The national question in Yugoslavia

That this should continue to find some resonance at this late date is truly remarkable, given the rapidity with which the old Yugoslav state federation unraveled and given the revival of the particularly ugly form of Serbian chauvinism which has kept the region in turmoil for the past decade. A more accurate perspective would reveal that the resurgence of all kinds of separatist movements - from republican nationalism to Serbian semi-fascism - was nourished and exacerbated by the bureaucratic political and social monopoly of Titoite Stalinism which officially recognised nationality as the only possible and legitimate source of difference in Yugoslavia.

Post-war Yugoslavia consisted of several southern Slavic nations and as many as 15 Slavic and non-Slav national minorities. Unitary in its original structure, but officially described as a federal state consisting of six republics and two autonomous regions incorporated into the Serbian republic, early Titoite politics emphasised greater centralisation and subordination to the federal party and state leadership.

The problem of national equality, in the 1953 constitution, de-emphasised the autonomy of the republics and officially looked forward to the merger of cultures into a single Yugoslav melting pot, where peoples were severed from their pasts. Minorities were pressed to assimilate into the dominant national culture. Paramount in these considerations remained the concern that the political regime would be imperiled if national tensions increased, which was precisely the inevitable result of such heavy-handed maneuverings.

Later when the first inevitable signs of discontent finally erupted, Tito shelved this crude attempt at national amalgamation and discovered the virtues of 'divide and conquer'. The various national groups were set against one another so that the aspiration of the one served to frustrate that of the others. This controlled release of national aspirations operated to deflect hostility from the social system and its ruling class, redirecting it towards other ethnic populations. It therefore served to atomise and harmlessly diffuse opposition from below.

The Croatian bureaucracy in the late 1960s, for instance, was pitted against the Serbians, with Tito and a few federal leaders reserving for themselves the role of impartial judge. Croatian nationalists were consequently eliminated in the early 1970s, balanced by an even more sweeping removal of their Serbian opponents. Both local leaderships were invariably and predictably replaced by minor and more obedient bureaucrats. This rule by manipulation necessarily bred the universal suspicion that each nationality was indirectly ruled by whatever national bureaucracy temporarily had the ear of Tito and the federal regime.

The Tito regime, in any case, could not answer national pressures with an extension of democracy. Yet without democracy, real national reconciliation and the individual motivation needed for true socialist planning were quite simply inconceivable. It instead kept national hostilities simmering by extending the market and by increasing the powers of the republics without democratising the party/state.

These reforms themselves, perceived as a capitulation to the more wealthy republics of Croatia and Slovenia, reversed the modestly redistributive tendencies that had previously characterised federal investment, development and allocation policies. Bureaucratic decentralisation transferred control over the surplus from the centre into the hands of the constituent republican bureaucracies. These mechanisms had the divisive effect of enhancing inequalities thereby arousing suspicions that certain wealthier nations were officially sanctioned by these arrangements. The local Stalinist autocrats that rose to the fore pursuant to these reforms were merely miniatures of their socially narrow and culturally stifling federal counterparts.

With the 1974 Constitution these developments were codified insofar as the only recognised source of distinction among Party leaders was now based on their alleged defence of local ethnic economic and social interests. Leaders required nationalist support as a counterweight to federal pressures, but had to tread lightly in invoking nationalist ardour without provoking ethnic unrest. Favour with Tito for any clique remained tethered to its demonstrated and 'unique' abilities to keep nationalist passions under control.

The shift in bureaucratic power did not and could not promote a broader understanding among nations and greater solidarity. Indeed, there were no federal - any more than there were democratic - institutions where workers of different nationalities could meaningfully participate in developing mutual confidences based on the pursuit of common interests. As the party became more and more confederal, the repressive powers of the centre could no longer, with the demise of Tito, contain the centrifugal forces which Yugoslav Stalinism had unleashed.