Yugoslavia, the State which Withered Away
Autor: Aleksandar Pavković
Yugoslavia, the State which Withered Away1 : The Rise, Crisis and Fall of Kardelj’s Yugoslavia (1974–1990), I shall argue, offers a very well- argued and coherent explanation of the political processes that led to Yugoslavia’s disintegration but not a conclusive answer to our question. The book – published in the same language both in Zagreb and in Belgrade – tells the story of a failed attempt to impose the Marxist conception of the withering away of the state to a multinational society of former Yugoslavia.
According to the doctrine elaborated by Edvard Kardelj, Tito’s second in command, the state, during the socialist transition, should, in all of its non-coercive functions, be replaced by associations of workers who were referred to as ‘self-managing (or free) producers’. The two founding legal documents embodying this doctrine, the Yugoslav federal Constitution of 1974 and the Law on Associated Labour (1976) generated more than 5 million laws and regulations which were supposed to govern all aspects of public life in former Yugoslavia, both at the workplace and in the more traditional political sphere. More importantly, as Dejan Jović argues, this doctrine of socialist self-management shaped the ideological outlook of the Yugoslav communist elites well until the effective dissolution of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav Communist Party), at its last and aborted extraordinary congress in January 1990.
But the book offers not only a story of a failed communist experiment, but also an explanation of the disintegration of the federal Yugoslav state. Its author, in the first chapter, examines and partially rejects eight competing explanations of the disintegration each of which postulate one of the following as the dominant or decisive causal factor in the disintegration: the economic crisis, ancient hatreds among the peoples of Yugoslavia, nationalism/nationalist ideologies, cultural differences among the peoples of Yugoslavia, changes in international politics (the end of the cold war), the role of individual political leaders (for example, Slobodan Milošević), the pre-modern character of the Yugoslav state (resembling an empire) and the peculiar structural and institutional character of the Yugoslav state. In his subtle and far-ranging analysis, Jović persuasively argues that all these factors, except the ancient hatreds, contributed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia but that none had been the decisive or dominant causal factor in this disintegration. Jović does not believe that a dominant causal factor type of explanation can always be offered in social sciences and argues that, in particular, no such explanation can be offered of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Instead, he is to offer a multi-factor explanation which incorporates both the subjective beliefs and actions of the principal political actors and the political and social context of their actions.
In the second chapter Jović outlines Kardelj’s concept of Yugoslavia as ‘a community of the common interests of free and independent peoples’; these interests were the common defence, common economic policy and common economic interests and, most importantly, the ‘building of socialism in the same way’ (Jović, p. 138). Accordingly, the federal state apparatus in Yugoslavia was confined to the tasks of defence, foreign affairs and common economic policy while all other state functions were transferred from the federal state to the republics (federal units). Kardelj regarded these six federal units as states in the service of the working class of the national groups living in them. The federal republics, under Kardelj, become socialist nation-states. The federal state of Yugoslavia, according to Kardelj, could not perform the ‘national’ task and, if necessary, could be discarded.
In effect, Kardelj’s doctrine allowed an almost unlimited autonomy to the communist leaders of each of the six republics. This is one reason, Jović argues in the third chapter, why almost all of them, including those of Serbia, endorsed the doctrine. However divided they were into factions, according to Jović, all Serbian communist leaders in post-1970s Yugoslavia were primarily loyal to the republic of Serbia and not to their national group, the Serbs, a large number of whom lived outside Serbia. In this they did not differ from the communist leaders in other republics. According to him, neither was Kardelj’s doctrine imposed on the Serbian communist leaders nor, contrary to the post-1987 Milošević’s accusations, did they betray Serb national interests (as they conceived them).
The first major challenge to Kardelj’s doctrine, Jović explains in the fourth chapter, came from the severe economic crisis which, partly because of the sudden rise of world interest rates, Yugoslavia faced in the early 1980s. Fragmented into myriad ‘organisations of associated labour’ and divided into six separate and often competing economies based on the six federal units, the Yugoslav economy required a radical reform – including the centralization of the control of credit and of economic planning – if it was to overcome the crisis. Until 1989 the republics’ communist leaders had refused to allow any such reform, fearing the loss of their autonomy and power; and, in spite of the rapidly falling standard of living, the workers, Jović maintains, feared such a radical reform as well.
The second major challenge to this doctrine, Jović explains in the fifth chapter, were the mass demonstrations as well as rioting of the Albanians in the province of Kosovo who in 1981 demanded the province become a federal republic, the seventh federal unit. Left without their paramount leader, Tito, who died in 1980, the communist leaders of all republics were united in rejecting the Kosovo Albanian demand and in condemning these demonstrations as counter-revolutionary. But there was no unity in their views as to how to prevent and combat such radical challenges to the political system they inherited from Kardelj and Tito. Some argued that Kardelj’s federal Constitution of 1974 needs to be modified and the political system reformed so as to stop the erosion of the powers of the federal state. Others rejected any major changes to the political system within which they enjoyed virtually unlimited power over their own federal units. According to Jović, from 1982 onwards the communist elite in Yugoslavia split into the two opposing groups, the defenders and the reformers of the Constitution. This split was along ideological and not ethnic or national lines: members of both groups were found in the communist elite of each republic. The reformists among the Serbian communist leaders, including Ivan Stambolić, demanded equal constitutional status of Serbia to other republics which would enable Serbia to re-establish the legislative control over its two provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina) which the Constitution of 1974 had in effect abolished. The defenders of the Constitution argued that no major change of any kind is necessary. In Jović’s opinion, it was the conflict between the two ideologically based groups that ultimately split Yugoslavia in 1990 (p. 301).
- Dejan Jović, Jugoslavija, država koja je odumrla: uspon, kriza i pad Kardeljeve Jugoslavije (1974–1990), (Prometej, Zagreb, 2003), 531 pp., ISBN 953-6460-32-7 (hb), 165 Kuna (HRK); Serbian edition: Jugoslavija, država koja je odumrla: uspon, kriza i pad četvrte Jugoslavije (1974-1990), (Samizdat B92, Beograd, 2003), 522 pp., ISBN 86-7963-174-4 (pb), 650 Dinars (YUD). [↩]