Serbian Nationalism and the

Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis

Vesna Pesic

UNITED STATES

INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Summary v

1 Explaining Nationalism in Yugoslavia 1

2 Integrative Problems: Interwar Yugoslavia

and the Major National Ideologies 5

3 Ethno-national Federalism under Communist Rule 9

4 The Role of Serbian Ressentiment 14

5 The Breakdown of Communism: Collapse and War 23

6 Conclusions 28

Notes 32

About the Author 40

About the Institute 41

CONTENTS
The dissolution of multinational communist

federations and the ensuing armed conflicts

that have emerged with their transformation

into independent nation-states have returned the

“national question” (i.e., the relationship of a national or ethnic group to a state that includes multiple ethnic groups within its territory) to the forefront of debates over international politics, law,

and theory. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia, in

particular, demonstrates the inability of the international community to rely on any solid legal principles, guidelines, or established mechanisms to

avoid such chaos and mass suffering when constituent parts of these types of multinational states

decide to go their own way.

The former Yugoslavia was an attempt to address three fundamental aspects of the “national

question”: (1) the right of a nation acting to create

its own state through demands for national selfdetermination; (2) the right of a national homeland (whether sovereign state or republic within a

federation) acting through its diaspora either to

monitor the relative status of its conationals elsewhere, or to demand national unification and the

redrawing of borders; and (3) the rights of members of national minorities to resist the majority’s

formation of a new nation-state either by seeking

cultural or political autonomy or by seceding in order to unite with their own national homeland.

A multinational state, such as Yugoslavia, cannot attempt to resolve these questions in any one

nation’s favor, lest it risk the collapse of the entire

state. If a resolution of the national question in Yugoslavia appeared to tilt in favor of any one particular group, the federation’s internal balance would

be upset. Thus, Yugoslavia was not only a mosaic

of different ethnic nations, but also a system that

was developed to accommodate these differences.

The creation and maintenance of Yugoslavia

hinged on the interdependence of Serbs and

Croats, the country’s two largest national groups.

These peoples “imagined” the borders of their respective states as overlapping and clashing. None

of the other national groups the former Yugoslavia

comprised, with the exception of the Slovenes,

lived within clearly defined ethnic borders inside

the federation. Large numbers of Yugoslav peoples

lived within one of the other’s “national” territory.

Bosnia-Herzegovina posed the greatest challenge

to the peaceful dissolution of Yugoslavia because

both Serbs and Croats lived there in large numbers, and because both Serbia and Croatia had historical pretensions to the republic’s territory.

Almost every one of Yugoslavia’s peoples has

been perceived as a threat to another national

group and has felt threatened itself. This general

atmosphere of ressentiment, real or imagined,

could easily be used to produce the feeling that

one’s national group was threatened with extinction as the object of another’s aggression.

Ever since the founding of Yugoslavia, two distinct nationalist policies have struggled for primacy in the debate over the country’s political

future: Croatian separatism striving for an independent state and Serbian centralism striving to

preserve the common Yugoslav state under its dominion. Croatian nationalism was separatist and

oppositional, Serbian nationalism alternated between outright Serbian rule and a strict federalism

governed through central government institutions.

The Croatian policy supported the devolution of

power from the center outward and found support

among most other Yugoslav nations, which would

eventually articulate their own national aspirations—Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, and (in

the Bosnian experience) Muslim.

v

SUMMARY
Both of these strident, ethnocentric, national

ideologies preordained the failure of any attempt

to constitute Yugoslavia as a modern unitary and

liberal state. For Serbia, the Yugoslav state became

nothing more than a vehicle for Serbian domination, which, in turn, stimulated Croatian national

opposition. The first Yugoslav state (1918–41) was

not only unable to pacify internal conflicts and dilute rigid national ideologies, but its collapse in

World War II left no mechanisms in place to prevent extreme methods of resolving the national

question.

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY)

played the role of “mediator” among the quarreling

Yugoslav peoples. It promised an ideological resolution of the national question through a social

revolution that subsumed class and national distinctions within a socialist framework. While the

country’s major ethnic groups were constituted as

nations within the new federation, the arrangement was best expressed by the classic Soviet formula, “national in form, socialist in content.”

The tenuous supranational ideology of Yugoslav

communism would eventually provoke the federation’s crisis. The weakening and disappearance of

socialism’s ideological sovereignty raised perforce

fundamental and profound questions about Yugoslavia’s existence as a state, as happened in

Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

Despite the regime’s attempts to control national aspirations by institutionalizing them within

the political and territorial boundaries of the titular

republics, the more abstract aspects of nationhood

could not be so confined. Conferring the sense of

statehood upon Yugoslavia’s major ethnic groups

had far greater consequences in strengthening

their territorial integration.

The immediate source of Serbian dissatisfaction

in general, and the most tangible reason for the republic’s nationalist reaction in particular, were the

constitutional provisions that undermined Serbia’s territorial integrity. Although the institutional

system established under the 1974 constitution

prescribed the “nativization” of all Yugoslav peoples within their territorial, republican frameworks, Serbia was frustrated in this regard. According to the constitution, Serbia was not a

“sovereign” negotiating party like the other republics because of the “sovereignty” of its two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina.

Serbian hard-liners’ main interpretation of the

“Serbian tragedy” in Kosovo was that ethnic Albanians had gained control through Yugoslavia’s

1974 constitution, and that the only way to stop

the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs in Kosovo was to reinstate Serbian domination there. In the ambiguity

surrounding the “Kosovo problem,” hard-liners organized a putsch in Serbia’s Communist party in

1987, bringing the most conservative elements

into the party’s leadership positions.

During 1988–89, Serbia’s intelligentsia and

Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian Communist party

clique joined forces to encourage a national revolution to create a “unified Serbia” by tapping social

and national discontent in the republic. The nationalist ideology of being threatened and hated

fueled this Serbian mass movement.

This nationalist movement also mobilized Croatian Serbs by helping to organize meetings where

they aired their demands for cultural and political

autonomy. Such meetings only further supported

the growth of Croatian nationalist movements, including the Croatian Democratic Union. 

The advent of free elections in 1990 and the

breakdown of the communist regime was the culmination of what had already been going on for

more than a decade in Yugoslavia following Tito’s

death. Along with the process of democratization

in the republics and the denial of that same

process in the federal government, central state authority was becoming weaker, approaching a situation of anarchy that bore an unsettling resemblance to the collapse of the empire that used to

rule the Balkans. Yugoslavia’s breakup gave new

meaning to the old notion of Balkanization.

As communism collapsed, the strategies of the

political actors in each of the Yugoslav republics

were determined by specific elements of the national question on the one hand, and the search 

for an exit from the communist system on the

other. Yet, saving the communist regime remained

the one method by which conservative elites in

Serbia, including the Yugoslav National Army

(YNA), could simultaneously preserve the Yugoslav state and achieve the goal of Serbian unification within one country.

The dual games (national and ideological)

played by all the republics to a greater or lesser extent actually precluded both of two possible paths

to a resolution of the federation’s crisis. The

vi
vii

republics’ leaders were unable to either reimagine

Yugoslavia as a democratic and minimal state or

break away peacefully by creating new, separate

democratic states. 

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union shared the

same types of multinational federal institutions,

ethno-demographic mix of populations, and large

diaspora communities whose status would change

significantly with the dismemberment of both federal states. Both cases involved the creation of new

national states in which one ethnic group became

predominant. If these and other multinational

states share the same broad political and ethnodemographic elements, are there lessons from the

Yugoslav crisis that the international community

can generally apply to their dissolution and avoid

the possibility of mass violence in their wake? 

First of all, the international community should

actively work with the relevant parties to arrange a

temporary status quo compromise if the dismemberment of multinational states is not preceded by

both an internal consensus on the terms for creating new states, including their borders and the status of minorities, and a clear conception of future

security and cooperation arrangements. 

The international community’s recognition of

the new states emerging from the Yugoslav federation’s breakup was woefully insufficient to secure

their peace and security. Not only must such recognition take into account the internal and external

threats involved in each case, but it must be real in

the sense that the new state must either be able to

defend itself or be defended by international military forces. Otherwise the result is highly unstable

situations that lead to victim-states and victimized

populations.

In the wider context of the political transformation of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet

Union, a more fundamental debate has been rekindled: the right to national self-determination and

how this vague principle might be reconsidered

and clarified in order to make it a workable concept in international law. The abuse of this right in

the Yugoslav case underscores the need for such

an examination, as the right to self-determination

came to be equated with the right of ethnically defined nations/republics to secede from the federation, regardless of the mass violence such an act

would surely entail. The republics’ unilateral acts

of secession were in turn met with internal acts of

secession by minority ethno-national communities

invoking the same principle of self-determination.

One crucial precondition for the peaceful application of the right to self-determination should be

the respect of both territorial integrity and minority rights. Borders cannot be changed by force or

without consideration of the consequences that

the redrawing of international borders would have

for all members of the state. Above all, there

should be some international mechanism that provides for the renegotiation of borders and that encourages all sides to recognize the consequences

of newly drawn international borders for all relevant parties.
The dissolution of multinational communist

federations and the ensuing armed conflicts

that have emerged with their transformation

into independent nation-states have returned the

“national question” to the forefront of debates over

international politics, law, and theory. The forces

fueling the breakdown of these multinational

states have not been exhausted with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. Most of the successor states of these federations are themselves breaking down. Whether

there will be a third phase of breakdown that will

require the resolution of new “national questions”

remains to be seen.1

In this paper, I attempt to explain the disintegration of Yugoslavia and why its breakup was not a

peaceful one. By way of this example, I also attempt to explain in general why and when the

demise of multinational states creates ethnic polarization that seems “resolvable” only by force and

even genocide. The violent breakup of Yugoslavia,

in particular, demonstrates the inability of the international community to rely on any solid legal

principles, guidelines, or established mechanisms

to avoid such chaos and mass suffering when constituent parts of these types of multinational states

decide to go their own way. In the concluding

section of this study, I offer recommendations the

international community may find useful in avoiding these kinds of conflicts in the future.

For many years, Yugoslavia functioned as a

nation-state by providing a peaceful compromise

to the conflicting, multifaceted, and perennial “national questions” posed by its constitutive parts.

Multinational states, such as Yugoslavia, cannot attempt to resolve these questions in any one nation’s favor, lest they risk the collapse of the entire

state. If a resolution of the national question appeared to tilt in favor of any one particular group,

Yugoslavia’s internal balance would have been upset. Thus, Yugoslavia was not only a mosaic of different ethnic nations, but also a system that was

developed to accommodate these differences.

Joseph Rothchild emphasizes the almost unbelievable diversity of ethnic groups that Yugoslavia

brought under one state: “By virtually every relevant criterion—history, political traditions, socioeconomic standards, legal systems, religion and culture—Yugoslavia was the most complicated of the

new states of interwar East-Central Europe, being

composed of the largest and most varied number

of pre-1918 units.”2 Maintaining political balance

and diffusing ethnic tensions was the only way Yugoslavia could survive. If the Yugoslav state could

not maintain these essential functions, the “separation” of its intertwined national groups in a fullscale war would be the probable result. 

By its very nature, Yugoslavia has never had a

staatsvolk (“state-people”) that could “naturally”

dominate by its numbers and serve as the foundation on which a modern nation-state could be

built. (As members of the most populous national

group, Serbs constituted only 40 percent of the total Yugoslav population.) The creation and maintenance of Yugoslavia hinged on the interdependence of Serbs and Croats, the country’s two

largest national groups. These peoples not only

shared a common daily existence, but also “imagined” the borders of their respective states as overlapping and clashing. Thus, a Serbo-Croatian compromise represented the foundation of Yugoslavia.

None of the other national groups that inhabited the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of

the Slovenes, lived within clearly defined ethnic

borders inside the federation. Large numbers of

Yugoslav peoples or peoples of neighboring countries lived within one of the other’s “national”

territory.3 Bosnia-Herzegovina posed the greatest

1

1EXPLAINING

NATIONALISM IN

YUGOSLAVIA
challenge to the peaceful dissolution of Yugoslavia

because both Serbs and Croats lived there in large

numbers, and because the two states—Serbia and

Croatia—both had historical pretensions to the republic’s territory.4 Bosnia-Herzegovina was an “apple of discord” between Serbia and Croatia, as the

recent war over its division confirms.5

The very existence of Yugoslavia seemed to defy

the history of relations among its different nations,

which had already waged one ethnic and religious

war among themselves with the collapse of the first

Yugoslavia (1918–41). The feeling of resentment

among Yugoslavia’s nations, however, did not

emerge from this experience alone. To be sure, Yugoslavia’s national groups all share a common history of struggling to save their distinct identities

and renew their lost medieval states—a history of

repressive domination that fostered disloyal and

militant minorities and arrogant and repressive

majorities. Almost every one of these peoples has

been perceived as a threat to another national

group and has felt threatened itself. This general

atmosphere of ressentiment, real or imagined,

could easily be used to produce

the feeling that one’s national

group was threatened with extinction as the object of another’s aggression.6 Almost without

exception, every Balkan nation

has had some territorial pretensions or expansionist intentions

in one historical period or another. The region’s history has

witnessed successive campaigns

for “Greater Serbia,” “Greater

Croatia,” “Greater Albania,”

“Greater Bulgaria,” “Greater

Macedonia,” and “Greater

Greece.”7 National ressentiment

extended into the relatively recent period of communist rule, as the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (embodied in Tito as the bearer of absolute power) frequently resolved national

conflicts through repressive methods that were

not easily forgotten. In the process of maintaining

a balance of power among national groups, every

nation/republic had reason to believe that it had

been unjustly treated in the Yugoslav state.

The sheer complexity of the former Yugoslavia’s

current crisis has supported numerous interpretations of its origins. One explanation that has

acquired a certain currency is “nationalism as a

power game,” which views the main cause of the

Yugoslav crisis as an ideology (in the sense of

“false consciousness”) of “aggressive nationalism,”

perpetuated by members of the old nomenklatura

who seek to preserve their threatened positions of

power in the face of democratic change. Given that

these government bureaucrats, party officials, and

military officers were overwhelmingly concentrated in Serbia, this republic was the first to forge

an effective conservative coalition under the banner of the old Serbian ideology to inhibit a “democratic revolution” that would drive them from

power.8

In the “nationalism as a power game” argument,

Communist elites in Yugoslavia’s other republics

faced similar reformist pressures and attempted to

duplicate the Serbian leaders’ strategy in their own

republics. By promoting their own nationalisms,

Yugoslavia’s other republican leaders acknowledged not only that Serbian threats—real or perceived—must be countered, but that nationalism

was the most successful card to play in maintaining their positions of power. Indeed, stirring up nationalist sentiment seemed to be the most

convenient strategy for Yugoslavia’s republican political

elites, particularly when they

could easily manipulate public

opinion through their control of

their respective republic’s major

sources of information.9

The problem with this approach is that it treats the “national question” as an epiphenomenon of the struggle to

preserve power and privilege. In

doing so, it forgets that political

battles in Yugoslavia have almost always developed around the “national question.” Such an understanding of nationalism as “false consciousness” discounts the power of national sentiment

among the region’s ethnic groups. 

The alternative explanation views nationalism

in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Yugoslavia as a result of historical desires of separate

peoples to resolve their “national question.” As

such, nationalism is not viewed as a disingenuous

ploy by political elites to hold onto power, but as a

consequence of modernity in contemporary

2

Bosnia-Herzegovina

was an “apple of

discord” between Serbia

and Croatia, as the

recent war over its

division confirms.
3

international society.10 The very idea of a “multinational state” implies the dynamic of the “national

question.” Multinational states significantly differ

from multiethnic states, in that the former are composed of separate nations that want to establish

their political autonomy in order “to ensure the full

and free development of their cultures and the best

interests of their people. At the extreme, nations

may wish to secede, if they think their self-determination is impossible within the larger state.”11

When we speak of the “communist federations”

that are the subject of this work, we should keep in

mind that these states “institutionalized multinationality.”12

Yugoslavia was an institutionalized multinational state that managed to contain, in the full

sense of the word, disparate and seemingly intractable national questions. If we accept the 

view that there are essentially three fundamental

aspects of the national question, then Yugoslavia

contained all three: (1) a nation acting to create its

own state through demands for national self-determination; (2) a national homeland (state or republic) acting through its diaspora either to monitor

the relative status of its conationals in the new

states emerging from the federation, or to demand

unification and the redrawing of borders; and 

(3) members of an alienated national minority suffering from discrimination and acting to resist the

majority’s formation of a new nation-state by either

seeking cultural or political autonomy or seceding

in order to unite with their own national homeland.13

In this respect, it should be kept in mind that all

these aspects of the national question existed

within one federal state, creating a specific internal

dynamic that cannot be compared to a similar configuration of national questions in other independent states. These national questions have emerged

in their most extreme forms (secession, irredentism, or the expulsion of minorities) in the process

of Yugoslavia’s disintegration. Once they were so

formulated, with the understanding that their proponents could not abandon their commitment to

their particular solution, war was more or less

inevitable.

The question arises, then, why practically each

nation took the most extreme position, which, in

essence, made Yugoslavia’s political relations a

zero-sum game. Was the main cause of this situation the ancien regime’s elites who launched

“nationalism” as an ideology in order to protect

their threatened positions of power? Or was it the

prospect of finally resolving the ever-present “national question,” which would be freed from the

constraints of the old authoritarian political order

with the arrival of democracy? The related question, in terms of the federation’s survival, was

whether Yugoslavia could either transform itself

into a genuine democratic, federal state, or break

up peacefully in light of: (1) conflicting national

ideologies; (2) the existing collective decisionmaking structure, representing Yugoslavia’s nations (through its republics’ representatives) and

the working class (through its vanguard, the

League of Communists of Yugoslavia); and (3) the

enormous apparatus of power that was created by

the “authentic” socialist revolution—the authoritarian regime and the legacy of Tito’s absolute rule?

If nationalism takes the form of a quest for national identity through the creation of a nationstate, the most important task is to show why and

when the nation assumed such worth, thereby

making nationalist demands such a successful political card to play.14 A more comprehensive analysis of nationalism, based on specific historical, institutional, and political factors, helps to avoid

treating nationalism as an irrational, “false” phenomenon that can be wished away, or as a mere

psychological template in the postcommunist

search for identity. Following the more comprehensive analyses, this study will attempt to show

that nationalism is a weapon for a new division of

power in the process of deconstructing the political space of Yugoslavia and a dysfunctional prerequisite in the struggle for security among the new

states emerging from the former multinational

federation.

This analysis of nationalism’s role in Yugoslavia’s crisis will focus on three main factors: (1) the

contradictory institutional structures of the Yugoslav state; (2) Serbian ressentiment; and (3) the

collapse of authoritarian rule.

The first part examines the contradictory institutional structures of Yugoslavia as a state. While

Yugoslavia was a practical compromise solution to

the conflicting national questions contained

within its borders, the Yugoslav state lacked the integrative potential necessary to create institutional

frameworks and workable procedures of democratic rule that could accommodate the conflictual

relations among its different national groups. It
was particularly unsuccessful in establishing the

latter, as it was constantly trying to “resolve” national questions—mainly through its repressive

state apparatus—that were anathema to the establishment of a democratic state. The next section explores this matter in detail, comparing the first Yugoslavia, the centralized, liberal state created after

World War I, and the second Yugoslavia, the

ethno-national federation created under communist rule. This section attempts to show how difficulties encountered in both of these state structures became a basis for future ethnic conflicts and

the eventual disintegration of Yugoslavia. In short,

both of these Yugoslavias proved unable to overcome the inherent antagonisms of the country’s

fundamental national question.

The second and perhaps the most salient factor

of the Yugoslav crisis is Serbian ressentiment,

which ultimately rejected both the second Yugoslavia and a possible “third Yugoslavia” as a confederation of independent states. From the mid1980s, prominent segments of the Serbian

intelligentsia, in conjunction with the republic’s

political and military elites, pushed Yugoslavia toward rapid disintegration with an offensive strategy of “finally settling accounts with ‘Tito’s monster.’” An aggressive Serbian nationalism broke the

thin thread holding together Yugoslavia’s nations

in a compromise arrangement, pushing toward an

extreme solution of its national question through

threats and warmongering: Either Yugoslavia’s various nations would accept Serbia’s vision of a “normal,” unified state that served Serbian interests, or

Serbs from all the republics would “join together”

and achieve their national unity by force. The political elites in all the former republics took advantage of these extreme solutions as an opportunity

to save their positions of power and privilege.

The third factor in this analysis is the collapse of

authoritarian rule, which began right after Tito’s

death in 1980, and accelerated rapidly during the

breakdown of other communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe in 1989. This collapse involved two simultaneous processes of disintegration. The first was the breakdown of the value

system of socialist internationalism, which tipped

the delicate balance between socialist universalism

and ethnic particularism in favor of the latter. The

second was the dissolution of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which brought the very existence of the Yugoslav state into question—particularly if we keep in mind that socialist ideology, as

defined by the LCY, provided the main integrative

force holding the Yugoslav state together. With the

disintegration of the state and its apparatus of repression, nothing could restrain the rise of nationalism—particularly Serbian nationalism—or return

it to the framework of compromise. Far from laying the foundation for representative and responsive institutions that could accommodate the demands of Yugoslavia’s nations, the introduction of

political pluralism and free elections at this juncture created a “state of nature,” bringing unmediated national conflicts to the stage of open warfare.

Thus, the situation in Yugoslavia during

1990–91 can best be described as a “decisive battle” for maximal solutions to the question of national boundaries and legitimate states.15 In order

to provide a complete understanding of the events

that led up to this battle and what they mean for

the future of the former Yugoslavia, I examine

these three factors in fuller detail.

4
One prevalent explanation for the eventual demise of the Yugoslav state is that it

never succeeded in constituting itself as

a political community, as a nation-state whose

identity conceptually and structurally transcended

the various nations that it comprised. While the

special function and purpose of the Yugoslav state

ideally would have accommodated a large, diverse

collectivity of many different ethnic groups, national minorities, and religions, as well as cultural,

economic, and linguistic differences, the reality

was that each of Yugoslavia’s nations sought to use

Yugoslavia to protect its own particular national

identity and develop its own idea about statehood.

The more obvious reality was that these different

conceptions of the Yugoslav state were decidedly

asymmetrical: Yugoslav statehood had to compete

with its individual nations’ desires for statehood.

Yet the Yugoslav state itself would eventually be

usurped by the largest nation—Serbs—to serve its

own national interest. To be sure, the creation of a

Yugoslav nation-state reflected Serbian interests,

while Croatian interests (and, later, those of the

other republics) fostered the ideal of a Yugoslav

confederation of independent states.

The first Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of Serbs,

Croats, and Slovenes) enshrined the idea of

“national unity” in a liberal, parliamentary monarchy. The idea of “national unity” presumed that

there lived in Yugoslavia one people with three

names—Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The wartime

allies promoted unification of these “tribes” in a

common state as an expression of the right to selfdetermination on the basis of nationality, following the example of the creation of the Italian and

German nations in the second half of the nineteenth century.16 Of course, such “Yugoslav ethnic

unity” was spurious.17 Its foundation of putative

ethnic unity was, in essence, a joint project among

the various South Slav nations to ward off any territorial aspirations of neighboring countries and to

protect their national identities through a “unified”

Yugoslavia. The state was dominated by Serbian institutions (above all, the Serbian House of Karadjordjevic), including the military, the political leadership, and the civil service. These institutions

were mechanically transferred to the new parts of

Yugoslavia, even though these old Serbian institutions lacked the integrative potential for a new

state that was five times larger than Serbia and that

now brought under its dominion fragments of old

empires that were arguably more developed than

Serbia from a legal, cultural, and economic standpoint. After the creation of Yugoslavia as a unified

nation and centralized state under Serbian domination, the Croatian political parties entered the

opposition, obstructing the work of parliament

and state organs. Practically from the very founding of Yugoslavia, the Croatian national question

was opened up.

Even before its formation as a state, there were

debates over how the first Yugoslavia should be organized, even though Serbia entered the debates

with a considerable advantage. Serbia had a

stronger position in the negotiations over Yugoslavia, largely owing to its reputation as one of

the victors in the Balkan Wars (1912–13), then as a

state on the side of the Entente during World War I

(in which Serbs suffered enormous casualties),

and finally as an organized military force capable

of blocking the pretensions of neighboring countries to Yugoslav lands (primarily Italy’s claims on

Dalmatia). For these reasons, Serbia believed that

it had the right to speak in the name of all Yugoslav

peoples and to influence decisively the form of the

state in conformity with Serbian national interests.

5

2

INTEGRATIVE

PROBLEMS

Interwar Yugoslavia 

and the Major 

National Ideologies
Given the historical circumstances and balance of

power, the Serbian position prevailed.18

Serbian politicians rejected outright the Croatian proposals for a federation. Such a scheme was

foreign to Serbian history. Moreover, anything less

than a centralized state would deprive Serbia of its

dominant role in ruling the new country. If Serbian

politicians were to accept the federal model, they

would have to link together all of the “Serbian

lands” so that Serbia could be assured of a dominant role in such a federation. The “Serbian lands

in Austria-Hungary” that would be linked with Serbia were understood to include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina with Srem, and a part of Dalmatia. Montenegro, which had already united with

Serbia, also fell within these “lands.” Moreover,

Serbia had already obtained Vardar Macedonia

and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars. As a result, the

Serbian federal unit would be substantially larger

than its Croatian and Slovenian counterparts. The

idea of a federation created on the basis of historical provinces was not up for consideration, since it

would “break up the Serbian nation” and the leading role of Serbia.19 Serbian politicians were not

prepared to “drown Serbia in the Yugoslav community” and rejected the example of the Piedmont region, which renounced its own past for the unification of Italy. This is the reason why Serbia did not

agree to call the new state “Yugoslavia,” which

came only in 1929 under the dictatorship of King

Alexander.

Debates over how Yugoslavia should be organized—as either a unitary or a federal state—constantly plagued the first Yugoslavia, and the debates continued on into the second, communist,

Yugoslavia until its disintegration. But debates

over the country’s political structure involved

much more than arguments about the nature and

extent of federal relations in the two Yugoslavias.

At the heart of these debates was the ongoing battle to resolve Yugoslavia’s national question. The

opposing sides in these debates almost always divided along the lines of the two historically dominant ideologies that inevitably destroyed both Yugoslavias: Croatian and Serbian.

Well before unification, a strong political current in Croatia advocated an independent Croatia

within its “historical boundaries,” which included

Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of contemporary

Serbia (a so-called Greater Croatia). Because

Croatia long enjoyed an autonomous status under

Hungarian rule, it joined Yugoslavia as a nation

with a well-developed consciousness about the

“right of statehood,” that is, the right to an independent state.20 Given the circumstances at the time,

Croatia was not in a position to exercise this right

or to advance the cause for a federal Yugoslavia.

Pressed by an internal Yugoslav movement (which

was especially strong in Dalmatia and among

Croatian Serbs who were pushing for unification

with Serbia), Croatia joined Yugoslavia, but with a

strong feeling of its unequal position in the partnership.21 Given its ambivalent relationship toward the unified state, and the fact that such an

arrangement was ill suited for advancing its own

interests, Croatia maintained a strategic position of

separatism regarding its conception of the Yugoslav state. This position alternated between a

pro-Yugoslav ideal of an autonomous state within a

confederation of other South Slavs and outright secession from the Yugoslav federation and the establishment of a truly independent state. Regarding the latter position, Serbs posed the only

obstacle to its achievement, according to the more

extreme strains of Croatian nationalist sentiment.

Croatian nationalist ideology and a historical longing for the national state it lost a thousand years

before gave ample support for such a position.

Serbia’s basic objective remained the unification

of all Serbs in one state. Following this nationalist

ideology, Serbia entered World War I with the aim

of bringing together all Serbs and Serbian lands,

including those in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Vojvodina (all under Austro-Hungarian

rule). However, Serbia officially defined its war

goal as the broader unification of all South Slavs

within one state. The idea of Serbian unification

was based on two principles. One reflected narrow

Serbian interests: It envisioned a large Serbian

state that would be a center of power in the

Balkans after Serbian military victories and strategic alliances with the other Balkan nations forced

the dying Hapsburg and Ottoman empires out of

the region. Serbia achieved this goal, ending Ottoman rule and annexing Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Serbian diaspora had a dual role in fulfilling

Serbian unification: providing the resources

needed to occupy a dominant position in the

Balkans and focusing on the national question.

While the borders of this “Greater Serbia” were not

6
7

clearly drawn, Serbia’s more ardent nationalists

invoked the image of a rebirth of the medieval Serbian kingdom lost to the Ottoman Turks at the

Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

The second principle was broader: namely,

Yugoslavism conceived in a number of ways. Yugoslavia as a multinational enterprise, and not an expanded Serbia, was more popular among prominent segments of the Serbian intelligentsia and

youth than in official political and military circles.22 The pervasiveness of Serbian ethnic boundaries coincided with both the Yugoslav ideal and

the cooperation established in the mid-nineteenth

century with other nations that included large Serbian communities,

principally Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Croatia. However, Serbian politicians did not renounce the Piedmont-like position of Serbia and its

leading role in the creation of Yugoslavia. Toward the end of World

War I, the Serbs realized their unification plan with the establishment

of Yugoslavia under the slogan “national and state unity.” From that

time on, they considered Yugoslavia

the permanent solution to their national question. Accordingly, they

made great sacrifices during World

War I, assigning themselves the role

of the Yugoslav “state people” and

“liberators” of the other peoples.23

This dual identity remained a permanent part of the Serbian national

character up to the emergence of the

Serbian national movement in the

1980s, when this tie was broken

with the rejection of Yugoslavism

and Yugoslavia as the Serbian

homeland.

Under the pressure of national,

social, and economic problems, Yugoslavia did not survive for long as a

parliamentary democracy. King Alexander’s imposition of dictatorship in 1929 decisively defeated

the idea of Yugoslavia as a liberal state based on

“national unity.” Through repression and persecutions, the King imposed his own version of national unity, including extensive regional

reorganization aimed at severing ties among ethnic

communities and lessening their potential for resistance. This policy was not only unsuccessful, it

intensified dissatisfaction among the national

groups it sought to include in the monarchy’s ideal

of Yugoslavism, including Serbia. Such a policy

found support only among diaspora Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

With the weakening of the dictatorship in 1934,

pressure to resolve the Croatian question was so

strong that on the eve of World War II the regime

established the Croatian region (banovina). In addition to the traditional Croatian lands, considerable parts of Herzegovina and

northern Bosnia were included in

the new region. The establishment

of the Croatian administrative region, in turn, reopened the question

of where and how far the Serbian

lands extended.

During Yugoslavia’s partition in

World War II, the conflict over the

national question culminated in

ethno-religious war and genocide in

the fascist Independent State of

Croatia (NDH), which included

Bosnia-Herzegovina and part of present-day Serbia, near Belgrade. Ethnic atrocities committed by the

Nazi-sponsored Croatian Ustashe

regime in the NDH left an indelible

mark on Serbian national consciousness, as well as on the consciousness of peoples who suffered

Serbian revenge. The mass liquidations that were carried out by the

new communist government

against so-called collaborators and

“class enemies” further traumatized

the Yugoslav nations.

The scale of the massacres in the

NDH and other mass executions

would not allow their examination

in the atmosphere of “national reconciliation” that

followed the war. Such a possibility was further denied by communist ideology, which rejected attempts to define the problems of ethnic war in “national” terms. As such, genocide and massacres

were not carried out by members of national

Ethnic

atrocities

committed by the

Nazi-sponsored

Croatian Ustashe

regime . . . left an

indelible mark on

Serbian national

consciousness, as

well as on the

consciousness of

peoples who

suffered Serbian

revenge.
groups, but by “fascists,” “Ustashe,” and “Chetniks.” Monuments were raised to the victims, but a

veil of silence covered over the climate of fear and

mutual distrust.24

Ever since the founding of Yugoslavia, two distinct nationalist policies have struggled for primacy in the debate over the country’s political

future: Croatian separatism striving for an independent state and Serbian centralism striving to

preserve the common Yugoslav state under its

dominion. Croatian nationalism was separatist

and oppositional, Serbian nationalism alternated

between outright Serbian rule and a strict federalism governed through central government institutions. While the former would be nurtured by

economic growth through a reorientation of the

Croatian economy, the latter would have to rely on

the army and the police. The Croatian policy supported the devolution of power from the center

outward and found support among most other

Yugoslav nations, which would eventually

articulate their own national aspirations—Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian, and (in the Bosnian experience) Muslim.

Both of these strident, ethnocentric, national

ideologies preordained the failure of any attempt

to constitute Yugoslavia as a modern unitary and

liberal state. To be sure, such attempts lacked a

genuine appreciation for the term “liberal state.”

For Serbia, the Yugoslav state became nothing

more than a vehicle for Serbian domination,

which, in turn, stimulated Croatian national opposition and, in a somewhat subsidiary fashion,

Slovenian nationalism. The position of the other

Yugoslav nations was simply not a matter for discussion. The first Yugoslav state was not only unable to pacify internal conflicts and dilute rigid national ideologies, but its collapse in World War II

left no mechanisms in place to prevent extreme

methods of resolving the national question.

8
The disintegration of the second Yugoslavia

and the activity of the main actors up

through the outbreak of violent conflict can

be understood in a specific context, that of a multinational federal state operating within a socialist

framework. Both of these elements, which served

as the bases of Yugoslavia’s renewal after World

War II, produced new problems of integration at

the level of both the federation and the new federal

units, or “national states.” New contradictions

emerged with the radical rejection of the civic principle of citizenship as a means of integrating the

Yugoslav state and its constituent parts.

“National in form, socialist in content”

The renewal of the country from the start of the

war was taken up by the League of Communists of

Yugoslavia, which played the role of “mediator”

among the quarreling Yugoslav peoples. It

promised a resolution of the national question,

which from its ideological standpoint, could be

settled only as an inseparable part of a social revolution. The party’s linkage of social and national

revolutions offered a specific way to “resolve” the

national question and constitute Yugoslavia as a

unified state. The linkage between nation and

revolution was presented as a comprehensive

arrangement, best expressed by the classic Soviet

formula, “national in form, socialist in content.”

What exactly did this formula mean for the formation of Yugoslavia as a state, and how exactly was

the national question “resolved” according to this

formula?

The contradictory nature of Yugoslavia as a state

was apparent from its very inception. On the one

hand, the Communist party was able to come to

power only as a Yugoslav movement; on the other

hand, it could not hope to attract the “oppressed

nations” to the revolutionary cause with the

promise of a Yugoslav solution to the national

question. The social revolution, following the tradition of the Soviet experience, subsumed class

and national divisions within the categories of the

oppressed and the oppressor. Simply put, some of

Yugoslavia’s nations were “working class,” and others ranked among the bourgeoisie. According to

the LCY, the “Serbian bourgeoisie” was both a class

and national oppressor. Thus, the party did not offer a Yugoslavia that its “exploited nations” would

continue to view as a Serbian creation; rather, it attempted to move the new Yugoslavian project as

far away from Serbian influence as it could. This

was achieved by emphasizing the revolutionary

right of each nation to self-determination and by

offering the promise of a federal organization of

Yugoslavia. The resulting framework of social revolution (which, according to party ideologists, was

coterminous with the country’s national war of liberation) could only be a new, socialist Yugoslavia.

In its formulation of the new socialist project, “the

party had come to acquire a sensitivity to the point

of view of the individual Yugoslav nationalities

while at the same time being fully committed to

finding a Yugoslav solution to the national question.”25 How would such a Yugoslavia be constituted? On what institutional assumptions would it

be based?

According to official communist doctrine, Yugoslavia could not be established as a nation-state,

even in a federal arrangement. “Nations” were

products of capitalism, not socialism; so any attempt to establish administrative units based on

historical categories, such as nations, was out of the

question. Unity in the new, socialist Yugoslavia was

to be realized by merging the basic differences (including national ones) among its various peoples in

an all-encompassing proletariat.26 This presumed

3

ETHNO-NATIONAL

FEDERALISM UNDER

COMMUNIST RULE

9
10

unity was not political (i.e., national) but apolitical

(i.e., class-based) in nature. Until the time when

this new unity could be fully established, nations

would be recognized and constituted as sovereign

states, but only until that “form” could be transcended by an authentic community of working

people. Of course, recognition of the nations as

sovereign states was, from the start, more established on paper than in fact, particularly with regard to their own national policies. The major decisions were taken in the central party organs, and

all state institutions, including republican governments, were merely “transmitters”

of these decisions.

The formula “national in form,

socialist in content” established

Yugoslavia as a state based on one

ideological project, or more precisely, the absolute and centralized power of the Communist

party and its apparatus of state

power.27 The subjective dimension of Yugoslavia as a state is expressed by “socialist patriotism,”

which reduces its identity to that

of a communist supranational

ideology. This tenuous conception of Yugoslavia would later provoke its crisis. The weakening and

disappearance of socialism’s ideological sovereignty raised perforce

fundamental and profound questions about Yugoslavia’s existence

as a state, as happened in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

As long as communist Yugoslavia could not be defined as a

nation-state (“nation” defined as a

shared political community), nor

its citizens as constituting a unified nation, its communist leaders

could safely 

allow its composite parts to be constituted in national terms.28 Yugoslavia institutionalized the relations among these nations through an unusual

federal arrangement based on a hierarchy of two

kinds of ethno-nationality. Enjoying the higher

status were the “constitutive nations” that originally “joined together in the common state” and

theoretically enjoyed the right to be recognized as

sovereign states. Thus, Yugoslav federalism was

based on an ethno-national sovereignty that would

bear the seeds of future ethnocracies once its socialist framework fell apart.29 Five constitutive nations were so recognized—Croats, Macedonians,

Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes—each of which

was territorially and politically organized as a republic in the Yugoslav federation. One republic,

Bosnia-Herzegovina, was not recognized under the

national principle until 1971. After the recognition

of Muslims as a separate ethno-nation, BosniaHerzegovina became a republic consisting of three

constitutive peoples: Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.

The constitutive nations enjoyed the status of states (republics), while all of the other national groups held the status of

national minorities with recognized cultural rights. Later on, this

status was elevated to the level of

“nationalities” (narodnost), granting them proportional representation at the local level, and at the

provincial/republican and federal

levels for larger minority groups

(e.g., Hungarians in Vojvodina).

Within the Serbian republic, two

autonomous provinces were

formed: Kosovo, populated primarily by ethnic Albanians, and

Vojvodina, populated by significant numbers of ethnic Hungarians and other minorities.30 Under

the 1974 constitution, both of

these regions took on a state-like

status similar to that enjoyed by

the republics.

Despite the regime’s attempts to

control national aspirations by institutionalizing them within the

political and territorial boundaries

of the titular republics, the more

abstract aspects of nationhood

could not be so confined. Conferring the sense of

statehood upon Yugoslavia’s major ethnic groups

had far greater consequences in strengthening the

territorial and ethnic integration of these nations.

That is, their rights to be “constitutive” were recognized not only within their respective states, but

also among their conationals inhabiting the territory of other Yugoslav republics. In some cases,

these ethnic diaspora communities viewed the

The formula

“national in form,

socialist in content”

established Yugoslavia as a state

based on one

ideological project,

or more precisely,

the absolute and

centralized power of

the Communist

party and its

apparatus of state

power.
11

constitutive nature of Yugoslav nationhood as giving them the right to extend the sovereignty of

their national “homeland” to the territories they inhabited. Such was the case with Serbs in Croatia,

constituting 12 percent of the republic’s population in 1991. Later, this status would produce enormous problems, giving Croatian Serbs the “right”

to secede from Croatia, and giving Croatia the

right to deny them this status by designating them

as a “minority” in its new constitution. An even

clearer example was in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

where, according to the same principle, three nations held sovereignty: Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.31 This principle held for Yugoslavia’s other

nations as well, but it did not have the same consequences due to the significantly smaller share of

other nations in their populations.

Yugoslavia’s institutionalization of these two opposing principles of integration—territorial-political and ethnic—posed an apparent contradiction

that had two major consequences.32 First, none of

Yugoslavia’s constitutive nations acquired its own

national state (with the exception of Slovenia,

which was more or less ethnically homogeneous),

since members of other “constitutive” nations lived

within their borders. The second consequence

bears on the issue of the right to self-determination. Specifically, who is the bearer of that right in

the Yugoslav experience? Does self-determination

apply to the republics or to “peoples” as members

of national groups? (Serbian nationalists insisted

on the latter, referring to the federal constitution,

which states that “nations” and not republics

“joined together” to form the common state.)

There was a third consequence whose significance would become increasingly apparent in later

conflicts: When “constitutive peoples” were in the

minority of a particular republic, they were denied

the exercise of their cultural rights, since they

already enjoyed such rights in their own titular

republics. Thus, for example, Serbs in both Croatia

and Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Croats in the latter,

could not carry out their own cultural policies as

ethnic groups, nor could they maintain cultural

links with their home republics.33 Such policies

not only precluded the possibility of peacefully integrating national minorities into the majority ethnic group’s titular republic, but they prevented

these minorities from maintaining vital cultural

linkages to their national homelands within the

territorial and political framework of that republic.

This absolutized the political (i.e., state) criteria for

guarding and protecting the “nation” in the ethnocultural sense. Moreover, this arrangement later

gave Serbia’s policy of unifying all Serbs unlimited

possibilities for playing upon Serbian discontent

in order to escalate conflicts in Croatia or BosniaHerzegovina.

This system was the logical consequence of rejecting the civil state as a framework for integration

under the socialist regime. Such a “supranational”

arrangement could be maintained only with the

unlimited power of the Communist party, which

kept an eye on any and all attempts to raise national consciousness to the level of nationalism

among Yugoslavia’s myriad ethno-national groups.

Could the new Yugoslavia have succeeded in attenuating the country’s two major national ideologies—Serbian domination and Croatian separatism—that threatened the very survival of the

Yugoslav experiment? The obvious answer is that

it could not, but less obvious is why it could not.

Was the Yugoslav experiment doomed to fail from

its inception? The key to answering this deeper

question once again lies in the different perceptions of Yugoslavia’s two main ethno-national

groups about the purpose of the new federation.

The revolutionary bases—national and social—

underlying the legitimacy of socialist Yugoslavia

can be understood as a compromise between the

two major national ideologies. Yugoslavia’s new

federal arrangement within a socialist context not

only provided all of the region’s major national

groups their own territorial sovereignty, but ensured a de jure equality among the federation’s

new states. At least this was the perception among

most of the Yugoslav nations, including Croatia.

Serbia perceived the new federation differently: Yugoslavia’s renewal under a strong, centralized communist order would once again fulfill Serbia’s historical quest to unify all Serbs in one state.34 Serbs

accepted the new federation and the borders that

defined its republics and provinces only because

Yugoslavia, not the republic of Serbia, would now

be the guarantor of their national interest. In spite

of its new configuration, Yugoslavia’s basic asymmetry survived under the guise of arbitrary “national balancing acts” that would later serve as the

basis for new nationalist grievances. The most obvious of such “national balancing acts” was the

overrepresentation of Serbs in the federal organs

of power—military, police, and administration.
12

Disproportionate numbers of Serbs outside of Serbia joined Partisan forces in World War II and

were active in the revolution. For their efforts as a

loyal cadre, these Serbs were awarded state and

party positions in these republics in disproportionate numbers. This circumstance especially

caused discontent among Croats, even though the

numbers of Serbs did not undermine the dominant position of the Croatian cadre in its own titular republic. On the other hand, this circumstance

“balanced off” the reduction of Serbia as a republic

(with its two autonomous provinces).35

Centralism and decentralism

Beginning in the early 1960s, the debate over centralism versus decentralism in the federation highlighted the differences between the two fundamental views of Yugoslavia’s national purpose. Serbia’s

official policy strategically sided with the center of

power and “Yugoslavism,” resisting until the end

of the decade the push for decentralization and

economic reforms that would lead to a redistribution of power in favor of the republics and

provinces.36 Croatia and Slovenia extended their

original support of economic decentralization to

the central Yugoslav party and state apparatuses,

resisting periodic attempts by the party to renew

the idea of “Yugoslavism” outside the context of

“socialist patriotism.”37 This position found support among the other non-Serbian republics and

provinces, not because of similar economic interests, but for political reasons—namely, to weaken

the central government as a Serbian stronghold.

Thus Croatia (along with Slovenia and the other

non-Serbian republics) adopted the strategy of

loosening and weakening the central role of the

federation, preferring that it merely represent the

positions the republics and provinces had already

agreed on.

If one event foreshadowed the specter of nationalism in postwar Yugoslavia, it occurred in

1964 at the Eighth LCY Congress, which rejected

the idea of “Yugoslav culture” as assimilationist.

Croatia and its supporters denounced “integral

Yugoslavism” as a chauvinist policy advanced by

Serbian hegemonists. Similarly, the congress rejected the “bourgeois prejudice about the withering away of nations” and the specious notion that

“national differences will disappear quickly after

the revolution.” These viewpoints were judged as

being not only incorrect but also bureaucratic,

“unitarist,” and hegemonic.38 In line with such criticism, the congress witnessed a complete turnaround in efforts to establish Yugoslavia as a nation-state. From that point on, nations/republics

were to become the real bearers of sovereignty, as

all nations have the right to do. At its next congress in 1969, the LCY followed the same pattern,

transferring party power to the republican organs.

Thus, Yugoslavia’s Communist party practically

disappeared as a unified organization, although it

continued to function primarily because of Tito’s

sacred and absolute power.

The devolution of power initiated at the Eighth

LCY Congress eventually produced a series of

comprehensive constitutional changes that culminated in the 1974 constitution. Tito’s personal

power was strengthened under Yugoslavia’s new

basic law (which only served to codify the tremendous growth of his personality cult during the

1970s), as was the political role of the Yugoslav

National Army, which became the ninth member

of the collective presidency of the LCY, along with

the eight representatives of the republics and

provinces.39 On the other hand, the new constitution also transferred power to the republics. In

the federal organs, decisions had to be made according to consensus (with each republic and

province holding veto power). All of the republics

were represented equally in government bodies;

the provinces had a smaller number of representatives, but this did not affect their position. Representatives in federal organs consisted of “delegations” from the republics and provinces, and they

were accountable to these bodies for their decisions. Republics and provinces could develop

their own independent foreign relations, and the

organization of territorial defense was left up to

the republics as well.

The formal bearers of sovereignty in Yugoslavia

were its nations. Without the agreement and approval of the country’s eight national states (six republics and the two provinces), the federation

could not function, as it did not have its own

autonomous source of authority.40 The need for

agreement among disparate national states operating within a framework of overlapping federal and

confederal jurisdictions (the proscribed powers of

the federation were fairly broad) meant that every
13

question was necessarily “nationalized,” inevitably

leading to national confrontations on a regular

basis.41 Under the 1974 constitution, so-called

international relations were established within Yugoslavia.42 Every question affecting the entire federation first had to be cleared in one’s own state

and returned to the federal level for final agreement. Since there were no federal bodies with their

own source of legitimacy that transcended that of

the republics, Yugoslavia under the new constitution could neither frame issues in terms of their impact on the federation as a whole, nor arrive at federal solutions that attempted to effect compromise

outcomes.

Finally, the 1974 constitution established a symmetry that precluded linking Yugoslavia’s identity

with any particular republic. As such, Yugoslavia

essentially had no citizens; rather, it was inhabited

by citizens of its respective republics. In reality,

though, the country’s political life belonged to Tito

and the Yugoslav National Army. The country’s

political elites would begin their competition for

real political power only after Tito’s death in 1980.

The institutionalization of Yugoslavia as an

ethno-national federation constituted the first step

in dismembering Yugoslavia along ethnic lines.

This analysis suggests that Yugoslavia, as a multinational state, was formed in such a way that it

emerged and survived only under the aegis of authoritarian rule, and that the battle for ethnonational statehood results in either the construction of a common “nation-state” that seeks to pacify

separate national identities, disintegration into independent states, or the formation of a confederation (which is not a “state” in the real sense of the

term). However, neither possibility obtained in

postwar Yugoslavia, since asymmetrical national

interests and the very institutional structure of

multinationality precluded these alternatives.

Rather, Yugoslavia’s states resorted to yet another

alternative—to change Yugoslavia’s internal borders through prolonged, bloody conflict.
Thus far, this study has attempted to explain

the fragility of the Yugoslav state in terms of

both the dominant national ideologies that

shook its foundations from its very creation and

the institutional frameworks within which national conflicts evolved.

Tito’s principal strategy in maintaining national

peace sought to curb the power of the largest republic (Serbia) and prevent the separation of the

others from the federation. After his death, such a

peace had little chance of surviving absent a

supreme arbiter. No legitimate political institutions existed in Yugoslavia to both regulate conflicts among different national groups and support

the ideal of a unified nation-state, a common situation for all multinational states in the communist

bloc. This circumstance was particularly convenient for the rise of ethno-nationalism in these

countries.43

Sources of crisis in Serbia: 

The nationalist response

The crisis in the former Yugoslavia, characterized

first by the political disintegration of the country

and then by its descent into full-scale war to alter republican borders, cannot be understood without

an analysis of the crisis that broke out in Serbia in

the mid-1980s. This crisis had its origins in the

powerful nationalist movement under the leadership of Serbia’s Communist party. Initially, it

sought the restoration of the Yugoslav federation

based on the authority of the Communist party,

but it soon grew into a movement for the creation

of a “Greater Serbia.” With each passing day, this

movement intensified national conflicts and

pushed the crisis toward the denouement of war

that eventually engulfed all of Yugoslavia. The

country could have embraced a democratic response to the collapse of the communist system

only under the condition that all participants pursue a moderate policy.44 Unfortunately, Yugoslavia

was robbed of such a conditional alternative with

the triumph of conservative factions in the League

of Communists of Serbia and the ascension of Slobodan Milosevic as its leader in 1987.

The Serbian crisis had multiple origins, three of

which can be identified as the most profound.

Serbia’s problematic position under the 1974 constitution. As noted previously, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was not immune to the

forces that rendered federation-wide institutions

ineffective in guaranteeing Yugoslavia’s existence.

The LCY’s waning authority as the basis of Yugoslav integration was viewed by the Serbs as jeopardizing the Serbian national interest for all Serbs

to live in one state. “Every Serb who had participated in the national liberation movement became

convinced that the new Yugoslavia was becoming

an inter-nationally founded federation in which . . .

the ideological principle had precedence over the

national.” This conviction, “as shown by the identification with Yugoslavia as a formula of internationalism, was the core of most Serbs’ national

consciousness up until 1974. . . .”45

This fundamental legitimacy crisis was bolstered by the existing constitutional arrangement

that defined Yugoslavia as a state by “mutual agreement” of the republics and provinces. Yugoslav

sovereignty had been essentially seized and divided up among the federation’s national groups.

The symmetry established between the republics

and provinces vis-à-vis an empty central authority

made it senseless for Serbia to maintain its “internationalist” position against the “nativist” positions of other republics.46 Yugoslavia’s future was

4

14

THE ROLE OF SERBIAN

RESSENTIMENT
heading toward either confederation or disintegration as the communist system weakened. The

Serbian cultural and political elite did not accept

such a future, fearing that the forces propelling Yugoslavia toward dissolution would also destroy the

fundamental Serbian national goal—that all Serbs

live in one state. Viewed as such, Serbian nationalism was a reaction to the fading of what Serbs considered a symbiosis between “Serbianism” and

“Yugoslavism” that was mediated by the communist system. With the disappearance of this symbiosis, the problem of the Serbian diaspora clamored to be resolved once again.

The immediate source of Serbian dissatisfaction

in general, and the most tangible reason for its nationalist reaction in particular, were the constitutional provisions that undermined Serbia’s territorial integrity. Although the institutional system

established under the 1974 constitution prescribed the “nativization” of all Yugoslav peoples

within their territorial, republican frameworks,

Serbia was frustrated in this regard. According to

the constitution, Serbia was not a “sovereign” negotiating party like the other republics because of the

“sovereignty” of its two provinces, Kosovo and

Vojvodina.

According to the 1974 constitution, the republics and provinces were almost completely on

equal footing regarding rights and duties. At the

federal level, provinces had veto power, equal representation in the collective Yugoslav presidency,

and the right to represent their own interests without consulting the republic—most often in opposition to it. Serbia’s representation at the federal

level covered only the territory of “Serbia proper”

(i.e., Serbia without its autonomous provinces),

even though such a jurisdiction was not defined in

the constitution. In ethno-demographic terms, this

meant that Serbia’s representatives in the federation could speak for only 42 percent of the Serbs

living in Serbia.47

Following the period of constitutional reform in

the late 1960s, Serbia’s provinces seized all the attributes of statehood—legislative, judicial, and executive powers—even those not constitutionally

granted to them. The provinces changed their own

constitutions independently, maintained relations

with foreign countries (e.g., Kosovo with Albania),

and created their own territorial defense. Laws

were passed by consensus of all three units; if the

provincial parliaments did not accept Serbian proposals, they applied only to Serbia proper.

Soon after adoption of the 1974 constitution,

the Serbian leadership called for a change in the

Serbian republic’s status. Why it wasn’t changed

immediately is obvious: The constitution could

not be changed because the federation’s members

could not reach an agreement regarding this matter.48 In 1976, the Serbian leadership submitted a

request to change the constitutional provisions

specifying the republic’s composition, seeking to

encompass Serbia’s provinces formally. The document justifying this request to change Serbia’s status was called the “Blue Book” (made public only

in 1990). Denounced as a nationalist tract, the document was received with “knives” by political leaders in the other republics and particularly in the

provinces.49

The situation continued into the early 1980s,

when the focus of attention shifted to Kosovo, the

Serbian province that was the scene of growing

ethnic tension. The Serbian leadership at the time,

headed by Ivan Stambolic, made concerted efforts

to change the status of Serbia vis-à-vis its provinces

with the agreement of the other federation members. However, opening up discussions on this

matter was becoming an increasingly painstaking

process. In order to change the constitution, an effective pro-Serbian coalition was required. When

none was forthcoming, Serbia interpreted the

maintenance of the constitutional status quo as the

work of an anti-Serbian coalition. After the outbreak of nationalist demonstrations in Kosovo in

1981, in which ethnic Albanians demanded republican status for Kosovo—which would bolster

claims to the right to self-determination—the question of Serbia’s constitutional jurisdiction took on

even greater importance; its resolution spelled either political survival or failure. Indeed, Kosovo’s

threat to Serbia’s territorial integrity had been gaining momentum since 1968, when the Kosovar

leadership gave its support to an Albanian national

movement in the province whose principal goal

was to gain republican status for Kosovo.50

Kosovo and the “ethnic threat.” Demonstrations

among Kosovo’s overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian

population were the second reason for the crisis.

Setting Kosovo apart as a de facto republic created

the conditions for a Serbian nationalist reaction.

15
Kosovo was considered the cradle of Serbian medieval culture and the symbol of national history

and mythology.51 During the first years after the

1981 Albanian demonstrations and the imposition

of martial law in Kosovo, the LCY provided the official, socialist interpretation of the disturbances,

branding them as instances of “counterrevolution”

by Albanian separatists. Viewed in such a way, the

Yugoslav leadership avoided identifying ethnic factors as the cause of unrest.

A starkly different interpretation of these events

emerged from the Serbian

party leadership, which capitalized on the symbolic

meaning of Kosovo and latent Serbian nationalism in

order to strengthen its arguments for changing Serbia’s

constitutional status. The

Serbian Communist party redefined Kosovo as an ethnic

threat, tapping national

myths surrounding Kosovo

and the history of the great

Serbian medieval state. The

federal government tolerated Serbia’s ethnic reaction,

which centered on the possible loss of Kosovo as a “holy

land.”52 The “Albanian enemy’s” goal, according to the Serbian party leadership, was being realized by the forced expulsion of

Serbs from Kosovo,53 while ethnic Albanians escaped prosecution from a sympathetic provincial

government for crimes such as rape, murder, theft,

desecration of Serbian graves, and various other

types of intimidation.54 Serbian emigration from

Kosovo came to be viewed by Serbia as nothing

short of an exodus under the pressure of Albanian

nationalism, although clearly there were other factors at work.55 Anyone who dared to mention

these other reasons (economic, educational, etc.),

particularly if the person was from another Yugoslav republic, was ruthlessly attacked and denounced as an enemy of the Serbs.56 Serbian grievances were not thoroughly investigated, since the

very act of checking suggested doubts about the

Serbs’ claims of victimization.57 Not even repression of the “rebellious” Albanians, the military occupation of Kosovo, or the imprisonment of

hundreds of Albanians changed Serbs’ opinion

that their brethren in Kosovo suffered increasing

persecution, evidenced by continued Serbian emigration from the province.58

The main role in defining the situation in

Kosovo was taken over by an organized movement

of Serbs from Kosovo that had the support of the

Orthodox Church and the Serbian intelligentsia.

These Serbs’ demands were almost always aimed

at constitutional changes that would establish a

united Serbia, but they endeavored even more to

change the ethnic domination in Kosovo. Their

main interpretation of

the “Serbian tragedy” in

Kosovo was that the ethnic Albanians had gained

control through the 1974

constitution, and that the

only way to stop the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs in

Kosovo was to reinstate

Serbian domination

there.59

Both interpretations

of the problem, the constitutional position of

Serbia as an unequal

party in the federation

and the matter of ethnic

Albanian domination in

Kosovo, distanced Serbs

from a diagnosis of the republic’s real problem: determining the basis of Serbia’s political community

and its political identity. To be sure, the same problem applied to Yugoslavia as a whole, but it is not

an exaggeration to say that the locus of Yugoslavia’s demise was in Kosovo. The federation was politically unequipped to protect its citizens—Serbs

and ethnic Albanians in this case—because it had

no nonviolent instrument (above all, the rule of

law) at its disposal to neutralize and pacify these

types of ethnic conflicts.

The ethnic politicization of Kosovo increased

the number of interpretations of the conflict, depending on who was speaking: “genocide” (the

Serbian interpretation), “normal migration” and

“vehicles of Serbian nationalism” (Slovenian), “dispossession of ethnic Albanians and political terror” (Albanian). These interpretations strained relations among the republics. On the one hand,

Slovenia and Croatia backed the Albanian nationalist movement. On the other hand, Serbian

16

Kosovo demonstrated that

ethnic conflicts could be

invented and exacerbated

through media propaganda.

This effective tool became the

principal mechanism for

intensifying ethnic conflicts in

Yugoslavia.
responses increasingly acquired overtones of

nationalism, repression, propaganda, and outright

lies.60 Kosovo demonstrated that ethnic conflicts

could be invented and exacerbated through media

propaganda. This effective tool became the principal mechanism for intensifying ethnic conflicts in

Yugoslavia. In essence, the media dramatically

staged reality for millions of Serbs and turned

whatever potential existed in Serbia for ethnic hatred into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The antidemocratic coalition. The third factor in

the Yugoslav crisis involved the concentration of

the old regime’s conservative forces in Serbia. The

privileged layer of central and local Communist

party bureaucrats and members of the state’s

power apparatus (military and police) viewed with

concern the nascent democratic changes taking

place in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Democratization of the “first country of socialism”

threatened Yugoslavia’s status quo and the privileges and positions these elites enjoyed. They were

threatened by domestic liberal opposition as well,

which was strongest in Belgrade at the time. In the

ambiguity surrounding the “Kosovo problem,”

these conservative political elites organized a

putsch in the Serbian Communist party in 1987,

bringing to the forefront the party’s most conservative elements, led by Slobodan Milosevic. 

The party conservatives’ support of the military

apparatus was not hidden. General Ljubicic, one of

the most influential officers in the Yugoslav National Army, greeted Milosevic’s candidacy as president of the Serbian Communist party with this encomium: “Slobodan has committed himself to the

battle against nationalism, against liberalism, and

against all forms of counterrevolution in

Belgrade.”61 Criticism of the moderate wing in the

League of Communists of Serbia as being unfaithful to Tito’s politics was accurately read as an accusation of having betrayed national interests. On

both tracks—defending Tito’s cult of personality

and resolving the Kosovo problem—a power struggle took place through party purges, consolidating

the party’s victorious faction, establishing control

over the most influential media outlets, and attacking the liberal opposition.62

Serbia’s conservative power apparatus tapped

new sources of energy and support in the wellspring of Serbian national frustration. The Yugoslav National Army excelled in this technique,

with its “evaluations of the situation” that characterized the “soft communist” reformers as agents of

the “new world order,” whose goal was to deny “socialism [the ability] to rectify its mistakes and show

its strength.”63 The Western countries (especially

Germany) were routinely denounced as enemies

of Yugoslavia for both undermining socialism and

destroying the Soviet Union as a state and military

power. In fact, the army was an instrument not of

the state, but of the party; as such, it was the main

political force (together with the Serbian party faction that maintained its power) posing the most

formidable obstacle to change. When communism

began to split along all its seams, the army rushed

in first to help defend the system. Its actions

should come as no surprise, since it was defending

its own privileges. Officers in the YNA joined Yugoslavia’s conservative apparatchiks in dragging

Serbia into an “antimodern” revolution, which became the social and political background for defending the Serbian national question.64

By the end of the 1980s, a powerful and effective

antidemocratic coalition was firmly in control of

Serbia’s political scene. One side consisted of extreme nationalist elements in the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian intelligentsia, whose

role was to produce propaganda and formulate nationalist ideology. The other side consisted of the

conservative party apparatus, the army, and the

police, who used this nationalist ideology to hold

onto their positions of power. Although their motives were different, the members of this “nationalist-communist” coalition65 complemented each

other and jointly pursued an aggressive policy of

tearing down Yugoslavia and recasting it in their

own mold: Either Yugoslavia would become a

country according to Serbian (i.e., Serbian Communist party) standards, or else Serbia would embark on the path toward creating a “Greater

Serbia” by force. In the end, the new country

would encompass all of Yugoslavia’s Serbs and

keep the members of the ancien regime in their

privileged positions.

Escalation of the conflict: 

The Serbian offensive strategy

The principal mechanism for escalating interethnic conflicts in a multinational state begins when

political elites in tenuous positions of power

successfully portray their ethno-nation as being

17
threatened by another.66 The political players will

then manipulate this “ethnic threat” to advance

their interests in holding onto political power

and/or vanquishing competing elites. Members of

Serbia’s broad coalition of conservative political,

military, and cultural elites pushed each other toward an extremist definition of the “national

threat,” creating a constant escalation of the conflict among all the other Yugoslav nations. The

more this coalition emphasized the perception

that the Serbian nation was threatened, the more

the other ethnic nations perceived threats to their

own security. This defensive reaction was, in turn,

used to confirm the threat to Serbia, giving it the

right to increase the level of its “defense.”67

This vicious circle of defending against ethnonational threats began in the 1980s with the “ethnic threat” in Kosovo and the uncertainty over the

survival of Yugoslavia’s state and society. The conflict developed in the context of a preemptive vision of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, which incited

the struggle for power and security among all of its

nations’ political leaders. Reality was becoming

more and more a daily fabrication based on mutual name-calling and consciously crafted lies. Ethnic clashes were becoming more frequent and

more intense in a political scene whose script was

becoming increasingly predictable.68

For its part, Serbia used three offensive strategies for grabbing power while working to ensure

Yugoslavia’s disintegration and, at the same time,

beginning the process of nation- and state-building. The Serbian leadership’s new vision of statebuilding now relied on mass nationalist movements that coalesced around the idea of redividing

the Yugoslav space and creating a powerful, allencompassing Serbian state.69 This new vision informed the Serbian intelligentsia’s redefinition of

Serbia’s national identity, as reflected in regularly

repeated media images and historical myths.70

Serbian ressentiment. The very expression of Serbian nationalism and the new vision of the Serbian

state invoked by Serbian nationalist intellectuals

aggravated ethnic tensions.71 The task of redefining the Serbian nation was undertaken by both the

conservative faction of the Serbian intelligentsia

and the Serbian Orthodox Church in collaboration

with the political leadership, which had control

over the mass media. The reawakening of Serbian

national consciousness followed classic methods

of “nation-building,” including descriptions of “national treasures” and cultural uniqueness.72 They

encouraged the Serbian national community to

imagine itself as an “endangered species” that urgently needed its own state in order to protect itself from other “species.” The basic emotion upon

which Serbian national identity was built was the

enmity of other Yugoslav peoples.

73 This is best illustrated in the words of the writer and “father of

the Serbian nation,” Dobrica Cosic: “The enemies

of the Serbs made Serbs Serbs.”74 Another wellknown Serbian writer expressed the same thought:

“The Serbian issue was started and opened by others. They straightened us out by blows, made us

sober by offenses, woke us up by injustices,

brought light and united us by coalitions. They

hate us because of Yugoslavia, and now it seems

they do not leave her, but us.”75

Ressentiment—the dominant sentiment of being

threatened and hated throughout Yugoslavia—informed Serbian nationalism, which consisted of

two basic components. One was entirely for domestic purposes, providing the conservative Serbian leadership with a convenient taxonomy of

real and fabricated Serbian grievances against Yugoslavia’s other nations. By constantly returning to

this repertoire of current and historical wrongs,

the Serbian leadership was able to keep nationalist

passions running high. 

The second, external, component contained a

revision of Serbian relations with other nations

and with Yugoslavia as a whole. This new set of relations appeared for the first time in 1986 with the

unofficial publication of the Serbian Academy of

Sciences and Arts’ draft “Memorandum,” which

was an attempt to present systematically the situation of the Serbs as a whole nation. Based on that

document and many positions taken by wellknown Serbian writers and members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts appearing daily

in the Serbian media, seven key themes of Serbian

ressentiment are identified here.76

1. Yugoslavia is a Serbian delusion. According

to this theme, Serbs were naively duped into accepting Yugoslavism and the fraternal bonds of its

other nations, while those “brothers” were continually building their ethno-national states on the

bones of dead Serbs who fought in wars of liberation. Only the Serbs love Yugoslavia, they were the

only ones to fight for her, they were the only ones

to abdicate their Serbian nationality in the name of

18
Yugoslavian unity. They lost considerable “historical time” in coming to the realization that Yugoslavia was a Serbian delusion. They had everything to lose in accepting the Yugoslav project, and

other nations had everything to gain. The Serbs

were the victims of their own futile Yugoslavism:

“The contemporary Serbian national consciousness is soiled by ideological fraud . . . with its

strongest spiritual footing in its national defeats,

the illusory Yugoslavian. . . . The contents and

forms of national consciousness of other Yugoslav

nations are a priori anti-Yugoslav.”77 But now,

“there is a growing consciousness that Yugoslavia

is a mass grave of the Serbian people. . . .”78

2. The conspiracy

against the Serbs. During

their entire Yugoslav history, Serbs were exposed

to the conspiracy of the

Comintern, the LCY, and

Tito (the Croat) and

Kardelj (the Slovene), who

played the leading roles in

Yugoslav decision making

and who implemented Yugoslavia’s anti-Serbian policy. As part of its social revolution and the struggle

against Serbian hegemonism, the LCY acted to

reduce Serbia to the Turkish pasha’s outpost in Belgrade and promoted the

disintegration and assimilation of the Serbian people: “Austro-Hungarian and Comintern ideology

united in Titoism. In setting up republican-political territories, developing republican etatisms . . .

and instituting the 1974 constitution, Titoism was

doing everything to disintegrate the Serbian nation, and it succeeded in doing so.”79

3. Serbia is exploited. Serbia was economically

exploited by Croatia and Slovenia, which explains

its economic backwardness. The largest part of the

Serbian Academy’s “Memorandum” was devoted

to this theme, formulated in the following way:

“During the entire postwar period, the economy of

Serbia was exposed to nonequivalent exchange. . . .

There is not the slightest degree of suspicion that

the relative retardation of Serbia primarily resulted

because of smaller investments per capita, and not

because of the effectiveness of investments. . . .

One gets a picture of an oppressed and neglected

economy in the Yugoslav space. . . . The situation of

Serbia should be observed within the pattern of

the political and economic domination of Slovenia

and Croatia, who were the initiators of changes in

all of the previous systems.”80

4. Serbs are the losers, because they are the

only ones who do not have a state proper. They

win at war, but lose in peace. All their war victories

were canceled out in peace settlements (i.e., two

Balkan wars and two world wars). Serbs, along

with the Montenegrins, sacrificed their earlier

states for the foundation of Yugoslavia. “The nation which after a long and bloody struggle came

once again to have its state

[that is, after the long Ottoman occupation], which

alone fought for and acquired democracy, and

which in two world wars

lost 2.5 million compatriots, lived to see that a party

commission created by the

party apparatus found that

after four decades in the

new Yugoslavia it was the

only nation that did not

have its own state. A worse

historical fiasco in peacetime could not be imagined.”81

5. Serbs are exposed to

the hatred that all Yugoslav people have toward them. Hatred toward

Serbs is a dominant theme in the writings of Serbian intellectuals, expressed in many different

ways. Each Yugoslav nation has its own distinct hatred toward Serbs. For instance: “Macedonian

Communists have simply ‘Macedonized’ Serbs

(i.e., they have committed ethnocide against Serbs

in their republic).” And so it goes for each nation.

This theme in Serbian ressentiment contends that

the republic had to endure “the unequal and humiliating position of the Serbian people in the present-day Yugoslavia under the rule of an anti-Serb

coalition, especially of ‘Serbophobia,’ which in the

last decades has grabbed wide layers of Slovenian,

Croatian, Albanian peoples, and some parts of the

Macedonian intelligentsia and Moslems. . . . The

Albanian national minority for longer than two

decades from its motherland hounds the most

19

The principal mechanism for

escalating interethnic

conflicts in a multinational

state begins when political

elites in tenuous positions of

power successfully portray

their ethno-nation as being

threatened by another.
20

populous Yugoslav people.”82 The Serbian nation

is “surrounded by hatred, which made its peace

more tormenting than the war.”83

6. Serbs are exposed to genocide, again perpetuated by their enemies’ enduring and immutable

anti-Serb policies.84 The motive of Serbia’s leaders

in provoking fear and ethnic clashes was to remind Serbs of genocide’s ever-present proximity

and to prevent a new genocidal campaign against

Serbs. This theme was renewed in a variety of

ways, but mainly through the display of photographs and accounts of Ustashe atrocities

against Serbs in all of the republic’s major newspapers and on television programs.85 An exhibit devoted to Serbian genocide traveled around Serbia

for months. 

Orthodox priests demanded that they be allowed to take Serbian victims murdered in World

War II out of mass graves and to rebury them with

dignity.86 Exhuming mass graves and the reburial

of remains has a symbolic role of defining the borders of the Serbian state: Where there are Serbian

graves, there are also Serbian borders. The number

of past genocide victims increased every day during this particular Serbian nationalist campaign,

which led to disputes with Croatia over the exact

number of Serbs murdered. The number of victims

was, in fact, overstated in order to force the Croats

to publicly deny the inflated numbers. In such a

fashion, the Serbs could conclude that Croats

wanted to hide their genocidal crimes against

Serbs in order to deflect attention from preparations for another future campaign: “It seems to me

that that which disrupts relations between Serbs

and Croats now is connected to the genocide

which was perpetrated against the Serbian people

by [the Croatian Ustashe regime]. . . . We can conclude that this hiding of genocide represents an

appeal to history for a repeat. . . .”87 Thus, “Serbs

are the people who are constantly exposed to

genocide.”88

7. A national state of all Serbs. An identity created from others’ hatred meant that inevitably Serbs

would want to “clean their house” of all those who

hated them: “After genocide, . . . after the 1974 constitution, . . . it is difficult to understand why Serbs

today do not reasonably and obstinately aspire to a

state without national problems, national hatreds,

and Serbophobia.”89 “We Serbs have to learn to

think that we can live alone.”90 Thus, the issue of a

Serbian national state is seen as an “issue of freedom

and the right to exist for the Serbian ethnos as the

whole of its spiritual, cultural, and historical identity, irrespective of the present-day republican

boundaries and the Yugoslav Constitution. If this

freedom and the right are not respected, then the

historical goal of the Serbian people—unification of

all Serbs in one state—is not realized.”91

These nationalist themes, which were perpetuated by the Serbian intelligentsia through the republic’s major media outlets, would not have been

entirely successful if they had not been taken up

by Serbia’s political and military elites as part of

their daily activity, although they did not publicly

express such views. Serbia’s conservative intellectuals and, later on, the republic’s nationalist opposition parties, were the voice of official nationalist

policy. At the beginning of 1991, it was officially

disclosed that Slobodan Milosevic accepted the

right of all peoples to self-determination, but he

did not accept the existing republican borders. In

March 1991, at a closed meeting with the leaders of

all Serbian municipalities, Milosevic stated the

possibility that Serbs could “live alone”:

Borders, as you know, are always dictated by the

strong, they are never dictated by the weak. Therefore it is basic for us to be strong. We simply believe that the legitimate right and interest of the

Serbian people is to live in one state. That is the

beginning and the end. That legitimate interest of

the Serbian people does not threaten the interest

of any other nation. Anyway, why would they

need those Serbs who bother them so much in

Knin, Petrinja, Glina, Lika, Banija, Kordun,

Baranja, if this problem is of such magnitude?

And, if we have to fight, God help us, we will. I

hope they will not be so crazy to fight with us. Because, if we cannot work and produce well, at

least we know how to fight.92

Political mobilization: The “antibureaucratic revolution” and the unification of Serbia. The only way

out of this “national catastrophe,” according to Serbia’s intelligentsia, was by encouraging a Serbian

uprising. The hope was for a national revolution in

which the Serbs would again be able to create their

own national state. This so-called antibureaucratic

revolution, which was organized from above by

Milosevic’s party clique with the help of Serbs

from Kosovo and the secret police, drew upon the

nationalist ideology of “being threatened and

hated.” During 1988–89, the revolutionary forces
took shape as a mass movement to create a “unified Serbia,” successfully tapping social and national discontent in the republic, especially over

the situation in Kosovo. Political mobilization developed through mass “meetings of solidarity”

with Serbs from Kosovo. These meetings were

used as an extra-institutional way of tearing down

the leaderships in Serbia’s provinces (Vojvodina

and Kosovo) and in Montenegro. More than sixty

such meetings were held across Serbia, in which

3.5 million people participated. There were few

places in the republic where these “meetings of

truth” were not held. Although the slogans varied

from place to place, they were all distinctly nationalist and even racist in content. For the first time,

people appeared at these meetings dressed in

Chetnik regalia.93 At the November 1988 meeting

of “Brotherhood and Unity,” held in Belgrade and

attended by more than one million people, calls

for hounding Slovenia out of Yugoslavia were publicly heard for the first time. At the same gathering,

Milosevic spoke in ominous tones about the use of

force:

This is not the time for sorrow; it is time for struggle. This awareness captured Serbia last summer

and this awareness has turned into a material

force that will stop the terror in Kosovo and unite

Serbia. . . . People will even consent to live in

poverty but they will not consent to live without

freedom. . . . Both the Turkish and the German invaders know that these people win their battles

for freedom. . . . We shall win despite the fact that

Serbia’s enemies outside the country are plotting

against her. . . . We tell them that we enter every

battle with the aim of winning it.94

Just a few short months after Milosevic’s speech,

Serbia seemed to be preparing for such a battle.

The republic enacted a series of sweeping repressive measures in Kosovo in March 1989. A coup

d’état brought a Serbian puppet regime to power

in Montenegro. At the same time, the populist and

authoritarian Serbian national movement invested

its national leader with absolute power, thereby

making democratization and a clear break with the

ancien regime impossible.95

In the already weakened Yugoslav presidency,

Serbia could no longer count on a majority of votes

in the collective body. The attempt of the Serbian

Communists to dominate the LCY failed at its extraordinary (and last) congress in January 1990,

when the Slovenian and Croatian representatives

walked out, thus signaling the end of Yugoslavia’s

Communist party. 

Mobilization of the Serbian diaspora: The Croatian nationalist response. Serbia’s third strategic

move involved the mobilization of the Serbian diaspora in Croatia by directly linking its loyalty to

Serbia’s survival. Ethnic skirmishes using diaspora

Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were

planned with the idea of tearing the republics

apart along ethnic lines. In the climate of nationalist hysteria surrounding a “unified Serbia,” the Serbian nationalist coalition had little trouble spreading rumors of possible genocidal campaigns

directed at the Serbian diaspora communities in

these republics. Such rumors were largely intended to mobilize the diaspora Serbs, and they

would not have been successful had there been no

recognizable strain of Ustashe nationalism in

Croatia’s official policy. If Croatia had not fallen

victim to its own national chauvinism, Serbia’s entire strategy would have failed.

Slovenia was the first to clash with Milosevic, attacking him for destroying the leaderships in Vojvodina and Montenegro. These attacks were welcomed with open arms, since they rallied Serbs

around anti-Slovenian sentiment. At the same

time, Slovenia was using Milosevic to justify its

plans to secede from Yugoslavia. In fact, secession

was already under way in 1989, when the Slovenes

proclaimed that federal laws were valid in Slovenia

only if they conformed with Slovenian law. The

Croatian Communist party kept silent because of

the republic’s Serbian minority, ever aware that an

attack on Milosevic would cause a major rift with

Croatian Serbs. Yet, the silence could not last

forever.

Serbia’s mobilization of Croatian Serbs started

with an unsuccessful attempt to organize a meeting of solidarity in Knin with Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo. Belgrade inundated the Knin

gathering with constant messages, and the Serbian

Orthodox Church assisted by publishing a text

that claimed the situation of Serbs in Croatia was

worse than that of Serbs in Kosovo and that such

terror would force Serbs to migrate toward the

east.96 The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

also contributed by organizing a conference on the

Croatian war memorial at Jasenovac, once more

heating up the unavoidable theme of the Croatian

genocide of the Serbs; an accompanying tract

21
accused Croatia of assimilating Serbs living in the

republic. The Serbian Writers Association also organized a meeting in 1989 with the theme of “Serbophobia,” where Croatian genocide was once

again featured prominently. Finally, all kinds of

Serbian emissaries were sent to Knin to incite

Croatian Serbs, and the response this time seemed

promising. The meeting was set for February 28,

1989. Well-trained “advance people” came from

Serbia, shouting out Slobodan Milosevic’s name

and carrying posters with his visage looking out

over the crowd, waving the Serbian national flag,

and singing nationalist hymns.97

Soon after this event, the Croatian Democratic

Union appeared on Croatia’s political scene. During the creation of the nationalist party, its leader,

Franjo Tudjman, accused the Croats of being

silent, and attacked the system in which the “sovereignty of the Croatian people” had been made an

impossible goal. In the republic’s parliament just a

couple of days later, it was suggested that the Croatian Constitution be changed so that it would no

longer stipulate that Croatia was also a state of the

Serbian people. Thus, the process of Croatia’s ethnic homogenization began.

Finally, at the February 24, 1990 inauguration

of the Croatian Democratic Union, in the presence

of Ustashe émigrés and Croats waving their national flag, Tudjman delivered his well-known remark that the “Independent State of Croatia [under the Ustashe regime] was not only a chauvinist

state, but also the result of specific historic facts

and the will of the Croatian people to create their

own state.”98

During this short period, Croatian Serbs became tightly organized. They formed their own

party and began to express their territorial pretensions. First, they expressed these ideas as the need

for cultural and then political autonomy; finally,

they threatened secession if Croatia were to become an independent state. Meetings were held

throughout the republic at which young men appeared in Chetnik regalia, shouting “This is

Serbia!” 

Tudjman won the elections in Croatia. This was

the greatest gift that Milosevic and the rest of Serbia’s nationalist coalition could have received. After Tudjman’s victory, unremitting media propaganda from both sides further exacerbated the

conflict. Now Serbs were really threatened, and

war was no longer a remote possibility. The labels

that each side had attached to the other had in fact

become their identities: Both Chetniks and

Ustashe had reappeared in Yugoslavia.

22
By the late 1980s, the emerging democratic

movements across Eastern Europe were

gathering momentum. In Yugoslavia, by

contrast, national movements were gearing up to

establish their own states. The breakdown of the

communist regime and the advent of free elections

was the culmination of what had already been going on for almost a decade in Yugoslavia. Along

with the process of democratization in the republics and the denial of that same process in the

federal government, central state authority was becoming weaker, approaching a situation of anarchy that bore an unsettling resemblance to the collapse of the empire that used to rule the Balkans.

Yugoslavia’s breakup gave new meaning to the old

notion of Balkanization.99

At first glance, it could be concluded that Balkanization was the predictable outcome of the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War

balance of power. This allegedly “natural” state of

affairs in the region, which had long suffered from

unresolved national questions and old conflicts

among the three founding nations of Yugoslavia

(Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), generally has been

regarded as the explanation for the country’s ongoing violence. Nationalist antagonisms in postcommunist Yugoslavia appeared to confirm

Nietzsche’s “eternal return”: Once again, Slovenes

and Croats were fighting for their independent

states, and Serbs were struggling for their own unification within one state. How could history repeat

itself in such a stereotypical fashion? What hidden

mechanism accounted for this repetition? Had five

decades of communist rule had no effect on the

“national question”? As stated at the beginning of

this study, the Communist party combined two elements to create the Yugoslav state: 1) resolution

of the national question, and 2) social revolution.

In order to understand the most recent Balkanization of the region, both elements must be taken

into account. As communism collapsed, the strategies of the political actors in each of the Yugoslav

republics were determined by specific elements of

the national question on the one hand, and the

search for an exit from the communist system on

the other.

After five decades during which Yugoslavia’s

Communist leaders preoccupied themselves with

“external” and “internal” enemies of the regime

that could threaten their privileged positions, the

enemy suddenly had become real. That this enemy

came from the “first socialist country,” where

Gorbachev granted “permission” to all the communist countries to choose their own way, was the

clearest sign that communism was losing its ideological ability to maintain these leaders in power.

Various strategies for dealing with the impending downfall of communist regimes typically

framed the responses to nationalist conflicts

throughout the region during the 1980s, but Yugoslavia’s republican elites could not agree on a

joint policy for managing the mounting threats to

their multinational system. At its last congress in

January 1990, the Serbian Communist party, led

by Milosevic and supported by the Yugoslav National Army, sought to reinforce the communist

regime’s role of holding Yugoslavia together; but

other republican leaders, particularly in Slovenia

and Croatia, did not want to continue down that

path. They clearly perceived that a departure from

the communist system could serve as their path

away from Yugoslavia and toward the establishment of their own independent states. Thus, each

of the republics was pursuing a separate policy,

combining the national cause with ideological

choice.

Saving the communist regime remained the one

method by which conservative elites in Serbia, including the YNA, could simultaneously preserve

the Yugoslav state and achieve the goal of Serbian

23

5

THE BREAKDOWN OF

COMMUNISM

Collapse and War
unification within one country. After the conservatives took power in 1987, they saw little advantage

in democratic change. This is unfortunate. In fact,

the only way that Serbia could have successfully resolved its national question of all Serbs living

within one state would have been for it to take the

leading role in democratization, offering a multiparty system, a liberal federation, and a freemarket economy. Such was the path taken by other

republics, first by Slovenia and Croatia, and then

to some extent by the other republics. The conservative Serbian elite believed it was left with few options: It defended the old regime and opposed political pluralism and economic reform.100

The dual games (national and ideological)

played by all the republics to a greater or lesser extent actually precluded both of two possible paths

to a resolution of the federation’s crisis. The republics’ leaders were unable to either reimagine

Yugoslavia as a democratic and minimal state or to

break away peacefully by creating new, separate,

democratic states. These games led to the final

stage of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, which went

through four phases: (1) introducing varying degrees of political pluralism, which fostered and in

some cases even maximized the interests of the different republics; (2) giving precedence to national

goals over economic interests and political reform;

(3) establishing national states as ethnocracies,

that is, differentiating citizens’ rights and obligations along ethnic lines; and (4) negotiating the

age-old question of Yugoslavia’s political form.

Taken together, these four phases amounted to a

prelude to war.

Political pluralism

The republics witnessed the formation of a variety

of new political parties during 1989–90. Since

most of these parties to varying degrees advanced

nationalist programs, political pluralism in Yugoslavia was strongly colored by nationalism from

the very start. In April 1990, Slovenia and Croatia

held their first free elections; the Communists lost

in both cases. Meanwhile, Serbia’s official policy remained at the level of reform rhetoric; Serbian

leaders continued to advocate political pluralism

without actually introducing a multiparty system.

However, once all of the other governments in the

region had squarely embarked on the path of

political reform, Serbia had no choice but to accept

multiparty elections. The League of Communists

of Serbia rechristened itself the Socialist Party in

July 1990. Although all of the communist parties in

the various republics entered their respective multiparty elections under new names, only in Serbia

and Montenegro did these renamed communist

parties win, and only then with the support of the

YNA. At that time, the YNA openly supported the

Serbian side—or, more precisely, Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia. The three main tenets of this

coalition were: 1) both partners were against liberal and democratic changes; 2) both viewed the

new Yugoslavia as a vehicle for advancing Serbian

and military interests; and 3) both had majority

participation of Serbs. The other republics’ new

parties were able to push the Communists into the

opposition, and in doing so the republics could assert that they had become “democracies” by virtue

of having overthrown their communist predecessors. In Serbia, on the other hand, a combination

of communism and nationalism won out. 

The most important fact about these first free

elections was that they confirmed the power of the

offensive strategy of defending national interests.

Bosnia-Herzegovina’s first and only elections were

particularly instructive when viewed from this

standpoint. The Bosnians had a chance to vote for

the liberal and reformist party of the then Yugoslav

prime minister, Ante Markovic. Indeed, his party

seemed to be the most popular in BosniaHerzegovina. But it turned out that the people

from each of the three national communities were

afraid to take the chance to vote for the civic parties, fearing that the others might vote for nationalist ones—a typical “prisoner’s dilemma.” Thus, the

results of the elections mirrored the national census; almost all citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina

voted according to their national affiliation. Nationalist parties won in all of the republics, except

Macedonia.101

Maximal nationalist programs became enshrined as state policy in the main rival republics,

Serbia and Croatia. In both republics, opposition

parties decided to expand nationalist agendas

rather than devise alternative programs that would

strike some balance between nationalist and democratic goals, between extremist and moderate

national policies. Some of the ultranationalist opposition parties, in cooperation with their

24
respective state governments, set up their own

armies and paramilitary formations, which eventually would be responsible for horrible crimes.

The centrality of ethnicity in Yugoslavia’s political life grew as the victorious nationalist parties

spread beyond their borders, serving the interests

of their conationals, or “constituent peoples,” who

lived in other republics. Thus, Franjo Tudjman’s

Croatian Democratic Union opened

branches for Croats living in BosniaHerzegovina and Vojvodina. Similarly, Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina

and Croatia formed local branches

of the Serbian Democratic Party 

with guidance from Belgrade.102

The Muslim Party of Democratic

Action, led by Alija Izetbegovic, originated in Bosnia-Herzegovina but

soon expanded to Serbia and Montenegro to support the Muslims living in Sandzhak. Moreover, larger

national minorities, such as the

Albanians and Hungarians, established their own ethnic-based political parties, first in Kosovo and Macedonia and then in Vojvodina,

respectively. Thus, the whole space

of Yugoslavia and the republics

themselves were divided up by ethnic parties with their various public

and hidden agendas.

The priority of national over

economic interests

At the beginning of 1990, the new

Yugoslav prime minister (who

would also be its last), Ante

Markovic, introduced a dynamic

program of economic reform, succeeding in reducing the galloping rate of inflation

from an annual 2,600 percent to zero in about six

months. He offered a vision of a new economic system governed by market principles and privatization, making room for a political union of a new,

democratic Yugoslavia. Markovic attained considerable popularity throughout the country, even superseding in this respect the “fathers” of its dominant nations, Milosevic and Tudjman. Indeed, for a

time it seemed as though a united Yugoslavia

might succeed in acquiring a new lease on life.

With his liberal political outlook and substantial

economic success, Markovic represented a real

chance for the various nations to avoid the path of

war and destruction and, instead, turn toward a future based on modernization and eventual European integration. During 1990, the standard of living rose as hard-currency reserves swelled to $7.1

billion, twice their 1989 level. The

country’s foreign debt decreased

and repayments took place on

schedule.

Markovic’s economic and political program ran counter to the nationalist politics pursued by the various republics. Markovic eschewed

the endless discussions about Yugoslavia’s future political form, insisting that the term used for such a

form (i.e., federation or confederation) was not important. What mattered most to Markovic was maintaining a consensus on the

usefulness of an integrated, wellfunctioning state that would facilitate economic reform. To consolidate political support for his ideas,

Markovic founded his own political

party, the Alliance of Reform Forces

of Yugoslavia, in July 1990. Unfortunately, this came after the formation

of the nationalist parties and the

elections in Slovenia and Croatia,

too late to influence developments

in these two breakaway republics.

Markovic founded his party in

Bosnia as a symbol of Yugoslavia’s

ethnic diversity and as a concrete

embodiment of the multiethnic idea

of “living together.”

Curiously, Markovic’s program was both successful and popular in all the republics, including

Serbia, but he was unable to convert this popularity into electoral support for his party. He failed in

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, and

had relatively little success in Macedonia. There

was little doubt that the decisive factor in

Markovic’s defeat was insecurity about voting for

someone who did not represent one’s own ethnic

community; too many people believed that voting

25

Some of the

ultranationalist opposition

parties, in

cooperation with

their respective

state governments, set up

their own armies

and paramilitary

formations,

which eventually

would be

responsible for

horrible crimes.
only for their own national leaders would guarantee their safety.

Although practically none of the republican

leaders (except those in Macedonia) supported

him, Markovic faced an especially ruthless attack

from Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic clearly intended

to destroy this unpredictable obstacle to his own

political plan for restructuring Yugoslavia’s political space.103 When Markovic proposed constitutional changes to embrace further economic reform and to make room for federal elections,

Slovenia and Croatia joined Serbia in blocking his

proposals. The republics thus decisively precluded

the possibility of an economic and democratic reconstruction of the federal state and a democratic

dialogue about Yugoslavia’s future. After the political leaders squandered this opportunity, national

conflicts gained momentum. The country was

swiftly moving from one crisis to yet another.

Ethnocracies and war from inside the

republics

The new republican governments produced their

own internal instabilities by discriminating against

national minorities (or groups sharing the ethnicity of peoples from other constituent republics).

This discrimination created a vicious circle: In order to realize their desire for national sovereignty,

the newly elected governments developed powerful and militant nationalist movements backed by

propaganda, discriminatory policies, and violations of human and civil rights. Backed by the republican political leaders, these movements produced disaffected and separatist minority groups

that, in turn, posed a real “disturbance” to the republics’ national sovereignty and territorial integrity. In reaction to the militant separatist behavior of these minority groups, the republics quickly

acquired the highly centralized, authoritarian machinery of states that were ill suited to the heterogeneous composition of their population. The governments of Serbia and Croatia were typical of this

situation, the former in relation to the Albanian minority in Kosovo and the latter in relation to its

Serbian minority.

Armed conflicts first broke out in Kosovo after

Serbia abolished its autonomy. Subsequent repressive measures in Kosovo then provoked fresh

revolts, mass demonstrations, and the eventual,

complete alienation of the Albanian minority. In

January 1990, approximately forty thousand students staged demonstrations in Kosovo, demanding both an end to the extraordinary political measures and the release of Azem Vlasi, a Kosovar

political leader who was on trial. By the beginning

of February, Kosovo was on the brink of civil war.

The Yugoslav National Army intervened against

the demonstrators, killing twenty-seven ethnic Albanians and wounding many more.104 In July

1990, ethnic Albanian delegates to Kosovo’s

provincial assembly submitted a declaration proclaiming Kosovo a republic. A few days later, the

Serbian legislature dismissed Kosovo’s provincial

assembly. The ethnic Albanians of Kosovo then

boycotted the elections in Serbia to show that they

did not recognize Serbia as their country. Finally,

they created their own shadow government and

held a “secret” referendum on the question of an

independent Kosovo.

Croatia’s failure to provide adequate minority

rights guarantees fueled the fires of rebellion

among Croatian Serbs, who had already been

strongly supported from Belgrade and had raided

local police stations to supplement their arms

caches.105 The new Croatian government confronted armed resistance when it set out to take

over and change the ethnic composition of the police stations in predominantly Serbian areas of the

republic. The violence started in Knin in August

1990, when Croatian government officials began

gathering arms from the police stations and prevented Serbs from taking them. In the largely Serbpopulated Krajina region of Croatia, Serbs were

preparing to hold a referendum on their political

autonomy, a prospect that inflamed tempers

throughout the rest of Croatia. The government in

Belgrade encouraged the discontented Croatian

Serbs, spreading propaganda about the inevitable

repetition of the Ustashe genocide against the

Serbs in World War II. With the rejuvenation of

these memories, Serbia’s leaders promoted the fear

of a complete return to the past among Croatia’s

Serbs, pushing them even closer to the precipice of

war.106 In mid-1991, conflicts escalated in those areas of Croatia populated by large numbers of

Serbs, who were openly supported in their efforts

by the Yugoslav National Army.107

26
Negotiations, collapse, war

After seventy years of existence, the circle was

closed: Yugoslavia found itself repeating the same

historical debate about what form the Yugoslav

state should take. Just as had occurred seventy

years before, a number of different proposals were

on the table again. Slovenia and Croatia proposed

confederation, an arrangement that was to be construed as resembling the structure of the European

Union. The proposed confederation would consist

of sovereign and internationally recognized states

that would regulate matters of joint interest, such

as a common market, defense and security, human

rights, and European integration.108 Serbia and

Montenegro proposed a “democratic federation,”

which in practice would have meant the termination of the confederal elements introduced by the

1974 Yugoslav constitution.109 The proposal adumbrated a set of classical federal principles, including the sovereignty of citizens at both the federation and republican levels.110 The third and

most conciliatory solution was advanced jointly by

Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which envisioned Yugoslavia retaining its identity as a state

and its republics as sovereign entities.111 All three

proposals failed, since the protagonists—Slovenia

and Croatia on the one hand, and Serbia on the

other—were in no mood to compromise. The compromise solution aimed at saving Yugoslavia proposed by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina was

rejected just weeks before the war started.

Direct negotiations between the national leaders began in the spring of 1991. The talks produced

no results in part because the leading republics

had already decided unilaterally and in secret

coalitions to follow their own particular interests.

Slovenian and Serbian leaders came to an agreement that Slovenia could secede and that Serbs

had a right to live in one state. Another secret

agreement between Tudjman and Milosevic, created as far back as March 1991 in Karadjordjevo

(Serbia), formed an alliance against Markovic and

divided up Bosnia-Herzegovina between Serbia

and Croatia.112 These so-called reserve alternatives

were under way long before direct negotiations

started. Slovenia and Croatia were preparing to

gain their independence—by force, if necessary.113

The Serbian side was preparing for a war to establish a Serbian national state, but not within the existing “communist” borders.114

Finally, federal agencies started to collapse with

the withdrawal from the Federal Assembly of first

the Slovenian and Croatian members and then the

representatives from Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Macedonia. By September 1991, the Yugoslav presidency was reduced to a “rump” composed of only

Serbian and Montenegrin representatives. This

process paralleled the individual republics’ referenda on independence (beginning with Slovenia

and ending with Bosnia-Herzegovina) and their

subsequent declarations of independence. Croatia

and Slovenia declared their independence in June

1991. The Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serbian Republic of Krajina declared their independence in December 1991.

War erupted in Slovenia in June 1991 when

Slovenes removed federal signs along the Slovenian border and occupied the border outposts and

customs offices. The Yugoslav federal government

sent a unit of the YNA to replace Yugoslav border

signs and return the federal customs officers to

their posts. The YNA decided to fulfill this task by

moving into Slovenia with tanks and carrying out

their orders with force. Slovenian Territorial Defense units responded by attacking the YNA detachments, which were defeated in a few short

days. The YNA then quickly withdrew from

Slovenia.

Immediately thereafter, war broke out in Croatia between the rebellious Serb population and the

Croatian police guard. The YNA sided with the

Croatian Serbs under the pretext of protecting the

Serb population from genocide and ensuring its

right to self-determination. The YNA practically

waged a war against Croatia, as it would do later in

Bosnia-Herzegovina; the Croatian forces also

joined in the latter conflict. So began the long and

tragic division of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbs and

Croats.115

27
I

have confined my analysis of the Yugoslav crisis

to the internal factors that led to both the collapse of the state and the onset of war. The international community has had an important influence on the crisis and a decisive impact on the

dynamics of the conflict. A proper treatment of the

conflict itself, important though it may be, would

go beyond the framework of this study. Nevertheless, based upon my analysis of the internal factors

of Yugoslavia’s breakdown, I offer some recommendations in the form of conclusions that may be

useful for international decision making on ways to

avert such conflicts in the future. I offer these broad

recommendations despite the fact that the Yugoslav case is unique, just as the factors contributing to the breakdown of all multinational federations are unique. Still, we can draw some important

lessons from Yugoslavia’s demise, especially with

regard to the critical ethnic problems that still

plague the former Soviet Union and East-Central

Europe.

Yugoslavia and the USSR shared the same type

of multinational federal institutions, ethnodemographic mix of populations, and large diaspora communities whose status would change significantly with the dismemberment of both federal

states. Both cases involved the creation of new national states in which one ethnic group became predominant. The politics of ethnic unification invites

conflicts over borders (for example, NagornoKarabakh in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, and the Krajina region in Croatia). Secession

that does not entail a change of either borders or

minority-majority status (as was the case with

Slovenia, a uniquely homogeneous republic in the

Yugoslav federation) might still lead to an imbalance in the ethno-national composition of the rest

of the multinational federation, encouraging other

ethnically mixed regions or republics to claim the

right to self-determination in order to avoid the potential domination of one of the remaining federal

units.

Therefore, the first conclusion we can draw from

the case of Yugoslavia is that the international community should treat the dismemberment of multinational states with great caution, attempting to

moderate the tempo of state dissolution and thus

avoid an all-or-nothing result. Otherwise, it is virtually impossible to establish procedures for peaceful

decision making. Here, too, it is important for the

international community to avoid spurious assumptions in deciding how it should respond to

the crisis (for example, the convenient assumption

that nationalism is a benign ally in the struggle

against communist regimes).

Although Yugoslavia never succeeded in creating a wholly legitimate and democratic state, neither did it comprise an “empire” in which all its constituent nations had the same desire for

independence from the center. As I have argued in

this study, Yugoslavia was a patchwork of ethnically mixed regions, and it contained just as many

“national questions” as there were approaches to

resolving them. Not all of these approaches involved the kind of ethnic symmetry necessary for a

successful political outcome. Some of Yugoslavia’s

republics, like Slovenia and Croatia, were more inclined to push for the complete devolution of the

federal state. Serbia, on the other hand, played the

role of the state’s guardian, trying to maintain the

power of the center for its own interests. The interests of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were

somewhere in between these two dominant positions. Creating independent, ethno-national states

from the disintegrating federation was highly problematic from the very beginning, since the maximal

solutions proposed for most of Yugoslavia’s various national questions were in fundamental conflict with one another. The all-or-nothing nature of

these solutions, leavened with the nationalist

6

28

CONCLUSIONS
fervor with which Yugoslavia’s republican political

leaders pursued them, made war and gross violations of human rights natural accompaniments.

This scenario applies throughout the region.

When a maximal solution is proposed for one national question, then all other competing national

claims emerge in the same extreme form. In these

predictable and potentially lethal conditions, such

conflicts require early preventive actions that aim

at inhibiting the rise of extreme solutions and the

escalation of nationalist responses.

A major problem with the dismemberment of

Yugoslavia, as executed by extreme nationalist

political elites, was the apparent

absence of alternative solutions

that would have prevented (or

stopped altogether) the war

and reestablished peace and

security in the region. Thus, 

I offer as another recommendation that the international community actively work with the

relevant parties to arrange a

temporary status quo compromise if the dismemberment of

multinational states is not preceded by both an internal consensus on the terms

for creating new states, including their borders

and the status of minorities, and a clear conception

of future security and cooperation arrangements. 

This last item gives rise to the question of

whether reaching agreement on procedures that

enable the conflicting parties to arrive at any sort

of consensus is even feasible in such profound

crises. What happens if the parties can find no

common ground to work out the decision-making

rules and institutions—or, short of these, compromise solutions—that will govern the dismemberment of the country? Absent such common

ground, solutions typically appear as a fait accompli; and once they are under way, workable political solutions and peaceful attempts to prevent or

stop violent conflicts are almost impossible to find.

Thus, the Vance-Owen proposal for ending the

hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina came too late;

that is, after the Bosnian Serbs already held more

than 70 percent of Bosnian territory. At the same

time, the international community did not really

press for acceptance of the plan, since its members

could not reach a firm consensus among themselves. The United States, for example, did not

express much enthusiasm for the plan, apparently

because it would have required an uncertain—and

undesirable—degree of U.S. military participation

to bring the plan to fruition.

Because there was no internal consensus in the

Yugoslav case, two messages should have been

sent by the international community to Yugoslavia’s republican leaders: (1) that no unilateral decisions about secession would be accepted, and (2)

that the use of military force would be met with a

military response. Asking the antagonists to respect human rights, democratic institutions, and

international law was tantamount to doing nothing to prevent conflict. If the

various leaders of Yugoslavia’s warring factions

observed these rights and

principles in the first place,

they would not have found

themselves suddenly trying

to vanquish one another. 

To be sure, the international community’s recognition of these new states was

woefully insufficient to

secure their peace and

security. Not only must such recognition take into

account the internal and external threats involved

in each case, but it must be real in the sense that

the new state must either be able to defend itself or

be defended by international military forces. Otherwise, the international community produces

highly unstable situations that lead to victim-states

and victimized populations. The experience in

Bosnia-Herzegovina has discredited the concept of

collective security, and has severely undermined

the credibility of the UN and NATO. Similarly, the

conflict has weakened the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and has clouded

the otherwise bright prospects for future European integration and its institutional machinery

overall.

In the wider context of the political transformation of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet

Union, a more fundamental debate has been rekindled: the right to national self-determination and

how this vague principle might be reconsidered

and clarified in order to make it a workable concept in international law. The abuse of this right in

the Yugoslav case points up the need for such an

examination, as the right to self-determination

29

The experience in BosniaHerzegovina has discredited the concept of

collective security.
came to be equated with the right of ethnically

defined nations/republics to secede from the federation, regardless of the mass violence such an act

would surely entail. The republics’ unilateral acts

of secession were in turn met with internal acts of

secession by minority ethno-national communities, invoking the same principle of self-determination. The international community, meanwhile,

did very little to clarify the situation.

In fact, its actions during the early

stages of Yugoslavia’s dissolution

probably contributed more than any

other factor to dashing the

prospects of the multinational federation’s giving birth to sovereign, independent states in a peaceful

fashion, as its recognition of the new

states was based more on strategic

calculations and risk-aversion than

on an established international legal

principle. The failure to develop

guidelines for the application of this

principle only served to exacerbate

conflicts and provide the justification for nationalist pathologies, such

as so-called ethnic cleansing, and

the violent eruption of emerging

mini-states.

This is not the place to develop

either a new concept of self-determination or the criteria for the recognition of this right by the international

community. Rather, a more practicable endeavor would be simply to

suggest that the international community discourage claims to collective rights that infringe upon the

enjoyment of individual ones, especially in East-Central Europe and the

former Soviet Union, whose citizens

are still making democracy’s requisite psychological transition from collective to individual rights

and the observance of civil liberties. Future discussions about the notion of self-determination

should start from an investigation of the specific

characteristics of new cases emerging in the postcommunist era. Drawing on the arguments elaborated in this study, I would suggest that a minimal

precondition for the international community’s

support of a nation’s claims to the right of 

self-determination be a viable political community

in which the full rights of citizenship do not depend upon membership in the dominant ethnonational group and whose democratically expressed will for independence transcends the

ethnic base of the state.

As preconditions for the peaceful application of

the right to self-determination, one other factor

should be present when invoking

this right: the respect of both territorial integrity and minority rights.

This does not mean that the boundaries between states are immutable.

It does mean, however, that they

cannot be changed by force or without consideration of the consequences that the redrawing of international borders would have for

other members of the state. Above

all, there should be some international mechanism that provides for

the renegotiation of borders and

that encourages all sides to recognize the consequences of newly

drawn international borders for all

relevant parties.

The right to self-determination

ought not be exercised at the expense of the rights of others, particularly those who will become minorities in the new states. This

means that plebiscites, referenda,

and ethno-national coalitions—

which, by their very nature, exclude

the voices of newly created minorities—are not adequate foundations

for the formation and recognition of

new states. Indeed, in the case of Yugoslavia, they became a treacherous

road to war. Various new forms of

national self-expression, autonomy, and political

representation must be developed to fit the new

situations arising in complex, multiethnic states today. But none of these variations should be so encumbered by collective national ideologies as to

override the liberal ideal of individual liberties and

civil rights.

I have described here a typical case of ethno-nationalism, which is characterized by a rigid ideology and the aggressive politicization of national

30

Above all,

there

should be some

international

mechanism that

provides for the

renegotiation of

borders and that

encourages all

sides to recognize

the consequences

of newly drawn

international

borders for all

relevant parties.
identities. Another important conclusion that can

be derived from this case is that the interpretation

of both national membership (i.e., citizenship) and

the nation itself plays a key role in shaping policies

conducive to the establishment of a democratic nation-state. Human collectivities that define themselves in organic terms, as “superfamilies” in which

myths about blood ties provide the predominant

image of communal identity, find it difficult to establish universal, democratic rules of governance.

Their goal of creating a state for “their people” will

always be out of reach, as other people “get in the

way” and must be removed—by force, if necessary.

It is impossible in this part of the world to create a

stable state on the basis of the sovereignty of one

particular ethnically defined group.

This outcome was particularly likely in multinational Yugoslavia, which suffered from 

undemocratic regimes, economic backwardness,

and overlapping national goals. The old regime’s

more conservative element grabbed the chance to

achieve Serbian unification and preserve itself in

power at the same time. In Croatia, new elements

of the authoritarian regime were added to the old

in the service of defending a “young democracy”

and creating a new nation-state. In order to establish a permanent peace and to reconstruct the region in economic, political, and cultural terms, the

current elites will have to be replaced by new democratic leaders capable of introducing innovative

ideas and visions that will foster the development

of each of these countries and of the region as a

whole. Such a perspective is necessary as the only

way to eliminate the conditions that produce unitary national identities and their destructive political manipulation.

31
1. Charles Tilly also poses the question of whether we

will be faced with a process in which every ethnic

group seeks its own national state. See his “Prisoners of the State,” International Social Science Journal 44, no. 3 (August 1992): 329–42.

2. East Central Europe Between the Two World

Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press,

1974), 201.

3. According to the last Yugoslav census, conducted

in 1991, the ethnic makeup by republics consisted

of the following. Serbia: Serbs, 65.9%; Albanians,

17.1%; Hungarians, 3.5%; and Muslims, 2.5%.

Montenegro: Montenegrins, 61.85%; Muslims,

14.6%; Serbs, 9.3%; and Albanians, 6.6%. Bosnia

and Herzegovina: Muslims, 43.7%; Serbs, 31.3%;

Croats, 17.3%; and “Yugoslavs,” 5.5%. Macedonia:

Macedonians, 66.5%; Albanians, 22.9%; and others, 12%. Croatia: Croats, 77.9%; Serbs, 12.2%; and

others, 10%. Slovenia: Slovenes, 90%; and others,

10%.

4. Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ethnic diversity goes beyond

the number of different ethnic groups living there

and their relative size. Before the onset of the conflict, one-third of its population lived in towns

whose residents—to a significant degree—were the

products of mixed marriages. The ethnic distribution of the rural population was markedly different, with two-thirds inhabiting different ethnically

homogeneous villages in close proximity to one

another. As such, the republic had very few ethnically homogeneous regions. See Srdjan Bogosavljevic, “Bosna i Hercegovina u ogledalu statistike,” in

Bosna i Hercegovina izmedu rata i mira, ed. Dusan Janjic and Paul Shoup (Beograd: Dom omladine/Forum za etnicke odnose, 1992), 40–41.

5. It is no longer a secret that Presidents Milosevic

and Tudjman agreed to divide up BosniaHerzegovina in the spring of 1991. In a hearing on

Yugoslavia’s breakup before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State James Baker

stated: “We know that the leadership of Serbia and

Croatia held long conversations about how to divide up Bosnia.” NIN, January 20, 1995.

6. “Ressentiment refers to a psychological state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred

(existential envy) and the impossibility to act them

out. . . .” Liah Greenfield and Daniel Chirot, “Nationalism and Aggression,” Theory and Society 23,

no. 1 (February 1994): 84. The authors argue that

in the case of “collectivistic and ethnic nationalism,” which is characteristic of all the peoples of

the former Yugoslavia, ressentiment plays a key formative role.

7. Vesna Pesic and Julie Mostov, “A New Challenge

for Conflict Resolution: The Case of Yugoslavia,” in

Yugoslav War, ed. T. Kuzmanovic and A. Truger

(Schlaining, Austria: Austrian Study Center for

Peace and Conflict Resolution, 1992), 38.

8. V.P. Gagnon, Jr., “Serbia’s Road to War,” Journal of

Democracy 5, no. 2 (April 1994): 118.

9. One of the most thorough studies of the manipulation of public opinion through control of the mass

media in all of the Yugoslav republics involved in

the war is Mark Thompson’s study for Article 19 of

the International Centre Against Censorship. See

his Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia,

and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Avon: The Bath Press,

1994). 

10. Charles Tilly thinks that the modern era legitimated the principle “that states should correspond

to homogeneous peoples, that members of homogeneous peoples owe strong loyalties to the states

that embody their heritage, and that the world

should therefore consist of nation-states having

strongly patriotic citizens.” Charles Tilly, “States

and Nationalism in Europe, 1492–1992,” Theory

and Society 23, no. 1 (February 1994): 133.

11. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal

Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 16.

12. According to Rogers Brubaker, the “Soviet Union

was a multinational state not only in ethnodemographic terms—not only in terms of the extraordinary ethnic heterogeneity of its population—but,

more fundamentally, in institutional terms.” Rogers

Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question

in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia: An Institutional Account,” Theory and Society 23, no. 1

(February 1994): 49.

13. Ibid., 64.

14. For a definition of nationalism as a desire for congruity of nation and state, see Ernest Gellner, NaNOTES

32
33

tions and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1983), 1, 7, and 43. See also Liah

Greenfeld, “Transcending the Nation’s Worth,”

Daedalus 122, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 47–62.

15. Claus Offe, “Ethnic Politics in Eastern European

Transitions” (paper presented at the conference on

“Nationalisms in Europe Revisited” at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, 27–29 March

1995), 34. In this analysis of nationalism in Eastern

Europe, Offe discusses the role of the “decisive battle”: “It is well understood by the ethnic groups in

Eastern Europe that this is the decisive time at

which a new game is being started and the ‘original

endowment’ of territorial and legal resources is being distributed, which will determine the relative

position of the actors involved for the indefinite future. Both of these assessments, the absence of a

stable equilibrium and the urgency of the issues involved, are apt to inflame ethnic and chauvinistic

sentiments and to provoke unilateral preemptive

strikes.”

16. Basically, this was only one current—the so-called

integral Yugoslavs—which was not popular among

the masses in Serbia, Croatia, or Slovenia. It was

not accepted by any of their official representatives

who were involved in negotiations over the new

state. See Vasa Cubrilovic, Istorija politicke misli u

Srbiji XIX veka (Belgrade: Nolit, 1954), 450.

17. Branko Petranovic, “Modernizacija u uslovima nacionalno nestabilnog drustva,” in Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XX veka, ed. Latinka Perovic

(Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 1994),

18.

18. See Djordje Stankovic, Nikola Pasic, Saveznici i

stvaranje prve Jugoslavije (Belgrade: Nolit, 1984).

19. See Cubrilovic, Istorija politicke, 461–65.

20. Latinka Perovic, Od centralizma do federalizma

(Zagreb: Globus, 1984), 125–42.

21. Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984),

115–40.

22. Cubrilovic, Istorija politicke, 463.

23. According to some sources, about one million

Serbs were killed in the Balkan Wars (1912–13)

and in World War I. See Jozo Tomashevich, Peasants, Politics, and Economic Change in Yugoslavia (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press,

1955), 225.

24. Croatia’s communist-imposed silence on genocide

aided Belgrade’s propaganda in eventually pushing

Croatian Serbs into war, and Zagreb’s propaganda

helped to confirm Serbia’s suspicions. See Bette

Denich, “Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist

Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide,”

American Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (May 1994):

367–90.

25. Paul Shoup, Communism and the Yugoslav National Question (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1968), 55.

26. Gregory Gleason, Federalism and Nationalism:

The Struggle for Republican Rights in the USSR

(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), 35.

27. See Slobodan Samardzic, Jugoslavija pred iskusenjem Federalizma (Belgrade: Strucna Knjiga, 1990).

See also Robert Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Former Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review 51, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 654–73.

28. Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question,” 52.

29. On ethnocracy, see Julie Mostov, “Endangered Citizenship,” in Russia and East Europe in Transition,

ed. Michael Kraus and Ronald Liebowitz (Boulder,

Colo.: Westview Press, forthcoming).

30. Using census data, it is possible to chart the

changes in the ethnic structure of Kosovo. In 1921,

65.8% of Kosovo’s population was Albanian and

26% was Serbian. The first postwar census in 1948

shows that the percentage of Albanians grew and

that of the Serbs decreased. In 1948, Serbs were

23.6% of the population, while in 1981 they stood

at only 13.2%. Because ethnic Albanians boycotted

the last census in 1991, there are only estimates of

the population’s ethnic breakdown for that year:

Albanians, 81.6%; Serbs, 9.9%. Nacionalni sastav

stanovnistva SFRJ (Belgrade: Savremena administracija, 1991) and Bilten No. 1934 (Belgrade:

Savezni zavod za statistiku, 1992).

The majority of the population of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina was Serbian.

They made up 57.3% of the population; Hungarians, 16.9%; Croats, 3.7%; Slovaks, 3.2%; Montenegrins, 2.2%; Romanians, 1.9%; and others, 14.8%.

31. After the formation of the Muslim nation, there was

a discussion about whether to recognize its status

regionally—that is, within Bosnia and Herzegovina

only—or for all Muslims wherever they live—that is,

in Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, etc. It

was decided to recognize the Muslims’ status as a
34

“constitutive” people over the whole territory of

Yugoslavia. For an interesting discussion of this

question, as well as the unwillingness to recognize

the “ethnic Muslims” by individual republics, see

Sabrina P. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in

Yugoslavia, 1962–1991, 2d ed. (Bloomington,

Ind.: University of Indiana, 1991), 177–86.

32. Rogers Brubaker contends that “In regions with

highly intermixed ethnocultural communities, . . .

where political borders cannot be drawn to coincide with ethnocultural frontiers, the territorialpolitical and ethnocultural models of nationhood

are not so easily reconciled. Widely dispersed ethnocultural nations, as well as those that overlap

with other ethnocultural nations in inextricably intermixed frontier ‘shatter zones,’ cannot be neatly

‘territorialized,’ cannot easily acquire their own territorial states. And territorial polities that include

substantial and self-conscious national minorities

cannot, in the age of nationalism, be easily ‘nationalized,’ i.e., ‘nationally homogenized.’” Brubaker,

“Nationhood and the National Question,” 56.

33. Thus, for example, the old cultural institutions of

Serbs in Croatia were abolished soon after the war,

with the explanation that a constitutive people is

not a minority and thus is not entitled to minority

cultural rights. This fact later enabled Serbian nationalists to assert that Serbs in Croatia had fewer

rights than under Austro-Hungarian rule and were

“subject to assimilation.” See Predrag Tasic, Kako je

ubijena druga Jugoslavija (Skopje: Stamparia

Katje, 1994), 181.

34. Serbs outside of Serbia accepted Yugoslavia as their

national state. “If you awake an average Serb from

Croatia in the middle of the night and ask him

what is his national state, he will say ‘Yugoslavia.’ If

you wake a Croat and ask him the same, he will say

‘Croatia.’” Dusan Biladzic, “Skriven nacionalni program u SKJ,” Filozofija i drustvo IV (Belgrade: Univerzitet u Beogradu i Institut za drustvenu teoriju,

1993), 119.

35. See Walker Connor, The National Question in

Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1984), 334–36.

36. Serbian “liberals,” who led the Serbian Communist

party at the end of the 1960s, provided an official

outlet for Serbia’s political and economic elites

who were critical of Yugoslavia’s centralism and authoritarianism (including Tito’s). Based on their

ideas about Serbia’s modernization and economic

development, the “liberal” platform briefly

changed Serbia’s traditional centralist policy. Tito’s

extensive purges of “liberals” in both Serbia and

Croatia in 1972 aided conservatives’ efforts to

reverse the process of decentralization and reform

with “more nationalism and more authoritarianism.” On the struggles among the republics over

economic decentralization and economic reform

as a major source of conflict over different national

interests, see Dennison Rusinow, Yugoslav Experiment, 1948–1974 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

37. The idea of “Yugoslavism” was not clear and was

subject to different interpretations from the standpoint of different national interests. At the beginning of the 1950s, the accent was on national unity

and “Yugoslavism,” as was evident in the constitutional changes in 1953 and in later discussions

about “Yugoslav culture” based on the closeness of

the Yugoslav peoples. A 1954 declaration establishing Yugoslav cultural and scientific institutions asserted that the Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin

languages were one. On this occasion, efforts were

undertaken to compile a Serbo-Croatian dictionary. But by the beginning of the 1960s, there was

a backlash from Croatia and Slovenia, rejecting the

idea of “Yugoslavism” as an attempt at “cultural assimilation.” See Shoup, Communism and the Yugoslav National Question, 194–212.

38. Veljko Vlahovic, Referat na Osmom Kongresu SKJ

(“Report to the Eighth Congress of the LCY”) (Belgrade: Komunist, 1964), 141–142; cited in Vesna

Pesic, Kratki kurs o jednakosti (Belgrade: Sociolosko drustvo Srbije, 1988), 73.

39. See James Gow, Legitimacy and the Military: The

Yugoslav Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1992), 59.

40. See Julie Mostov, “Democracy and Decisionmaking,” in Yugoslavia: A Fractured Federalism, 

ed. Dennison Rusinow (Washington, D.C.:

Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1988), 105–119.

41. Bare “national interests” tend toward a political

“zero-sum” game. Slobodan Samardzic calls this

kind of federalism “combative.” See Samardzic, Jugoslavija pred iskusenjem Federalizma , 34.

42. Ramet correctly asserts that the Yugoslav system

can be studied in the context of a “balance of

power” approach (i.e., within the context of international systemic theories). Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962–1991, xvii.
35

43. See Ernest Gellner, “Nationalism in the Vacuum,”

in Thinking Theoretically About Soviet Nationalities, ed. Alexander Motyl (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1992), 243–54. 

44. Here I use Renée de Nevres’s definition of “moderation” in the context of democratization: “Moderation means avoidance of extremism and hostility in

developing positions vis-à-vis other ethnic groups.”

Renée de Nevres, “Democratization and Ethnic

Conflict,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, ed. Michael E. Brown (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1993), 70.

45. Dobrica Cosic, “The Serbian People’s Great Illusion,” Politika, January 10, 1991.

46. Underlying the Serbs’ “internationalism” was a decidedly nationalist position, which explains why

they did not have an organized nationalist movement—as long as the LCY maintained Yugoslavia

under centralized rule. Other nations, holding

onto their “nativist” positions, went through their

own nationalist experience: the extensive Croatian

movement at the beginning of the 1970s, the

Slovenian highway affair at the end of the 1960s,

and the Albanians’ numerous demonstrations in

Kosovo.

47. Connor believes that the intention of Yugoslavia’s

Communist party was “to gerrymander the Serbian

community” that was constitutionally recognized

“within the new Serbian Republic as well.” In order

to achieve a balance between Croatia and Serbia,

provinces were created in Serbia alone. Connor

stresses that the Serbian community in Serbia was

reduced by one-fifth (i.e., 1.1 million people). See

Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, 336. 

48. Ramet contends that the provinces were put on

equal footing with the republics with the helpful

assistance of Slovenia and the Croatian nationalists

in power at the time the amendments were made.

For more details on the constitutional struggle between Serbia and its provinces, see Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962–1991,

76–78.

49. The appearance of the “Blue Book” spelled the end

to the confederal compact in which republican lists

of cadres for candidates to the presidency of the

League of Communists of Yugoslavia were automatically accepted. Dragoslav Markovic, who was

in charge of the “Blue Book” on behalf of the Serbian leadership, was not elected to the LCY presidency owing to the opposition of representatives

from other republics and provinces. For a more detailed discussion of the “Blue Book,” see Veljko

Vujacic, “Communism and Nationalism in Russia

and Serbia” (Ph.D. diss., University of California,

Berkeley, 1994), 176–78.

50. Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds—The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,

1993), 51.

51. The Battle of Kosovo, which pitted Serbs against

Ottoman Turks on June 15, 1389, symbolizes the

loss of the medieval Serbian empire and still remains the central event in all of Serbian history.

The Battle of Kosovo also shapes a large part of Serbian national consciousness and culture, serving

as an inspiration for Serbian epic poetry that has

been passed down throughout the centuries.

52. The Serbian Orthodox Church was the most attentive and immediately accepted the chance to cast

off its marginalized role. The revitalization of the

church was essentially linked to the “dangers” that

were hanging over the nation. Kosovo became the

cornerstone of its strategy to take over the representation of the Serbian people as a whole. The

church’s support in this affair was rewarded by the

government in 1984, when approval was given to

build St. Sava church in Vracar and a complex of

buildings for the School of Theology. Radmila

Radic, “Crkva i ‘srpsko nacionalno pitanje,’

1980–1995,” Republika, no. 121–22 (August

1995): iv–v.

53. The population of Serbs and Montenegrins was

permanently on the decline, which I indicated earlier. (See note 30.) The number of Serbs who left

Kosovo from 1981 to 1985 reached 17,600. See

Tasic, Kako je ubijena druga Jugoslavija, 64.

54. My research on rapes in Kosovo indicates that as of

1987, there was not a single “interethnic” rape (i.e.,

a Serbian woman raped by an Albanian), although

such cases were constantly mentioned in the press.

Under enormous public pressure regarding the

rape of “Serbian women,” new criminal proceedings were introduced if the rape involved individuals of “different nationalities.” In addition, the rate

of such sexual assaults in Kosovo was the lowest

compared to other Yugoslav republics, and the

greatest number of rapes in Kosovo occurred

within the same ethnic groups. See Vesna Pesic, 

“O krivicnom delu silovanja: Uporedna analiza sa

SFRJ, uzu Srbiju, Kosovo i Vojvodinu,” in Kosovski

cvor: dresiti ili seci? (Belgrade: Chronos, 1990), 47.
36

55. Ruza Petrovic and Marina Blagojevic, Seobe Srba i

Crnogorca sa Kosova i iz Metohije (Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 1989).

56. Tasic, Kako je ubijena druga Jugoslavija, 71.

57. The Slovenes in particular were criticized for not

understanding the Serbian problem in Kosovo.

“The Serbs understood the Slovenes when the Germans ousted them from their homes during the

Second World War, and thus gave them shelter in

Serbia.” They did not ask for “proof” that the Germans had truly ousted them. Tasic, Kako je ubijena

druga Jugoslavija, 89.

58. Ivan Jankovic, “Krivicno pravna represija politicki

nenasilnih ponasanja na Kosovu: 1979–1988,” in

Kosovski cvor: dresiti ili seci?, 63.

59. This interpretation of the conflict was publicly expressed for the first time at the funeral of Aleksander Rankovic, the former Yugoslav minister of

internal affairs. After his downfall in 1966, the situation in Kosovo changed drastically when ethnic

Albanians assumed power. His funeral in 1983 was

“transformed into a nationalistic event,” which was

attended by more than 100,000 people. Beneath

the din of thousands of Serbs shouting out his

name, the subtext of the gathering was clear:

“When Rankovic was on the job, the Albanians

were peaceful.” Slavoljub Djukic, Izmedju slave i

anateme—Politicka biografija Slobodana Milosevica (Belgrade: Filip Visnjic, 1994), 36.

60. The “Keljmendi Case,” regarding the Albanian soldier who killed four sleeping soldiers from different ethnic groups and wounded several others,

was headlined in the Serbian press as “Shooting at

Yugoslavia” and stirred up extreme anti-Albanian

sentiment. Commentaries in Politika implied that

the Albanians hated not only the Serbs, but all Yugoslav ethnic groups. Daily accounts of the case

pointed up so many contradictions that one could

not help but get the impression that the barracks

massacre had been orchestrated. See Tasic, Kako je

ubijena druga Jugoslavija, 99–100.

61. Djukic, Izmedju slave i anateme, 36.

62. The most influential and prestigious daily newspaper, Politika, was put into the service of nationalist

policy in order to create a cult of the new “national

leader.” The newspaper played a key role in the creation of national intolerance through its aggressive

column “Odjeci i Reagovanja” (“Repercussions and

Reactions”). It spoke with the voice of “the people,”

attacking individuals—and even the entire nation—

if the slightest doubt was expressed over Milosevic’s policies. Such doubt was likened to hatred of

the Serbian people.

63. General Kadijevic, Yugoslavia’s secretary of defense

and the head of the republic’s military high command from 1989 to 1992, maintains in his book

that the reformers in power in socialist countries

were part of the U.S. strategy to defeat communism. These “reformers” had been prepared long in

advance “so that it seemed as though the process of

destroying the system by way of reforms was being

led by internal Party forces.” Moje vidjenje raspada—Vojska bez drzave (Belgrade: Politicka izdavacka delatnost, 1993), 13.

64. In “The Crisis of Modernity” (Republika, No. 8:

“The Slavs and the West,” January 1994), Srdja

Popovic accurately emphasizes that the conservative coalition in Serbia “found its social base in

primitive rural regions which have always been

threatened by the effort and discipline that modernism requires. . . . Its main opponent is the middle class and the urban population, the mainstay of

cosmopolitanism, commercialism, science, and

rationality.”

65. For the similarities and coalitions between the

communists and nationalists in Serbia and Russia,

see Vujacic, “Communism and Nationalism in Russia and Serbia.”

66. William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 74.

67. Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic

Conflict,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, 194.

68. Miodrag Stanisavljevic, Zveckanje Oklopnika

(Zrenjanin: Republika, 1994), 25.

69. Dobrica Cosic emphasizes the subordinate role of

national ideology to state-building with the following: “Slobodan Milosevic became a politican having the characteristics of a charismatic leader not

with nationalism as an ideology, but with statehoodness as a national goal.” Promene (Novi Sad:

Dnevnik, 1992), 141.

70. On the relationship between “nation” and “state,”

see Katharine Verdery, “From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe,” East European Politics and

Societies 8, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 225–55.
37

71. The issue here is the ethnic interpretation of a nation, which is closest to the definition offered by

Anthony Smith: “Ethnic concepts of the nation focus on the genealogy of its members, however

fictive; on the popular mobilization of ‘the folk’; on

native history and customs; and on the vernacular

culture.” When politically mobilized, ethnic nationalism tends to conceive of the nation based on 

1) its natural qualities, renewing “pre-existing ethnic ties”; 2) the politicization of culture, which renews the ethno-historical tradition; and 3) ethnic

purification, which leads to “segregation, expulsion, deportation, and even extermination of

aliens.” Anthony Smith, “The Ethnic Sources of Nationalism,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, 36 and 38.

72. Yael Tamir, “The Right to National Self-Determination,” Social Research 58, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 577.

73. Jack Snyder points out that “nationalist criteria for

political identity and alignment are, to some extent, inherently conflictual. Any intensification of

nationalist sentiment is likely to contribute to an

intensification of the conflict with other national

groups.” See his “Nationalism and the Crisis of the

Post-Soviet State,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Security, 93.

74. Politika, July 27, 1991.

75. Matija Beckovic, Politika, August 2, 1991.

76. The other face of ressentiment is chauvinism and

aggressiveness. The poisoning of the Serbs by others’ hatred resulted in their hatred toward the

other nations. Thus Serbian nationalism acquired

the classic traits of ethnic “reductionism”—ethnic

purification and chauvinism. Alexander Motyl

points out that chauvinistic nationalism presupposes the situation in which “nations must be

brought into contact and competition, in which

some lose and others win.” See Alexander Motyl,

“The Modernity of Nationalism: Nations, States,

and Nation-States in the Contemporary World,”

Journal of International Affairs 45, no. 2 (Winter

1992): 313.

77. Dobrica Cosic, Knjizevne novine, December 1,

1988.

78. Dobrica Cosic, Promene (Novi Sad: Dnevnik,

1992), 62, 72, and 75.

79. Cosic, Politika, July 27, 1991.

80. “Memorandum,” quoted in Osmica, February 12,

1989.

81. Ibid.

82. Cosic, Knjizevne novine, December 1, 1988.

83. Cosic, Promene, 259.

84. Croatian genocide against the Serbs is regarded as

an enduring historical phenomenon: “It is certain

that for the genesis of the genocidal acts upon

Serbs in Croatia one has to look to the times when

the so-called Orthodox Vlasi (i.e., Serbs under the

pressure of Turkish rule in the 16th and 17th centuries) started to populate Croatian lands. . . . The

idea of genocide of Serbs was completely finished

in the framework of Austria-Hungary, before World

War I started. . . . The long-lasting fermentation of

the idea of genocide in Croatian society . . . took

root in the conscience of many generations.”

Vasilje Krestic, Knjizevne novine, September 15,

1986.

85. For instance, over the course of four months in

1985, different daily newspapers were full of stories about crimes that Andrija Artukovic, “the

Himmler of the Balkans,” and the Ustashe perpetrated on the Serbs. For months, Serbia’s major

newspapers ran serials with titles like: “From the

History of the Ustashe State,” “I Fled from Artukovic’s Torture Chamber at Jasenovac,” “Andrija

Artukovic—The Greatest Living War Criminal,”

“Pavelic’s Secret Chambers,” and so on. The “Voice

of the Church” also published a great number of serials about genocide against the Serbs, accompanied by photographs of decapitated and mutilated

corpses.

86. Throughout 1990, reports regularly arrived from

Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia about religious

chanting and services for the victims of genocide,

including the exhumation of the victims’ remains

and their reburial. The reports were usually followed by detailed descriptions of the way the victims were killed. At the same time the ministry of

the Serbian Orthodox Church sent a warning from

Bosnia-Herzegovina that there was a broadening of

the “vampire Ustashe” atmosphere even there. Before the war of 1991, there was a commemoration

of the fifty years of suffering of the Serbian Orthodox Church and genocide and the ongoing work of

priests and others to unearth the remains of the innocent victims. This is still being done throughout

Bosnia. See Radic, “Crkva i ‘srpsko nacionalno pitanje,’ 1980–1995,” xiv.
38

87. Jovan Raskovic, Politika, March 25, 1990.

88. Radovan Samadzic, Politika, August 7, 1992.

89. Dobrica Cosic, Knjizevne novine, July 15, 1989.

Just before the war, the idea of a Serbian state was

propagated much more openly. Cosic is most clear

about this matter: “The Serbian people have today

all the historical, national, and democratic reasons

and rights to live in one state. . . . If other peoples

do not want such a Yugoslavia, then the Serbian nation will be forced to live freely in its state and after

two centuries of struggle will solve for good its existential question.” Politika, January 21, 1991.

90. Antonije Isakovic, Politika, May 25, 1990.

91. Cosic, Politika, January 21, 1991.

92. Quoted in Djukic, Izmedju slave i anateme, 187.

93. Tasic, Kako je ubijena druga Jugoslavija, 124.

94. Quoted in Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in

Yugoslavia, 1962–1991, 229–230.

95. Nebojsa Popov, “Srpski populizam,” Vreme, no.

133 (May 24, 1993).

96. Tasic, Kako je ubijena druga Jugoslavija, 152.

97. Ibid., 157.

98. Ibid., 187.

99. Balkanization is “a process and possibly a cycle of

empire disruption, small countries creation, local

instability, and a new (or old) empire moving in. . . .

The balkanization process was characterized particularly by the attempts of the Balkan nations at

autonomous state creation and by wars erupting

between them.” Vladimir Gligorov, Why Do Countries Break Up? (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 1994), 18. 

100. This unfortunate choice was obvious when the old

apparatus created its own political organization,

which played an important role in fomenting the

armed conflicts. It was known as the “Generals’

Party”; its formal name was The League of Communists—Movement for Yugoslavia. 

101. Although the nationalist party in Macedonia received the most votes of any single party, it did not

get a majority of all votes cast. The nationalist party

got 31.67%; the “reformed” communists, 25.83%;

the Albanian minority party (PDPM), 14.17%; and

the Alliance of Reformist Forces of Macedonia

(Ante Markovic’s party), a mere 9.17%.

102. In these republics, Serbs did not take the name of

Milosevic’s party in order to avoid being associated

with “communists.” They thus adapted to the situation in these republics.

103. Prime Minister Markovic had to face a number of

vitriolic attacks, including those from politically active members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences

and Arts. Mihailo Markovic declared: “Ante

Markovic is making a deal with our enemies about

how to destroy Yugoslavia and Serbia,” Politika, October 11, 1991. “We are a country of cleavages and

hatred—national, religious, and social,” said Dobrica Cosic, “[and] it is difficult to understand why

Premier Markovic is ignoring the political reality of

Yugoslavia, and it is even less understandable how

he thinks that that reality can be overcome through

elections.” Politika, August 4, 1990.

104. Slobodanka Kovacevic, “Hronologija jugoslovenske

krize: 1990–1992,” Medjunarodna politika, nos.

1–2 (1992): 110.

105. Ibid., 111. Jovan Raskovic, the leader of the Serbian

Democratic Party in Croatia, anticipated armed rebellion on June 25, 1990, when the Assembly of

Serbs in Croatia passed a declaration proclaiming

the sovereignty and autonomy of the republic’s

Serbs and established a Serbian National Council

to serve as a state-like body to represent their autonomy. Raskovic characterized these acts as

“Serbs’ rebellion without arms.”

106. On the discrimination against Serbs and the acts of

the Croatian government that rekindled Serbian

memories of the Ustashe-run Independent State of

Croatia, see Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia:

The Third Balkan War (New York: Penguin Books,

1992), 12–14. Also see Denich, “Dismembering

Yugoslavia.”

107. For more details, see Kadijevic, Moje vidjenje raspada, 122–144.

108. Borba, October 6–7, 1990.

109. “Democratic federation” as a concept was inimical

to the precepts of Serbian nationalism. The fictitious character of that proposal was unacceptable

even to those republics whose interests were coterminous with the federal organization of Yugoslavia

(i.e., Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). 

110. Borba, October 8, 1990.

111. Borba, June 4, 1991.

112. See Djukic, Izmedju slave i anateme, 187 and 190.
113. According to the 1974 constitution, each republic

had its “Territorial Defense” (TD), which was independent from the federal Yugoslav National Army.

Martin Spegelj, Croatia’s defense minister and former YNA general, understood TD as serving the “security of the republics against the domination of the

majority people” (Serbs). Under his organization,

Croatia’s TD could mobilize 180,000 armed troops

in 1982. When the Warsaw Pact broke up, the YNA

took control over the TD system. In 1991, the YNA

partially disarmed the Croatian TD. But, after the

elections in Croatia and Slovenia, these republics

started to buy arms secretly from foreign sources.

See Darko Hudelist’s interview with Spegelj in Erazmus 9 (1994): 42 and 45. 

114. Latinka Perovic defines Serbia’s war objectives in

the following way: “Revision of internal boundaries,

exchange of populations, and restructuring of the

Balkan political space.” Latinka Perovic, “Yugoslavia Was Defeated from Inside,” in Yugoslavia,

Collapse, War Crimes, ed. Sonja Biserko (Belgrade:

Center for Antiwar Action and Belgrade Circle,

1993), 63.

39
40

115. On June 14, 1991, Belgrade’s daily paper Borba

disclosed that President Tudjman had informed

the British officials that the Serbian and Croatian governments had agreed to divide up

Bosnia-Herzegovina between themselves. The

article also mentioned that in the “circles of European politics such a possibility was already

considered as one of the options.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
41

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by

Congress to promote research, education, and training on the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.

Established in 1984, the Institute meets its congressional mandate through an array of programs, including

research grants, fellowships, professional training programs, conferences and workshops, library services,

publications, and other educational activities. The Institute’s Board of Directors is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

Chairman of the Board: Chester A. Crocker

Vice Chairman: Max M. Kampelman

President: Richard H. Solomon

Executive Vice President: Harriet Hentges

Board of Directors

Chester A. Crocker (Chairman), Distinguished Research Professor of Diplomacy, School of Foreign 

Service, Georgetown University

Max M. Kampelman, Esq. (Vice Chairman), Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson, Washington, D.C.

Dennis L. Bark, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University 

Theodore M. Hesburgh, President Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

Seymour Martin Lipset, Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University

Christopher H. Phillips, former U.S. ambassador to Brunei

Mary Louise Smith, civic activist; former chairman, Republican National Committee

W. Scott Thompson, Professor of International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts 

University

Allen Weinstein, President, Center for Democracy, Washington, D.C.

Harriet Zimmerman, Vice President, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington, D.C.

Members ex officio

Ralph Earle II, Deputy Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Toby Trister Gati, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research

Ervin J. Rokke, Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force; President, National Defense University

Walter B. Slocombe, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)
Peaceworks No. 8. First published April 1996.

The views expressed in this report are those of the author or conference participants alone. 

They do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace.

UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE

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Other titles in the Peaceworks series:

Turkey’s Role in the Middle East: A Conference Report by Patricia Carley (Peaceworks No. 1)

Central Asians Take Stock: Reform, Corruption, and Identity by Nancy Lubin (Peaceworks

No. 2)

From the Managing Chaos conference:

Keynote Addresses by Les Aspin and Ted Koppel (Peaceworks No. 3)

Sources of Conflict: G.M. Tamás and Samuel Huntington on “Identity and Conflict,” 

and Robert Kaplan and Jessica Tuchman Mathews on “‘The Coming Anarchy’ and 

the Nation-State under Siege” (Peaceworks No. 4)

NGOs and Conflict Management by Pamela R. Aall (Peaceworks No. 5)

Humanitarian Assistance and Conflict in Africa by David R. Smock (Peaceworks No. 6)

Self-Determination: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Right to Secession by Patricia

Carley (Peaceworks No. 7)
UNITED STATES

INSTITUTE OF PEACE

1550 M Street NW

Washington, DC 20005 Peaceworks No. 8