Of course, I assure everyone that Serbia will not in any way abuse its numerical size nor endanger anyone in [any] way.

SLOBODAN MILOšEVIć, at the January 21, 1990, session of the LCY Commission for the Reform of the Political System

Until 1987, it seemed conceivable that Yugoslavia could continue to muddle along¹—agreeing on long-term programs of stabilization but failing to carry them out, fretting about ethnic violence in Kosovo but being content with containing rather than defusing it, groping its way toward pluralism slowly if persistently. Yugoslavia’s regional elites, governing the eight federal units (six republics and two autonomous provinces), continued to quarrel about the fundamental choices in future development. Yet as long as they quarreled, they were at least talking to each other, and that signaled a degree of consent on the rules of the game.

In late 1987, the entire political game was changed overnight. Slobodan Milošević, a former banker, succeeded in deposing his erstwhile mentor, Ivan Stambolić, and in establishing himself as the unrivaled boss in the republic of Serbia. From that bastion, Milošević started to rewrite the rules of the game and, in so doing, dramatically sharpened the growing crisis in Yugoslavia, forcing it to a head.

Before Milošević, there was a general acceptance of the principle that the two autonomous provinces—Kosovo and Vojvodina, both of which lie within the jurisdictional frontiers of Serbia—should enjoy de facto parity with the six constituent republics that make up the Yugoslav federation. Like the republics, the two autonomous provinces enjoyed wide-ranging autonomy and even conducted foreign economic relations independently of the federal government. Milošević was determined to end this.

Before Milošević, there was a strong tendency to channel power through institutional channels—chiefly the republican party organizations and republican governments. Milošević would turn to mobs and orchestrated demonstrations to marshal and apply power.

Before Milošević, there had been a string of “faceless bureaucrats” who, since the death of President Josip Broz Tito in May 1980, seemed determined to prevent the rise of a “new Tito.” But Milosevic’s followers evidently thought of him as a new Tito—or even better—and marched down the streets, bearing his portrait and singing songs in his honor.

And finally, before Milošević, the Communist party—able to agree on little else—agreed all the same that any resurgence of nationalism would destabilize the system and promote serious political change. The party leaders, therefore, repeatedly reminded each other that “every nationalism is dangerous” and refused to legitimize any nationalism. Milošević changed that from the start, openly embracing both Serbian nationalism and Serbian Orthodoxy (the “Serbian” religion). For the first time since the communists had taken power, the Serbian Orthodox Church found itself coddled by the communists.

These changes had a powerful effect on the system and throttled it toward a showdown. In the gathering crisis, Milošević’s Serbia was initially challenged by Slovenia and Croatia, and as the months unfolded, seemed to wax in strength, only to find itself increasingly isolated.

From Bureaucrat to Politician

As politician, Milošević has championed what he has called the “anti-bureaucratic revolution.” But Milošević himself was nurtured in the economic bureaucracy and rose through its ranks.

Born in Požarevac, Serbia, on August 29, 1941, Milošević joined the Communist party at age twenty-eight. He was actively involved in party politics (as chair of the university’s party ideological committee) while studying at the University of Belgrade, from which he graduated in 1964 with a degree in law. He took a post in economic management within the party hierarchy, and in 1968 was named to an executive position in the state-owned Tehnogas company; one of his colleagues there was none other than Ivan Stambolić, his later mentor and eventual rival in the Serbian party apparatus. In 1973, Milošević became general director of Tehnogas and, five years later, took the highly visible post of president of Beobanka (Belgrade Bank). In that capacity, he visited the United States several times, and, over the years, polished his English.

It was not until 1984, however, that Milošević entered politics, when he became head of the Belgrade city committee. He was forty-three years old at the time.

Meanwhile, Ivan Stambolić, his former colleague at Tehnogas, had become chair of the central committee (CC) of the Serbian party in April 1984. Milošević seemed, at the time, to be a loyal standard-bearer to Stambolić, and there were not detectable differences in their statements on policy matters. Stambolić and Milošević seemed as close as brothers; they even served as “best man” at each other’s weddings. People remember, however, how at a meeting of the Serbian CC sometime in 1985, Milošević was the only speaker to address the meeting in emotional tones, and the only speaker to be given a passionate applause.² Later—in May 1986—Stambolić vacated his position as chair of the Serbian CC in order to become president of the Republic of Serbia. With his blessing, Milošević succeeded him as chair of the Serbian party.

Even at that stage there were signs of a waxing Serbian nationalist backlash in reaction to the repeated Albanian riots in Kosovo and the mass exodus of Serbs and Montenegrins from the province. As early as 1983, in an overt expression of nostalgia for the “good old days,” some 100,000 people showed up for the funeral of Aleksandar Ranković. And later, in October 1986, came the issuance—already described in chapter 9—of the Serbian Academy’s famous “Memorandum,” bemoaning Serbia’s fate in Yugoslavia and calling on Serbs to reverse the tide of decentralization and halt natural processes in Kosovo. Even Stambolić found he had to pay at least lip service to the demands of Serbian nationalism. In his report to the Tenth Congress of the Serbian party (May 26, 1986), Stambolić endorsed the Serbian nationalist position that the federal constitution of 1974 was contrary to the interests of Serbs, although he also warned that “certain individuals” were “coquetting” with Serbian nationalism.³ Stambolić straddled the fence.

Not so Miloševic—and gradually differences emerged between the two men. Then in April 1987, an event occurred that had a profound effect on Milošević. The situation in Kosovo seemed to be deteriorating again, and a meeting of 300 party delegates was called in Kosovo Polje, a suburb of Priština. As head of the Serbian party, Milošević went there to attend the meeting; most of the 300 delegates were, however, ethnic Albanians. When the meeting began, some 15,0 Serbs and Montenegrins—mostly locals but also a few who had come to Kosovo for this purpose—tried to force their way into the hall. The meeting was supposed to be closed, so police blocked their way and started to beat them back with clubs. Then Milošević raised his hands, signaling the police to let the Serbs through, telling the Serbs, “Nobody, either now or in the future, has the right to beat you.”⁴ These words assured Milošević of a place in Serbian mythology. Milošević stayed in the building until dawn—some thirteen hours— listening to hundreds of Serbs tell him of their troubles and blame the Albanian leaders of the provincial government for allowing the situation to deteriorate. He emerged from that night a changed man. As a Serbian journalist who has known Milošević for years put it, “After that night, suddenly there was a psychological change in him. All at once, he discovered he had this power over people.”⁵

In mid-December 1987, Milošević ousted Stambolić from the Serbian presidency (a post Milošević assumed somewhat later, in May 1989) and began to put a new program into effect. Whereas Stambolić had carefully balanced his speeches with veiled self-contradictions and obscure summons to action that would not be carried out, Milošević spoke simply and directly and outlined a program he in fact would try to carry out. The program involved four stages, but these stages entailed mutually incompatible prerequisites so that the program appeared doomed from the start.

The first stage in his program entailed establishing his full control in Serbia. To do so, he felt he needed a pliant press. He therefore fired a number of editors and journalists at the prestigious Politika publishing house. The daily papers Politika and Politika ekspres and the weekly magazines Duga and NIN became mouthpieces of Milošević. He also reached out for an alliance with the Serbian Orthodox Church, authorizing it to resume construction on the monumental Cathedral of St. Sava in downtown Belgrade and giving the church a new prominence and dignity in social life. Through the church, Milošević tapped one of the primordial wellsprings of Serbian nationalism. Through publications and displays and public events, Serbian society now began to revive memories of its past—especially of the Battle of Kosovo, at which the Serbian army of King Lazar had been beaten by the Ottoman army in 1389. This battle, which symbolically captures the essence of the tragedy of Serbia’s conquest and occupation by Turkey, has figured prominently in Serbian mythologizing of Kosovo—now populated 90 percent by Albanians. In June 1989, Milošević joined Serbian Orthodox Church dignitaries in a joint commemoration of the battle: it was no less than a celebration of Serbian nationalism. A year later, on June 15, 1990, Milošević received a delegation of the Serbian Orthodox Church Synod to work out remaining problems in the church-state relationship in Serbia.⁶

This first stage necessarily entailed the development of a localized “cult of the personality”—the first in Yugoslavia since the death of Tito in May 1980. It was nothing to see shops and vendors and restaurants displaying photo portraits of Milošević in the front windows. At a more fundamental level, it became impossible for Serbs to criticize Milošević publicly and retain jobs of any importance. Many Serbs were buoyed by an intoxicating sense of Serbian pride, as “Comrade Slobo” began to promote criticism of Tito for having weakened Serbia. Among the alleged anti-Serbian acts said to have been committed by Tito: the removal of large amounts of Serbian industry to new locations in Croatia and elsewhere in the late 1940s and early 1950s;⁷ the expansion of the prerogatives and powers of the autonomous provinces, especially after 1968; and the federal constitution itself. Some Serbs told foreigners that they had never been free under Tito but were, with “Slobo” at their head, “completely free as never before.” Other Serbs quietly fretted, as did growing numbers of non-Serbs, that Milošević was patterning himself not merely after Tito, but after Stalin!

The second stage involved the reestablishment of Serbian control over its autonomous provinces and the subversion of Montenegro in order to bring it under the control of pro-Milošević forces. To accomplish this, Milošević proposed to mobilize Serbian and Montenegrin citizens and take politics “to the streets.” This stage was aptly captured in the slogan, “strong Serbia, strong Yugoslavia.” This slogan assured Milošević of extensive support in Serbia. But it was deeply alienating to Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Bosnian Muslims, let alone to Kosovo’s Albanians.

With the successful accomplishment of the tasks of the second stage, Milošević hoped, in the third stage, to bring down the old constitution of 1974, tightening up the federation and reducing the powers of the six constituent republics.

And in the fourth stage Milošević promised a reform of the by-then unified system, emphasizing the marketization of the economy and the controlled democratization of internal party life, but stopping short of the political repluralization of society. What Milošević understood by “controlled democratization” was never entirely clear, but the stress was clearly on control rather than democratization. Milošević’s repeated allusions to the need for democracy and for a free market economy won him respect in the West, particularly in the United States, at first, where it was noted with approval that Milošević looked to South Korea as a kind of model. And, at that point, he won some support at home because of his reputation as a technocrat. But in the long run, he looked to political strategies, rather than economic ones, to legitimate his authority and gained a reputation as a Serbian nationalist. This image gradually eclipsed his earlier technocrat image. And in the U. S., in particular, his policies in Kosovo merely aggravated a growing public relations problem of his own making—culminating in the passage of a congressional resolution condemning Yugoslav (i.e., Milošević’s) policies in Kosovo.⁸

The First Stage: Building Strength in Serbia

Milošević has boasted that he has brought Serbia “strong arm” rule (čvrsta ruka).⁹ His rule has also been one continuous celebration of Serbia—indeed, that is the foundation and source of his strength. Milošević appeals to the passions, not to the intellect; he talks of Serbia’s place in the world, of struggle, of enemies, of solutions. The spirit of his appeal is captured in the following excerpt from a speech he delivered at an outdoor meeting at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers in Belgrade, on November 19, 1988:

. . . This is no time for sorrow; it is a time for struggle. (indistinct shouting) 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. (indistinct shouting) This is a process which no longer can be stopped by any force, a process in the face of which all fear is weak. People will even consent to live in poverty but they will not consent to live without freedom, at least not the people gathered here and the people in Serbia, to whom I myself belong and therefore I know that they can only live in freedom and in no other way. (indistinct shouting) Both the Turkish and the German invaders know that these people win their battles for freedom.

We entered both world wars with nothing but the conviction that we would fight for freedom, and we won both wars. (cheers) Now we have the unified LC stances on Kosovo and we shall implement them energetically to the very end. (chanting: “Yugoslavia”)

We shall win the battle for Kosovo regardless of the obstacles facing us inside and outside the country. (cheers). . . . We shall win despite the fact that Serbia’s enemies outside the country are plotting against it, along with those in the country. (cheers) We tell them that we enter every battle (Milosevic is interrupted by cheers) with the aim of winning it. (cheers)

We have never waged unjust and dishonest battles that would be to the detriment of other peoples. (shouts of “that is right”) The people, all citizens regardless of their nationality and profession, are at the head of this battle for Kosovo. And there is no battle in the world that the people have lost. (shouts of “that is right”) The leadership has little choice there: It shall either head the people and listen to their voice, or time will push it aside . . . (cheers) . . . ¹⁰

Milošević owes his rise, above all, to the growing Serbian bitterness about the demographic changes in Kosovo and Serbian fears that the province will be “lost.” Milošević’s style is populist—building popular trust in him personally rather than trust in the political institutions. This aspect of his power has repeatedly been demonstrated—for example, in October 1988, 6,000 angry demonstrators peacefully dispersed moments after Milošević drove up in his car and told them that he would take up their complaints personally. Other Yugoslav politicians (outside Serbia) began to compare him to Mussolini.¹¹

Milošević stoked the fires of Serbian nationalism, and in the resultant atmosphere, strange things happened. There were calls, for example, for the posthumous rehabilitation of Aleksandar Ranković (d. 1983), Tito’s right-hand man until 1966, who was personally responsible for much of the repression of the Kosovar Albanians in the first two decades after the war.¹² Serbs began talking about a Vatican-Comintern conspiracy and trying to vilify the Catholic Church—the cultural champion of the Serbs’ arch-rivals, the Croats. Thus, in 1987, Belgrade published a book that attempted to link the Vatican with the misdeeds of the fascist Ustaše of World War II, and in November 1988, the Serbian Academy of Sciences ordered a scientific meeting on the theme, “Jasenovac, 1945-1988,” in order to keep alive Serbian resentments of the liquidations of Serbs at the wartime concentration camp at Jasenovac.¹³ There were also reports that Serbs were reorganizing Chetnik formations—the Chetniks were Serbian nationalist resistance forces in World War II—that these Chetniks were holding demonstrations in traditional insignia and flowing beards, and that Serbian demonstrators in Montenegro were heard chanting, “Long live King Peter!” and “We want the Russians!”¹⁴ And the Serbian Orthodox Church, which had grown accustomed to being treated like an unwelcome stepchild, suddenly found itself lauded and celebrated in the Serbian press, and its priests, inspired with new confidence, began to take part in nationalist demonstrations.

Milosevic’s style of rule has sometimes exploited the Serbian party apparatus as an instrument of power and, at other times, has simply bypassed it. Not without reason did he confess to a French journalist in July 1989 that he was hostile to a multiparty system, and actually preferred “a system without parties.”¹⁵ In a nonparty system, the people place their trust directly in the leader, who therefore embodies the will of the people. The formula seemed to work. Said Budimir Kostić, president of the Serbian Investment Bank: “Miloševic has [in mid-1989] full support in Serbia, from the peasants to the Academy of Science. He’d get 90 percent of the vote in any election.”¹⁶

The Second Stage: Conquering the Provinces

From early on, Milosevic’s supporters began saying that Serbia was a second-class republic and that the prerogatives enjoyed by the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina were extraconstitutional. Central to Milošević’s program was the “reconquest” of these provinces. To effect this, the Committee for the Protection of Kosovo Serbs and Montenegrins was set up, under Milośevic’s wing, in 1988. Between July 9 and September 4, 1988, the committee organized eleven rallies, involving up to 160,000 persons at a time, and by spring 1989 had organized almost one hundred protest demonstrations, involving a cumulative total of some 5 million people, or an average of 50,000 participants per demonstration. This committee was a key instrument in Miloševic’s drive for power.

Chair of this committee was Miroslav Solević, who expressed the committee’s philosophy quite simply when he told Radio Zagreb, “If we don’t get our rights, we will take up arms.”¹⁷ Another important member of the committee was Mica Sparavalo, at one time a lieutenant to UDBa chief Ranković.

The first demonstration was modest enough and involved a seven-hour demonstration in Novi Sad, Vojvodina’s capital city, in which about five hundred Kosovar Serbs were joined by several thousand local Serbs. The demonstrators shouted slogans against Vojvodina’s alleged “separatism” and called the province’s leaders “traitors.” Vojvodina’s leaders replied on July 15, accusing Miloševic of making a grab for power. Three days later, at a closed session of the twenty-three-member federal party presidium, Vojvodina’s leaders demanded that Milošević be fired.¹⁸ But Milošević kept up the pressure, and in late September, a joint meeting of the Vojvodina presidency and the Vojvodina party leadership released a communique fretting that “an attack unprecedented in the post-World War II history of Vojvodina has been launched at the province. “¹⁹

Such warnings were to no avail, and when, on October 6, Milošević mobilized some 100,000 supporters on the streets of Novi Sad, the entire leadership of Vojvodina resigned, including provincial party leader Milovan Šogorov and provincial president Nandor Major. Further resignations were tendered in the cities and local communities of Vojvodina.²⁰ In their places, Milosevic installed his own people: in particular, Nedeljko Sipovac became party chief in Vojvodina, while Mihalj Kerteś took over the presidency.

In emotional terms, Vojvodina was only a dress rehearsal for Kosovo—the real jewel in the Serbian crown, despite its extreme poverty. Further rallies in Belgrade, Smederevo, and various cities throughout Serbia, as well as a march of 17,000 Serbs and Montenegrins through the streets of Priština on August 29, 1988 (by coincidence, Milosevic’s birthday), helped prepare the way for a takeover in the largely Albanian-populated southern province as well. In a series of maneuvers, Milošević engineered the forced resignation of Albanians Azem Vllasi and Kolj Široka from the Kosovar leadership, placed his loyal follower Rahman Morina in the provincial party presidency, pushed through the adoption of Serbo-Croatian as the sole official language in Kosovo (making Albanian, hereafter, unacceptable for official use), and prepared a series of constitutional amendments designed to strip the provinces of much of their autonomy.²¹

The federal party central committee registered its disapproval of Milošević’s actions on October 19, by taking a vote of no-confidence in Dušan Čkrebić, a key Milošević lieutenant, effectively firing Čkrebić from the party presidium. Undeterred, Milošević continued to push for changes to the constitutions of Serbia and its autonomous provinces. This was accomplished in February 1989, resulting, among other things, in the elimination of the province’s authority to pass its own laws and in the establishment of the Supreme Court of SR Serbia as the highest judicial court of appeal for Kosovars, prior to appeal to the federal level. Vllasi, the former provincial party president, was eventually arrested on Milošević’s orders, and put on trial on charges of organizing Albanian unrest between November 1988 and March 1989, only to be acquitted in April 1990.²² Milošević also pledged to construct some two thousand new dwellings in Kosovo by 1993 for the use of Serbian families who decide to return to the province, funding the construction almost entirely out of federal funds.²³

These moves by Milošević stirred federal party president Stipe Šuvar to defend the constitutional status quo against the revisionist Milošević. Šuvar had, for years, figured as a centralist and had, therefore, long been more popular in Serbia than in his native Croatia.²⁴ But now Šuvar criticized Milošević’s use of street demonstrations. Milošević, in turn, accused Šuvar of opposing the people’s will, and at a stormy session of the central committee on January 30, 1989, various Serbian delegates called for Šuvar’s resignation. Šuvar suddenly became the rallying point for anti-Milošević sentiment, and former critics of Šuvar now became his loudest advocates. Milošević tried to orchestrate Šuvar’s removal from office before the expiration of his term in May 1989, but failed, and Šuvar served out his term.

Simultaneously, Milošević also set in motion efforts to destabilize Montenegro and Bosnia, with the aim of installing his followers in power in those republics too. An early move came on August 20, 1988, when his action committee organized a protest involving 30,000 people in the Montenegrin capital of Titograd.²⁵ Further protests followed on September 18 (50,000 persons, in Nikšić) and October 7 (in Titograd). The latter demonstrations initially shook the confidence of the republic leadership, which briefly considered bowing to the protesters’ demands that the leadership resign. Instead, the Montenegrin leaders sent club-wielding police to disperse the crowd. Later, to appease them, the local politicians gave the workers wage increases of up to 30 percent.

But again Milošević kept up the pressure, and finally, on January 11, 1989, following two days of renewed unrest in Titograd, the entire Montenegrin collective presidency resigned, along with Montenegro’s delegates in the federal party presidium (Marko Orlandić, Vidoje Žarković, and Slobodan Filipović) and its member in the federal collective presidency (Veselin Djuranović).²⁶ They were replaced by supporters of Milošević.

Serbian nationalists have long tended to regard Montenegrins merely as coastal Serbs, and scholars argued back and forth throughout the 1970s and 1980s about whether Montenegrins came from the same ethnic stock as Serbs. This controversy was now revived with a vengeance, as pro-Serbian Montenegrins urged the annexation of Montenegro to the Republic of Serbia.²⁷ And in June 1989, Serbo-Croatian was made a mandatory subject in all Albanian-language elementary and secondary schools in Montenegro, at the same time that it was made mandatory in Serbian schools where the language of instruction was some language other than Serbo-Croatian.

By mid-1989, Milošević seemed to be in a strong position. He controlled Serbia, Kosovo, and Vojvodina outright. He had installed his people in Montenegro. Macedonia was, for the time being, allied with Milošević. And Milošević had quietly sent agents of the Serbian security service into Bosnia in order to gather intelligence and subvert the republic from within—although this did not come to light until later.²⁸ A confident Milošević now assumed the post of state president of Serbia (on May 8), sanctioned by a unanimous open vote.²⁹

The Third Stage: Bringing Down the Constitution

Having identified himself for three years with the slogan “strong Serbia, strong Yugolsavia”—a slogan that endeared him to Serbs but alienated non-Serbs—Milošević tried, in 1989, to repackage himself in order to complete his program. He therefore tried to identify himself with what he called the “antibureaucratic revolution.” He also talked of the need to build a “modem, efficient, stable state”—by which he meant a centralized state.³⁰

But Milošević’s efforts to mobilize the Serbian population in Bosnia only consolidated the anti-Serbian solidarity between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims, and the more the Belgrade media harped on “the alleged imperilment of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina,”³¹ the more the Bosnian leadership tended to look to Slovenia and Croatia for allies against Milošević.

In Macedonia, moreover, locals were becoming increasingly agitated already in early 1989 by the proliferation in that republic of slogans, graffiti, and songs glorifying Serbian leader Miloševic.³² Then Milošević proposed a law to allow Serbs who had land titles from the interwar period to reclaim their land. The measure was designed to provide a legal basis for large numbers of Serbs to move to Kosovo, but it also threatened to dislocate Macedonians. Relations between the two republics, accordingly, soured. And subsequently, Milošević introduced a proposal to declare December 1—the day on which Yugoslavia had been united in 1918—a national holiday. But any celebration of the old “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes” inevitably hurt Macedonian sensitivities, since they recalled that the old kingdom had called them “south Serbs” and had denied them any cultural or educational guarantees.

As for Slovenia and Croatia, they were, by the latter part of 1989, rapidly moving from a defense of the quasi-confederal status quo to advocacy of a multiparty system, full-fledged confederalization of Yugoslavia, and full republic status for Kosovo and Vojvodina.³³ By September 1989, Milosevic had lost his momentum and found himself on the defensive. By February 1989, the Croatian Writers Association was openly calling on Milošević to resign from office.³⁴ By June 1990, Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Marković (a Croat) was found, by pollsters, to be the most popular politician in the country—with growing support even in Milosevic s Serbian backyard.³⁵ And in mid-June 1990, a remarkable political inversion occurred: some 30,000 Serbs marched through Belgrade carrying Serbian flags with old (precommunist) Serbian insignia, chanting “Down with communism!” and bearing pictures of Milošević, with a black “X” across his face and the slogan written above, “We don’t want another dictator!”³⁶

The Consequences of Repluralization

Beginning in 1988, independent political parties started to form in Yugoslavia. By early 1990, there were eighty-six of them, including six in Serbia. In January 1990, the Slovenian party severed its links with the LCY. And in spring, free elections were held in Slovenia and Croatia, resulting in the electoral victories of a center-right coalition in Slovenia, and of the Croatian-nationalist Croatian Democratic Community, a party headed by retired partisan general Franjo Tudjman, in Croatia. The new noncommunist governments of Slovenia and Croatia immediately removed the word socialist from the designations of their republics and removed the red star from the flags, and the Slovenian parliament shortly issued a somewhat ambiguous declaration of “sovereignty” (not independence), explaining that Slovenian law overrode federal law, and that the latter would apply only when it was consistent with Slovenian law.³⁷ The Croatian Sabor likewise declared the Republic of Croatia “sovereign.” Moreover, with Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency, firmly in Serbian hands, the new Croatian government set up its own news agency (Hrvatska Novinska Agencija). On August 1, Bosnia-Herzegovina followed suit, and declared itself a “sovereign and democratic state.”³⁸ These declarations obviously prepared the way for possible declarations of withdrawal from the Yugoslav federation.

About the same time, Bosnia announced that it would hold multiparty elections on November 18. Macedonia had already scheduled elections for that month. And in Montenegro, the government likewise promised to hold multiparty elections as soon as the republic constitution could be appropriately amended.³⁹ Even the Serbian leadership was eventually forced, reluctantly, to agree to promise a multiparty system in their republic too. That solution—as Kosovo’s Albanians well knew—could undermine Milošević’s formula for tight control of the provinces.

Meanwhile, Milošević was faced with new competition for the Serbian nationalist “vote.” Two new parties, both created in January 1990, are expressly nationalist in character—one monarchist and one populist. The former is an outgrowth of the Sava Society, set up by Vuk Drašković in Nova Pazova. Reconstituted as the Party of Serbian National Renewal, this organization calls for a restoration of the Serbian Karadjordjević dynasty at the head of a Greater Serbia, which would include the territories corresponding to the present units of Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, as well as those regions in Bosnia and Croatia (such as Knin and parts of Dalmatia) that have heavy concentrations of Serbs. In keeping with the restorationist inspiration of this program, the Party of Serbian National Renewal also promises that “ . . . the state institutions(s), the economy, education, the army, [the position of] the church, and foreign policy would be restored in the form corresponding to the period.”⁴⁰

The other nationalist challenger to Milošević is the Democratic Freedom party, set up in Belgrade on January 14, 1990. While espousing democracy and Yugoslav integration into the European community in 1992, this party also pledged to work to abolish the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina altogether, to expel large numbers of Albanians from the country, to obtain the restoration of property lost by Serbs who were expelled from Kosovo during World War II, and, in the event of the breakup of the country, to seek the maximum extension of Serbia’s borders.⁴¹

By late June, Milošević, who had hitherto declared confederalization “unacceptable,” had to concede that this had become a very real possibility— indeed, it was probably the one route whereby Yugoslavia might have survived. But in this context, Milošević added, ominously, that in the event that Yugoslavia became a confederation, the external borders of Serbia would be an “open question”.⁴² Even more ominously, the draft of the new constitution of the Republic of Serbia gave the president of Serbia an unusual new prerogative— the power to declare war and conclude peace. This, of course, presumed the creation of an independent Serbian army, as Macedonian politicians were quick to note.⁴³ Just as obviously, this new prerogative was a dangerous escalation in a country that had been abuzz for about three years with rumors of impending civil war.

Conclusion

Milošević has had a profound effect on developments in Yugoslavia. His concerted campaign to refashion Yugoslavia along centralist lines and to erode the two autonomous provinces provoked a powerful anti-Serbian reaction throughout the rest of the country, a reaction that wedded prodemocracy sentiment to proconfederation sentiment, and probably accelerated Bosnia’s ultimate embrace of political pluralism. In what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to consolidate at least his minimal program, Milosevic staged a referendum on July 1, asking Serbian voters to endorse constitutional changes that would virtually eliminate any vestige of provincial autonomy. The supposedly docile Kosovo assembly replied the following day by declaring Kosovo a republic, independent from Serbia, though still a constituent part of the Yugoslav federation.⁴⁴

The Serbian parliament replied by suspending the provincial assembly and the provincial executive council and assuming full and direct control of the province. Serbian authorities dismissed the editors of Kosovo’s principal Al-banian-language newspapers, as well as the station managers of radio and television stations. Albanian-language broadcasts ceased. Police even occupied the offices of the Kosovo Writers Association, which had been used by opposition circles for meetings.⁴⁵ When Rilindja, the Pristina daily, nonetheless continued to criticize Serbian policy, Milošević closed the paper down too. On September 4, Albanians observed a twenty-four-hour general strike, virtually shutting down the province. Meanwhile, some 111 members of Kosovo’s dissolved assembly—representing more than two-thirds of the body’s membership—met clandestinely and drew up an alternative constitution for Kosovo that spelled out Kosovo’s rights as a republic within the Yugoslav federation (or confederation) and designated Albanian as the official language of the province.⁴⁶ Milosevic replied by ordering the arrest of the deputies to Kosovo’s now-banned assembly.

The new governments of Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves ready for immediate negotiations on the transformation of Yugoslavia into a confederation.⁴⁷ But Yugoslavia was distinctly unstable, and the lame-duck governments of Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Montenegro were not really in a position to negotiate something so fundamental as the confederalization of the country. Yugoslavia was more anomalous than ever: one could describe it (in October 1990) as a “two-thirds communist country”—with four republics under lameduck communist governments, two republics under noncommunist governments, the two autonomous provinces with undefined futures, and the very borders separating the republics called into question.

In spring 1984, I warned, in the policy journal, Orbis, that the suppression of Croatian liberalism in 1971 and the heavy reliance on Serbs to administer Croatian politics (out of proportion to their numbers in that republic⁴⁸) had sown such bitterness and distrust between Croats and Serbs as to make civil war a real danger.⁴⁹ This danger has not been steady, and at times it has seemed to recede, but with the advent of Milosevic, the mood of the country became more tense, and the country once again drifted in the direction of civil war. As bad as the situation in Kosovo has been, however, and despite the fact that Kosovo became an issue between Slovenia and Serbia in the course of 1989, thus contributing to the inflammation of interrepublican relations broadly, it is highly unlikely that any amount of trouble in Kosovo could ever have triggered generalized civil war in Yugoslavia. The most dangerous flashpoint in Yugoslavia, and possibly the only one capable of triggering civil war, was the Serbian region in Croatia. And under Milošević’s influence, Croatia’s Serbs started to press demands. Serbs took to insisting that if Yugoslavia were to become a full-fledged confederation, Serbs would have the “right” to create an autonomous province within Croatia.⁵⁰ In summer 1989, there was an abortive effort to set up an autonomous Serbian cultural society (the “Zora Society”) in the Knin region of Croatia; the Croatian authorities immediately banned the organization and jailed its chief organizer, Jovan Opačić.⁵¹ When the Serbian Writers Union sprang to Opačić’s defense and took up the cause of political autonomy for Croatia’s Serbs,⁵² Croatian authorities blasted the union for seeking to change Croatia’s borders and to destabilize the republic altogether.⁵³ In August 1990, following the May election of Tudjman’s noncommunist government in Croatia, leaders of Croatia’s Serbian community pledged to seek territorial-political autonomy—a solution unacceptable either to the Croatian people or to the Croatian government. But the Serbs took to issuing threats. “If the Croatian people want their own state,” said Jovan Rašković, president of the Serbian Democratic party, about the proposed Serbian autonomous region, “then the Serbs will decide their own fate.”⁵⁴ Rašković added that if Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, Croatia’s Serbs would try to attach their areas to Serbia. Obviously Croatian authorities would consider any such move completely unacceptable.

In mid-August, Croatian Serbs conducted a referendum on autonomy within Croatia, defying a ban by Zagreb authorities. There were maneuvers by armored vehicles of the Croatian police, and meanwhile, hundreds of Serbs, armed with AK-47 rifles and pistols, sealed the roads to Knin, felling trees to block entry. Federal army units were also sent into the Knin region, contributing to the tension.⁵⁵ Meanwhile, Politika blasted Croatian president Tudjman, simultaneously for trying to restore the Ustaše and for copying Tito, and pledged the support of Belgrade Serbs for the Serbian minority in Croatia.⁵⁶ These developments were clearly encouraged by Milosevic’s policies.

Officially, 756, 781 Serbs took part in the August 9-September 2 referendum. Of this total, it is said, 756,549 voted for Serbian autonomy, 172 voted against, and 60 ballots were invalid. On October 1, the Serbian National Council in Croatia declared the autonomy of areas in Croatia inhabited primarily by Serbs.⁵⁷ With this move, civil order broke down in Croatia. The Croatian ministry of internal affairs, meanwhile, decided to confiscate the weapons of local militias, thereby disarming the Serbs. Resisting, Serbs raided at least one police station, burglarized gun shops, and erected barricades around Knin and other municipalities. Railway lines to Knin were also cut. Meanwhile, Serbs in Belgrade gathered in front of the Parliament building, shouting, “We want arms” and “Let’s go to Croatia.”⁵⁸ A similar rally took place in Zagreb. The individual republics’ ever-greater assertion of control over their own military districts seemed to prefigure eventual warfare. In mid-October, the Slovenian prime minister, Lojze Peterle, even suggested that Slovenia would welcome an international peacekeeping force if the situation deteriorated any further.

Milosevic has been a catalyst for crisis, his campaigns forced things to a head. But the processes that unfolded had deep roots, and pressure for repluralization and confederalization had been building for some two decades.⁵⁹ Milošević has thought of himself as a modern, efficiency-oriented politician and likes to talk about democracy and free enterprise. But he ultimately gave priority to the nationalist components in his program and will thus go down in history as a late reactionary who tried, but failed, to turn back the clock.