Yugoslavia's Implosion - Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in ...

they considered him “the incarnation of Serbdom, a man bidden by
history to personalize politically this age and state. … [T]hey respect
him because they believe him to be the state symbol of Serbia.” 27
Croatian politician Branko Horvat described the Brioni Plenum’s
dismissal of Ranković and ensuing crackdown on the State Security
Service as the “formal beginning of our third revolution,” the
first, in his opinion, having taken place in 1941 and the second in 1948
(the break with the Soviet Union). Parallel with this development
was a gradual shift toward the concept of a republican statehood in
response to the centralist and unitarian tendencies. The Brioni Plenum
made it possible to embark on processes that galvanized the
whole of Yugoslavia, including Serbia, and sharpened the clash
between the lcy’s conservative and reformist wings. The articulation
of demands to democratize the country coincided with increasing
manifestations of the problem of intercommunal relations in the
wider Yugoslav context, for the national “emancipation” (the process
of national profiling of Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians,
Croats, and Slovenes) had raised the question of the character of
Yugoslavia in all respects, especially economic.
The political demise of Ranković created a political climate that
encouraged national movements throughout the country, including
an awakening of the ethnic Albanian population. Democratic forces
in Serbia capitalized on the Brioni Plenum to push through major
decisions concerning the political system, especially the role and
character of the State Security Service, and to transform the lcy.
Even the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia
sharply criticized the work of the State Security Service in Kosovo
as a “drastic example of chauvinistic practice”—that is, of favoring
Serbs at the expense of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
However, Ranković’s dismissal and the reaction in Serbia to the
move were the first signs of a clash between two different concepts in
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Chapter 1
27 Dobrica Ćosić, Piščevi zapisi 1951–1968 (A writer’s notes), (Belgrade: Filip Višnjić, 2000) p 263.