Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis

7/30/2019 Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis

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Serbian Nationalism and theOrigins of the Yugoslav Crisis

Vesna Pesic

UNITED STATES

INSTITUTE OF PEACE


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Summary v

1 Explaining Nationalism in Yugoslavia 1

2 Integrative Problems: Interwar Yugoslavia

and the Major National Ideologies 5

3 Ethno-national Federalism under Communist Rule 9

4 The Role of Serbian Ressentiment 14

5 The Breakdown of Communism: Collapse and War 23

6 Conclusions 28

Notes 32

About the Author 40

About the Institute 41

CONTENTS


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The dissolution of multinational communistfederations and the ensuing armed conflictsthat have emerged with their transformationinto independent nation-states have returned thenational question (i.e., the relationship of a na-tional or ethnic group to a state that includes mul-tiple ethnic groups within its territory) to the fore-front of debates over international politics, law,and theory. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia, inparticular, demonstrates the inability of the inter-national community to rely on any solid legal prin-ciples, guidelines, or established mechanisms toavoid such chaos and mass suffering when con-stituent parts of these types of multinational statesdecide to go their own way.

The former Yugoslavia was an attempt to ad-dress three fundamental aspects of the nationalquestion: (1) the right of a nation acting to createits own state through demands for national self-

determination; (2) the right of a national home-land (whether sovereign state or republic within afederation) acting through its diaspora either tomonitor the relative status of its conationals else-where, or to demand national unification and theredrawing of borders; and (3) the rights of mem-bers of national minorities to resist the majoritysformation of a new nation-state either by seeking

cultural or political autonomy or by seceding in or-der to unite with their own national homeland.

A multinational state, such as Yugoslavia, can-not attempt to resolve these questions in any onenations favor, lest it risk the collapse of the entirestate. If a resolution of the national question in Yu-

goslavia appeared to tilt in favor of any one partic-ular group, the federations internal balance wouldbe upset. Thus, Yugoslavia was not only a mosaicof different ethnic nations, but also a system thatwas developed to accommodate these differences.

The creation and maintenance of Yugoslaviahinged on the interdependence of Serbs andCroats, the countrys two largest national groups.These peoples imagined the borders of their re-spective states as overlapping and clashing. Noneof the other national groups the former Yugoslaviacomprised, with the exception of the Slovenes,

lived within clearly defined ethnic borders insidethe federation. Large numbers of Yugoslav peopleslived within one of the others national territory.Bosnia-Herzegovina posed the greatest challengeto the peaceful dissolution of Yugoslavia becauseboth Serbs and Croats lived there in large num-bers, and because both Serbia and Croatia had his-torical pretensions to the republics territory.

Almost every one of Yugoslavias peoples hasbeen perceived as a threat to another nationalgroup and has felt threatened itself. This generalatmosphere ofressentiment, real or imagined,could easily be used to produce the feeling thatones national group was threatened with extinc-tion as the object of anothers aggression.

Ever since the founding of Yugoslavia, two dis-tinct nationalist policies have struggled for pri-macy in the debate over the countrys politicalfuture: Croatian separatism striving for an inde-pendent state and Serbian centralism striving topreserve the common Yugoslav state under its do-minion. Croatian nationalism was separatist andoppositional, Serbian nationalism alternated be-

tween outright Serbian rule and a strict federalismgoverned through central government institutions.The Croatian policy supported the devolution ofpower from the center outward and found supportamong most other Yugoslav nations, which wouldeventually articulate their own national aspira-tionsSlovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, and (inthe Bosnian experience) Muslim.

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SUMMARY


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Both of these strident, ethnocentric, nationalideologies preordained the failure of any attemptto constitute Yugoslavia as a modern unitary andliberal state. For Serbia, the Yugoslav state becamenothing more than a vehicle for Serbian domina-tion, which, in turn, stimulated Croatian nationalopposition. The first Yugoslav state (191841) wasnot only unable to pacify internal conflicts and di-lute rigid national ideologies, but its collapse in

World War II left no mechanisms in place to pre-vent extreme methods of resolving the nationalquestion.

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY)played the role of mediator among the quarreling

Yugoslav peoples. It promised an ideological reso-lution of the national question through a socialrevolution that subsumed class and national dis-

tinctions within a socialist framework. While thecountrys major ethnic groups were constituted asnations within the new federation, the arrange-ment was best expressed by the classic Soviet for-mula, national in form, socialist in content.

The tenuous supranational ideology of Yugoslavcommunism would eventually provoke the federa-tions crisis. The weakening and disappearance ofsocialisms ideological sovereignty raised perforcefundamental and profound questions about Yu-goslavias existence as a state, as happened inCzechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

Despite the regimes attempts to control na-tional aspirations by institutionalizing them withinthe political and territorial boundaries of the titularrepublics, the more abstract aspects of nationhoodcould not be so confined. Conferring the sense ofstatehood upon Yugoslavias major ethnic groupshad far greater consequences in strengtheningtheir territorial integration.

The immediate source of Serbian dissatisfactionin general, and the most tangible reason for the re-publics nationalist reaction in particular, were theconstitutional provisions that undermined Ser-

bias territorial integrity. Although the institutionalsystem established under the 1974 constitutionprescribed the nativization of all Yugoslav peo-ples within their territorial, republican frame-works, Serbia was frustrated in this regard. Accord-ing to the constitution, Serbia was not asovereign negotiating party like the other re-publics because of the sovereignty of its two au-tonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina.

Serbian hard-liners main interpretation of theSerbian tragedy in Kosovo was that ethnic Alba-nians had gained control through Yugoslavias1974 constitution, and that the only way to stopthe ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo was to re-instate Serbian domination there. In the ambiguitysurrounding the Kosovo problem, hard-liners or-ganized a putsch in Serbias Communist party in1987, bringing the most conservative elementsinto the partys leadership positions.

During 198889, Serbias intelligentsia andSlobodan Milosevics Serbian Communist partyclique joined forces to encourage a national revolu-tion to create a unified Serbia by tapping socialand national discontent in the republic. The na-tionalist ideology of being threatened and hatedfueled this Serbian mass movement.

This nationalist movement also mobilized Croa-tian Serbs by helping to organize meetings wherethey aired their demands for cultural and politicalautonomy. Such meetings only further supportedthe growth of Croatian nationalist movements, in-cluding the Croatian Democratic Union.

The advent of free elections in 1990 and thebreakdown of the communist regime was the cul-mination of what had already been going on formore than a decade in Yugoslavia following Titosdeath. Along with the process of democratizationin the republics and the denial of that same

process in the federal government, central state au-thority was becoming weaker, approaching a situa-tion of anarchy that bore an unsettling resem-blance to the collapse of the empire that used torule the Balkans. Yugoslavias breakup gave newmeaning to the old notion of Balkanization.

As communism collapsed, the strategies of thepolitical actors in each of the Yugoslav republicswere determined by specific elements of the na-tional question on the one hand, and the searchfor an exit from the communist system on theother. Yet, saving the communist regime remained

the one method by which conservative elites inSerbia, including the Yugoslav National Army(YNA), could simultaneously preserve the Yugo-slav state and achieve the goal of Serbian unifica-tion within one country.

The dual games (national and ideological)played by all the republics to a greater or lesser ex-tent actually precluded both of two possible pathsto a resolution of the federations crisis. The

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republics leaders were unable to either reimagineYugoslavia as a democratic and minimal state orbreak away peacefully by creating new, separatedemocratic states.

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union shared thesame types of multinational federal institutions,ethno-demographic mix of populations, and largediaspora communities whose status would changesignificantly with the dismemberment of both fed-eral states. Both cases involved the creation of newnational states in which one ethnic group becamepredominant. If these and other multinationalstates share the same broad political and ethno-demographic elements, are there lessons from the

Yugoslav crisis that the international communitycan generally apply to their dissolution and avoidthe possibility of mass violence in their wake?

First of all, the international community shouldactively work with the relevant parties to arrange atemporary status quo compromise if the dismem-berment of multinational states is not preceded byboth an internal consensus on the terms for creat-ing new states, including their borders and the sta-tus of minorities, and a clear conception of futuresecurity and cooperation arrangements.

The international communitys recognition ofthe new states emerging from the Yugoslav federa-tions breakup was woefully insufficient to securetheir peace and security. Not only must such recog-

nition take into account the internal and externalthreats involved in each case, but it must be real inthe sense that the new state must either be able to

defend itself or be defended by international mili-tary forces. Otherwise the result is highly unstablesituations that lead to victim-states and victimizedpopulations.

In the wider context of the political transforma-tion of East-Central Europe and the former SovietUnion, a more fundamental debate has been rekin-dled: the right to national self-determination andhow this vague principle might be reconsideredand clarified in order to make it a workable con-cept in international law. The abuse of this right inthe Yugoslav case underscores the need for suchan examination, as the right to self-determinationcame to be equated with the right of ethnically de-fined nations/republics to secede from the federa-tion, regardless of the mass violence such an actwould surely entail. The republics unilateral acts

of secession were in turn met with internal acts ofsecession by minority ethno-national communitiesinvoking the same principle of self-determination.

One crucial precondition for the peaceful appli-cation of the right to self-determination should bethe respect of both territorial integrity and minor-ity rights. Borders cannot be changed by force orwithout consideration of the consequences thatthe redrawing of international borders would havefor all members of the state. Above all, thereshould be some international mechanism that pro-

vides for the renegotiation of borders and that en-

courages all sides to recognize the consequencesof newly drawn international borders for all rele-

vant parties.


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The dissolution of multinational communistfederations and the ensuing armed conflictsthat have emerged with their transformationinto independent nation-states have returned thenational question to the forefront of debates overinternational politics, law, and theory. The forcesfueling the breakdown of these multinationalstates have not been exhausted with the disintegra-tion of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czecho-slovakia. Most of the successor states of these fed-erations are themselves breaking down. Whetherthere will be a third phase of breakdown that willrequire the resolution of new national questionsremains to be seen.1

In this paper, I attempt to explain the disintegra-tion of Yugoslavia and why its breakup was not apeaceful one. By way of this example, I also at-tempt to explain in general why and when thedemise of multinational states creates ethnic polar-

ization that seems resolvable only by force andeven genocide. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia,in particular, demonstrates the inability of the in-ternational community to rely on any solid legalprinciples, guidelines, or established mechanismsto avoid such chaos and mass suffering when con-stituent parts of these types of multinational statesdecide to go their own way. In the concludingsection of this study, I offer recommendations the

international community may find useful in avoid-ing these kinds of conflicts in the future.

For many years, Yugoslavia functioned as anation-state by providing a peaceful compromiseto the conflicting, multifaceted, and perennial na-tional questions posed by its constitutive parts.

Multinational states, such as Yugoslavia, cannot at-tempt to resolve these questions in any one na-tions favor, lest they risk the collapse of the entirestate. If a resolution of the national question ap-peared to tilt in favor of any one particular group,

Yugoslavias internal balance would have been up-set. Thus, Yugoslavia was not only a mosaic of dif-ferent ethnic nations, but also a system that wasdeveloped to accommodate these differences.

Joseph Rothchild emphasizes the almost unbeliev-able diversity of ethnic groups that Yugoslaviabrought under one state: By virtually every rele-

vant criterionhistory, political traditions, socioe-conomic standards, legal systems, religion and cul-tureYugoslavia was the most complicated of thenew states of interwar East-Central Europe, beingcomposed of the largest and most varied numberof pre-1918 units.2 Maintaining political balanceand diffusing ethnic tensions was the only way Yu-goslavia could survive. If the Yugoslav state couldnot maintain these essential functions, the separa-tion of its intertwined national groups in a full-scale war would be the probable result.

By its very nature, Yugoslavia has never had astaatsvolk(state-people) that could naturallydominate by its numbers and serve as the founda-tion on which a modern nation-state could bebuilt. (As members of the most populous nationalgroup, Serbs constituted only 40 percent of the to-tal Yugoslav population.) The creation and mainte-nance of Yugoslavia hinged on the interdepen-dence of Serbs and Croats, the countrys twolargest national groups. These peoples not onlyshared a common daily existence, but also imag-ined the borders of their respective states as over-

lapping and clashing. Thus, a Serbo-Croatian com-promise represented the foundation of Yugoslavia.None of the other national groups that inhab-

ited the former Yugoslavia, with the exception ofthe Slovenes, lived within clearly defined ethnicborders inside the federation. Large numbers of

Yugoslav peoples or peoples of neighboring coun-tries lived within one of the others nationalterritory.3 Bosnia-Herzegovina posed the greatest

1

1EXPLAINING

NATIONALISM INYUGOSLAVIA


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challenge to the peaceful dissolution of Yugoslaviabecause both Serbs and Croats lived there in largenumbers, and because the two statesSerbia andCroatiaboth had historical pretensions to the re-publics territory.4 Bosnia-Herzegovina was an ap-ple of discord between Serbia and Croatia, as the

recent war over its division confirms.5The very existence of Yugoslavia seemed to defy

the history of relations among its different nations,which had already waged one ethnic and religiouswar among themselves with the collapse of the first

Yugoslavia (191841). The feeling of resentmentamong Yugoslavias nations, however, did notemerge from this experience alone. To be sure, Yu-goslavias national groups all share a common his-tory of struggling to save their distinct identitiesand renew their lost medieval statesa history ofrepressive domination that fostered disloyal and

militant minorities and arrogant and repressivemajorities. Almost every one of these peoples hasbeen perceived as a threat to another nationalgroup and has felt threatened itself. This generalatmosphere ofressentiment, real or imagined,could easily be used to producethe feeling that ones nationalgroup was threatened with ex-tinction as the object of anoth-ers aggression.6Almost withoutexception, every Balkan nationhas had some territorial preten-sions or expansionist intentionsin one historical period or an-other. The regions history haswitnessed successive campaignsfor Greater Serbia, GreaterCroatia, Greater Albania,Greater Bulgaria, GreaterMacedonia, and GreaterGreece.7 National ressentimentextended into the relatively recent period of com-munist rule, as the League of Communists of Yu-

goslavia (embodied in Tito as the bearer of ab-solute power) frequently resolved nationalconflicts through repressive methods that werenot easily forgotten. In the process of maintaininga balance of power among national groups, everynation/republic had reason to believe that it hadbeen unjustly treated in the Yugoslav state.

The sheer complexity of the former Yugoslaviascurrent crisis has supported numerous interpreta-tions of its origins. One explanation that has

acquired a certain currency is nationalism as apower game, which views the main cause of the

Yugoslav crisis as an ideology (in the sense offalse consciousness) of aggressive nationalism,perpetuated by members of the old nomenklaturawho seek to preserve their threatened positions of

power in the face of democratic change. Given thatthese government bureaucrats, party officials, andmilitary officers were overwhelmingly concen-trated in Serbia, this republic was the first to forgean effective conservative coalition under the ban-ner of the old Serbian ideology to inhibit a demo-cratic revolution that would drive them frompower.8

In the nationalism as a power game argument,Communist elites in Yugoslavias other republicsfaced similar reformist pressures and attempted toduplicate the Serbian leaders strategy in their own

republics. By promoting their own nationalisms,Yugoslavias other republican leaders acknowl-edged not only that Serbian threatsreal or per-ceivedmust be countered, but that nationalismwas the most successful card to play in maintain-

ing their positions of power. In-deed, stirring up nationalist sen-timent seemed to be the mostconvenient strategy for Yu-goslavias republican politicalelites, particularly when theycould easily manipulate publicopinion through their control oftheir respective republics majorsources of information.9

The problem with this ap-proach is that it treats the na-tional question as an epiphe-nomenon of the struggle topreserve power and privilege. Indoing so, it forgets that political

battles in Yugoslavia have almost always devel-oped around the national question. Such an un-

derstanding of nationalism as false conscious-ness discounts the power of national sentimentamong the regions ethnic groups.

The alternative explanation views nationalismin Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Yu-goslavia as a result of historical desires of separatepeoples to resolve their national question. Assuch, nationalism is not viewed as a disingenuousploy by political elites to hold onto power, but as aconsequence of modernity in contemporary

2

Bosnia-Herzegovina

was an apple of

discord between Serbia

and Croatia, as the

recent war over its

division confirms.


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international society.10The very idea of a multina-tional state implies the dynamic of the nationalquestion. Multinational states significantly differfrom multiethnic states, in that the former are com-posed ofseparate nations that want to establishtheir political autonomy in order to ensure the full

and free development of their cultures and the bestinterests of their people. At the extreme, nationsmay wish to secede, if they think their self-determi-nation is impossible within the larger state.11

When we speak of the communist federationsthat are the subject of this work, we should keep inmind that these states institutionalized multina-tionality.12

Yugoslavia was an institutionalized multina-tional state that managed to contain, in the fullsense of the word, disparate and seemingly in-tractable national questions. If we accept the

view that there are essentially three fundamentalaspects of the national question, then Yugoslaviacontained all three: (1) a nation acting to create itsown state through demands for national self-deter-mination; (2) a national homeland (state or repub-lic) acting through its diaspora either to monitorthe relative status of its conationals in the newstates emerging from the federation, or to demandunification and the redrawing of borders; and(3) members of an alienated national minority suf-fering from discrimination and acting to resist themajoritys formation of a new nation-state by eitherseeking cultural or political autonomy or secedingin order to unite with their own national home-land.13

In this respect, it should be kept in mind that allthese aspects of the national question existedwithin one federal state, creating a specific internaldynamic that cannot be compared to a similar con-figuration of national questions in other indepen-dent states. These national questions have emergedin their most extreme forms (secession, irreden-tism, or the expulsion of minorities) in the process

of Yugoslavias disintegration. Once they were soformulated, with the understanding that their pro-ponents could not abandon their commitment totheir particular solution, war was more or lessinevitable.

The question arises, then, why practically eachnation took the most extreme position, which, inessence, made Yugoslavias political relations azero-sum game. Was the main cause of this situa-tion the ancien regimes elites who launched

nationalism as an ideology in order to protecttheir threatened positions of power? Or was it theprospect of finally resolving the ever-present na-tional question, which would be freed from theconstraints of the old authoritarian political orderwith the arrival of democracy? The related ques-

tion, in terms of the federations survival, waswhether Yugoslavia could either transform itselfinto a genuine democratic, federal state, or breakup peacefully in light of: (1) conflicting nationalideologies; (2) the existing collective decision-making structure, representing Yugoslavias na-tions (through its republics representatives) andthe working class (through its vanguard, theLeague of Communists of Yugoslavia); and (3) theenormous apparatus of power that was created bythe authentic socialist revolutionthe authoritar-ian regime and the legacy of Titos absolute rule?

If nationalism takes the form of a quest for na-tional identity through the creation of a nation-state, the most important task is to show why andwhen the nation assumed such worth, therebymaking nationalist demands such a successful po-litical card to play.14A more comprehensive analy-sis of nationalism, based on specific historical, in-stitutional, and political factors, helps to avoidtreating nationalism as an irrational, false phe-nomenon that can be wished away, or as a merepsychological template in the postcommunistsearch for identity. Following the more compre-hensive analyses, this study will attempt to showthat nationalism is a weapon for a new division ofpower in the process of deconstructing the politi-cal space of Yugoslavia and a dysfunctional prereq-uisite in the struggle for security among the newstates emerging from the former multinationalfederation.

This analysis of nationalisms role in Yugoslav-ias crisis will focus on three main factors: (1) thecontradictory institutional structures of the Yugo-slav state; (2) Serbian ressentiment; and (3) the

collapse of authoritarian rule.The first part examines the contradictory insti-tutional structures of Yugoslavia as a state. While

Yugoslavia was a practical compromise solution tothe conflicting national questions containedwithin its borders, the Yugoslav state lacked the in-tegrative potential necessary to create institutionalframeworks and workable procedures of demo-cratic rule that could accommodate the conflictualrelations among its different national groups. It


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was particularly unsuccessful in establishing thelatter, as it was constantly trying to resolve na-tional questionsmainly through its repressivestate apparatusthat were anathema to the estab-lishment of a democratic state. The next section ex-plores this matter in detail, comparing the first Yu-

goslavia, the centralized, liberal state created afterWorld War I, and the second Yugoslavia, theethno-national federation created under commu-nist rule. This section attempts to show how diffi-culties encountered in both of these state struc-tures became a basis for future ethnic conflicts andthe eventual disintegration of Yugoslavia. In short,both of these Yugoslavias proved unable to over-come the inherent antagonisms of the countrysfundamental national question.

The second and perhaps the most salient factorof the Yugoslav crisis is Serbian ressentiment,

which ultimately rejected both the second Yu-goslavia and a possible third Yugoslavia as a con-federation of independent states. From the mid-1980s, prominent segments of the Serbianintelligentsia, in conjunction with the republicspolitical and military elites, pushed Yugoslavia to-ward rapid disintegration with an offensive strat-egy of finally settling accounts with Titos mon-ster. An aggressive Serbian nationalism broke thethin thread holding together Yugoslavias nationsin a compromise arrangement, pushing toward anextreme solution of its national question throughthreats and warmongering: Either Yugoslavias var-ious nations would accept Serbias vision of a nor-mal, unified state that served Serbian interests, orSerbs from all the republics would join togetherand achieve their national unity by force. The polit-ical elites in all the former republics took advan-

tage of these extreme solutions as an opportunityto save their positions of power and privilege.

The third factor in this analysis is the collapse ofauthoritarian rule, which began right after Titosdeath in 1980, and accelerated rapidly during thebreakdown of other communist regimes through-

out Eastern Europe in 1989. This collapse in-volved two simultaneous processes of disintegra-tion. The first was the breakdown of the valuesystem of socialist internationalism, which tippedthe delicate balance between socialist universalismand ethnic particularism in favor of the latter. Thesecond was the dissolution of the League of Com-munists of Yugoslavia, which brought the very ex-istence of the Yugoslav state into questionparticu-larly if we keep in mind that socialist ideology, asdefined by the LCY, provided the main integrativeforce holding the Yugoslav state together. With the

disintegration of the state and its apparatus of re-pression, nothing could restrain the rise of nation-alismparticularly Serbian nationalismor returnit to the framework of compromise. Far from lay-ing the foundation for representative and respon-sive institutions that could accommodate the de-mands of Yugoslavias nations, the introduction ofpolitical pluralism and free elections at this junc-ture created a state of nature, bringing unmedi-ated national conflicts to the stage of open warfare.

Thus, the situation in Yugoslavia during199091 can best be described as a decisive bat-tle for maximal solutions to the question of na-tional boundaries and legitimate states.15 In orderto provide a complete understanding of the eventsthat led up to this battle and what they mean forthe future of the former Yugoslavia, I examinethese three factors in fuller detail.

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One prevalent explanation for the even-tual demise of the Yugoslav state is that itnever succeeded in constituting itself asa political community, as a nation-state whoseidentity conceptually and structurally transcendedthe various nations that it comprised. While thespecial function and purpose of the Yugoslav state

ideally would have accommodated a large, diversecollectivity of many different ethnic groups, na-tional minorities, and religions, as well as cultural,economic, and linguistic differences, the realitywas that each of Yugoslavias nations sought to use

Yugoslavia to protect its own particular nationalidentity and develop its own idea about statehood.The more obvious reality was that these differentconceptions of the Yugoslav state were decidedlyasymmetrical: Yugoslav statehood had to competewith its individual nations desires for statehood.

Yet the Yugoslav state itself would eventually be

usurped by the largest nationSerbsto serve itsown national interest. To be sure, the creation of aYugoslav nation-state reflected Serbian interests,while Croatian interests (and, later, those of theother republics) fostered the ideal of a Yugoslavconfederation of independent states.

The first Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of Serbs,Croats, and Slovenes) enshrined the idea of

national unity in a liberal, parliamentary monar-chy. The idea of national unity presumed thatthere lived in Yugoslavia one people with threenamesSerbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The wartimeallies promoted unification of these tribes in acommon state as an expression of the right to self-

determination on the basis of nationality, follow-ing the example of the creation of the Italian andGerman nations in the second half of the nine-teenth century.16Of course, such Yugoslav ethnicunity was spurious.17 Its foundation of putativeethnic unity was, in essence, a joint project amongthe various South Slav nations to ward off any ter-ritorial aspirations of neighboring countries and toprotect their national identities through a unified

Yugoslavia. The state was dominated by Serbian in-stitutions (above all, the Serbian House of Karad-

jordjevic), including the military, the political lead-ership, and the civil service. These institutionswere mechanically transferred to the new parts of

Yugoslavia, even though these old Serbian institu-tions lacked the integrative potential for a newstate that was five times larger than Serbia and thatnow brought under its dominion fragments of oldempires that were arguably more developed thanSerbia from a legal, cultural, and economic stand-point. After the creation of Yugoslavia as a unifiednation and centralized state under Serbian domi-nation, the Croatian political parties entered the

opposition, obstructing the work of parliamentand state organs. Practically from the very found-ing of Yugoslavia, the Croatian national questionwas opened up.

Even before its formation as a state, there weredebates over how the first Yugoslavia should be or-ganized, even though Serbia entered the debateswith a considerable advantage. Serbia had astronger position in the negotiations over Yu-goslavia, largely owing to its reputation as one ofthe victors in the Balkan Wars (191213), then as astate on the side of the Entente during World War I

(in which Serbs suffered enormous casualties),and finally as an organized military force capableof blocking the pretensions of neighboring coun-tries to Yugoslav lands (primarily Italys claims onDalmatia). For these reasons, Serbia believed thatit had the right to speak in the name of all Yugoslavpeoples and to influence decisively the form of thestate in conformity with Serbian national interests.

5

2INTEGRATIVEPROBLEMS

Interwar Yugoslaviaand the Major

National Ideologies


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Given the historical circumstances and balance ofpower, the Serbian position prevailed.18

Serbian politicians rejected outright the Croat-ian proposals for a federation. Such a scheme wasforeign to Serbian history. Moreover, anything less

than a centralized state would deprive Serbia of itsdominant role in ruling the new country. If Serbianpoliticians were to accept the federal model, theywould have to link together all of the Serbianlands so that Serbia could be assured of a domi-nant role in such a federation. The Serbian landsin Austria-Hungary that would be linked with Ser-bia were understood to include Bosnia and Herze-govina, Vojvodina with Srem, and a part of Dalma-tia. Montenegro, which had already united withSerbia, also fell within these lands. Moreover,Serbia had already obtained Vardar Macedonia

and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars. As a result, theSerbian federal unit would be substantially largerthan its Croatian and Slovenian counterparts. Theidea of a federation created on the basis of histori-cal provinces was not up for consideration, since itwould break up the Serbian nation and the lead-ing role of Serbia.19Serbian politicians were notprepared to drown Serbia in the Yugoslav commu-nity and rejected the example of the Piedmont re-gion, which renounced its own past for the unifica-tion of Italy. This is the reason why Serbia did notagree to call the new state Yugoslavia, which

came only in 1929 under the dictatorship of KingAlexander.

Debates over how Yugoslavia should be orga-nizedas either a unitary or a federal statecon-stantly plagued the first Yugoslavia, and the de-bates continued on into the second, communist,

Yugoslavia until its disintegration. But debatesover the countrys political structure involvedmuch more than arguments about the nature andextent of federal relations in the two Yugoslavias.

At the heart of these debates was the ongoing bat-tle to resolve Yugoslavias national question. The

opposing sides in these debates almost always di-vided along the lines of the two historically domi-nant ideologies that inevitably destroyed both Yu-goslavias: Croatian and Serbian.

Well before unification, a strong political cur-rent in Croatia advocated an independent Croatiawithin its historical boundaries, which includedBosnia-Herzegovina and parts of contemporarySerbia (a so-called Greater Croatia). Because

Croatia long enjoyed an autonomous status underHungarian rule, it joined Yugoslavia as a nationwith a well-developed consciousness about theright of statehood, that is, the right to an indepen-dent state.20 Given the circumstances at the time,

Croatia was not in a position to exercise this rightor to advance the cause for a federal Yugoslavia.Pressed by an internal Yugoslav movement (whichwas especially strong in Dalmatia and amongCroatian Serbs who were pushing for unificationwith Serbia), Croatia joined Yugoslavia, but with astrong feeling of its unequal position in the part-nership.21Given its ambivalent relationship to-ward the unified state, and the fact that such anarrangement was ill suited for advancing its owninterests, Croatia maintained a strategic position ofseparatism regarding its conception of the Yu-

goslav state. This position alternated between apro-Yugoslav ideal of an autonomous state within aconfederation of other South Slavs and outright se-cession from the Yugoslav federation and the es-tablishment of a truly independent state. Regard-ing the latter position, Serbs posed the onlyobstacle to its achievement, according to the moreextreme strains of Croatian nationalist sentiment.Croatian nationalist ideology and a historical long-ing for the national state it lost a thousand yearsbefore gave ample support for such a position.

Serbias basic objective remained the unification

of all Serbs in one state. Following this nationalistideology, Serbia entered World War I with the aimof bringing together all Serbs and Serbian lands,including those in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croa-tia, and Vojvodina (all under Austro-Hungarianrule). However, Serbia officially defined its wargoal as the broader unification of all South Slavswithin one state. The idea of Serbian unificationwas based on two principles. One reflected narrowSerbian interests: It envisioned a large Serbianstate that would be a center of power in theBalkans after Serbian military victories and strate-

gic alliances with the other Balkan nations forcedthe dying Hapsburg and Ottoman empires out ofthe region. Serbia achieved this goal, ending Ot-toman rule and annexing Macedonia and Kosovo.The Serbian diaspora had a dual role in fulfillingSerbian unification: providing the resourcesneeded to occupy a dominant position in theBalkans and focusing on the national question.

While the borders of this Greater Serbia were not

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7

clearly drawn, Serbias more ardent nationalistsinvoked the image of a rebirth of the medieval Ser-bian kingdom lost to the Ottoman Turks at theBattle of Kosovo in 1389.

The second principle was broader: namely,

Yugoslavism conceived in a number of ways. Yugo-slavia as a multinational enterprise, and not an ex-panded Serbia, was more popular among promi-nent segments of the Serbian intelligentsia and

youth than in official political and military cir-cles.22 The pervasiveness of Serbian ethnic bound-aries coincided with both the Yugoslav ideal andthe cooperation established in the mid-nineteenthcentury with other nations that in-cluded large Serbian communities,principally Bosnia-Herzegovina andCroatia. However, Serbian politi-

cians did not renounce the Pied-mont-like position of Serbia and itsleading role in the creation of Yu-goslavia. Toward the end of World

War I, the Serbs realized their unifi-cation plan with the establishmentof Yugoslavia under the slogan na-tional and state unity. From thattime on, they considered Yugoslaviathe permanent solution to their na-tional question. Accordingly, theymade great sacrifices during World

War I, assigning themselves the roleof the Yugoslav state people andliberators of the other peoples.23

This dual identity remained a per-manent part of the Serbian nationalcharacter up to the emergence of theSerbian national movement in the1980s, when this tie was brokenwith the rejection of Yugoslavismand Yugoslavia as the Serbianhomeland.

Under the pressure of national,

social, and economic problems, Yu-goslavia did not survive for long as aparliamentary democracy. King Alexanders impo-sition of dictatorship in 1929 decisively defeatedthe idea of Yugoslavia as a liberal state based onnational unity. Through repression and persecu-tions, the King imposed his own version of na-tional unity, including extensive regional

reorganization aimed at severing ties among ethniccommunities and lessening their potential for re-sistance. This policy was not only unsuccessful, itintensified dissatisfaction among the nationalgroups it sought to include in the monarchys ideal

of Yugoslavism, including Serbia. Such a policyfound support only among diaspora Serbs in Croa-tia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

With the weakening of the dictatorship in 1934,pressure to resolve the Croatian question was sostrong that on the eve of World War II the regimeestablished the Croatian region (banovina). In ad-dition to the traditional Croatian lands, consider-

able parts of Herzegovina andnorthern Bosnia were included inthe new region. The establishmentof the Croatian administrative re-

gion, in turn, reopened the questionof where and how far the Serbianlands extended.

During Yugoslavias partition inWorld War II, the conflict over thenational question culminated inethno-religious war and genocide inthe fascist Independent State ofCroatia (NDH), which includedBosnia-Herzegovina and part of pre-sent-day Serbia, near Belgrade. Eth-nic atrocities committed by the

Nazi-sponsored Croatian Ustasheregime in the NDH left an indeliblemark on Serbian national con-sciousness, as well as on the con-sciousness of peoples who sufferedSerbian revenge. The mass liquida-tions that were carried out by thenew communist governmentagainst so-called collaborators andclass enemies further traumatizedthe Yugoslav nations.

The scale of the massacres in the

NDH and other mass executionswould not allow their examination

in the atmosphere of national reconciliation thatfollowed the war. Such a possibility was further de-nied by communist ideology, which rejected at-tempts to define the problems of ethnic war in na-tional terms. As such, genocide and massacreswere not carried out by members of national

Ethnic

atrocities

committed by the

Nazi-sponsored

Croatian Ustashe

regime . . . left an

indelible mark on

Serbian nationalconsciousness, as

well as on the

consciousness of

peoples who

suffered Serbian

revenge.


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groups, but by fascists, Ustashe, and Chet-niks. Monuments were raised to the victims, but a

veil of silence covered over the climate of fear andmutual distrust.24

Ever since the founding of Yugoslavia, two dis-tinct nationalist policies have struggled for pri-macy in the debate over the countrys politicalfuture: Croatian separatism striving for an inde-pendent state and Serbian centralism striving topreserve the common Yugoslav state under itsdominion. Croatian nationalism was separatistand oppositional, Serbian nationalism alternatedbetween outright Serbian rule and a strict federal-ism governed through central government institu-tions. While the former would be nurtured byeconomic growth through a reorientation of theCroatian economy, the latter would have to rely on

the army and the police. The Croatian policy sup-ported the devolution of power from the centeroutward and found support among most other

Yugoslav nations, which would eventuallyarticulate their own national aspirationsSloven-ian, Macedonian, Albanian, and (in the Bosnian ex-perience) Muslim.

Both of these strident, ethnocentric, nationalideologies preordained the failure of any attemptto constitute Yugoslavia as a modern unitary andliberal state. To be sure, such attempts lacked agenuine appreciation for the term liberal state.For Serbia, the Yugoslav state became nothingmore than a vehicle for Serbian domination,which, in turn, stimulated Croatian national oppo-sition and, in a somewhat subsidiary fashion,Slovenian nationalism. The position of the other

Yugoslav nations was simply not a matter for dis-cussion. The first Yugoslav state was not only un-able to pacify internal conflicts and dilute rigid na-

tional ideologies, but its collapse in World War IIleft no mechanisms in place to prevent extrememethods of resolving the national question.

8


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The disintegration of the second Yugoslaviaand the activity of the main actors upthrough the outbreak of violent conflict canbe understood in a specific context, that of a multi-national federal state operating within a socialistframework. Both of these elements, which servedas the bases of Yugoslavias renewal after World

War II, produced new problems of integration atthe level of both the federation and the new federalunits, or national states. New contradictionsemerged with the radical rejection of the civic prin-ciple of citizenship as a means of integrating the

Yugoslav state and its constituent parts.

National in form, socialist in content

The renewal of the country from the start of thewar was taken up by the League of Communists of

Yugoslavia, which played the role of mediator

among the quarreling Yugoslav peoples. Itpromised a resolution of the national question,which from its ideological standpoint, could besettled only as an inseparable part of a social revo-lution. The partys linkage of social and nationalrevolutions offered a specific way to resolve thenational question and constitute Yugoslavia as aunified state. The linkage between nation andrevolution was presented as a comprehensive

arrangement, best expressed by the classic Sovietformula, national in form, socialist in content.

What exactly did this formula mean for the forma-tion of Yugoslavia as a state, and how exactly wasthe national question resolved according to thisformula?

The contradictory nature of Yugoslavia as a statewas apparent from its very inception. On the onehand, the Communist party was able to come topower only as a Yugoslav movement; on the otherhand, it could not hope to attract the oppressednations to the revolutionary cause with thepromise of a Yugoslav solution to the nationalquestion. The social revolution, following the tra-dition of the Soviet experience, subsumed classand national divisions within the categories of theoppressed and the oppressor. Simply put, some of

Yugoslavias nations were working class, and oth-ers ranked among the bourgeoisie. According tothe LCY, the Serbian bourgeoisie was both a classand national oppressor. Thus, the party did not of-fer a Yugoslavia that its exploited nations wouldcontinue to view as a Serbian creation; rather, it at-tempted to move the new Yugoslavian project asfar away from Serbian influence as it could. Thiswas achieved by emphasizing the revolutionaryright of each nation to self-determination and byoffering the promise of a federal organization of

Yugoslavia. The resulting framework of social revo-

lution (which, according to party ideologists, wascoterminous with the countrys national war of lib-eration) could only be a new, socialist Yugoslavia.In its formulation of the new socialist project, theparty had come to acquire a sensitivity to the pointof view of the individual Yugoslav nationalitieswhile at the same time being fully committed tofinding a Yugoslav solution to the national ques-tion.25 How would such a Yugoslavia be consti-tuted? On what institutional assumptions would itbe based?

According to official communist doctrine, Yu-

goslavia could not be established as a nation-state,even in a federal arrangement. Nations wereproducts of capitalism, not socialism; so any at-tempt to establish administrative units based onhistorical categories, such as nations, was out of thequestion. Unity in the new, socialist Yugoslavia wasto be realized by mergingthe basic differences (in-cluding national ones) among its various peoples inan all-encompassing proletariat.26 This presumed

3ETHNO-NATIONAL

FEDERALISM UNDERCOMMUNIST RULE

9


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10

unity was not political (i.e., national) but apolitical(i.e., class-based) in nature. Until the time whenthis new unity could be fully established, nationswould be recognized and constituted as sovereignstates, but only until that form could be tran-scended by an authentic community of working

people. Of course, recognition of the nations assovereign states was, from the start, more estab-lished on paper than in fact, particularly with re-gard to their own national policies. The major deci-sions were taken in the central party organs, andall state institutions, including republican govern-ments, were merely transmittersof these decisions.

The formula national in form,socialist in content established

Yugoslavia as a state based on oneideological project, or more pre-

cisely, the absolute and central-ized power of the Communistparty and its apparatus of statepower.27 The subjective dimen-sion of Yugoslavia as a state is ex-pressed by socialist patriotism,which reduces its identity to thatof a communistsupranationalideology. This tenuous concep-tion of Yugoslavia would later pro-

voke its crisis. The weakening anddisappearance of socialisms ideo-logical sovereignty raised perforcefundamental and profound ques-tions about Yugoslavias existenceas a state, as happened in Czecho-slovakia and the Soviet Union.

As long as communist Yu-goslavia could not be defined as anation-state (nation defined as ashared political community), norits citizens as constituting a uni-fied nation, its communist leaders

could safelyallow its composite parts to be constituted in na-tional terms.28Yugoslavia institutionalized the re-lations among these nations through an unusualfederal arrangement based on a hierarchy of twokinds of ethno-nationality. Enjoying the higherstatus were the constitutive nations that origi-nally joined together in the common state andtheoretically enjoyed the right to be recognized assovereign states. Thus, Yugoslav federalism was

based on an ethno-national sovereignty that wouldbear the seeds of future ethnocracies once its so-cialist framework fell apart.29 Five constitutive na-tions were so recognizedCroats, Macedonians,Montenegrins, Serbs, and Sloveneseach of whichwas territorially and politically organized as a re-

public in the Yugoslav federation. One republic,Bosnia-Herzegovina, was not recognized under thenational principle until 1971. After the recognitionof Muslims as a separate ethno-nation, Bosnia-Herzegovina became a republic consisting of threeconstitutive peoples: Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.

The constitutive nations en-joyed the status of states (re-publics), while all of the other na-tional groups held the status ofnational minorities with recog-nized cultural rights. Later on, this

status was elevated to the level ofnationalities (narodnost), grant-ing them proportional representa-tion at the local level, and at theprovincial/republican and federallevels for larger minority groups(e.g., Hungarians in Vojvodina).

Within the Serbian republic, twoautonomous provinces wereformed: Kosovo, populated pri-marily by ethnic Albanians, and

Vojvodina, populated by signifi-cant numbers of ethnic Hungari-ans and other minorities.30 Underthe 1974 constitution, both ofthese regions took on a state-likestatus similar to that enjoyed bythe republics.

Despite the regimes attempts tocontrol national aspirations by in-stitutionalizing them within thepolitical and territorial boundariesof the titular republics, the more

abstract aspects of nationhoodcould not be so confined. Conferring the sense ofstatehood upon Yugoslavias major ethnic groupshad far greater consequences in strengthening theterritorial and ethnic integration of these nations.That is, their rights to be constitutive were recog-nized not only within their respective states, butalso among their conationals inhabiting the terri-tory of other Yugoslav republics. In some cases,these ethnic diaspora communities viewed the

The formula

national in form,

socialist in content

established Yugo-

slavia as a state

based on one

ideological project,

or more precisely,

the absolute and

centralized power of

the Communist

party and its

apparatus of state

power.


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11

constitutive nature of Yugoslav nationhood as giv-ing them the right to extend the sovereignty oftheir national homeland to the territories they in-habited. Such was the case with Serbs in Croatia,constituting 12 percent of the republics popula-tion in 1991. Later, this status would produce enor-

mous problems, giving Croatian Serbs the rightto secede from Croatia, and giving Croatia theright to deny them this status by designating themas a minority in its new constitution. An evenclearer example was in Bosnia-Herzegovina,where, according to the same principle, three na-tions held sovereignty: Serbs, Croats, and Mus-lims.31This principle held for Yugoslavias othernations as well, but it did not have the same conse-quences due to the significantly smaller share ofother nations in their populations.

Yugoslavias institutionalization of these two op-posing principles of integrationterritorial-politi-cal and ethnicposed an apparent contradictionthat had two major consequences.32 First, none of

Yugoslavias constitutive nations acquired its ownnational state (with the exception of Slovenia,which was more or less ethnically homogeneous),since members of other constitutive nations livedwithin their borders. The second consequencebears on the issue of the right to self-determina-tion. Specifically, who is the bearer of that right inthe Yugoslav experience? Does self-determination

apply to the republics or to peoples as membersof national groups? (Serbian nationalists insistedon the latter, referring to the federal constitution,which states that nations and not republicsjoined together to form the common state.)

There was a third consequence whose signifi-cance would become increasingly apparent in laterconflicts: When constitutive peoples were in theminority of a particular republic, they were deniedthe exercise of their cultural rights, since theyalready enjoyed such rights in their own titularrepublics. Thus, for example, Serbs in both Croatia

and Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Croats in the latter,could not carry out their own cultural policies asethnic groups, nor could they maintain culturallinks with their home republics.33 Such policiesnot only precluded the possibility of peacefully in-tegrating national minorities into the majority eth-nic groups titular republic, but they preventedthese minorities from maintaining vital culturallinkages to their national homelands within theterritorial and political frameworkof that republic.

This absolutized the political (i.e., state) criteria forguarding and protecting the nation in the ethno-cultural sense. Moreover, this arrangement latergave Serbias policy of unifying all Serbs unlimitedpossibilities for playing upon Serbian discontentin order to escalate conflicts in Croatia or Bosnia-

Herzegovina.This system was the logical consequence of re-

jecting the civilstate as a framework for integrationunder the socialist regime. Such a supranationalarrangement could be maintained only with theunlimited power of the Communist party, whichkept an eye on any and all attempts to raise na-tional consciousness to the level of nationalismamong Yugoslavias myriad ethno-national groups.

Could the new Yugoslavia have succeeded in at-tenuating the countrys two major national ideolo-giesSerbian domination and Croatian sepa-ratismthat threatened the very survival of the

Yugoslav experiment? The obvious answer is thatit could not, but less obvious is why it could not.

Was the Yugoslav experiment doomed to fail fromits inception? The key to answering this deeperquestion once again lies in the different percep-tions of Yugoslavias two main ethno-nationalgroups about the purpose of the new federation.

The revolutionary basesnational and socialunderlying the legitimacy of socialist Yugoslaviacan be understood as a compromise between the

two major national ideologies. Yugoslavias newfederal arrangement within a socialist context notonly provided all of the regions major nationalgroups their own territorial sovereignty, but en-sured a de jure equality among the federationsnew states. At least this was the perception amongmost of the Yugoslav nations, including Croatia.Serbia perceived the new federation differently: Yu-goslavias renewal under a strong, centralized com-munist order would once again fulfill Serbias his-torical quest to unify all Serbs in one state.34 Serbsaccepted the new federation and the borders that

defined its republics and provinces only becauseYugoslavia, not the republic of Serbia, would nowbe the guarantor of their national interest. In spiteof its new configuration, Yugoslavias basic asym-metry survived under the guise of arbitrary na-tional balancing acts that would later serve as thebasis for new nationalist grievances. The most ob-

vious of such national balancing acts was theoverrepresentation of Serbs in the federal organsof powermilitary, police, and administration.


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12

Disproportionate numbers of Serbs outside of Ser-bia joined Partisan forces in World War II andwere active in the revolution. For their efforts as aloyal cadre, these Serbs were awarded state andparty positions in these republics in dispropor-

tionate numbers. This circumstance especiallycaused discontent among Croats, even though thenumbers of Serbs did not undermine the domi-nant position of the Croatian cadre in its own titu-lar republic. On the other hand, this circumstancebalanced off the reduction of Serbia as a republic(with its two autonomous provinces).35

Centralism and decentralism

Beginning in the early 1960s, the debate over cen-tralism versus decentralism in the federation high-

lighted the differences between the two fundamen-tal views of Yugoslavias national purpose. Serbiasofficial policy strategically sided with the center ofpower and Yugoslavism, resisting until the endof the decade the push for decentralization andeconomic reforms that would lead to a redistribu-tion of power in favor of the republics andprovinces.36 Croatia and Slovenia extended theiroriginal support of economic decentralization tothe central Yugoslav party and state apparatuses,resisting periodic attempts by the party to renewthe idea of Yugoslavism outside the context of

socialist patriotism.37

This position found sup-port among the other non-Serbian republics andprovinces, not because of similar economic inter-ests, but for political reasonsnamely, to weakenthe central government as a Serbian stronghold.Thus Croatia (along with Slovenia and the othernon-Serbian republics) adopted the strategy ofloosening and weakening the central role of thefederation, preferring that it merely represent thepositions the republics and provinces had alreadyagreed on.

If one event foreshadowed the specter of na-

tionalism in postwar Yugoslavia, it occurred in1964 at the Eighth LCY Congress, which rejectedthe idea of Yugoslav culture as assimilationist.Croatia and its supporters denounced integral

Yugoslavism as a chauvinist policy advanced bySerbian hegemonists. Similarly, the congress re-

jected the bourgeois prejudice about the wither-ing away of nations and the specious notion thatnational differences will disappear quickly after

the revolution. These viewpoints were judged asbeing not only incorrect but also bureaucratic,unitarist, and hegemonic.38 In line with such crit-icism, the congress witnessed a complete turn-around in efforts to establish Yugoslavia as a na-

tion-state. From that point on, nations/republicswere to become the real bearers of sovereignty, asall nations have the right to do. At its next con-gress in 1969, the LCY followed the same pattern,transferring party power to the republican organs.Thus, Yugoslavias Communist party practicallydisappeared as a unified organization, although itcontinued to function primarily because of Titossacred and absolute power.

The devolution of power initiated at the EighthLCY Congress eventually produced a series ofcomprehensive constitutional changes that culmi-

nated in the 1974 constitution. Titos personalpower was strengthened under Yugoslavias newbasic law (which only served to codify the tremen-dous growth of his personality cult during the1970s), as was thepolitical role of the YugoslavNational Army, which became the ninth memberof the collective presidency of the LCY, along withthe eight representatives of the republics andprovinces.39 On the other hand, the new consti-tution also transferred power to the republics. Inthe federal organs, decisions had to be made ac-cording to consensus (with each republic and

province holding veto power). All of the republicswere represented equally in government bodies;the provinces had a smaller number of representa-tives, but this did not affect their position. Repre-sentatives in federal organs consisted of delega-tions from the republics and provinces, and theywere accountable to these bodies for their deci-sions. Republics and provinces could developtheir own independent foreign relations, and theorganization of territorial defense was left up tothe republics as well.

The formal bearers of sovereignty in Yugoslavia

were its nations. Without the agreement and ap-proval of the countrys eight national states (six re-publics and the two provinces), the federationcould not function, as it did not have its ownautonomous source of authority.40 The need foragreement among disparate national states operat-ing within a framework of overlapping federal andconfederal jurisdictions (the proscribed powers ofthe federation were fairly broad) meant that every


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13

question was necessarily nationalized, inevitablyleading to national confrontations on a regularbasis.41Under the 1974 constitution, so-calledinternational relations were established withinYu-goslavia.42 Every question affecting the entire fed-eration first had to be cleared in ones own stateand returned to the federal level for final agree-ment. Since there were no federal bodies with theirown source of legitimacy that transcended that ofthe republics, Yugoslavia under the new constitu-tion could neither frame issues in terms of their im-pact on the federation as a whole, nor arrive at fed-eral solutions that attempted to effect compromiseoutcomes.

Finally, the 1974 constitution established a sym-metry that precluded linking Yugoslavias identitywith any particular republic. As such, Yugoslavia

essentially had no citizens; rather, it was inhabitedby citizens of its respective republics. In reality,though, the countrys political life belonged to Titoand the Yugoslav National Army. The countrys

political elites would begin their competition forreal political power only after Titos death in 1980.

The institutionalization of Yugoslavia as anethno-national federation constituted the first stepin dismembering Yugoslavia along ethnic lines.This analysis suggests that Yugoslavia, as a multi-national state, was formed in such a way that itemerged and survived only under the aegis of au-thoritarian rule, and that the battle for ethno-national statehood results in either the construc-tion of a common nation-state that seeks to pacifyseparate national identities, disintegration into in-dependent states, or the formation of a confedera-tion (which is not a state in the real sense of theterm). However, neither possibility obtained inpostwar Yugoslavia, since asymmetrical nationalinterests and the very institutional structure of

multinationality precluded these alternatives.Rather, Yugoslavias states resorted to yet anotheralternativeto change Yugoslavias internal bor-ders through prolonged, bloody conflict.


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Thus far, this study has attempted to explainthe fragility of the Yugoslav state in terms ofboth the dominant national ideologies thatshook its foundations from its very creation andthe institutional frameworks within which na-tional conflicts evolved.

Titos principal strategy in maintaining nationalpeace sought to curb the power of the largest re-public (Serbia) and prevent the separation of theothers from the federation. After his death, such apeace had little chance of surviving absent asupreme arbiter. No legitimate political institu-tions existed in Yugoslavia to both regulate con-flicts among different national groups and supportthe ideal of a unified nation-state, a common situa-tion for all multinational states in the communistbloc. This circumstance was particularly conve-nient for the rise of ethno-nationalism in thesecountries.43

Sources of crisis in Serbia:The nationalist response

The crisis in the former Yugoslavia, characterizedfirst by the political disintegration of the countryand then by its descent into full-scale war to alter re-publican borders, cannot be understood withoutan analysis of the crisis that broke out in Serbia in

the mid-1980s. This crisis had its origins in thepowerful nationalist movement under the leader-ship of Serbias Communist party. Initially, itsought the restoration of the Yugoslav federationbased on the authority of the Communist party,

but it soon grew into a movement for the creationof a Greater Serbia. With each passing day, thismovement intensified national conflicts andpushed the crisis toward the denouement of warthat eventually engulfed all of Yugoslavia. Thecountry could have embraced a democratic re-sponse to the collapse of the communist systemonly under the condition that all participants pur-sue a moderate policy.44 Unfortunately, Yugoslaviawas robbed of such a conditional alternative withthe triumph of conservative factions in the Leagueof Communists of Serbia and the ascension of Slo-

bodan Milosevic as its leader in 1987.The Serbian crisis had multiple origins, three of

which can be identified as the most profound.

Serbias problematic position under the 1974 con-stitution.As noted previously, the League of Com-munists of Yugoslavia was not immune to theforces that rendered federation-wide institutionsineffective in guaranteeing Yugoslavias existence.The LCYs waning authority as the basis of Yu-goslav integration was viewed by the Serbs as jeop-ardizing the Serbian national interest for all Serbsto live in one state. Every Serb who had partici-pated in the national liberation movement becameconvinced that the new Yugoslavia was becomingan inter-nationally founded federation in which . . .the ideological principle had precedence over thenational. This conviction, as shown by the identi-fication with Yugoslavia as a formula of inter-nationalism, was the core of most Serbs nationalconsciousness up until 1974. . . .45

This fundamental legitimacy crisis was bol-stered by the existing constitutional arrangement

that defined Yugoslavia as a state by mutual agree-ment of the republics and provinces. Yugoslavsovereignty had been essentially seized and di-

vided up among the federations national groups.The symmetry established between the republicsand provinces vis--vis an empty central authoritymade it senseless for Serbia to maintain its inter-nationalist position against the nativist posi-tions of other republics.46Yugoslavias future was

4

14

THE ROLE OF SERBIANRESSENTIMENT


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heading toward either confederation or disintegra-tion as the communist system weakened. TheSerbian cultural and political elite did not acceptsuch a future, fearing that the forces propelling Yu-goslavia toward dissolution would also destroy thefundamental Serbian national goalthat all Serbs

live in one state. Viewed as such, Serbian national-ism was a reaction to the fading of what Serbs con-sidered a symbiosis between Serbianism andYugoslavism that was mediated by the commu-nist system. With the disappearance of this sym-biosis, the problem of the Serbian diaspora clam-ored to be resolved once again.

The immediate source of Serbian dissatisfactionin general, and the most tangible reason for its na-tionalist reaction in particular, were the constitu-tional provisions that undermined Serbias territo-rial integrity. Although the institutional system

established under the 1974 constitution pre-scribed the nativization of all Yugoslav peopleswithin their territorial, republican frameworks,Serbia was frustrated in this regard. According tothe constitution, Serbia was not a sovereign nego-tiating party like the other republics because of thesovereignty of its two provinces, Kosovo and

Vojvodina.According to the 1974 constitution, the re-

publics and provinces were almost completely onequal footing regarding rights and duties. At thefederal level, provinces had veto power, equal rep-resentation in the collective Yugoslav presidency,and the right to represent their own interests with-out consulting the republicmost often in opposi-tion to it. Serbias representation at the federallevel covered only the territory of Serbia proper(i.e., Serbia without its autonomous provinces),even though such a jurisdiction was not defined inthe constitution. In ethno-demographic terms, thismeant that Serbias representatives in the federa-tion could speak for only 42 percent of the Serbsliving in Serbia.47

Following the period of constitutional reform inthe late 1960s, Serbias provinces seized all the at-tributes of statehoodlegislative, judicial, and ex-ecutive powerseven those not constitutionallygranted to them. The provinces changed their ownconstitutions independently, maintained relationswith foreign countries (e.g., Kosovo with Albania),and created their own territorial defense. Lawswere passed by consensus of all three units; if the

provincial parliaments did not accept Serbian pro-posals, they applied only to Serbia proper.

Soon after adoption of the 1974 constitution,the Serbian leadership called for a change in theSerbian republics status. Why it wasnt changedimmediately is obvious: The constitution could

not be changed because the federations memberscould not reach an agreement regarding this mat-ter.48 In 1976, the Serbian leadership submitted arequest to change the constitutional provisionsspecifying the republics composition, seeking toencompass Serbias provinces formally. The docu-ment justifying this request to change Serbias sta-tus was called the Blue Book (made public onlyin 1990). Denounced as a nationalist tract, the doc-ument was received with knives by political lead-ers in the other republics and particularly in theprovinces.49

The situation continued into the early 1980s,when the focus of attention shifted to Kosovo, theSerbian province that was the scene of growingethnic tension. The Serbian leadership at the time,headed by Ivan Stambolic, made concerted effortsto change the status of Serbia vis--vis its provinceswith the agreement of the other federation mem-bers. However, opening up discussions on thismatter was becoming an increasingly painstakingprocess. In order to change the constitution, an ef-fective pro-Serbian coalition was required. Whennone was forthcoming, Serbia interpreted themaintenance of the constitutional status quo as thework of an anti-Serbian coalition. After the out-break of nationalist demonstrations in Kosovo in1981, in which ethnic Albanians demanded repub-lican status for Kosovowhich would bolsterclaims to the right to self-determinationthe ques-tion of Serbias constitutional jurisdiction took oneven greater importance; its resolution spelled ei-ther political survival or failure. Indeed, Kosovosthreat to Serbias territorial integrity had been gain-ing momentum since 1968, when the Kosovar

leadership gave its support to an Albanian nationalmovement in the province whose principal goalwas to gain republican status for Kosovo.50

Kosovo and the ethnic threat. Demonstrationsamong Kosovos overwhelmingly ethnic Albanianpopulation were the second reason for the crisis.Setting Kosovo apart as a de facto republic createdthe conditions for a Serbian nationalist reaction.

15


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Kosovo was considered the cradle of Serbian me-dieval culture and the symbol of national historyand mythology.51During the first years after the1981 Albanian demonstrations and the impositionof martial law in Kosovo, the LCY provided the of-ficial, socialist interpretation of the disturbances,

branding them as instances of counterrevolutionby Albanian separatists. Viewed in such a way, the

Yugoslav leadership avoided identifying ethnic fac-tors as the cause of unrest.

A starkly different interpretation of these eventsemerged from the Serbianparty leadership, which capi-talized on the symbolicmeaning of Kosovo and la-tent Serbian nationalism inorder to strengthen its argu-ments for changing Serbias

constitutional status. TheSerbian Communist party re-defined Kosovo as an ethnicthreat, tapping nationalmyths surrounding Kosovoand the history of the greatSerbian medieval state. Thefederal government toler-ated Serbias ethnic reaction,which centered on the possi-ble loss of Kosovo as a holyland.52 The Albanian ene-mys goal, according to the Serbian party leader-ship, was being realized by the forced expulsion ofSerbs from Kosovo,53 while ethnic Albanians es-caped prosecution from a sympathetic provincialgovernment for crimes such as rape, murder, theft,desecration of Serbian graves, and various othertypes of intimidation.54 Serbian emigration fromKosovo came to be viewed by Serbia as nothingshort of an exodus under the pressure of Albaniannationalism, although clearly there were other fac-tors at work.55Anyone who dared to mention

these other reasons (economic, educational, etc.),particularly if the person was from another Yu-goslav republic, was ruthlessly attacked and de-nounced as an enemy of the Serbs.56 Serbian griev-ances were not thoroughly investigated, since the

very act of checking suggested doubts about theSerbs claims of victimization.57 Not even repres-sion of the rebellious Albanians, the military oc-cupation of Kosovo, or the imprisonment ofhundreds of Albanians changed Serbs opinion

that their brethren in Kosovo suffered increasingpersecution, evidenced by continued Serbian emi-gration from the province.58

The main role in defining the situation inKosovo was taken over by an organized movementof Serbs from Kosovo that had the support of the

Orthodox Church and the Serbian intelligentsia.These Serbs demands were almost always aimedat constitutional changes that would establish aunited Serbia, but they endeavored even more tochange the ethnic domination in Kosovo. Their

main interpretation ofthe Serbian tragedy inKosovo was that the eth-nic Albanians had gainedcontrol through the 1974constitution, and that theonly way to stop the eth-

nic cleansing of Serbs inKosovo was to reinstateSerbian dominationthere.59

Both interpretationsof the problem, the con-stitutional position ofSerbia as an unequalparty in the federationand the matter of ethnic

Albanian domination inKosovo, distanced Serbs

from a diagnosis of the republics real problem: de-termining the basis of Serbias political communityand its political identity. To be sure, the same prob-lem applied to Yugoslavia as a whole, but it is notan exaggeration to say that the locus of Yugoslavi-as demise was in Kosovo. The federation was po-litically unequipped to protect its citizensSerbsand ethnic Albanians in this casebecause it hadno nonviolent instrument (above all, the rule oflaw) at its disposal to neutralize and pacify thesetypes of ethnic conflicts.

The ethnic politicization of Kosovo increasedthe number of interpretations of the conflict, de-pending on who was speaking: genocide (theSerbian interpretation), normal migration andvehicles of Serbian nationalism (Slovenian), dis-possession of ethnic Albanians and political ter-ror (Albanian). These interpretations strained re-lations among the republics. On the one hand,Slovenia and Croatia backed the Albanian nation-alist movement. On the other hand, Serbian

16

Kosovo demonstrated that

ethnic conflicts could be

invented and exacerbatedthrough media propaganda.

This effective tool became the

principal mechanism for

intensifying ethnic conflicts in

Yugoslavia.


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responses increasingly acquired overtones ofnationalism, repression, propaganda, and outrightlies.60 Kosovo demonstrated that ethnic conflictscould be invented and exacerbated through mediapropaganda. This effective tool became the princi-pal mechanism for intensifying ethnic conflicts in

Yugoslavia. In essence, the media dramaticallystaged reality for millions of Serbs and turnedwhatever potential existed in Serbia for ethnic ha-tred into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The antidemocratic coalition. The third factor inthe Yugoslav crisis involved the concentration ofthe old regimes conservative forces in Serbia. Theprivileged layer of central and local Communistparty bureaucrats and members of the statespower apparatus (military and police) viewed withconcern the nascent democratic changes taking

place in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. De-mocratization of the first country of socialismthreatened Yugoslavias status quo and the privi-leges and positions these elites enjoyed. They werethreatened by domestic liberal opposition as well,which was strongest in Belgrade at the time. In theambiguity surrounding the Kosovo problem,these conservative political elites organized aputsch in the Serbian Communist party in 1987,bringing to the forefront the partys most conserva-tive elements, led by Slobodan Milosevic.

The party conservatives support of the militaryapparatus was not hidden. General Ljubicic, one ofthe most influential officers in the Yugoslav Na-tional Army, greeted Milosevics candidacy as pres-ident of the Serbian Communist party with this en-comium: Slobodan has committed himself to thebattle against nationalism, against liberalism, andagainst all forms of counterrevolution inBelgrade.61Criticism of the moderate wing in theLeague of Communists of Serbia as being unfaith-ful to Titos politics was accurately read as an accu-sation of having betrayed national interests. On

both tracksdefending Titos cult of personalityand resolving the Kosovo problema power strug-gle took place through party purges, consolidatingthe partys victorious faction, establishing controlover the most influential media outlets, and attack-ing the liberal opposition.62

Serbias conservative power apparatus tappednew sources of energy and support in the well-spring of Serbian national frustration. The Yu-goslav National Army excelled in this technique,

with its evaluations of the situation that charac-terized the soft communist reformers as agents ofthe new world order, whose goal was to deny so-cialism [the ability] to rectify its mistakes and showits strength.63 The Western countries (especiallyGermany) were routinely denounced as enemies

of Yugoslavia for both undermining socialism anddestroying the Soviet Union as a state and militarypower. In fact, the army was an instrument not ofthe state, but of the party; as such, it was the mainpolitical force (together with the Serbian party fac-tion that maintained its power) posing the mostformidable obstacle to change. When communismbegan to split along all its seams, the army rushedin first to help defend the system. Its actionsshould come as no surprise, since it was defendingits own privileges. Officers in the YNA joined Yu-goslavias conservative apparatchiks in dragging

Serbia into an antimodern revolution, which be-came the social and political background for de-fending the Serbian national question.64

By the end of the 1980s, a powerful and effectiveantidemocratic coalition was firmly in control ofSerbias political scene. One side consisted of ex-treme nationalist elements in the Serbian Ortho-dox Church and the Serbian intelligentsia, whoserole was to produce propaganda and formulate na-tionalist ideology. The other side consisted of theconservative party apparatus, the army, and thepolice, who used this nationalist ideology to holdonto their positions of power. Although their mo-tives were different, the members of this national-ist-communist coalition65 complemented eachother and jointly pursued an aggressive policy oftearing down Yugoslavia and recasting it in theirown mold: Either Yugoslavia would become acountry according to Serbian (i.e., Serbian Com-munist party) standards, or else Serbia would em-bark on the path toward creating a GreaterSerbia by force. In the end, the new countrywould encompass all of Yugoslavias Serbs and

keep the members of the ancien regime in theirprivileged positions.

Escalation of the conflict:The Serbian offensive strategy

The principal mechanism for escalating intereth-nic conflicts in a multinational state begins whenpolitical elites in tenuous positions of powersuccessfully portray their ethno-nation as being

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threatened by another.66 The political players willthen manipulate this ethnic threat to advancetheir interests in holding onto political powerand/or vanquishing competing elites. Members ofSerbias broad coalition of conservative political,military, and cultural elites pushed each other to-

ward an extremist definition of the nationalthreat, creating a constant escalation of the con-flict among all the other Yugoslav nations. Themore this coalition emphasized the perceptionthat the Serbian nation was threatened, the morethe other ethnic nations perceived threats to theirown security. This defensive reaction was, in turn,used to confirm the threat to Serbia, giving it theright to increase the level of its defense.67

This vicious circle of defending against ethno-national threats began in the 1980s with the eth-nic threat in Kosovo and the uncertainty over thesurvival of Yugoslavias state and society. The con-flict developed in the context of a preemptive vi-sion of Yugoslavias disintegration, which incitedthe struggle for power and security among all of itsnations political leaders. Reality was becomingmore and more a daily fabrication based on mu-tual name-calling and consciously crafted lies. Eth-nic clashes were becoming more frequent andmore intense in a political scene whose script wasbecoming increasingly predictable.68

For its part, Serbia used three offensive strate-gies for grabbing power while working to ensure

Yugoslavias disintegration and, at the same time,beginning the process of nation- and state-build-ing. The Serbian leaderships new vision of state-building now relied on mass nationalist move-ments that coalesced around the idea of redividingthe Yugoslav space and creating a powerful, all-encompassing Serbian state.69 This new vision in-formed the Serbian intelligentsias redefinition ofSerbias national identity, as reflected in regularlyrepeated media images and historical myths.70

Serbian ressentiment. The very expression of Ser-bian nationalism and the new vision of the Serbianstate invoked by Serbian nationalist intellectualsaggravated ethnic tensions.71The task of redefin-ing the Serbian nation was undertaken by both theconservative faction of the Serbian intelligentsiaand the Serbian Orthodox Church in collaborationwith the political leadership, which had controlover the mass media. The reawakening of Serbiannational consciousness followed classic methods

of nation-building, including descriptions of na-tional treasures and cultural uniqueness.72 Theyencouraged the Serbian national community toimagine itself as an endangered species that ur-gently needed its own state in order to protect it-self from other species. The basic emotion upon

which Serbian national identity was built was theenmity of other Yugoslav peoples.73 This is best il-lustrated in the words of the writer and father ofthe Serbian nation, Dobrica Cosic: The enemiesof the Serbs made Serbs Serbs.74Another well-known Serbian writer expressed the same thought:The Serbian issue was started and opened by oth-ers. They straightened us out by blows, made ussober by offenses, woke us up by injustices,brought light and united us by coalitions. Theyhate us because of Yugoslavia, and now it seemsthey do not leave her, but us.75

Ressentimentthe dominant sentiment of beingthreatened and hated throughout Yugoslaviain-formed Serbian nationalism, which consisted oftwo basic components. One was entirely for do-mestic purposes, providing the conservative Ser-bian leadership with a convenient taxonomy ofreal and fabricated Serbian grievances against Yu-goslavias other nations. By constantly returning tothis repertoire of current and historical wrongs,the Serbian leadership was able to keep nationalistpassions running high.

The second, external, component contained arevision of Serbian relations with other nationsand with Yugoslavia as a whole. This new set of re-lations appeared for the first time in 1986 with theunofficial publication of the Serbian Academy ofSciences and Arts draft Memorandum, whichwas an attempt to present systematically the situa-tion of the Serbs as a whole nation. Based on thatdocument and many positions taken by well-known Serbian writers and members of the Ser-bian Academy of Sciences and Arts appearing dailyin the Serbian media, seven key themes of Serbian

ressentimentare identified here.76

1. Yugoslavia is a Serbian delusion. Accordingto this theme, Serbs were naively duped into ac-cepting Yugoslavism and the fraternal bonds of itsother nations, while those brothers were contin-ually building their ethno-national states on thebones of dead Serbs who fought in wars of libera-tion. Only the Serbs love Yugoslavia, they were theonly ones to fight for her, they were the only onesto abdicate their Serbian nationality in the name of

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Yugoslavian unity. They lost considerable histori-cal time in coming to the realization that Yu-goslavia was a Serbian delusion. They had every-thing to lose in accepting the Yugoslav project, andother nations had everything to gain. The Serbswere the victims of their own futile Yugoslavism:

The contemporary Serbian national conscious-ness is soiled by ideological fraud . . . with itsstrongest spiritual footing in its national defeats,the illusory Yugoslavian. . . . The contents andforms of national consciousness of other Yugoslavnations are a priorianti-Yugoslav.77 But now,there is a growing consciousness that Yugoslaviais a mass grave of the Serbian people. . . .78

2. The conspiracyagainst the Serbs. Duringtheir entire Yugoslav his-tory, Serbs were exposed

to the conspiracy of theComintern, the LCY, andTito (the Croat) andKardelj (the Slovene), whoplayed the leading roles in

Yugoslav decision makingand who implemented Yu-goslavias anti-Serbian pol-icy. As part of its social rev-olution and the struggleagainst Serbian hege-monism, the LCY acted toreduce Serbia to the Turk-ish pashas outpost in Bel-grade and promoted thedisintegration and assimilation of the Serbian peo-ple: Austro-Hungarian and Comintern ideologyunited in Titoism. In setting up republican-politi-cal territories, developing republican etatisms . . .and instituting the 1974 constitution, Titoism wasdoing everything to disintegrate the Serbian na-tion, and it succeeded in doing so.79

3. Serbia is exploited. Serbia was economically

exploited by Croatia and Slovenia, which explainsits economic backwardness. The largest part of theSerbian Academys Memorandum was devotedto this theme,

Documents

Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis