Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

40 THE TURNING POINT: 1986–87
it in early November 1987, had, in this regard, no economic or national
affiliation and was therefore politically weak. This made it thoroughly incapable
of acting as a political factor, as long as political factors dominated the scene. As
a result of demographic developments, there was an ever growing discrepancy
between the composition of its officer corps (60 per cent Serb and Montenegrin)
and that of the rank and file. This discrepancy had some implications for military
preparedness. 20
One should not neglect to mention that the dogmatic and centralist attitude of
the army’s higher echelons brought the army politically ever closer to Milošević.
The army’s image of itself as the “guarantor of Yugoslav unity” was shaken in
autumn 1987 by the shooting spree of an Albanian soldier, Aziz Kelmendi, in the
Paračin barracks, in which four soldiers died, with six more wounded. 21 This
event, together with other developments, impelled the Yugoslav authorities to
send about 400 federal police to Kosovo at the end of 1987.
By that point, the lines of polarization which would push the country to its
eventual collapse were already well established. Perhaps it might have been
possible to reverse this process, had the Mikulić government been able to come
up with some stabilizing measures. But this was not the case. On the contrary,
Mikulić held fast to a dogmatic economic policy. The opening months of his
government were characterized by administrative measures. These were in fact
not inspired by socialist teaching, but were concepts which were then being
tested in France. Mikulić tried to create stability at three pressure points—wages,
prices, and rates of exchange. He could not get anywhere with wages, however,
and the attempt to stabilize them collapsed after a few months, as did efforts to
shake off the “tutelage” of the International Monetary Fund and to reach a longterm
regulation of Yugoslav debts. 22 A period of uncontrolled “laissez-faire —
laissez-aller” resulted, which was only further heated by inflation.
In Yugoslavia, the suspicion prevailed that Mikulić was doing all of this
deliberately, in order to justify a strong arm policy. 23 Only toward the end of
1987 did his administration develop an active anti-inflation program; discontent
had, in the meantime, spread in all the republics, and Mikulić came under
personal attack. But political relationships had also changed fundamentally.
Slovenia and soon Croatia and even Serbia did not want to hear anything further
about centralist measures or the curtailment of republic sovereignty. The
unsuccessful economic policy of the regime worked to catalyze centrifugal
tendencies.
The first year of Mikulić’s government discouraged everyone who had
believed in reforms and renewal on the Yugoslav level and who had believed in
the reformability of the Yugoslav system. The recommendations of the Kraigher
Commission were finally scattered by the wind, The Yugoslav regime as a whole
had shown that it did not want any real reforms. One can not overestimate the
significance of the realization of this fact which hit people in many parts of the
country around the end of 1987. Kučan told me in autumn 1994 that he began to
doubt Yugoslavia’s future when he saw the work of the Kraigher Commission