[Militant International Review, No. 52, July-August 1993, p. 17-20]
The Destruction of Yugoslavia, by Branka Magas. Published by Verso, £12-96. Available from World Socialist Books, 3-13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB.
“Have you ever seen a wedding without meat?” This indifferent response by an Albanian Kosovar miner was given to a journalist asking whether he realised thousands of protesting miners would be attacked by police. These miners led half a million workers and youth in opposition to the absorption of Kosovo into Serbia by the Milošević government, in November 1988.
At many points in her book, Magas, a socialist from Croatia now living in London, gives similarly graphic accounts of the break-up of Yugoslavia, concentrating on the 1980s.
As Magas explains, Yugoslavia was formed in 1945 on the basis of a united struggle between all nationalities against fascist occupation. This unity, forged in action, offered the promise of ending the poverty and national oppression faced by the working class in pre-war capitalist Yugoslavia. However, Magas is confused about the nature of the Yugoslav regime. Thus she argues that post-war stability was achieved by an ‘alliance’ between the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and the working class. On the other hand she refers to the post-war regime as being based on Serb centralism and on the vicious oppression of the Kosovars.
In fact, despite the 1948 split between Tito and Stalin, the Yugoslav regime was a deformed workers‘ state. This means that it was a planned economy, a basically progressive system of organising production, but controlled by a bureaucratic caste, which ruled by totalitarian methods and grotesquely mismanaged the economy. The bureaucracy, made up of former officers of the partisan army, maintained stability by giving reforms to the working class, but at a price. They siphoned off a huge share of the wealth produced by the working class, directing a planned economy from above without real workers‘ participation.
Serbs were the most numerous nation in the federation, although not the majority. Under Ranković, the Serb Stalinist, the federal bureaucracy attempted to impose rule by Greater Serbian chauvinism, despite formal guarantees of equality for national minorities. A section of the federal bureaucracy led by Tito realised the mortal danger this posed to the federation and their continued rule. They purged a section of the Serb bureaucracy and Tito became the federal president.
Central control from Belgrade also resulted in the increasingly complex economy grinding to a standstill. The new federal leadership’s response was to decentralise political and economic control, leading to so-called local ‚workers‘ self-management‘. However, the problem was never centralisation or decentralisation, but the party apparatchiks themselves.
Decentralisation simply meant a huge growth in the bureaucracy throughout society. But it also released a much more dangerous genie from the bottle. As Magas describes, „strong local party bosses emerged who provided an institutional funnel for the growth of nationalism“. They used workers‘ anger at their economic conditions to attack the federal leadership and obtain further funds (which usually ended up in their own pockets) while diverting the class nature of these protests along national lines. Yugoslavia’s exclusion from the Comecon meant reliance on the West for investments and markets. This saw increasing Western capitalist influence over the economy, and a growing section of technocrats looking towards the market. This forced the federal bureaucracy under Tito, resting on the army, to take action, especially after 1968 when protest in many forms swept across Europe. Sections of the bureaucracy were purged in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia from 1970 to 1972. The replacements were more committed to a centralised apparatus, conducting repression to drive out ’nationalist counter-revolutionaries‘. In the main, however, self-management of the economy remained with a few restrictions – the federal leadership did not feel strong enough to launch an all-out attack on the nationalist inclined-leaderships of the republics. They were wary of exciting outright opposition from the national minorities.
This fear led to the 1974 constitution which elevated the representation of the two autonomous provinces of Serbia,Vojvodina and Kosovo, to federal level. In all but name these provinces had the same rights as the six republics – the right to veto any measures at federal level which affected themselves. But the refusal of republic status, a concession to the Serbian League of Communists (LC) who claimed that Serbia was being divided, merely encouraged the Serbian LC to whip up Serb nationalism further, aggravating the feeling among the Kosovars of being denied their national rights.
The 1970s laid the foundations of the economic crisis of the 1980s. Trying to escape the contradictions of their economic policies, the federal government borrowed from the West, especially in the period following the 1974 world economic crisis when the IMF had access to billions of petrodollars. Production was centred on consumer goods in order to buy social peace. However, raw materials and primary products came from the West, because of imposed IMF loan conditions, further weakening Yugoslav manufacturing industry.
In Magas’s opinion the 1980s saw a Stalinist and nationalist degeneration in the LCY, marking a decisive turning point in Yugoslavia. The impression is given that the period of Tito’s rule was a stable and progressive era of socialism in which the rights of minorities were protected, and workers‘ self-management developed the economy. Despite this she recounts examples of oppression in Kosovo and says at one point that self-management did not have the content that workers were promised. Yet how can this be the case if the only real problems began in 1980? In reality the interests of the bureaucracy could not be conciliated with genuine workers‘ democracy and socialism. The Yugoslav regime had different faces. Only in a period of economic crisis did its real reactionary content become clearer.
She invests in Tito’s death greater significance than necessary.
Therefore, she invests in Tito’s death greater significance than necessary. Tito’s authority allowed him to fulfil an important role: playing one republican bureaucracy off against another, balancing between the federal and the republican bureaucracy, and between the working class and the bureaucracy as a whole. While there was sharp conflict amongst the bureaucracy, their all pervading common interest was to stay in power. All this information is supplied by Magas – unfortunately it is not crystallised into a clear Marxist analysis. Even if Tito had remained alive the same process which she goes on to describe would have unfolded at some stage.
Tito was replaced by an eight-member‘ rotating federal presidency, with representatives from the republics and the two autonomous provinces. However, stability could only have been ensured on the same basis that it had existed under Tito – an expansion of the economy and rising working class living standards, which did not happen. Magas graphically describes the economic crisis: mounting debt, rocketing inflation, and soaring unemployment. In 1981 the federal government admitted foreign debts were $20bn! This smashed the federal bureaucracy’s authority and confidence. In 1983 industrial losses stood at 118bn dinars, with one million unemployed out of a workforce of 7.7m, and inflation at 250%. Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo went bankrupt. So did Bosnia-Hercegovina’s flagship enterprise, AgroKomerc. The government fell.
These bankruptcies shifted the balance of power to the three other republics, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, and brought them into much sharper conflict with each other. Magas points out: „In this situation the political consensus within the LCY and the intricate system of checks and balances which it had hitherto underpinned, simply collapsed. The economic crisis was expressed as a political crisis“.
Another factor came into play; the differences in the economies of the federation, which had only partially been rectified in the post-war period, and which the crisis polarised further. Net income in Slovenia, for example, was more than double that of Kosovo, which had 50% unemployment. The richer northern republics used the economic crisis to whip up opinion against continuing to subsidise the southern republics. The working class in the latter began to protest at a catastrophic collapse in living standards. As Magas says, „social differentiation had taken the form of national conflict”.
The increasingly strident anti-Kosovar campaign was stepped up by the Serb bureaucracy, reawakening historical fears of the Serbs being overrun by a growing Albanian population. As a result of Kosovar protests in 1981 Serbia imposed martial law with the federal government’s acquiescence. By 1987 the Serbian republic passed a law stating that common crime would be treated as anti-state if the ethnic origin of the victim was different to the perpetrator. There were increasing demands for the two autonomous provinces‘ absorption into Serbia. Growing Serb nationalist propaganda and the lack of a revolutionary alternative drove the working class of other republics into the hands of the various reactionary nationalist leaders.
History also played an important factor in the growth of Serb nationalism. Magas explains: „National dispersion made the Serbs especially sensitive to any weakening of Yugoslav unity, while any mobilisation of them on a nationalist basis directly threatened the Yugoslav federal structure“. Increasingly there was a unity of interests between Serb nationalists who were let off the leash and the ex-Stalinists around Milošević Both encouraged the formation of Serb autonomous areas in Croatia which eventually declared themselves independent states, led by extreme reactionary, nationalist elements.
The economic crisis saw the gradual adoption of capitalist ideology by most bureaucrats. In Croatia economists talked of joining the EC while a Slovenian ‚communist‘ economist called for „a revolution in the old social and political relations so as to recognise formally the growing dominance of capitalist economic categories“.
Milošević couched market ideology in socialist rhetoric: „A contemporary, efficient … society can only be built on the basis of commodity production and a modern market mechanism“. However, none of the bureaucracy were prepared to implement these policies. „Instead the federation, republics and local communities are trying to outwit each other at the game of who should pay the bill. Nobody is prepared to take responsibility for the coming storm“. The refusal of the federal government to take decisive action, despite attacking workers‘ living standards, undermined its authority further. The intelligentsia moved towards nationalism as a result of this impasse in society. Magas had previously glowingly praised these intellectuals for their commitment to democratic liberalisation. Although able to explain the reasons for their evolution, she seems particularly dismayed by this development. This is a sign of her lack of confidence in the ability of the working class to play an independent role in the transformation of society.
Republic after republic experienced strike action.
This is also shown by her passing references to the huge struggles of the workers in the 1980s, which represented a move towards political revolution. Republic after republic experienced strike action. As late as 1987, in Bosnia-Hercegovina there was a strike by Croat miners who took united action with their Kosovar workmates. There were federal strikes even in the late 1980s. However, unity in action over economic questions is one thing. In the absence of a revolutionary alternative and with increasing economic crisis and a vacuum in society, workers were stampeded into the various nationalist camps.
By the end of the 1980s, Milošević had won control of the Serb political apparatus and drove out the leaderships of Vojvodina,Montenegro, and Kosovo, replacing them with his own representatives or military occupation. The federal government apparatus became a shell whose sole existence was to be a cover for Serb nationalism. This put in motion a chain reaction which led to the vote for independence in Croatia and Slovenia.
The federal army sided with the Serb government. There was a predominance of Serbs among army officers but also the federal army saw its privileges being best protected by siding with Greater Serb chauvinism, especially since the Slovenian and Croatian governments called for their removal from the two republics.
The federal army invaded Slovenia and then Croatia. Its campaign was more successful in Croatia since the former contained no significant Serb minority. The Bosnian government, resting on its Muslim and Croat population, proposed a referendum on independence. The leaders of the Serbs within Bosnia, playing on fears of repression within an independent Bosnia, called for a boycott. The way was thus opened to civil war in Bosnia, and its subsequent break-up. More dominoes are waiting to fall in the Balkans. One thing is abundantly clear from Magas’s book: Kosovo is likely to be the next flashpoint.
The hypocrisy of Western imperialism is given especially sharp relief by the inability of the UN to fulfil its commitments to ’safe areas‘, The Vance-Owen peace plan, which itself was based on a shamefaced acceptance of Serb and Croat military successes and the disappearance of a viable Bosnian state, lies in tatters.
The unintentional lesson of Magas’s book is the danger of straying from a class approach to the national question. Starting as a left apologist for Yugoslav Stalinism, she becomes increasingly blinkered by seeing Serb nationalism as the root cause of all problems. She makes only passing reference to reactionary Croat nationalism and is incapable of identifying the class interests of the new Croat and Slovene governments as being diametrically opposed to the working class.
Therefore, her final response is a timid plea for the European parliament to intervene to ensure the status quo. Her conclusion is that Balkanisation (the splitting of the former federation into its constituent republics) is far more preferable to Lebanisation (the division of the country into smaller and smaller parts). Unfortunately, the process of the restoration of capitalism has meant that one leads to the other, and more is to come.
The solution to the civil war lies with the working class of the region and its development as an independent force. The war has thrown back working class consciousness and reactionary nationalism has left it semi-paralysed. While there are independent trade unions, many of them are led by ex-Stalinists or reformists, both with illusions in the market.
Struggles around democratic or economic demands will not be enough to solve the national conflict, Nonetheless, out of these workers‘ struggles, a new generation of fighters can be built. The exact content of a new genuine socialist federation of the Balkans, including the right to self determination and equal rights for all national minorities, will be decided by the workers and youth of the region through the struggle to change society.
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