The impact of Stalinism's legacy

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Captured federal soldiers in Slovenia: "Stripped of their uniforms and sent home." 8 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1991 The Soviet newspaper Pravda was quick to draw a moral from the armed clashes in Yugoslavia, which formally is a multinational confederation like the Soviet Union. The Soviet Communist Party (CP) organ argued that far more autonomy had been granted to the Yugoslav republics than to those of the USSR, but it was now clear that such concessions had not brought a solution to national conflicts. Instead, they had encouraged the "virus of separatism."

Commentators in the Western press followed a parallel line, moralizing about "irrational national hatreds" and so on.

Both Washington and the European imperialists made it clear that they were opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. They hedged their positions on this only after the onset of armed clashes made them want to avoid appearing to support attempts to maintain the union by force.

In fact, in its July 1 issue, Pravda noted an accusation by the chair of the Slovenian parliament, France Bucar, (made in an interview with Der Spiegel) that the U.S. secretary of state "secretly approved the use of armed force in Slovenia."

The Slovenian leader was quoted as saying "[Ante] Markovic [the Yugoslav federal premier] and the army could not have done anything without the approval of Baker."

Washington's interest in maintaining a united Yugoslavia had, in fact, long been notorious in the country.

Many months ago, the liberal (and federalist) Croatian weekly magazine Danas, for example, raised the spectre of a "New Yalta," that is, Washington consigning the restive Yugoslav republics to Serbian domination as it supposedly handed over Eastern Europe to Moscow.

The U.S. government cannot afford to be seen as backing the neo-Stalinist Serbian chauvinist leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Its favorite in Yugoslavia is clearly the liberal federal premier Markovic, who is responsible for implementing capitalist restorationist economic reforms under the aegis of the IMF and other international capitalist institutions.

However, Markovic wields no real political or material power. The only ones who have the strength to attempt to dominate Yugoslavia are Milosevic and the Serbian army officers.

History of repression

In the series of crises leading up to the Slovenian and Croatian secessions, Milosevic deliberately tried to create a situation in which the army could take control of the country.

As far back as 1988, a military coup was planned to stop democratization in Slovenia. The plot was exposed by the journal of the liberal Slovenian Communist Party youth organization, Mladina.

The federal authorities responded by trying to victimize the staff of the youth magazine, provoking a major campaign by anti-totalitarians in defense of the right of free speech throughout the Yugoslav state.

Appropriately enough, the present Slovenian minister of defense, Janez Jaksa, was the Mladina's military expert at the time of the prosecutions.

Once again, he seems to have outsmarted the federal army chiefs, who suffered humiliating defeat against Slovenia.

The Croatian Spring The premier of Croatia, Franko Tudjman, is also a former victim of "antinationalist" repression, as is Stjepan Mesic, the Croatian representative on the Federal Presidium, and now federal president. Both were jailed in the aftermath of the crushing of the Croatian Spring of 1971.

The Croatian Spring, like the Slovenian • EXIT democratic movement in the 1980s, combined demands for greater economic and political rights for the republic with political liberalization.

At that time in Croatia, notably, Trotsky's works were published for the first time in Yugoslavia. The purge that ended it, moreover, led to a general crackdown on democratic rights throughout Yugoslavia.

In 1971, the Titoist regime used "leftist" arguments to justify the repression, charging that the Croat CP majority represented "bureaucratic nationalism," as well as vestiges of bourgeois nationalism. The

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: home!" Der Spiegel 8, over 750,000 workers in ed a general strike, among because many had not been three months. Their demands met by the apparently frightBut the incident revealed an ial climate in Serbia, which, f Yugoslavia, has been expeloping economic crisis. text, it is hardly likely that an continue to meet the the workers. In Poland, for around to satisfy restive groups of workers. This sort of juggling cannot go on for long. However, the Serbian workers, who have a first taste of social mobilization and of victory, will continue to press their demands.

The student, worker and antiwar protests seem to offer hope finally for the emergence of a democratic opposition to Milosevic. The Serbian demagogue has managed in the past to mobilize masses of Serbians on chauvinist themes (although he called these actions "the antibureaucratic revolution").

On the basis of his chauvinist appeals, Milosevic succeeded in getting 60 percent of the vote in the first multiparty elections. And his principal opponents up until now have tried to outbid him in Serbian chauvinism.

Thus, the rise of social movements combating the regime represents a very big change. For years, the neo-Stalinist Serbian government has been poisoning the political situation in the country. Now, it is beginning to look shaky.

Threatened for the first time in his own bailiwick, Milosevic clearly started looking to the army under its predominantly Serbian officer corps. In the meantime, however, he conceded most of the immediate demands of the March demonstrations.

But on March 14, during a meeting of the Federal Council, the federal president at the time, Borislav Jovic, a Serbian stooge of Milosevic, proposed declaring a state of emergency throughout the Yugoslav state. When this was rejected, he resigned.

Jovic went on TV March 15 to declare that the country was "in a critical state of breakup, provoked by the actions of separatist forces." The only positive references in Jovic's speech were to the federal army. Immediately after the session of the Federal Council at which Jovic resigned, the army high command announced that it was ready to take the "essential measures."

The resignation of Jovic created a constitutional vacuum, since the law makes no provision for such an eventuality. The presidency of the Federal Council rotates among representatives of the six republics. The next in line was Stjepan Mesic, representative of Croatia. But Milosevic was not having him.

Milosevic's provocations

On March 16, the representatives of Montenegro and the autonomous province of Vojvodina, two other stooges of Milosevic, also resigned from the Federal Council, depriving it of a quorum. Milosevic pronounced the Federal Council dead: "No patriot can consider a collective leadership that acts against the unity of the country to be legal."

However, Milosevic's moves met with opposition in Serbia itself, and both he and the army retreated from the brink, allowing the Federal Council to function again. A period of direct negotiations among the leaders of the republics followed. But at the same time, Serbian secessionist takeovers began multiplying in the Serbian-dominated communities of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina and led to armed clashes.

The summit negotiations were poisoned by the Serbian secessionist operations. More fundamentally, they were stalled by Milosevic's intransigence. The Serbians denounced the Slovenian and Croatian proposals for a confederative union as a definitive breakup of the country. The latter, on the other hand, made it clear that if they could not gain sovereign rights within Yugoslavia, they would secede.

Given the long history of Slovenian and Croatian grievances against Serbian domination (going back to the interwar state and the period before the Serbian centralist Rankovic was toppled in the mid-1960s), Milosevic's chauvinist campaigns and bullying made it absolutely certain that the restive republics would secede rather than knuckle under.

By May, it became clear that chauvinist had no choice but either to capitulate to Serbian neo-Stalinist gangs were being sent from Serbia to support the secession of Serbian-majority areas in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Croatia president, Franko Tudjman went on TV to announce:

"We are witnessing the beginning of open war against the republic of Croatia."

On May 15, it was the turn of the Croatian representative on the Federal Council, Stjepan Mesic, to take the federal presidency.

But the Serbian leadership rejected the rules of the federalist system and blocked his accession. It seized on a formal provision requiring that the elected, although the automatic rotation. Th vassals (including a hal tive of Kosovo) kept I majority.

It was this final vio mentary rules for equa republics that set the s and Slovenian declarat at the end of June.

They were put in a had no choice but eil Serbian neo-Stalinist c from the federation. It domination and antider that is the issue.

Referendums in Slor produce overwhelming pendence. But in its London Economist | polls showing that the republics was almo between an immediate negotiations, with a m ing out of the federat confirmation that the r Croatians and Sloveni: ing the union on a basi It is the antidemoci vic, and the othe chauvinists, the proca leadership of the federa the Serbian military of ing up Yugoslavia.

In launching an al Slovenians they dre across the Yugoslav Great Serbia is likely chaos as a redoubt of bi The Serbian natio clearly been cracked a deepen. The way seem chain reaction of worki

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ovoke venia?

'They were put in a position where they

overlordship or break from the federation.'