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Like I said...it was Clusterfuck of epic proportions...
No,of course not,but the Serbian national bourgeoisie was among the main culprits...
In my opinion,the reasons for the violent break-up of SFRY go to year 1948. when the Yugoslav Comparty was finally expelled from the International Commnunist Movement because of its deviations from Marxist-Leninist lines...The Titoists embraced bourgeois nationalism which in the end "evolved" into "national" movements in the 80s with figures such as Slobo (Milosevic) or Tudman etc...
I'll quote myself to answer this, as this is an only answer regarding nationalism:
Not true. Only Party of Right (which used to be ruling party of ISC in WW2) wanted to create ISC as confederation between Bosnia and Croatia. They considered Bosnians as Croats who are Muslims and still do. Croatian Democratic Union wanted only one part of Bosnia.
Montenegrins stayed in small Yugoslavia (which was consisted of Montenegro and Serbia) and attacked Croatia and Bosnia. They participated in "Great Serbia" campaign.
To create national state you need nationalism. To win a war you need an extreme nationalism.
What we should have had was a war against some country in the 70s...even though war would have been bad, a war we would have won would have solidified the idea of brotherhood and unity...
I don't think so.
Also no one ever claimed that "half a million Croats" (near Bleiburg all sorts of domestic quislings gathered,in addition to these there were also many Domobrans and Croatian civilians) were killed in Bleiburg,even the craziest nationalists speak of max. 300k.
Also,Valter,i'd like to hear more details about that CIA agent who was sent to "instigate"...if you like you can PM me or write a post here...
I don't know...IMO even the national "Communist" Parties were teeming with bourgeois nationalists...and even those who weren't openly nationalist pursued the ideological line of Titoism which went "hand by hand" (ruku pod ruku) with these radical right wing elements...
Well, yes, but I was aiming for the most extreme policies. And Party of Rights one is more extreme.
That's what I said, lol. (more or less).
Yes, me too.
...Dok je uprava gore, dronjav žitelj dolje, a vojska grdna zvijer na tankom lancu, bit će buna i pohara...
- Derviš Sušić
Exactly! You can see in the first democratic elections of 1990, nationalist parties won across the board. National identity became stronger than Yugoslav identity, and the different nationalist movements reinforced one another. For instance, as Croatian nationalism grew stronger in Croatia, Serbian nationalism escalated in proportion because it seemed like the only way to protect the rights of Serbs living in Croatia.
I am talking about the nationalists of suceeding repubics. The ones that wanted the war.
Though I don't really agree that Titoism was nationalism, but alright, that doesn't matter.
...Dok je uprava gore, dronjav žitelj dolje, a vojska grdna zvijer na tankom lancu, bit će buna i pohara...
- Derviš Sušić
The national question had not been solved in the SFRY.There had been no real "brotherhood and unity" because such a thing was impeded by the capitalist nature of Yugoslavia.The Kosovo Albanians were,for example,second class citizens subjected to discrimination,and developed countries (Slovenia,Croatia...) exploited the less developed ones.
Actually that happened some time earlier,and it was about Kosovo,not Serbs in Croatia.
When you say that Titoists "embraced bourgeois nationalism" after 1948, what do you mean exactly? Are you referring to the fact that they cut themselves off from the "international" movement that the Soviets claimed to espouse (so a sort of "Yugoslav" nationalism implied by socialism in one country), or the fact that the different nationalities within Yugoslavia were legally recognized?
Meh,actually,i reckon it will take some 20-30 years before we get some truthful,objective overview of the breakup of YU...
Yes.Which eventually degenerated into bourgeois nationalist cliques "emerging" even in individual Yugoslav Republics...
No,of course,because that was the case with the USSR or any other communist country at that time.
I really don't see how you can make that causal relationship. How would you explain the concurrent nationalist movements occurring in former republics of the USSR (such as Georgia) and former members of the Soviet Bloc, many of which are much more virulent than those in the Yugoslav successor states?
You honestly think that if Yugoslavia had remained a member of the Comintern, it would not have collapsed and there would have been no wars?
[FONT=Calibri]Aggressive Croat nationalism, bourgeois German intriguing with them and NATO imperialist bombers wrecked Yugoslavia. [/FONT]
It is important to point out that the Yugoslav Wars involved three of its biggest and most powerful countries.A war of such scale in the USSR's context would be,for example,a war between Ukraine and Russia or something like that.
And the Soviet Union also turned revisionist and eventually "ultra-revisionist" when Gorbachov came.
Not necessarily,no,but i do think that things and the timeline of the collapse of the country would have been very different...it is of course just a hipothesis,but 40+ years of genuine socialism may have "civilized" the Yugoslavs to the point that they may have been able to pull of a Czechoslovakia style brake-up instead of the bloody Yugo-wars / may have resulted in less dangerous conditions to begin with...
Interesting analysis...You do know when NATO made its first action in ex-Yugoslavia,right?
well, Yugoslavia was slowly collapsing when Tito died. you see many nationalists and fascists hide to communist masks so they couldn't go to jail, or be killed. so after Tito died, nationalists wanted independant Bosnia,Croatia , Macedonia etc. and serbian nationalists wanted to have Great Serbia, and after war all these countries economicly destroyed the ex-Yugoslavia during the war , some countries less, some countries more.
There is definitely something to the statement that some members of the Serbian elite in Belgrade wanted a highly centralised, Serb-dominated state. They basically wanted something more like the first Yugoslavia (though not necessarily a monarchy). Tito himself was against this and it is the main reason Kosovo and Vojvodina were granted limited autonomy. Also note that, unlike the Croatian Ustaše, the Serb Četniks were repeatedly offered amnesty by Tito during the war. This is a glaring problem in a one-party state: people who believe in different ideologies will infiltrate the communist party and pretend to be good comrades while subverting it for their own gains.
Note that the Serb elites were hardly the only ones with such plans. But they were the most powerful.
Now the real reason nationalism was able to gain such strong support is that the economy was in bad shape from around 1977 or so (when Tito stepped down from most of his roles and became a more-or-less ceremonial figure). The oil crisis was one of the reasons for this, while the other one is a gradual turning towards a free market economy, which became faster under Aleksandar Marković, around 1982 or so. It became so bad that the government took an IMF loan that they couldn't repay (just like our modern governments, eh? Though the modern governments are several times worse in this regard). It is because of these internal contradictions that Yugoslavia became ever more fragile and vulnerable to foreign influence.
This brings us to...
You bet the CIA was active in Yugoslavia! So were other organisations (I think one was called "Friends of Yugoslavia" or something like that) who were officially set up to help with the economy, but were actually there to undermine the county's stability, push more free market reforms and finally - according to Ronald Reagan's orders - usher in a "quiet revolution" which will put the communists out of power.
And this is exactly what happened. By 1990 the country had an unemployment rate of 15%, the army leadership had been purged by Milošević (he installed officers loyal to him), the guerrilla warfare-based doctrine of the People's army was abandoned (these things help explain why the army performed so poorly in Croatia and Bosnia)... I think you know the rest
Whether the war was planned by foreign powers I don't know. But it sure served as a good "smoke screen" for corrupt political and economic elites to plunder the country's remaining wealth through "privatisation".
Ok, I'll now write a bigger post, since I really care about this topic, because I study Yugoslavia as „unique socialist project“ in World’s history. I think that a lot of answers here are superficial, concentrated more on a sort of a reaction then on a cause. I’ll probably repeat something I said before, so please excuse me for that.
First, a lot of people, when they talk about collapse of Yugoslavia here will talk about role of CIA and its role. I’ll dismiss big influence of CIA or KGB (or somebody else) on development of situation in Yugoslavia. Their influence was big maybe on individuals from national elites (for example right hand of Croatian president Tuđman was Gojko Šušak, guy who lived in USA before collapse of Yugoslavia and was probably CIA’s agent), but claiming that CIA had bigger influence on anything before collapse of Yugoslavia is a conspiracy theory, and therefore it’s not Marxist.
Second, so called “post-Yugoslav wars” (I wouldn’t use term “Balkan wars”, because they were something else back into history, and there were no countries beside ex-Yugoslav involved in this conflict –ok, maybe Albanian volunteers on Kosovo) were consequences of collapse of Yugoslavia not the reason for collapse. Croatian and Slovenian separations (this term dosen’t has a “moral” value in this discussion, in other words I don’t use it in bad or good connotation) believed that they could declare independence without a war. But, war happened. I’ll write about it later.
Third, in other to understand the collapse of Yugoslavia we must find reasons why did Yugoslavia collapse. Many users of this forum, especially those of Marxist-Leninist tendency, will claim that the main reason was revisionism. But in Marxist-Leninist theory, Yugoslavia was revisionist right from the start, so it’s kind of funny that it latest for more than a 50 years. So, to just say that Yugoslavia was revisionist – it’s not enough (especially when from the point of view of people like me – all state socialist regimes are revisionist. But that’s another topic.). Question is still here: what were the reasons for collapse. I’ll try to point some:
Yugoslavian state ideology was based on a few myths. I don’t use this term “myth” to refer something which is not true or which is fabricated, but I use it to name something that is almost transcendental, something which is giving sort of an identity to this community. In the case of Yugoslavia these myths were (i) National Liberation Struggle (cro. Narodno oslobodilačka borba – NOB), (ii) socialist self-management, (iii) “brotherhood and unity” (cro. “bratstvo i jedinstvo”) and (iv) cult of marshal Tito. These myths were never questioned. First, myth is saying that all nations of Yugoslavia liberated themselves using their own power, without Allied intervention (there was a small Soviet intervention in Serbia, but that’s quite irrelevant when we analyze whole struggle), and that they defeated Germans, Italians and their collaborators (Croatian Ustaše, Serbian Četnik’s and Nedić’s forces, Albanian Balije’s, Russian Čerkez’s, Slovenian White Army etc.). Yugoslav post-war propaganda always empathies great sacrifices of Yugoslav partisans, brutality of enemy etc. You can see this myth by watching Yugoslav partisan movies (which are great!). Second myth is based on struggle against Stalin and creation of specific Yugoslav socialist path – workers self-management. It’s also important to emphasize that ideology of workers self-management claimed that in order to reach communism it’s important to dissolve the Party and to let worker councils to run the factories and economy, but also neighborhoods etc. In order to dissolve Party Tito changed name of Communist Party of Yugoslavia (and all its national branches) into Union of Communists. There was no real difference in practice, but ideological idea was to include more and more people in managing the society. Of course, Yugoslav self-management was nice on paper (which is really true, it’s really interesting experiment and if you are interested you should really read about that), but, as we say here in Croatia, paper can take everything, or in other words ideology was far from reality. State never dissolved, but it grew stronger, so did Party (even Tito retired centralists – note: he didn’t killed them, he really retired them) etc., and workers never self-manage their work places, but instead of them that job was done by beurocrats – new ruling class. I won’t write much here about economy and “market socialism” since it’s not topic, but it’s important to know that this form of state capitalism was more liberal comparing to Russian (Soviet), so some forms of private property existed. Third myth was “brotherhood and unity” which is maybe most important myth in order to understand collapse of Yugoslavia. Tito and his right hand Kardelj were aware of history of nationalism of south Slavs and idea of Yugoslavia etc. Since state ideology was to dissolve the state Tito never tried to turn all people in Yugoslavs. That was idea of Aleksandar Ranković who was centralist, but he was retired in 70’s. Kardelj said that Yugoslavia is consisted of “nations” and “nationalities”. Nations were: Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians. Each nation had its republic. Serbia was special, because it also had two autonomous regions: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Nationalities were something which we would now, in liberal democracy, called minorities. Biggest were, of course, Albanians on Kosovo, but there were also Germans, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Hungarians etc. Each nation had its own communist party (union of communists) and after Tito died each nation gave their representative into new formed body called “predsjedništvo” which ruled Yugoslavia. Also, it’s important to say that Bosnian and Macedonian nations did formally exist before Yugoslavia. We could also say something similar regarding Montenegrins. Yugoslav paradigm regarding national question in Yugoslavia is that there were no majorities and minorities. That is really important! This is what “brotherhood and unity” was all about. This principle of inclusion was everywhere. Yugoslav authorities were always trying to keep balance, so that in every important position in the country is one representative of each nation. For example in Yugoslav National Army there were 6 generals and one was Croat, one was Serbian etc. You get the picture? Problem was with some nationalities, such as Albanians who were huge in numbers but were not represented as nations were. At the end of 80’s Albanians wanted to have status of nation which was a spark for a Serbian nationalism, at least for an excuse... Forth myth was Tito’s cult... and we all know what that was about. He was hero of WW2 (he’s only Allied leader who was wounded in a war, because he was always with his troops), founder of Non-aligned movement, he showed Stalin middle finger etc. etc. In the end, his cult was glue of Yugoslav unity, and that’s why shits started to happen when he died.
All problems started when these myths were started to be questioned. We all know that Yugoslavia was more liberal than other real-socialist countries. For example there was Praxis group in Zagreb, who were Marxist-Humanists and who were saying that Yugoslav system is not socialist enough etc. But there were also a lot of liberals who started to write about civil society and shit like that. After Tito died Serbs were the first to start questioning these myths. They rehabilitated Chetnik movement as anti-fascist movement who fought against Germans but also against communism in order to save Serbs etc. Then these discussions about numbers of killed Serbs and Croats in WW2 started appear (Which is a reason I don’t wanna see them here! Go and get official documentation if you wanna discuss this but stop writing nationalistic numbers!). There’s important document made by Serbian nationalists called “Memorandum SANU” were Serbian right-wing intellectuals wrote how Serbs will be exterminated on Kosovo, or in Croatia and Bosnia. This caused few sparks and soon various other right-wing intellectuals appeared. Regarding Croatia it’s important to say that most of Croat right-wing intelligentsia was abroad, because Croats in WW2 were openly fascists, so their supporters would be put to prison in Yugoslavia. (Also, it’s interesting that Croat had one right wing episode in Yugoslavia when they tried to start a right-wing revolution with insurrectionist/terrorist squad of 17 men deployed from Austria to Bugojno in Bosnia. Most of them were shot dead by Yugoslav police and UDB, all but one who was still kid. He was killed later by Serbian sniper in 90’s while he was commanding neo-fascist Croatian paramilitary unit.)
Ok, third is over
Forth, the biggest reason for collapse of Yugoslavia was ideological defeat. Real-socialist regimes failed on the east. In Yugoslavia elites demanded representative/parliamentary system. The problem with representative system is, as I noticed in one of my few posts before, that it creates minority and majority which didn’t exist in Kardelj’s theory. So, in if you have parliamentary system you have parties which compete for power and national elites were scared that their nation would get fucked up. Slovenians and Croats were scared because of their economical power; Serbs were scared because of possibility that Albanians take Kosovo as another Yugoslav republic etc. Neither nation was in majority (Serbs were the biggest nation with 38% of population), so nationalist elites decided that the best way is to be biggest fish in a small pound. Also, there was a big problem of aggressive Serbian nationalism lead by Slobodan Milošević, who grabbed high position in Yugoslavia and who later caused shit on Kosovo and abolished autonomous regions: Kosovo and Vojvodina. First countries that left Yugoslavia were Slovenia and Croatia, later rest followed.
Fifth, regarding “post-Yugoslav wars” it important to emphasize that the biggest boom of nationalism came just before Slovenia and Croatia left Yugoslavia. These nationalisms were encouraged by new formed nationalists’ movements which aimed to create national states. Serbian nationalism was specific, because many Serbs lived outside of Serbia, mostly in Croatia and Bosnia, and they were victims of Belgrade’s propaganda that Croats will kill them if they don’t rebel. They were scared with new Jasenovac (Croatian concentration camp from WW2). On the other hand, which Croatia declaring independence many ex-Ustasha’s came back to Croatia. They formed a Croatian Rights Party and when Serbs started to rebel, they formed paramilitary forces called Croatian Defense Force. Then we got war in Croatia and later war in Bosnia, which are not subject of this topic. Bosnians were a new nation so they didn’t have much of a history on that part. Croatian extreme right always considered Bosnians as a Croats, so they decided to create another identity – Muslim one. So, they called on a Jihad against Serbs when they attacked them and many jihadists came to Bosnia. That case didn’t happen on Kosovo, even majority of Albanians are Muslim, because other Albanians are Catholics and jihadists would killed them.
Ok, so I wrote a lot and I’m hoping that you got what I wanted to say. I didn’t write much about foreign politics or about economy of Yugoslavia, even trough there are reasons for collapse in that part also. I concentrated on this “nationalist” part, since many people here wrote stuff which was superficial.
That’s all, and once again my pleas, especially to my ex-Yugoslav comrades, don’t play with numbers!! That’s right wing rhetoric – not Marxist.
Partija Rada (Party of Labour)
