The lines between the federated states in a federal Yugoslavia are not lines of separation, but of union.

TITO (shortly after the liberation of Zagreb)

The utility of the balance-of-power model is predicated here on the supposition that the actors in the system enjoy considerable autonomy. This chapter will endeavor to establish that such autonomy has existed in the Yugoslav system during the period under discussion. Before exploring the operation of the system in detail, I will demonstrate that the federal units have used that autonomy to promote their own interests, in accordance with behavioral constants 1 and 5 (see chap. 1, pp. 13-14).

By the end of 1990, the Communist party in Yugoslavia was in an advanced state of decay. In Slovenia and Croatia, many local party organizations had closed down. In Slovenia itself, the Communist party seceded from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in early 1990 and renamed itself the Party for Democratic Renewal. Simultaneously, it abrogated all obligations to the LCY, including those of a financial nature. In Croatia and Serbia, the local communist parties fused with local “Socialist Alliances” to create supposedly new socialist parties—the latter electing Communist party boss Slobodan Milosevic in June 1990 to continue as head of the Socialist party of Serbia.¹

Moreover, after the free elections in Slovenia and Croatia in early 1990 and the election of noncommunist governments in those republics, evolution into a full-fledged confederation seemed the only peaceful option. As of early 1991, autonomy seemed too weak a word to describe the wide-ranging powers effectively wielded by the republics. Sovereignty—a word employed by the governments of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia—seemed more appropriate. In these conditions, the relevance of a balance-of-power analogy is, I should think, selfevident.

Yet even prior to the collapse of the center—a process that quickened after the polarizing appearance of Serbian party boss Slobodan Milošević on the political scene in 1987—the balance-of-power model had relevance. In 1969 (at the party’s Ninth Congress), the LCY introduced collective leadership in the form of the executive bureau of the presidency, with fourteen members— two from each republic and one from each of the two autonomous provinces. This body replaced the central committee, which, for the time being, was abolished. This collective principle was soon after extended to the other sociopolitical organizations, such as the Socialist Alliance, the Labor Union, the Veterans Organization, and the Youth Organization.² As a result of this and other restructuring, the League of Communists ceased to be a unified body. One can say, without exaggeration, that after 1969 there was no national communist party organization in Yugoslavia. What unity the party had it owed to the unifying and commanding presence of Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s longtime president, and the powers he, uniquely, enjoyed.

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia was literally that—a league comprising six republican and two provincial party organizations. Each of these eight regional parties held its own party conferences, which, after 1969, were scheduled before rather than after the LCY congresses (indicating that they did more than rubber-stamp LCY policies). Each party set up its own presidium and its own executive bureau. Beginning in 1969, the republican organizations, at their congresses, passed their own statutes. These developments were followed by the adoption, at the Ninth Party Congress of the LCY (also in 1969), of a resolution calling for the further strengthening of the role and responsibilities of the republic party organizations.³ Significantly, the republican parties also came to enjoy autonomous control of cadres policy in their own organizations. These autonomous party organizations were united only at the level of the federal presidium and remained both autochthonous and authoritative in their respective realms. As a result, in the Tito era Yugoslav politicians tended to eschew removal to the center, so that the real talent generally remained at the republican level. This practice set the pattern for the post-Tito era as well.

Autonomy of the Republics

Contrary to popular belief, Yugoslav decentralization did not originate in 1965. The Communist party of Yugoslavia (CPY) became the LCY in 1952, and that transformation expanded the jurisdiction enjoyed by republican and local party organizations over economic enterprises and projects. As early as 1950, the textile and leather industries had been transferred from federal to republican control; coal, electrical, chemical, and certain consumer-goods industries soon followed, and by the end of 1952, it was possible to speak of effective economic decentralization (though the republics were not the only beneficiaries, since they had to share the spoils with workers’ councils and local party administrators).⁴ By 1965, the federal government no longer had any direct means of control over enterprises, and the republics exercised considerably more control, although often mediated through local governments. Autarkic tendencies developed as each republic sought to develop its economic independence, even if it compromised the free market. Unnecessary duplications of services as well as productive capability occurred, although the interests of the federal government and of the country at large suffered. One example was the lack of coordination of bus services, which were even then consigned to the jurisdiction of the republics. Again, Slovenia’s establishment of her own airline, Aviopromet, was motivated more by reasons of political competition than by economic requirements. Finally, severe constraints were placed on companies that attempted to open outlets or compete for contracts across republican boundaries. In the early 1960s, as Paul Shoup notes, “ . . . decisions in the Central Committee of the League of Communists . . . were taken by a majority vote and often not implemented if they were considered contrary to republic interests.”⁵ Even during the crucial months during 1965-66, when the struggle against Ranković was coming to a head, Croatia put preservation of its autonomy ahead of certain ends that could have been achieved through cooperation with the federal center. Thus, despite contrary instructions from Belgrade, the Croatian secret police, responsible to the Croatian ministry of the interior, was instructed not to turn over reports to Belgrade and to continue its own independent investigation of Ranković. The Croatian secret police also refused Belgrade’s demands to provide reports of meetings of the central committee of the Croatian LC at which the national question had been discussed.⁶

The republican party organizations had obtained control of economic organizations within their territories and acquired influence over questions of personnel in enterprises, banks, and social services. They enjoyed growing financial leverage and the ability to retain talented cadres. The determination of republican party apparatuses to pursue their own interests was demonstrated in 1967 in Slovenia. The Slovenian premier, Janko Smole, an ex-officio member of the federal government, compromised with other federal officials and introduced a bill calling for a cut in expenditures on social insurance. The Slovenian Social and Health Chamber, which had opposed any such reduction, vetoed this proposal, which resulted in Smole’s resignation as premier. The republics viewed themselves as rival centers of legitimate interests. Thus, Miko Tripalo, just a few months before his fall from power, said, “SR [Socialist Republic] Croatia is [now] a state; so it is necessary to behave like statesmen.”⁷

The federal units obtained an effective veto in many areas of federal legislation, the federal budget came to require the unanimous consent of the six republics and two autonomous provinces, and most of the functions formerly accorded the federal secretariat for internal affairs were, by the early 1970s, vested in the republics. The republics therefore ceased to be interested in appointments to the secretariat, as even federal secret police came to depend on cooperation from the republican ministries. So entrenched did republic interests become that one British observer was moved to declare it “unlikely that the LCY in fact exercises fully effective control over the present system.”⁸

At this writing, Yugoslavia is still technically governed under its fourth (1974) constitution. All but the second (1953) have guaranteed the republics the right of secession. That this guarantee could be taken seriously became clear in 1989,⁹ but even earlier, during the period of the struggle against Ranković, several influential Slovenes urged the invocation of this article and the secession of their republic.

But, though the 1946 constitution recognized the right of the republics to secede in their own name, the constitutions of 1963 and 1974 accorded this right to “the peoples of Yugoslavia,” that is, to the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Muslims. (Under the Titoist formulas, the Hungarians and Albanians were considered “nationalities,” not “peoples,” and were denied the right of secession.) Whether this guarantee should be seen to have been intended as a kind of “devolution” or recentralization (insofar as the right is guaranteed to the people rather than to their representatives) is debatable. Regardless of the terminology employed in this article, however, it is certain that under Article 110 of the 1963 constitution, the republics gained the right to engage in cooperative ventures among themselves without any role being played by the federal government. (This had already been happening in practice, for example, in certain cultural agreements between the Serbian and Montenegrin republics.) This right was not rescinded. Even more important for the assurance of republican autonomy—indeed, the sine qua non of regional autonomy—is the absence of a federal power to transfer republic-level personnel from one republic to another. Such lateral transfers were long common in the U.S.S.R. (at least until Gorbachev’s accession). But in Titoist Yugoslavia, offices in any given republic were filled solely by citizens of that republic. Of course, this meant that Serbs born and living in Croatia were eligible to serve in the Croatian, rather than in the Serbian, party apparatus.

The constitutional legislation of 1971-74 sharply reduced the legislative and economic functions of the federal government. In 1977, a law on hard currency guaranteed the republics the right to dispose of hard currency earnings, thus assuring them of fiscal sovereignty. From that point on, the only important economic functions left to the federal government (aside from preventing the erection of internal tariff barriers and coordinating economic relations abroad and with the World Bank) were its supervision of the Federal Fund for the Accelerated Development of the Underdeveloped Republics and the Province of Kosovo (FADURK) and the minting of coins and printing of currency. The federal units were the chief beneficiaries of this devolution.¹⁰ The republics obtained exclusive jurisdiction in regulating, among other things, the following: the use of agricultural farmlands; mining, transport, forestry, urban planning; the planning and erection of investment objects; education, science, culture, health, public safety, environmental protection; the residence of citizens; public meetings; the legal status of religious communities; and marriage and family, guardianship, parent-child relations, inheritance, residential life, and employment. Criminal law was also assigned to the jurisdiction of the republics and provinces but was coordinated via interrepublican mechanisms. Economic planning was to be carried out by each federal unit in coordination with both federal and district planning agencies, and each republic was to determine its own budget with complete autonomy.

For a number of years, many prices subject to regulation in Yugoslavia were regulated not by the federal government but by the governments of the federal units. Thus, in 1979, when an increase in slaughtering of cows presaged a reduced supply of milk and signaled the need for higher milk prices, some republics (Slovenia and the Socialist Autonomous Province [SAP] of Vojvodina) reacted quickly and approved the price hikes sought by the dairy industry, resulting in an assured supply of milk. Others, such as Croatia and Serbia, were slow to approve higher prices. Croatian and Serbian dairies responded by sending their milk out of the republic in search of higher prices, thus producing milk shortages in their own republics. By the end of the year, patience had worn thin, and Dragutin Jurko, Croatian secretary for agriculture, forestry, and food industry, revealed that discussions were underway to establish a uniform nationwide price for milk.¹¹ Then, on December 28, straining under the dual pressure of rising inflation and foreign trade imbalances, the federal Executive Council (SIV) upbraided those republics that, during November and December, had granted permission for hefty price increases for various products and services. The council announced that prices should not be allowed to rise without interrepublican agreement. Gojko Ubiparip, vice president of SIV, said that this behavior imperiled the policy of economic stabilization, and he demanded that the federal units sign an agreement synchronizing price policy for 1980. A special working body was created, and by early February, the federal government had its agreement—limiting price inflation to 25 percent for 1980. Although the federal government obviously initiated the agreement, it is important to note that the agreement was reached by mutual consultation of the republics, not imposed by federal diktat.

Interrepublican coordination was seen, at least until the Serbs broke off economic relations with Slovenia in December 1989, as a basic necessity in the decentralized polity. Hence, for example, when the federal Secretariat for Transport was shut down in 1975, it was replaced by an interrepublican coordinating committee for transport.

The republics gradually became aware of built-in social and institutional factors that militated toward a degree of uniformity in both economic and noneconomic sectors. For example, in the mid-1970s, Vojvodina abolished the pregraduation exam administered to high school seniors. All the other federal units, however, retained this exam, and the universities in all federal units other than Vojvodina continued to require passage of this exam as a condition for admission. Graduates of Vojvodina’s high schools had no option but to attend the University of Novi Sad. Thereupon, the Vojvodinan skupština repealed the law and restored the exam.

Whatever the imperatives of coordination, the republics clearly enjoyed vast political, cultural, and administrative autonomy. Indeed, under the 1974 constitution, the federal units enjoyed quasi-confederal autonomy. Yet, despite the constriction of federal functions, the exclusion of the federal government from various sectors, the strengthening of the direct (via republican assemblies) and indirect (via republican representatives in the federal Assembly) participation of the federal units in the passage of federal law, and the deepening autonomy of the republics and provinces effected by the 1974 constitution, a cautionary note may be appropriate. For, despite the overhaul carried out between 1971 and 1974, Djordji J. Caca could still write, in 1977, that

[the first] three years of experience in applying the new constitution do not fully confirm the suppositions and expectations [that had accompanied its passage]. Undoubtedly policy is more in conformity with the essence and norms of the constitution than was earlier policy, but this is still uncertain because again it is not rare to find federal laws spelling out norms on certain questions both fully and in detail. We can no longer regard that as inertia.¹²

Bearing that caveat in mind, the republics were, nonetheless, already at that time, genuinely autonomous centers of power.

In July 1990, the Slovenian parliament proclaimed the sovereignty of Slovenia and declared that federal law would be valid in Slovenia only if approved by Slovenian legislators and if federal law did not conflict with Slovenian laws. Tone Persak, a member of the Slovenian parliament, commented: “By this declaration, the Slovenian Parliament de jure created a sovereign Slovenian state that is no longer a part of the Yugoslav federation. The declaration created a confederal relationship. “¹³

Role of the Republics in Foreign Relations

With the passage of republican constitutional amendments in January 1969, the republics acquired the right to participate autonomously in the foreign policy of the Yugoslav federation, that is, to engage in unmediated contacts with foreign states.¹⁴ Croatia and Slovenia were quick to exercise their new prerogatives and established close contacts with Austria. Other early examples of independent foreign policy contacts include the dispatch by Croatia of emissaries to Hungary in 1969 and 1971 in pursuit of economic and cultural links and the visit by a Croatian delegation to Munich in November 1971 to conduct bilateral discussions with deputies of the “Free State of Bavaria.”¹⁵ Such contacts have continued to the present day.

Certain “unreconstructed” centralists attempted to abort this development, calling the move another token of Yugoslavia’s “degeneration into a confederation.”¹⁶ But, ten years later, each federal unit had its own Bureau of Foreign Relations and its own Coordination Commission for Economic Relations Abroad, and bilateral contacts between Yugoslavia’s federal units and foreign states had become commonplace. In addition to contacts arranged at the intergovernmental level, the republican and provincial organizations of SAWPY likewise played a role, until 1989, in maintaining contacts with regional organizations of neighboring countries as well as with the organizations of Croatian and Slovenian minorities in Austria and Italy.

Autonomy of the Autonomous Provinces

When first called into being by the constitution of 1946, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and the Autonomous Region of Kosovo-Metohija (as it was then designated) were little more than administrative divisions of Serbia. They enjoyed no independent representation in federal bodies, and their borders were subject to modification at Serbia’s discretion. Even after Kosovo was granted the more dignified rank of autonomous province, the two units were, until the end of the 1960s, unmistakably inferior to the six socialist republics, as illustrated by their having statutes, rather than constitutions, under the 1963 constitutional arrangement.

By the latter half of the 1960s, however, Kosovo and Vojvodina, supported by Croatian nationalist-liberals (such as Djodan) and Slovenian liberals, were pressing for more equal treatment, with certain circles even attempting to obtain equality of representation in the Chamber of Nationalities.¹⁷ Nonetheless, not until 1968 were some of these desiderata granted. Amendment 16 to the Yugoslav Constitution finally guaranteed that the boundaries of the provinces could not be changed without the consent of their skupštinas (a guarantee subsequently incorporated also into the constitution of SR Serbia), and their statutes were given the legal status of constitutions. This latter change made possible the establishment of constitutional-judicial branches of the supreme courts of Vojvodina and Kosovo, which performed the same functions as the republican constitutional courts. But the formal establishment in the autonomous provinces of the constitutional courts—which the republics had had since 1963—was delayed until 1972, by which time, through the passage of further constitutional amendments in 1971, the autonomous provinces had acquired extensive additional legislative and judicial powers and enjoyed the same degree of administrative autonomy as the republics.¹⁸ Moreover, by the early 1980s, changes to the constitutions of Vojvodina and Kosovo were being made entirely autonomously, with no provision for either review or recommendative proposal on the part of any Serbian organ; the provincial assemblies of Vojvodina and Kosovo were, in effect, empowered to make amendments without consulting with the Serbs.

There has long been a provision in the Serbian constitution (Article 301) for enacting legislation for the entire territory of the Serbian republic (i.e., including Vojvodina and Kosovo) on the basis of the mutual agreement of the assemblies of all three units. The article also provided that should the assembly of one autonomous province approve a Serbian-sponsored measure rejected by the other autonomous province, the bill would become law only in Serbia proper and the province that approved it. Similarly, though another article of the Serbian constitution (Article 296) authorized the Serbian republic to communicate directly with lower organs of the autonomous provinces “in matters of national defense, state security and . . . in other circumstances in which irreparable damage might ensue”¹⁹ (provided only that the provincial government be apprised), this article was, for all practical purposes, a dead letter from the time the fourth constitution was passed (1974) to the seizure of power in Serbia by Slobodan Milošević in 1987. Milosevic would claim that Serbia had the right to legislate unilaterally on the territory of the provinces and that the provinces had usurped their autonomy “illegally.” But when Milošević began to curtail the powers of the APs (autonomous provinces), their assent was not freely given.

The general Yugoslav view in the late Titoist and early post-Titoist period was that Vojvodina and Kosovo were republics in everything but name. The differences between the SRs and the SAPs through the late 1970s and most of the 1980s amounted to this: Vojvodina and Kosovo had no provincial flags, no provincial citizenship (natives of the SAPs have automatically received Serbian citizenship), and no legal claim to the right of secession (a guarantee always reserved for the republics). In addition, the autonomous provinces have had less representation on certain federal bodies, such as in the Chamber of Republics and Provinces (where they have eight delegates each instead of the twelve to which a republic is entitled) and the Federal Chamber (where they have twenty delegates instead of thirty). Since it required only eight delegates, acting as a block, to introduce or veto bills in the Chamber of Republics and Provinces, the difference in delegation size was without consequence. In fact, the purely symbolic character of the differences between the republics and the provinces until 1989 confirms the conclusion that they were, for all practical purposes, equivalent.

By the same token, to the extent that the socialist republics can be treated as autonomous actors, the socialist autonomous provinces functioned in the same way until the end of the 1980s. That the autonomous provinces participated in federal policy making on a par with the republics was demonstrated in March 1978, for instance, in a discussion of a draft law on the customs tariff that took place in the CRP’s Committee for Economic Relations with Foreign Countries. On this occasion, Croatia clashed with Kosovo over a 15 percent increase in the tariff on imported equipment. Rajko Savić, the Kosovar delegate, wanted only a 7 percent increase. Regional interest, of course, dictated the differences in policy proposals. A compromise tariff rate was finally worked out by the other republics and Vojvodina.²⁰ Clearly, in this discussion, Kosovo and Vojvodina negotiated on equal terms with the republics.

Article 292 of Vojvodina’s constitution and Article 293 of Kosovo’s authorized the autonomous provinces to make contact and enter into agreements with “organs and organizations” of foreign states. Both provinces exercised this right and engaged in unmediated negotiations with foreign states. Of the two, Vojvodina was the more active in pursuing foreign economic relations, though Kosovo maintained active contacts with neighboring Albania, including a steady flow of faculty and cultural groups between the University of Tirana and the University of Pristina, until the Albanian-nationalist riots of the spring of 1981 prompted Belgrade authorities to cancel the exchange program.

In the latter part of 1981, in the wake of accusations of cover-up by provincial officials in Kosovo, authorities of the Serbian republic began to talk of downgrading the autonomous provinces and reclaiming powers that the SAPs had obtained “unconstitutionally.” Vojvodinan officials reacted vehemently, however, complaining that Serbia was overreacting to events that had nothing to do with Vojvodina. A full-blown dispute erupted between Vojvodina and Serbia over the autonomy of the APs, especially in the realms of national defense, civil defense, economic planning, and foreign trade.²¹ Serbia also wanted to retract authority over citizenship in the SAPs from the ministries of internal affairs in the provinces to the Serbian ministry and tried for two years to persuade Kosovo and Vojvodina to acquiesce in the transfer of authority. Finally, in early 1983, having failed to obtain the assent of the SAPs, Serbia simply promulgated the new law unilaterally (in breach of their own republican constitution).²²

In the course of 1988, Slobodan Milošević removed many provincial leaders in Kosovo and Vojvodina and replaced them with his own people. In February 1989, he pushed through a series of amendments to the constitution of SR Serbia that eliminated the provinces’ authority to pass their own legislation and established the Supreme Court of SR Serbia as the highest judicial court of appeal for Kosovo, prior to appeal to the federal level. Later, in summer 1990, Kosovo was placed under direct rule from Belgrade. As a result of these moves, the APs effectively disappeared as autonomous actors from the Yugoslav political scene.