Introduction
States usually break up in wartime as a result o f m ilitary defeat and/or political revolution. This is how the three great empires of our time - the Austro-Hunga- rian, the Ottoman and the Russian - came to an end at the close o f the First World War. The Russian empire’s successor: the Soviet Union, may yet prove an exception by dissolving peacefully in peacetime. Yugoslavia’s own disintegration is taking place in peace time but to the accompaniment o f much internal violence, thus conform- ming to no previous pattern.
There are many reasons for Yugoslavia’s crisis but foreign interference is not one of them. The principal reason for what is happening in Yugoslavia now is that its main nations had come to reject - at least in the form in which it had existed since it was founded in 1918 - as not measuring up to their very different (and often mutually exclusive) national needs and aspirations.
U n til recently, these divergences in national perception within Yugoslavia were of academic interest only. For three and a half decades after the second world war, Yugoslavia was held together by a strong leader at the head o f a loyal Communist Party and an army, President Josip Broz T ito , who had led both to victory and power. The fear o f falling under foreign domination was another factor o f cohesion.
A fte r Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Soviet block in 1948 a bond was created by T ito ’s successful defiance of Stalin between the outright T ito supporters and those who opposed him, which also helped to keep the state together. A nother cohesive factor was the country’s growing prosperity during the last two decades o f T ito ’s life right up to 1980, which created a mood of optimism and hope. Last but not least, whatever Yugoslavia’s own citizens thought o f it, whether or not they wanted it, the outside world did. In the eyes o f the West, an independent Yugoslavia (even if Communist-ruled) was an important asset during the Cold War. To keep it afloat, the West was prepared to reach into its pocket.
Now all those cohesive factors are gone. T ito , its main glue, died in 1980, aged 88.
His death was followed by a severe financial crisis which grew into a crisis o f the whole economic system. The Cold War ended in 1989 removing that other glue - fear o f external danger. A t about the same tim e, the Communist Party o f Yugoslavia finally broke up. It had long been divided along ideological lines into its reformist and “ dogmatist” wings and split into six republican (Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) and two provincial (Kosovo and Vojvodina) parties. The party’s formal demise occurred at the last, abortive congress in Belgrade in February 1990. W ith all those factors o f unity gone, it was for the first time in their history for the peoples o f Yugoslavia to say what should happen to Yugoslavia, without the outsiders telling them. But they disagreed profundly about what should happen next. What they all agreed about, however, was that they had - most o f them, anyway - had a raw deal from Yugoslavia since its was set up in 1918.
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Ironically, the strongest and, as it later turned out, ultim ately the most destructive push fo r change came from the Serbs, Yugoslavia’s most numerous nation (35% of the total population o f 23,5 m, according to the first estimates from the most recent census in 1991) and one that has traditionally considered itself its Staatsvolk. Serb dissatisfaction with the post-1945 T ito Yugoslavia surfaced on various occasions during T ito ’s lifetim e but always furtively and couched in coged language. The first clear and open statement o f the Serb dissatisfaction with post-1945 Yugoslavia was the Memorandum prepared fo r the Serbian Academy o f Sciences in Belgrade by a working party o f economists, sociologists, political scientists, demographers and historians and leaked to the press in 1985. The gist o f the document, which caused a sensation, was that under the rule o f T ito , a half-Croat and half-Slovene, and his second-in-command, Edvard Kardelej, a Slovene, the Serbs had been discriminated against, their republic deliberately cut into three parts (Serbia proper, Kosovo and Vojvodina) to keep it weak, and they themselves subjected to terror by the ethnic Albanians (Kosovo) and to a systematic policy of genocide (Croatia). In comment- ing on the Memorandum, many Serbs contrasted the, as they saw it, anti-Serb T ito Yugoslavia with the pre-1941 monarchist one which the Serbs could call their own identity with: not without reason for they controlled the army, the civil service and the diplomacy under the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty.
This contrast with the prewar, strongly Serb dominated Yugoslavia was precisely why most non-Serbs, for all their objections to the T ito one (notably its lack of democracy) saw some merit in it. This was - chiefly because its federal system, far from perfect and fo r two decades after 1945 a mere form ality, gave them a measure o f equality with the other nations and, above all, the Serbs. None o f them, not even the Croats and the Albanians, the most frequently accused by Serbs and some outsiders o f irresponsible “ separatism” , actually worked for Yugoslavia’s total des- truction but rather for its evolution into a looser grouping o f states with the attributes o f sovereignty, yet working together in a common framework. However, for the Serbs, the T ito Yugoslavia was already far too loose and, in their view, needed re-centralising, a view shared wholeheartedly by the Yugoslav army, with its largely Serb (70% or over) officer corps and its strong attachment to socialist facto status o f a fu ll federal republic on a par with Croatia, Serbia and the other four.
His means was a remarkable political campaign officially called the “ anti-bureaucra- tic revolution, an amalgam o f old-fashioned xenophobia and Chinesestyle Cultural Revolution. Mass rallies were held throughout Serbia, attended by Serbs from Kosovo and other Milosevic supporters “ bussed in” fo r the occasion. A t those rallies an end to “ te rro r” against Kosovo Serbs was demanded as well as Serbia's “ re- unification” (that o f Serbia proper with Kosovo and Vojvodina).
The campaign was a b rillian t success. Vojvodina was the first to fall to Milosevic after one o f the mass rallies in Novi Sad, its capital, in October 1988. Kosovo's autonomy was crushed amid vuch violence in the spring o f 1989 when Serbia gained
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Yugoslavia: the Road to Dissolution 151 direct control over Kosovo’s police, courts, te rrito ria l defence and economic deci- sion-making. E arlier in the year, in January 1990, Milosevic had scored his first success outside Serbia. A fte r a series o f the by then fam iliar rallies in Titograd, its capital, attended by Milosevic supporters “ bussed in ” fo r the occasion, the republic’s leadership was replaced by pro-Milosevic supporters.
Those victories raised Milosevic's popularity in Serbia to unprecedented heights, an important factor in the electoral success he had at Serbia’s first m ulti-party elections in December 1990. He himself was re-elected President with a large m ajority but his party, the (re-named Communist) Socialist Party o f Serbia also did well. A month before, the re-named Communists had also been re-elected in Montenegro.
Milosevic's victories, predictably, caused alarm among Yugoslavia’s non-Serbs.
The threat o f re-centralisation under a populist, anti-reform Serbia helped the sue- cess o f the nationalist parties in Croatia and Slovenia win substantial victories in the spring o f 1990. But nationalist parties also did extremely well in Bosnia & Her- cegovina and Macedonia in the late autumn o f 1990. What however, pushed Croatia and Serbia into secession was economic despair - the realisation that w ithin a Yugoslavia dominated by the army and Milosevic there were no changes o f serious economic reform and ultim ately closer relations with the European Community.
The last step was the scandal o f a financial raid by Serbia on the National Bank on December 1990 to help pay fo r huge wage and pensions increases in Serbia on the eve o f the December 1990 election that gave the Milosevic regime its victory.
A t referendums in Slovenia in December 1990 and in Croatia in February 1991 large majorities voted in favour o f independence if a satisfactory agreement on turning Yugoslavia into a loose grouping o f sovereign state a sort o f Yugoslav Com- mon M arket, could not be negotiated. Slovenia and Croatia duly proclaimed their independence on June25 having had their proposals rejected. The Yugoslav arm y’s attempt to wrest back from Slovenia the border posts taken over by Slovene forces was beaten back after a brief armed conflict at the end o f which the Yugoslav army, under pressure from the European Community and the United States, agreed to a phased withdraw! from Slovenia. But other points negotiated by the E C ’s ministers were not honoured, notably the promise by the army and its allies, Serbia and the irregulars in Croatia, to observe cease-fire in Croatia. Several o f those were broken in succession, plunging Croatia into a an unequal struggle against the combined forces o f the army and the irregulars.
Enormous destruction was caused, more than 150,000 Croats made homseless and over 5000 people killed. The efforts by the EC to stage a peace conference in early September were accompanied by hints from Germany and other European states that they would recognise Croatia and Slovenia and propose various measures including economic sanctions and perhaps even m ilitary action against Serbia.
Fearing that the onslaught against Croatia was only a part o f a broader strategy (in the spirit o f the 1985 Memorandum) to replace today’s Yugoslavia with a Grea- ter Serbia taking in virtually the whole o f Yugoslavia minus Slovenia pushed Macedonia in September to vote over independence just as the situation in Bosnia threatened to deteriorate into civil war. Whatever the outcome o f the Yugoslav conflict, it is fairly clear that dissolution o f Yugoslavia, now a fact, cannot be
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reversed. A Greater Serbia, in which the Serbs would be a m inority trying to rule a collection o f discontented Albanians, Bosnians, Moslems, Croats and Hungarians is not a viable proposition over a longer period of time and could be maintained only strongly anti-Albanian) offensive under Slobodan Milosevic. This has fatally weakened the Yugoslav state and united Kosovo Albanians. A strong, cohesive common economic and security interests but also linked to others in the neighbour- hood and w ithin the broader European context. These groupings w ill comprise sovereign states getting together, not to build Berlin or Chinese walls to keep others out but forging links to neighbours and others beyond in customs unions, free-trade areas and so on. One o f the functions o f powerful outsiders could be to foster this openness and discourage inward-looking tendencies.
In the west could be a loose grouping (mainly) Catholic states, those which had once been part o f the Habsburg empire - a “ L ittle Central Europe” bound together by tradition but even more by perceived economic and security interests they have in common. Its members could be Austria, Bosnia (a Habsburg land between 1878 and 1918), Czechoslovakia (either as a federal state it is now or as its two halves), Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia. Italy could be associated with the grouping, as could from the north, Bavaria. This grouping would be building on the useful cooperation among the members o f the so-called A lpen-A dria working community which has been in existence since 1978 and comprises Croatia and Slovenia, the three western districts in Hungary, five Länder in Austria, four nothern Italian regions and, in Germany, Bavaria.
To the east could be a grouping o f states sharing the orthodox tradition and cooperating in the political and economic field. Here, in particular, the existing Balkan cooperation machinery, set up at the 1988 Balkan conference and developed since could be extremely useful. This grouping could include Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
Albania could be associated with the grouping from the start, not least because such a grouping could provide a framework for defusing, perhaps even solving the explosive Kosovo issue that divides Serbia and Albania. It could also be a solution guaranteeing the position o f Macedonia by preventing a competition like that in the past among its neighbours over who is to get control over it.
Turkey could eventually become associated with such a grouping, although there would be some initial fear that it would assume a hegemonistic position. But whether from w ithin or from the outside, Turkey could play a useful role in Albania, by
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Yugoslavia: the Road to Dissolution 153 offering it moral and material aid, as it has been doing fo r some time. It could match anything its other neighbours, notably Italy, might do to help this extremely poor country. Turkish backing for Albania could deter those in Greece and Serbia who may still be dreaming o f carving Albania between them. The same is true o f Macedonia.
States usually unite in common action only when they need to and mostly for negative reasons - against somebody or fo r want o f opportunity o f joining a better club. Every ex-Communist state in the Balkans wants to “ join Europe” — just as the ex-Communist states further north, in Central Europe do. The good thing about the groupings that might emerge in the Balkans is that they could fu lfil a role o f a staging post on the way to membership o f the European Community. The wait fo r that membership specially for the Balkan countries, could be long. Meanwhile there are bound to be disappointments which those broader groupings could help to cushion as comfortable waiting-rooms do.
Realistically speaking, the L ittle Central Europe grouping could link its members more closely to “ Europe” but it could also be a shield agains future German hege- monism from the north, irredentist moves from Italy in the south and from Serbia in the east. Last but not least it could deter a resurgent Russia from moving into the Balkans again one day. A Balkan confederation could do even more. Psychologi- cally, it could offer its more defensively-minded members a measure o f reassurance against both Catholicism and Islam (defined as broad politico-religious tendencies).
More specifically, Serbia could feel reassured against what is these days seen as the Albanian demographic wave rolling northwards and “ engulfing” it. Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia would probably be able to accept, w ithin such a fram ework, a separate Macedonia. For both Greece and Bulgaria there would be additonial reassurance in such company against fears o f Turkish hegemony in the region. As far as Romania is concerned, belonging to such a group would take it out o f its isolation from its neighbours and the rest o f Europe.
This new series o f alignments w ill have been made possible by the dissolution (not yet complete but irreversible) o f Yugoslavia, an unnatural creation across one o f the great divides o f history - the line that Emperor Theodosius drew back in 395 D D from north to south to split o ff his eastern from his western empires. That line goes right across today’s Yugoslavia from Osijek on the Drava river in the north to what is today the Montenegrin litto ra l. Attem pts to build a viable state across that divide since 1918 having failed, the new alignments stand a far better chance. The Versail- les order having died, the post-Versailles one can begin.
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