Anticipating the disintegration: Nationalisms in former Yugoslavia, 1980-1990

Nationalities Papers

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 427-440

  Pavković, Aleksandar ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 3943072353     PISSN: 00905992     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00905999708408516     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Franjo Tudjman was born in 1922 in Veliko Trgovište in Croatia. In 1941, he joined the communist-led Partisans where, as a political commissar, he rose to the rank of major. In 1961, with the rank of major-general, he retired from the army to become the director of a history institute in Zagreb. In 1964, with a Party reprimand for "bourgeois-nationalist deviation" his reputation as a nationalist historian was firmly established; in 1965 he earned his doctorate in history at the University of Zadar. In the late 1960s he became one of the leaders of the then nationalist organisation Matica Hrvatska (Croatian Hive), and in the purges of nationalist leaders in 1972 was sentenced to two years in prison. For his continued dissident activity, including interviews to foreign journalists, he was arrested in 1981 and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release in 1987, during his extensive travels in the U.S., Canada and Europe, he established contacts in the Croat émigré communities and organisations. In 1989 he founded the first postwar Croatian opposition party - the Croat Democratic Union - and after its electoral victory in 1990, was elected president of Croatia. He was re-elected, in direct presidential elections, in 1992 and in 1995 was proclaimed "vrhovnik" (generalissimo) of the Croatian armed forces.
2. Alija Izetbegović was born in 1925 in Bosanski Šamac in Bosnia-Hercegovina and joined the Young Muslims during World War II. In 1946 he was sentenced to three years in prison for his participation in this nationalist movement. After his release from prison, he completed a law degree and worked as a lawyer for state firms. In 1983 he was arrested for nationalist dissident activity (including the writing of his Islamic Declaration) and with a group of fellow Muslims sentenced, on appeal, to six years in prison (of which he served four). His Islam between East and West, 2nd edn (Indianopolis: American Trust, 1989) was originally published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade in 1984. In 1989 he founded the first opposition party in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Party of Democratic Action; and, in 1990 was elected president of the presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
3. The official number of dead was nine persons, including one policemen. Some (probably exaggerated) unofficial estimates put the number of dead up to 1,000. Cf. S. P. Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia 1962-1991, 2nd edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 196.
4. For an array of similar arguments see S. S. Juka, Kosova: The Albanians in Yugoslavia in Light of Historical Documents (New York: Waldon Press, 1984).
5. For an illuminating discussion of these aspects of the "Serb question" see V. Vujacic, "Dominant Nation in a Late Multinational State: Communist Federalism and the Institutional Origins of Contemporary Serbian Nationalism" (unpublished essay, Harvard Academy, Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University).
6. The infamous term "ethnic cleansing" (etničko čišćenje in Serbo-Croatian) was first used in the Yugoslav press to describe the forced emigration of Kosovo Serbs from Kosovo.
7. This draft was leaked in 1986 to the Belgrade, Party-controlled press which proceeded to attack it as a counter-revolutionary and nationalist document. An authorised version was published in K. Mihailović and V. Krestić, "Memorandum SANU": odgovori na kritike (Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1995); an authorised English translation of this work Memorandum of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Replies to Criticisms was published by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 as well. For a discussion of the document see A. Pavković, "Intellectual Dissidence and the Serb National Question," in A. Pavković, H. Koscharsky and A. Czarnota, eds, Nationalism and Postcommunism: A Collection of Essays (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1995), pp. 128-131.
8. This draft was leaked in 1986 to the Belgrade, Party-controlled press which proceeded to attack it as a counter-revolutionary and nationalist document. An authorised version was published in K. Mihailović and V. Krestić, "Memorandum SANU": odgovori na kritike (Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1995); an authorised English translation of this work Memorandum of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Replies to Criticisms was published by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 as well. For a discussion of the document see A. Pavković, "Intellectual Dissidence and the Serb National Question," in A. Pavković, H. Koscharsky and A. Czarnota, eds, Nationalism and Postcommunism: A Collection of Essays (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1995), pp. 128-131.
9. This draft was leaked in 1986 to the Belgrade, Party-controlled press which proceeded to attack it as a counter-revolutionary and nationalist document. An authorised version was published in K. Mihailović and V. Krestić, "Memorandum SANU": odgovori na kritike (Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, 1995); an authorised English translation of this work Memorandum of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Replies to Criticisms was published by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 as well. For a discussion of the document see A. Pavković, "Intellectual Dissidence and the Serb National Question," in A. Pavković, H. Koscharsky and A. Czarnota, eds, Nationalism and Postcommunism: A Collection of Essays (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1995), pp. 128-131.
10. Born in Požarevac, Serbia in 1941. Both of his parents were teachers (his father migrated from Montenegro to Serbia); and both, separately, committed suicide. He started his Party career in 1960s at Belgrade University's Law Faculty where he completed a law degree and met his future patron Ivan Stambolić, the future president of the Serbian Communist party and, later, of the presidency of Serbia. As one of the Ivan Stambolić's closest friends, Milošević rapidly advanced in his career, serving as the director of the largest state bank in Serbia and the head of the Belgrade Party Committee. In the late 1970s he also spent some time in the U.S., ostensibly studying the U.S. financial system. In 1986 he replaced Stambolić as the president of the presidency of the Communist Party of Serbia, and in 1987 he purged the Serbian Party of Stambolić's supporters. Even before the first multiparty elections in December 1990 - in which he was elected president of Serbia - he established himself as the undisputed ruler of Serbia and leader of a loosely organised pan-Serb movement in the Yugoslav federation. As in October 1994, he broke with the leaders of Bosnian Serbs and imposed an internationally monitored blockade on the Bosnian Serb territory. Thereby, he split the pan-Serb movement he had himself initiated in the late 1980s.
11. See A. Pavković, op. cit., pp. 133-134.
12. This philosophy of history and the example of the Jews is elaborated in F. Tudjman, Bespuća povjesne zbiljnosti (first published in 1989), in Izabrana djela Franje Tucrossed d signmana (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1990), pp. 158-167.
13. This philosophy of history and the example of the Jews is elaborated in F. Tudjman, Bespuća povjesne zbiljnosti (first published in 1989), in Izabrana djela Franje Tucrossed d signmana (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1990), pp. 158-167.
14. For an example of this kind see F. Tudjman, op. cit., p. 118.
15. A. Purivatra, "On the National Phenomenon of the Moslems of Bosnia-Hercegovina," Nations and Nationalities of Yugoslavia (Belgrade: Medjunarodna Politika, 1974), p. 311.
16. In Serbo-Croatian: Islamska deklaracija: Jedan program islamizacije Muslimana i muslimanskih naroda (Sarajevo: Bosna, 1990).
17. Ibid., p. 29.
18. Ibid., pp. 29-30.
19. Ibid., p. 43.
20. Ibid., p. 22
21. Ibid., p. 30. These are some of the social ills which the Muslim Party of Democratic Action, in its program of 1990, pledged to eliminate.
22. In Serbo-Croatian, "preuzimanje vlasti." This was an explicitely set goal in the Muslim party's "Resolution on the Internal Policies, Justice and Administration" (Rezolucija o unutrašnjoj politici, pravosucrossed d signu i upravi), Bilten "Kongres" 1991 (Sarajevo: Stranka demokratske akcije, 1991), p. 51.
23. This conflict of claims was further complicated by the Serb ideologues' claims to territories from which Serbs had been forcibly expelled in recent history - during World War II and under communist rule. These were territories in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo-Metohija.
24. Izetbegović's treatise and his public statements, prior to October 1991 when the Serb political leaders rejected, in the Assembly of Bosnia-Hercegovina, his party's Memorandum of Sovereignty, did not target any nation as an enemy of the Muslims.
25. This article is based on Chapter 7 of the author's The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism in a Multinational State (London: Macmillan, 1996).