The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980-1992 [1 ed.] 086091593X, 9780860915935

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The Destruction of

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The Destruction of

ugoslavia Tracking the Break-up 1980-92 +

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Yv VERSO London « New York

First published by Verso 1993 © Verso 1993 All rights reserved Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1V 3HR USA: 29 West 35th Street, New York, N¥ 10001-2291

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN 0-86091-—376-7 ISBN 0-86091—593—X (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset by Type Study, Scarborough Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn

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1% This book is dedicated to the cities of Vukovar and Sarajevo

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Contents

Introduction

xi

Part One: The Kosovo Watershed and its Aftermath

(1981-87) Introduction Wrong Turn in Kosovo Students Demand Amnesty for Albanians Kosovo between Yugoslavia and Albania Nationalism Captures the Serbian Intelligentsia (a) Petition by Belgrade Intellectuals (b) The End of an Era (c) Editors of Praxis International Defend their Position on Kosovo (d) ‘Michele Lee’ Replies

3 6 15 49

Part Two: Interregnum (1980-88)

Introduction

77

Tito’s Deluge

79

Reverberations of the Polish Coup (a) Reactions Official and Otherwise Petitions on Poland (b) Solidarnost with Solidarnosc

84

Onset of the Crisis (a) The Radovié Affair and its Menacing Consequences Open Letter against Repression (b) Yugoslavia between the IMF and Socialism (c) Trial of the Belgrade Six

89

A New Stage in the Crisis

105

Awaiting the Future

115

Brief Notes on a Visit to Yugoslavia, 18 May to 1 June 1988

122

Democracy and the National Question

137

Part Three: Milosevic Assails the Federal Order (1988-89) Introduction

159

Will the Centre Hold? (a) Slovenes Reach for Democracy (b) ‘Anti-bureaucratic Revolution’ Triumphs in Serbia (c) Class Anger Explodes in Montenegro (d) Albanians March for Democracy (e) The End of Self-Management?

163

Break-up (a) Trepéa on Strike (Jelena Lovric) (b) The Albanian Intifada (Shkelzen Maliqi) (c) The Spectre of Balkanization

179

Civil War in Yugoslavia?

218

Part Four: Systemic Collapse (1990-91)

Introduction

241

The League of Communists Breaks Up Kosovo and the Struggle for Democracy in Yugoslavia: Interview with Veton Surroi

243

Yugoslavia Goes into a Penalty Shoot-Out

254

The Slide towards Civil War

260

The Generals’ Manifesto Report concerning the Actual Situation in the World and Yugoslavia, and Immediate Tasks of the Yugoslav People’s Army

266

The Undoing of Yugoslavia

ars

Youth Rebel against MiloSevié The Serbian Intellectuals’ Appeal

281

Yugoslavia in Trouble (a) Will Yugoslavia Survive?

287

(b) Draft Resolution on Yugoslavia to be Put before the European Parliament The Kosovo Boomerang

291

Letter to The Guardian on the Coup

297

Part Five: War (June—December 1991)

Introduction A Requiem for Yugoslavia Memorandum for the British Media A Country Unravels -& NHN WwW h

The Spread of War (a) The Vampire of Greater Serbia (b) Letter to the British Government in the Name of the

301 303 310 317 320

Croatian Peace Forum

Lessons of History: War Returns to Yugoslavia

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The War in Yugoslavia

336

Balkanization or Lebanization?

346

A War that Serbia Can Only Lose

351

MN NH © ON To Be

Against the War in Yugoslavia Means Opposing the Aggressor

356

Index

360

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Introduction

The year 1992, scheduled to be a milestone on the road to European unity, has seen Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities slowly bombarded to pieces and their inhabitants starved before the television eyes of the world. It has seen two million Bosnian Moslems threatened with Europe’s first genocide since World War Two, most already driven from their homes by massacre, rape and terror, thrown into concentration camps or made refugees within their own country or outside it. All this has occurred with the full knowledge of the outside world, which is also quite aware of the identity of the perpetrator, who has been perfecting these procedures for over a year now in occupied Croatia, including in zones formally under UN jurisdiction. The year has seen Bosnia’s legal, multinational government holed up in Sarajevo, treated as a mere ‘warring party’, and pressed to surrender by Western governments eager for peace at any price. Short-sighted and cynical, divided among themselves, determined to avoid intervention, and seeking an eventual accommodation with the military strongman of the Balkans, these governments have settled for ‘humanitarian’ palliatives that amount to little more than a prolonging of the victims’ agony. The same governments protested loudly about ‘ethnic cleansing’ only when the reality was exposed by their media, months after they first learned about it. At the same time, they maintained an embargo on the arms which alone would enable the Bosnian government to repel the aggression, reassert its authority over the whole territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and create conditions for the expelled population to return. The year 1992 has also, it must be said, seen a Western Left largely silent before, if not actively complicit with, these crimes: a Left content to parrot the disinformation so artfully disseminated by their foreign offices; too indolent or ignorant to distinguish between fact and propaganda; and quite ready to accept the easier, essentially racist, interpretation, facilitated by centuries of world domination, that Balkan — or all Eastern — peoples (frequently referred to as ‘tribes’, rarely as real nations) are somehow genetically programmed for violence and thus equally to blame

xii

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for the cataclysm. There can be no excuse this time that ‘we didn’t know!’; for everyone knows what is happening. The search is thus on for reasons to justify inaction. For example, nostalgia for the Yugoslavia created by the Partisans — a Yugoslavia finally buried in June 1991 when a so-called People’s Army outside legitimate political control attacked Slovenia, a nation-state of the Partisan-created federation. Or, a repugnance at nationalism that makes no distinction between mobilization behind an expansionary chauvinist project and mobilization in defence of national sovereignty — even national existence — under military assault. Or, resentment of Germany, ignobly fostered by weaker post-imperial powers like Britain and France for their own petty purposes, and yet more ignobly echoed on the social-democratic and even Marxist Left. Or, the fetishization of supranational states in the East by the very people who fear them like poison in the West. Above all, perhaps, cynical indifference to the democratic rights of other peoples, which can be airily traded away for this or that minor tactical or pragmatic consideration borrowed from the repertoire of their own governments: ‘Why couldn’t they have waited?’; ‘It was all the fault of the Germans, pressing for recognition’; ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina was never viable as an independent state’; ‘Ethnic cleansing is dreadful, but they all do it you know’; ‘Once the lid came off. . . old ethnic passions. . . goes back to World War Two. . . goes back centuries. . . warring factions . .. competing nationalisms . . .”— the obscurantist litany is unending. There is, however, another voice with which the Left can respond to events such as those that have been unfolding in the former Yugoslavia. It did not, after all, get things quite so wrong in the former Soviet Union, when for the most part— despite clinging to hopes that Gorbachev would succeed in negotiating some new common arrangement—it responded to the August Coup (in whose success, incidentally, Belgrade had invested great hopes)

with the fundamental recognition that unity enforced by brute military might was a far worse option than break-up. That, above all, is the message of this book. Written over the ten years leading up to Yugoslavia’s bloody demise, most of itis—was—guided by the belief that an understanding of the forces tearing the federation apart might help keep it together. The last part, however, beginning with the ‘Requiem’ I wrote when that hope had been comprehensively dashed, is inspired by a new and different commitment: to the future viability of the legitimate successor states of the former Yugoslavia — a future that offers the best, indeed the only, hope of a democratic development for all the peoples of what was once a far-from-artificial state, born of a genuine revolution, a country that was not fated to disintegrate but which has nevertheless been destroyed. Tito’s death in 1980 marked a point of no return for Yugoslavia. Although the occasion witnessed an authentic outpouring of Yugoslav patriotism, the

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xiii

country had in fact already entered a period of dramatic and potentially disintegrative change. Yugoslavia stood at a crossroads. One path led towards democratization, the other towards repression. Which path would be taken? The forces favouring the second soon showed their hand: first in 1981 in Kosovo, where force was used against student-led demonstrations; and then in 1984 in Belgrade, where intellectuals were put on trial for taking part in unofficial debating societies. Subsequent events proved, however, that the decentralization upon which the country

had embarked in the more optimistic 1960s — embodied in the 1974 constitution — in fact precluded the federal party and state organs from acting as effective instruments for conservative reaction, spearheaded as it then was by active and retired army and police chiefs. Though that decentralization — a devolution of powers to the republics and provinces — was not accompanied by any significant loosening of the ruling party’s monopoly of political initiative, it did allow a greater public airing of

differences between the constituent states, hence also of alternative views within those states. If Yugoslavia was to be united on a neo-conservative platform, it would have to be recentralized first. The neo-conservative- project changed radically with the capture of

power in Serbia by Great Serb nationalists. In the mid 1980s, Belgrade became the headquarters simultaneously of a new Yugoslav unitarism and ofa ‘Serb national renewal’. The history of Yugoslavia appeared now to be running backwards: the more the Serb nationalists embraced the cause of ‘Yugoslavia’, the more anti-federal that Yugoslavia of theirs became — and, inevitably, the greater was the resistance to it in other parts of the country. National coexistehce would henceforth be threatened not only by power struggles within the institutions of the federal state, but also by the readiness of the new Serbian régime headed by Slobodan MiloSevié to use extra-legal means — mass mobilization on an ethnic basis — to destroy the 1974 constitution. The aim was not merely to return to the pre-1974 situation, but to revise completely the postwar settlement based on the principle of national equality. Belgrade sought nothing less than the destruction of the federal arrangement — in the name of a ‘strong federation’! By proclaiming its right to speak not only for Serbia but for all Serbs in Yugoslavia, by seeking to redefine internal borders as purely administrative, and by erasing the autonomy of the provinces, the Belgrade régime negated the very foundations of the second, federal, Yugoslavia. Milogevié thus emerged as the spokesman not simply of a conservative backlash, but for the cause of counter-revolution in the Yugoslav lands. What is more, this counter-revolution was armed and ready, if defied, to resort to war. Serbia’s annexation of Kosovo and Vojvodina was the first instance in postwar Europe of alteration (obliter-

ation) of recognized political borders by force. By the end of the 1980s —

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before multi-party elections ever took place — it had become clear that, unless MiloSevi¢ was stopped, Yugoslavia was doomed either to become a Greater Serbia or to fall apart. Yugoslavia thus did not die a natural death: it was destroyed for the cause of a Greater Serbia. With the Army on his side, Milosevi¢ felt confident of victory. What Serbia had failed to gain in two Balkan Wars and two World Wars suddenly looked to be within reach. The whole nation was seemingly united behind the counter-revolutionary project — which had been formulated, indeed, by its most eminent intellectuals. It

would be difficult to overestimate the role this self-confidence played in bringing about Yugoslavia’s disintegration. The armed counterrevolution rejected all compromise solutions that might have kept the country together. The resistance was inevitably led (once Kosovo had been crushed, and Vojvodina and Montenegro swallowed up) by Slovenia and Croatia, whence came a first strategic counteroffensive in the shape of multi-party elections. These two republics, flanked by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, then offered Serbia a confederal compromise: the transformation of Yugoslavia into an association of sovereign states. The offer was rejected out of hand. The Great Serb bloc stood firm, believing that the Army would deliver whatever it wished. Slovenia was allowed to go, after a brief military incursion in June 1991, by mutual consent; but not Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, which would be squeezed to relinquish as much of their territories as the Army could hold. As the war — which began in earnest in August 1991 — progressed, the contours of the projected, racially homogeneous, Greater Serbia became increasingly visible. What the Great Serb bloc underestimated, however, was the readiness of Yugoslavia’s constituent nations to defend themselves. In dismissing the possibility of people’s war, the Serbian-dominated Army made its biggest mistake. Neither in Slovenia, nor in Croatia, nor in Bosnia-Herzegovina, did aggression result in the anticipated capitulation, despite the defenders’ lack of arms. In Croatia, Serbia’s great military advantage led to the occupation of one third of the republic’s territory, but failed nevertheless to achieve Belgrade’s minimal strategic goals — the establishment of a

physical link between the disparate parts of the so-called Serb Krajina; the capture of a coastline commensurate with Serbia’s ambition to become an Adriatic power. Each defeat suffered by the Serbian armies, however, served only to increase their destructive determination. The very fact that Croatia survived and received international recognition ensured that the onslaught on Bosnia-Herzegovina, when it came, would be that much more bloody and devastating. Whereas in Croatia the war gradually built up from local Serb ‘uprisings’ in the summer of 1990 toa full-scale war in

the summer of 1991, Serbia’s aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina took

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the form of a blitzkrieg. In Croatia, ‘ethnic cleansing’ was to produce some 300,000 refugees in the course of a year; in Bosnia, the victims of the same policy perpetrated on a larger scale numbered almost two million within six months. A US Senate report estimated that during this period as many as 35,000 people were killed in Bosnia as a result of ‘ethnic cleansing’ alone. In Croatia, Serbia fought the war ostensibly to defend a Serb minority threatened bya‘fascist régime’. No such pretext was possible in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbs formed not a minority but one of three formally recognized constitutive nations. The Bosnian elections of October 1990 produced an Assembly in which Serbs were represented in numbers reflecting their weight within the population as a whole. A government was subsequently formed with appropriate Serb representation. Despite this, the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina was from the start waged with only one aim: the complete destruction of the republic. It was here that the Great Serbian project revealed the full extent of its criminal nature. Preparations for the assault on Bosnia-Herzegovina followed a pattern set in Croatia. A Serb Democratic Party was once again set up — the SDS — which immediately proceeded (that is, prior to the elections of November 1990) to declare itself the sole representative of Bosnian Serbs, viewed as part of a seamless Serb nation. A Serb National Assembly and Serb National Council were established in Banjaluka in October 1990, as sovereign legislative and executive bodies wholly independent of Sarajevo. From October 1990 to December 1991, the SDS was busy consolidating this structure (including its police and armed forces) and demarcating new internal borders in Bosnia+Herzegovina. Six so-called Serb Autonomous Regions (SAOs) were thereby established: Bosanska Krajina, Northern Bosnia, Northeastern Bosnia, Romanija, Herzegovina and Old Herze-

govina. These were then declared parts of a ‘Serb Republic of BosniaHerzegovina’, later renamed simply the ‘Serb Republic’. Many non-Serb areas found themselves included in this self-proclaimed mono-ethnic state. The first aim of Serbian military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina was subsequently to be the establishment of corridors between the different SAOs, cleared of all non-Serb population. As the political arm of Serbia’s impending aggression against BosniaHerzegovina, the SDS acted throughout the crucial year of 1991 to block all moves by the Bosnian government to save the republic. The elections had produced a coalition government and state presidency made up of representatives of the three main parties — the SDS, the Moslem-based Party of Democratic Action (SDA), and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Between them they controlled 86 per cent of National Assembly seats (72, 86 and 44 respectively, out of a total of 240). Thanks to the obstructionist policy of the SDS, the new administration found itself

xvl

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unable to take any strategic decisions regarding the republic’s future. The National Assembly was divided de facto between two blocs of uneven size. The majority bloc, composed of deputies belonging to the SDA, the HDZ and most of the smaller parties, wished Bosnia-Herzegovina to become a sovereign state within Yugoslavia, or failing that an independent state. The minority, made up of the SDS and its satellite parties, wanted the republic either to join Serbia en bloc (with some ‘federal’ facade) or to be broken up. Again, no compromise was possible: thus, in February 1991, the SDS turned down a proposal by the SDA (supported by the HDZ) that a joint declaration be adopted giving the Bosnian legislature precedence over the ‘federal’ one, now controlled by Serbia. As in other republics, the departing Communist administration had introduced constitutional amendments designed to enhance the integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In October 1991, the Bosnian Assembly adopted a draft Memorandum confirming these changes. Though falling short of a declaration of independence, the Memorandum affirmed the inviolability of the republic’s borders, while expressing support for a Yugoslavia made up of sovereign states. The SDS deputies walked out before the vote was taken. Their leader Radovan Karadzié warned not only that Bosnian sovereignty could not be achieved without Serb consent (which in any case would not be forthcoming), but also that insistence on sovereignty was leading the republic ‘into a hell in which the Moslems will perhaps perish’. For the Bosnian leaders, however, defining the republic’s status was an urgent political matter, given that the EC-sponsored conference on Yugoslavia was about to begin. It was also important to keep BosniaHerzegovina out of the war already raging in Croatia. Adoption of the Memorandum provided the occasion to declare Bosnian neutrality in this war — although, in reality, the Army had from the start been using the territory under SDS control as a base for its offensive in Croatia. Strive as the Assembly might to distance itself from the war, however, Bosnian integrity was increasingly called into question. The National Assembly’s affirmation of sovereignty was immediately followed by the SDS’s proclamation of a separate Serb state — the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was followed by the establishment by local HDZ leaders of two so-called Croat Communities, one in the north (Community of the Sava Valley) and one in the south (Herceg-Bosna).

Although these lacked the formal state structures characteristic of the enclaves set up by the SDS, the intention behind them was unmistakable: the Sarajevo government would be recognized only ‘as long as it retains its independence from the former or any future Yugoslavia’. The Bosnian HDZ leadership itself (supported by most Bosnian Croats and nearly all Croatian parties) denounced these moves towards an effective division of

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Bosnia-Herzegovina. But they were, in reality, simply a sign that war was now seen as inevitable. Whether the establishment of these Croat ‘communities’ — in regions adjacent to the areas of greatest military activity in Croatia itself — was merely an act of self-defence, or whether it was done with Zagreb’s encouragement, is hard to tell. What is certain is that they sat firmly athwart the two prongs of Serbia’s planned military onslaught — the projected corridor to occupied central Croatia in the north, and the sweep towards the Adriatic Sea in the south — which threatened to cut off central Bosnia from the outside world. Whereas Serbia never hid its territorial ambitions towards BosniaHerzegovina, Croatia’s position was more ambiguous. It certainly did not initiate the war in the neighbouring republic. But it could hardly disregard the latter’s considerable Croat population, or Bosnia’s strategic importance for its own destiny, in circumstances in which it was itself still the victim of Serbian aggression, a fate that Bosnia would soon share. In any case, Croatia’s president, Franjo Tudjman, had made clear quite early on that he believed neither in the likely survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina, nor in its historic legitimacy, in the event of Yugoslavia’s disintegration into national states. The logical solution, he claimed, was to partition the republic between Croatia and Serbia. This, however, infringed the very principle of inviolability of Yugoslavia’s internal borders upon which Croatia rested its own case for the return of its occupied territories! Unlike its Serbian counterpart, moreover, the Croatian régime was hampered by the fact that the idea of dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina remained deeply unpopular in Croatia. In trying to square this circle, Croat officials followed the SDS in proposing ‘cantonization’ of Bosnia-Herzegovina along ethnic lines. The SDS had justified the creation of the six SAOs on the grounds that, in a centrally run republic, Serbs would become an oppressed minority. Under Zagreb’s influence, parts of the Bosnian HDZ now accepted the same logic. The EC, to its eternal discredit, also encouraged this ‘ethnically based’ programme — in whose name it has subsequently sought to qualify the Bosnian government’s legitimacy. Originally, six cantons were envisaged — two predominantly Serb, two Moslem and two Croat —but the number was soon reduced in the minds of their advocates to three. The intermingling of nationalities within Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, makes the whole notion of cantonization on ethnic lines dangerous nonsense. According to the 1981 census, out of 109 municipalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 35 had a Moslem absolute majority, 32 a Serb absolute majority and 14 a Croat absolute majority (in several of these, it should be noted, the Serb or Moslem predominance was a matter of a few percentage points). A further 15 municipalities had a relative Moslem majority, 5 a relative Serb majority and 7 a relative Croat majority. Since the combined population of these latter 27 municipalities

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in which no nationality could claim an absolute majority was about 1.7 million, it was clear that in order to create cantons with absolute national majorities, a great proportion of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s inhabitants would have to be uprooted and resettled. Cantonization, in other words, involved not just civil war, but destruction of the very identity of the Bosnian state, created as it was on the basis of coexistence between the three nationalities. This is why cantonization was rejected by all Bosnian Moslems, by a majority of Bosnian Croats, by probably most Serbs in Bosnia’s major cities, and by an unknown number of Serbs in‘areas under SDS control. Zagreb’s acceptance of the principle of cantonization was thus a divisive act that could only gravely imperil the defence of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although Croatia repeatedly denied all territorial ambitions towards its neighbours, recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina within its borders, took in half a million Bosnian refugees, helped with humanitarian relief, and provided the essential military supply route and rear base for Bosnia’s armed resistance, its support for cantonization of the republic rendered it in this respect an objective accomplice of the régime in Belgrade. Running against the clock, the Bosnian government was forced to stop appeasing Belgrade and the SDS. On 20 December 1991, with EC recognition of Croatia and Slovenia pending, it too asked that the republic be recognized as an independent state. The SDS leaders declared this decision null and void, warned again that ‘one nation will disappear if the idea of Bosnian independence is not abandoned’, and announced that, in the event of independence being granted, the ‘Serb Republic’ would become ‘part of the federal state of Yugoslavia’. Following the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia on 15 January 1992, the EC arbitration commission invited the Bosnian government to hold a referendum on the issue of independence, as a condition of recognition. On 25 January the SDA and HDZ deputies, supported by most of the smaller opposition parties, approved the holding of such a referendum under international supervision. The question submitted to the electorate on the weekend of 1 March was: ‘Are you in favour of a sovereign and independent BosniaHerzegovina, a state of equal citizens and nations of Moslems, Serbs,

Croats, and others who live in it?? Almost two thirds of the population voted in favour. The Serbian Army struck the day after BosniaHerzegovina was recognized as an independent state. In view of the attitude of the Serb Democratic Party — for which the majority of Bosnian Serbs had voted a year earlier, and which could thus claim to speak on their behalf — was it right for the Bosnian government to seek independence? The fact is that the republic had no other choice. The alternative of joining a Greater Serbia was not simply unpalatable to the majority of its population: it entailed the disappearance of Bosnia as a state. What is more, the SDS certainly had no mandate for waging war

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against Bosnia in order to prevent its independence. Indeed, whatever legitimacy the SDS may have possessed at the beginning of this whole process, its participation in the terrible crimes committed against the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina has since disqualified it from speaking for any part of it. . The Bosnian state was totally unprepared for war. The weapons of its Territorial Defence forces had been confiscated by the Army prior to the elections. Its government had, in addition, been persuaded by the EC and the United States to receive huge quantities of military personnel and armour leaving Slovenia and Croatia. (Although Zagreb had repeatedly requested of the EC mediators that heavy armour and tanks located in garrisons in Croatia be left there under international control, the West had insisted that they be allowed to depart for Bosnia-Herzegovina.) In preparing for independence, the Bosnian government clearly hoped for (and must indeed have been promised) international protection against aggression. Once war began, however, the EC countries and the United States accepted no responsibility for the country’s defence. The arms embargo which had given Belgrade’s forces such an advantage in Croatia was maintained to still more catastrophic effect in Bosnia, directly contributing to the human and material devastation visited upon the republic by the Serbian blitzkrieg. Bosnia~-Herzegovina duly became a member of the United Nations, but its legitimate — and multi-national — government was now increasingly treated as a mere ‘warring faction’. Western rhetoric here accurately reflected Western policy, for although Bosnia-Herzegovina had fulfilled the conditions set by the EC for international recognition, the West now bowed to Serbian pressure by making that recognition ‘dependent upon Sarajevo’s acceptance of cantonization. The schizophrenic split between high principle and shabby pragmatism characteristic of Western policy towards Croatia — leading to a settlement apparently designed to reward aggression and condemn refugees to indefinite exile — was to attain quite morbid proportions in relation to the far greater tragedy of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The West did indeed condemn Serbia as the chief culprit of the war, imposing economic sanctions on the self-proclaimed ‘Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’ (made up of Serbia and Montenegro); yet it has done nothing to enforce their observance. It duly denounced the Serbian policy of ethnic cleansing, the shelling of cities, the creation of concentration camps; yet the perpetrators of these crimes were regularly welcomed in European capitals and treated as legitimate participants in the ‘peace process’. The West has decried Serbia’s and Croatia’s annexationist ambitions, and yet continues to press ahead with cantonization. It pays lip service to the integrity of the Bosnian state, and yet, by maintaining the arms embargo, denies it the means to defend that

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INTRODUCTION

integrity. By allowing Serbia to destroy much of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and by failing to distinguish between victim and assailant, the West has become an active participant in Serbia’s aggression.

What the West — including most of the Left — has always refused to do is acknowledge the singular character of MiloSevi¢’s régime: a racially based, proto-fascist formation that can survive only by creating new sources of war and conflict. It is waging the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina not just for territories, but for territories devoid of population: the primary target of Serbia’s blitzkrieg has not been objects of military significance, but rather the population itself. That is why the war has taken the form of mass terror. The aggression, moreover, is being conducted not just against the people, but against their whole historical presence in the area, embodied in the architecture of cities and villages, in churches and graveyards, in archives and academic institutions, in museums and galleries. The scorched-earth policy practised by Serbia in Bosnia-Herzegovina aims to create a tabula rasa, to establish a new zero point in the history of this part of Europe. The genocide being conducted today against the Moslem population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the destruction of a unique society based on the centuries-long coexistence of different nations and religions, amount to a crime against humanity. How could this be allowed to happen in peacetime Europe? Yet Bosnia lives on. Despite the cataclysm that has engulfed it, BosniaHerzegovina has not surrendered. Its multinational government manages

somehow to function. Sarajevo, under daily bombardment, continues to resist. The Bosnian defence forces, embracing Moslems, Croats and Serbs,

are being slowly and painfully assembled. Short of weapons and logistical support, they have in many places resorted to forms of guerrilla struggle reminiscent of the Partisan war. The Serbian military momentum has been checked; any thought of an easy or quick victory is receding. The Serbian corridor south of the River Sava remains unsafe; the liberated areas in

central Bosnia are being extended; the siege of Gorazde in the east has been broken; in western Herzegovina the lifeline to the outside world remains secure. The coming winter will impose a heavy toll, but it will not spare the aggressor either. The occupied areas that go under the name of the ‘Serb Republic’ are in turmoil. The war is gradually turning around, even though the decisive battle — the lifting of Sarajevo’s blockade — is still to come. Bosnia needs outside help, of that there can be no doubt; yet its strength lies in a resolute determination to survive. Bosnia-Herzegovina does not even need to win the war outright; its mere survival indicates that the Great Serb project has no future, entailing inevitable repercussions in Serbia itself. One can expect, however, that the Belgrade régime, frustrated but not thoroughly defeated in BosniaHerzegovina, will be tempted to open up another theatre of war, most

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obviously in Kosovo, which would become one more victim of military aggression and ‘ethnic cleansing’. Macedonia, for opportunistic reasons

denied international recognition, is likewise well aware that, in the event of a war in Kosovo, it risks being attacked. Such an extension of hostilities into Kosovo and Macedonia would inevitably draw in neighbouring states. Thus, the more comprehensive the defeat for Serbian expansion in the present war, the greater is the chance of avoiding its successors. In 1980, I decided to research the history of Yugoslavia’s formation, in

order to prepare for the changes to be anticipated after Tito’s death. However, study of Yugoslavia’s birth in 1918, its speedy decline, and its rebirth in 1945, soon came to merge with examination and assessment of events that seemed to be heading irresistibly towards a final disintegration, not only of the system of ‘socialist self-management’ but of the country itself. Although the two dimensions of the crisis formed part of the same process, so cannot be separated in physical time, the present book does register the gradual shift from a preoccupation with the fate of ‘socialism’ in Yugoslavia to a concern with the fate of the country as such. There was some hope in the early 1980s that the system might be saved through reform: that, under the pressure of an increasingly combative working class, an alliance of progressive forces could be forged, including reform-minded members of the League of Communists and democratic elements from among the intelligentsia and enterprise management. This would have been the ‘organic’ way out, shedding the layers of Stalinist inheritance and corrupt bureaucratic rule in favour of political pluralism and economic reconstruction. It was clear from the outset that such an undertaking could succeed.only as an all-Yugoslav effort, building on initiatives in each of the republics and provinces to produce a new vision of the country’s future. (There remained in the mind’s eye, after all, the

achievement of the Communist-led all-Yugoslav national and social revolution, still only one generation away.) This was a scenario which, mutatis mutandis, the Left — whether conceiving it as social revolution, political revolution or reformist evolution — at this time embraced not only for Yugoslavia, but also for the other countries of Eastern Europe. If it were to succeed anywhere, it would surely do so in Yugoslavia. But, of course, Yugoslavia was not isolated from events elsewhere. The political leadership necessary for the Yugoslav working class to assert itself as the primary agent of a positive social transformation could have emerged only as part of a wider continental shift to the left. Such a shift, after all, was occurring in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the 1980s, however, the continent was moving steadily to the right. The suppression and disintegration of the Solidarity movement in Poland — a movement initially supported by millions of workers — was to change the parameters of

XXil

INTRODUCTION

Yugoslav politics as well: the working class ceased to be perceived as a force able to deliver the final blow to a moribund system. The era of struggle for parliamentary democracy had arrived. Political vocabularies changed to suit local circumstances: in the Yugoslav west, ‘comrades’ became ‘citizens’; in the east, narodna volja replaced ‘working-class interests’. Weakened by a dramatic fall in living standards and by escalating unemployment, unprepared for the loss of self-confidence of the system that had produced it, and confused by a growing realization that the party which still ruled the country in its name had abandoned it, the allYugoslav working class was taking only its first steps towards political independence when the crisis of the country’s entire superstructure became terminal. Belgrade-based counter-revolution now imposed a different agenda. Political struggle became necessarily focused on the defence of basic national and democratic rights. In Kosovo, miners spearheaded a general strike in defence of the province’s autonomy, while in Serbia workers were being mobilized behind chauvinist banners for a final assault on that autonomy. A Yugoslav Communist Party unable to defend the miners, and a Federal state unable to defend Kosovo, could not but break up. In a multinational state like Yugoslavia, democracy — whatever its class basis — was inextricably bound up with a commitment to, and institutional safeguards for, equality between the constituent nations. An all- Yugoslav movement for democratic reform could have been built only within such parameters. Serbia, however — for the second time — turned out to be the weak link. In the country’s vital hour, Serbia failed Yugoslavia and thus

sealed its fate. It can be argued that, as a state, Yugoslavia contained too many contradictions — above all in the field of economic development — to survive. The capitalist class emerging in the area at the beginning of the twentieth century favoured Yugoslavia for economic reasons: the creation of a large and protected market. Yet the unequal economic development of the individual nations made a common economic policy a matter of constant political contestation. Concentration of economic power at the Yugoslav centre always led to concentration of political power as well, which in practice meant Serbian domination. Decentralization, on the other hand, not only provoked Serbian resistance but also fed centrifugal tendencies in the country as a whole. In a sense, therefore, one might argue that Yugoslavia came into existence too soon: that is, before the area’s economic growth could provide the preconditions for its viability and stability. On the other hand, the very fact that Yugoslavia did come into existence, not once but twice, suggests that there has always been a need for some sort of economic and political cooperation throughout the area.

INTRODUCTION

xxiii

_ One thing is certain, however. If and when this need again finds expression, it will not take the form of a common state, for Yugoslavia’s historic time has run out. Nevertheless, unlike the war that has accompanied it, the break-up of Yugoslavia need not be seen as a tragedy. Once the Great Serb project has been defeated, allowing peace to return

to the lands that once formed Yugoslavia, this need will seek and find its own channels and forms. It is customary for an author to thank all those who have helped her work. Here I am confronted with a problem. My writings over the years have, after all, been the result of a collective effort by friends and

co-thinkers from all the different constituent members of the former Yugoslav federation. I cannot thank them all individually. Some appear directly in these pages, others I can only hope will recognize their own contributions in what I have written. It is by reading their views, by talking to and arguing with them, that I have been able to form my own thoughts and conclusions — for which, of course, they bear no final responsibility. Here I wish to single out those friends in Serbia and Montenegro — some of whom IJ have never met! — who have dared to stand up to an overwhelming tide and who have actively opposed the war despite the physical danger to themselves. Special thanks and gratitude must also go to the Albanian workers and people, who at one point had to wage such alonely battle for essential human dignity: they taught me the true value of political commitment and made me aware that there was more to Yugoslavia than its name. I would like also to salute here all those young women and nien in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who, fighting against such daunting odds, have not hesitated to risk their lives in the defence of freedom and in the cause of democracy. Their time is still to come. I also wish to thank the members of the former Yugoslav community here in Great Britain, who have helped me overcome the sense of despair I have often felt when seeing the mindless destruction of a beautiful country in the name of a reactionary phantasm. To those journalists and cameramen, too, who have penetrated the fog of mystification and brought to public attention the horrific truth of the Great Serb terror, I can only offer my deep appreciation. My thanks go also to Ernest Mandel and Mike Davis, who gave me important early encouragement; to the British Council, which funded my first research trip to Yugoslavia; and to the Hamburger Institut fiir Sozialforschung, which granted me a two-year research scholarship to write a book that has, I hope, not changed too much or been completed too late! Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to all those, throughout the world, who have rallied in a myriad of individual ways to the flag of human solidarity and compassion, against and despite the indifference of their governments.

XXIV

INTRODUCTION

It is they, above all, who have helped me retain my belief in internationalism. This book has been constructed out of my writing on Yugoslavia over the past twelve years, and represents some two-thirds of what I have written. It would have been possible to recast this book as a single account written from today’s vantage-point. But it seems to me that the rawer, more ‘documentary’ approach adopted here conveys more clearly to the reader that Yugoslavia’s disintegration and the present war were predictable well in advance of their actual occurrance, as well as demonstrating the different options that were available at different moments, and how the Yugoslavs themselves saw these evolving. Linking introductions have been provided in order to produce a coherent narrative of the years leading to the country’s break-up. Texts are printed in chronological order, except for the first two sections, which cover the same period; here the Kosovo issue has been separated out and considered first. This is because the destruction of Yugoslavia started in Kosovo in 1981, and also because the long text on ‘Kosovo between Yugoslavia and Albania’ gives a concise historical introduction to the two Yugoslavias (the interwar monarchy and postwar federation). | am only too aware that the book contains imbalances; one important gap — Croatia’s internal politics since the 1990 elections — will be filled in my next book, which will be on Croatia. Texts have been shortened to avoid repetition, and minor errors corrected; otherwise they have been reprinted as originally written, including judgments or predictions that have turned out to be mistaken. Most of the earlier texts were originally published under the pseudonym ‘Michele Lee’, adopted in order to avoid problems when visiting Yugoslavia. A small proportion of the book comprises material translated rather than written by myself. The last text was co-authored by Quintin Hoare. For the sake of consistency, the standard international (Slav) spelling ‘Kosovo’ has been retained throughout the book, even though I now normally use the Albanian spelling ‘Kosova’, which should certainly be recognized as the new international standard, given this former Yugoslav province’s declaration of independence. The Introduction; the sectional introductions; Part Two, chapter 6; Part Four, chapters 4 and 7b; and Part Five, chapters 2, 3 and 4b are all published here for the first time. Other texts appeared in Labour Focus on Eastern Europe (Part One, chapters 1 and 3; Part Two, chapters 2, 3a, 3b, 4, 5 and 7; Part Three, chapters 1, 2a, 2b, 3; Part Four, chapters 1, 2, 7a and 8); in New Left Review (Part One, chapter 2; Part Two, chapter 3c; Part Three, chapter 2c); in the New Statesman (Part Two, chapter 1; Part Five, chapter 9); in the London Review of Books (Part Five, chapters 1 and 8); in Marxism Today (Part Five, chapter 7); in Capital and Class (Part

INTRODUCTION

XXV

_ Five, chapter 5); in RUSI, journal of the Royal United Services Institute (Part Five, chapter 6); in International Viewpoint (Part Four, chapters 3, 5 and 6; Part Five, chapter 4a). Lastly, an invaluable source for me of dailies and weeklies from all parts of the former Yugoslavia has been Ramadan Newsagents, of Queensway,

London W.2. I wish to thank Mr Anwar Aziz and his colleagues for all their kindness and help over more than a decade. September 1992

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