6-26-06, 11:30 am
His party faction was not only bureaucratic but nationalistic. For these reasons, almost all old Communist cadres were against Milosevic and his methods and politics. His opponents included Draza Markovic, one of most famous Communist leaders in Serbia and former president of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia and member of the Central Committee of League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and Milos Minic, illegal party worker from the 1930’s, organizer of the national liberation struggle and Yugoslav minister of foreign affairs in Tito’s era.
Before April 1987, Milosevic was not well known in Serbia and Yugoslavia. That month, he visited Kosovo where he met with leaders of mass demonstrations by local Serbs who were being oppressed by Albanian separatists. Later, upon his arrival in Belgrade to assume power as Serbia’s president, Milosevic advocated a radical approach to solving the Kosovo problem. Namely, suppression of Albanian separatism through ending Kosovo’s autonomy.
To fully appreciate the significance of this consider for a moment the following background. Although Kosovo had been Serbian territory in medieval times, it was under Turkish occupation until 1912. After that, it was returned to Serbia. Since then the Albanians have always been the majority there, but they were harshly oppressed by the Serbian monarchy. After 1945, the new communist government gave the Albanians new national rights, and Kosovo became an autonomous province in the framework of the Socialist Republic of Serbia. The Albanians had the right to use their national language not only in elementary and secondary schools but also at the University of Pristina, which contributed considerably to the creation of an Albanian intelligentsia in Kosovo. Kosovo was the most underdeveloped region of Yugoslavia, but the federal Yugoslav state devoted special attention to its socioeconomic and cultural development. During the decades following the war, mostly thanks to federal funds contributed by all of the Yugoslav republics, Kosovo developed quickly, and its working class became skilled and educated. As a province, Kosovo’s government had an assembly and presidency as well as the Communist Party organization where Albanians were in the majority. According to constitutional changes in 1967 and 1971, Kosovo sent representatives to the Assembly of Yugoslavia as well as to the Presidency of Yugoslavia.
In this period, Kosovo, on a practical and legal level, became more than a province, according to the 1974 Constitution. Representatives of Serbia were unhappy about that, but politicians from other republics considered it a way to weaken Serbia’s dominance in federal institutions. In 1968 and 1981, Albanian separatists organized mass demonstrations. In 1981, they demanded the formation of the Republic of Kosovo as a first step toward separation. All of the Yugoslav republics agreed that this was a kind of counter revolutionary revolt that should be stopped by force. Federal police along with the Yugoslav People’s Army were sent to crush the rebellion. Even after the uprising, however, Albanian nationalists remained in control of Kosovo. They began a campaign to pressure Serbs to leave Kosovo. This action prepared the ground for growing Serbian nationalism. Thus by 1987, Milosevic had already won popular support in Serbia for his radical nationalist approach. In turn, Milosevic’s plan intensified the Albanian separatist movement. In fact, radical Albanian nationalist Adem Demachi, who was in government prisons for more than 30 years, said that Albanians from Kosovo should set up a monument for Milosevic for making it possible to wage a successful struggle for independence.
In 1989, the Assembly of Serbia under Milosevic’s control enacted constitutional amendments that ensured the integrity of Serbia and its control of Kosovo. Although it was necessary to do it, Milosevic made a great error by using completely unconstitutional means. By changing the constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia in this manner, he effectively changed the Yugoslav Constitution. But he used this means to show himself to be the real father of the Serbian nation. Another great error was his suspension of the legal institutions of government in Kosovo where Albanians held majorities. Instead of organizing new elections, Milosevic imposed from Belgrade unelected bodies composed of Serbian nationalists. This was exacerbated by the fact that from 1990 to 1999, there were no elections for the parliament and government of Kosovo. Before 1990, the Albanian majority terrorized the Serb minority. After 1990, the Serb minority terrorized the Albanian majority. One nationalism replaced the other.
In 1988, in the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and the Socialist Republic of Montenegro, Milosevic’s regime organized mass meetings against existing leaders. These gatherings caused these governments to fall. After that, Milosevic tried to overthrow the leadership of Slovenia by export of mass demonstrations and demonstrators from Serbia, but he failed. These attempts were the results of Milosevic’s endeavors to control the majority in the Presidency of Yugoslavia (which consisted of nine members – one from each republic and autonomous province and a president of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia). The other republics were terrified by this power grab.
From 1987 on, the Slovenian leadership began its own secessionist movement. It organized campaigns against the Yugoslav People’s Army. Slovenian intellectuals who belonged to liberal political circles drafted a so-called Slovenian national program based on claims that Slovenia was exploited in Yugoslavia and that it should become an independent state. A propaganda war between Serbia and Slovenia erupted soon after, which contributed a great deal to the development of nationalist sentiments.
In the spring of 1991, Milosevic and Milan Kucan, president of Slovenia, agreed that Slovenia could become an independent state. It was, of course, an informal and unconstitutional agreement between the two nationalist leaders. It was also an act of betrayal. Milosevic, Kucan and Borisav Jovic, Milosevic’s closest associate and president of the nine-member Presidency of Yugoslavia, admitted that such agreement had been achieved. It must be said that in light of this fact, Milosevic and Kucan had the same responsibility for the dissolution of Yugoslavia. On the other hand, such an agreement could not be achieved between Serbia and Croatia because the latter included in its borders large numbers of Serbs. In 1990, the neo-ustashi Croatian Democratic Community won the elections in Croatia and immediately started implementing legal discrimination against Serbs. Up to 1990, the Serbs, as a 15 percent minority of the population, had equal rights with the Croats. After the neo-ustashi victory, they lost constitutional guarantees of their position, and many of them lost their jobs, were beaten or even killed. Although most of them in 1990 voted for the Party of Democratic Changes (formerly the League of Communists, which had become a social democratic party), former Communist bureaucrats had not done anything to protect them. That is why they became easy pillage for Serbian nationalists from the Serbian Democratic Party.
When Communists and other anti-fascists, organized in the League of Communists – the Movement for Yugoslavia and People’s Front of Yugoslavia, tried to organize resistance, even an armed one, in coordination with some officers of Yugoslav People’s Army, they were sentenced and even killed both by Croatian and Serbian nationalists. While Franjo Tudjman, head of the Croatian nationalist state, started organizing paramilitary neo-ustashi troops, armed with equipment bought in Hungary and Germany, Slobodan Milosevic took control of the Yugoslav People’s Army. The Croatian regime advocated Croatian independence including territory from parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (project Greater Croatia). For its part, the Serbian regime advocated preservation of Yugoslavia in words only. In practice, Milosevic’s government greatly contributed to Yugoslavia’s dissolution with the agreement between Milosevic and Kucan and with the agreement between Milosevic and Tudjman about division of parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Serbia and Croatia.
In 1991, the Presidency of Yugoslavia, where Milosevic’s associates were in the majority, ordered the Yugoslav People’s Army out of Slovenia and two-thirds of Croatia, where the Croats were in the majority. It was a clear act of betrayal. Thus all the prerequisites for civil war were there. Milosevic declared that only Serbian territories were going to stay in framework of “Yugoslavia.” It was impossible, however, to divide territories without blood and crimes. When civil war started in late 1991, the Croatian and Serbian regimes had at their disposal organized paramilitary troops who committed many crimes. The regime of Slobodan Milosevic hired criminals and thieves who were recruited into special units under the command of Secret Service officials and officers of the Serbian Interior Ministry. Also, the Serbian Radical Party under the leadership of Vojislav Seselj, who stands accused of war crimes, was formed according to an agreement between him and the Serbian Secret Service. His volunteers, so-called chetniks, were trained in special camps in Serbia and then sent to Serbia and Bosnia where they committed mass war crimes. Vojislav Seselj himself promoted the most distasteful chauvinist and fascist propaganda against all non-Serbs. In 1998, he became vicepresident in a coalition government with Milosevic’s socialists, and ministers from his party began monstrous attacks on the freedom of the press.
The Yugoslav People’s Army became a Serbian nationalist army. It provided Serbian nationalists in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with arms. At the end of March and beginning of April 1992, the well-known Serbian criminal and commander of the so-called Serbian Volunteer Guard was sent with his unit to northern Bosnia to help local Serbian nationalists in establishing their control over this region on the border with Serbia. During the war, Serbian military officers in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina received salaries from Belgrade, and local Serbian nationalists received all kinds of support, including arms, from Belgrade. Many prisoners of war from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were removed to Serbia and then killed in jails or camps. Although Milosevic controlled the Yugoslav People’s Army and the Presidency of Yugoslavia, he did not try to save Yugoslavia by imposing military control over the republics where separatists acted. Through his agents in the Presidency of Yugoslavia, he ordered the army’s retreat from Slovenia and parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It could not be said that Milosevic is the only one responsible for the dissolution of Yugoslavia or for war crimes. Nationalist leaders played the same role in the Yugoslav crisis, although some of them clearly expressed their separatism while others hid their separatist intentions behind false concern for the country’s survival. But Milosevic played the role of a politician who was for Yugoslavia and who fought imperialism. He is the one, however, who ordered the withdrawal of the army from almost half of Yugoslav territory in 1991 and 1992 and who signed the so-called Kumanovo Agreement in June 1999 according to which Yugoslav troops had to leave Kosovo. This, too, was a betrayal. Milosevic was the one who lost Kosovo, and who agreed with NATO’s arrival there. To their credit, Yugoslav Communists were able to hold off Albanian separatists in Kosovo by ensuring its autonomy and national rights. There was no civil war, until Milosevic’s shortsighted nationalist politics threw the Albanians into the arms of separatist forces. Although the Communists never supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (its methods and aims were considered nationalist and separatist), it can not be overlooked that the KLA was a guerilla army with mass support of the Albanian population who controlled 60 percent of Kosovo territory. The Serbian police and army were not able to suppress the mass separatist and nationalist movement of Albanians because of one simple reason – one nationalist movement could not be suppressed with another.
During the wars in Yugoslavia and total blockade of Serbia, Milosevic’s regime became a kind of coalition of criminals, mafia bosses, the powerful political elite and managers of state-owned enterprises. Milosevic was the one who first introduced capitalist measures in Serbia. Until 1990, workers in Serbia had pretty wide rights in managing their enterprises. In 1990, the Socialist Party government abolished all of them and gave enterprises to shareholders or to managers nominated by the state. During Milosevic’s rule, two or three different laws on privatization were enacted. In 1997, the Socialist Party government sold Serbian telecom to foreign interests. Of course, it was not possible to complete the process of capitalist restoration because big state enterprises and banks were necessary to the regime for wars and solving most crucial social problems. It is well known, however, that the ruling elite (which included most powerful officials of the Socialist Party who held the most important positions in state and economic structures) used their posts to develop the black market and control trade with drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and petroleum in order to finance the war and their private needs as well. Socialist Party officials became a new ruling class in Serbia – new capitalists. One of the most famous criminals was Milosevic’s son.
What about Milosevic’s struggle against imperialism? We should pose this question another way: what struggle against imperialism? German imperialism had the most important foreign role in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Facts are cruel for Milosevic’s defenders, but he clearly collaborated, together with Tudjman, Izetbegovic and others, in this process. While Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic were creating the National Guard (in Croatia) or Patriotic League (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and arming them illegally, Milosevic used the army for his purposes. To sum up, Milosevic arranged with the Slovenian leadership for it to separate. He arranged with Tudjman a division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Officers of his secret service trained and commanded war criminals recruited in so-called volunteer units. With his signature, NATO troops came to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, and he agreed with the removal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo in 1999. His claim that these moves were victories in a struggle for peace was simply an excuse for his betrayals. Above all, he acted as a father of the nation who was going to save Serbian freedom and dignity. But after the imperialists’ pressure, he behaved as a well-trained puppet. At the same time, he was the first leader of Serbia to introduce capitalist restoration. The opposition parties who came to power in 2000 did not have to change much. This was one of Milosevic’s “merits.”
--Goran Marcovic is president of the Workers' Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Send your letters to the editor to
