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GREATER SERBIA
from Ideology to Aggression
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences
Memorandum 1986
This memorandum is a critique of the Yugoslav system from a Serbian nationalist point
of view, which assumes that Serbia was exploited by other Yugoslav republics and must
correct the situation without hesitation
The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), released in 1986, is a
well-organized list of complaints and criticisms against the Yugoslav system as it existed
at the time. The main theme of the argument in the Memorandum is that Serbia was
wrongfully taken advantage of and weakened under 1974 constitution of Yugoslavia, and that
as a result, Serbians are the victims of genocide (in Kosovo) among other things. The
Memorandum is written in such a way that it acts as a call to arms for the Serbian people,
and justifies any actions taken that will insure the security of 'threatened' Serbia.
Dobrica Cosic (b.1921) was the president of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences at
the time the Memorandum was written, and he had a leading influence on its content and
direction. Cosic is a writer who has held numerous cultural and political posts since the
end of World War II, among them representative in the Federal parliament, president of the
Serbian literary community, and editor of several papers and literary journals. He is
presently the president of the new Yugoslav Federation.
* * *
There is deep concern in Yugoslavia because of stagnating social development, economic
difficulties, growing social tensions, and open inter-ethnic clashes. A serious crisis has
engulfed not only the political and economic arenas, but Yugoslavia's entire system of law
and order as well. Idleness and irresponsibility at work, corruption and nepotism, a lack
of confidence in and disregard for the law, bureaucratic obstinacy, growing mistrust among
individuals, and increasingly arrogant individual and group egoism have become daily
phenomena. The resulting blow to moral values and to the reputation of leading public
institutions and a lack of faith in the competence of decision-makers have spread apathy
and bitterness among the public and produced alienation from all the mainstays and symbols
of law and order. An objective examination of Yugoslav reality suggests that the present
crisis may end in social shocks with unforseeable consequences, including such a
catastrophic eventuality as the fragmentation of the Yugoslav state. No one can close his
eyes to what is happening and to what may happen. Certainly, our nation's oldest institute
of scientific and cultural creativity cannot do so.
In these fateful times, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences feels obliged to express
its views on society's condition in the conviction that this will help us find a way out
of our present troubles. The nature of this document, however, obliges us to limit
ourselves to the key issues of Yugoslav reality. Regretfully, these issues include the
undefined and difficult position of the Serbian nation, a position brought to the fore by
recent events.
In order to understand the primacy of ethnicity in the present practice of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia it is necessary to consider the influence of the Comintern on the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia between the two world wars. The Comintern's strategy during
that period derived from the conclusion that following the failure of the proletarian
revolution in Western Europe, the Communist parties of Eastern, Central,
and Southern Europe had to depend on national movements, even though they were expressly
anti-socialist and based on the idea of national rather than class unity. Stalin engaged
in crushing all opposition to such a strategy (as, for example, in the case of Sima
Markovic, one of the founders of the Yugoslav Communist Party). In this spirit, the
solution to the national question was formulated and developed theoretically by Sperans
(Kardelj) in his book "Razvoj slovenskoga narodnoga vprsanja" (The Development
of the Slovene National Question), which generally served as the ideological model for
Yugoslav development in the direction of a confederation of sovereign republics and
autonomous regions, which was finally achieved by the Constitution of 1974.
The two most developed republics, which achieved their national programs with this
Constitution, are now the most ardent defenders of the existing system. Thanks to the
political position of their leaders at the centers of political power, they have held
(both before and after the decisive years of the 1960s) the initiative in all matters
affecting the political and economic system. They modelled the social and economic
structure of Yugoslavia to suit their own desires and needs. Nothing would seem more
normal that they now defend the structure that they stubbornly took so long to
build, a structure that represents the attainment of most of their national programs.
No one needs convincing that separatism and nationalism are active on the social scene,
but there is insufficient understanding of the fact that such trends have been made
ideologically possible by the Constitution of 1974. The constant reinforcement of and the
competition engendered by separatism and nationalism have driven the (ethnic) nations
further from one another to a critical degree. The manipulation of language and the
confinement of scientific and cultural professionals within the ranks of the republics and
regions are sorry signs of the growing power of particularism. All new ethnogeneses are
unfortunate products of locally closed, regional ideologies and shackled logic, and they
are also symptomatic of a retreat from a common past, a common present, and a common
future. It is as if everyone wished to flee as fast and as far as possible from a
collapsing house. Mental attitudes warn us that the political crisis has reached the
critical point, threatening the complete destabilization of Yugoslavia. Kosovo is the
clearest expression of this.
No form of political oppression and discrimination on the basis of nationality is properly
acceptable in modern society. The Yugoslav solution to the nationalities question could be
considered at its inception an exemplary model of a multinational federation in which the
principle of the unity of the state and state policy was successfully joined with the
principle of the political and cultural autonomy of nationalities and national minorities.
During the past two decades the principle of unity has become progressively weaker and the
principle of national autonomy is stressed, which has in practice changed into a
sovereignty of the parts (republics, which are not ethnically homogenous as a rule). The
weaknesses that were present in the model from the beginning became more and more visible.
All nations are not equal: the Serbian nation, for example, did not obtain the right to
its own state. Unlike national minorities, portions of the Serbian people, who live in
other republics in large numbers, do not have the right to use their own language and
alphabet, to organize politically and culturally, and to develop the unique culture of
their nation. The unstoppable persecution of Serbs in Kosovo in a drastic manner shows
that those principles that protect the autonomy of a minority (Albanians) and not applied
when it comes to a minority within a minority (Serbs, Montenegrins Turks and Gypsies in
Kosovo). Considering the existing forms of national discrimination, present-day Yugoslavia
cannot be considered a democratic state.
. . .Yugoslavia is seen less as a community of citizens, nations and nationalities all
equal before the law, and more as a community of eight equal territories. But even this
variety of equality does not apply to Serbia because of its special legal and political
position which reflects the tendency to keep the Serbian nation under constant
supervision. The guiding principle behind this policy has been "a weak Serbia, a
strong Yugoslavia" and this has evolved into an influential mind-set: if rapid
economic growth were permitted the Serbs, who are the largest nation, it would pose a
danger to the other nations of Yugoslavia. And so all possibilities are grasped to place
increasing obstacles in the way of their economic development and political consolidation.
One of the most serious of such obstacles is Serbia's present undefined constitutional
position, so full of internal conflicts.
The Constitution of 1974, in fact, divided Serbia into three parts. The autonomous
provinces within Serbia were made equal to the republics, save that they were not defined
as such and that they do not have the same number of representatives in the various bodies
of the federation. They make up for this shortcoming by being able to interfere in the
internal relations of Serbia proper through the republic's common assembly (while their
assemblies remain completely autonomous). The political and legal position of Serbia
proper is quite vague-Serbia proper is neither a republic nor a province. Relationships in
the republic of Serbia are quite confused. The Executive Council, which is a body of the
republic's assembly, is in fact the Executive Council for Serbia proper. This is not the
only absurdity in the limitation of authority. The excessively broad and institutionally
well established autonomy of the provinces has created two new fissures within the Serbian
nation. The truth is that the proautonomy and separatist forces insisted on increasing
autonomy, but this would have been difficult to achieve had they not received moral and
political support from those republics in which separatist tendencies have never died out.
Relations between Serbia and the provinces cannot be reduced solely or even primarily to a
formal legal interpretation of two constitutions. It is primarily a matter of the Serbian
nation and their state. A nation that has regained statehood after a long and bloody
struggle, that has achieved civil democracy, and that lost two and half million kinsmen in
two world wars underwent the experience of having a bureaucratically constructed party
commission determine that after four decades in the new Yugoslavia it alone was condemned
to be without its own state. A more bitter historic defeat in peacetime cannot be
imagined.
The expulsion of the Serbian nation from Kosovo bears spectacular witness to its historic
defeat. In the spring of 1981 a very special, but nevertheless open and total war,
prepared by administrative, political, and legal changes made at various periods,
was declared against the Serbian people. Waged through the skilful application of various
methods and tactics, with a division of functions, and with the active, not merely
passive, and little concealed support of certain political centers within Yugoslavia (more
pernicious than the support coming from outside), this open war, which has yet to be
looked in the face and called by its proper name, has been continuing for almost five
years. It has thus lasted longer than the entire Yugoslav war of liberation (from April 6,
1941 to May 9, 1945). The Balli (anti-communist nationalist) uprising in Kosovo and
Metohija that broke out just before the end of the war with the participation of fascist
units was broken miltarily in 1944-45, but it appears not to have been broken politically.
Its present form, disguised with a new content, is proceeding more successfully and is
moving towards a victorious outcome. A final showdown with neo-fascism did not
materialize; all of the measures so far taken have only removed the expression of this
aggression from the streets and in fact, its racially motivated and unretracted goals,
which are being sought after by all means and atall costs, have only been reinforced.
Deliberately drastic sentences are even pronounced on young offenders in order to incite
and inflame inter-ethnic hatreds.
The physical, political, legal and cultural genocide perpetrated against the Serbian
population of Kosovo and Metohija is the greatest defeat suffered by Serbia in the wars of
liberation she waged between Orasac in 1804 and the uprising of 1941. Responsibility for
this defeat falls primarily on the still living Comintern heritage in the
nationalities policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and on the acquiescence of
Serbian communists in this policy and on the exorbitant ideological and political
delusion, ignorance, immaturity, and chronic opportunism of an entire generation of
post-war Serbian politicians, always on the defensive and always more concerned with the
opinions others have of them and of their hesitant explanations of Serbia's position than
with the true facts affecting the future of the nation that they lead.
Kosovo is not the only region in which the Serbian nation is being pressured by
discrimination. The absolute (and not merely relative) fall in the number of Serbs in
Croatia is sufficient proof of this assertion. According to the 1948 census there were
543,795 Serbs in Croatia (14.48% of the total). According to the 1981 census their number
has been reduced to 531,502 or only 11.5% of the total number of inhabitants in Croatia.
Over 33 peacetime years the number of Serbs in Croatia has declined, even in relation to
the immediate post-war period when the first census was taken and when the effects of the
war on the number of Serbian inhabitants in Croatia was well known. Lika, Kordun, and
Banija have remained the most underdeveloped regions of Croatia and this has greatly
encouraged the emigration of Serbs to Serbia and migrations to other parts of Croatia
where the Serbs, being newcomers, are a minority and socially inferior group, greatly
exposed to assimilation. In any case, the Serbs in
Croatia are otherwise exposed to a sophisticated and quite effective policy of
assimilation. One component of this policy is the prohibition of all Serbian associations
and cultural institutions in Croatia, which had had a rich tradition dating from the
Austro-Hungarian and pre-war Yugoslav periods, and the imposition of an official
language that bears the name of another nation (Croatia), thus giving concrete shape to
national inequality. A constitutional provision has made this language obligatory for the
Serbs in Croatia, and nationalistically inclined Croatian linguists are distancing it
systematically and by well-organized actions from the language used in the other republics
of the Serbo-Croatian language area, and this is helping to weaken the ties binding the
Serbs in Croatia to other Serbs. Such action is gladly undertaken at the cost of
interrupting language continuity among the Croats themselves and of eliminating
international terms that are invaluable for communicating with other cultures,
particularly in the field of science and technology. But the Serbian community in Croatia
is not just cut off from their homeland culturally; that homeland cannot keep itself
informed of their circumstances or of their economic or cultural situation anywhere near
the extent to which it is possible for some nations in Yugoslavia to maintain contact with
their compatriots in other countries. The integrity of the Serbian nation and its culture
in Yugoslavia as a whole is an issue vital to its survival and progress.
With the exception of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941- 45, Serbs in Croatia
have never been as persecuted in the past as they are now. The solution to their national
position must be considered an urgent political question. In so much as a solution cannot
be found, the results could be disastrous, not just in relation to Croatia, but to all of
Yugoslavia.
The question of the Serbian people's position is given considerable weight by the fact
that a large number of Serbians live outside of Serbia, especially Serbia proper, and that
their number is larger than the total number of people of some other nations. According to
the census of 1981, 24% of the Serbian people (1,958,000) live outside of the Socialist
Republic of Serbia, which is considerably more than the number of Slovenians, Albanians,
Macedonians and taken individually, almost the same as the Muslims. Outside of Serbia
proper there are 3,285,000 Serbs or 40.3% of their total population. In the general
disintegration process which has taken over Yugoslavia, the Serbs are hit with the most
intense disintegration. The present course which our society in Yugoslavia has taken is
totally opposite from the one that has moved for decades and centuries until the formation
of a unified state. This process is aimed at the total destruction of the national unity
of the Serbian people.
Having borne for over half a century the stigma and handicap of being the jailer of the
other Yugoslav nations, the Serbian nation was incapable of deriving support from its own
history. Many aspects of this history itself were even brought into question. The
democratic bourgeoisie tradition for which Serbia had struggled successfully in the 19th
century has remained in the shadow cast by the Serbian socialist and labor movement until
quite recently because of narrow-mindedness and lack of objectivity on the part of
official historiography. This so impoverished and restricted the true picture of the
contribution made by Serbian bourgeoisie society to law, culture, and statesmanship that,
deformed in this manner, it could not provide mental or moral support to anyone nor could
it serve as a foothold for preserving or reviving historical self-confidence. The brave
and honorable efforts at liberation exerted by the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina and by all
Yugoslav youth, which included Young Bosnia, experienced a similar fate and were pushed
into the historical background by the contributions of a class ideology whose proponents
and creators were Austrian Marxists, confirmed opponents of movements of national
liberation.
Influenced by the ruling ideology, the cultural achievements of the Serbian people are
undergoing alienation, being usurped by others or denigrated, or they are ignored and
retrogress; the language is being displaced and the Cyrillic script is gradually being
lost. In this connection, the realm of literature is serving as the main arena for caprice
and anarchy. The cultural and spiritual integrity of no other Yugoslav nation is so
roughly challenged as that of the Serbian nation. No other literary and artistic heritage
is so disordered, ravaged, and confused as the Serbian heritage. The political criteria of
the ruling ideology are imposed on Serbian culture as being more valuable and stronger
than scientific or historical criteria.
After the dramatic interethnic conflicts of the world war, it had appeared that chauvinism
has lost momentum was even on the road to oblivion. This appearance has proven deceptive.
It was not long before nationalism began rising up once more, and every change in the
constitution served to promote its growth. Nationalism has been promoted from above; its
chief proponents have been politicians. The fundamental cause of this multi- dimensional
crisis is to be found in the ideological defeat of socialism at the hands of nationalism,
which has produced the centrifugal processes that have brought the Yugoslav community to
the brink of ruin and which has destroyed the old system of values.
Its roots lie in the ideology of the Comintern and in the nationalities policy of the
pre-war CPY. The revanchism directed at the Serbian nation as an
"exploiting" nation that was built into this policy has had far-reaching
consequences for inter- ethnic relations, the social organization, the economic system,
and the fate of moral and cultural values since the Second World War. The Serbian nation
has been encumbered with a feeling of historical guilt and has remained the only nation
not to solve its national problem and not to receive its own state like the other nations.
Therefore, the first and foremost action must be to remove this burden of historical guilt
from the Serbian nation, to categorically deny the contention that it enjoyed a privileged
economic position between the two world wars, and to refrain from denigrating Serbia's
liberation-oriented history and contribution in creating Yugoslavia.
Complete national and cultural integrity of the Serbian people is their historic and
democratic right, no matter in which republic or province they might find themselves
living. The attainment of equality and an independent development have profound historical
meaning for the Serbian people. In less than fifty years, over two successive generations,
the Serbian nation has been exposed to such severe trials-twice exposed to physical
extermination, to forced assimilation, to religious conversion, to cultural genocide, to
ideological indoctrination, and to the denigration and renunciation of their own
traditions beneath an imposed guilt complex, and thereby disarmed intellectually and
politically, that they could not but leave deep spiritual wounds that cannot be ignored as
this century of the great technological takeoff draws to a close. In order to have a
future in the international family of cultured and civilized nations, the Serbian nation
must have an opportunity to find itself again and become a historical agent, must
re-acquire an awareness of its historical and spiritual being, must look its economic and
cultural interests square in the eyes, and must find a modern social and national program
that will inspire this generation and generations to come.
The present depressing condition of the Serbian nation, with chauvinism and Serbophobia
being ever more violently expressed in certain circles, favor of a revival of Serbian
nationalism, an increasingly drastic expression of Serbian national sensitivity, and
reactions that can be volatile and even dangerous. We must not overlook or underestimate
these dangers for a moment under any circumstances. But a principled struggle against
Serbian chauvinism cannot be based on the reigning ideological and political symmetry in
historical guilt. The rejection of this symmetry, fatal to the spirit and morale, with its
trite falsehoods and injustices, is a precondition for mobility and effectiveness on the
part of democratic, Yugoslav, humanistic awareness in contemporary Serbian culture.
The fact that ordinary citizens and the working class are not represented in the
appropriate councils in the Federal Assembly cannot simply be ascribed to favoritism for
ethnic nationalisms; it is also the result of an attempt to place Serbia in a position of
inequality and thereby weaken her political influence. But the greatest calamity is the
fact that the Serbian nation does not posses a state like all of the other nations. True,
the first article of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia contains a
provision to the effect that Serbia is a state, but the question immediately arises: What
kind of a state is one that lacks authority within its own territory and lacks the means
to protect the personal property of its citizens, to prevent genocide in Kosovo, and to
prevent the emigration of Serbs from their ancient homeland? This position underlines the
political discrimination against Serbia, especially when one remembers that the
Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has imposed internal
federalism on Serbia, creating a permanent source of conflicts between Serbia Proper and
the provinces. The aggressive Albanian chauvinism in Kosovo cannot be contained until
Serbia ceases to be the sole republic whose internal relations are ordered by others.
The Federal Constitution has formally established the equality of all the republics but
this has been rendered worthless in practice by forcing the Republic of Serbia to renounce
many of its rights and powers in favor of the autonomous provinces, the status of which is
regulated by the Federal Constitution to a considerable extent. Serbia must openly state
that this is an imposed arrangement. This is especially true in regard to the position of
the provinces, which in reality have been promoted to republics and which regard
themselves far more as constituent elements of the Federation rather than as parts of the
republic of Serbia. Besides failing to consider a state for the Serbian nation, the
Yugoslav Constitution also created insurmountable difficulties to the establishment of
such a state. In order to satisfy Serbia's legitimate interests, a revision of that
constitution is unavoidable. The autonomous provinces must become true integral parts of
the Republic of Serbia by granting them a degree of autonomy that would not destroy the
integrity of the Republic and would make it possible to act in the common interests of the
wider community.
The unhappy matter of Serbian statehood is not the only deficiency that must be corrected
by constitutional amendments. The 1974 constitution turned Yugoslavia into a very unstable
state community, prone to consider alternatives other than the Yugoslav alternative, as
has been made clear in recent statements by public figures in Slovenia and the earlier
positions taken by Macedonian politicians. Such considerations and fragmentation lead to
the notion that Yugoslavia is in danger of further corrosion. The Serbian nation cannot
meekly await the future in such a state of uncertainty. Therefore, all of the nations
within Yugoslavia must be given the opportunity to express their wants and intentions.
Serbia would then be able to declare and define her own national interests. Discussions
and agreements in this vein must precede an examination to the Constitution. Naturally,
Serbia must not take a passive stand in all this, waiting to hear what others will say, as
she has done so often in the past.
The position of equality that Serbia must strive for presupposes the same initiative in
deciding on key political and economic issues as enjoyed by others. Four decades of
Serbian passivity have been bad for Yugoslavia as a whole by failing to contribute ideas
and critical appraisals based on her longer state tradition, enhanced feeling for national
independence, and rich experience in struggling against home-grown usurpers of political
freedom. Unless the Serbian nation within Serbia participate on an equal footing in the
entire process of decision making and implementation, Yugoslavia cannot be strong--and
Yugoslavia's very existence as ademocratic, socialist community will be called into
question.
An entire period in the development of the Yugoslav community and of Serbia has clearly
ended in a historically worn-out ideology, overall stagnation, and ever more obvious
regression in the economic, political, moral, and cultural spheres. Such a situation
imperatively requires a profound and well-though out, rationally grounded, and
decisively implemented reform of the entire governmental structure and social organization
of the Yugoslav community of nations, and speedy and beneficial integration into the
modern world through social democracy. The human resources of the entire country must be
involved to the utmost extent in social reform in order that we may become a productive,
enlightened, and democratic society capable of existing on the fruits of our own labor and
creativity and able to make our fair contribution to the human race.
The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences is taking this occasion to express once again its
willingness to promote this portentous undertaking and the historical aspirations of our
generation with all the resources at its disposal.
Contents:
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