Based on archival sources and relevant literature, this paper portrays political circumstances and security situation in Western Slavonia from 1989, that is, from collapse of the communist systems in ...Europe and destabilisation of Yugoslavia by the political leadership of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, up until August 1991 when the overt Greater-Serbian Aggression started in Western Slavonia. Democratic processes in Europe also seized western Yugoslav republics, Slovenia and Croatia. These republics advocated either the restructure of Yugoslavia as a confederal state, or their independence in case that the political agreement with other republics about common state system was not feasible. Conversely, Serbian political leadership’s goal, supported by pro-Serbian oriented leadership of the federal Yugoslav People’s Army, was to impose Yugoslavia as a centralized state under the domination of Serbs, as the most numerous Yugoslav nation. After this policy failed, Serbian leadership attempted to create Greater Serbia which would comprise all territories which Serbian leadership considered as historically and ethnically a Serbian territory. Among others, that also included Western Slavonia where a certain part of population were ethnic Serbs. Part of these Serbs, as well as ethnic Serbs in certain other parts of Croatia, supported by Belgrade, gradually commenced rebellion against the Croatian authorities. Insurgency was led by representatives of Serbian Democratic Party whose centre was in town Knin. In the first phase of destabilisation the emphasis was on the thesis that the Serbs were endangered in Western Slavonia, in order to radicalize as many as possible, which was successfully implemented, and finally led to terrorist actions culminating with the open aggression in Western Slavonia.
This Article explores the transitional, post-transitional and strategic narratives about the wars in the former Yugoslavia, more specifically in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The criminal justice narrative ...created by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) dominates the transitional narratives about the Yugoslav wars. It is not uncommon that both sides - the victims and the perpetrators - express dissatisfaction with the justice outcome depending on the verdict. Transitional narratives based on the criminal trials are expected to provide clarity on the distinction between "bad" and "good" guys; between perpetrators and victims; between the criminality of the perpetrating side and the response of the victim's side. With the passage of time, all transitional narratives will be challenged by post-transitional narratives, launched by various societal and political actors for different reasons with specific objectives behind them. For example, the ruling post-conflict elites can decide to create a post-transitional narrative in which they will try to re-interpret or counter the existing transitional narratives with the goal to exonerate the policies of the predecessor regime that led to the violence by reintroducing the "politics of the past" into the "politics of the present" in the perusal of the still to be achieved political objectives of the predecessor regime. Using the example of the ICTY genocide judgments, this Article will explore how its transitional narrative of genocide has been undermined by the post-transitional narratives launched by the Serbian post-conflict elites in the perusal of the unfulfilled strategic goals of the predecessor regimes.
This article scrutinizes the disintegration of the federal level of government of the SFRY and its role in transforming the Yugoslav crisis into an armed conflict. This was a culmination of a long ...process in which centrifugal tendencies overcame the integrative capacity of Yugoslavia. A deep economic and social crisis surged dramatically in the wake of the collapse of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990. This crisis led to a paralysis of the federal level of government exactly at the time which called for radical transformation and adjustment to the global changes signaled by the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Yugoslav government (Federal Executive Council), led by Ante Marković, was spearheading such a reformist program, but it faced ever stronger opposition from the conservative leadership of the armed forces. The agenda of the military, meanwhile, prioritized the preservation of the system, even at the expense of the country’s modernization. The space for addressing the mounting problems on the federal level was thus narrowing, enabling constitutive republics to act out their conflicting political projects. Empowered additionally by elections, which were never held on the federal level, leaders of the most influential republics fostered irreconcilable visions: Slovenia under Milan Kučan was planning its independence, hence changing Yugoslav external borders. Serbia under Slobodan Milošević was plotting to redraw internal borders between the republics, and Croatia under Franjo Tuđman was aiming to do both. The realization of such disparate plans called for the instrumentalization or marginalization of the federal government.
In early 1991, this process was set in motion. The growing autonomy of republican leadership resulted in divisions within the SFRY Presidency and its inability to act decisively during the period in which Serbia undermined the federal monetary system, Croatia imported arms from abroad, and Slovenia held an independence referendum. Unchecked by civilian authorities, armed forces were pushing the Presidency into action through systemic pressures, peaking with an aborted coup in mid-March. The Yugoslav Presidency was hence effectively sidetracked, whereas the political dialogue about the Yugoslav future was relegated to summits of republican leaderships. These summits, held in late March and throughout April, did not produce any tangible results, as their actors attempted to legitimize their own positions by avoiding responsibility for the impending collapse and angled to maximize their gains in its course. The remaining federal authorities, Yugoslav government, and the military did attempt to stall this process. However, they failed to coordinate, maneuvering instead to oust each other. These attempts were abandoned in early May, amidst a number of armed incidents. With an increasing number of fatalities, the chances for peaceful resolution of the Yugoslav crisis were dwindling. Yugoslav federal authorities were increasingly unable to influence the course of events. Paralysis of the federal institutions blocked any institutional path toward resolving political problems. As the country moved from collapse into war, the divided representatives of the federal government either abdicated in front of their republican leaderships, or acted in cross-purposes, opening the path to the last stage of the Yugoslav agony.
U ovom članku se analizira teorijski doprinos Jovana Mirića (19342015), profesora politologije na Fakultetu političkih nauka (znanosti) u Zagrebu, kritici političkog sistema jugoslavenskog ...socijalizma - u periodu od 1965. do 1990. Od 10 knjiga koje su objavljene za njegova života, u ovom članku analiziramo ih pet i jednu postumnu: Interesne grupe i politička moć (1973), Rad i politika (1978), Pluralizam interesa i samoupravna demokracija (1982), Sistem i kriza (1984) i Iskušenja demokracije (1990), te Sve se mijenja, kriza ostaje (2018). U tim knjigama, Mirić je najprije razvio marksističku politologiju, a potom dao izvoran i vrlo zapažen doprinos kritičkoj analizi političkog sistema tadašnje Jugoslavije. U kasnijim fazama, Mirić se pomiče prema liberalizmu, ali ostaje kritičan prema postojećoj stvarnosti. Kritičnost ostaje kontinuitet u njegovom djelovanju - uključujući i djelovanje kao javnog intelektualca, kroz intervjue i novinske članke koje takoðer ovdje analiziramo - bez obzira na njegov odmak od marksizma prema liberalizmu, kao i na promjene fokusa: od tema kao što su interesi, rad, pluralizam preko političkog sistema do srpskog pitanja u Hrvatskoj nakon 1990. Njegovi članci, intervjui i knjige pokazuju da je već početkom osamdesetih govorio o mogućnosti raspada Jugoslavije, a u drugoj polovici osamdesetih govori o mogućem ratu. U tom smislu, njegovo djelo postavlja pitanje: je li raspad i rat bilo moguće predvidjeti upravo kritičkom politološkom analizom stvarnosti?
The relations between Serbia and Macedonia in the period from the disintegration of SFR of Yugoslavia (1991) to 2013 became the subject of the proposed considerations. They are targeted at searching ...for an answer to the question in the title about the character of the attitude of Serbia towards its southern neighbour during the last twenty years. As an introduction the issues regarding the previous stage of the relations between Serbia and Macedonia, i.e. with the Yugoslavian period (since 1943), were briefly mentioned. Through decades, within the Yugoslavian order, the links between Serbia and Macedonia were so close that only the links that the biggest of the republics of former Yugoslavia had with its smallest member, i.e. Montenegro, seemed to be closer. The situation changed rapidly when in 1991 Macedonia decided to declare sovereignty and following the precursors of the defragmentation of SFRY – Slovenia and Croatia, it started to shape its political and economic being without ties to Yugoslavia, at that time cut and stuck in the chaos and on the verge of gory conflicts. Although, from the point of view of Belgrade, Macedonia was never officially considered an enemy, and the regime of Milosevic was mainly interested in those republics of the former SFRY, which territories were numerously inhabited by Serbs (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro), in the relations between Serbia and Macedonia cooled off and the Serbian radicals (the political camp of V. Šešelj) for some time called for “dealing with” Macedonia. On the threshold of the independence of Macedonia, it turned out that the main problems which this weak country will have to tackle in the relations with the outside world, will not be connected with Serbia but other neighbours (in the text the conflicted relations between Macedonia and Greece are mentioned, as well as the tensions between Macedonia and Albania inside Macedonia together with the background presence of the issue of Kosovo; the relation between Macedonia and Bulgaria were skipped). In the 90s of the 20th century as well as in the first 13 years of the current century, the relations between Serbia and Macedonia underwent interesting transformations. They evolved from quite hostile to fairly friendly, although occasionally various political, economic and even religious problems put a shadow on them. Especially important moments, which squeezed stigma on the transforming relation between Yugoslavia/Serbia and Macedonia, were the events happening in Kosovo and northern and western Macedonia at the turn of the 21st century, the centre of which was the Albanians. The changes on top of authorities of both countries, happening during the 20 years of censorship in 1991‑2011, were also of vital importance. The interpolitical transformations of both post‑Yugoslavian countries contributed to the gradual development of their, at first frozen, relations (in the text they are analysed since the visit of Kiro Gligorov in Belgrade in 1995 and the official establishment of diplomatic relations by Macedonia and Yugoslavia, comprised of Serbia and Montenegro in 1996 to the elections in Serbia in 2011, when the president of Serbia became T. Nikolić and the prime minister I. Dačić – the first once connected with V. Šešelj, the latter with S. Milošević – who paradoxically turned out to be an advocate of the rapprochement between Serbia and Macedonia, which was expressed by inter‑governmental connections in 2013). Another issue, pointed out in the article, is the presence in the bilateral relations between Macedonia and Serbia the problem of integration of both countries and the whole west Balkan macro region with the EU, significant since the democratization of Serbia (autumn 2000). The submitted sketch is closed with an optimistic evaluation of the present conditions and perspectives of the relations between Serbia and Macedonia. It is worth underlining that they did not deteriorate when the coalition of the nationalistic party (SNS) with the socialistic (SPS) came to power in Belgrade, although some analysts predicted – wrongly as it turned out – that this kind of reconfiguration of the political scene in Serbia would not provide the relation between Serbia and Macedonia with new, positive impulses, but only difficult challenges and trials, if not dramatic crises.
Raspad SFRJ: kriza, erozija, pat Petrović, Vladimir P
Istorija 20. veka (1983),
02/2015, Letnik:
33, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The article is scrutinizing stages of disintegration of SFRY, from the crisis which characterized the 80s to erosion heralded with the disintegration of LCY and realignment of political players ...during 1990. The collision between leaderships of republics, which produced divisions within the state Presidency, as well as collision between the Presidency, Federal Executive Council and the military is traced through the failed attempts to stop the erosion of the security situation in Yugoslavia at thte end of 1990 and beginning of 1991. Through the documents, media sources and the memories of participants, the article analyses activity and mutual raltions of key actors in the period of deepening og Yugoslav crisis in the direction of paralysis and violent disintegration of the state.
At the end of the Cold War, Yugoslavia lost its geopolitical significance for the United States. The President George H.W. Bush Administration tried to support these political forces in the SFRY, ...which tended to maintain the multiethnic country, for example the new Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Ante Marković, and the leader of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov. The Americans opposed the independence aspiration of Croatians and Slovenians, because they were afraid that it would lead to the ultimate falling apart of the country, which could influence the USSR. When the EC recognized Slovenia and Croatia, the Bush Administration refrained from following European countries until April 1992, considering the consequences for Bosnia and Macedonia. The peaceful and democratic nature of Macedonia’s independence placed the republic in a good position to be recognized by the United States. But Greece led a vigorous campaign against the recognition of Macedonia and the Administration of George H.W. Bush was worried that a conflict between Greece and Macedonia could spark a regional conflict in which Greece and Turkey, two members of the NATO, could clash against each other. One influence on the decision of the Bush Administration was the Greek lobby in the United States, which actively engaged in the Macedonian case and the 1992 presidential campaign. Concurrently, without establishing official diplomatic relations with Macedonia, the Americans engaged in the works of the CSCE mission and supported the preventive deployment of “blue helmets” to appease the domestic situation and contain neighbours from aggressive steps. “The Macedonian Problem,” as the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, remained unravelled by George H.W. Bush and became a problem for his successor in the White House.
In the text the author considers politics of interpretation of South-Slavic peoples' recent past, which was demonstrated by the most prominent activists of Serbian non-governmental organizations. By ...summarizing the interpretation in a few points, the author attempts to identify its key features: arrogance and extremism as a style, counter factuality as a strategy and anti-Serbian nationalism and racism as an ideological strongpoint. In the final section of the text, what is pleaded is a precise legal regulation of that delicate area of civil activism, which in the last decade has presented a malignant protuberance on destroyed social tissue of Serbia and serious threat to the rest of its considerably lost national interests.
U tekstu se razmatra politika interpretiranja novije jugoslovenske proslosti, kakvu je u protekloj deceniji praktikovalo nekoliko najprominentnijih aktivista srbijanskih nevladinih organizacija, nominalno usmerenih zastiti i unapredjenju ljudskih prava, promociji vrednosti mira i nenasilja, multikulturalizma i tolerancije. Sazimajuci njihovu interpretaciju nedavne proslosti jugoslovenskih naroda u nekoliko tacaka, autorka identifikuje kljucne karakteristike jedne nove i vulgarne - interpretatorske politicnosti (?politikantstvo?), kakvu su ove nevladine organizacije demonstrirale u proteklom desetlecu svoga delovanja na srbijanskoj javnoj sceni: arogantnost i ekstremizam kao stil, falsifikatorstvo i kontrafaktualnost kao strategiju i antisrpski nacionalizam i rasizam kao ideolosko uporiste. U zakljucnom delu teksta autorka pledira za precizno zakonsko regulisanje ove delikatne oblasti civilnog delovanja, koje bi jasno definisalo sve njegove vaznije aspekte (izvori finansiranja, domen delatnosti, krivicne sankcije za njegovo prekoracenje,...).
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