SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION

Nebojša Vladisavljević CONCLUSION: PROTEST POLITICS, THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AND NATIONALIST CONFLICT*

The late 1980s witnessed a mobilization of ordinary people across Eastern Europe that played an important part in the conflicts that triggered the fall of communism. The levels of mobilization in the eastern part of socialist Yugoslavia exceeded those in most other parts of the region, and their immediate consequences were no less dramatic. And yet, images from popular and scholarly writing associated with this wave of mobilization stand out for different reasons. The generally accepted image of protest politics that unfolded across Eastern Europe is that of people power employed to bring about democratization of communist party-states. By contrast, the literature that touches on the antibureaucratic revolution and the episodes of mobilization that surrounded it conveys exclusively images of top-down, authoritarian mobilization and virulent, chauvinistic nationalism. The evidence I presented in this book suggests that most published accounts provide a misleading interpretation of this wave of mobilization. Below I sharpen my argument about the mobilizational wave in the light of this evidence, and show how it sheds light on the fall of Yugoslav communism and the rise of a new populist authoritarianism, as well as on the break-up of Yugoslavia and the contemporary Serb–Albanian nationalist conflict in and over Kosovo.

Explaining the antibureaucratic revolution and related protest campaigns

According to the popular and scholarly literature, the mobilization of ordinary people in socialist Yugoslavia in the 1980s is an emblematic case of elite-driven and purposive nationalist mobilization. The key players were political and cultural elites, while ordinary people were little more than passive participants in the events. With the decline of communism, opportunistic high party-state officials engineered the mass mobilization in search of new ways to preserve their political power. The events principally reflected the Serb nationalist revival, which provoked a reactive mobilization of Kosovo Albanians. Nationalist themes spread from small groups of dissident intellectuals to the general public, and the developments were boosted by the support of Leninist officials who aimed to protect their power by embracing nationalism. According to this view, these and subsequent nationalist outcomes mainly originated from the nationalist strategies of the political and cultural elites.†

Ordinary people or elites The elite thesis is misleading because non-state and non-elite actors played a vital role both in the early stages of mobilization and in the expansion of protest politics. Driven by different causes, aiming at different goals, and working independently from each other, the grass-roots groups of Kosovo Serbs and industrial workers across Yugoslavia initiated popular

* Poglavlje iz Nebojša Vladisavljević (2008) Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Miloševid, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan). † Cohen (2001: 62–78) and Popov (1993: 20–3) offer the most sophisticated version of the elite argument. The purposive nationalist mobilization argument can be found in Cohen (2001: 57–88), Pavlowitch (2002: 184–98), Popov (1993: 16–23), Pavković (2000: 89–90), Đilas (1993), and Crnobrnja (1994). 1

SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION protests in the mid-1980s and over time became influential political actors. Most observers failed to identify the main agents in these events largely due to an erroneous assumption that non-state and non-elite actors could not initiate and sustain protests under communist authoritarianism. Since high officials did not suppress the protests and since the protest groups managed to organize, recruit activists, appeal for popular support and make major demands on the party-state, observers came to believe that Milošević or dissident intellectuals, or both, had orchestrated the events. This assumption originates from the view that modern non-democratic regimes are invariably closed, exclusive and repressive and thus an extremely hostile political context for the collective action of ordinary people at all times. And yet, modern non-democratic regimes vary considerably in their institutional design, informal relations among their various power centres and strategies towards challenger groups. Economic decline, political instability, political realignments and elite conflicts often create political opportunities for previously powerless and disadvantaged groups to engage in popular protest. Indeed, the rise and expansion of protest politics in Yugoslavia in the 1980s was an unintended consequence of its peculiar communist authoritarianism, that is, a largely relaxed and tolerant non-democratic regime with radically decentralized federal, local and self- management institutions, and of political change which began after the death of Tito. The communist leadership mainly targeted ideological dissidence and was considerably more responsive to discontent when it came from the working class, students and grass-roots groups with national grievances, due to their strategic position in the officially sanctioned legacy of the liberation war and indigenous revolution. Industrial workers and Kosovo Serb activists repeatedly demonstrated their loyalty to the party-state and the Yugoslav federation, and worked partly within official channels, thus exploiting the institutional resources of this most liberal and decentralized East European communist state. Growing elite conflict, driven by leadership succession, generational change and by disputes between the republics and autonomous provinces, paralysed Yugoslavia’s collective leadership and further impeded attempts at the suppression of popular challenges. While pursuing separate goals, industrial workers and Kosovo Serb activists exploited a long-standing popular discontent with the political class that had overseen a sharp decline in the previously successful economy and the rise of nationalist tensions in Kosovo. The open defiance of the previously unassailable party-state further undermined its legitimacy and invited other popular challenges. The rapid expansion of protest politics accelerated conflicts in Yugoslavia’s political class, that is, between and within regional elites and between higher and lower-level officials, and set the stage for an alliance between a variety of non-state actors and Milošević against an increasingly old-fashioned and dispirited Titoist establishment. The broad alliance, sparked off by the sudden and far-reaching success of protest politics and Milošević’s populist appeals, and cemented by their struggle against common foes, signalled the fall of the Yugoslav version of communism and the formation of a new populist consensus, which became the bedrock of Milošević’s authoritarian rule in the early 1990s. The antibureaucratic revolution involved the agency of elite and non-elite actors, in roughly equal measures. The extent to which one or the other prevailed in specific events varied temporally and spatially. The antibureaucratic movement rested largely on the breakthroughs achieved by industrial workers and Kosovo Serb activists in previous years, especially their strategies and action frames, well-established networks, and the destruction of a dominant but

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION misleading image of unified and dignified elites. In the late summer and autumn of 1988, however, the social movement became a strategic alliance of protest groups, intellectuals, individual rebels from official organizations and parts of the old political establishment. In Vojvodina and Montenegro, where mobilization originated largely from local sources, non-state actors and opponents of high officials from the official organizations organized rallies and demonstrations on their own, with the support of Belgrade’s powerful media. In central Serbia, the role of Milošević and party-state officials was critical. The Kosovo Albanian protests followed a similar route. The November 1988 and March 1989 protests appear to have been a spontaneous counter-mobilization, without much input from elites, while the February 1989 protests reveal an important role played by elites, who launched an effective public relations campaign during the Stari Trg protest and the general strike, backed by much of the province’s media. In short, in the light of the evidence presented in this book, the argument that ordinary people are incapable of coherent political action without the involvement of elites is deeply flawed. On the other hand, it would be unwise to exaggerate the power of ordinary people. Only under very specific circumstances can they challenge authorities and elites with success, that is, exert substantial political influence. In most cases, under both authoritarianism and democracy, authorities can easily confront and weather out popular challenges. In the case of Yugoslavia, the extraordinary period of the 1980s undermined the communist regime and thus made it vulnerable to the mobilization of ordinary people. Even when popular unrest undermines established regimes and protest groups achieve recognition for some of their demands, consolidated elites and their priorities principally shape the ways in which the polity and its policies are reconstituted.

The politics of nationalist mobilization or nationalist strategies The purposive nationalist mobilization thesis also provides a highly distorted view of this wave of mobilization. The wave involved a variety of themes and demands and only in its late stages became exclusively nationalist. True, the protests of Kosovo Serb and Albanian activists developed around their nationalist strategies all along. This was hardly surprising and originated partly from the fact that Kosovo had long been a deeply divided society, polarized by conflict between Albanians and Serbs, and partly from Yugoslavia’s institutional structure that favoured mobilization along nationalist lines. Nonetheless, important parts of the mobilization wave, which featured high levels of participation, involved socio-economic and non-nationalist political demands and claims. The strikes of industrial workers since the mid-1980s, and their protests in the summer of 1988 had little to do with nationalism. Similarly, the antibureaucratic revolution involved a blend of nationalist and unrelated themes. As mobilization spread from Kosovo Serbs to other groups, the focus of their attention ranged from the constitutional status of the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and Serb–Albanian relations to socio-economic issues, industrial relations, the accountability of high officials and popular participation in politics. The wave of mobilization reached its peak only with the rise of the highly resonant antibureaucratic frame, which reflected the dominant vision of the conflict in socialist Yugoslavia. While featuring nationalist demands and symbolism, the antibureaucratic revolution was simultaneously a social movement with an important socio- economic focus and one aimed at the extension of political participation and the accountability

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION of political elites, just like the social movements that developed throughout Eastern Europe on the eve of the fall of communism. The dominance of exclusionary and confrontational nationalist themes in late February and March 1989 reflected a major attitudinal shift among political actors, high officials and non- elite groups alike. This outcome did not result principally from the nationalist strategies of the various actors. Rather, it was largely an unintended consequence of the high levels of mobilization and spiralling of conflicts of all varieties at both elite and mass levels in a highly decentralized, authoritarian multi-national state, which was going through an acute economic crisis and rapid liberalization. Protest politics highlighted old and triggered new conflicts across various sectors of society and the political system, including industrial and socio-economic conflicts, struggles related to political participation, the accountability of political elites and relations between the republics and nations. The resulting widespread conflict in an increasingly dysfunctional institutional context, and at a time when the power structure was changing rapidly, became the vehicle which transformed all of these struggles into exclusionary conflict, which now reflected the main underlying structural divisions in Yugoslavia between its republics and nations. Protest politics highlighted and amplified pre-existing conflicts within the political class and initiated changes in the power relations between regional elites, thereby altering their strategic choices. Before the summer of 1988, several lines of division were present within Yugoslavia’s political class, such as over constitutional reform in Serbia and Yugoslavia, over the Kosovo policy, over economic reforms and political liberalization, as well as between different political generations. The cleavages often intersected, which complicated relations in the political class. The summer 1988 mobilization undermined the leadership of Vojvodina, affecting the balance of power in the federation during a highly sensitive period of constitutional debate, and thus amplified conflict between the high officials of the republics and of the autonomous provinces. The antibureaucratic revolution led to the escalation of conflict by triggering not only important changes in the personal composition of the political elites of Vojvodina, Montenegro and Kosovo, but also a major re-distribution of power among the leaderships of Yugoslavia’s republics. As a result, constitutional reform that would empower the central organs Serbia and Yugoslavia, which had long been considered extremely unlikely, now seemed increasingly feasible. With rising stakes in the conflict, the salience of other pre-existing cleavages within elites in the republics, such as between different political generations, over economic reforms and political liberalization, or newly important divisions such as between high officials on the one side, and lower-ranking officials, local officials and company managers on the other, faded away. The leaders of the republics now forsook any qualms they might have had about extending exclusive nationalist appeals to their national constituencies. Since the major re- distribution of power among the republics’ elites now unfolded on the public stage, these events also brought about an attitudinal shift among the population. The growing prospect of the constitutional restructuring of the Yugoslav federation, perceived as threatening to the interests of some republics and their constituent nations, overshadowed other, previously important political concerns. Thus, the high officials’ nationalist appeals resonated well among their national constituencies.

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By bringing conflicts over constitutional reform and the Kosovo policy onto the public stage, the mobilization wave also set off the radicalization of most political actors. Earlier, heated elite conflicts over these issues had been apparent only to professional observers. Although prolonged negotiations over constitutional reform had remained inconclusive, the lack of popular pressure left hopes that representatives of the republics and autonomous provinces would ultimately reach a compromise. The summer 1988 mobilization shifted passionate conflicts from narrow leadership circles to the televised sessions of the Central Committee of the LCY. The republics’ leaders were now under intense pressure not to offer any concessions to their counterparts from other republics because their constituencies might consider these to be a sign of weakness. Since popular support had become a major power resource in the course of the mobilizational wave, growing competition among regional leaders for the support of their national constituencies resulted in nationalist outbidding, even among high officials who had not previously been considered nationalists. The explosion of conflict in early 1989 brought increasing pressure on individuals to choose between competing political loyalties, which had previously coexisted largely in harmony with one another. Struggles over constitutional reform and the explosive conflict between Serbia and Slovenia at both elite and mass levels encouraged people to embrace more exclusive political identities. These pressures grew as high levels of mobilization brought uncertainty to large parts of the population. While Serb and Yugoslav, Croat and Yugoslav, Slovene and Yugoslav, and to a lesser degree, Albanian and Yugoslav identities had previously been considered compatible, the supra-national Yugoslav identity gradually lost out in competition with more exclusive national ones. In short, the conflicts turned overwhelmingly nationalist only in the late stages of the mobilizational wave. While Kosovo Serb and Albanian activists initiated protests under nationalist themes early on, most other groups, who engaged in protest with other demands and goals, embraced more exclusive identities only in the course of mobilization and at the time of heightened conflict. Even nationalist themes were initially cast in a less than exclusionary fashion. In short, the evidence from this book suggests that nationalist outcomes result from politics, rather than the pre-existing nationalist strategies of political actors. Changes in power relations within the political elite, and between the elite and the masses, often drive the process of identity change in multi-national states. It may well be that non-violent popular protest is not always the best way to promote political change in complex multi-national societies. Popular protests tend to raise unrealistic expectations on one side and unnecessary and exaggerated fears on the other, thus leading to polarization. Unless there is an external source of cohesion for challenger groups from different segments of a divided society, such as a common external foe, non-violent protests may unintentionally reinforce divisions, even lead to the escalation of conflict and violence. The relationship between non-violent action and the use of force is complex, and shifts from one to the other do occur. Non-violence is rarely principled, that is, fully based on the moral rejection of the use of force. In fact, most practitioners of non-violence in the twentieth century employed it for pragmatic reasons, as the most effective tool to bring about political or social change within a particular context (see Ackerman and Kruegler 1994: 5). At least some actors involved in non- violence may change their mind in the face of a changing political context, in which violence may appear as a more efficacious means to achieve their goals. Thus, genuine non-violent popular protests need not inevitably result in democracy and peace.

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION

The fall of communism, Serbian style

The expansion of protest politics brought about considerable shifts in power relations in Serbia and the Yugoslav federation. Some of these power shifts were only temporary, while others had a lasting influence on the politics of Yugoslavia’s successor states. Regarding the short-term impact, protest politics altered power relations within Yugoslavia’s political class, namely by triggering the rebellion of previously unimportant political actors, such as lower- ranking and local officials and company managers, and by strengthening Milošević against his opponents from other republics. At a time when popularity became an important power resource, Milošević was the only one among Yugoslavia’s regional leaders who enjoyed broad popular support from his constituency. Moreover, some protest groups and their allies temporarily developed into important centres of power. The Kosovo Polje group, a number of managers and trade union leaders of large state enterprises, as well as individual local officials, suddenly commanded more political influence than many party committees and high officials. These power shifts were most visible at the peak of mobilization in October–November 1988 and January–February 1989, but faded away with demobilization and the consolidation of political elites. The high levels of mobilization brought about exhaustion among participants, while the satisfaction of important demands, such as the resignations of the high officials of Vojvodina and Montenegro and the shift towards constitutional reform, removed important reasons for further participation. Those mobilization entrepreneurs from official organizations, such as managers of large state enterprises and local officials, even trade union leaders from large enterprises, encouraged demobilization and directed popular demands to the official channels. After the political demise of the leaders of Vojvodina and Montenegro and of hundreds of local officials across Serbia and Montenegro, they were eager to switch to routine political action. Many had long harboured mixed feelings about popular protest and considered it legitimate only as a means of activating formal decision-making centres. Now co-opted into the political elite, they were keen to exploit the advantages of institutional political action, as well as the perks associated with their new status. Gradually, a new, radically different power structure emerged, partly as a consequence of political change that had begun with the death of Tito, and partly as a result of condensed and intensive political conflicts and mobilization since the summer of 1988. This political change occurred before the rise of multi-party, electoral politics and in many respects survived its arrival in early 1990, thus decisively shaping Milošević’s authoritarian rule over the following years. Changes in the power structure related to both the internal workings of the party-state and to state–society relations. The party-state structures at the regional and federal levels, such as the party and state Presidencies, the Central Committees, governments and Assemblies, as well as the ideology, rules and procedures of the party-state, had previously heavily constrained the power of regional party leaders. With onset of the antibureaucratic revolution, Milošević’s popularity soared across Serbia and Montenegro while his rivals became increasingly unpopular, thus lifting many constrains to his behaviour. The main sources of power before and after the antibureaucratic revolution differed considerably. Earlier, the power of high officials originated

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION from their office, from the unified party-state leadership and from their control over society. Now popularity became the main power resource of the leader, squarely in populist terms. The regime’s rules that regulated access to high office changed considerably. Before, party-state officials developed their careers by advancing gradually up the official hierarchy, for the most part in the party and state bureaucracy. Now some of the lower-ranking party and local officials, who played an important part in the antibureaucratic revolution, suddenly made a great leap into the higher ranks of the regime. For example, Momir Bulatović, from Titograd’s University Committee suddenly became the President of Montenegro’s party Presidency, while Mihalj Kertes, a local party chief from Bačka Palanka was later co-opted into Serbia’s state Presidency. Likewise, many party-state officials in Vojvodina and Montenegro enjoyed fast-track careers. Party membership effectively ceased to be the main criterion for holding high office. Milošević co-opted a large number of the antibureaucratic revolution’s entrepreneurs, including managers and trade union leaders of large state enterprises, and even dissident intellectuals. Thus, power shifted decisively from the party committees to the offices of the state. Tellingly, Milošević left the highest regional party office to become the President of Serbia’s state Presidency in late 1989. The wave of mobilization also brought about important changes in state–society relations. One involved the expansion of pluralism in social, economic and political life. Ever since the break with Stalin, Yugoslavia had enjoyed greater pluralism than other East European states. In political life, pluralism had existed only within the party-state as ‘institutional’, not political pluralism, created and sustained by the regime (see Hough 1977). Nonetheless, boundaries between the party-state and society became increasingly blurred in the years after the death of Tito, and this pluralism, not least in the form of writers’ and professional associations, had increasing political implications. Liberalization accompanied the summer 1988 mobilization and the antibureaucratic revolution. There was a sudden relaxation of controls in cultural life and tolerance for the seeds of future political opposition. Censorship vanished and former dissident intellectuals gained access to the media and publishing houses, often to the dismay of the high officials of other republics, such as those from Croatia (see Danas, 16 August 1988: 24). While many former dissident intellectuals temporarily backed Milošević, partly due to the liberalization and partly because of his nationalist appeal, these former dissident circles became the breeding ground for future political parties. The leadership of Serbia failed to officially embrace political pluralism, but tolerated it in practice. Groups and proto-parties operated freely, vied for media attention and lobbied government and businesses for support. Partly drawing on the legacy of the antibureaucratic revolution and partly feeling pressure from political reforms that unfolded in Slovenia and in other East European states, Milošević and his associates hailed so-called non-party pluralism as the formula that would supposedly bring together the advantages of communism and liberal democracy. This new formula included the broadening of the officially sanctioned repertoire of participation. Multi-candidate, but not multi-party elections were now introduced for state and local government offices. In addition to the legalization of the industrial strike across Yugoslavia, Serbia’s leadership aimed to institutionalize popular protest by staging massive rallies, modelled on those of the antibureaucratic revolution. The November 1988 rally in Belgrade was the first such rally in which around 700 000 people took part, bussed in from all parts of Serbia and supplied with flags and industrially produced banners. Seven months later, an even larger event

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION was arranged in Gazimestan, in central Kosovo, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the medieval battle of Kosovo. Careful staging and logistics replaced the spontaneity of early mobilization, but numbers grew as all party-state resources were now employed to ensure a large turnout. The new institutions created to increase popular participation in politics had little power, but provided a feeling of participation and involvement to many. The leading role of the party remained constitutionally sanctioned over the following months, and Yugoslavia’s version of communist ideology retained some, though a sharply diminishing social presence, but the internal workings of the party-state and state–society relations had altered so much that the emerging power structure only superficially resembled communism. Shortly afterward, the communist façade, with its oppressively omnipresent symbolism of the party-state and its straitjacketed ways, collapsed as well, thus bringing some relief to many people who had considered such developments inconceivable in their own lifetimes. Nonetheless, while moving decisively away from the old regime, Serbia and Yugoslavia’s other republics, with the exception of Slovenia, did not get any closer to democracy. In this respect, Yugoslavia’s transition from communism diverged from that unfolding simultaneously in much of Eastern Europe and ended in the rise and consolidation of a new authoritarianism. In some important respects, the mobilization of ordinary people in Serbia facilitated the rise of this new authoritarianism. The antibureaucratic movement lacked cohesion, both programmatic and organizational. The various groups involved had highly dissimilar grievances and goals, few of which had any but indirect relevance to democracy. While the broad antibureaucratic theme was successful in mobilizing opposition to some high officials and their policies, it did not provide much guidance about what should be done once the officials resigned. The focus was on the reform of Yugoslavia’s authoritarianism and state, rather than on democratization. The peak of the mobilization wave was also short-lived and there was not enough time for more stable collective identities to emerge and for protest leaders and activists to build lasting autonomous organizations, which could potentially turn them into promoters of democratization in the later period. Moreover, although various challenger groups were initially autonomous of cultural and political elites, many forfeited this status when they supported the rise and consolidation of charismatic leadership. The antibureaucratic revolution therefore did not live up to its name and could not be considered a revolution, that is, an irregular, extra-constitutional and/or violent overthrow of a state or political regime by a popular movement (Goodwin 2001: 9). The change in the personal composition of the regime and some of its policies under popular pressure prior to the end of communism only rejuvenated and reenergized the authoritarian regime and thus improved its life-prospects, albeit in a very different form. The failure of a democratic opposition in Serbia to successfully confront the authoritarian regime was only partly due to its oscillation between the promotion of nationalism and democracy. There had been strong opposition currents in Belgrade (and Ljubljana) throughout the 1980s, which outshined the dissident intellectuals of most East European states; even their nationalism hardly went much beyond that of other places. However, the rise and successes of a broad anti-establishment movement, supported by an energetic and unconventional high official, rendered dissident intellectuals’ anti-regime appeals much less resonant with the population than would otherwise have been the case. That

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION is probably why some former dissident intellectuals initially opted to support, rather than oppose Milošević. The important features of the mobilization wave and greater ambivalence towards democracy of elites and important sections of Yugoslavia’s population than that of their East European counterparts originated from the historical, structural and institutional legacy of Yugoslav communism and the state. In both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the simple polarization between the communist regime and pro-democratic opposition forces on the model of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which would result in clear victory for the democratic opposition, was unlikely. Transition from communism in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union involved not only regime change, but also the restructuring of complex multi-national states. Scholars of democratization recognize that post-communist transitions differed from transitions from authoritarian rule in Southern Europe and Latin America in that they were triple transitions (counting also the transition to a market economy) (Offe 1991), but this proposition applied to a much greater extent to Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union than to other East European states. As a result, political actors in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union often faced priorities that had little to do with democracy, especially as inter-regional and nationalist conflicts grew. Moreover, the communist regimes of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union enjoyed genetic legitimacy among important sections of their population, unlike those across Eastern Europe, as they originated from indigenous revolution and played an important part in national liberation during the Second World War. One implication of this was a relatively independent geopolitical position and internal policy relieved from excessive external constraints, whereas most East European states from the Soviet bloc remained largely dependent on their senior partner. Although many people in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union harboured great discontent with, and were highly critical of, the policies and personal composition of the regime, they rarely questioned its basic legitimacy, in contrast to the populations of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, for example. As a result, there was no polarization between regime and society and the lines between different actors became increasingly blurred. Demands for democratization in most East European states strongly benefited from a fear of Russia/the Soviet Union. Desire to ‘join’ the West made it necessary for both elites and the masses to opt for democracy, even if many had hardly thought of themselves as democrats. Political actors in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union had no such external constraints and could also consider other possibilities.

Protest politics and Yugoslavia’s nationalist conflicts

The rise and expansion of protest politics in the second half of the 1980s was hardly the only factor behind the nationalist conflicts that led to the break-up of the Yugoslav federation. With or without mobilization, the collapse of communism was bound to make the survival of Yugoslavia difficult. Like the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, the other two communist multi- national federations, Yugoslavia encouraged its republics to develop a party cadre based on titular nationality, as well as a range of political, economic, social and cultural institutions. Created to expand the control of the party over the politicization of ethnicity, these institutions over time turned republics into proto-states and provided the main resources for republican elites to pursue nationalist strategies and thus trigger the dissolution of the state at a time of growing malleability of international and domestic factors (Roeder 1991; Bunce 1999). And yet,

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION there was nothing intrinsic to multi-national federalism that caused political instability. This constitutional arrangement had long served as a source of stability in these complex multi- national states, rather than a source of conflict. True, Yugoslavia stood out among communist multi-national federations in terms of the extent to which the power of federal units grew at the expense of the federal centre. Since the radical federalization of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yugoslavia was a highly decentralized state in which political and economic life was structured largely along the borders of its six republics and Serbia’s two autonomous provinces. Not only did the independent powers of federal organs shrink considerably, but also policy formulation in the remaining areas of federal jurisdiction now required the consensus of regional representatives. Regional representation in the federal organs was based on the parity formula, despite a huge regional disparity in terms of size, population and economic power. The federal organs were further weakened as regional leaderships gained control over personnel appointments at the federal level and over the execution of federal policy. Judging formal institutional framework, Yugoslavia almost resembled a confederation. While the institutionalist accounts rightly stress that communism’s collapse was bound to create great challenges to the survival of this most decentralized communist multi-national federation (Bunce 1999), the break-up of Yugoslavia was hardly inevitable. Surveys conducted by independent research analysts in the 1980s still registered very low levels of rejection of other nationalities (Pantić 1987; Kuzmanović 1994) and the behaviour of high officials did not suggest that they intended to split up the state. What sealed the state’s fate, in addition to its potentially dysfunctional institutions, was the attitudinal shift from broad support for the state’s survival at both elite and mass levels to a widespread belief that the state was standing in the way of the interests of particular republics and nations. This book reveals that the attitudinal shift was largely the consequence of high levels of conflict during the peak of the mobilizational wave, at a time when the communist power structure was rapidly disintegrating. The break-up of Yugoslavia, previously almost unimaginable for both the political class and the population at large, now came to be seen as a distinct possibility. True, some actors, especially dissident intellectuals, had long championed nationalist claims, articulating various nationalist arguments that would subsequently be adopted by high officials (Dragović-Soso 2002; Wachtel 1998). However, their influence in the political process was negligible before the autumn of 1988, and the popular appeal of their nationalist demands and claims grew only with the explosion of elite conflict and conflicts between high officials and the population at large. The wave of mobilization served as the vehicle which transformed various socio-economic and political, nationalist and non-nationalist struggles into nationalist conflicts, and which turned inclusive nationalist themes increasingly exclusionary. Like in the Soviet Union, the critical actors that brought about its break-up were themselves transformed by the spread of nationalism (see Beissinger 2002: 441). Indeed, the argument that the communist leaders of Serbia and Slovenia, Milošević and Kučan, had long secretly harboured plans to drastically re-shape the state or trigger its break-up, or had opted for exclusive nationalist strategies purely for opportunistic reasons, to remain in power at a time of major political change, is misleading. The leaders in fact gradually embraced nationalist strategies under the pressure of the spiralling conflicts, which had been triggered or amplified in the course of the mobilizational wave.

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Even so, the mix of the potentially dysfunctional institutions of the Yugoslav federation and the politics of nationalist mobilization did not lead inexorably to the collapse of the federation and, more importantly, did not have to result in large-scale violence. Failure of leadership also played an important role in these events. The Yugoslav conflicts in the second half of the 1980s revealed a very low quality of leadership, all over socialist Yugoslavia. The vast majority of Yugoslavia’s high officials failed to respond to the growing economic and political crises and wasted their energies on petty conflicts. Once elite conflict and mass mobilization had expanded, they engaged in nationalist outbidding. At a time when they should have cooled passions, high officials fanned the flames of conflict. The role that Milošević played in these events was destructive and deplorable, to say the least, and has been well documented. However, most of Yugoslavia’s other high officials, his predecessors and contemporaries, fare hardly better in the light of the evidence presented in this book. This book’s focus on the origins, dynamics and consequences of the antibureaucratic revolution has also provided a unique insight into the role that Milošević played in the political struggles in Yugoslavia of the 1980s. Challenging a widely accepted view that he rose personally as leader in 1986–87 principally because of the broad appeal of his nationalist programme, I have argued that his ascent had little to do with nationalism and was an internal party affair that unfolded according to the rules of the game in communist party-states, without much influence from society. His rise to the position of Serbia’s communist leader should not be confused with the subsequent changes to the power structure and the spread of nationalism, which unfolded under strong pressures from below during the peak of mobilization. Milošević’s consolidation in power in Serbia and the important role he played during the break-up of Yugoslavia were possible only at a time of rapid disintegration of the old power structure and the rise of popular mobilization, developments unintentionally produced by the peculiar features of Yugoslavia’s late authoritarianism, and initiated by autonomous non-state and non-elite actors. The wave of mobilization and parallel political struggles in and over Kosovo led to a major political change in the autonomous province. The rejection of demands originating from the protests of November 1988 and February 1989, and growing state repression, facilitated the radicalization of the demands of Kosovo Albanians. The constitutional reform of March 1989 and, especially, the new constitution of Serbia of July 1990 reduced considerably the autonomy of Kosovo, while Milošević acquired full control over its political life and public sector. Serbia’s government responded to the resistance of Kosovo Albanians to the constitutional reforms by introducing a range of decrees that amounted to gross violations of their rights. It disbanded Kosovo’s Assembly, fired thousands of Kosovo Albanians from the public sector and replaced them with Serbs (see Kostovicova 2005). Milošević filled political offices in the province with local Serb apparatchiks, mainly those with little connection to earlier grass-roots mobilization. Unsurprisingly, these officials were little more than Milošević’s proxies. The initial disorientation of Kosovo Albanians after the crackdown gave way to non-violent resistance. By rejecting Serbia’s political authority over Kosovo and through the creation of parallel institutions, especially in education, Ibrahim Rugova’s Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), now widely accepted as the voice of the Kosovo Albanian community, aimed at the secession of Kosovo. This book suggests that an exclusive focus on broadly conceived Serb–Albanian relations, centred on the issue of the status of Kosovo and relations between Belgrade and Pristina (or Pristina/Tirana), is misleading. Another, equally important dimension of the Kosovo conflict is

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SERBIA’S ANTIBUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION CONCLUSION the Albanian–Serb conflict within the province. Over the last two decades there had been little interest in the grievances and behaviour of local actors, especially Kosovo Serbs, and little understanding of the changing political context within which they struggled and of the important consequences of their political action. The failure of local and external political actors—before, during and after the rule of Milošević, including representatives of the international organizations involved in reconstruction and institution building after the 1999 Kosovo war—to take both dimensions of the conflict seriously, strongly contributed to the intractability of the conflict.

*

In late 1989 Yugoslavia looked very different than only a year and a half before. The political conflicts surrounding the wave of mobilization had transformed the internal dynamics of the party-state and of state–society relations to such an extent that the political system now only superficially resembled communism. While other East European states largely opted for democracy, Serbia and Yugoslavia’s other republics, except for Slovenia, faced the rise of a new authoritarianism. Various struggles, socio-economic and political, at both elite and mass levels were transformed into an intense nationalist conflict, which later resulted in the break-up of Yugoslavia, prolonged civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia and the intensification of the Serb– Albanian nationalist conflict in and over Kosovo. The end of the mobilizational wave in March 1989 was by no means the end of popular protests. Another series of protests erupted in the autumn of that year with the resurgence of mobilization of Kosovo Albanians, while various other protests subsequently occurred across Yugoslavia. However, these protests reflected different battles. Struggles over the emergence and shape of electoral, multi-party politics replaced earlier, somewhat naïve attempts to bring about greater popular participation within the old political system. Nationalist mobilization, earlier largely restricted to the battles over a relatively limited constitutional reform, became increasingly radical, featuring maximalist demands for national self-determination.

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