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Communism, Nationalism, Racism to Separatism (The rise and fall of Tito’s Yugoslavia)



Introduction
Yugoslavia, the land of the South Slavs was formed after World War I.  Although they spoke a common language (Servo-Croatian), the country comprised of six ethnic groups, with different histories, different beliefs, and distinct identities. During the last century, this nation achieved an incredible rise to power and had a devastating collapse in the span of nine decades. Yugoslavia experienced a variety of governmental structures1. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was established in 1918, only to be substituted in 1943 by the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. Just three years later, the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed under the influential leadership of Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980)2. The country which existed for 85 years and flourished under Tito’s leadership, is now non-existent. It is argued that the continuous adoption of various ideology caused instability and eventually led to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The objective of this article is to describe the rise and fall of Tito’s Yugoslavia relating to the four different ideologies elaborated below.


1. Tito’s Communist ideologies (1943-1987)

After the Allied victory in World War II, Yugoslavia was formed and forcibly held together by Tito under communist rule. It was a federation of six republics with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. which was In addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and ruling elite, and any tensions were solved on the federal level3. The Yugoslav model of state organization-as a "middle way" between planned and liberal economy had been a relative success, and the country experienced a period of strong economic growth and relative political stability up to the 1980s, under the rule of president-for-life Josip Broz Tito4.

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Tito entered politics at a unique time in the nation’s history; as Yugoslavia shifted from a monarchy to a federation, he became one of the country’s biggest advocates for a communist-style of government. A visionary leader, Tito believed in empowering a plurality of independent centres of political authority. Consequently, the Yugoslavs defected from the communist bloc in
1948. This pluralistic worldview carried over into Tito’s leadership of Yugoslavia itself. Consisting of six national republics and two autonomous regions, Tito was able to unify these disparate people into one communist entity. In his thirty-seven years as leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito instituted a policy of “polycentrism” which unified the culturally diverse people. However, the policy collapsed upon his death, due to the ineffective leadership of the collective presidency, economic troubles, and ethnoreligious unrest; resulting in the country’s disintegration5.

In order to protect Yugoslavia from the influence of major world powers, Tito introduced a policy in which the nation opted to remain neutral amidst worldwide conflict. Known as the Non-Alignment Movement, the policy was largely brought into effect in response to the United States conflict with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. As the nuclear arms race between the two world powers intensified, Tito expressed concern about becoming involved. Upon initiating the policy of neutrality, Tito decided to host the first “Conference of Non-Aligned Heads of State.” The conference took place in Belgrade in 1961 and had twenty-five countries represented6.
Tito’s unique leadership made it possible for the Non-Alignment Movement to strengthen, posing threats to major world powers.

Within the eight constituencies, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formally comprised three religions predominantly Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Islam. Through a policy of “polycentrism,” Tito successfully unified these notably distinct republics into one federation7.

For many years, Yugoslavia aligned itself with the Soviet Union. However, after Tito came into power, he sought to distance the nation from the center of Communist rule. Yugoslavia disassociated itself from the Communist bloc in 1948. To Stalin’s dismay, the Yugoslav Communist Party stayed in power and continued on as before; not falling to capitalism as the Soviets predicted. The federation’s success in this regard caused other Communist rulers to question the merits of obedience to the Soviet Union8.

Tito built a relationship amongst the Yugoslavs “in which people believe in one another and had confidence in one another.” Through polycentrism, he decentralized economic and cultural life, allowing the power to rest with the people. To Tito, this policy was a means of “uniting the citizens of a country in one front”. Along with the right kind of leadership, Tito demonstrated to the world that there was more than one path to socialism—that a republic as diverse as Yugoslavia could stay united9.

As the Tito era came to an end, the world was in a period of great conflict. These conflicts foreshadowed the disintegration of Yugoslavia, for the federation’s success was founded in Tito’s cult of personality. Without Tito’s leadership, the fragmentation of Yugoslavia would prove to be unavoidable. On May 4, 1980, Josip Broz Tito died at the age of eighty-eight. He left an impressive legacy having ruled over Yugoslavia for nearly four decades. After his death, the nation had a literacy rate of 85%, a population of 21.3 million, and a GDP of $26 billion. But most significantly, he left behind “Titoism,” an ideology his successors would fail to grasp10.

Tito’s utmost goal was for Yugoslavia to remain a Communist state, in spite of Western influence. In 1974, Yugoslavia amended its Constitution with the intent of preparing for a transition between leaders. Under Tito’s direction, the Constitution dictated the formation of a nine-member collective presidency; six people would represent each of the six republics, whereas two would represent each of the two autonomous regions, and one individual would rule the party. In 1978, Tito suggested an amendment to the Constitution in which one member of the collective presidency would serve as the overarching president of Yugoslavia, serving a single one-year term. Upon Tito’s death, the collective presidency went into effect, with the amendment that established one predominant leader. Thus, a continuous line of men and women succeeded Tito. This disrupted the nation each year as a new person took office, adding more instability to the federation. Though the intent of the proposed Constitutional changes was pure, the collective presidency made Yugoslavia unpredictable. Tito had amended the Constitution in an attempt to prevent a dictator from succeeding him; instead, he paved the way for economic collapse and the ascension of an ideological rival11.

However, a combination of factors led to debilitating economic collapse in the years following Tito’s death. In 1982, Milka Planinc was elected head of the collective presidency. Meanwhile, with Tito dead, both the USSR and the United States felt confident that Yugoslavia was no longer a major threat considering Tito’s death. In 1984, the Reagan administration introduced a policy in a National Security Decision Directive to target Yugoslavia’s economy; the United States sought to topple Communist Nations, forcing Eastern Europe to participate in a market-oriented economy. Western trade barriers halted economic growth in Yugoslavia, forcing the government to take out the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans. In 1982, the federation’s foreign debt reached 16.9 billion in US dollars. By 1988, the foreign debt topped twenty-one billion in US dollars with 217% inflation increase12.
While ineffective leadership and economic collapse were highly detrimental to post-Tito Yugoslavia, ethnic conflicts became the federation’s ultimate downfall13.

2. Nationalism- adopted by Slobodan Milosevic (1987-1989)

Slobodan Milosevic, an ideological rival of Tito’s, proved to be the primary instigator of the ethnic clashes. In the late 1980s, Milosevic was garnering support for himself in Serbia14.
Without Tito, Communism was failing in Eastern Europe; Milosevic proposed a different style of rule, advocating for “incendiary Nationalism.” In the 1980s, Shambolic was elected President of the Republic of Serbia. In a thirty-hour meeting that spanned from September 23 to September 24, 1987, Milosevic engineered President Stambolic’s ouster, effectively taking over Serbia. From that moment onwards, he declared Serbia to be “Communist by name and Nationalist by choice”15.

3.The period driven by Slobodan Milosevic’s Racism ideologies (1987-1992)

After becoming President of Serbia in 1987, Milosevic began to exert authority over Yugoslavia, encouraging nationalistic tendencies. In 1981 a year after Tito’s death, ethnic Albanians held riots in Kosovo, rebelling against Yugoslav rule. In Tito’s time, these conflicts were quashed; however, the Serbian president deliberately resurrected these nationalistic grudges. When Milosevic took power, the two largest ethnic groups of Yugoslavia were Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Christian Serbs. Conscious of this fact, Milosevic used nationalism to set the stage for a brutal civil war that spread across the federation. He orchestrated wars that pitted the Serbs against Slovenes, Croats, Albanians, Kosovars, and Bosnians, with the intention of realizing his dream of a “Greater Serbia.”As a result of a practice called “ethnic cleansing,”millions of people were killed or displaced during the conflicts with the Serbs. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone resulted in two hundred thousand deaths and left millions of people without homes. Both in 1991 and 1996, opposition forces attempted to oust Milosevic16 which became a reality in 2000.

In 2001, Milosevic was sent to The Hague to be charged with war crimes; he was discovered dead in his cell in 2006. Slobodan Milosevic left a dark legacy: Serbian Nationalism served as a key part of inciting ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia17.

4. Separatist movements flourish (After 1991)

By 1992, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was in ruins. Slobodan Milosevic’s goal of replacing Communism with Nationalism succeeded. Slovenia and Croatia were the first to secede in 1991, with Macedonia following shortly thereafter. In the following year, Bosnia Herzegovina also declared its independence. In order to resolve longstanding ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 created two self-governing entities within the nation, dividing the Serbs and Muslim-Croats. After the secession of Bosnia Herzegovina, only Serbia and Montenegro remained in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which later transformed to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Due to the years of turmoil in the federation, the international community refused to recognize the new republic. Thus, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia divided into successor states in 200318.


Encyclopedia Britannica 

Conclusion

For thirty-seven years, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia thrived under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito’s. He unified the diverse nation, growing both an educated population as well as a healthy and robust economy. Significant for his cult of personality, Tito introduced policies of ‘nonalignment’ and ‘polycentrism,’ which revolutionized the nature of Communist government. Upon Tito’s death in 1980, marred by the unproductive leadership of a nine-member collective presidency and riddled with foreign debt, Yugoslavia started to dissolve19.

When Slobodan Milosevic was elected as President of Serbia in 1987, all hopes for Yugoslavia maintaining a Communist-style of government was lost. Through widespread ‘ethnic cleansing,’ he coordinated the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. During Milosevic’s rule, Yugoslavia’s various republics began to declare their independence. All that Tito had worked for, all that he had strived to create, was lost20.

In the span of eighty-five years, Yugoslavia managed to rise to the status of world power in control of the majority of Eastern Europe and to completely fall out of power, ultimately disappearing off the map21.

Nevertheless, Tito’s legacy as a benevolent dictator will not be forgotten. He demonstrated the importance of respecting different cultures and the inherent power of neutrality to the world. He developed a new archetype for a leader, one who above all values the input of the masses, as opposed to the input of the elite. On the idolatry of leaders, Tito once said, “If a man separates himself from the people, if he tends to be set on a pedestal, then he will only inspire fear or hatred…the people are those who are the motive power, they are the ones who inspire their leaders and the leader is but the organizer and the formulator of the people’s thoughts”22.

Although Yugoslavia no longer exists, Tito, the leader of the republic for nearly half of its existence, will serve as a role model for centuries to come.


References

1.      Borowiec, Andrew. Yugoslavia after Tito. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979.

2.      Kennan, George F. “Polycentrism and Western Policy.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Jan., 1964): 171-183.

3.      Borowiec 1979.
4.      Kennan 1964.
5.      The Non-Aligned Movement. “The Non-Aligned Movement: Description and History.” Last modified Sep. 21, 2001. http://www.nam.gov.za/background/history.html.

6.      Graff, Donald F. “A Quiet Transition in Yugoslavia.” The Telegraph (United Kingdom), May 28, 1982.

7.      The Non-Aligned Movement. “The Non-Aligned Movement: Description and History.” Last modified Sep. 21, 2001. http://www.nam.gov.za/background/history.html.

8.      The Non-Aligned Movement. “The Non-Aligned Movement: Description and History.” Last modified Sep. 21, 2001. http://www.nam.gov.za/background/history.html.


9.      Ibid.

10.   Ibid.

11.   Stankovic, Slobodan. The End of the Tito Era: Yugoslavia’s Dilemmas. California: Hoover Institution Press, 1981.

12.   ibid

13.   ibid

14.   Kamm, Henry. “Yugoslavia’s President Says Crisis Harms the Country’s Reputation.”New York Times, Oct. 19, 1988.

15.   ibid

16.   Simons, Marlise and Alison Smale. “Slobodan Milosevic, 64, Former Yugoslav Leader Accused of War Crimes, Dies.” New York Times, Mar. 12, 2006.

17.   Ibid

18.   ReesMogg, William. The Strains of Yugoslavia without Tito. The Times (London, England), Apr. 17, 1988.

19.   Binder, David. “Fare Well, Illyria!” Unpublished Manuscript, 2002.

20.   Ibid.

21.   Simons, Marlise and Alison Smale. “Slobodan Milosevic, 64, Former Yugoslav Leader Accused of War Crimes, Dies.” New York Times, Mar. 12, 2006.


22.   Olivia Hinerfeld. “The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia”, St Mary's Academy of Portland State University, Young Historians Conference, 2013.


Dr. K.Y.D Perera MBBS(Col), PGDCH(Col), PGDHQPS(Col), MSc (Medical Administration) is a Medical Officer and Medical Administrator. He was a former Medical Director at District General Hospital, Hambanthota and a former Deputy District Director of Health Services at Puttalam district. He is currently reading for his Doctorate in Medical Administration at Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo and is a student of the BIDTI.





The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and not the institutional views of the BIDTI, nor do they necessarily reflect the position of any other institution or individual with which the author is 








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