{"id":1004,"date":"2019-03-10T16:52:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T16:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=1004"},"modified":"2019-10-21T01:15:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T00:15:36","slug":"the-yugoslav-wars-myths-realities","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/the-yugoslav-wars-myths-realities\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yugoslav Wars Myths & Realities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard<\/em> (September 1995),\nthe monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of\nthe working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in the former\nYugoslavia. Despite claim and counter-claim of atrocities committed by one side or the\nother the simple fact is that worker is butchering worker – for the privilege of\nrearranging capitalist state borders!<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Early August brought what could be a turning point in the Yugoslav wars with a major offensive by the Croatian army which recaptured almost the whole of the Krajina region including Knin, the capital of the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina, and an offensive by the Bosnian Army’s 5th Corps who successfully broke out of the besieged Bihac enclave and linked up with the Croatian Army in Krajina. This has thrown into disarray not just the whole of the Serbian nationalist political apparatus but also the foreign policies of the great powers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not inevitable<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to the ramblings of the “ancient hatreds” school of thought, war in\nYugoslavia was not inevitable. Major constitutional changes were very much on the agenda\nand even though there was a tendency towards fragmentation, and with it a potential for\nviolence. But full-scale war and genocidal carnage were not preordained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics and two autonomous provinces each having\nits own regional government within the federal structure. The two richer republics of\nSlovenia and Croatia wanted free-market-type reforms akin to those being implemented in\nthe former state capitalist bloc, together with a looser confederal political structure\nand moves towards EC membership. For a time it looked as if this was the direction in\nwhich Yugoslavia would move, with Prime Minister Ante Markovic presenting a reform package\nthat allowed for foreign ownership of Yugoslav industry and tied the Dinar to the\nDeutschmark. Such proposals met with the approval of the EC, who also made it clear that\nthey were only interested in Yugoslavia as a single market and not as a number of smaller\nstates. Similarly George Bush stated that the US would not recognise any breakaway\nrepublics from Yugoslavia (partly because Bush did not want to encourage secessionist\ntendencies in the Soviet Union). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In purely economic terms total breakup of the federation was in no-one’s interests.\nEven for Slovenia and Croatia, the Yugoslav federation though a drain on their economies\nwas also the biggest market for their goods. To secede would have meant not only losing\nthat market but losing also the possibility of EC membership, while for the poorer\nrepublics secession would mean losing a source of funding for economic development. In\nterms of international politics the West (and Moscow) feared that the break-up of\nYugoslavia would not only destabilise the Balkans but provide a model and source of\nlegitimacy for the break-up of the Soviet Union into a number of smaller and less stable\nstates, some with a nuclear capability. The continued existence of the Yugoslav Federation\nappeared to be agreed upon by all concerned <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ancient hatreds?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to John Major the Yugoslav wars are primarily the results of “the\ncollapse of the Soviet Union and of the discipline that that exerted over the ancient\nhatreds in the old Yugoslavia Once that discipline had disappeared, those ancient hatreds\nreappeared and we began to see their consequences when the fighting occurred”\n(Hansard, 23 June colt 324). This view is repeated by many western politicians, partly to\nexcuse their failure to have guided Yugoslavia peacefully into post-Cold War Europe (a not\nimpossible task given the consensus noted above), and partly because it mirrors the racist\npropaganda of the nationalist regimes in Serbia and Croatia, the two regional imperia to\nemerge from the disintegration of Titoist Yugoslavia and behind whom the great powers are\nlining up against one another. It is, however, a view which bears no resemblance to\nhistorical reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of ancient hatreds and longstanding ethnic feuds is wholly mythical. For\ncenturies Serbs and Croats were barely aware of each other’s existence, being separated by\nthe border dividing the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires the military frontier or Volna\nKrajina to use its Slavonic name. The Serbs who inhabited this region were descended from\nsemi nomadic Vlachs who were encouraged to settle along the frontier by the\nAustro-Hungarian authorities to function as a buffer against incursions by raiders from\nBosnia. In return they were awarded certain privileges such as semi-autonomy and freedom\nof worship (the Vlachs were Orthodox Christians unlike the Catholic Hapsburgs). The idea\nthat these Genzers, as they came to be known, were Serbs running from religious\npersecution by Muslims is a myth fabricated by Serbian nationalist intellectuals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that Bosnia’s Orthodox\nChristians and Catholics began to regard themselves as Serbs and Croats, and again this\nwas due to propaganda by nationalist intellectuals. The often bloody conflicts for which\nthe Balkans are known, and which at times took on an ethno-religious dimension, were in\nessence economic and political conflicts manifestations of the class struggle between the\npredominantly (but not exclusively) Christian peasantry and their predominantly (but not\nexclusively) Muslim overlords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only in World War II did Serbs and Croats finally confront each other directly, but\neven this is shrouded in mythology. The Ustase regime of Ante Pavelic which Serbian\nNationalists claim illustrates the inherent fascism of all Croats was deeply unpopular and\nwould not have lasted a day without the blessing of the Vatican and the support of the\nNazis. Its victims were not just Serbs but Croats too. Many Croats, including the young\nFranjo Tudjman, fought with the Partisans led by Tito, another Croat. Serbs also fought\nSerbs in a three-way slaughter involving the pan-Yugoslav Partisans, the Nazi puppet\nregime in Belgrade and the Monarchist forces of Draza Mikailovic. Bosnian Muslims fought\non both Partisan and Axis sides, and proportionally suffered more than either Serbs or\nCroats. The Yugoslav war of 1941-45, then, was not an ethnic conflict but ideological and\npolitical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly the Yugoslav wars of today have their origins in political struggles. Not in\nthe political struggles of secessionist republics against the Federation as a whole, but\nin the political struggles occurring inside the Federation’s most powerful republic,\nSerbia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bones of Prince Lazar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Slobodan Milosevic was at one time hailed in the West as a Balkan Gorbachev, the first\nYugoslav to realise Tito was dead, as the phrase went. Inside Yugoslavia he was known as\nsomething else, as the Saviour and Protector of the Serbs who, the nationalists claimed,\nwere oppressed in Tito-the-Croat’s Yugoslavia despite the fact that Serbia dominated the\npolitical system, the army and was creaming of the profits from Slovenian industry and\nCroatian tourism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1989 when the rest of Europe was celebrating the fall of the state capitalist empire\nand extolling the virtues of civic nationalism, Milosevic was staging rallies\ncommemorating the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje and parading the bones\nof Prince Lazar around towns and villages across Serbia in a campaign calculated to whip\nup ethnic nationalist sentiment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milosevic began his rise to power in 1987 when he opportunistically latched on to the\nissue of the Serb minority in the province of Kosovo. The situation of these Serbs, though\npoor, was no worse and probably better than Kosovo’s Albanian majority; but in taking on\nthe issue Milosevic was able to establish a power base among the nationalist intellectuals\nof the Serbian Academy of Sciences from which to launch an assault on the ailing Titoist\npolitical system. The Kosovo issue, which eventually led to the autonomous provinces of\nKosovo and Vojvodina being swallowed up by Serbia, showed that the post-Cold War\nYugoslavia was to be a Serbian-dominated centralised unitary state, thus further provoking\nconfederalist tendencies in the other republics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chetniks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Yugoslav wars began in June 1991 when the Yugoslav Army entered the breakaway\nrepublic of Slovenia under the pretext of securing Yugoslavia’s borders. The Slovenian war\nlasted ten days, left less than seventy dead and ended with the army’s withdrawal. This\nallowing of Slovenia which had no sizeable Serb population to secede indicated that the\nSerbian Nationalists in the Yugoslav Army had won their power struggle with the\n“Yugoslavists” who wanted to retain Yugoslavia within its previously existing\nfrontiers, and that Greater Serbia would be exactly that: a single state that incorporated\nall areas of the former Yugoslavia populated by Serbs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Croatia and Bosnia did have sizeable Serb populations. As securing of borders could no\nlonger be used as a front for Yugoslav Army intervention, the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia\nwere induced to turn on their neighbours through a combination of propaganda and terror.\nWhen the army was deployed it was usually under the pretext of “peace-keeping”\nor protecting the Serb minority from attacks they themselves had provoked by actions\ninstigated by Belgrade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part Serbian intervention came in the form of the Chetniks, volunteer\nunits recruited from the underworld and far-right groups often commanded by gangsters and\nneo-fascist politicians. The Arkanovci, for example, were responsible for many of the\natrocities committed at Vukovar and around Banja Luka in Bosnia. This unit take their name\nfrom Arkan, nom de guerre of Zeljko Raznjatovic a Belgrade mafia boss wanted by Interpol\nfor murder who became an MP in Milosevic’s Serbia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arkan was last sighted around Srebrenica in the company of General Miadic prior to the\ntown’s fall. Another unit, the Dusan Silni, forced elderly Croats to talk through a\nminefield in Slavonia, while the Seseljovci were responsible for the first documented\nincidence of mass rape in the Bosnian war after rampaging through Zvornik, a defenceless\ntown on the banks of the Drina. This latter group are the paramilitary wing of the Serbian\nRadical Party headed by the rabid nationalist Vojislav Seselj. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers are always the victims<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working class who suffer most. They\ndo the fighting and the dying, they are raped and “ethnically cleansed”, and it\nis their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage” whether\nor not they swallow the nationalist filth of their leaders. The people of Tuzla, for\ninstance, an industrial town where Serbs, Croats, Muslims and others have lived and worked\ntogether for generations, didn’t even vote for Bosnian secession. Yet now they find\nthemselves fighting and dying together for what will be, if Bosnia survives, a capitalist\nstate that exploits them as surely as any other, for to lay down their arms will mean\ncertain extermination at the hands of the Chetniks. The story is much the same throughout\nBosnia-Hercegovina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Yugoslav experience shows us what can happen when structural changes in the\ncapitalist economy result in power struggles that spiral out of control. These wars are\nnot the results of ancient hatreds ore peculiar Balkan mentality, they are the result of\ncapitalism and can therefore happen anywhere in the world, even here. The choice, as ever,\nis simple: Socialism or Barbarism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Ian Simpson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Please email your comments about this article to feedback@worldsocialism.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back to the Politics Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard (September 1995), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Despite claim and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1004","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2637,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1004\/revisions\/2637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}