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 former Yugoslavia and the descent into ethnic conflict

Many are familiar with the outcomes of the conflicts that consumed the republics of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s. Many thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced or made refugees, and homes, businesses and even entire towns were destroyed in the process. Yet attempting to establish a clear view of the origins of the conflicts from the present draws attention to the multitude of forces and factors that have been presented in an attempt to account for such origins. I will delve into some of the many theoretical perspectives that have been developed to understand how ethnic violence was capable in the now defunct state that took pride in its multiethnic character. One must first understand the nature of nationalism, as this is the touchstone idea that all theoretical perspectives on ethnic violence emanate from. I aim to avoid a chronology of the events, and instead I seek to provide a series of thematic debates around some of the contested views regarding the forces that contributed to ethnic violence. I will look to forces of a political, historical, social/psychological, and cultural nature and critically analyse their validity. I shall then pull together the views on certain fundamentals, such as whether the conflict was inevitable or premeditated and if it was elite or mass led, or a combination of both.

Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism, 2006) defines nationalism as ‘primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent.’ He goes on to say that sentiment is the feeling that is aroused when this principle is either achieved or violated, and that a nationalist movement is the sum of physical acts derived from such sentiments. Taken at face value, Socialist Yugoslavia could not be described as the realized goal of a nationalist given that numerous peoples, nationalities and ethnic groups lived within its borders. Nationalism as an all-pervasive ideology has been blamed for conflict, however, what is of more interest is how an ideology manifested itself and how it had to fit on to a culture for it to be adopted by its people, as Erwin Staub suggests (The Roots of Evil, 1989). Nationalism was not new to the region prior to the 1990’s, but neither was it as ferocious as what was later witnessed. The redefining of state boundaries in the early 1990’s along with the geographic placement of ethnic groups within them are viewed as the watershed moment for the conflict to have begun, and I will now turn to the first of several theoretical viewpoints that lead towards this point and the violence being ethnic in nature.

Rogers Brubaker (in Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 2, Spring, 1995) provides a theory centred on the political dynamics surrounding the collapse of the Yugoslav state. His triadic nexus of national minorities, nationalizing states and external national homelands portrays a relational perspective to the Yugoslav break up between these three. Because of the ‘nationalization of political space’, since the bigger political space has now evaporated, those constituent nations now dwell in pockets in new states where another dominant nation now governs. Citizenship in one state is balanced with ethno-national affinity with another. So an individual is at the centre of the triadic relationship going on, and of two nationalisms being played out; one in the state they reside in, and one in the ‘home’ state. Conflicts arise because of new reconfigurations of the triadic nexus. Nationalizing states partake in the elite-led promotion of a homogenous nation in a heterogeneous society, where there is a large national minority who is organised yet politically alienated. This group makes demands based on real or perceived threats to their wellbeing, and are closely watched by elites in their ‘homeland’ who protest on their behalf for their rights. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia should be seen in this triadic form. Three overlapping processes consisted of nationalizing Croats both before and after independence, disaffection and nationalist mobilisation of Croatian Serbs in the borderlands, and the development of a belligerent homeland stance in the Serbian state leaning on a Serbian dominated JNA to create a Greater Serbia out of the federation. So the Croat secession wasn’t simply a response to Serb assertiveness within Yugoslavia, but a nationalizing process by Croats. The interplay between these three processes acted as catalysts for people to become involved because of their perception of and reaction to events in one of the other two processes. These were founded on representations that had to be developed from monitoring situations in the other fields, and packaged in a way for people to be mobilized. So although he believes the processes to be elite-led, they had to have support from the masses. He takes the view that after an event occurred; new perceptions or responses were triggered. So he looks at the contexts of an event in relation to what went before it that acted as a trigger. This created the conditions for an escalation of events, the catalyst being the political leaders. However he looks at the process of the break up in isolation from the processes that led to the break up.

Jack Snyder (From Voting to Violence, 2000) believes democratisation played a role in this. He believes that nationalism is weak prior to democratization, and that this process actually produces nations and nationalisms. When political leaders wish to garner support, yet not to relinquish too much power to the citizen, they provide for partial democracy using nationalism to gain it. The timing and context of democratization varies the nationalism that results. Exclusionary nationalism occurs if the country is poor, the citizens lack skills to participate in democracy, and when politicians, the media and institutions are weak during the beginning of the process. This is what occurred in Serbia and Croatia. In pre-conflict Yugoslavia democratization and political decentralization led to communist elites fearing for their position, giving them an incentive for leading popular nationalist movements. Decentralization and the ethnofederal nature of Yugoslavia allowed these elites to use the institutions at their disposal for this advancement. Four factors allowed for democratization to lead to nationalism and then ethnic conflict. First, he argues that ‘Historical legacies created the conditions from which conflict could emerge…’ Secondly, the structure of the federal system, tying ethnic groups to republics, was conceived in order to deal with the nationalities question but instead it created divisions within Yugoslavia, that not only nationalists favoured but liberals also, and became represented as a debate between Slovenia and Croatia on one side, and Serbia and the Army on the other. Thirdly, challenges with the economy were in tandem with the maneuverings of political elites to gain support on the onset of a more open political system. Finally, the media were an important factor in that the ethnic republic leaders could monopolize as much as they could. Journalists and intellectuals who disseminated nationalist myths aided this. But this only fed into prejudices that were already present therefore a supply and demand scenario existed. The only downside to this argument is that it doesn’t account for the rise of Franjo Tudjman as President. His portrayal can be seen to mirror Slobodan Milosevic’s conversion during democratization, but not of an anti-communist figure that rose independently of the state structures. He was more a figure of ‘Historical legacies’ if anything. However, Snyder does provide three more political factors that I will now approach. 

Marshal Tito’s policy of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ sought to erase the competing nationalist versions of World War II history by providing a narrative that united the new Yugoslavs around a Partisan myth versus internal and external fascist enemies. The new socialist Yugoslav constitution developed a system of republics, most of which had a nation tied to them. In addition to this there was the guarantee of equality of the nations throughout the republics, for those who do not live in their ‘home’ nation. And this is where Sabrina Ramet believes Tito went wrong. In her epilogue in Balkan Bebel she argues that when Tito opted to tolerate the already present cultures based on a thin ‘Yugoslavism’ anchored in the Partisan myth, instead of creating a new Yugoslav identity, he embedded the continual resurfacing of inter-group hatred from the World War II era. Therefore the trauma of those who experienced it never went away. Anthony Oberschall (in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 982-1001. November 2000) agrees with her focus on the Yugoslav constitution but for a different reason. He felt that because there was a balancing act going on to appease all the different ethnic and national stakeholders in the country, any attempts by nationalists to alter it would obviously focus on issues including the drawing of boundaries and placement of peoples. But he prescribes democratization as the antidote to nationalists employing ethnic cleavages. This is the opposite of what Snyder argues as he placed democratization first with the rise in nationalism as the consequence. I would agree with Oberschall that nationalists would try and alter the borders of the republics, but his approach is set within the context of a communist state where nationalist communists were the actors who could affect that change, and this wasn’t the case. Democratization led to the election of both a nationalist ‘communist’ in Slobodan Milosevic and an outright nationalist in Franjo Tudjman. Therefore the rules of the game changed. The borders issue became more prominent once Tudjman made the calls for secession because they would lead to international state boundaries, not internal republic borders. So the issue became a lot more contentious and therefore more open to conflict. Given that republics were tied to nations, this provided the ethnic paradigm. To add to this E. M. Despalatovic (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) makes the point that when Croatia was gearing towards independence and after the HDZ had won the elections; they fired Serbian communists – not because they were Serbs but because they were communists. So the result of democratization was the removal of communists in the state bureaucracy yet presented as removal of the Serbs. This feeds into Brubaker’s argument about opportunities for political leaders to represent the other process, here the nationalization of the Croatian state. In terms of contributing to ethnic violence, economic issues pale into the background, but they do add to the factors that may have left the population frustrated and motivated to turn to nationalist politicians and be receptive of their messages.

But people were receiving messages from other sources, namely the media, as pointed out by Snyder. Bette Denich (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) provides a compelling case on the lack of communication between the numerous elites and amongst the various ethnic populations. Denich’s argument is that there were two processes going on. First, Serb and Croatian nationalists were arguing over the overlapping nature of their claims for territory, which meant that they were only concerned with their own nationalist version of truth, and not listening to others. Second, this meant that the ordinary people weren’t listening to each other either, helped by the media’s portrayal of events. The narratives at play, victimization and threat, fed into those who weren’t ‘nationalist’ before. Only those not involved in an ethno-nationalist framework were distant from it, but they were few in number. In employing Benedict Anderson’s assertion that print capitalism played a part in the forming of commonality prior to nation-state formation, she points to mass media that was devolved to the republics, which carried narratives produced by the intelligentsia’s of the republics based on the raw materials of ethnic identity. The media in each republic therefore pushed different perspectives on the same news to different audiences who reacted differently. The portrayal of victimization by each media and of the ‘other’ as a threat, coupled with no actual response to the ‘other’ only their projection of them, led to an escalation of the perception of the ‘other’ as being a threat. Without other contrary viewpoints, these perceptions grew and became exaggerated. Therefore the media was employed as a tool to foster conditions on the ground that led to ethnic tensions being raised backed by each republics leaders and intelligentsia. To link with Brubaker’s triadic nexus argument, the communication of representations was key for the processes to interact with each other and produce different responses to events. So the media was complicit in fostering those conditions.

So what we had was a combination of political forces that interacted with each other, and played off each other, which fostered conditions for ethnic violence the former Yugoslavia. Established political elites sought to exploit the move to democracy for their attempts to cling on to, or reach, power in their home republics, using the existing structure of the Yugoslav state; and the ideology of nationalism as tool to garner mass support by communicating through republic owned media outlets. This led to the collapse of the League of Communists as an institution and the subsequent undermining of the Yugoslav state that had been created to unite the nations of the South Slavs. But solely pointing to political forces leaves out the emotional connection people at the grassroots level had and could relate to.

Historical forces are another viewpoint from which to understand the conditions that were created to lead to ethnic violence. Norman Naimark (Fires of Hatred, 2001) points to both the Serbs and Croats prior to the conflict exploiting their versions of recent ‘history’ in order to mobilize their respective ‘nations’. ‘The Serbs in Krajina mobilized around the threat of a new Jasenovac…’ and rested on past and present inflated numbers of Serb deaths there during the Ustasha state. Whereas the anti-communist Croats connected the Serbs to the communist legacy by pointing to Croat massacres under Tito at the end of World War II. These messages were relayed by the media, which was controlled by both Milosevic and Tudjman. These fed into repressed memories of those who lived through them times and were thus employed as a tool to mobilize them. He feels that the brutality displayed during the war in Croatia had ‘to do with the history of the region since 1940 and the urban social groups that fostered Serbian paramilitaries than it did with the inheritance of the distant past.’ His latter point regarding outsiders coming in to the area to stir up conflict, I will approach later. He does have a valid point about the present use of selected (and perhaps contested) historical facts to underpin nationalist rhetoric. But this argument doesn’t go far enough in the sense that there is a detachment between those who lived through the experiences of World War II and those who have grown up since; he doesn’t account for their mobilization. Aside from factors that have been mentioned up to now that could have motivated this group of people, Victor Roudometof (Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy, 2001) argues that it is necessary to take into account the educational mechanisms responsible for the production and proliferation of stereotypes. ‘As the different nationalist agendas of the Balkan nation-states gradually became enshrined in regional historical discourse, they inevitably found their way into songs, schoolbooks, and local traditions.’ Thus collective memories were acted out daily and were barriers to solving the problems of the 1990’s. Because there was no outlet to answer the ‘national question’ under communism, the 1980’s saw a revival of historical revisionism. In the 1990’s, history was ‘renationalized’ and used as a tool for ethnocentric propaganda. There are two links here; the first being Sabrina Ramet who said that communism didn’t provide a vehicle to openly discuss the traumas of World War II. But Rogers Brubaker better links the past to the present in his triadic view of the Serbs ‘as active participants in the intensifying conflict and as political subjects in their own right, construing (and misconstruing) the dangers of the present in the light of the atrocities of the past.’ This linking of the past to the present leads on to ethnosymbolism and cultural forces in general.

Stuart Kaufman (Modern Hatreds, 2001) argues from a ‘symbolic politics’ perspective on the cause of ethnic war. He believes that two roots to ethnic violence are mass-led or elite-led. Developments of three factors are crucial to reach this end, mass hostility, ethnic outflanking by political elites, and a security dilemma. By mass hostility he refers to an external affinity problem (i.e. a group is a majority in the state, but a minority in the region), a history of ethnic domination, or issues over ethnic symbols. A security dilemma can occur when these threaten other groups, and when outbidding by extremist leaders in power up the ante on this because of a perception of extinction on either side. So he believes that ‘If the necessary conditions for ethnic war are myths, fears, and opportunity, the timing of the war is explained by an increase in fear, opportunity, or hostility justified by the myths.’ This could be down to a rise in symbolic events or where a political opportunity presents itself, which determines whether it is elite or mass-led. Conversely, a lack of ethnic symbolism can be seen in areas where ethnic violence didn’t occur but had mixed ethnicities. His judgement is that relevantly modern hatreds, found in renewed accounts of myths and stories, inspired the killing in the former Yugoslavia, which links into the arguments set out by Ramet, Roudometof and Naimark. Events in Yugoslavia were elite-led, albeit with ethnic hostility already being present amongst the masses, which ramped up the low level hostility through fears manipulated by symbols and myths. Roudometof agrees with the power of symbols, myths and stories that were used as mobilizing tools, and he places a time on when their true potential was realized. After the independence of Croatia ‘the new ethnic symbolisms emphasized the explicit ethnic character of the proposed new state.’

Although Ramet agrees with Kaufman on the traumas of World War II being relived and that Milosevic was tapping into already present hostility because ‘He catered to them, manipulated them, and amplified them.’ She fundamentally believes that because these people were culturally diverse they weren’t going to get on. So a chasm opens up here between the idea that it was the fault of political leaders who utilized symbols and myths of the past to conjure up ethnic hatred and violence in a once stable society, to a fundamental questioning of the reason why these people were ever placed in one state. The fact that different cultures were put together in the first place almost justifies Ramets’ argument that Milosevic (and others) had a simple task to achieve their aims, and this is where I disagree with her assertion of inevitability. It had to be linked to other ongoing processes at the time or else these groups would have been in conflict before the 1990’s, and this is where Kaufman’s argument stands up to scrutiny.

However, other social or psychological factors played a role in the path to ethnic violence. The first tranche of these focus on predetermined characteristics that could account for ethnic violence. Remembering Snyder’s point that nationalism was weak prior to democratization, I return to Oberschall whose approach to ethnic violence leans on two cognitive perspectives that Yugoslavs were meant to have had when conducting relations with other ethnicities. ‘People possessed both frames in their minds: In peacetimes the crisis frame was dormant, and in crisis and war the normal frame was suppressed. Both frames were anchored in private and family experiences.’ He points to the Tito-era as a time when the normal frame was activated, but he links the events of World War II and the 1990’s as one of repetition. He draws on personal history as a force for the actions of the present, and ties this to psychological factors inherent in the people of the former Yugoslavia. But to understand his theory he places it into the context of the 1990’s conflict and uses it to answer the question of why a people who lived harmoniously for forty years began to kill each other. The crisis frame was triggered by elite manipulation in the context of a security dilemma, so here he links to Kaufman’s theory. Benjamin Valentino (Final Solutions, 2004) narrows this notion of some form of individual cognitive frame, experienced by a collectivity. His approach to the cause of ethnic violence goes back to the argument of it being elite-led. However, he believes that instead of the masses participating in a wide spread melee, the violence was conducted by a small group of people with the rest of the population as bystanders. Because only a few people are perpetrators they are selected, and can be fanatics or those manipulated by elites in certain situations. He divides perpetrators into two types, ones who are innately biased towards violence and others who are ‘ordinary’ yet are seduced into it. So psychological factors and social/situational ones motivate perpetrators to violent acts. Preexisting ideological convictions or hatred alone did not account for violence, nor can the severe brutality of some can be seen as generic to all perpetrators. Yet soldiers carry out violence as duties from the top of the hierarchy. His argument then is that all humans have the capacity to kill but it is individuals who make a choice on what they wish to do. This latter argument tied into the idea that something needs to occur for humans to kill, such as a situation or coercion, seems to be plausible, yet does run closely parallel to Oberschall’s cognitive frame idea that is somewhat rigid.

Looking at it from a different tangent, H. Grandits and C. Promitzer (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) point to a historically rooted patriarchal mentality that descended from the Military Frontier, where Catholics and Orthodox were united as soldiers. These remained up to the time of the 1990’s conflict, including the predisposition to use force and take up arms. This went in tandem with the use of symbols to act as triggers to draw out different responses by reactivating historical values. This may have some weight if it can be based less on psychological/biological foundations and more on its penetration into local rituals and customs of communities. But to tie up the debate on predetermined societal and psychological forces that led to ethnic violence, I return to E. Staub, whom I quoted earlier arguing that nationalism had to fit the already present cultures for it to succeed. His wider argument is that that ‘Certain characteristics of a culture and the structure of a society, combined with great difficulties or hardships of life and social disorganisation, are the starting point for genocide or mass killing.’ He believes that most cultures possess characteristics that have the potential for group violence and that certain circumstances that they find themselves in unleash it. This underlines Grandits and Promitzer’s argument if taken from my suggested perspective. All these theories point to the circumstances of the period in the early 1990s as the trigger for all these preordained factors to become active, so there must be validity in their claims. However, I can only agree with those claims that are rooted in a sense of cultural continuity such as Staub, and Valentino to a degree, because the triggers for the violent acts need to have a human or emotional connection for these presumptions to be valid. Staub’s example of ‘life problems’ is one such link. Another could be the lived experience of World War II.

Yet Staub also provides us with a temporally linear explanation that leads to ethnic violence, as opposed to a purely predetermined one, this being the ‘continuum of destruction’. His idea here is that small destructive actions that become more routinely used can justify the next destructive action, and so on. This idea assumes the collective nature of the actions, whether they be societal or between ethnic groups. The start of such a process can be as long as the observer or researcher wishes it to be. A primordialist of an ‘ancient hatred’ tradition would see this stretch back millennia. But more modern arguments place it within the last two centuries. Brubaker’s argument regarding the impact of education places it in the 19^th century. Roudometof’s theory of collective memory places it in the wake of the atrocities in World War II, if not before that. But what is of key importance here is that hatred had been building up over a period of time. This can explain two things. First the role of the bystander, and second the reason why mass killing didn’t occur straight away.

On the former point, Valentino argues that mass killings don’t need mass support, just indifference for it to occur. It is wrong to assume that the masses support it. Mass killings don’t just start from scratch, but the public show negative support by allowing legal measures and social attitudes to build up discrimination and hatred of vulnerable social groups. So no one opposes it. Accordingly they may support the regime but not the killing. But even if they do, he says it may be down to propaganda and mis-information to ‘cover up’ the extent of it. ‘Throughout the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Belgrade sought to cover up its atrocities or characterize them as legitimate military actions.’ So this backs up his argument that ethnic violence is elite-led, and links to Staub’s ‘continuum of destruction’. On the latter point, the former argument backs up the common sense idea that mass killing didn’t just spontaneously erupt, but that the conditions had been building up and brewing for sometime. Yet, this still doesn’t explain how it did arrive at violence. Although the war was a conflict between Croatia and Yugoslavia backed up by the JNA, something altered to make it an ethnic conflict on the ground in multiethnic communities. Here we can place the idea of the role of ‘outsiders’ in fomenting trouble and stirring up ethnic violence. Sabrina Ramet describes the events between the JNA intervening in Croatia and the amassing of paramilitaries to fight in the war. Clashes between Croatian militia and Serb irregulars highlight the potential for rogue elements to act out; however, they would not without either insecurity underpinned by nationalist rhetoric or from official orders. The latter is most likely. Yet a result of these clashes was that Serb paramilitaries formed and struck at towns in Croatia. So one can see how non-official combatants brought the conflict in to the region. Or as Grandits and Promitzer see it ‘the influence of movements outside the region developed national consciousness in the area.’

Taking into account the many forces that these scholars have attributed to the creation of conditions for ethnic violence, I seek to tie up two ideas. The first is the question of whether the ethnic violence was elite or mass-led. Many if not most of the theories point to an element of elite-led participation. Some argue that it may be as basic as a leader using the raw material of hostility, such as Ramet. Others developed a more nuanced argument that included the use of the media, state institutions, the circumstances of democratization and state collapse, along with the tapping into the already held prejudices of the population via ethnosymbolism. But one must concede that without the masses divided into two or more distinct groups (whether historically or newly fashioned) then there would have been no conflict over the placement of these people. Further to that, the build up over years, if not decades, of hostility had to have been incubated at the community level for the political rhetoric to resonate. So a combination of the two approaches is an adequate answer, but this links to the second question of whether ethnic violence was inevitable or a consequence of the series of events that came before it. This depends on the perspective of time one takes when looking at the events that took place through linear time. On one side you have Ramet who argues that Tito’s failure to solve the nationalities issue at he start of the second Yugoslavia meant it was inevitable to led to ethnic violence. However, her approach comfortably sits at the ‘end of time’ with the benefit of hindsight. Others take the view, such as Roudometof, that the build up over time of hostility couldn’t have inevitably led to violence given that they lived peacefully for forty years prior to the events in the 1990’s. Therefore, one must place the actions of the past, in motion, into the context of the time period just prior to ethnic violence occurring. And this is where Brubaker and Snyder’s views become useful. This is also where intent can be ascribed, according to some of the theorists mentioned, because of the elite-led nature of the violence.

In conclusion, the forces that led to the creation of conditions for ethnic violence to occur in the former Yugoslavia were varied, and fluctuated in importance according to the theory developed. I understand the situation as follows. Hostility was already present on the ground in the communities of the former Yugoslavia, and had been building up over time, thanks in part to educational institutions and the nurturing of cultural traditions. ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ was Tito’s policy to ensure that the nationalities’ issue was dealt with after the traumatic experiences of World War II, which were seen as ‘ethnic’ in nature. Through developments in the constitutional make up of the Yugoslav state, the republics grew as power bases for a small elites to govern, especially in regards to the media. With the onset of democratization, nationalists or reforming communist leaders sought to gain (or keep) political office. Nationalism was utilized by these leaders, using the boundaries of the republics for their new state, and communicating effective ethnosymbolic messages to the masses through the media, which resonated with some due to their lived experiences in World War II. For others, the socio-economic conditions, deteriorating since the mid-1980’s, mobilized their sense of isolation in a state that was collapsing. A continuum of destruction developed and became truncated in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, as nation-building reified distinctions of who ‘us’ and ‘them’ were, especially volatile in areas of mixed ethnicities such as eastern Croatia. A security dilemma took hold once ‘outsiders’ who used violence elsewhere in the region came into local communities coercing people to choose sides. For fear of death, those of the same ethnicity as the belligerents chose to take their side or become neutral bystanders to the violence. Therefore although one can point to the forces from history for ethnic violence, one must account for the activities of those who led the charge of utilizing such rhetoric that didn’t stop violence escalating, even actively promoting its use, in the period immediately prior to violence being committed. Ultimately, though, the participation of the masses, actively or passively, meant that the actions of the leaders could be easily justified, as they had no mass popular opposition to contend with.

The ‘nationalism’ question in Communist states

Given the vast number of states that had Communist regimes during the 20^th century, this post will aim to compare the approaches to dealing with nationalism in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, during the early life of those regimes. In doing so, I will initially define terms such as ‘nationalism’, ‘nationality’ and the ‘nation’, using views expressed by leading scholars, and those held by leading Communists. This will enable me to link communism to nationalism as an ideology, and show how Communists understood the concepts of nation, nationalism and nationalities. I can then consider why Communists needed such definitions to enable them to establish their respective regimes, and to claim their legitimacy.

I will begin by comparing the various ways that the two regimes structured their societies and the functions that operated within it. I will look at the concept of self-determination, and judge whether these regimes followed the various components of what constitutes a nation, and to reflect on whether these considerations were met. I avoid commenting on whether the demise of these two states in the 1980’s and 1990’s stemmed from these policies, as it would be unfair not to include the other numerous factors that were involved in these processes that this post will not cover. I will finish by evaluating whether communism did indeed ‘deal’ with nationalism.

In order to understand nationalism, one must first look at the related notion of the nation. Both the nation and nationalism are modern phenomena, which both ethno-symbolist and modernist scholars on nationalism agree on (Smith, Gellner, Hobsbawm). Anthony Smith (The Ethnic Origins of Nations, 1988) begrudgingly accepts that nations can be modern, however he believes that there were ethnies prior to modernity, which had 6 characteristics, and contributed to the formation of modern nations and established lines of continuity. However his overall view implies that ethnies are somewhat rigid and bounded in structure and have not merged or split over time, which ties in to Ernest Gellner’s criticism (Nations and Nationalism, 2006). In the reverse of Smith’s argument, Gellner acknowledges that groups and cultures have always existed, but that over time they have had either firm and/or fluid boundaries. Modern nations however grew out of the radically altered social conditions that existed in the latter 18^th and early 19^th centuries that homogenized certain elements of pre-existing high cultures, aided by education, leading to the only unit that humans could identify with. These nations were therefore inventions, or social constructs, in the era of modernity. Albeit two conflicting arguments, there is common ground in both. Therefore I will employ Smith’s definition of an ethnie (An ethnie needs a name, common myth of descent, a shared history, a distinct shared culture, an association with a territory and a sense of solidarity) as a basis for a ‘nation’, and relate to Gellner’s idea that modern nations were created only because a certain set of conditions were reached, when analyzing the two states that are the focus of this post.

To define nationalism, I return to Gellner whose view it is that ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.’ Smith also agrees with this aspirational tone as the aim of nationalism, and concedes that today’s nation-states rarely have congruent lines. Eric Hobsbawm (Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. 1991) also agrees with Gellner on his interpretation of nationalism, and adds that this principle is the bond between the people and the polity, and overrides all other obligations. I will return to this theme of legitimacy later on. But both agree that nationalism came before the nation, or as Hobsbawm puts it ‘Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way around.’ It is this view that I align myself with, and hope to highlight during this post, in that states used nationalism as a vehicle for political legitimacy, and created nations. However, the boundaries of such terms as the ‘nation’ or ‘state’ will be picked up later.

Finally nationality, or national identity, can be described as identification with the nation-state or nation.  This can be how individuals describe themselves, or have it bestowed on to them as an individual. The different applications of this term will be evident in the rest of this post.

Having now defined the terms that I will use in this essay, I can now look to how communism viewed nationalism. Given that all attempts at creating Communist states have all tried to apply the theories of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, I will look to the Communist Manifesto for reference. In the founding document of communism, it states:

            ‘The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself as the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.’ (The Communist Manifesto 1848)

In essence, although the prime aim of communism was the abolition of countries, Mark and Engels believed that the working class must achieve political power within countries, thus to constitute the ‘nation’ itself. They go on to argue that although capitalism is already dissolving national differences, communism would achieve it faster. Imperialism of one nation over another would disappear, as exploitation of one man over another does.

The fundamental difference here is that communism sees nations only as vehicles on the route to communism, because embodied in the state is political power to achieve its ends; and ultimately it is internationalist as there would be no class differences or antagonisms. Nationalism on the contrary defines itself within borders, sets out to create differences from other groups so that it can ultimately wield political power over a nation within a state – thus create a nation-state. But my main focus is not on the ends but the means to reaching communism. The use of the nation and boundaries, for the proletariat to ascend to power, features heavily in the practice of communism.

One of the leading figures on nationalism in the USSR was Joseph Stalin, who in the early years of the Soviet Union was the Commissar for the Nationalities. In 1913 he developed his own definition of the nation. He explained that a ‘nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.’ (Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, 1935). His argument reflected the later views of Gellner when he wrote that nations belong ‘to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism.’ Thus Stalin laid the foundations for two similar future scholars. He preceeded Smith by defining characteristics of a nation, though not correlating exactly with the categorizations he used, but also accepted that the nation only arose out of industrialization.  

As for Yugoslavia, Josip Tito in 1941 co-wrote a resolution of the fifth conference of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, (The Party of the Revolution, 1980) which contained a section on ‘the struggle of national equality and freedom’. Instead of theoretical points he makes practical ones, focusing on the need for self-determination for the Macedonians, Albanians and other minorities from enemies both outside and inside Yugoslavia. Stalin also wrote on this point of self-determination, by allowing a nation to determine its own future. This can be seen in the state systems in the former USSR and former Yugoslavia.

The USSR was the first Communist country in the world therefore it did not have a country to look to for establishing its system, but it did have a legacy to deal with from the Russian Empire. Self-determination was the key to ensuring that the former empire, and all its nations, stayed within the new Soviet Union. Albeit it in opposition to the internationalist stance of communism, this approach was seen as necessary for it would promote further revolution. Walker Connor (The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, 1984) takes a less theoretical and a more political stance on the context within which this policy developed. He believes that this policy was necessary because of several factors, mostly relating to internal political consolidation, and to ward off external threats. However, Connor points out that a change of heart soon came about and that socialism, or the unification of the working class, was re-established as the ultimate goal, so a proviso was added to statements regarding secession. However, the ‘working men of the world now had a country’.

Socialist Yugoslavia, on the other hand, formed after World War Two, when it had the experience of being united under a monarch, even if dismembered by the Axis powers. Prior to the war, the political discourse revolved around the structure of the state, and the balance of power between a strong centralized centre, and a loose confederal system, typified by the Serbs arguing for the former, and the Croats the latter. This power issue was linked to the desire for political control over territorial boundaries that existed within the state. It also had the legacy of being split by two former dominant empires, the Habsburg and Ottoman, along with all their cultural, social, political and economic baggage. The paradox here though was that at the time, the notion of one Yugoslav nation was preeminent. The idea of self-determination was a recruiting tool Tito used for his Partisan forces, attracting, notably, the Serbs domiciled within the Croatian republic borders, but also those residing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The use of ‘Yugoslav’ as a tool for mobilization, however, was omitted, and the national name of the audience being addressed was used.

From the start of Tito’s rule then, we can see that there were many obstacles to overcome when navigating the troubled waters of nationality and the nations. Tito opted for a federal state structure with which to deliver his socialist utopia. Silvo Devetak (The Equality of Nations and Nationalities in Yugoslavia, 1988) details five spheres of social relations that were regulated in Yugoslavia between the nations and nationalities. The legal, constitutional and institutional apparatus was the first of these. It followed strict rules in ensuring that the nations and nationalities were represented fairly and equally. They were allowed to express their cultural and linguistic differences, but also to interact with the state in their own tongue. Socio-economic considerations were met with targeted funds to those areas deemed ‘backwards’, for fear of dissent from the local nation that may raise national sentiments. The educational system was used to foster friendship and mutual understanding, but this was applied, and could only be effective, in the more diverse areas. Socio-political organizations were set up to get gather different groups together, and tried to be as broad as possible, such as the Socialist Youth League. Finally, the penal system outlawed the practice of national inequality and hatred. It was the exercise of the last point that was visible when Tito purged the Croatian party in the 1970’s.

Parallel to this was the structural issue of territorial boundaries. The ambiguity in the constitution arose around who had the right to self-determination. If one decided that the republics were the boundaries, then it would justify a claim by a nation to a ‘state’. However, if you invested in the nation the power for self-determination, then the lines are less clear. Therefore the system that operated in Yugoslavia institutionalized the differences between the nations, but also tried to blur the boundaries between the nation and republic. Through the use of nationalities within the republics and the guarantee of equality, they aimed to eliminate the desire for nations to seek assurances from a ‘mother’ nation, or in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s case, to be split by there being no majority nation.

In the USSR, although workingmen now had a country, to govern it, the Communists had to wear some of the nationalist’s clothes. Self-determination was still the language of the Communists, but the application of it was somewhat different and varied. Martin McCauley (The Soviet Union 1917-1991, 1993) points to the strategy of korenizatsiya that allowed for the establishment of local institutions to be run by indigenous people. This would give the air of legitimacy to the regime, so that it wouldn’t be seen to be imperialist; yet carry out the diktats of the Party arriving from Moscow. A federal system of national and regional autonomous areas was therefore established. The original intent of Lenin and Stalin was that nations could determine their own future, on the assumption that if they chose to leave, then their bourgeois revolution would then lead to a socialist one and a return to the Soviet fold.

However, as McCauley points out, there were many obstacles here too. Firstly, there was only a limited proletariat in the Soviet Union, and it was its geographical fringes that lacked the education and skills to develop one. This led to increased Russian labour migration to these areas assigned for industrialization. An example of the rise in nationalism came via collectivization when the Ukrainians opposed this move in the 1930s. Secondly, the Communist Party itself was significantly made up of Russian members. A drive was initiated to increase non-Russian numbers, but subsequent purges led to their numbers dropping again. Thirdly, the use of local languages was enshrined in law, however there were disparities between those local speakers of languages, and those elites who were readers and writers of those indigenous or other languages. However, the Communist Party had its impact on this too, and in certain areas one language was favoured more than others, or the authorities would change between Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, dependent on its objectives in that nation; an example being the imposition of the Cyrillic alphabet onto an original Latin text Moldavian language. Thus ‘Great Russian chauvinism’ quietly crept back into fashion, and at the same time standardized ‘national’ languages were codified.

These points by McCauley illustrate that ‘Leninist nationality policy deliberately promoted the formation of nations and the development of national languages and cultures. It was believed that these new nations would be socialist-orientated and would therefore support the building of socialism in the Soviet Union.’ Therefore Stalin’s characteristics of the nation, reflective of Smith’s, were used to bestow onto people a national identity and with that, a polity of Communists to govern the newly demarcated autonomous republics. These boundaries were sometimes arbitrary and some often created for political reasons, but given legitimacy because of state backing.

To conclude, the Communist states had a theoretical base upon which to assume that with the transition to socialism, nationalism would cease to exist. However, as realities hit those Communist leaders in the first decades when establishing their power, they had to go some way towards the goal of nationalism by providing for territorial borders for nations, and also creating new nations within borders they established. Smith’s ethnie is evident here in that Communist states couldn’t start from a blank page, but had recent historical/cultural baggage to deal with, so even the creation of a new ‘Soviet’ or ‘Yugoslav’ identity was a big task. Gellner’s view of nations being created in the context of certain circumstances is reflected by the fact that Communists sought to speed up industrialization and thus negatively gave a hand to developing nationalism.

Self-determination is a key idea that the two states shared. Through their employment of it they ensured that local leaders were loyal to the Party as opposed to their nation, allowing for the effective governing of those states. In Yugoslavia this was ambiguous as there were boundaries of the nation and similarly boundaries to the republics, and nationality was often fluid. In the USSR, boundaries were fixed and often drawn up to ensure it contained sizeable non-national groups, and nationality was determined at birth. Both of these methods sought to establish political control, as reflected on by Hobsbawm previously, and therefore needed nations and nationalities to rationally organize their societies; but in doing so they became exposed to nationalism. In short, communism couldn’t ‘deal’ with nationalism but instead it had to embrace it.