The fact that Yugoslavia was
born twice in labor pains and was disintegrated
two times in blood - since it was founded in 1918,
during the effective seventy years of its existence
- can serve equally as an argument for those who
advocated it and those who challenged it.
We should remember that the 1918 Yugoslavia (Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians) did not encompass
already formed and free countries, but peoples
that had spent the previous centuries under foreign
rule, on this seismic Turkish-Austrian-Hungarian
geographic area. Only Serbia, the biggest, most
numerous and covering the largest territory, and
Montenegro, the smallest, were independent states
before Yugoslavia was created. The role of the
unifying country could have only been played by
Serbia, because of the good reputation it had
earned with the countries that won the World War
I - though by economic and cultural development
it was far behind Slovenia and Croatia.
It soon became evident that expectations of the
three united peoples were not the same. Serbian
state leadership and a prevailing part of the
Serbian public envisaged the integration as expansion
of the Serbian state (like some spoils of war)
and ultimate realization of the big dream - for
all Serbs to live in one state. Others, however,
hoped that the integration with the victorious
Serbia, despite the respect for its unifying role,
opened room for their own national emancipation
and that they would be able to achieve with their
own what they had been unable to do under foreign
rule. Disappointments were in store for both sides.
The dramatic disintegration of Yugoslavia before
the surge of German and Italian fascism in 1941
- 23 years after the unification - seemed so convincing
and final that rarely anyone believed the shreds
could ever be assembled again into a new state
union. But the miracle did happen. Even if it
were true that after seven decades of its existence
Yugoslavia no longer had the conditions to survive,
it would not be true if we said that it should
have never been created. If the 1941 disintegration
were the evidence that Yugoslavia was a chimera,
the 1945 resurrection proved it was real, not
an artificial creation, and that even the first
one did not have to vanish fatally.
The seminal feature of the creation and duration
of the two Yugoslavias was the fact that it emerged
from the real need of its peoples. This was confirmed
by the lack of any popular revolt against its
existence, with the exception of external agitation
ahead of the occupation in early forties and domestic,
nationalistic movements in the 90's. There was
always some dissatisfaction, social or anti-regime,
but no anti-Yugoslav. Even Croatia in the 70's
(the mass movement) or Slovenia in the 90's did
not ask for dissolution, but demanded radical
reorganization of the common state. The demands
for separation peaked when the overbearing Milosevic
posed an ultimatum requiring a "firm federation",
condemning the demands for democratization of
the federation as anti-Serb action and proclaimed
any calls for higher independence of the republics
as separatism and secession. The assembly at Gazimestan
ended hopes that Yugoslavia could be sustained
or even dissolved peacefully.
For all this, it would be more worthwhile if we
focused on the characteristics of the second Yugoslavia,
not only because it lasted twice longer, but also
because it was separated by qualitative discontinuity
both from the first and from the last, Milosevic's
and fake one.
The indisputable truth is that Tito's communist
partisans - unlike Draza Mihajlovic's chetniks
- did not stage a war against the occupiers, but
really waged one. They tried and managed to lead
into combat members of literally all Yugoslav
peoples and all ethnic groups, while Draza Mihajlovic's
followers from Ravna Gora gathered exclusively
Serbs and Montenegrins in their squads, passively
stationed in the mountains. General Mihajlovic
offered regeneration of royal Yugoslavia under
Serb dominance (see decisions of Ravna Gora Congress
in the village of Ba, January 1944), while Tito
proposed a federative republic of national equalities
and a revolutionary change of social order that
did not enjoy huge sympathies even in Serbia.
The war started with propagandist glorification
of heroic fight of Yugoslav army in the homeland,
and ended in overall support of Allies to Tito's
partisans in the fight against occupiers and quislings.
Finally, the Allies decided that the royal government
should subordinate the chetnik army in the homeland
to supreme partisan command, though they were
not unfamiliar with their
revolutionary objectives
(because they were not hidden). Tito did
not openly insist on communism during
the fight against the occupier, while
Mihajlovic insisted until the very end
on the fight against "the communist".
Thus the narrow-minded anticommunism of
the royal government and the army practically
enabled, or at least facilitated, the
victory of Tito's communism.
Yugoslav partisan movement, though it
was the strongest and the most efficient
in occupied Europe, did not contribute
decisively to the Allies' victory over
the powers of the Axis, but it was undoubtedly
the definitive factor in rejuvenation
of the Yugoslav state. Without it, Yugoslavia
would not have resurrected, even if some
thought it should have never been created.
Everyone achieved with Yugoslavia more
than they could have without it. If it
had not been for the partisans' victory
in the antifascist alliance, Croatia would
not have received Istra and the Dalmatian
islands, Slovenia would not have won the
Adriatic coast in the Trieste bay, Macedonia
would never |
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Leon Bakst, La
danseuse Ida Rubinstein (1885-1960)
en Helene de Sparte, 1912.
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have its nation state, Bosnia and Herzegovina
the independent republic, Serbia would not be
a dominant nation in the large state that spread
from Maribor to Djevdjelija, while Vojvodina maybe
would not have been, as it had not been back then,
an integral part of the Serbian state (because
in 1918 it did not become a part of Serbia, but
of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians).
Yugoslav territory would have been divided into
spheres of influence of the large powers and divided
by the Iron Curtain after the Cold War confrontation.
After the dramatic war temptation, the peoples
and the citizens proved convincingly their determination
to remain in the common state, hoping it would
be able to offer more than the previous one.
Was there a clear concept of social and state
organization of Yugoslavia during the war and
immediately after it was won triumphantly?
A clear answer was given during the war only to
the question of national relations and the state
organization. Even on 29 November 1943, which
is taken as the date when the second Yugoslavia
was founded, at the meeting of the makeshift parliament
(AVNOJ) it was decided that Yugoslavia should
be a unique federative republic, with six equal
republics and with widest rights awarded to national
minorities.
Strong partisan authority, after triumphant ending
of the war, swiftly extinguished nationalist strongholds,
radically punished the war criminals and collaborators,
and with them a larger part of its political opponents.
Every nationalist action was punished cruelly.
"Fraternity and unity", which some would
say today was imposed by force, became widely
accepted and respected by the majority of the
population. Already a year or two after the war,
anyone was able to move freely from one part of
Yugoslavia to another, regardless of his nationality,
religion or dialect. It was a real miracle for
a country in which one tenth of its citizens had
been killed during the fight against the occupiers,
in mutual retaliations, national, class and religious
extermination.
In its internal policy, Yugoslavia tried to prove
it was possible to establish democratic socialism,
socialism with a human character. The impressive
postwar enthusiasm about the reconstruction of
the country, public works at which hundreds of
thousands youths volunteered, modernization endeavors
in industry and agriculture, free education and
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healthcare, full employment,
freedom of movement… These successes are
all too easily disputed today. Yugoslavia
was the only country in Eastern Europe
in which majority of the population still
lived better - not only materially - during
communism, than before it. It turned out,
however, that any further progress could
only be achieved by deeper democratization
of the entire political and administrative
system. But it was no longer possible!
Tito - an unwilling reformer - was becoming
ever more determined hindrance to change,
who valued more his formula of single-party
socialism than the country's prosperity,
whenever the two collided. He conceded
that the rebelled Belgrade University
students were right in 1968, but he used
his concession - not to really change
a thing. However, it seemed that Yugoslavia
managed to find a successful and original
road to
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Leon Bakst, Narcisse,
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socialism with a human face. Everything was subjected
to the need to resemble the great success of the
original Titoist, self-governing socialism even
when Yugoslavia was mercilessly consuming its
future. The system was becoming increasingly anachronous
in the attempt to preserve the semblance of "perfection"
by glossing over its failures.
Self-governance, the unquestionably valuable idea,
which has roots in Serbian social tradition, could
not go further or deeper than the idea of "participation",
already accepted in the West. There was even the
illusion that self-governance can replace, or
at least offset, the growing need to adhere to
pluralism and multiparty system. But, of course,
it could not -as some proclaimed it would - become
the fundament of the social and state order, because
it did not entail comprehensive democratization
and disavowal of single-party shepherding.
To be fair, Yugoslav socialism, though it failed
to advance democratic and civil liberties, after
fifty years of existence, did leave behind the
country and the society in a much better state
than they had been in before. It may not be superfluous
to note that, despite all the ideological similarities
and organic affinity, it was never as rigid or
restrictive as the Soviet one. The very label
of communism did not fit it equally well as it
did the other countries in the socialist camp.
Serbia contributed the most to creation even of
the first Yugoslavia, but it was also instrumental
in the demise of the second one. Croatia's "contribution"
was hardly smaller. In both countries, extremists
presented the national issue as the question of
territory and both republics saw in the integrity
of Yugoslavia an obstacle to territorial expansion.
Each aspired to gain a fraction of some other
land, and both wanted the entire territory of
the national potpourri of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The international community resembled at times
a self-confident team of doctors in which everyone
proposed to cut a part of the patient's body,
not having consulted actually on the patient's
condition and the chance to apply some drugs,
before taking the saw. When the patient died,
the doctors washed their hands and justified themselves
by claiming the patient had not had a chance anyway.
Yugoslavia suffered from a completely different
illness than the one she received treatment for.
Long after the Yugoslav crisis began, no one advocated
disintegration of Yugoslavia, aware of the tragic
consequences it might provoke - neither the European
powers, nor the neighboring countries, and least
of all America. This was well documented in Zivorad
Kovacevic's recently published book America and
Disintegration of Yugoslavia. Solutions could
only succeed if they were ours, and any help was
welcome, provided it was well-intended and timely.
If creation of the European Union was the best
news in Europe after the WWII, the bloody disintegration
of Yugoslavia was definitely the worst.
Yugoslavia did not need to fail because of its
multiethnic, multi-religion and multicultural
state, but it had to disappear because of the
hegemony, absolutism and lack of democracy. Even
the EU would not be able to survive (or even to
be created) if it succumbed to the infection of
nationalism. The reformed and democratically reorganized
Yugoslavia, including Serbia, might have converged
with the European Union more successfully than
its independent fractions.
All parts of the former Yugoslavia now wish to
join the prosperous European community, which
in fact is founded on the same principles of integration
as the former Yugoslav federation, with all the
republics and the autonomous Kosovo, of course.
Only from this viewpoint can Kosovo's determination
to proclaim itself a state be appropriately questioned,
because independence of all the Balkan states,
including Serbia, will lose its sense gradually
within the EU. Because, though the EU is not a
negation of identity of any state, it is incongruous
with anachronous ambition of absolute state sovereignty.
The moment when Milosevic started ripping Yugoslavia
apart, Serbia started losing Kosovo. A prosperous
Serbia may again gain large influence in Kosovo,
but never the governmental or territorial sovereignty
over it. It will be easier to force Serbia to
accept Kosovo's independence, than to force Kosovo
back under Serbian rule.
Ideology, even if it is totalitarian, homogenizes
relative things. Only nationalism - particularly
if aided by religion - homogenizes the absolute.
People can chose the social form, but they are
born into a nation. Chauvinism unnaturally levels
and unites people by their national feelings,
to prevent them from uniting naturally by their
civic beliefs.
Both Yugoslavias stood for too long at the crossroads
between the European civilization, to which they
belonged, and patriarchal populism - prone to
violence and despotism - which they were unable
to escape. Balkan and Serbian multiethnic, geopolitical
and strategic area (and the great interest Europe
and the big powers have in it) entails that no
narrow-minded, provincial and nationalistic policy
can be conducted here without causing damage to
the region and every country in it. This is why
even a local policy here has always to be modern,
good neighborly, European and global.
