The Tragedy of Yugoslavia: The Failure of Democratic Transformation

The Failure of Democratic Transformation

Jim Seroka, Vukasin Pavlovic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315486956
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Once it was hoped that the Yugoslav federation might manage to defy the odds once more, this time to become one of the world's few examples of democratic pluralism. Instead, we are witnessing another Balkan tragedy. What went wrong? In this volume scholars from Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia examine the Janus face of pluralism, with case studies of electoral politics in the republics and of what were once the country's institutions of integration - the League of Communists, the managerial elite, and the army. Among the contributors are Mirjana Kaspovic, Tomaz Masmak, Vesna Pusic, Anton Bebler, Ivan Siber, Vucina Vasovic, and the editors.

1. The Challenge of Post-Communism

Vladimir Goati

We can date the trend toward the pluralization of political life in Yugoslavia from the middle of the 1980s. During that period there appeared on the political scene several new actors who autonomously influenced the course and development of the political process. To a great extent, the appearance of these subjects came about as a result of the dramatic social crisis that had rapidly eroded the power and influence of the one-party state under the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ).

Many of the organizations which had earlier been completely dependent on the ruling party and about whose political subjectivity one could not really make claims were among the new participants. An example is the Socialist Alliance of Working People (SSRN), which gradually began to exercise a more autonomous societal role after the 1986 Congress in Slovenia. In addition, institutions which did not have any overt political role in the past began to become involved in the political process. This is the case with many different interest group associations (e.g., literary, scientific, legal, etc.) which entered into the previously hermetically sealed political space. Increasingly, these groups expressed their own opinions about critical social questions, often with viewpoints that were diametrically opposed to those expressed by the ruling party.

In the course of 1988, newly organized political actors and new forms of overt political activity (i.e., movements, protest meetings, public forums, political marches, etc.) challenged the centers of political power, particularly in Serbia and Montenegro. The immediate cause of the emergence of these new political activities was the dissatisfaction with the unfavorable position of Serbs and Montenegrins in the province of Kosovo. Approximately three million people took part in the so-called "popular forums" that were held from July to mid-October 1988. There also emerged an enormous outpouring of informal networks. These had their own participants, structures, and roles which supplemented the network of formal institutions that had allied themselves with the protests. In effect, a form of parallel government emerged among the non-institutionalized groups. This is illustrated by the formation of the "Committee for Organizing Departures to the Protest Gatherings Outside the Province," a group formed following a decision of a local branch of the Socialist Alliance in Kosovo Polja on June 26, 1988. In effect, the power and authority of this committee far surpassed those of many formal institutions.

Demands to change the monopolistic role of the SKJ began to be expressed by many of these informal organizations, and they took a more urgent form at a mass meeting which was reported by the Belgrade newspaper Politika on September 5, 1988. The text that was adopted by the participants of the mass meeting included the following: "We demand that the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia at its 17th Session initiate an opening of its ranks to invite and include all those who had been denied a place in the Central Committee and in the League of Communists." Such a tone and language in communications with the central party organizations had never before been heard in Yugoslavia or in the other countries of "real socialism." The mass meeting in this way took upon itself the tactics of the ruling party and eventually metamorphosized into a party as well. For practical purposes, the League of Communists became only one actor in a pluralist environment. Among other points, this development underscored the low level of authority and deteriorating reputation of the ruling party.

From the middle of 1988, extra-institutional political life in Yugoslavia emerged, not only as a supplement to the network of pre-existing institutions, but also, to a considerable degree, as an alternative and a correction to political life. In some cases, the participants from the extra-institutional sphere who received considerable support from part of the public succeeded in achieving their objectives and in supplanting the policy orientation of the ruling institutions.

An illustration of this was the series of protest meetings in the Vojvodinan cities in the summer of 1988. These were held at the invitation of the previously mentioned committee, despite the opposition of the official institutions (i.e., the SSRN) of Vojvodina. A direct consequence of these massive protests was the mass resignation and replacement of the entire political leadership of Montenegro and Vojvodina. Strikes should also be included as a form of extra-institutional behavior. These strikes were a form of political expression par excellence because they nullified the existing procedures for resolving political conflicts with their own procedure (strikes were not legal until 1989). In addition, in a system such as Yugoslavia's, any economic activity takes upon itself a political character. By the middle of the 1980s, the number of strikes in Yugoslavia grew so rapidly that it threatened the breakup of social peace. In 1987 there were 1,570 strikes with over 360,000 participants, a fourfold increase when compared to 1985.

On the whole, we could conclude that there were three interconnected groups of factors which had a significant impact on the process of political pluralization in Yugoslavia: (1) the growth in the number of strikes, which paralleled the dramatic worsening of the position of the employed and the general population; (2) the dissatisfaction with the position of the Serbs and Montenegrins in the province of Kosovo; and (3) the fallout from the trend toward democratization in some of the countries of "real socialism" (e.g., the USSR, Poland, Hungary). Overall, the strikes were the result of the economic crisis which appeared in the beginning of the 1980s, but whose roots were sown earlier. The long and exacerbating crisis demonstrated the weakness of the ruling system and its inability to direct the social development of Yugoslavia. This failure gave a powerful thrust to the search for alternative political solutions.

Growing ethnic antagonisms, which culminated in the separatist revolt in Kosovo in 1988, also had a strong impact on political pluralization in Serbia and Montenegro. The difficult position of the Serb and Montenegrin minorities in the autonomous province of Kosovo served as the basic political catalyst in these two republics. Large numbers of Serbs repudiated the 1974 Constitution because this document gave full autonomy to the province of Kosovo, a region which had a 90 percent Albanian population. In this way, the Federal Constitution made it impossible for the republic of Serbia, which formally controlled Kosovo, to protect the minority ethnic Serbs.

Inter-ethnic violence rapidly expanded to other areas, including Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and "Serbia Proper." The consequences of these heightened inter-ethnic conflicts are not clearcut. On the one hand, these conflicts contributed to the breakup of the monistic political system; but on the other hand, they resulted in the segmentation, not pluralization, of Yugoslav society (see Goati et al. 1989a).

The process of democratization in some countries of real socialism" (e.g., Poland, Hungary, the USSR) also intensified pluralistic tendencies in Yugoslavia. The spectacular demise of "real socialism" at the end of 1989 encouraged the democratic adherents in Yugoslavia, and it contributed to the acceptance of a pluralist solution.

Autonomous Institutions

The creation of autonomous political institutions became a critical threat to the monistic system and its integrative ideology (i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, class struggle, the leading role of the Communist party, etc.). In the course of 1988 and 1989, the ruling Communist party, the SKJ, tried for tactical reasons to preserve the existing political system by advocating "pluralization from within." This inevitably led to ideological inconsistencies and an artificial linkage which was antagonistic to the party elements. Refusing to take into account the democratic demands for autonomous political organizations, the SKJ insisted that the new organizations could not be recognized as political parties.

The party's program of "non-party political pluralism" was intended to reconcile the political monopoly of the SKJ with the need to absorb new political participants. According to the proponents of these ideas, these groups could not make demands to participate in the government because they were not parties. The real interest, of course, was the perpetuation of the political monopoly of the SKJ.

The problem of "absorbing" the pluralistic changes also confronted the Yugoslav social science community. Several events which contributed to the breakup of the monistic paradigm brought about the conditions for an alternative paradigm (Kuhn 1974, 204) in the form of a still insufficiently articulated pluralistic paradigm. Its critical features included democratic elections, majority rule, rule of law, and division of power. Within the scientific community, the change in the paradigm brought about considerable confusion because many members of the community had stubbornly defended the old paradigm; and, as predicted by Kuhn, many saw their life's work threatened by these changes.

Many researchers unconsciously continued to use among themselves contradictory concepts borrowed from both paradigms. This occurred not only in official texts but also in many scientific and scholarly discussions. Thus, during 1988 and 1989 scholars used and interchangeably linked such naturally contradictory concepts as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "democratic elections"; "the leading role of the party" and "the rule of law"; "the vanguard of the party" and "civil society." Understandably, the scientific community in this period wasted its efforts in semantic disputes whose practical importance and significance were negligible.

The irresistible progress of the pluralist solution in Yugoslavia cannot be completely explained by the economic failure of the ruling monocratic model of development, the escalation of nationalism, and the influence of democratic processes in Eastern Europe. Above all, we must emphasize the fact that the citizens of Yugoslavia were very favorably disposed toward the idea of a multi-party system even before the "pluralist revolution."

An illustration of this can be seen in one of the most massive empirical research projects ever conducted in Yugoslavia, which in 1986-87 polled 17,000 participants from every republic and province. A significant number of Yugoslavs accepted the following statement: "The SKJ should be only one of the parties on the political scene"—a clear acceptance of a multi-party system. In Slovenia, a relative plurality of those surveyed agreed (38.9 percent) while only 27.6 percent were undecided. In the other republics and provinces the frequency of affirmative and neutral responses ranged as follows (neutral responses appear in parentheses): Croatia, 30.4 percent (29.1); Montenegro, 28.3 percent (18.4 percent); Bosnia-Hercegovina, 25.6 percent (22.1 percent); Macedonia, 23.5 percent (37 percent); Serbia Proper, 22.9 percent (28.6 percent); Vojvodina, 28 percent (21 percent); Kosovo, 25.2 percent (33 percent) (Tos et al. 1988). These data show that the conditions for the emergence of a multi-party system in Yugoslavia existed for some time, and that the pluralist ideas fell on fertile soil.

The first pluralist political organization on the Yugoslav political scene was the Slovenian Villager Alliance, founded in May 1988. Tens of similar organizations were formed in Slovenia and Croatia in mid-1988. The title "party," however, was consciously avoided by these organizations at that time because of fear of repression. Nevertheless, these groups were undeniably political parties with respect to their programmatic orientation and behavioral characteristics. In their preambles the newly formed groups characterized themselves as "councils" and "associations."

In Slovenia, immediately after their formation, these groups engaged in the campaign for the election of the republic's representative to the federal presidency. An example of how the organizations directly involved themselves in the electoral competition can be seen from the invitation of the representative of the Social Democratic Alliance of Slovenia to all "alternative movements," on June 26, 1989, to unify for the coming elections (Borba, June 26,1989).

Although some of these new political organizations did not have the time to articulate a detailed political platform, even a cursory examination of their charters left no doubt that these organizations had fundamental differences with the ruling Communist party. For example, the Social Democratic Alliance of Slovenia and the Slovenian Democratic Alliance explicitly asserted a demand for a parliamentary system immediately after their founding (Borba, June 6, 1989). Both organizations, as well as the Croatian Liberal Alliance, petitioned from their inception for membership in the European Economic Community—an action that had undoubted political significance.

The capacity for action by the autonomous political organizations and for the creation of new organizations became more favorable when the Slovenian League of Communists in July 1989, and later the Croatian League in October 1989, accepted political pluralism and initiated fundamental changes in the existing institutionalized system. It is important to note that these reforms were not preceded by long-term mass disobedience after which the government (as in some East European countries) was forced to concede. Just the opposite, the ruling parties in Slovenia and Croatia had the foresight to allow free elections and a change in government in a relatively peaceful political climate and without direct pressure from the streets. Comparing the efforts made by the opposition to get free elections, and the effects of those elections in the two republics, one author correctly noted that "nowhere in East and Central Europe as in Croatia [and, by implication, Slovenia] has more power been seized with less struggle and sacrifice" (Pokrovac 1990, 4).

Party Legalization

With the acceptance by the ruling party of the multi-party system, these newly formed political organizations in Slovenia and Croatia, which had hidden their true character at the end of 1989, began to publicly declare themselves as parties. Also, with the adoption of the multi-party concept by the federal League of Communists during the 14th Congress (January 20-22, 1990), opposition parties sprang up throughout the country. By October 1990, approximately 150 political parties had been formed, and scores more have been founded since that time. The number of members in each party is generally relatively small, varying from 200 to 5,000 members.

The majority of parties function only on the territory of a single republic, and limit themselves to this republic in their charter and name. A small number of parties, however, do function in two or more republics. Nearly every new party has pledged to support a market economy and a system of representative democracy. In Slovenia and Croatia, nearly every new party expresses a predisposition for confederation (Peculjic and Milic 1990).

There is very little information about the structure of the membership of the new parties, but the core leadership in them is dominated by former members of the Communist party, often former Communist party officials. The social profiles of the leaders of the new parties are dominated by intellectuals, and there is a significantly lesser presence of those occupations which dominate in the leadership structures of the West European parties, particularly lawyers, journalists, and teachers.

To a great extent, political pluralism in Yugoslavia was cultivated and matured to conform to the institutionalized norms of the monistic political system. The League of Communists accepted pluralism only gradually and grudgingly because pluralism meant the end of its long domination of the political system. Measures legalizing the parties appeared first in Slovenia in December 1989 and were repeated a month later in Croatia. This process took much longer in the other republics and was not completed until September 1990, largely because the Communist parties labored mightily to preserve the status quo and their privileged position within it.

The opposition parties that existed in this interim period operated in a "grey zone" and were at the mercy of the dominant political movements. They depended on the uncertainties of the altering constellation of forces within the ruling political currents in their republic as well as the anticipated reaction of other regions in Yugoslavia. This period is also characterized by insecurity and insufficiently predictable actions of the participants in the pluralist political process (e.g., street protests, demonstrations, and boycotts). To some extent this was a pluralism outside the publicly accepted rules of the game, a type of neurotic, wild pluralism (Vasovic 1990).

The sequencing of the Yugoslav republics in the acceptance of the multi-party system is based upon the timing of the first free elections. These elections were held first in Slovenia and then in Croatia in the spring of 1990. In the other republics they occurred later, during the fall and winter. For a long time, the leadership of Serbia refused to schedule free elections. It attempted to hold "temporary" elections for delegates without the participation of the other parties. After strenuous protests by the opposition, however, the ruling Communist parties in most of the Yugoslav republics eventually accepted and scheduled the first free multiparty elections, which were held by the end of 1990.

The Breakup of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia

The disintegration of the League of Communists into six completely autonomous political parties paralleled the pluralization of political life. The party's collapse became irreversible following the "interruption" of the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the SKJ held during January 20-22, 1990. The ostensible reason for the postponement was the walkout of the Slovenian delegates, but the real reasons were much deeper and related to different views about the character of the political system, the position of the Communist parties in the system, the nature of the Yugoslav community (i.e., confederalism vs. federalism), policy in Kosovo, etc.

The suspension of the 14th Congress ratified the dissolution of the League of Communists into independent republic parties. Each party moved at a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1. The Challenge of Post-Communism
• 2. The Structure and Dynamics of the Yugoslav Political Environment and Elections in Croatia
• 3. Civil Society in Slovenia From Opposition to Power
• 4. Variation in the Evolution of the Yugoslav Communist Parties
• 5. The Rulers and the Managers A Possible Transition Team?
• 6. Political Pluralism and the Yugoslav Professional Military
• 7. The Impact of Nationalism, Values, and Ideological Orientations on Multi-Party Elections in Croatia
• 8. A Plea for Consociational Pluralism
• Index
• Contributors