Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

THE TURNING POINT: 1986–87 37
representatives from the province, the Republic of Serbia, and the federal
government. This commission was supposed to verify that legislative acts,
especially in regard to the sale of land, were correctly applied vis-à-vis the
Serbian minority. Aside from that, the judicial and educational reforms were also
supposed to be reviewed. Moreover, the authorities imposed a moratorium until
1990 on all sales of property owned by Serbs. 8 This was the first curtailment of
Kosovo’s autonomy. It followed a “spontaneous” rally of Kosovar Serbs, which
adhered to the pattern of Milošević’s later “agitation meetings”.
The Yugoslav party congress itself yielded few results; indeed, it was entirely
incapable of producing much of anything. Prime Minister Mikulić promised
reforms, for example the extension of a further credit to enterprises. Defense
Minister Admiral Mamula thought it was necessary to confront the growing
criticism of the army, especially in Slovenia. As for Kosovo, there was relatively
little discussion of the problems there; that subject was supposed to be treated at
a special meeting of the Central Committee.
This meeting took place only a year later, at the end of June 1987, in
Belgrade. While the highest party organ sat in deliberation, several thousand
Serbs, among them many from Kosovo, demonstrated outside, demanding
“finally” some security. As a result of the demonstrations, the Central Committee
ended its work a day early. 9 It had had to endure a veritable tidal wave of Serbian
attacks, accusations, and demands. For the first time, an army spokesperson
entered into the debate with the argument that the Kosovo problem was a
“defense problem” for Yugoslavia. Serbian demands centered concretely on the
“unification of the Republic of Serbia”. Milošević himself had spoken along
these lines already at the Central Committee session of mid-January 1987: state
and party in all of Serbia should, in future, be unified. 10 The Central Committee
did not satisfy this twin demand. On the contrary, as shown in the closing
statement of CC chair Milenko Renovica, a Bosnian Serb, there was rather a
tendency to view Kosovo as an issue for all of Yugoslavia. 11 But there was also
another tendency, especially marked among representatives of the western
republics (i.e., Slovenia and Croatia in particular), to take little interest in the
Kosovo problem, because taking a position in the face of voluble Serbian
agitation could only lead to conflict with Serbia and was not likely to be of much
practical benefit to anyone.
The dam broke at the end of September 1987. After painstaking political
preparation, which had given him control of the state television as well as of the
newspaper Politika, Milošević set out to strip the rival faction in the Serbian
party, under Ivan Stambolić, of power. He did not immediately attack Stambolić,
however, but concentrated his fire on Belgrade party secretary Dragiša Pavlović,
a moderate liberal very much in the spirit of Belgrade party tradition. Milošević
himself had had to comport himself as a liberal when he had held this office, and
his attacks on Pavlović now disappointed many people.
The city committee at first did not want to eject Pavlović from office. So the
affair was taken before the Serbian party Central Committee. Here Milošević’s