The Yugoslav

1981/No. 35 by Dennison I. Rusinow UNFINISHED BUSINESS: THE Europe [DIR-2-'81] YUGOSLAV'"NATIONAL QUESTION"

"Do not forget, the national factor is stronger and potential significance of the trouble were than all others; on this issue history, including our indeed greater than initially admitted. There had history, has not upheldMarx's theory." apparently been more than the officially reported In the first days of April 1981 the Yugoslav 9 dead and 250 wounded during the April riots, regime and public and equally unprepared out- since many in both categories were said to have side observers of the Yugoslav scene were startled been taken into hiding by relatives and clansmen, by reports of widespread and violent nationalist a time-honored Balkan custom. More complete and irredentist disturbances in the Socialist lists of places and incidents made it clear that no Autonomous Province of Kosovo. Constitution- part of Kosovo had been untouched, and trials of ally a sub-unit of Serbia, one of Yugoslavia's six persons with Albanian names were also reported federated republics, the Kosovo region borders on from western Macedonia. The "security situa- Albania and is predominantly inhabited by tion" in Kosovo was ominously being described as Albanians. "still complicated" more than two months later. Spasmodic demonstrations, strikes, and acts of The scale of the disturbances was suggested, violence, usually directed against Serbian graves despite early local attempts to suppress details and monuments and the property of the revealing their seriousness and extent, by refer- Province's Serb and Montenegrin minorities, ences to police reinforcements from other regions continued despite further police reinforcements and territorial militia assisting local police in from other regions and the threatening presence quelling demonstrations in several parts of the of the Army and its tank,,s (reportedly never used). province. Units of the Yugoslav People's Army The University of Pristina (Prishtine), among with tanks guarding key facilities and communi- whose 45,000 students it all began, was closed in cations were called in and state-of-emergency mid-May, 10 days before the academic year measures were invoked over an entire federal unit should have ended. Public gatherings continued for the first time in postwar Yugoslav history. The to be banned, and theaters and cinemas remained stability and tranquility that had characterized closed. Meanwhile, as the press and the regime Yugoslavia's transition from the Tito era for sought to explain the extent and violence of the almost precisely one year had been rudely disorders and the surprise and unpreparedness of breached at their weakest point, on the "national the authorities when they occurredirredentism question" in general and in Kosovo in particular, and occasional nationalist demonstrations are old and with a violence the country had not experi- Kosovo stories, but not on this scale--it was said enced since an earlier armed uprising by Kosovar that Provincial Party and state organs, predomi- Albanians just after World War II, when Tito's nantly Albanian in personnel, had ignored Communist Partisans were consolidating their warmng tremors over a period of several years rule. and even failed to report them to higher authori- In the weeks that followed, with Kosovo still ties in Belgrade, the capital of both Serbia and under a partial state of emergency and closed to the federation. foreign observers except for official conducted Resignations by senior Albanian Party and tours, Yugoslavia's own belatedly unleashed state officials in Kosovo began. The first to go was media gradually revealed that the depth, extent, Provincial Party boss Mahmut Bakalli, whose 2/DIR-2-'81

blithe response to this reporter's suggestion thought. But if this is so, where else to begin during a 3V hour interview only 16 months again? Generalized condemnations of "Albanian earlierthat the situation at the university and in nationalism and irredentism" and mutual re- employment constituted a political time-bomb in criminations, including Kosovar accusations of the Kosovar national context was then interpreted "tendentious" (meaning ethnically prejudiced) as an effort to deceive a foreign observer, but now reporting by "the central Belgrade media," sug- seems also to have included elements of self- gested more evasion and even panic than coherent deception. 2- Calls for more "assigning responsi- strategy. Implicit in 11 this has been a broader bility" and a campaign for "political differentia- question. Is the "Titoist solution" to Yugoslavia's tion," a new euphemism for impending wider "national question," so long regarded as prom- purges, were said to be meeting widespread ising if problematic and incomplete, failing its resistance in the form of lip service and protective first post-Tito test in Kosovo? And if so, where "family-ism" on the part of Kosovar Albanian next? Party cadres. The extent and violence of the nationalist dis- Polemics with neighboring Albania escalated turbances in Kosovo in spring 1981 pale in com- sharply after the (Tirana) Albanian media took up parison with similarly inspired events in many the cause of their "brothers" in Yugoslavia, sup- countries of the Third World and even Europe, to porting the demonstrators' demand that Kosovo both of which Yugoslavia belongs. Pritina is not be elevated to the status of a seventh Yugoslav yet Belfast or Beirut; Kosovo is not yet Kurdistan Republic, and that alleged Serbian domination or the Basque country; and only extraordinary and exploitation should cease. With demon- stupidities by the Yugoslav authorities (which strators' demands for a separate federal republic cannot, however, be excluded if panic ultimately interpreted as merely a first step toward detach- triumphs over policy) can erase these "not yets." ment of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and its incorpo- On the other hand, and as the Yugoslav media are ration in a "Greater Albania" ruled from Tirana, now glumly and repeatedly reminding their and with "We are the soldiers of Enver Hoxha" readers and listeners, the trouble in Kosovo and (the Albanian head of state and Party) among the its repercussions, whether imitative or reactive, slogans of some of the student demonstrators in are not likely to go away soon or with a small dose Kosovo, Yugoslav officials and media accused of combined repression and economic and polit- Albania of challenging Yugoslavia's territorial ical concessions. integrity and endangering peace in the Balkans, As in the economy, where serious problems are with inevitable repercussions for world peace. also aggravating the national question and under- Meanwhile, Yugoslav officials and the media mining stability as well as living standards and wondered aloud, in hurt and bewildered tones, further economic development, a serious rethink- how it could be possible that an apparently large ing of solutions and systems inherited from the number of Kosovar Albanian students, workers, Tito era---which is not the same thing as their and peasants seemed to prefer Enver Hoxha's abandonment or a radical "de-Titoization"---is in Stalinist Albania, with its notorious lack of per- order, and this is being said with all due circum- sonal, civic, and religious freedom as well as pros- spection at several official and popular levels. A perity and modernity, to Titoist Yugoslavia, where lively public discussion of problems and deficien- all of these things are present in manifestly far cies in the political and constitutional relationship greater abundance, even if less so in Kosovo. between the Autonomous Provinces of Kosovo Some are suggesting that comparative counting and the V0jvodina, and the Republic of Serbia of per capita television sets, refrigerators, per- to which they formally belong, is only one straw sonal automobiles, and industrial development, in the wind of critical reappraisal that was certain with which Yugoslav officialdom had tradi- to blow before the first post-Tito Yugoslav Party tionally comforted itself---and sought to per- Congress in 1982, and that has been spawned only suade Yugoslavia's Albanians---that Albanian a little prematurely by the storm centers in Kosovo irredentism had no allure, may not be the best way and the economy. Other straws include parallel either to understand or to respond to the problem. discussions of "responsibility" for a purportedly Perhaps not even far greater freedom of expres- accelerating "disintegration" of the "unified sion, religion, opportunity, participation, and Yugoslav market" into "closed, autarchic Repub- movement in Yugoslavia than in Albania counts lican and Provincial markets" that is substan- as much against the "national factor" as had been tiated by statistics on declining interrregional DI R-2-'81/3

A U S T R A

H U N G A R Y

Tirana MACEDONIA

Yugoslavia 1981 4/DIR-2-'81 commerce, and about ways to make the system of Examples, which the predominantly Austrian "workers' and social self-management" economi- originators of this interpretation generally drew cally more efficient. The first of these debates was from Hapsburg and therefore in part Yugoslav generated by events in Kosovo, the second is part experiences, included the oppression and exploi- of the problem, and all three are bound to stir the tation of proletarian or peasant nations or parts embers of old conflicts between "centralists" and of nations by Capitalist or landowning ones or "de-centralizers," also intimately involving the portions thereof. These and analogous phe- national question. nomena may appear within individual multi- Pending more information about what is still cultural countries or internationally in the form happening in Kosovo, a more thorough analysis of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and of this new challenge from Albanian nationalism their ilk. and irredentism would be premature, and the Nationalism and national conflicts, so under- present writer has in any case had his say in stood, should therefore tend to disappear when anticipation about the background to these the bourgeois carriers and economic reasons for events, aAs the general debate proceeds, how- them are eliminated under socialism. This, ever, a review of the more general legacy that the however, will be a slow process, since the per- disturbances in Kosovo and their likely reper- ceptions, prejudices, loyalties, and suspicions cussions have called in question may be helpful characteristic of competing nationalisms have to nonspecialists wanting a little more back- become an important part of "subjective" reality ground useful in understanding a "current for the people concerned. Therefore national (but event" that is likely to be around for a while and not nationalist) identities and concerns should be that is capable of disturbing Balkan and hence treated with special circumspection and sensi- European stability and peace. This legacy con- tivity during the socialist "transition" phase, for sists of policies and their consequences asso- example by guaranteeing cultural autonomy, ciated with Tito's attempt to solve the Yugoslav equality of opportunity and access, anti special national question, which competes with his suc- protection for ethnic minorities, or through cessful defiance of Stalin for the honor of beiig federalism for multinational states where the dis- considered his most remarkable and indeed im- tribution Of nationalities and their relations probable accomplishment. make this appropriate. At the same time, and precisely because they Stalin's formulation of this theory, done at were so improbable, so associated with Tito's Lenin's request, plagiarized early twentieth- person, and so qualified and subject to renewed century "Austro-Marxists" who were attempting challenge, these two accomplishments--the to find a Marxist explanation and solution for the nonaligned independence of Yugoslavia and the national question in the Hapsburg Monarchy, "brotherhood and unity" of its peoplesare then in its acute phase. In post-1945 Yugoslavia often considered the most fragile of his legacies. the theory was thus returning to part of the land Moreover, the two are linked in many pessimistic of its origin (along with similarly multinational "scenarios" for the post-Tito era, which foresee a ex-Ottoman lands) under the patronage of a Soviet attempt to reassert control over Yugo- former Hapsburg subject who had been a witness slavia following and exploiting a crisis.in rela- to both the monarchy's disintegration and the tions among the country's nationalities. Bolshevik Revolution. It is in this sense quite appropriate to apply to Tito the often-quoted Marxist Theory and Yugoslav History ironic title "last of the Hapsburgs," coined by The "Titoist" solution to the national question British historian A.J.P. Taylor to describe Tito's was born of Marxist theory as it was transmitted relative success in ruling the most multinational by Stalin and tempered by Yugoslav prewar, and unruly of the Hapsburg successor states and wartime, and postwar experience. in unifying its historically quarrelsome nations. The theory, somewhat oversimplified, holds The Yugoslavia created after the First World that nationalism is a phenomenon of the capi- War was the embodiment of an idea, a century- talist epoch and that national conflicts as mass old aspiration which held that the South Slav phenomena are at least primarily and usually peoples, the Jugoslaveni, should be united in one based on misperceptions, most often because of state in order to be free at last of alien rule. This lack of class consciousness, concerning what are aspiration was an adaptation to Balkan con- in reality class differences and conflicts. ditions of the prevailing ideology of the modern DIR-2-'81/6 world, which posits national emancipation and terized by the triumph of the ideology of the the nation-state as prerequisites of individual nation-state, although that ideology had led to its freedom and social progress. The adaptation creation. Its official name until 1929, the King- consisted of a modification of this doctrine based dom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, bore on a prophetic recognition that the unity of understated witness to that fact. diverse but related nationalities would provide a solution for small nations living in an ethnic No single nationality comprised (or comprises) patchwork, where pure ethnic boundaries among a majority of the population, then about 14 and states are impossible and where Great Power today about 23 million. Serbs were and are most interests interact and would inevitably dominate numerous, today with about 39 percent of the minuscule but still ethnically heterogeneous total, followed by Croats with about 22 percent, national states. Serbo-Croatian-speaking Slav Muslims, living primarily in Bosnia-Herzegovina and now The trouble with this solution was that the counted as a separate nation, with about 9 South Slav peoples, never before united polit- percent and Slovenes with about 8 percent. ically, in fact had little in common except the Something over a million Macedonians and half aspiration for unity in freedom and the similari- as many Montenegrins bring the share of South ties of language, of myths of historical origin, and Slavs in the total population Of the South Slav of centuries of alien rule on which that aspiration state to about 83 percent.4 The rest consists of was based. The Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Mace- nearly two dozen "nationalities," the term offi- donians, Bosnians, Montenegrins, and numerous cially used to distinguish those like Albanians, non-Yugoslav minorities included in the new Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Slovaks, Yugoslav state were divided by language or and Italians whose "national home" is outside dialect, by religion (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Yugoslavia (along with Gypsies, Vlahs, and and Muslim), and also by the impact of more others without a "national home") from the six than a millenium of separation and incorpora- South Slav "nations" whose "national homes" tion for much or all of that period in different are in Yugoslavia. That Yugoslavia's Albanians empires (Frankish, Byzantine, Magyar, Venetian, are actually more numerous than the Monte- Hapsburg, and Ottoman) with enormous differ- negrins and Macedonians and almost as numer- ences in political and social systems and cultures. ous as the Slovenes, all of whom have "republics" These different historical experiences made a as "national homes," is today an important polit- deep impact on their cultures and ethos and in- ical and psychological ingredient in the problem creased the differences between them. of Kosovo, where Albanians constituted 77.5 per- It was not just that the South Slav peoples had cent of the population in the April 1981 census, lived under various and usually foreign masters with 350,000 more in adjacent districts of Monte- before 1918, as had the Italians before 1860 and negro and western Macedonia, but are being told the Poles after the partitions ofthe eighteenth cen- that a separate Kosovo Republic cannot be. tury. They had lived in effect on separate conti- The in old nents, partly in Catholic Hapsburg or Venetian situation Yugoslavia was further Europe and partly in Ottoman-ruled Muslim and complicated by an acute maldistribution of both Orthodox Asia. The disruptive potential of these economic and political power and their respective differences in a common state and in the many polarization in ethnically different parts of the regions in which peoples from these two worlds are country. While economic power was concen- intermingled is symbolized for the two most trated in Slovenia and Croatia, the more devel- numerous nations by a common Yugoslav saying oped ex-Hapsburg north, political power came to born of post-1918 experience: "The very way of be held almost exclusively by ruling groups in life of a Serb and a Croat is a deliberate provoca- Serbian Belgrade, who succeeded in imposing tion each to the other." themselves and a highly centralized political by system on other nationalities whose leaders United at last in 1918, the Yugoslavs remained usually, and especially in Croatia, would have disunited by nationality, religion, and diverse preferred a federation. Thus the non-Serb foreign imperial influences on urban forms, rural majority of the population found themselves settlement and landholding patterns, legal sys- living in what was really a Greater Serbia, with a tems, levels of economic and social development, Serbian king, a Serbian capital, Serbian prime and ways of viewing the world. Their state was a ministers, and Serb domination of the officer multinational anachronism in an age charac- corps ofthe army and bureaucracy. 6/DIR-2-'81

In such a situation all significant political "brotherhood and unity" of the Yugoslav parties were ethnic parties except an initially peoples. Together these marked the rebirth of the pan-Yugoslav Communist Party, which was "Yugoslav idea" in a new form: as a federation of driven into illegality and impotence after 1921. equal nations, now numbering five (and later six) The political system founded on such parties fluc- as the Macedonians, the Montenegrins, and after tuated between instability and deadlock until, in 1968 the Serbo,Croatian-speaking Slav Muslims frustration, a Serbian royal dictatorship was im- of Bosnia-Herzegovina (heretofore claimed by posed in January 1929. One of its first acts was to both Serbs and Croats) were officially recognized Change the name of the state of Yugoslavia and as separate nations alongside the Serbs, Croats, to redefine Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the first and Slovenes. Each of the first five was to have a category already subsuming Montenegrins, republic of its own, while the sixth republic, Macedonians, and Bosnian Muslims) as "tribes" Bosnia-Herzegovina, an historic rather than a of one "Yugoslav nation," which seemed to be national unit, was to be the condominium of its indistinguishable from the Serb nation in most of Serb, Muslim Slav, aiad Croat peoples. The most its salient characteristics. The dictatorship and numerous non-Slavic minorities, Albanians and perceptions of progressive Serbianization in turn Magyars, were to receive special recognition in spawned or spurred militant and sometimes Autonomous Regions, Kosovo and the Vojvodina, fascist separatist movements, especially among within the Serbian Republic. Other minorities Croats and Macedonians, whose fascist Ustasa were to enjoy "cultural autonomy." and terrorist IMRO combined their talents to assassinate King Aleksandar Karadjordjevi in That this rebirth of the Yugoslav idea was not Marseilles in October 1934. merely widely accepted but a powerful recruiting slogan for the Partisan armies is explained by the The fragile vessel of such a Yugoslavia, with course of the war itself. The disintegration of the many of its crew already in a mutinous frame of old Yugoslavia because of the national question mind, broke apart on the rocks of World War II. had brought foreign domination and thehideous The Axis invasion of April 1941 led not merely to fratricide of civil war. To paraphrase a slogan military defeat, which was in any case inevitable, from the eighteenth century American Revolu- but to a disintegration so total that it seemed tion, the lesson seemed to be that if the Yugoslav doubtful that a unified Yugoslav state could ever peoples did not hang together they would end by be recreated, whatever the outcome of the wider hanging each other in a paroxysm of mutual war. To compound the mischief, the Axis con-. genocide. The force of this lesson generated a querors divided the country into a patchwork widespread propensity to try again with a new of puppet states and annexed or occupied dis- formula. This in turn was an important reason tricts, all fashioned and governed in such a way why the Communist-led Partisans, the apostles of as further to incite civil war among the nationali- the new formula, won out over others, both ties, which duly came to pass. Kosovo and fellow-resisters and Axis collaborators, whose western Macedonia, to take an example of aims were either the perpetuation of partition or particular salience today, were annexed to a the restoration of a unitary and Serb-dominated "Greater Albania" ruled as an Italian and later Yugoslavia. German puppet state from Tirana, a temporary precursor of the situation that Stalinist Tirana, By themselves, however, the propensity to try anticommunist Albanian emigrs in the West, again and the formality of federalism were only and Albanian irredentists in Kosovo are now the prerequisites of a solution to the national being accused of trying to restore. Of the 1.7 question. Cultural differences, conflicting eco- million Yugoslavs killed during the war years nomic and social interests and priorities, and (11% of the population then), more were victims suspicion and bitterness born of prewar and war- of intra-Yugoslav fratricideeither interethnic time experiences remained potentially disintegra- or between those who would restore the Serb- tive forces, leaving each of the Yugoslav peoples dominated old order and those who aspired to a hypersensitive to any sign that their own national new one--than were killed by the country's interest or identity was again threatened or being foreign occupiers. treated unequally. In the midst of this destruction and collapse of The Titoist Solution's Four Phases the civil order, Tito and his Communist Party During Tito's reign the "Titoist" solution to began their Partisan war of resistance under the the national question, subjected to repeated double slogan of national liberation and the strains arising from its own weaknesses as well as DIR-2-'81/7

from the complexity and intransigence of the at the federal level. In this contradictory situa- question, passed through four phases. tion interregional competition over the allocation of scarce, important, and centrally allocated The first, like other aspects of the early resources, although argued in terms of Marxist postwar system in Yugoslavia, was a virtual or market economic principles, inevitably came carbon copy of the Soviet "solution." Formal to be regarded as competition among the constitutional federalism and a considerable nationalities. Questions like priority for basic degree of genuine cultural autonomy and recog- or processing industries (concentrated in differ- nition of cultural differences (for example in folk- ent regions), or which resource, seaport, railroad, lore and language) were counterbalanced by a or highway should be developed first, were again highly centralized but carefully multinational clearly and gradually, even publicly interpreted one-party dictatorship and police apparatus and as national questions by those involved and by a centralized planned economy. The combination the public at large. In these circumstances was not without virtues, for a time. The modest political leaders defending local and economic reality and psychological impact of even the interests were regarded (and increasingly saw formal creation of the republics and of all- themselves) as national leaders defending vital Yugoslav rather than Serb ruling apparatuses, national interests. added to popular revulsion against ethnic nationalism after the horrors of civil war, acted to Serving to aggravate the suspicions of other pacify ethnic tensions at least temporarily. nationalities, Serbs and their close relatives the Where this was not enough the centralized Montenegrins (widely considered merely taller, regime and its police ruthlessly suppressed any fiercer Serbs)were in proportion to their share in display of what it chose to define as "nationalist" total population overrepresented in the federal rather than acceptable "national" sentiment. At Party and state apparatuses, including the army the same time the behavior of the regime in its and the state security service, where the com- early yearsgeneralized and therefore in most petition for resources and other ultimate powers cases ethnically nondiscriminatory harassment, rested. This was primarily because mountain arrests, nationalization, forced labor, compulsory districts largely populated by these nations deliveries by peasants, and other oppressive acts happened to send more of their sons into these by a multinational Communist dictatorship-- apparatuses, because the Partisan war and there- gave those who suffered them a set of basically fore Partisan and postwar elite recruitment were non-national grievances which for the moment concentrated there, and later because the eco- took precedence over national ones in their con- nomic backwardness of these regions made Party sciousness. For a time it was possible to imagine and public employment particularly attractive to that the national question really had been solved. people who had few alternative opportunities. Whatever its reasons, however, such overrepre- The second phase began when less harshness sentation could easily seem deliberate and and early and modest steps toward a more created a potential for the restoration, in reality genuine political and economic decentralization, or in appearance, of "Greater Serbian" domi- the first fruits of Yugoslavia's break with Stalin nation. in 1948 and with Stalinism after 1950, reopened the question in a new form. This time, as though If the Croats were (and are) for historic reasons to prove the correctness of Marxist theory, the most sensitive to any sign of "Serbian hegemo- basic reasons really were economic- competition nism," another and specific gap between theory among regions and localities, and therefore and practice was ticking like a time bomb. Until among the country's nationalities, over the the 1960s none of the non-Yugoslav minorities means of economic development. (later renamed "nationalities" as noted) enjoyed the proportionate representation in the political With the reforms of the 1950s the power to system that was accorded to the Yugoslav take economic initiatives like the building or "nations" in theory and to a significant degree expansion of factories and incentives to do so, also in practice, but one of them was subject as including tax powers and more reason to develop well to systematic and constant repression, and and cater to local clienteles, devolved to the re- cultural and economic discrimination. This was publics and local communities and their "self- the Albanian nationality, and those in charge of managed" enterprises. At the same time, how- their repression and discrimination were the ever, most investment funds, fiscal instruments, Serb-dominated security service (UDBa) and foreign currency and trade remained centralized political apparatuses of Kosovo and Serbia. s 8/DIR-2-'81

The first reaction to new evidence that divisive changes possible, and of regional and therefore and potentially disintegrative nationalisms were national interests in their reasons for playing this alive and incarnate in Communist officials as role, that justifies the contention that the prin- well as "reactionaries" was a short-lived cam- cipal driving force behind at least this stage in the paign for "Yugoslavism," in which a "Yugoslav" expansion of individual and group autonomy and patriotism, culture, and economy should provide liberty is to be found in Yugoslavia's national a supposedly supranational and unifying question and efforts to answer it, which were more umbrella over the country's diverse national powerful factors than the ideals and interests identities, cultures, and economies. The cam- represented in the theory and institutions of "self- paign coincided with efforts on the part of con- management." servative elements in the Party and police to halt A major "de-6tatization" of the economy after or reverse a new wave of economic liberalization 1965 broadened the role of market forces and and political decentralization which was drawing largely eliminated central planning and control its principal support from economically more over investment funds. In principle designed to developed regions like Slovenia and most of enhance the power of the country's "self-man- Croatia. For a number of reasons only partly aged" enterprises (and hence, in theory, that of connected with national prejudices and prefer- the working class) through the "withering away of ences, the most visible protagonists of this con- the state" at all levels, the virtual liquidation of servative and recentralizing course, including federal economic powers through these reforms Tito's Vice-President and then heir-presumptive, also enhanced local and republican (and therefore Aleksandar Rankovi6, happened to be Serbs. national) autonomy. This was particularly true for Linked in the perceptions of most non-Serbs, wealthier and more developed regions like Slo- "Yugoslavism" and the centralizers were seen as venia and Croatia, which had previously con- an ominous attempt to repeat King Alexander's tributed more to centrally administered funds efforts to decree a "Yugoslav nation" that turned than they had received from them, and whose out to be the self-image of the Serb nation ruling leaders were therefore understandably the prin- over and seeking to assimilate the rest. In the face cipal authors and advocates of the reforms. But of these reactions the campaign for "Yugo- the national rather than purely economic aspect of slavism" was abandoned. Then the combined the issue was even clearer in the support given opposition of non-Serb Party leaders (on national them by leaders from an underdeveloped republic grounds expressed in terms of economic argu- like Macedonia, which apparently decided that it ments) and of liberal Party leaders (on ideological feared the loss of federal funding less than the and economic grounds), who finally enlisted Tito's threat to national autonomy from the centralist vital support, brought the downfall of the cen- power inherent in such funding. tralizers. A purge of their leaders and of the Meanwhile, in the political sector per se, a series security service in 1966, on Tito's initiative, ended of constitutional amendments and then a new the second phase. constitution were turning Yugoslavia into a de If nationalism and national disputes were not to facto confederation. The powers of the federal be suppressed by a centralized and ultimately center were reduced to foreign policy, defense, Serb-dominated dictatorship, killing divisive and a minimum number of economic instru- nationalisms with kindness might provide an ments, with decision-making even in these spheres alternative solution. The third phase brought, in to be the product of consensus among representa- effect, such an effort. It was done in the name Of tives of the federal units. The number of these "self-management" and by the political coalition units was also effectively enlarged from six to eight forged in the struggle against centralism by as the Vojvodina and Kosovo, although still ideological and economic liberals 6 and regional formally Autonomous Provinces within the Party barons whose motivations were sometimes Serbian Republic, acquired most of the attributes liberal, sometimes localist and nationalist, and of separ,te republics. In Kosovo, with the Serb- sometimes all of these. The beneficiaries of the dominated security service humbled and a Yugo- resulting expansion of political participation, slav equivalent of an "affirmative action" policy liberty, and autonomy in general included indi- in force as an attempt to right past wrongs, gen- viduals and other kinds of social groups as well as uine rather than token control of political and nationalities. It is the importance of regional police apparatuses, and ofthe economy, shifted to barons in the power equation that made these the Albanian majority. It now appears that DIR-2-'81/9

neither of these developments registered on a political help and growing influence of non-Com- large part of the Albanian community,, but they munist and nationalist elements to push demands registered on Kosovo's Serbs and Montenegrins, for even fuller autonomy, with symbols of sover- who began to leave the_province as described in an eignty. Federal lawmaking and administration earlier AUFS Report. were virtually paralyzed by the mutual vetoes that constitutional amendments had made possible Ofequal or greater importance in the real world now with fre- of politics, appointment to federal administrative and that were invoked increasing bodies, Party ones, quency. National tensions escalated sharply on all as well as elective including sides, and some members of the large Serb genuinely passed into the hands of republic and of the provincial Party and state bodies as a revocable minority in Croatia, with memories delegationwhereas earlier, as in the Soviet massacres of 1941-1945, were reportedly arming Union, regional officials had in reality been made themselves. and unmade by federal Party authorities. Rigid By autumn 1971 these trends alarmed Tito into application of the so-called "republican and drastic action. Threatening to use the army if ethnic keys" in apportioning and rotating jobs (for necessary, he summarily brought about the example, ambassadorships) in all federal de- removal of the Croatian leaders, denounced any partments, frequently on the basis of equal "federalization" of the Party, and moved to numbers from each republic regardless of popula- reassert central Party discipline and authority. In tion, provided the smaller republics and nations 1972 regional Party leaderships who opposed this with further guarantees, although it has also com- partial restoration of centralized Party dictator- plicated staffing and often had a negative effect on ship in other republics, including Serbia, were the quality of federal personnel. Meanwhile, the also toppled, usually accused of excessive liberal- most important consequences of this "federaliza- ism rather than "nationalism." The Yugoslav tion" of cadre selection was that those with polit- national question, which had been a major factor ical ambitions, knowing that their careers are in the process of general political and economic dependent on the approval of the republican/pro- liberalization in the 1960s, had now become the vincial apparatuses who send them to Belgrade major factor in a retreat from political liberalism, and to whose ranks they must return, were often proving that multinationalism in Yugoslavia was reluctant to accept a federal post and always still a double-edged sword. responsive to their home constituencies when they Tito's coups of 1971-72 ushered in a fourth did. This further increased the power (and attrac- phase in the "Titoist" solution to the Yugoslav tiveness) of local offices while it reduced the power national question. It did not change as much as (and quality) of central ones. many were fearing or hoping at the end of 1972. While these arrangements were evolving in the The de facto confederal structure of the state was later 1960s and early 1970s they were subjected to maintained and indeed reconfirmed by a new a severe tes.t that produced the most serious polit- Constitution adopted in 1974: the only significant ical crisis of the Tito era. The growing autonomy changes were in providing additional and more of the republics and debates about how much efficient modalities for reaching agreement on further the process should go generated a surge of disputed issues. The autonomy of enterprises and nationalist feeling almost everywhere, including of similar "de-tatized" social services like educa- Kosovo, where a series of nationalist demonstra- tion and health was also maintained and even tions in the late 1960s were a mild foretaste of somewhat enhanced by further "de-6tatization" those of 1981. It was most marked among the through a mammoth and complex "Law on Asso- Croats, whose numbers (4.5 million, second only ciated Labor" adopted in 1976. Because most to 8 million Serbs among the Yugoslav nations), enterprises, economic associations, and cultural rich resource base, strongly developed national institutions limit their activities to the territory of consciousness, and long tradition of struggling for one republic (creating, in a critical official phrase, their "historic state rights" against pre-1918 "closed Republican economies and cultures"), Magyar and post-1918 Serb domination make this too tends to strengthen regional and therefore them the most fervently autonomistand some- national autonomy and separation. Edvard times separatistof the Yugoslav peoples. In Kardelj's description of Yugoslavia as a "plural- Croatia a young, popular, and self-confident ism of self-management interests" describes and Party leadership, although themselves generally seeks to legitimize a reality, and the "pluralism" is more liberal than nationalist, accepted the national as well as functional. 10/DIR-2-'81

On the other hand, the Party in Tito's last years for signs of divisiveness that could be exploited was againif in lesser measure than Tito had dampens eagerness to express these too openly or apparently intendeda more centralized, dis- aggressively. The "external threat" has always, or ciplined, and authoritarian agency than in the almost always, tended to unite the Yugoslavs. third phase, before the Croatian crisis and Tito's Determination to make "collective leadership" reaction. Regional Party leaders, although in the work, including collective and paritetic federal, Yugoslav historical and contemporary context as state, and Party leadership, has been one of the potentially localist and therefore nationalist as hallmarks ofthe first post-Tito year. their deposed predecessors, currently lack the On the other hand, a major challenge to sta- personal stature, the right moment, and usually bility on the national and other fronts and to the the local political base and following to assert or determination to make federalism and collective expose themselves in this way. And it is the Party, leadership into durable solutions comes again, as whether centralized or "federalized," that still it did in the 1950s and 1960s, from the matters most. economy. Differences in regional economic interests and After Tito... an historic propensity to interpret these as Eight years of relative quiet on the national national questions are as real as ever and are front after the crisis of 1971-72marred por- certain to be aggravated if present serious eco- tentously, in retrospect, by small-scale demon- nomic problems are not solved and especially if strations and waves of arrests in Kosovo in the they become worse. This last, moreover, is not an mid-1970smust have seemed to Tito, at the end of unlikely prospect, both for domestic reasons and his reign, a vindication of his action. But the in the light of current international economic embers of national and nationalist fires were not trends over which the have no control. extinguished and could still be fueled by at least Yugoslavs some of the same issues and historic suspicions Yugoslavia's present economic problems are in that have caused them to burst into flame at other varying degrees of intensity common to all moments in postwar as well as prewar Yugoslav southern European countries today. (This history. Only Tito could have dealt with the crisis suggests that "ugoslav problems and prospects of 1971 as he did, and Tito is no longer there. will be better understood if examined in a Medi- The omens have been mixed as the post-Tito era terranean rather than an East European regional begins. context.) They include high inflation and un- employment rates, high balance of trade and pay- On the one hand a number of factors tend to ments deficits and foreign indebtedness, rapidly undermine the appeal ofdivisive nationalisms and rising energy costs, and the consequences of all of to suppress the expression of what is left. Most of these for recently rapid but unfinished and the "nationalist" demands that gave expression to dangerously unbalanced economic development. legitimate Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Like the other southern European countries, other national grievances in the late 1960s have Yugoslavia suffers from an uncomfortably high been met, even while those who made these de- degree of dependence on the maintenance of eco- mands were being purged from public life. The nomic prosperity in northern and western Europe, individual republics now have nearly as much where recessions promptly cut imports from and control over their economic fortunes and cultural tourism to the Mediterranean countries and send identities as the sovereign states in the European Gastarbeiter home, further increasing domestic Economic Community (which means that their unemployment and eliminating remittances of control is not unlimited or free of intra-Yugoslav great importance to the balance of payments. and wider interdependence!). Their local political leaderships, while actually less freely and com- To this list must be added a further problem petitively elected than in the late 1960s, are at least that is of major importance elsewhere in the their own, internally imposed by co-nationals Mediterranean world but is especially threatening rather than externally imposed; and those who to Yugoslavia because it directly raises the represent the republics in federal institutions are sensitive national question. This is an intolerably genuinely delegated by and responsible to these large and still growing difference in regional levels local and of prosperity and economic development that native leaderships. coincides dangerously with differences in nation- As for grievances that remain, whether real or ality and with the great cultural dividing line that imaginary, awareness that the outside world separates the predominantly Catholic, Central and the Soviet Union in particular--is watching European, and ex-Hapsburg north from the DIR-2-'81/11

Orthodox and Muslim ex-Ottoman south. The of the Serbs and Croats who live there, and how failure to close this gap or even to stop its widening would they and their kinsmen in Serbia and in years of high growth rates for all has been a Croatia react? The "Bosnian question," which major social problem and source of ethnic sus- detonated a World War in 1914 and which Tito picions and disputes ever since Yugoslavia was re- sought to answer forever by "affirming" a Muslim established as a federal state. In times of economic nation as a buffer and balance to end Serbo- troubles, with growth rates and improvements in Croatian rivalry over the region, threatens to living standards becoming smaller or even nega- reappear on Yugoslavia's and the world's agenda tive, an inequitable distribution of deprivations, of problems. The third case is Kosovo itself and whether real or imagined, seems bound to lead to adjacent Albanian-inhabited parts of Macedonia far more serious disputes than were formerly en- and Montenegro, where the old confrontation gendered by purported inequities in the distribu- between "legitimate" Albanian national claims tion of the fruits of a rapidly growing economy. and aspirations and equally "legitimate" Serbian Meanwhile, a serious flaw in the concept of and other historic claims and passionate attach- federalism as the basic solution for Yugoslavia's ments has again assumed an acute and urgent national question can affect future relationships form with international as well as domestic in either of two ways, helping to reconcile the dimensions. nations to life together or seriously complicate Paradoxically, however, the multinationality of their relations. The republics (except for officially the republics and provinces can also be a force trinational Bosnia-Herzegovina) are in theory the promoting at least a reluctant faute de mieux national states of their respective nations, bound reconciliation. Again to cite an obvious and im- together in a federation. However and with the portant case, concern for the fate of fellow-Serbs exception of Slovenia and "narrow" Serbia living as minorities in Croatia and also in Bosnia- without its autonomous provinces, all of them Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and elsewhere contain large and numerous national minorities can and often does make the Serbs the most gen- and are in actuality multinational states, a series uinely "Yugoslav" of Yugoslavs. They might of Yugoslavias writ small. And even Slovenia, prefer a Yugoslavia dominated by Serbs as its which is adding a growing army of Yugoslav most numerous nationality, as in former times, Gastarbeiter from other, less developed republics but if this is not possible, then Yugoslavia as it to its existing Italian and Magyar minorities, is now exists is clearly preferable to a disintegration becoming multinational. that would deliver up so many of their kinsmen to The potential for trouble arising from this flaw alien and potentially unfriendly rule. The ethnic in a theory that mistook historical for ethnic map reveals many other cases of this kind. frontiersnot out of ignorance but because The conclusion is that a Yugoslavia dissolved ethnic state frontiers cannot be drawn in an ethnic into small and only supposedly national sovereign patchworkis most obvious in three cases. The states would be condemned to a plethora of ill- first is Croatia with its many minorities and in treated minorities and a plague of mutual irre- particular its large Serb community (15% of the dentisms, increasing their susceptibility to population), whose reaction in 1970-71 to the im- external domination and exploitation as well as plications of a nationalist-led Croatian nation- the certainty of permanent strife and risk of war state, within or without the Yugoslav federation, among them. This is as true today as it was in has already been mentioned. The second is tri- 1915, when Professor R.W. Seton-Watson, the national Bosnia-Herzegovina, with an only great Scottish patron of Slav and Romanian recently recognized but already increasingly national aspirations in Central Europe, wrote to assertive Slav Muslim "nation" as its largest Serbian Crown Prince Alexander, later King of national community (40%, followed by Serbs with Yugoslavia, to beg him not to deviate from the 37%, and Croats with 20.5%). A significant num- goal of a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, ber of members of this community, from both toward the lesser one of a Greater Serbia as an Muslim "clericalist" circles and secular groups Allied War aim: whom the regime labels "bourgeois nationalist," have lately been suggesting that the "logic" of "... For it would certainly be unnecessary to point Yugoslav federalism should make Bosnia-Herze- out toyourRoyalHighness that if Croatia became govina "their" national homeland, even as Serbia an independent state alongside Serbia, the situa- and Croatia are the national homelands of the tion ofthe latter would be still less favorable than Serbs and Croats. What would then be the status before the war; for in that case the two sister 12/DIR-2-'81

nations would be enemies; in place of the idea of pluralism of institutionalized corporate and func- the national unity of all the Serbs, Croats, and tional interests in place of a pluralism of political Slovenes in a single state, we would have an acute parties and ideologies. Each of these has many conflict between two opposing Slav programs; and drawbacks, much room for improvement, in view of the impossibility of drawing any terri- numerous critics, and few who are unqualifiedly torial line ofseparation between Serbs and Croats, enthusiastic supporters. In each case, however, it each of the two states--the new Serbia as well as is hard to think of a possible and radically differ- the new Croatia--would be torn apart from one ent alternative arrangement that would not with end to the other by two rival irredentismsthe great certainty bring greater inconveniences, less Catholics andMusHms ofenlarged Serbia looking freedom, and even downright disaster for almost to Zagreb, and the Orthodox of Dalmatia and all Yugoslavs. Croatia to Belgrade. I do not need to emphasize There is considerable evidence, both impres- the extreme danger of such a situation, from a sionistic and from that political, economic, military and above all survey research, most a Yugoslavs are aware that this is so and draw the dynamic point ofview. appropriate conclusion. This is in turn the best The same argument applies, ceteris paribus evidence that the fundamental principles of what and in varying degrees of intensity, to all the the world calls "Titoism"federalism and its nationalities of today's Federation under Tito's concomitants as an answer to the national ques- institutionalized Communist dynasty. In this tion, nonalignment as the best guarantor of sover- sense the impossibility of drawing ethnic frontiers eign independence on the East-West frontier, and in the Balkan ethnic patchwork, a primary reason "self-management socialism" managed by a for the invention of the original "Yugoslav idea" "pluralism of... interests" under the guidance of as historic competitor to Greater Serbian, Greater a single and still semiautocratic Partyare likely Croatian, and other unitary or separatist con- to prove more stable in the post-Tito era than cepts, continues to be a compelling reason for a many in the outside world expect. On the other Yugoslavia of "brotherhood and unity." hand, each has thresholds of tolerance for sta- Such faute de mieux reasons for a widespread bility, like the ones examined for the national propensity to preserve the unity of Yugoslavia and question in these pages. These will vary in height keep ethnic rivalries and disputes within bounds over time and can be breached by crisis or overrun and subject to the rules of consensus politics have by gradual accumulations of distrust and dis- analogues in other sectors of the overall after-Tito illusion, at a certain point without regard for the question. The strongest force working for Yugo- "viability" or the desirability of the likely alterna- slav unity, despite national and cultural differ- tives. In the first year after Tito's death these ences, competing (but also complementary) thresholds, buttressed by the undesirability of all national interests, and the stresses that must arise currently visible alternatives, have for the most from these, is that any likely alternative would part seemed high and strong enough to withstand demonstrably be worse for most Yugoslavs. The considerable strain. Recent developments in same force works in the same way to preserve---in Kosovo are reminders, however, that the kind of grosso modo but not necessarily in detailthe rationality on which they are based is easily under- peculiar institutions of "self-management" and a mined and swept away by passion, especially when "socialist market economy," nonalignment as the it derives from "the national factor." fundamental principle of foreign policy, and a (August 1981) DIR-2-'81/13

NOTES

1. An unidentified member of the 23-member Yugoslav mous Provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. Other per- Party Presidency quoted in connection with the recent centages given here are extrapolations from the 1971 Kosovo disturbances by Paul Lendvai, "An Stelle einer census. Bilanz stehen Fragezeichen,"-in D/e Presse {Vienna), May 2-3,1981. 5. Except for the Albanian communities in Western Macedonia and Montenegro, who were similarly treated 2. See Dennison I. Rusinow, "The Other Albania: Kosovo by Macedonians and Montenegrins. 1979," Parts I and II [DIR-1,2-'80 ], A UFS Reports, Nos. 5 and 6, 1980, in which the conditions which led to the dis- 6. That word itself, although accurate in its original turbances of 1981 are described in detail. Several other denotative meaning, was an anathema because of its officials interviewed for and quoted in those Reports, bourgeois and therefore negative connotations in Marxist including Provincial government Vice-President Pajazit usage. Nusi and Secretary for Education Imer Jaka, were also 7. Cited in Note 2 above. among the first to resign. 8. Hugh Seton-Watson, Ljubo Boban, et al., eds., R.W. 3. See preceding note. Seton- Watson and the Yugoslavs-Correspondence 1906- 4. Precise current figures will not be known until the re- 1911 {London and Zagreb, 1976), I, 238 {letter to Prince sults by nationality from the census taken in April 1981 are Regent Alexander of September 17, 1915, in French). published. This has so far been done only for the Autono-