by manipulating institutions, individuals and the masses, through tools of fear and hatred, in order to put into practice a narrow nationalist agenda. 

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.