Synthetic report - EURAC

(hereafter: IMF) from 1985-1986 dismantled the system of self-management and
abolished the organizations of associated labor. 68 On the one hand, it is true that
the capability of this system to generate economic growth was low and this became
visible to foreign scholars much earlier. 69 On the other hand, the symbolic power of
self-management must not be underestimated. Self-management was the
“Yugoslav road to socialism”, the entire pride arising from Tito’s “no” to Stalin, a
trump in foreign policy, an object of fascination for foreigners, and along with the
partisan myth a core element of “Yugoslav” identity. 70 Noting this, one must be
aware of how important this brace, which was taken away by the reform from
1985-1986, had been.
3.3. Increasing of Ethnic Tensions
The cleansings of Croatian Spring had led to a subdued attitude of the Croatian
Communist Party in the eighties, which in turn lacked legitimacy from the Croatian
population. 71 As there was no official political forum, nationalism spread latently
through the civil society in Croatia. It was promoted by the processes going on in
Serbia.
Milošević picked up what was provided by the church and the intellectuals. 72
He put it on the political stage and made it accessible to a broader population so
that nationalism could spread. He used mass-movements and an anti-bureaucratic
revolution against the institutionalized system of the provinces “impeding” Serbian
power (in his nationalistic sense). Thus he brought down the provincial leadership
in Vojvodina, cleansed the leadership in Kosovo, and seized power with his allies in
Montenegro. 73
Tensions also became appreciable in Croatia. In the late eighties pro-
Serbian demonstrations of Croatian Serbs took for example place in Knin. 74 This was
another step in the spiral of ethnic mobilization in Croatia, which also shifted the
Croatian national/istic estimation to a higher level. The Croatian Communist Party
(except for many of the Serbian party members) and the Croatian population took a
critical view of Milošević’s policy. 75
While throughout the eighties the media became less and less restricted and
diverse political opinions were present in public, a definitively open stadium of
ethnic mobilization was only reached with the legalization of other parties for
democratic elections besides the Communist Party. It looked like now
“nationalism” had an open political stage in Croatia and BiH.
68 Ramet, 50.
69 See for example the critical assessment of Wolfgang Gumpel from 1975; Gumpel, 212-
214.
70 See Allcock, 422; von Kohl, 19; Tadeusz Szymczak, Jugosławia. Państwo Federacyjne
(Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, Łódź 1982), 202. From the point of view of the “official” Yugoslav
ideology, “a common progress and goals in a socialist self-managing community of peoples“
was the factor uniting multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, considered even as more important than the
partisan myth. See Michael B. Petrovich, “Population structure”, in Klaus-Detlev
Grothausen (ed.), Handbuch Südosteuropa. Band I.Jugoslawien (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
Göttingen 1975), 322-344, at 337
71 Petricusic, 5.
72 Pešić, 13.
73 Petricusic, p. 6, cited after: Paul Garde, Život i smrt Jugoslavije (Ceres, Zagreb, 1997),
246-255.
74 Petricusic, 6.
75 Petricusic, 6.
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