Ethnic Mobilization in Serbia - EURAC

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Definitions of Nation and Ethnic Mobilization ................. 3 2. Institutional Crisis in Serbia as a Factor of Ethnic Mobilization ............................................................................................................. 5 2.1. Constitutional Crisis in Serbia ……………………………………………… 6 3. Processes and Protagonists of Ethnic Mobilization ........... 8 3.1. What actually happened in Serbia? ............................. 13 4. Yugoslavia’s National Infrastructure: Nations and Nationalities, Republics and Provinces ....... 19 4.1. National Minorities in Serbia ……………………………………………… 21 5. Effects of EU Policies on Ethnic Mobilization in Serbia ….. 24 5.1. Missions …………………………………………………………………….…….…. 26 5.2. International Conferences …………………………….……….…………. 27 5.3. Sanctions ………………………………………………………………….………… 27 6. United Nations and Ethnic Mobilization ....................... 28 6.1. The Policy of Coercion and Ethnic Mobilization .............. 28 6.2. Policy of Exclusion …………………………………………………….………… 32 6.3. Policy of Individual Punishment …………….……………………..….. 33 7. NATO and Ethnic Mobilization .................................. 34 8. The OSCE and Ethnic Mobilization ............................. 35 8.1. Missions of Long Duration in Kosovo, Sandžak, Vojvodina ... 36 8.2. Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) ………………………………….…. 37 8.3. Suspension of Membership ….…………………………..….………..…. 37 9. Conclusion .......................................................... 38 2
1. Definitions of Nation and Ethnic Mobilization Ideal-type definitions of an ethnic nation, ethnic mobilization and ethnic politicization (nationalism) are prerequisites for the purposes of this project. The textbook definitions of these phenomena were nearly absolutely replicated into reality during the wars that raged in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, especially in Serbia. To comprehend the issue of national minorities, one must first understand which national ideas predominated amongst the majority peoples, their protagonists, and on which nationalist ideologies they founded the states that emerged from the ruins of Yugoslavia. This paper shall focus on the ethnic nationalism that developed in Serbia. In the Balkans, a nation is predominantly perceived in terms of ethnicity, and the Serbs are no exception. At times of crisis and during the ethnic mobilization that began in the mid-1980s, the Serbian nation politicized its ethnic identity to such an extent that it reversed the degrees of modernization and complexity it had previously achieved. In just a few years (from 1985 to 1991), it turned into an exclusive “us-group” that saw itself as a “natural” i.e. organic whole homogenized by the plebiscitary elected leader (Slobodan Milošević). The structure of its activity resembled the ancient tribal formula: leader-conationalsenemy, 1 which involved waging a war to salvage and unify the Serbian people and their “ethnic lands”. The politicization of the Serbian ethnic identity provoked strong feelings of ressentiment towards other peoples with which it had lived in the same community; at one point, all other peoples were defined as the enemy threatening to destroy the Serbs. Ethnic integration was ensured by homogenizing emotions on Serbian suffering and Serbia’s sacrifices for and goodness to other peoples which had not responded in kind. Serbian ethnic mobilization (on which volumes have already been written) reflects all textbook features of politicized ethnic nations, including the strong affective (irrational) component that is easily aroused and mobilized by an authoritarian leader. If these features also comprise war as the most efficient way of ethnifying a nation, of drawing ethnic borders and consolidating the power of the leader and his ruling structures, it can safely be said that the wars the Serbs waged had precisely such a role. The cultural elite assumed upon themselves the role of awakening national awareness of the anguish and vulnerability of the Serbian people; they stoked the feeling of fury demanding revenge; they revived the national myths and memories of historical and unhealed traumas (the Kosovo myth about heroism and betrayal, the Serbs’ expulsion from Kosovo, the genocide they suffered in WWII, etc). Irrational fears and aggressiveness were fuelled by nearly all means of public communication, movies and theatre plays, and by a deluge of new historical interpretations of past events. Departing from the example of the Serbian nation, we propose the following definition of ethnic mobilization: Ethnic mobilization is a state-building movement of a people led by an authoritarian leader who had succeeded in assuming control over the state apparatus, the media, the Church and the cultural elite, the involvement of which is prerequisite for achieving the emotional, cultural and political homogenization of the nation’s awareness of the common enemy war should be waged against. Serbian ethnic mobilization aimed at state-building would not have been possible had the other peoples/minorities in the then Yugoslavia themselves not 1 More on ethnic structures in Aleksandar Molnar, “Narod, nacija, rasa” (People, Nation, Race), History of the Origin of Nationalism in Europe (Belgrade Circle and APAKIT, Edition Krug, Belgrade, 1997). 3
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Page 7 and 8: and the global weakening of the com
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