Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 102, August/September 1991
The civil war which has erupted in Yugoslavia has brought to the fore the most reactionary and backward elements in each of its six republics. The working class movement, already paying a heavy price as capitalist restoration proceeds apace, is now faced with the prospect of bloody wars fought at the behest of aspiring bourgeois forces. DALE EVANS examines the crisis.
On 27 June Federal forces of the Yugoslav army and air force attacked the republic of Slovenia in the north of Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia had seceded from Yugoslavia on 25 June. After a week or more of fighting between Slovenian territorial forces and the Yugoslav army a truce was agreed. Under strong pressure from the European Community both sides have agreed to a cooling-off period of three months. The beginning of civil war is a disaster for Yugoslavia, a disaster produced by the reactionary nationalist elites in the six republics who are in conflict.
Josip Tito, the founder of socialist Yugoslavia in 1945, died in 1980. During his lifetime he fought determinedly against all reactionary nationalism, whilst at the same time allowing self-determination and equality for all the peoples of Yugoslavia. Under a new constitution in 1974, Tito tried to establish the framework for the maintenance of Yugoslavia. This included the rotation of the office of president every year between the six republics and two autonomous provinces (see box). Tito also sought to strengthen the federal constitution and the Yugoslav Communist Party.
The present crisis has shattered these structures, in particular those whose aim was to limit Serbian power. One of the limitations of Serbian power was the formation of two autonomous provinces within Serbia: Kosovo with an Albanian majority and Vojvodina with a substantial Hungarian minority – they were de facto republics.
A younger generation of Serbian ‘communists’ considered that the 1974 constitution placed unnecessary limits on the rightful role of Serbia within Yugoslavia. In April 1987 these social chauvinists led by Slobodan Milosevic, gained control of the Serbian League of Communists. Since that time Milosevic and his followers in Serbia have acted first as social chauvinists and never as communists, breaking federal party discipline on many occasions. In August 1988 after a series of mass demonstrations by Serbian nationalists in Montenegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina, the federal party instructed the Serbian party to halt its nationalist campaign. Its failure to enforce this instruction signified the impotence and disintegration of the Federal Communist Party. In March 1989, the Serbian party became strong enough to revise the constitution and reincorporate Kosovo and Vojvodina.
MAIN NATIONAL GROUPS IN THE YUGOSLAV FEDERATION
- SERBIA pop. 9.9m
- Serbs 66.4%
- Albanians (Kosovo) 14.0%
- Croats 16.0%
- Muslims 2.3%
- CROATIA pop. 4.6m
- Croats 75.1%
- Serbs 11.5%
- SLOVENIA pop. 1.9m
- Slovenes 90.5%
- Serbs 2.2%
- Croats 2.9%
- BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA pop.4.4m
- Muslims 39.2%
- Serbs 32.2%
- Croats 18.4%
- MONTENEGRO pop. 632,000
- Montenegrins 68.0%
- Muslims 13.4%
- Albanians 6.5%
- MACEDONIA pop. 1.9m
- Macedonians 67.0%
- Albanians 19.8%
- Serbs 2.3%
- KOSOVO pop. 2m
- Albanians 77.4%
- Serbs 13.2%
- VOJVODINA pop. 2m
- Serbs 54.4%
- Hungarians 18.9%
The rise of petit-bourgeois bureaucratic nationalism produced at the same time a profound attack on working class living standards, which provoked over 1,000 strikes in Yugoslavia in 1989. The average inflation rate for the year was 1,252%, and at one point it peaked at 2,700%. Throughout the 1980s workers left the party in their thousands, judging their interests to be in conflict with party membership. In Serbia Milosevic attempted to buy off the working class with nationalist rhetoric, and the printing of money. Before the Serbian elections in 1990 the Serbian authorities made sure that wages and pensions were paid on time – by printing money (equivalent to $1.6bn) in contravention of federal government decisions. Since then Serbia has been in the grip of a liquidity crisis, with many workers receiving no wages.
Milosevic’s attempts to buy social peace did not last long. In March Serbian youth and students took to the streets of Belgrade demanding the end of state control of the media and Milosevic’s resignation. Milosevic called in the army – the first time ever against civilians to quell the protests. In April three quarters of a million workers went on strike against falling living standards. Since then Serbian mothers have organised protests against their sons being sent to war. In these conditions Milosevic has survived by intensifying his nationalist campaign for Serbian domination of the whole country.
Parallel with rising Serbian nationalism, the other republics began to assert their own interests: in particular the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia. They are by far the two wealthiest republics. Slovenia, for example, has 8% of Yugoslavia’s population but 20% of its GDP. Slovenes are twice as affluent as the average Yugoslav. At the root of it all are the bourgeois forces whose development was accelerated by the penetration of capital into Yugoslavia, fighting for economic power. The Slovene and Croat nationalists deeply resent having to subsidise poorer regions of Yugoslavia and have, since the 1980s, sought to gain full control of their own economies.
The reactionary character of all these nationalist leaders is clear. One of the first acts of the Slovenian nationalist leadership which won the 1990 elections was to declare an amnesty for those who had collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War. The Croat movement has also ‘forgiven’ the ‘Ustase’, the Second World War fascist movement which perpetrated unparalleled atrocities, and has given their remnants the right to return from exile. The Serbs also have their modern ‘Chetniks’, descendants of collaborators with the Nazi occupation.
To subdue Slovene and Croat nationalism Milosevic raised the banner of Serbian irredentism. He used Serbian minorities in other republics as a base for Serbian domination of them. Serbs living in Croatia declared independence, claiming that the Croats intended to wipe them out. Serbs in the republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina established Serbian controlled areas. This quest for a Greater Serbia, that is to bring all Serbs in Yugoslavia within one nation-state, is the main threat to stability and any possible solution in Yugoslavia.
Throughout the summer Yugoslavia’s six presidents met to try to overcome the political impasse. The meetings were a charade as Croats and Serbs engaged in armed provocations in parts of Croatia, and the federal army prevented the disarming of the Chetniks.
Milosevic’s participation in he talks was merely deception while he attempted to undermine federal institutions. In an attempt to engineer a military coup, the Serbian nationalists ensured that the presidential council failed to elect a federal president. The army – the only power capable of realising Milosevic’s goal of a Greater Serbia – refused to respond. It cannot play out this role. While 70% of its officers are Serbs, the ordinary conscripts come from all over Yugoslavia. If it were used to advance Serb ambitions it could disintegrate. Indeed in the recent fighting in Slovenia over 2,000 scripts surrendered to Slovene territorial forces, and many units refused to fight with conviction.
The collapse of the socialist bloc, rather than heralding an epoch of democracy, peace and self-determination, threatens to unleash vicious nationalist conflicts in which the price will be paid by the working class. In this process Serbian chauvinism and its irredentist ambitions are the dominant destabilising factors. They threaten the territorial integrity of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, and are a threat to Macedonia, that would be strongly resisted. This threat has strengthened the Macedonian nationalists, who form the largest party in the republic and who now seek independence.
The break-up of Yugoslavia will also have considerable international repercussions. It could encourage other reactionary nationalist forces in the region to fight for unification with surrounding countries as their only means of escaping Serbian rule for example the Albanians of Kosovo, Hungarians in Vojvodina, Bulgarians and Greeks in Macedonia. Further many states could lay claim to the annexation of areas where their own nationalities live in other countries.
At the moment the imperialists regard such developments as extremely dangerous. Their aim is to retain Eastern Europe’s current borders drawn up in the 1918-1922 period. Anything else may, they judge, upset their plans for long term domination of the region. Nationalist risings could only upset their plans for investment and the extraction c f profits. This explains why the EC has been cautious about recognising Slovenia’s declaration of independence and why they are intervening to try and stop the war.
NATIONAL CONFLICTS IN RECENT YUGOSLAV HISTORY
- April 1941 The Italian fascists and German Nazi occupiers create the fascist Croatian state with Ante Pavelic (Ustasa leader) as President. 350,000 Serbs are massacred.
- May 1941 Formation of Serbian Chetnik guerrillas by Mihailovic based on Serbia. Later defeated by Communist Partisans led by Tito, who had formed a national army from all Yugoslavian nationalities.
- December 1944 Albanian uprising in Kosovo against Serbian Partisans who had treated the Albanians little better than the Serbian monarchists. Rising was crushed.
- 1945-1966 Period of Serbian domination through State Security Police led by Alexander Rankovic. Kosovo ruled under quasi martial law. Rankovic dismissed in 1966 after scandal involving bugging Tito’s home.
- 1966 Dismissal of Rankovic leads to rebirth of Croatian nationalism inside and outside Communist Party over language issues and economic decentralisation. Tito successfully thwarts nationalists which leads to purge of Croatian and Serbian parties.
- 1966, 1968, 1981 Major uprisings by Kosovo Albanians against Serbian domination.
- 1989 Uprising and general strike by Albanians to defend their rights under Yugoslav constitution.
