MAKING SERBS:

SERBIAN NATIONALISM AND COLLECTIVE

IDENTITY, 1990-2000

By

Danilo Mandić

A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts

Department of Sociology
Princeton University

2007
 Honor Pledge

I pledge my honor I did not violate the Honor Code in writing my senior thesis.

Danilo Mandić

2
 Acknowledgments

Research for this thesis was funded by the George and Obie Shultz Fund, the Fred Fox Class
of 1939 Fund, the Class of 1991 Fund, and Princeton University’s Sociology Department.

3
 Note on Transliteration

For readers unfamiliar with Serbian spelling and pronunciation, the following
guide may be useful for many names appearing below:

c ‘ts’ as in cats
č ’ch’ as in church
ć ’tj’ as in fortune
dj ’dg’ as in drudge
dž ’j’ as in job
j ’y’ as in you
lj ’lli’ as in million
nj ’n’ as in canyon
š ’sh’ as in she
ž ’zh’ as in pleasure

4
The enemies of the Serbs made Serbs Serbs.

-- Dobrica Ćosić
Politika, July 27, 1991.

5
 Table of Contents

Honor Pledge 2
Acknowledgements 3
Note on Transliteration 4
Table of Contents 6

INTRODUCTION 7
Theoretical Approach and Definition 7
Departing from the Literature on Yugoslavia’s Disintegration 16
Beyond “Blame Scholarship” 23

CHAPTER 1: Where Have All the Yugoslavs Gone? (1990-1992) 27

Multiple Identities 27
Values and Voting 36
Military Mobilization and Resistance 47

CHAPTER 2: Enemies and their Portrayal in the Media (1990-1992) 55

The Power of the Media 55
Slovenia 59
Croatia 63
Bosnia-Herzegovina 70
A New World Order 75

CHAPTER 3: United in Misery (1993-1995) 83

Sanctions and the War 84
A New Kind of Society, New Vested Interests 88
Public Opinion and Values 103

CHAPTER 4: Something Borrowed, Something New (1996-2000) 114

Public Opinion in the Second Half of the 1990s 114
“The Walks”: Novelties 120
“The Walks”: Continuities and the Nationalist Reaction 128
The NATO Bombing: A Temporary Upsurge in Nationalism 136
The Bulldozer Revolution: Nationalism Defeated 141
The Bulldozer Revolution: Nationalism Lives 146

CONCLUSION 156
Reactive After All 156
Implications for Theory and Future Study 162

Appendix #1 168

Bibliography 170

6
 INTRODUCTION

This thesis explores the ways nationalism interacts with external military, diplomatic

and economic pressures or perceived nationalist challenges, and attempts to account for the

formation and intensification of nationalist collective identity. Specifically, I investigate the

ways Serbian collective identity in the 1990s was shaped and, in large parts, defined by the

perceived challenges and pressures posed by Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Albanian and

Slovenian nationalisms, as well as by the US and Western European countries that were

diplomatically, militarily or otherwise implicated in the Yugoslav civil wars.

Through historical and sociological analysis, I intend to establish when and how the

notion of “we, the Serbs” monopolized collective identity and when and how the principle of

“all Serbs in one state” became a popular priority of the highest order. Following the lead of

Susan Woodward’s history of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, I approach the period as a

highly complex civil war in which outside interference was a crucial component and decisive

force behind the formation of new nationalist identities, if not the dominant one.

Theoretical Approach and Definition

A recurring question about Serbian nationalism in the late XX century is: can we

better understood it as a state-driven phenomenon, defined and perpetuated by considerations

of governments and power elites, or as a phenomenon based on widespread popular senses of

community and national identity among Serbs? To illustrate my general take on this question,

I briefly outline two theoretical approaches to understanding nationalism: those of Benedict

Anderson and Charles Tilly. By highlighting several crucial differences between the two, I

hope to simplify a much broader and more sophisticated debate in the theoretical literature

7
over nationalism. Far from mutually exclusive, the two authors overlap on certain analyses of

nationalism (especially given their shared Marxian inspiration). I therefore treat the two

positions as Weberian ideal types, not strict opposites of an absolute dichotomy. This thesis, I

should state immediately, will be friendlier to Tilly’s general perspective.

Anderson’s influential Imagined Communities purports to salvage Marxism from its

discrediting underestimation of nationalism. To account for nationalism’s capacity to

“command such profound emotional legitimacy” (even in a world of nominally anti-

nationalist Communist societies), Anderson reevaluates it as a cultural phenomenon. 1

Removing nationalism from the company of “isms” such as fascism, liberalism and other

ideologies, Anderson associates it (along with nationality, nation-ness and the like) with

kinship or religion – a sense of belonging to an imagined community that is perceived as

destiny rather than rational choice and that, like religion, offers transcendental explanations

of human sacrifice, agony and death. 2 Much more than simply a “false consciousness” or

outdated irrationality, nationalism is portrayed as a potent source of self-awareness and

identity that drives humans to think and behave according to their national membership. As

several older sources of identity lost their credibility, nationalism gained the power to

motivate and mobilize people (elites and semi-literate peasants alike) to act on its principles –

often against competing institutions such as the family, the church, the government or the

tribe.

The imagined community of the nation arose out of “large cultural systems” (like the

religious community and the dynastic realm), most often as a rebellion against them. These

systems had held an “axiomatic grip on men’s minds,” Anderson argues, by promoting three

1
Anderson, 4.
2
Ibid, 5-6.

8
crucial beliefs: that certain languages and scripts enable unique access to truth, that

aristocratic and monarchic rule is divinely ordered and legitimated, and that time flows non-

linearly, cosmologically and without clear separations between past and present. The single

greatest force in demolishing these beliefs was print capitalism – an abrupt proliferation of

the activities of writers, scribes, printers, publishers, lexicographers, grammarians, and text

merchants, who not only created a new readership by offering books in the vernacular as well

as Latin, but also gave language a novel fixity. Since European nationalism of the late XVIII

and early XIX centuries was largely language-based, this enabled populist unification around

one or another “mother tongue.” 3 Print capitalism gave birth to widespread literacy, mass

education, linear thinking, accurate maps, novels and a new conception of time.

Importantly, Anderson’s ultimate agent of change is the individual. It is neither state,

church, diplomatic elite or intellectual class that sparks nationalist beliefs, but a large group

of individuals who – autonomously, we are led to presume – begin imagining themselves and

others as members of a common political collectivity. Each person separately, anonymously

and self-consciously consumes the exciting new products of print-capitalism (newspapers,

novels, maps, etc.), while others simultaneously do the same, imagining each other’s

existence and awareness. In fact, these by-and-large unaffiliated individuals are so formative

of nationalist imagination that more coherent and organized non-individual agents are

sometimes even forced to adapt to this imagination. For instance, Anderson argues that the

European dynasties of the XIX century were practically left with no choice but to adopt

elements of the vernacular as official state language. What is more, these previously non-

nationalist elites were ultimately compelled to endorse “official nationalism,” a fusion of

empire and nation. Hence the “Romanovs discovered they were Great Russians, Hanoverians
3
Anderson, 67-83.

9
that they were English, Hohenzollerns that they were Germans.” 4 Official nationalism later

flourished, Anderson argues, in the XX century in Asia, Africa and Europe after World War

I. This not only implies that individuals can, in sufficient numbers, be the true agents of

historical change, but also that powerful institutional structures like the state often have to

adapt to nationalism’s authority.

At first glance, Charles Tilly’s work does not appear to analyze nationalism, let alone

offer an exhaustive “theory of nationalism” as such. I would argue, nevertheless, that Tilly’s

theses can be understood as an alternative explanation for the very phenomenon Anderson is

purporting to explain. Tilly’s avoidance of the term is indicative of the most crucial

difference between them: Tilly’s focus is the state, not the nation. He finds it unproductive to

treat the “nation” – “one of the most puzzling and tendentious items in the political lexicon” 5

– as a proper unit of historical and sociological analysis. It is the modern state that deserves

our attention because nationalism and nations depend on an elaborate inter-state system of

power relations to even become meaningful. Like Michael Mann and others, Tilly argues that

the state precedes and makes possible the rise of nationalism, not vice versa. Its

“importance,” Tilly believes, is its “political principle [that] a nation should have its own

independent state, and an independent state should have its own nation.” 6 The state is so

integral to understanding nationalism that even Tilly’s informal definition of the

phenomenon is fundamentally state-based:

4
Anderson, 85.
5
Tilly 1995, 6. Cited in Smith 1998, 76.
6
Tilly 2003, 33.

10
 The word [nationalism] refers to the mobilization of
populations that do not have their own state around a claim to
political independence; […] It also, regrettably, refers to the
mobilization of the population of an existing state around a
strong identification with that state. 7

Thus “nations” are understandable through the study of European inter-state diplomacy and

warfare alone; analyses which fail to acknowledge the state’s role are, Tilly argues, grossly

incomplete.

The contrast with Anderson’s definition of an “imagined political community” is

striking. This not only shifts our attention from the “cultural” and the “imaginative,” but

affirms the centrality of war, violence, coercion, competing interests and rivalry in defining

identities and communities. It is, after all, “war” that “makes states.” 8 Far from a romantic

vision of the “national state” as a cultural product of popular will or general sentiment, Tilly

is describing a brutally realpolitik institution with behavior and logic comparable to those of

an organized crime network. The state’s activities – war making, state making, protection and

extraction – are essentially self-justifying and self-perpetuating processes that, over time,

produce various institutional and ideological by-products (“residue[s],” in Tilly’s words) to

sustain themselves and maximize efficiency and the probability of success. To formulate the

thesis another way: nationalism can be understood as one of these by-products – a mere

“residue.” Given the need to placate the demands of various internal and external

populations, nationalism emerged as a convenient tool for state-affiliated elites to remain in

power, as well as a dominant mode of political communication for those seeking to challenge

them.

7
Tilly 1993, 116.
8
Ibid 1985, 170.

11
 Moreover, Tilly puts great emphasis on the ways war – the state’s ultimate function

and purpose – necessarily implicates states into complex networks of various constituencies,

power structures, industry-specific elites and other states. “War as international relations”

reflects Tilly’s dismissal of the idea of the state as geopolitically detached – the impact of the

European inter-state system of coercion and competition is so fundamental that the very

distinction between “internal” and “external,” “domestic” and “foreign” affairs is blurred.9

As states pursue their own interests, the interests of other states and the overall balance of

power restrict and frame the behavior of all actors involved. It is only in this inter-connected

and complex arena that nationalist ideologies can emerge, and are fated to be dependent on

these state activities and inter-state relations.

Three crucial points of contention between the two authors can be summarized.

Firstly, they diverge on the nature of the causal relation between political reality and

what we might call “popular perception.” For Anderson, a fundamental shift in a group’s

perception of time, history, geography and itself produces new political realities based on

nationalist ideology; for Tilly, it is the political realities – shaped overwhelmingly by states –

which cause peoples affected by these realities to gain new perspectives, ideas, and so-called

“worldviews.” For both authors, the nation is a construct; yet, it is a different kind of

construct for each. Anderson argues it is constructed by the imagination of its members – a

process precipitated by print-capitalism and the collapse of pre-nationalist dogmas like divine

rule and cosmological senses of time. Tilly, on the other hand, argues it is constructed

incidentally and derivatively by rivaling states pursuing their self-interests in a violent,

competitive arena. Put crudely, Anderson believes popular perception constructs nationalist

reality, while Tilly believes the state constructs both those things.
9
Tilly 1985, 184.

12
 Secondly, there is a difference regarding the extent to which nationalism is a product

of “top-down” processes as opposed to vice versa. Anderson suggests “bottom-up” processes

are crucial for the development of nationalism and might even overpower “top-down”

pressures from, say, imperial elites. He acknowledges the role of “high” institutions like

monarchies and colonial administrations, but does not see them as central. In sharp contrast,

Tilly treats “grassroots” forces as generally deferential to higher structural and institutional

processes from “the top.” Another formulation of this difference is whether nationalism is

understood as a somewhat spontaneous or state-dependent phenomenon. As mentioned, Tilly

necessarily implicates nationalism into a complex system of interconnected and competing

states; in this context, nationalism is inherently reactive and dependent on state-related

affairs. For Anderson, nationalism is fairly spontaneous in this regard, potentially oblivious

to structures like the state and primarily dependent on the private, autonomous thought

processes and sentiments of individuals. At best, Anderson concedes that the state may

regulate nationalism, but does not allow for the possibility that nationalism presupposes a

political order based on state structures.

Finally, while Anderson describes nationalism as a “cultural” phenomenon arising out

of “large cultural systems,” Tilly subsumes nationalism into the realm of politics as a

phenomenon arising out of considerations like protection from violence, coercion, violation

of property rights and so on. Anderson’s national subjects, in contrast, are motivated by

“emotional” considerations, senses of belonging, internal mental processes and reflections on

“transcendental” matters of suffering and death.

13
Table 1.0. Anderson vs. Tilly on Nationalism

Dissimilarity Anderson Tilly

Primary (not exclusive) source Emotional and psychological

of loyalty and allegiance to
nation state
Primary agents of historical
change
Proper unit of analysis
Single most emphasized
development that allowed
nationalism to arise
Context out of which
nationalism arose
The direction of the formation
of nationalism
legitimacy, built through the Force, violence and coercion.
imagination of community.
Individuals. States.
The nation. The state.
Print-capitalism. War.
Political:
Cultural:
European inter-state warfare,
Religious community, dynastic realm
competition, rivalry, conflict,
and other “large cultural systems.”
etc.
A “top-down” process –
A “bottom-up” process – nationalism
nationalism as state-
as somewhat spontaneous.
dependent.

These differences are, of course, matters of emphasis, not fundamentally irreconcilable

perceptions. Nevertheless, this thesis tackles nationalism in a sense closer to Tilly’s general

approach: with an emphasis on the role of states, war, coercion and political conflicts on

nationalism as opposed to more “Andersonian” concerns.

Accordingly, I will define Serbian nationalism as that set of political demands and

collective actions that called for the uniting of all Serbs into a single independent state ruled

by Serbs. These will include not only the doctrine of Greater Serbianism, but also advocacy

of those variants of Yugoslavism and socialism that emphasized unity with Croats, Slovenes

or Muslims but under the condition (at least implicit) that Serbs enjoy superior status of one

kind or another. To take an example from another time period: many advocates of the post-

1918 Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes would be treated as Serbian nationalists

under this definition if their defense of south Slav unity was motivated not by utopian beliefs

14
in altruistic brotherhood and inter-ethnic teamwork, but by the hope that Serbian interests

will be served to a greater extent than those of other groups.10

The Yugoslav civil war inspired social scientists to generate an array of imprecise

concepts (“historico-ethnic,” “ethno-mythological,” “religio-national,” “ethno-fascist” and

“nihilo-nationalist” are among the most impressive), most of which I intentionally avoid.

“Nationalist collective identity” and “Serbian-ness” are used synonymously to describe the

general sentiment that primary loyalty should be directed to being Serbian, not Yugoslav or

Orthodox Christian or a citizen of Vojvodina or a resident of Belgrade. “Bosniaks” will refer

to Bosnian Muslims; “Bosnians,” to citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Preceding the word

“Serbs” or “Croats” with the epithet “ethnic” is a prevalent custom in much of the literature,

though it has worn out its usefulness. It had originally served to distinguish between

nationality and civic status (an “ethnic Serb” from Croatia as opposed to a “Croat” from

Croatia), but has degenerated into an attempt to homogenize national belonging and to

account for the discrepancy between state and national boundaries. To avoid wordiness, I

avoid the prefix “ethnic” and refer to the entire nationality as “Serbs.” Citizens of Serbia will

be “Serbians” as opposed to Serbs, citizens of Croatia “Croatians” as opposed to Croats, and

so on. I avoid the careless distinguishing between “ultra-nationalists” and “nationalists,”

preferring simply the latter. Finally, to dodge an extraordinarily difficult debate over what

new categories of identity the Yugoslav civil wars have introduced in the fields of

anthropology and sociology, I use “ethnicity” and “nationality” interchangeably.

10
For the most influential author arguing that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was intended as an expression of
Serbian hegemony, see: Banac 1984.

15
Departing from the Literature on Yugoslavia’s Disintegration

The focus on Serbian nationalism specifically is not meant as a rejection of

comparative approaches to understanding the Balkans or as a statement about the uniqueness

of Serbia’s nationalist experience. To the contrary, I emphasize the inherently interactive and

interconnected nature of Serbian nationalism to Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian Muslim and

even Western nationalisms. Although authors like Ivo Banac, Charles and Barbara Jelavich

and Stevan K. Pavlowitch have carried out extensive comparative studies of Yugoslavia’s

various nationalisms in the pre-World War I or pre-World War II era, 11 few have emphasized

that Serbian nationalism in the last decade of the XX century can only be understood if

contextualized in relation to its rivals. Instead, much of the literature on the 1990s breakup

has perpetuated the notion of the uniqueness of Serbian nationalism – the idea that Serbian

nationalism is, in one way or another, an anomaly and exception in its unusual

aggressiveness, irrationality, intolerance, aversion to multiculturalism, propensity for

violence, expansionist tendency or general “backwardness.” Branimir Anzulović’s Heavenly

Serbia: From Myth to Genocide isolates the development of Serbian nationalist ideology

from those of other South Slavic peoples to attribute a “genocidal” nature to it.12 Less

extreme but somewhat similar approaches are visible in Michael Sells’ A Bridge Betrayed:

Religion and Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Stephen Schwartz’s (and Christopher

Hitchens') Kosovo: Background to a War, and even in the standard works of distinguished

11
Banac, 1984; Pavlowitch 1999; Jelavich and Jelavich 1987. In addition, comparative approaches have sought to evaluate
the similarities between Serbian nationalist state policies and Israeli state violence (Ron 2003), between ethnic cleansing
experiences in Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Mueller 2000) and even between the Armenian genocide, state-sponsored massacre
in Niger and Serbian crimes in the Bosnian war (Melson 1996). In addition to some unwarranted generalizations and
occasional overlooking of the specificities of Serbian nationalism, these approaches do not address the interrelations and
interconnections of Balkan nationalisms or the ways their mutual relationships define them. To employ a metaphor from
Michael Reynolds: it is one thing to study bacteria as a series of isolated case studies in separate petri dishes, and quite
another to examine the ways they reproduce and interact with each other in the same environment (Reynolds 2003, 10).
12
Anzulović 1999.

16
journalist Tim Judah. 13 In large parts, it was this “uniqueness thesis” that gave rise to the

dubious distinction between "ethnic nationalism" and "civic nationalism," the former being a

destructive, anti-“liberal,” virulent plague infecting the world and the latter being a

democratic, multi-cultural, diversity-friendly model exemplified by peace-loving democratic

nation-states. 14 The distinction is largely normative and analytically unhelpful, though its

political usefulness is clear. However – as Diana Johnstone, Kate Hudson and Aleksa Djilas

have warned – branding the “dark side” of Serbian nationalism unique is not only historically

unsound but might blind us to the uncomfortable commonalities it may have with its Western

counterparts. I maintain that crucial features of Serbian nationalism are far from unique and

that the formation of collective identity described and traced here is easily detectible in most,

if not all other national groups.

With a few exceptions, the approach to historical analysis of the 1990s Balkan wars is

regularly a traditional, top-down approach that analyzes statesmen and formal institutional

interactions – a "history of leaders," if you will, in which the principal agents and carriers of

nationalism are presidents, military officials and high-level diplomats. A typical example is

the obsessive focus on Slobodan Milošević’s 1989 speech at Kosovo Polje, at which fateful

moment – we are led to believe – he gave birth to Serbian nationalism. This kind of approach

not only tends to neglect the existence of opposition movements in the various Yugoslav

republics, but treats public sentiment and grassroots nationalism as products of well-designed

schemes of the republics' leaders, who are considered the true actors in the drama. Although

it is certainly true that leaders of authoritarian currents (primarily in Serbia and Croatia)

enjoyed overwhelming control over major events in the wars, they were also under

13
Schwarz 2001; Sells 1998; Judah 2000.
14
For a clear example of the distinction, see: Roshwald 2001, 3-4, though the distinction is pervasive.

17
significant pressure from their republics' populations. Occasionally, this public pressure

restricted policymaking, even though state elites rarely admitted so in public. For instance,

the massive anti-Milošević protests in Belgrade in March of 1991 put noteworthy pressure on

the regime and significantly complicated the supposedly homogenous nationalist mindset of

Serbia. Similarly, the 1992 Sarajevo protests against ethnic division caught many nationalist

leaders by surprise, as it turned out that popular antiwar sentiment opposed to exclusionary

nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina made mobilization for war difficult. Yet, Little and

Silber’s canonized book on the war – Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation – assumes that war

mobilizes public opinion to the power centers of each republic, leaving the leaders with most,

if not all the influence. 15 In a similar vain, Louis Sell tells the story of the destruction of

Yugoslavia with no more than a biography of Milošević alone, as if the single leader’s

decisions and political maneuvers account for all the developments of the period. 16 Doder

and Branson likewise attribute all the major developments of the period to biographical

explanations related to Milošević, with practically no acknowledgement of public opinion in

its own right. 17

I argue, however, that the connections between public support for state authority,

nationalism among elites, nationalism among the general population, and actual political

events and outcomes during the period, were rarely straightforward. The views of Slobodan

Milošević, Ratko Mladić, Vojislav Šešelj and other nationalist icons were often irrelevant to

the levels of nationalism among Serbs at large. Mobilized masses, occasionally at least, had

nationalist demands quite disparate from their leaders’, and were sometimes even

infringements on leaders' power. Inspired in part by Padraic Kenney’s study of the Central

15
Silber & Little 1996.
16
Sell 2002.
17
Doder and Branson 1999.

18
European revolutions that toppled Communism in 1989, 18 I explore the often neglected,

“grassroots” influences on collective identity and state policy which arise “from below” and

are sometimes impervious to official state policy or the pressure of leaders.

Although political sociology has tackled the interaction between nationalism and

military crisis in the Balkans, few studies have dealt with the role of external pressure vis-à-

vis the destructive rise of Serbian nationalism. Indeed, Misha Glenny’s Fall of Yugoslavia

belongs to a marginal minority by emphasizing factors other than Serbian aggression as roots

of the problem, and was ground-breaking at the time of its publication in questioning

Western intentions in the Balkans. 19 By-and-large, however, non-Yugoslav influences on the

civil war have not received reasonable attention. At one extreme, there is a conspiratorial,

nationalistic and oddly paranoid account, which sees the machinations of the “international

community” (usually defined as the Vatican, US, Britain and Germany) as the primary

source of the excesses of Serbian nationalism, as it manifested itself in ethnic cleansing,

territorial expansion and ethnic fanaticism. 20 At another extreme, there is a highly idealized

vision of the “international community’s” benevolent and altruistic efforts in mitigating the

irrational and barbaric practices of Balkan primordial nationalists. 21 In between are standard

interpretations of the Yugoslav wars, which explain major events as caused primarily by

Serbian aggression and secondarily by the various reactions to it within Yugoslavia, with the

disinterested or humanitarian “international community” failing to intervene on time, or with

insufficient force to impose stability. 22 One reflection of the last two of these approaches is

the common reluctance among scholars to refer to the conflict as a "civil war” – a term that

18
Kenney 2003.
19
Glenny 1993. Other useful analyses of external factors in the dissolution of Yugoslavia are Hudson 2003; Parenti 2001;
Chomsky 1999.
20
Šešelj N.d.; Bataković N.d.; Mitrovich 1999; Hudson 2003; Parenti 2001.
21
Doder and Branson 1999; International Crisis Group 2001; Malcolm 1998.
22
Ignatieff 2000; Judah 2000; Mertus 1999; Vickers 1998.

19
appears to contradict an “original sin” thesis of Serbian nationalism as the primary instigator

of the bloodshed, or that appears to assume that multi-ethnic Yugoslavia was a legitimate

entity. Most of these accounts remain incomplete because they assume that Serbian

nationalism arose somewhat spontaneously and in isolation, not as a reactive or interactive

force shaped by other nationalisms of the Yugoslav crisis. I approach the conflict precisely as

a civil war to draw attention to the interactive aspects of Serbian nationalism and away from

its supposed exceptionality and isolation. While I avoid reductionist attempts at burdening

only outside forces for the Yugoslav tragedy, 23 I do concentrate significantly on external

factors and pressures in making Serbian collective identity what it was.

Serbian nationalism (imagined as arising spontaneously and in isolation) is often said

to explode when, for instance, an intellectual class or political leader comes along and ignites

a mass nationalist awakening in some sort of political vacuum. Nationalists themselves

especially promote the view, as they are mostly hesitant to describe their own nations as

responses to other nations or outsiders (which might imply a status of inferiority), preferring

instead to portray those other nations (or ideologies like Bolshevism, religions like Islam,

etc.) as reacting derivatively to “us” and our natural instinctive desires (which implies “our”

superiority). Such is the unswerving line of Matija Bećković, Vojislav Šešelj and other

Serbian hardliners (some of whom see themselves as the sparks that ignite nationalist

awakening), though similar approaches are visible in the works of Anzulović and others.

Aside from the aforementioned Milošević speech at Kosovo Polje, many Western accounts

point to the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy or the publication of books by

Dobrica Ćosić or Vuk Drašković as the beginnings of the stirring of Serbian nationalism in

the late 20th Century. As Ivo Banac has pointed out, this approach mistakenly assumes that
23
Examples of such reductionism are Parenti 2001, Hudson 2003, and a plethora of Serbian nationalist authors.

20
Titoist Communist Yugoslavia was a period of absolute peace and tolerance, devoid of

national conflicts until the unfortunate rise to power of Slobodan Milošević. Departing from

these approaches, I treat nationalisms in the Balkans as primarily reactive and interactive

forces shaped by other nationalisms, perceived outside threats, external economic

challengers, rival ethnicities, etc. As Aleksa Djilas has pointed out, Serbian nationalist fears

and ambitions were by no means post-Communist novelties concocted by a clique of

intellectuals or political elites. 24 In fact, the presence of Serbian nationalism in the 1990s is

often independent of nationalist leaders, intellectuals or elites, which suggests caution about

what is sometimes called a “constructivist” approach to the phenomenon. 25

Nevertheless, an approach that emphasizes almost everlasting, primordial, ancient

hatreds which were merely delayed by the post-1945 Communist regime and erupted

inevitably in the 1990s is equally unsatisfying. For all their transcendental differences,

Serbian and Croatian nationalists in fact agree that the only way to understand nationalist

rivalries in the 1990s is to trace them back to XIX century (if not earlier) national yearnings

and to understand the “other” side’s malicious thirst to replay previous historical crimes. The

most obvious battleground for such nationalist interpretations is the Second World War.

Vladimir Dedijer’s Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican 26 and similar books reviewed

Croatian extermination policies against Serbs in World War II in painful detail and

encouraged viewing the Croatian separatist movement in the 1990s as continuities of the

ustaša regime of the 1940s. In contrast, Croatian nationalists – such as Franjo Tudjman

24
Djilas 2005. This very question – how ancient or modern the nationalist rivalries and hatreds in question are – has been
hotly debated by Djilas in his much-publicized review of Noel Malcolm’s Kosovo: a Short History (1998). The latter was
criticized for downplaying the role of “ancient hatreds” in the conflicts between Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Kosovo, as Djilas argued that the impact of the divisions of the Second World War are quite deep and that Bosnia-
Herzegovina in particular should not be idealized as a multi-ethnic paradise without national tensions. See Djilas 2005, 163-
175.
25
For an extensive presentation of the constructivist approach (albeit in the African context), see: Yeros, 1998.
26
Dedijer 1992.

21
himself in his Horrors of War and Genocide and Yugoslavia – exonerate the WWII Croatian

state from responsibility for genocide and see in the ustaša experience a legitimate national

aspiration of the Croatian people. 27 Both approaches overestimate the ancientness and

underestimate the novelty of major aspects of the national divisions of the 1990s. Significant

national differences existed in the Balkans, to be sure, but were historically more often

determined by regional as opposed to national lines. Differences between two regions

populated by the same national group were often greater than those between two different

national groups populating the same area (this is, incidentally, true even of most of the early

1990s). 28 Furthermore, precise nationalist delineations from the ancient past are extremely

difficult to acquire, given the closeness of the three principal languages of the region, the

frequent conversions among religions, the “promiscuity” of cultural practices in the region,

and the high levels of inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages (especially in Bosnia-

Herzegovina). Therefore, the opposite extreme of reducing the rise of nationalism in the

1990s to obvious ancient trajectories that were perfectly predictable and perhaps inevitable is

very problematic.

In conclusion, it remains extremely difficult to predict or explain behavior according

to ethnicity, religion, and ideology in the Balkans. Accordingly, I will aim for a balancing act

in regard to the difficulty of representing Yugoslavia's disintegration along nationalist lines.

Some of the identity categories – ethnic and religious especially – are inevitably somewhat

confusing, given how conflated they are. Most scholars have never fully reconciled the

difficulty of treating Serbian-ness as parallel to Muslim-ness in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for

instance. Or, when we look at the Yugoslav Army’s conduct during the wars, its state

27
Tudjman 1996a, 1996b.
28
Djilas, 4-6.

22
socialist ideological character may not explain much of its decision-making. Therefore, when

discussing interactions and reactions of Serbian nationalism with its rivals, it is not a matter

of dealing with simple identity equations (Milošević-style Communism and Orthodox

Christianity, Catholicism and "Greater Croatian" nationalism, Islam and Bosnian

secessionism, etc.). Rather, nationalism, ethnicity, etc. will be seen as driving forces of

violence only in so far as “Serbs,” “Croats,” and “Muslims” are taken as highly imperfect

categories. Finally, certain aspects of the conflict are, as many scholars agree, reducible to

purely realpolitik standpoints, unrelated to ethnic considerations or national loyalties. I will

therefore remain cautious about misinterpreting elements of a straightforward war for

territory through the lens of abstract national imagination, but will also remain sensitive to

crucial nationalist differences.

Beyond “Blame Scholarship”

Sadly, most of the literature on Yugoslavia’s demise ranges from biased analyses to

outright nationalist propaganda. By-and-large, Serbian nationalism is analyzed with

deliberate implications for who is to blame for its detrimental impact and who is to be

vindicated of responsibility for the grotesque levels of carnage. In Yugoslavia itself, scholars

like Anzulović and Mitrovich seek to blame Serbian and Croatian nationalism, respectively,

for instigating and escalating the bloodshed and rejecting peaceful solutions and diplomatic

initiatives from the other side. 29 Much of our information about the Serbian-Croatian war

comes from the likes of Former Yugoslav Defense Minister Veljko Kadijević, whose purpose

is not necessarily to narrate truthfully, but simply to justify the behavior of the Yugoslav

29
Anzulović 1999; Mitrovich 1999.

23
Army. 30 Outside Yugoslavia, Western scholars seek to condemn or defend the actions of the

“international community” according to ideological considerations or local political loyalties.

Michael Ignatieff, Ivo Daalder and Michael O'Hanlon, for instance, criticize US/British

interventions in the former Yugoslavia on the grounds of one or another party faction on the

Anglo-American political scene. 31 Similarly, Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts was explicitly

written with the hopes of influencing if not guiding Clinton administration policies. 32

Generally, the purpose of many travelogues or eyewitness accounts of the rise of Serbian

nationalism was far from descriptive and empirical.

The normative nature of most of the accounts is due to the fact that they come from

journalists or involved state officials, not sociologists or political scientists. Often,

journalists’ perspectives are mere reflections of where they were reporting from during the

civil war. Authors such as David Rohde, Roy Gutman, David Rieff and others reported

mostly from areas under siege by Serbian forces and, understandably, offer books that lament

Western non-intervention. Peter Brock’s reporting from Serbian areas, conversely, accuses

Western media coverage of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina of bias against Serbia. 33

Similarly, statesmen and military officials like Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark are

precious sources of information, but write primarily to support their own involvements rather

than to offer objective, descriptive accounts of historical events. 34 What is more, many works

that have entered the canon are authored by journalists affiliated with politicized

organizations or statesmen with obvious agendas. Milošević-biographer Louis Sell was a US

30
Kadijević 1993.
31
Ignatieff 2000; Daalder and O’Hanlon 2001.
32
Kaplan 2005.
33
Brock 2005.
34
Holbrooke 1998; Clark 2001.

24
Foreign Service officer and a board member of the International Crisis Group, which

predictably restricted his distribution of guilt for the Yugoslav wars.

The shortcomings of such “blame scholarship” have been amply documented.

Edward Herman and Philip Hammond’s collection of essays demonstrates the limitations and

ideological pollution of media coverage of the Kosovo crisis of 1999 as well as the earlier

phases of the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. 35 Aleksa Djilas has pointed out some

of the limitations of Noel Malcolm’s exclusive focus on non-Serbian documentary sources

and archives in his Bosnia: A Short History and Kosovo: A Short History, with broader

implications for how to avoid partiality in similar historical accounts. 36 In addition, both Ed

Vulliamy’s Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War, and Gutman’s Witness to

Genocide have been discredited for their exaggerated and even fabricated accounts of mass

rape and “death camps” in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even though both went on to become

bestsellers and award-winning works. 37 In sum, healthy skepticism and heavy scrutinizing of

most secondary sources – especially given the normative stakes in evaluations of external

pressures on Serbian nationalism – are in order.

To address this problem of bias, I can do little more than acknowledge an obvious

point: I will strive to separate, to the extent possible and to the satisfaction of common sense,

my political judgments from my analysis. This thesis, as any work dealing with such a brutal

historical episode, will present arguments which will unfailingly be shared by Serbian

extremist nationalists, just as it will contain claims dear to the hearts of apologists for

Western misconduct. It will mostly, however, present evidence in favor of an understanding

35
Hammond and Herman, 2000.
36
Djilas, 2005. Tim Judah has also challenged some of Malcolm’s approaches.
37
Hammond and Herman, 2000; Ali 2000. For a credible account of death figures and other statistics about the war, see:
Ewa and Bijak 2005 (a study by demographers commissioned by the Hague tribunal).

25
of nationalism that can help future handlings of it be more productive and humane. I cannot

perfectly avoid being labeled biased in one direction or another, especially on political issues

as contentious as the ones surrounding the Yugoslav conflicts. Unfortunately,

uncompromising advocates of one nationalism/ideology or another will inevitably denounce

analytic approaches, often regardless of what analysis may conclude. Against such thinking, I

hope my views and interpretations – which I have strived to make as transparent as possible –

will be judged on their merits.

26
 CHAPTER 1:
Where Have All the Yugoslavs Gone? (1990-1992)

This chapter deals with the period that is often referred to as a climax of Serbian

nationalism by exploring what some of its concrete features were. Contrary to many of the

authors mentioned above, I argue that Serbian nationalism should not be overemphasized as a

causal factor in this stage of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. I first outline the movement

from a widespread self-understanding based on multiple identities (which assigned low

importance to nationality) to a more nationalist one, based on ethnicity and a rejection of the

more collectivist category of “Yugoslavs.” Secondly, despite a lack of satisfactory public

opinion data, I investigate the extent to which values conducive to nationalism were reflected

in public opinion and how these were “translated” into voting decisions in the fateful

elections of this period. Finally, I review the military mobilization of 1991, the massive

resistance to it, and the implications of both for understanding the limits of Serbian

nationalism.

Multiple Identities

From 1960-1980, Yugoslavia had one of the world’s leading economic growth rates,

one of Europe’s lowest infant mortality rates, a steady inflow of enormous foreign capital, an

extensive system of free health care, a guaranteed right to an income, affordable

transportation and housing, one of the highest levels of university-educated women in the

world, and a life expectancy of seventy-two years. Without an official “national” to its

“state,” Yugoslavia was a rarity in Europe and one of very few on the continent without an

official national language. Though often ridiculed for their inefficiency and corruption,

independent worker councils and student-run cafeterias maintained a level of grassroots

27
participation and self-management in local affairs that was unheard of in the rest of the state

socialist world. The red Yugoslav passport could cross virtually every border in the world,

and its bearer could afford the indulgence thanks to a guaranteed, subsidized one-month

vacation. The so-called “Third World” placed its hopes on Yugoslavia’s economic

development model, victims of Soviet terror in Eastern Europe cheered the country’s clash

with Stalinism, while President Gerald Ford eagerly toasted to Yugoslavia’s honor by

observing that “Americans have particularly admired Yugoslavia's independent spirit.” 38

In this cozy socialist environment of “brotherhood and unity,” it made little sense to

emphasize ethnic and religious differences for any political posturing, let alone for territorial

expansion. Students and workers of numerous backgrounds shared university classrooms and

factory floors, often in blissful ignorance of what nationality some of their colleagues even

were. Although sometimes dismissed as revisionist romanticization of an “artificial,”

repressive communist state that was united only by coercion (the dreaded “Yugonostalgia”),

the fact remains that even the very last years preceding Yugoslavia’s death were a period of

considerable multi-nationality. To be sure, much of Yugoslav anti-nationalism was a coerced

principle, dictated by state socialist ideology for often unflattering reasons. Yet Titoist dogma

notwithstanding, the simple power of decades of multi-ethnic life and mixing throughout the

entire state in discouraging nationalism was undeniable. “Despite the claims made by

nationalist leaders,” Susan Woodward wrote,

…the reality of multinational Yugoslavia still existed in the

lives of individual citizens in 1990-91 – in their ethnically
mixed neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities; in their
mixed marriages, family ties across republic boundaries, and
second homes in another republic; in their conceptions of

38
Gerald Ford, Toast at State Dinner in Belgrade, August 3rd, 1975. Available at stable URL:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=5146 (the American Presidency Project).

28
 ethnic and national coexistence and the compatibility of
multiple identities for each citizen. 39

Indeed, “multiple identities” were reflected in multiple loyalties and associations, most of

which were localized and non-national (families, schools, sport teams, neighborhoods,

villages, professional associations, etc.). A national “character” was particularly deficient

among younger generations, especially those far enough from the inter-ethnic carnage of

World War II to be uninterested. In a study of youth attitudes towards identity in Serbia

proper (a highly homogenous environment, as we will see below), a predominance of

“personalistic beliefs” was found – those based on the idea that people should be judged as

persons rather than as members of nations. A majority of respondents rejected “national

background” as something of importance: 61% regarded it as less important that one’s

profession, friends, age, family, class position, gender, political orientation and region. In

ninth place, nationality found itself above only the categories of “favorite sport” and

“religion” on the scale of significance. 40 Though more moderate, a similar rejection of

national identity as a priority was also recorded among the population at large, who likewise

preferred localized, smaller categories. 41 It was from this cocktail of identity that a

vulgarized, jingoistic and narcissistic national identity emerged among Serbs, drawing

loyalty and allegiance to Serbia above all other collectivities and claimed the most brutal

atrocities in Europe since the Second World War in its name.

To trace this rise, I begin with a look at data relating to the curious concept of

“Yugoslav-ness.” A powerful indicator of “multiple identities” and the absence of

nationalism is the number of citizens in post-World War II census data declaring themselves

39
Ali 2000, 205.
40
Pantić 1994, 149.
41
Ibid 1991.

29
“Yugoslav” – an ethnically, culturally and religiously undefined category, which was

competing against six constitutionally-defined national or religious categories, six “national

minorities” and over ten other recognized ethnic groups. As a rough indicator of what

political collectivity citizens directed their allegiance to, this census data is potentially a

valuable way to “trace” Serbian nationalism and its rivals. [See Appendix #1 for a visual

representation of this data.]

Table 1.1. Self-declared “Yugoslavs” in Republics and Regions: Numbers 42

Republic or Region 1961 1971 1981 1991
Bosnia-Herzegovina 275,883 43,796 326,316 239,845
Montenegro 1,559 10,943 31,243 25,854
Croatia 15,559 84,118 379,057 104,728
Macedonia 1,260 3,652 14,225 n/a
Slovenia 2,784 6,744 26,263 12,237
Serbia (total) 20,079 123,824 441,941 317,739
Central Serbia 11,699 75,976 272,050 145,810
Vojvodina 3,174 46,928 167,215 168,859
Kosovo & Metohija 5,206 920 2,676 3,070
SFR of Yugoslavia 317,124 273,077 1,219,045 n/a [1,018,142 w/o Macedonians]

Table 1.2. Self-declared “Yugoslavs” in Republic and Regions: Percentages

Republic or Region Percentage Share of “Yugoslavs” in Total Population

1961 1971 1981 1991

Bosnia-Herzegovina 8.4 1.2 7.9 5.5
Montenegro 3.3 2.0 5.3 4.2
Croatia 0.4 1.9 8.2 2.2
Macedonia 0.1 0.2 0.7 n/a
Slovenia 0.1 0.4 1.4 0.6
Serbia (total) 0.3 1.5 4.7 3.2
Central Serbia 0.2 1.4 4.8 2.5
Vojvodina 0.2 2.4 8.2 8.4
Kosovo & Metohija 0.5 0.1 0.2 0.2
SFR of Yugoslavia 1.7 1.3 5.4 n/a

Republic Percentage distribution of “Yugoslavs”

1961 1971 1981 1991

Bosnia-Herzegovina 87.0 16.0 26.8 23.56

42
Both tables are drawn from 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991 censuses. The rapid decline in the number of persons declaring
themselves Yugoslavs from the 1961 to 1971 is due to the fact that “Muslim” was offered as a novel category in the 1971
census for the first time. This explains why Bosnia-Herzegovina, with its sizable Muslim population, saw the most abrupt
drop in Yugoslavs in this period. Additional summaries of the census data in the discussion below are drawn from Spasovski
et al. 1995.

30
Montenegro 0.5 4.0 2.6 2.54
Croatia 4.9 30.8 31.1 10.29
Macedonia 0.4 1.3 1.2 n/a
Slovenia 0.9 2.5 2.1 1.20
Serbia 6.3 45.4 36.2 62.42
SFR of Yugoslavia 100.0 100.0 100.0 ~ 98.5 (100.0 w/o
Macedonia)

Firstly, it is interesting that the most rapid increase in Yugoslavs occurred in the

Republic of Serbia itself. Over 420,000 citizens of the republic abandoned their previous

identity categories (mostly “Serb”) in just twenty years (1961-1981). Despite a significant

drop of the percentage share of Yugoslavs in the total population in Kosovo and the vastly

superior natural growth rate of Muslims in all the republics, this percentage share rose in the

Republic of Serbia from 0.3% in 1961 to 3.2% in 1991. This is largely due to the astounding

increase in Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern region: the share of Yugoslavs rapidly rose from

0.2% to 8.4% in forty years. In 1961, only 3,174 Yugoslavs in Vojvodina called themselves

that; by 1981, the number had climbed to over 167,000, a 53-fold increase. Ignoring for the

moment natural growth rates and migration patterns (relatively stable anyway), this means 22

newly-declared Yugoslavs on average were being “made” every day for twenty years. What

is more, Vojvodina saw the continuation of this growth in Yugoslavs into the 1991 census,

unlike the Republic of Serbia as a whole, which saw a slight decline from 1981. This

suggests that, whatever complex set of forces it was that discouraged nationalist self-

identification and advanced the more collectivist “Yugoslavism,” it appeared to be

significantly more effective in Serbia than in the other republics, if not most effective.

Secondly, of all those who declared themselves Yugoslavs in 1971, 45.4% lived in

Serbia, 30.8% in Croatia, and 16.0% in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latter two percentages are,

furthermore, in large parts reflecting the Serbian minorities in those republics. In Bosnia-

Herzegovina, for instance, 43,796 Yugoslavs in 1971 grew to 326,316 in 1981 (from 1.2% to

31
7.9% of the total population), but this was correlated to an equally sharp decline of declared

Serbs in the republic, suggesting that even Serbs outside Serbia tended to “become”

Yugoslavs disproportionately to other nationalities. By 1991, a remarkable 62.42% of all

Yugoslavs were accounted for in Serbia alone (up from 36.2% since 1981, and an almost

tenfold increase since 1961). In the total increase of 949,947 persons that declared

themselves Yugoslavs in the entire communist state from 1971-1981, it is estimated that

890,730 or 93.8% were individuals who changed categories between the two censuses; out of

these “converts,” as many as 60.3% came from the Serbian population. Dušan Biladžić

illustrated the difference as follows: "If you wake an average Serb from Croatia up in the

middle of the night and ask him what his national state is, he will say `Yugoslavia.' If you

wake a Croat up and ask him the same, he will say `Croatia.'" 43

The reasons for going from Serb to Yugoslav were apparently varied, and certainly

anything but straightforward. In the case of Croatia, some analysts have suggested that the

increase in Yugoslavs from 84,118 to 379,057 (from 1.9% of Croatian citizens in 1971 to

8.2% in 1981) consisted largely of Serbs “induced by the nationalist movement of the Croats

in the 1970s to temporarily deny their ethnic identity by declaring themselves as

Yugoslavs.” 44 A perceived nationalist competitor, in other words, apparently led Serbs to opt

for a sort of assimilation – a declaration of allegiance to the most general collectivity to

alleviate differences within it. This suggests that minority nationalities within a republic will

tend to “hide” their minority status by identifying with a social group that transcends both

nationalities and these republics. Furthermore, the data suggests a flipside to that coin: clear

national majorities are less likely to call themselves “Yugoslavs” and more likely to affirm a

43
Biladžić 1993, 119.
44
Spasovski et al. 1995.

32
nationalist category. In the 1981-1991 period, declines in Yugoslavs within the Republic of

Serbia were recorded in homogenous Central Serbia, but not in the diverse and

heterogeneous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina; in the latter two cases, non-Serbs tended

to declare themselves “Yugoslavs” more than Serbs did. Members of the minority Albanian

and Hungarian communities were more likely to be “Yugoslavs,” while Serbs constituting

decisive majorities were less so. Why “hide” behind the Yugoslav category if you’ve got no-

one to hide from? If one’s national identity is in the majority, one might as well affirm it.

Notwithstanding this reasoning, other apparent motives for adopting a Yugoslav

identity seem to contradict such explanations. Namely, the general drop in Yugoslavs in all

the republics from 1981-1991 (excluding Macedonia, for which data is unavailable) is widely

believed to be a direct result of heightened ethnic and religious tensions, for majorities and

minorities alike. Primarily in Croatia and Slovenia, but also in Serbia, people who had been

“Yugoslavs” retracted to their “original” identities in response to perceived conflicts with the

rivals of such identities. Far from assimilating, minorities (Serbs in Croatia, Albanians in

Kosovo, and every nationality in Bosnia-Herzegovina) seem to affirm their nationality in

response to rising tensions with hostile majorities in their republics. The striking differences

in growth rates of “Yugoslavs” between the decade of 1971-1981 and 1981-1991 is, to be

sure, largely a result simply of Tito’s death, the symbolic discrediting of the Yugoslav idea, a

loosening of single-party directives for suppression of nationalism and the like. A national

minority feeling outnumbered and threatened by another nationality could no longer express

loyalty to a broader collective called “Yugoslavia,” for such a collective was looking

increasingly politically unstable, economically weak, and militarily incapable of protecting

minorities if hell were to break loose. Nevertheless, it remains remarkable that tens of

33
thousands of Serbs apparently changed their identities twice in twenty years for incoherent

reasons. Large numbers of Serbs from Dalmatia and Slavonija, for instance, seem to have

passionately turned “Yugoslav” in 1981 in response to increasingly bitter relations with their

Croatian co-citizens and yet, come 1991, seem to have metamorphosed back into proud

“Serbs” in response to even greater tensions with Croatian nationalism in the area.

A more localized picture of the distribution of nationalities can perhaps explain this

paradox. Usefully, Appendix #1 shows subtleties according to ethnic settlements within

republics and provinces, which the census data above ignores. The existence of peaceful

multinational coexistence – as reflected in numbers of mixed marriages, multi-ethnic schools,

heterogeneous workplaces and the like – are not evenly distributed within provinces or

republics. These maps show that, almost without exception, the rise of nationalist identity is

negatively correlated with peaceful ethnic mixing in a given territory. In other words, the

more tense ethnic relations were in a given territory in a given decade, the less likely citizens

are to affirm their Yugoslav-ness. Hence the maps show that self-proclaimed “Yugoslav”

Serbs in the Republic of Serbia were mostly on the frontier areas of south-eastern Serbia

towards Bulgaria, parts of Vojvodina with homogenous Hungarian communities, and other

areas of contact with populations with whom Serbs have had historically high levels of ethnic

tolerance. While Bulgarian and Hungarian nationalisms were practically nonexistent in the

decades leading up to 1981, the Albanian nationalist movement was in full swing and had

already generated Serbian-Albanian violence in Kosovo in the early 1970s. Accordingly, the

number of Yugoslavs in the Serb-Albanian contact zones was miniscule, as it was in areas of

the Republic of Serbia with Muslim constituencies. Historical contextualization is therefore

essential, along with sensitivity to localized differences – i.e. an acknowledgment of the

34
variance among Serbs within the same province or republic, let alone between those from

differing ones.

A provisional but noteworthy conclusion can be drawn about Serbian national

identity from these data. Throughout the latter half of the XX century, Serbs appear to have

an especially strong investment in Yugoslav identity – they adopt it more in relative and

absolute terms from other nationalities, tend to adopt it in areas of mixed nationalities more

than comparable populations in such areas, and are less likely to abandon it in return to

“original” identity in the face of perceived threats from rival nationalities.45 Insofar as

numbers of declared Yugoslavs indicate the presence of multiple identities and the absence

of nationalism, a striking segment not only of Serbs but Yugoslav citizens in general

remained nominally anti-nationalist by 1991. To take the example of a republic that was said

to have the highest rate of inter-ethnic marriage in all of Europe: even as nationalism began

looming in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as many as 326,000 citizens refused to declare themselves

as one or another nationality or religion, remaining simply Yugoslavs in 1981. A decade

later, when nationalism had turned into outright violence and massacre along ethnic lines, the

number still remained as high as 239,845.

Nevertheless, these census responses alone tell very little about the development of

nationalist or, in fact, any political belief; declaring one’s nationality can be a personal,

cultural and perhaps even arbitrary choice, irrelevant of political views or perceptions of

differences between nationalities. Appendix #1 shows that declared Yugoslavs in general

were mostly concentrated in urban areas, perhaps suggesting that they have above-average

45
This strong Serbian attachment to Yugoslav-ness was also reflected in a separate public opinion poll that reported that (at
the height of conflict in 1992-1993) slightly more Serbs favored a united Yugoslavia than a purely Serbian state: 34%
reportedly favored the old Yugoslav arrangement with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia in a single
state while about 31 percent favored a “Union of Serbian lands.” Needless to say, not a single other nationality even came
close to favoring the preservation of Yugoslavia. Cited in footnote #7 of Simić 1997.

35
educational levels and social statuses, leaving them unrepresentative of the core mass

constituencies of the nationalist movements that tore Yugoslavia apart. Even more

importantly, the data leave us speculating about the potential nationalist interpretations and

meanings attached to Yugoslav identity. Large numbers of Serbs may have sworn their

loyalty to Yugoslavia under the assumption of “Serbian hegemony” within it, not as a

benevolent expression of multi-ethnic tolerance. Indeed, as nationalists of all sides have

argued, “Yugoslavism” might be a façade for nationalist dominance of one group over

another. To approach these issues, we must look to another set of indicators of Serbian

nationalism that identify specific values and political beliefs.

Values and Voting

Investigating what was in the heads of ordinary Serbs in the early 1990s is no easy

task. State propaganda dominated media outlets, making content analysis of television and

most newspapers highly unrepresentative. Even after the introduction of multi-party elections

in 1990, the legacy of the Titoist single-party system was enormous, with the state silencing a

vast majority of the population and allowing public visibility or voice only to a faithful

minority that met the criterion of “moral-political aptitude.” 46 Prior to the establishment of

Belgrade’s Strategic Marketing agency in the mid-1990s, no private agencies measuring

nationalism or national issues in public opinion methodically even existed, and the notion of

impartial political surveys was largely unheard of. What I rely on here, therefore, is one of

the few available windows into the role of nationalism in Serbian public opinion in 1990-

1992: the archives of the Center for Political Studies and Public Opinion Research (Centar za

46
Moralno-Politička podobnost was the prerequisite not only for all those associated with the Union of Communists of
Yugoslavia (SKJ), but for everyone from janitors to university professors. A rigorous filtering process left all those deemed
“morally-politically inept” completely outside the public arena at best and imprisoned for counter-revolutionary activity at
worst.

36
politikološka istraživanja i javno mnjenje, CPIJM), an association of the Belgrade-based

Social Science Institute (Institut društvenih nauka). It conducted two national public opinion

surveys in 1990 and 1992, one regional public opinion survey for Serbia in 1992, and two

pre-electoral regional public surveys in 1990-1991 and in 1992 (with three survey “waves”

each). In addition, CPIJM published a volume on the “Cross Cultural Analysis of Values and

Political Economy Issues, 1990-1993” in which several chapters deal with Yugoslavia and

Serbia specifically. 47 Finally, I rely on second-hand analysis of CPIJM data conducted by

two scholars investigating components of Serbian “political culture” and its relation to

support for political parties. This work not only reproduces otherwise unavailable CPIJM

findings, but also produces its own valuable statistics drawing on supplementary sources on

electoral preferences and independent surveys. 48 Like Churchill’s democracy, this indirect

approach to measuring nationalism is the worst possible aside from all its alternatives.

Most generally, a “value crisis” appears to have swept Yugoslav society by 1990 – in

the words of political scientist Ljiljana Baćević, “a moral vacuum, anomy and conflict of

values” that “left deep scars on the consciousness of [Yugoslavia’s] citizens.” 49 The

“crisis’s” central feature was widespread abandonment of purported Communist values and

those associated with state socialist ideology. From 1981 to 1991, the number of people

expressing favorable views of self-management – the prided model of Yugoslavia’s

independent socialist experiment – dropped by more than half. Over 90% of the population

had favored the policy of nonalignment; barely 25% did so in 1991. The popularity of social

ownership over other types of property distribution, which had stood at an indoctrinated

65%, plummeted to less than 10%, with more than half the population in favor of a market

47
Voich and Stepina 1994, 119-197.
48
Pantić and Pavlović 2006, 120.
49
Voich and Stepina 1994, 120.

37
economy. 50 Aside from a merely ideological or philosophical disturbance, this value crisis

had colossal implications for identity. An entire system of indications and reasons for who

“we” are, who “we” can be, why “we” belong to one collectivity as opposed to another, how

“they” can be our “brothers” despite differing dialects, religions, etc., simply collapsed. Like

all abrupt disappearances of an identity and its accompanying values, this one needed

replacement. In a comment highly applicable to the discussion of census data above,

Baćević wrote that:

These trends [of abandonment of professed communist/state

socialist ideals and towards a value crisis] are reflected in
phenomena such as the retreat into privacy, a return to religion,
ethnocentrism, cynicism, and an external loss of control. In the
general breakdown of value systems and the resulting
confusion, identification with traditional social groups and
institutions is a logical reaction. This takes the form of a
socalled [sic] ‘return’ to national concerns and religion, which
are depicted and regarded as a refuge and salvation from the
social and individual crisis.

How likely this “return” is varies, we saw earlier, with the levels of perceived insecurity and

potential for violence along national lines in the environment of the constituency in question.

Few things can generate the kind of “confusion,” “loss of control” and “crisis” that

intensified ethnic violence can, and few settings are better for a transformation of values than

a community under (real or imagined) threat. But what are the values in question?

An extensive survey of value priorities was carried out in May-June 1990 on a

representative sample of 18+ year-olds in all republics and provinces. Although the research

was designed to create an index of so-called “materialist” vs. “post-materialist” values,

certain elements of the survey can be selected for our purposes here. From data for the

50
Voich and Stepina 1994, 121.

38
broader Yugoslav public, the following can be extrapolated for Serbs according to provinces

and republics:

Table 1.3. Value Priorities of Serbs in 1990

Goals Serbia Bosnia Croatia Kosovo Vojvodina Others TOTAL
Economic growth 46 51 67 16 47 29 47
Strong state 34 33 15 59 42 40 34
More respect for 12 12 10 16 7 16 11
will of the people
Make cities, 4 2 1 3 2 13 3
countryside cleaner
and more beautiful
Maintaining order 49 61 60 29 55 53 52
Give people more 15 12 15 22 10 16 14
say in government
Fight rising prices 22 18 15 22 24 18 21
Protect free speech 10 3 1 19 8 11 8
Note: Within each of the two sets of four goals, respondents were asked to make two ranked choices.
Figures shown represent the percentage choosing the given goal as first in importance. “Undecided” and
“don’t know” were omitted.
Source: Vasović 1994.

The Kosovo Serbs immediately leap to our attention, with a record 59% prioritizing a “strong

state.” With high levels of perceived insecurity – from actual Albanian pressure or otherwise

– and significant emigration rates into Serbia proper, Kosovo Serbs apparently embraced the

prospects of a firm government hand to protect them against the separatist majority. It is also

safe to assume that the heightened emphasis on giving people “more say in government” did

not refer to the Albanians. These southern Serbs also stressed “freedom of speech,” reflecting

widespread sentiment that Serbs in Kosovo were not being heard or paid any mind from their

supposed protectors in Belgrade (a state of affairs Slobodan Milošević was to remedy to

fantastic political advantage). Interestingly, the other two major areas where Serbs are a

minority – Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia – prioritized a “strong state” far less frequently

than their co-nationals in Kosovo. Granted, the minority status of Serbs in Bosnia-

Herzegovina and Croatia was far less extreme, but the escalation of violence had already

become enormous in these areas at the time of the survey (Serbs in Croatia were already

39
calling for autonomy and refusing to recognize the newly-elected nationalists). Instead of

opting for a “strong state,” these Serb minorities favored “maintaining order” at roughly 60%

each. The discrepancy is perhaps understandable because, intense as violent incidents could

get in Kosovo, the prospects of outright military confrontation with Albanians were not

immediate. Serbian forces effectively suppressed rioting and, more often than not, managed

to reinstall general public order. The exodus of Serbs from Kosovo was, technically

speaking, voluntary or “unforced” migration, induced by intimidation and violence, but

involving a significant space for choice. 51 In contrast, the fleeing of Serbs from eastern

Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time was, quite literally, “forced” migration,

sometimes chosen at gunpoint for lack of alternatives. Thus, Serbs faced with the prospects

of immediate civil war (perceived rightly or wrongly) tended to prioritize “maintaining

order” instead of “a strong state,” perhaps associating the latter with their hostile home

republics as opposed to the state of Yugoslavia or even Serbia. The insecurity associated with

being a minority in general, however, did highly correlate with the perceived need for order

or a strong state as opposed to luxuries like “free speech” (only 1% and 3% in Croatia and

Bosnia-Herzegovina, respectively) or advancing the “beauty” of cities (ranging from 1-3%).

Economic issues, furthermore, are mostly on the minds of Serbs in peaceful areas and

where they are comfortable majorities. Serbia proper and Vojvodina have the highest rates of

Serbs concerned about rising prices. Like Kosovo, these areas were suffering the economic

crunch of the 1980s most severely and significantly more than Croatian and Bosnian citizens,

as is reflected in Table 1.3. Croatia is peculiar, however, in having the greatest share of Serbs

voting overwhelmingly for a “strong economy” as the top priority (67%) – unlike Bosnian

51
For an interesting discussion of the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the term “forced” in the rubric of “forced migrations,”
albeit in a different context, see Brubaker 2001.

40
Serbs, they even prioritize this over “maintaining order,” despite comparable ethnic tensions.

In this regard, Croatian Serbs are in agreement with Croatian citizens in general. In Kosovo,

and Macedonia, Slovenia and elsewhere (“Others”), however, the Serbian minority gives

little attention to economic issues. Although “economic growth” is a strong second priority in

Vojvodina, for Serbs in Serbia and for all Serbs in general, a “strong state” remains perceived

as more urgent.

For our purposes, it may be useful to categorize the goals of Table 1.3 into two

approximate poles: those value priorities conducive to Serbian nationalism and those

unfavorable to Serbian nationalism, as defined here. In the first category, we may include

those goals that seem to meet the desire for unity, stability, strength and protection against

perceived threats (“strong state” and “maintaining order”). In the second category, we may

include those goals pertaining to a higher living standard, political liberties, civic rights,

economic issues and development (“economic growth,” “cleaner and more beautiful

countryside, cities,” “fight rising prices,” “free speech,”). [Due to the ambiguous

interpretations of “more respect for will of the people” and “more say in government” –

especially in Kosovo – I exclude this goal from either category.] This opposition is not only

sketched in accordance with the particularly authoritarian and statist dimensions of Serbian

nationalism, but also reflects the basic dichotomy represented in parliamentary elections by

two general party “blocks.” The dichotomy can give us at least a rough estimate of the extent

of those values that were most compatible with (or vulnerable to appropriation by) nationalist

mobilization along lines of Serbian-ness.

Values conducive to nationalism were strong, but not absolutely dominant. Recall

that respondents were asked to name the favorite value priority within each cluster of four

41
choices. Values conducive to nationalism indeed received either most or second-most

preferences in both clusters; however, Serbs in general (“total”) and those from Serbia,

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Vojvodina specifically all voted for a value unfavorable to

nationalism (i.e. economic growth) in the first cluster. In other words, only most Serbs from

Kosovo and “other” places prioritized a value conducive to nationalism, and even these

populations opted for “non-nationalist” priorities as a strong second-place preference. In the

second cluster, most chose a “nationalist value,” with 52% of all Serbs calling for “order” –

more than those calling for all the other options combined. However, the range of alternatives

in this category should be scrutinized. Particularly, “fighting rising prices” is far narrower

than the more general “economic growth” in the first category that attracted so much interest.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and especially “others” (which includes prosperous Slovenia)

were settings where Serbs were not particularly scarred by rising prices (like those hitting

Kosovo, for instance), but were surely concerned with wages, unemployment, pensions and

other aspects of “economic growth.” Therefore, the lack of a more general priority covering

these concerns probably boosted the nationalist-friendly “maintaining order” value. The first

category suggests that, if a worthy “non-nationalist” value was offered in the second cluster,

the “nationalist” value that more than half of all Serbs prioritized might have seen a relative

drop. In conclusion, value priorities conducive to nationalism were strong (though not

absolute) and their dominance was conditional on the absence of a viable alternative,

particularly one relating to economic growth and stability. 52

The real question, of course, is how these values “translate” into collective action and

mobilization. Electoral preferences are the most immediate and testable reflections of this

52
This connects to a more general thesis that has argued that nationalist mobilization was not exclusively or even primarily
based on appeals to ethnicity. See: Ganon 1994.

42
translation. Serbia held its second multi-party elections since World War II in December of

1992, with roughly 5 million voters (or 70% of the electorate) conveying their values to the

ballot. The tension detected above – between economic issues, political liberties and

concerns about standards of living on the one hand, and a strong state, protection from

violence, and order on the other – was confirmed in a CPIJM survey of values of supporters

of the major political parties in 1992. The general split of the party scene into two blocks (the

so-called democratic oppositional one and the ruling communist-nationalist one) largely

reflected this tension.

Table 1.4. Values of Serbs According to Support for Political Parties in 1992
Socialist Serbian Democratic Serbian Nationalist- Democratic
53 Party of Radical Democratic Party of Renewal Communist Opposition
Value Serbia Party Party (DS) Serbia Movement Block Block
(SPS) (SRS) (DSS)* (SPO)* (Average) (Average)
Modernism 13 9 67 73 53 11 64.3
Liberalism 17 32 78 71 70 24.5 73
Tolerance 3 7 30 58 35 5 41
Xenophobia 85 92 59 54 59 88.5 57.3
Mandates 101 73 6 50
% of Votes 28.8 22.6 4.2 16.9
Note: Non-bold figures show percentages of respondents endorsing the given value.
* Part of opposition grouping Serbian Democratic Movement (DEPOS), along with another small party;
number of mandates won is the total for DEPOS.
Source: CPIJM

As two analysts of these and similar data have pointed out, the crucial divide is between SPS

and SRS on one side and the other three parties on another.54 Followers of the SPS-SRS

expressed highest levels of xenophobia and lowest levels of tolerance, clear indicators of

“vulnerability” to nationalist mobilization and aversions to pro-Western, reformist and liberal

party platforms. DS and DSS followers were in the majority committed to modernism as

opposed to traditionalism and liberalism as opposed to conservatism or communism. SPO,

53
An elaboration of the index of the value categories is available in the CPIJM study itself, though elaboration here is not
necessary, as the categories are defined rather commonsensically. Detailed analysis of this table can be found in Pantić and
Pavlović 2006.
54
Ibid, 53-56.

43
though markedly more nationalistic in its platform, has followers with values closer to

DS/DSS than the ruling parties. The high levels of xenophobia in the opposition parties is

somewhat surprising, but longer-term trend studies have shown that this is a “non-intensive,

reactive and fleeting phenomenon” which is largely due to the pressures of the ongoing war

in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time. 55 Though the levels of tolerance for the DS and SPO are

not as admirable as they might be, they are in fact above-average compared to the population

at large: CPIJM found an average of only 22% of adult Serbs endorsing tolerance, with 53%

displaying intolerance in 1992. The single-digit tolerance levels of the victorious parties

suggest, therefore, that those who voted for the ruling parties are very unrepresentative of the

entire population on the question of tolerance. Furthermore, those voting for the democratic

opposition are above-averagely tolerant, especially DSS supporters. In general, the

democratic opposition is significantly less attractive to voters with nationalist values than the

ruling parties are, but considerable nationalist potential remains in the high levels of

xenophobia (over half of all the supporters of the opposition). Simultaneously, however, the

democratic block endorsed the anti-nationalist values of modernism and liberalism,

conducive to democratic and reformist goals. On average, 57.3% of supporters of the

democratic opposition expressed xenophobia, but 73% and 64.3% of them also expressed

values of modernism and liberalism. The supporters of the ruling parties have, we may say, a

more coherent value system, susceptible to authoritarianism and nationalist perspectives of

non-Serbs.

This incoherence of values among voters of the democratic opposition immediately

suggests that the latter failed to present a coherent political message that would attract the

primary concerns of the public. As we saw above, economic and nationalist issues can each
55
Pantić and Pavlović 2006, 53-56.

44
become a priority over the other depending on what exact alternatives are offered and how

they are balanced. To compare the success of each block in doing so, we may look at the

expectations of voters in the presidential election of the same year as compared to perceived

priorities. A fascinating aspect of the 1992 presidential elections is the triumph of nationalist

parties despite the Serbian electorate’s relatively low concern for nationalist priorities.

Studies have found that the two political parties that again won the most votes (SPS and

SRS) emphasized the “Serbian national question” notably more than all their rivals through

media campaigns, rallies and other activities preceding the elections. 56 Yet, a CPIJM survey

conducted before the election found that this question was, for most voters, at the bottom of

the list of perceived major challenges facing Serbian society (with an end to the ongoing war

and the republic’s economic crises being on the top). A study of the causal relationship

between Serbian media and parliamentary election results found that all parties had

essentially dedicated equal attention to economic questions in their media messages, with the

Democratic Party (DS) even dedicating slightly more than the rest. What is more, the ability

of the democratic opposition to meet all of Serbia’s major problems was perceived as greater

than that of the ruling communists, with only one exception: the nationalist problem.

Table 1.5. Perceived Competence of Two Candidates to Meet Challenges facing Serbia in 1992
Perceived Major Challenge Facing Perceived “competence” of Perceived “competence” of
Serbian Society (in descending Milan Panić Slobodan Milošević
order of priority) For Entire (leader of democratic (communist leader) to meet the
Electorate opposition) to meet the challenge challenge
Economic crisis 53% 26%
Economic sanctions 53% 27%
Ending the war 40% 30%
Developing democracy 43% 31%
Serbian national question 26% 51%
Votes 32.11% 53.24%
Votes from entire electorate 22.38% 37.12%
Source: CPIJM.

56
Milivojević 1994. Milivojević i Matić 1993.

45
The enormous trust in Milan Panić notwithstanding, Slobodan Milošević and his SPS won a

decisive victory. Serbs voted, therefore, against a candidate that they believed was most

competent to deal with all the issues they prioritized as most important; and they elected a

candidate that they deemed incompetent to deal with all the important issues except the low-

ranked “Serbian national question.” How could nationalism – a fifth-rated concern – trump

the otherwise oppositional sentiment and bring Milošević to power? The unavoidable

explanation is the war that was raging. The nationalist-communist parties were alone in

offering a coherent, forceful message against the persecution of non-Serbian Serbs and in

credibly promising them protection and military victory. The violent conflict, Baćević

explains, was “politicized and ideologized by SRS and SPS as the Serbian national and state

question and presented to voters in that meaning as the key element of [these parties’]

electoral agenda.” 57 In other words, the war and its accompanying economic pressures were

successfully represented in the framework of Serbian nationalism – a task that the losing

oppositional parties never attempted. It seems unlikely, however, that nationalism itself (as

defined above) motivated voters; rather, a basic fear of the war’s effects on Serbia itself

seems to have been primary. The opposition’s failure, it would seem, was to deal with the

incoherence of its supporters’ values (and Serbs at large) – it failed to integrate the issues that

the public cares about most into a system of values that promises authority and protection in

a time of war. The party and candidate who did precisely this, on the other hand, happen to

be nationalist ones. In other words, perhaps the nationalist parliamentary victory is not as

representative of popular Serbian nationalism as many have taken it to be; it may simply be

the result of a frightened, economically pressured and war-stricken population turning to the

only political option offering unity and strength, nationalist or otherwise.

57
Baćević 1996, 67.

46
 In conclusion, the relation of values and voting among Serbs was complicated in the

early 1990s. Large parts of the Serbian population held apparently contradictory values, with

a majority of them holding values conducive to nationalist mobilization but prioritizing

economic questions, the pressures of the war and even democratic development over “the

Serbian nationalist question.” It appears that the triumph of nationalist forces in the ballots

was partially a result of the failure of the opposition to take advantage of the superior

confidence in its competence that it enjoyed. The pressures of war, not nationalism itself,

seem to account for Serbs’ turning to Milošević’s nationalist party despite their relative

distrust of its competence. Furthermore, as Table 1.5 shows, the tendency of pro-nationalist

Serbs to vote is greater than the tendency of opposition supporters to do so (many of whom

abstained, giving Milošević an advantage over Panić that is unrepresentative of Serbs as a

whole). Finally, there is somewhat of a gap between average Serbian values and the values of

supporters of the regime (tolerance levels, for instance). This may also be reflected in the

way nationalist priorities appear to “hijack” electoral preferences, even as other prioritizes

are given more weight and greater trust is given to non-nationalists. Before we turn to the

historical events that facilitated this seemingly irrational turn to nationalism, I will consider

one more indicator of whether or not values conducive to nationalism translate into collective

action. Although voting is an important reflection of values, ultimately the only interesting

indicator of nationalism is the act of participation in organized violence.

Military Mobilization and Resistance

The prided Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) was a particularly noteworthy

institutional symbol of “brotherhood and unity.” Military service was mandatory for young

men, who were (as a custom) almost never assigned to their own republics for their terms,

47
making service formative experience in multi-ethnic cooperation and bonding. The army’s

composition roughly reflected the overall ethnic distribution: even as late as the summer of

1991, the entire army (recruits, officers and civilians) was 32.9% Serb, 17.5% Croat, 13.4%

Muslim, 10.4% Albanian, 9.7% Yugoslav, 6.9% Macedonian, 5.4% Slovenian, 1.3%

Hungarian, etc. 58 The ten most important positions in the Ministry of Defense, the military

district commands, the Air Force and the Navy were held by one Yugoslav (Veljko

Kadijević, famously a son of a Serb father and Croatian mother), three Serbs, two Croats,

two Slovenes, and two Macedonians. 38% of the High Command consisted of Croats, 33%

of Serbs and 8.3% of Slovenes. Heroically defending the country against potential Cold War

threats and still glowing from its World War II victories, the JNA enjoyed substantial respect

and popularity.

With the collapse of the one-party system, however, the institution was left without a

system to defend; what is worse, with the collapse of the Soviet empire, it was left without an

enemy to defend the system from. As anti-federalist forces arose in most of the republics, the

army sought a new source of legitimacy. “One obvious course of legitimation,” Lenard J.

Cohen noted, “was to focus the military’s attention upon perceived internal threats to state

unity.” 59 Not unlike the identity crisis of ordinary Yugoslavs, the JNA was forced to

reinterpret itself vis-à-vis the national separatist movements that are abandoning traditional

rationales for unity. By the early 1990s, a new raison d’être for the military establishment

took shape: to crush subversive elements within the federation and to protect a unified,

cohesive Yugoslavia. In the wake of elections, the JNA disarmed the territorial defense

forces of Slovenia and Croatia. By November of 1990, it effectively became an extension of

58
Stojanović 1997, 105.
59
Cohen 1995, 183. Emphasis in original.

48
Milošević’s power through the formation of a new League of Communists – the Movement

for Yugoslavia (Savez Komunista – Pokret za Jugoslaviju, SKPJ). On May 9th 1991, the

federal presidency gave the newly-named Yugoslav Army (YA) the order to halt “ethnic

violence” within Yugoslavia’s borders. 60

Just as Serbs seemed to have a special fondness for the “Yugoslav” category, they

had several reasons to be similarly invested in the JNA more than other nationalities. Firstly,

when it came to officers, they were dominant at 54.3% with an additional 9.6% of Yugoslavs

who were “originally” Serbs. Secondly, the formal constitutional order was on the side of the

Republic of Serbia: secession was illegal, armed resistance to the federation within its

borders constituted terrorism, and the constitution obligated the JNA to protect the

sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. Thirdly, while Croatian and Slovenian

militias (as well as Albanian separatists) were receiving arms and funding from abroad, the

Serbian minorities and their defensive militias would have had nothing without support from

the JNA. And finally, lest it be forgotten, it was the Serbs who had sacrificed most and died

in the greatest numbers in the People’s Liberation Struggle that established Yugoslavia and

its armed forces. An epic tradition of military excellence and courage – as well as the

weighty fact that “the renown of the warrior is greater among Serbs” 61 than it is among the

other south Slavs – made it only logical that they uphold the honorable organization. The

relatively high commitment to the army was duly reflected in a study of public attitudes

toward financing the JNA in mid-1990, which showed that Serbia and Montenegro had the

lowest numbers of people believing the JNA should be receiving “less financial support than

60
What had previously been an exercise in multi-ethnic cooperation soon became an ethnically “pure” system of military
service: at the time of secession in 1991, 93% of Slovene and 77% of Croat recruits were doing their military service on the
territories of Slovenia and Croatia, respectively. Stojanović 1997, 105.
61
Ibid, 106.

49
now” and had the highest numbers of those believing it should be receiving “more than

now.” 62 Though officially defending “socialism” against internal subversive threats, it

became clear to all the republics as well as to the Serbian leadership itself that the actual line

was drawn between the JNA on one side and all the other national military groupings on the

other.

Serbian and Croatian militias jointly declared violations of the truce ceasefire on

August 23rd, 1991 and called for general mobilizations. On October 5th, the Serbian

government called for a full mobilization. Milošević is reported to have said that his only fear

was that there would not be enough uniforms for all the soldiers eagerly waiting to defend

their country. Here was a perfect opportunity for that vast Serbian public that voted

overwhelmingly for parties with nationalist causes to actually fight for them. At the time of

mobilization, 64% of Serbs expressed support for Serbia’s fighting for Krajina and Slavonija,

two Serb-majority areas in Croatia. A solid 24% believed that Serbia should be militarily

redefined to include any territory where ethnic Serbs live. 63 Between one fifth and one forth

of them supported parties calling for “Greater Serbia,” an entity stretching across Bosnia-

Herzegovina and into Croatia. Over half of Serbian electorate voted for leaders in favor of

preventing secession by force. Were these widely expressed values translated into organized

violence when the opportunity came?

To the authorities’ great shock, nothing could have been further from the outcome.

“The regime had a stubborn, mass resistance” to its war policy, Milan Milošević noted – far

“more overwhelming than the marginalized pacifist groupings” that were thought to be the

62
Cohen 1995, 185.
63
Ron 2003, 32; 211.

50
only ones remaining opposed. 64 In September, only 10-25% of the anticipated response rate

was recorded; in December, not even one-fifth of the 100,000 activated reservists were

responsive. In Belgrade, where gross numbers of activated men are highest in the republic,

municipalities recorded responsiveness of 8%. 65 In Kragujevac, a site of famous World War

II massacres and a major center of Serbian national pride, over 6000 men had better things to

do than combat a return of Croatian fascism. 66 A military unit in eastern Slavonija (Croatia)

was expecting an additional five brigades from the mobilization; it received one and a half.

On the strategically-crucial area around Banija and Kordun (where mixed Serbian and

Croatian residents were about to be unmixed), an anticipated four military brigades turned

into only one. In a recent testimony in front of the International Court of Justice, lawyer

Radoslav Stojanović revealed that a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council of Yugoslavia

on September 28th 1991 proclaimed that over 100,000 reservists called up by the

mobilization had not reported for duty. Another 50,000 had left the ranks of the army and

another 40,000 soldiers had defied orders to fight in Croatia. Some 200,000 reservists, in

other words, refused the mobilization order. The ethnic breakdown of the people who had

refused to fight reflected that of Serbia itself: 70% were Serbs and the rest were national

minorities. 67 On top of this, another 150,000 men emigrated to avoid being drafted, while

those who could not afford such a move “opted for internal emigration” and hid with

relatives or friends throughout the country instead. 68 For an army that numbered roughly

150,000 men in all (including tens of thousands of officers), these figures were devastating

and encouraged fear that the Croatian army might outnumber the JNA within months.

64
Milošević 1996, 11.
65
Radović N.d., 42.
66
Žunec 1998; Glenny 1993, 141.
67
Cited in Radoslav Stojanović’s testimony before the International Court of Justice on Friday, March 10, 2006.
68
Sikavica 2000, 142.

51
 Frequent and massive rebellions also shook the army’s plans. Three revolts were

marked in three days in Belgrade in the month of September, including one in the Air Force

and one at the Military-Medical Academy. Forty honorable members of the Guard Brigade in

Belgrade publicly demanded the resignation of Yugoslavia’s Minister of Defense, expressing

fury over the battle in Vukovar, the status of soldiers on the frontlines, invalids, combatants’

families, etc. One soldier from the Vukovar front drove an armored vehicle all the way back

to Belgrade to park it in front of the federal parliament building in protest.69 On July 2nd, a

few hundred mothers of recruits stormed the same building and occupied it for two days,

demanding a retreat from Slovenia. Similar protests of restless relatives would occur again in

Belgrade and Skopje as the war progressed. As upheavals swept Kragujevac, Valjevo,

Arandjelovac, Ada and Senta, the Belgrade newspaper Vreme announced that the situation

had reached the level of “total military disintegration.” 70 In all, it is estimated that over forty

thousand conscripts actively participated in the 1991 rebellions.

Since the regime’s resolute policy was that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia was

officially at war in the first place, general mobilization was difficult to manage. Military

police units would discretely pick up young men early in the morning at their apartments or

sneak up on unsuspecting guests at cafes and clubs late in the night. This miserably failed

recruitment policy was the primary impetus for the reliance on volunteers and para-military

formations, which turned out to be the most brutal and shocking actors of the entire civil war.

Mercenary armies such as the Četniks organized by SRS’s Vojislav Šešelj, the Serbian Guard

organized by SPO’s Vuk Drašković, and the Tigers led by drug dealer and international

criminal Željko Ražnatović “Arkan” were operative both in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

69
Žunec 1998.
70
Sikavica 2000, 151.

52
Though these units’ proud sponsors insist that love of motherland and national loyalty

attracted the bulk of their volunteers, studies have shown otherwise. Like their Croatian and

Bosnian counterparts, these young men were overwhelmingly “recruited from the

underclass” and primarily attracted to the prospects of robbery and pillage with impunity.71

Many did not even care to participate full-time, preferring to enter war areas only on

weekends for a brief looting drive followed by an immediate return to Serbia and

Montenegro – the so-called “weekend volunteers.” From utter poverty, these young men

often came to acquire enormous wealth in the wars, “filling their trucks with the entire

furnishings of homes and apartments and selling their booty on a flourishing black market.” 72

Those from outside Serbia, and especially residents of rural areas, were often involuntary

volunteers, caught in the middle of the fighting and given no choice but to join at the threat

of death or harm to their families. Far from taking the recruits' nationalist credentials for

granted, the unit commanders had to actively instill the proper values: “It was common for

the men of this group,” Stipe Sikavica found, “to be forced to prove their loyalty by

murdering a neighbor of a different national origin.” 73 Although actively involved in major

phases of the war and although constantly rotating, these paramilitaries often numbered less

than 50, commonly were a few hundred strong and rarely ever consisted of more than 1000

volunteers. For all these reasons, these bands do not meaningfully reflect nationalist

sentiment, let alone represent it for the Serbs at large.

In conclusion, when it comes to translating values into actions of organized violence,

Serbian nationalism in this early period did not seem to “walk the walk,” if you will.

Presidents and parliamentary representatives with nationalist credentials were elected,

71
Sikavica 2000, 141.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid, 142.

53
surveys showed support for state violence against separatism, and xenophobic values were

endorsed by a majority, but Serbs were not enthusiastic about risking their lives to themselves

act on these convictions. Military mobilization was a decisively “top-down” phenomenon,

driven by a desperate state encountering both passive and active resistance from its subjects.

Coercion and “forced volunteering” were the primary means of conscription, not abstract

appeals to ethnic identity. Even when interest in active war-making was shown “from

below,” it was more often motivated by profit or personal advantage than by nationalist

conviction. It seems fighting for the glory of the Serbian nation had more to do with being in

the wrong place at the wrong time than with a passionate attachment to Serbian-ness.

54
 CHAPTER 2.
Enemies and their Portrayal in the Media (1990-1992)

In this chapter, I introduce the media as the primary extension of state power that

contributed to the success of nationalist dogma. I then briefly summarize the major perceived

threats and outside forces fueling Serbian nationalism: those from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia

and the US and Europe. For lack of space, I exclude a discussion of the monumental impact

of the Kosovo Albanian challenge, which has been emphasized extensively. 74

The Power of the Media

Nationalist intellectuals and political elites have (rightly) been credited as the

indispensable promoters of nationalist fear and chauvinism in Yugoslavia. Yet the primary

contributor to the mass hysteria and hatred that fed the civil war – without which elites could

not have exerted their agendas over such a large public – was the media. Serbian radio,

television and the press played an essential role in the formation of values and beliefs in the

early 1990s, surely setting a landmark in the history of modern propaganda. As Mark

Thompson and others have amply documented, the Serbian media conducted a spectacular

campaign of manipulation and nationalist mobilization of public opinion. 75 “Unprofessional”

would be an outlandish compliment to give the Yugoslav media in the early 1990s. Detailed

content analysis by a team of Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak scholars has recorded that the

“mobilizing” approach to reporting and journalism mostly overshadowed “informational”

and “explanatory” approaches; that “subjective semantics” strongly overcame impartial and

“objective” ones in reporting; that conflicts were excessively portrayed as being between

national groups or nations as opposed to republics or governments; that antiwar voices and

74
See: Vickers 1998; Bataković N.d.; Jevtić 1995; Krstić 2004.
75
Thompson 1994; Milošević 2000. Skopljanac Brunner et al. 1999. Nikolić 2002, 36-37.

55
critics of state policy were routinely excluded; that news was intentionally directed at a

nationally-homogenized audience; that government sources were uncritically accepted as

factual news without serious questioning; that “the war” had no real competitors (“the

economy,” “ordinary life,” etc.) as the primary and most extensive theme of the press and

television in all the republics involved; that crimes were selectively reported and interpreted

along nationalist lines; and, above all, that an unwavering construction of “the other” national

group was promoted to mobilize for the war effort. Serbian and Croatian media outlets had

especially low regards for truth or objectivity. 76 Every major branch of the Serbian media

was, for all intents and purposes, under complete state censorship and run by officials with

unambiguous commitment to the Serbian nationalist cause. Not only was media control

highly concentrated, but it represented the dominant source of information for most Serbs of

all political orientations, and the level of consumption of state media has been positively

correlated with support for nationalist political parties. 77

Unsurprisingly, content reflected control. A coding of “culprits for the outbreak of the

war” and “interpretations of the reasons for the war” in all the editions of Serbia’s major

daily Politika for an entire year found the following distribution: over half of all articles

burdened “the Croatian side” with the blame for the war (mostly categories of political/state

organs, along with generalizations about Croats as a people or Croatia as a nation); the

Croatian and Slovenian sides combined accounted for over 2/3 of all the blame assigned by

Politika; institutions and officials at the federal level came in third, and the international

community and its main figures accounted for the rest of the blame. Less than 0.07% of all

the articles placed any blame on one of the following: “the Serbian leadership,” “[Serbian-

76
Hodžić 1999; Skopljanac Brunner 1999.
77
Lutovac 2006.

56
dominated] JNA generals,” “Serbia,” “Serbs demanding autonomy in Krajina” and “Serbs.”

In addition, a solid 13.6% accounted for the war with so-called “anthropological reasons,”

which included specific psychological characteristics of some national groups as well as the

“genocidalness” of others. 78 Other media outlets were no more humble. A report from the

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia summarized it well:

All types of public discourse came to bear the stamp of primary

signs, such as violence, passion, hate, wrath, intolerance,
vengefulness, primitivism and madness. […] It was almost
impossible to utter a single public word if it was not in
collusion with raw nationalism. [It was the media’s] national-
chauvinistic discourse of ‘origin and earth’, which prepared the
alibi, provided the pretext and laid the ground for the collective
practice of ethnic cleansing. It aggressively infiltrated the
whole state administration (statist nationalism), all the power
mechanisms and all the modalities of power. It foisted itself
dangerously on a society out of tune with its time and, under its
onslaught, this society went headlong into the abyss. 79

A poignant illustration of the astonishing achievements of such propaganda is the

Serbian public’s ignorance of Serbian crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As Serb forces

conducted intensive bombardment of Sarajevo through May and June 1992, inflicting

numerous civilian casualties through indiscriminate targeting, state-run television found a

creative way to integrate its standard line of Bosnian and Croatian aggression and Serbian

victimhood into reporting on the story. Namely, the event was described in the passive tense

and “using mainly impersonal sentence constructions, such as: ‘Sarajevo was bombarded

again today’, ‘The town was bombarded by this many or that many bombs’” and the like. In

July 1992, a public opinion poll asked a representative sample of Serbs to answer the

question “Who bombarded Sarajevo from the neighboring hills with artillery through May

and June?” No less than 38.4% answered that it was Muslim and Croat forces that did it;

78
Skopljanac Brunner 1999, 207.
79
Nikolić 2002, 36-37.

57
25.5% answered “nobody knows for sure” and a mere 25% answered “Serb forces.” 80 More

generally, several studies have found not only correlation but causality between intensity of

media indoctrination and the collapse of the approval ratings of anti-nationalist Ante

Marković and the political option he represented. 81

The role of “the other,” to repeat, was the very basis of media propaganda.

Nationalism was not promoted with academic discussions of Serbian language, literature or

medieval poetry, nor were reports on events internal to Serbia compelling for the cause.

Indeed, events within Serbia were sometimes devastating to the very agenda that the media

cheerled: the massive March 1991 protests against Milošević brought a 150,000-strong

crowd into the streets, demanding the resignation of the state TV director and denouncing

government control over the media. Even as tanks rolled into Belgrade’s center to pacify the

crowds (killing an eighteen-year-old antiwar protestor), the Serbian media found events

outside Serbia more newsworthy. To understand what it was that propelled Serbian

nationalism, therefore, an analysis of forces from the outside is unavoidable. Content analysis

found that reporting on recent war events and developments constituted most of media

coverage, and that virtually all of the nationalist propaganda relied on “foreign” and non-Serb

constituencies for its crusade.

Therefore, to condense the crucial historical context, I scanned the summaries of all

official daily news reports (Dnevnik) of Radio Televizija Srbija, the national television

network, for the three years of 1990-1992. In addition, I rely on the aforementioned second-

hand content analysis of Politika editions during the same period. Finally, I conducted my

own thematic content analysis of the Vreme weekly newspaper. Vreme was a privately owned

80
Poll by the Medium agency and the Political Science Institute. Cited in Branković 1999.
81
Skopljanac 1999.

58
and independent source with an explicitly antiwar, anti-nationalist orientation. Though weak

within the country, it was a popular source of reliable news for foreign journalists and

analysts; its News Digest Agency (NDA) consisted of international bulletins with articles

specially edited for foreign readers. The NDA archive includes useful raw data, forecasts,

maps, graphs, etc., and opinionated journalism from the period. I have gone through each

weekly NDA edition from October 1990 (from its founding) to December 1992, in order to

highlight the perceived threats that defined this period. I supplement the results with

contemporary historical research when appropriate, and mention post-1992 events if helpful

for a more complete picture. The main forces eliciting Serbian nationalism can be

summarized in four categories: Slovenian nationalism, Croatian nationalism, Bosnian

Muslim nationalism, and the interventionist forces from the US and Europe. 82 All the details

referenced below (including the block quotes from nationalist leaders) were widely-

publicized facts that dominated public discourse; any consumer of Serbian media in the

1990s would have found it very difficult to remain unacquainted with them.

Slovenia

On December 23rd 1991, 86% of Slovenes demanded secession from Yugoslavia. It

was the end of a series of struggles to distance Slovenia from participation in federal state

structures and to have its way by threatening to unilaterally withdraw. The coastal Alpine

republic was under the strong influence of Roman Catholicism and its people maintained

strong cultural ties to the former Austro-Hungarian areas. The Slovenes were the only

Yugoslav people to mostly live within a single, clearly-defined ethnic territory. While only

82
I do not discuss Macedonia’s 1992 secession because its peaceful declaration of independence was largely drowned in the
controversies of the secessions of the other republics. Its influence on Serbian nationalism was, in other words, largely
marginal and secondary.

59
extreme nationalists denied the identicalness of Serbian and Croatian as a unified Serbo-

Croatian, Slovenes spoke and carefully protected an altogether different language,

incomprehensible to most Yugoslavs. Slovenia had not participated significantly in the anti-

fascist resistance and Slovenes were not especially represented or distinguished in the JNA. It

was the most European-oriented part of the region, with extensive economic connections to

the Western private sector. In her massive study of the socialist economy of Yugoslavia since

1945, Susan Woodward argues that – instead of the overemphasized Serbian-Croatian rivalry

– it was the relationship between Serbia and Slovenia that determined crucial aspects of

Yugoslavia’s political stability, and acted as a check on autonomist pressures from Croatia

(which had been successfully overcome in 1967-1971, for instance). “The absence of

confrontation between Slovenia and Serbia,” she writes, “was far more crucial than the

presence of conflict between Serbia and Croatia.” 83 By the 1980s, however, Slovenian

literature, media and civic movements began demanding liberalization and increasing

political freedoms, mocking the Communist party system and its figureheads. The youth

activism surrounding the Mladina journal became so influential in urban centers that the JNA

saw it fit to arrest three Slovene journalists and subject them to an unreasonable trial in a

purported counterinsurgency campaign. The conviction of the three men sparked massive

protests throughout the republic, solidifying Slovenes’ rejection of the Yugoslav political

order in all its forms. 84 Desperate to prevent the first crack in the floodgate of secession,

authorities in Belgrade only increased their repressive policies, and Slovenian aversion to

political obligations to federal institutions only intensified.

83
Woodward 1995, 63.
84
Kenney 2002.

60
 But even more crucial to Slovenian secessionism were economic considerations.

Slovenia had long been more integrated with Western economies than its peer south Slav

republics, and the price of remaining in Yugoslavia steadily began rising. As foreign debt

rose in the 1980s and rigorous IMF packages damaged Yugoslavia’s economy, redistributing

wealth from the more affluent republics to underdeveloped areas where disorder was getting

out of hand (like Kosovo) became an urgent priority. As citizens of the most advanced

republic, Slovenes were thus the primary opponents of centralized economic planning in

Yugoslavia, much of which was directed towards developing the country’s backward

southern areas through the Fund for Underdeveloped Regions. The 1974 constitutional

decentralization ironically enhanced economic rivalry between Serbia and Slovenia instead

of – as the intention was – lightening it. Economic conditions in Serbia steadily deteriorated:

the number of jobless climbed to 1.3 million in 1989 and over 700,000 workers went on

strike to demand back-pay in April of 1991, crippling an already failing economy. Given

Slovenia’s superior industry and massive production of exports, it made little sense to

Slovenes to pick up Yugoslavia’s tab by subsidizing unprofitable factories in southern Serbia

or Macedonia, though that is precisely what Serbia had in mind. Slovenian profits should be

invested, Slovenes increasingly felt, closer to home. By 1989, the Slovene leadership

integrated these demands for economic reform into a framework of “human rights,”

appealing to Western ideals as opposed to socialist policies of egalitarian, distributed

development. “The disagreement over economic reform was,” David Chandler wrote, “re-

presented as a struggle between state sovereignty and human rights” and “greater autonomy

for [this] republic.” 85 Nevertheless, economic growth remained the bottom line: even after

independence was won and sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia during the wars that
85
Hammond and Herman 2000, 21.

61
followed, Slovene firms circumvented the UN embargo by redirecting trade routes to Serbia

through neighboring countries like Hungary, so as not to diminish trade. 86

To Serbs, Slovenia appeared to be leaving the hot potato with Yugoslavia. The 1989-

1990 institution of “shock therapy” measures was hitting Serbia harder than other republics,

especially Slovenia. In the peak of economic prosperity and industrial growth in the 1970s,

Slovenian separatism was restricted to marginal intellectual circles. By the late 1980s,

however, it exploded onto the public scene and became an unavoidable political current in

Serbia itself. 87 Accompanying Slovenian secessionism was the staggering growth of

Yugoslavia’s foreign debt: in 1970, it had been $2 billion; by 1980, it exceeded $20 billion in

a tenfold increase which made Yugoslavia’s foreign debt constitute one fourth of its total

GDP. Instead of rescuing their ill-fated “brothers” as the economy deteriorated, Slovenia’s

government increasingly opted to loosen the confederative arrangement. In 1989, Slovenia

closed its borders and forbade public demonstrations against secession. 88 Slovenian police

forces had been fighting, along with their Serbian and Croatian counterparts, in Kosovo

against Albanian demonstrators and rioters; in February 1990, they withdrew from the

province and renounced any responsibility regarding it. “The Slovenes,” Chandler noted,

began “play[ing] on the Kosovo issue as a way of legitimizing their own position and

weakening federal constraints.” 89 Finally, as if its own secession was not devastating enough,

Slovenia was actively supporting Croatian and Bosnian separatists as well. By the fall of

1991, Slovenia was illegally selling weapons to the Bosnian National Defense Council. 90

86
Ali 2000, 249.
87
Analogously to the notorious 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, a “Slovenian national
program” appeared in January of 1988 in the monthly Nova Revija (New Review). The “national program” offered a scathing
critique of the Slovenian communist leadership and promoted abandonment of Yugoslavia.
88
Woodward 1995, 111-112.
89
Hammond and Herman 2000, 21.
90
Woodward 1995, 279.

62
Eliciting support for Slovenia from countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Austria

often went hand-in-hand with promoting support for anti-Yugoslav elements in Macedonia,

Croatia and even Bosnia-Herzegovina. In all, the Slovenian nationalist challenge rejected the

burdens of being in a federation, set the precedent for others to do so as well, and transferred

previously shared political and economic responsibilities to Belgrade alone.

Nevertheless, Slovenian secession was only a mitigated disaster for Serbia. The ten-

day war for their independence was short and, by comparison to the ones that were to follow,

quite bloodless. Only 2.4% of the republic was Serb, and even they were not particularly

oppressed: in 1992, Slovenia and Macedonia were the only former Yugoslav republics found

to have satisfied standards of respect for minority rights set by the European Commission. A

far more aggressive and formative challenge to Serbian nationalists came from another front.

Croatia

Barely a decade after surveys were pressed to find any noteworthy traces of

nationalism among young Croats and Serbs, not much effort was required to notice it at the

May 1990 gathering of rival football fans from Zagreb and Belgrade. Violent skirmishes

cancelled the “friendly” game, leaving over 100 people injured, but also producing

memorable chants that traveled to television screens in all the six republics: while the hosts

sang “If you’re happy slam the Serb to the floor, if you’re happy butcher him with a knife, if

you’re happy and you know it shout ‘Croatia, independent state,’” their visitors from

Belgrade reminded them that “This is Serbia,” called for “Serbia to Zagreb,” and employed

colorful metaphors to associate “your mothers” to nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman.

Of all the separatist threats, the rise of Croatian nationalism was perhaps the most

painful attack on “Serbian-ness.” Serbs and Croats were decisive majorities in Serbia, Croatia

63
and Bosnia-Herzegovina and together constituted more than all the other nationalities

combined in the entire Yugoslavia. The rivalry of Serbian and Croatian nationalism,

therefore, dominated not only the political and cultural agendas of Serbs and Croats, but

those of Yugoslavia in general. As historian Aleksa Djilas pointed out, although the two

nationalisms were each other’s primary foes, “both ideologies [agreed on] an unfriendly

attitude towards other groups in Yugoslavia” and viewed every kind of pluralism as

threatening. 91 Those pushing for independent Croatia, therefore, were a uniquely serious and

credible obstacle to Serbian nationalism. Although Slovenia and Macedonia posed their own

nationalist challenges, advocates of all-Serbs-in-one-state hardly felt threatened; Croatian

separatism, on the other hand, was fully incompatible with such a vision.

Under Tito, Croatia as well the other republics endured a Communist-imposed silence

on issues deemed divisive or counter-revolutionary, with a primary one being the Croatian-

led genocide of World War II. Everything from literature and art to politics and academia

were strictly stripped of discussions of the inter-ethnic conflicts of the past. The Croatian

fascist ustaša regime had killed at least 300,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma in concentration

camps or villages – many of these victims’ nuclear or extended families were still alive in

1990, as were tens of thousands of Serbian survivors of Croatian death camps. 92 These

constituencies alone could be decisively valuable – if mobilized – to the electoral success and

popularity of leaders calling for “Greater Serbia.” The rise of the Hrvatska Demokratska

Zajednica (HDZ) to power in the 1990 elections, along with some secondary extremist

nationalist parties, aided precisely this purpose and embittered Serbian-Croatian relations

throughout Yugoslavia.

91
Djilas 2005, 10. Translation mine.
92
Hayden 1992.

64
 Led by Milošević’s future partner-in-crime, Franjo Tudjman, the HDZ flirted with the

ideology of ustašluk, glorified Croatia’s role in the Axis powers, and resurrected many

symbols of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) of the Second World War (including its

flag). All street names related to World War II crimes or Serbs were quickly given new

themes; the central “Square of the Victims of Fascism” in Zagreb turned into “the Square of

Croatian Great Ones.” The Yugoslav Dinar was replaced with the ISC-era currency, the

Kuna. When formal fighting began, areas captured by Croatian forces commonly had “U” for

ustaša painted on walls. Tudjman publicly urged ustaša exiles and their descendents to return

from abroad to Croatia, and several original ustaša leaders who did so came to occupy high

positions in Tudjman’s government. 93 As one review of nationalism in the Croatian media

noted, the construction of “a new national identity” was the foremost project; to Serbs, it was

signified best by Tudjman’s careless remarks, such as one that he is “doubly happy” that his

wife is neither a Jew nor a Serb, 94 or the even more famous one referring to the ISC as “a

historical aspiration of the Croatian people.” 95 Similar statements were incessantly carried

over TV and radio discussions of the need for national unity among Serbs, with one local

Serbian TV station even integrating such statements into promotional jingles. Milošević’s

mobilization of Serbs in general, and those from Croatia especially, was based largely on

discontent and fear of a repetition of genocidal World War II policies by “the vampire

ustaše,” as the Serbian Orthodox Church entitled them.

The Croatian government, like their Serbian counterpart, had little patience for

democratic processes or minority rights, with both believing that repressive measures are

necessary to fight fire with fire. “Croatia for Croats” was the electoral platform – Croatia was

93
Nikolić, 41.
94
Hodžić 1999.
95
Ilić 1995, 330.

65
redefined as a state of Croats, excluding other nationals. One of the earliest moves of

Croatia’s new parliament was a revocation of legislative protection of minorities, including

the 39th constitutional amendment which forbade changes to laws concerning minorities

without at least two-thirds majority in parliament. Most administrative positions were

stripped of Serbs, including the media and police department. Employment was ethnically-

discriminating and many Serbs were driven to “voluntary arrests.” 96 A special tax burden

was imposed on Serbs designed to confiscate their property and encourage them to emigrate.

A program of “language purification” was announced to cleanse what used to be known as

Serbo-Croatian of its “Serbisms” so that Croatian may become the official language. 97 Like

in Serbia, media control was under a tight nationalist rope, championing war-mongering and

inter-ethnic hatred. Tudjman’s government issued regular state directives imposing strict

restrictions on reporting (e.g. when Serbs were mentioned, the term “Serbian terrorists” was

mandatory; when the JNA was mentioned, the term “Serbian-communist occupying army”

was necessarily to replace it, etc.). 98 Serbs in Croatia, therefore, were exposed to

considerable provocation and persecution.

The painfulness of this “betrayal” had, among other things, a peculiar ideological

character. Serbs regarded themselves as the pioneers of antifascism in the region. Epic stories

of Serbian Partisan resistance fighters were ubiquitous in theater, literature, poetry, music

and film. Without difficulty, one could find passionate historical explanations of how Hitler’s

downfall is due to his unpredicted, prolonged stay in the Balkans, where underestimated

Serbian fighters struggled courageously to delay his advancement into Russia. Of all the

Balkan peoples, Serbs had sacrificed most lives during this war for a nominally left-wing,

96
Djilas 2005, 14.
97
Bennett 1996, 141.
98
Parenti 2001, 46.

66
egalitarian movement that promised the “brotherhood and unity” that Croats were now

ridiculing. On March 27 1991, tens of thousands gathered in Belgrade's Republic Square to

commemorate the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of the pro-Nazi government. Following

the massive and violent anti-government protests just weeks earlier (during which Milošević

brought tanks onto the streets of Belgrade), this commemoration took a highly oppositional

tone: it denounced the Communist authorities and the state’s monopoly over media.

However, the event also frantically cried out against the return of “fascism” in Croatia and

demanded that Serbia take a more active role in defending its nationals in the recently-

declared Serbian Autonomous District (SAO).

Much of the fear of a return of fascism and genocide was concentrated on Tudjman

himself. Jailed repeatedly for nationalist dissidence, he established himself as a prominent

spokesmen and revisionist academic for the Croatian irredentist cause. His Wastelands of

Historical Reality claimed as late as 1989 that no more than 59,639 people of all

backgrounds could possibly have been killed in World War II concentration camps. Serbs

were, of course, fed the figure of well over one million deaths in Jasenovac alone, making

Tudjman appear an outright fascist in the Serbian public sphere. Well into the conclusion of

the war, Tudjman continued to insist that the Jasenovac memorial be turned into a memorial

for ustaša themselves as well as their victims. 99 His books lacked the strategic moderateness

of some of his dissident colleagues, and his Wastelands of Historical Reality pulled no

punches:

Genocide is a natural phenomenon, in harmony with the societal

and mythologically divine nature. Genocide is not only permitted,
it is also recommended, even commanded by the word of the
Almighty, whenever it is useful for the survival or the restoration

99
Štitkovac 2000, 170.

67
 of the kingdom of the chosen nation, or for the preservation and
spreading of its one and only correct faith. 100

The “chosen nation” in question stretched at least across most areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

and at most into southern and northern Serbia (with almost half of Vojvodina) and parts of

Montenegro. In either case, Serbs were obvious candidates for being swept by the “natural

phenomenon” that was being promised to achieve such a state. The military balance of

forces, of course, made the possibility very unlikely, but the Serbian public (in Croatia

especially) was exposed to media that understandably led it to think otherwise.

A separate dimension, though related, is Croatian Catholicism. Croatian national

mythology painted Croatia as a “bastion of Christianity” resisting Turkish Ottoman takeover

of Europe. Accordingly, Bosnia-Herzegovina in its entirety had been eyed as naturally

Croatian, and large parts of Serbia and Montenegro were interpreted as having “originally”

been populated by Croatian Catholics who were later converted. An opportunity to re-assert

Croatian control over these areas arose in the Second World War, during which German and

Italian occupiers gave control over all these areas to Ante Pavelić’s regime. The Croatian

Catholic Church and the Vatican had actively supported the ustaše and the ISC. Not a single

contemporary Serbian textbook fails to cite the famous remark of an ISC minister, who

described the ways his state will kill a third of Serbs, displace another third and “the rest of

them we shall convert to Catholicism and thus assimilate into Croats.” 101 Fifty-five years

later, an ISC Minister of Internal Affairs facing trial in Zagreb in 1986 defended himself by

stating that everything he and his ustaše did was in accord with the Catholic Church, leaving

his conscience clear. This statement, and similar ones throughout the years, was given

enormous attention by authorities as lessons for secular Communism, though Serbian

100
Tudjman 1990.
101
Nedeljković 1991, xiii.

68
nationalists chose to learn different lessons. After coming to power, the HDZ-led government

made use of the Latin alphabet mandatory in all official documents and proceedings – a

move to curb the use of Serbo-Croatian in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, which was disliked

for its close association to the Serbian Orthodox Church and its history. With no Orthodox

Christian allies to turn to except Russia, and with Catholic Slovenia already independent with

the decisive backing of the Vatican and Austria, the Serbian Orthodox Church perceived an

existential threat to Serbian Christians everywhere. 102

In such a climate, minor, confusing incidents became perfectly legitimate causes for

war. Immediately after the HDZ swept the elections in 1990 (signaling a return to 1941 for

Serbs, who began packing their bags in Knin preparing to flee 103 ), an attack on a twenty-

three-year-old Serb activist from Benkovac was trumpeted as an “ustaša atrocity” throughout

the media, precipitating the declaration of independence of Knin and leading to a Serbian

boycott of Croatia’s new parliament. The newly-formed, all-Croatian army could not have

won the confidence of Serbs or Muslims, even if it had not become involved in violent

incidents since its origins. Dozens upon dozens of violent incidents marked the three years’

press content, mostly examples of defenseless Serbian victims violated at the hands of

Croatian military formations. Around 500,000 Serbs were eventually expelled from Croatia

by 1995 (out of the total 800,000 from the civil war), leaving the newly-independent country

over 90% Croatian and Catholic; for many Serbs, this achievement represented nothing more

than a successful continuation of the 1941 final solution of the “Serbian question.” Even

cursorily consuming Serbian media coverage of the situation could lead to only one

conclusion: only military force could prevent another genocide.

102
Tomanić 2001.
103
Bennett 1996, 129.

69
 Just as Serbia’s leadership exhibited significantly more nationalist fervor than many

of the people it purported to represent, the Croatian leadership was not fully representative of

Croats. A disproportionate and undemocratic electoral procedure 104 assigned HDZ control

over two-thirds of the Croatian parliament in the 1991 elections, even though it won only

41.5% of popular vote. Nevertheless, this threat was arguably the most formative enemy of

Serbian nationalism, receiving by far the most attention in both state propaganda media and

independent oppositional outlets. Serbian state policies were immune to criticism so long as

they could appeal to the gravest of menaces, the return of Croatian aggression. Even as

Milošević publicly denounced Tudjman’s nationalism and separatism, “he privately

welcomed it because it allowed him to disguise his expansionistic ambitions as mere aid to

his persecuted brothers in Croatia.” 105 The bloody clash of Serbian and Croat nationalisms,

however, was to take its greatest death toll neither in Serbia nor in Croatia.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Of all the Yugoslav republics, Bosnia-Herzegovina was not only the most diverse but

also enjoyed the least percentage of nationally homogenous (“ethnically clean”) territory.

This was, in a sense, its curse: its path to statehood was the most complicated and the most

brutal. 43% of Bosnians were Muslim, 31% Serb and 17% Croat – percentages that were

largely, in the 1991 elections, simply translated into votes for parties representing the

respective national groups. “Greater Serbia,” “Greater Croatia” and an independent Bosnian

state under Bosniak rule quickly became the three viable options as far as parliamentary

forces were concerned. The largest, Bosnia Muslim presence in parliament began assigning
104
In a delightful historical irony, the Croatian reform communists had set up the inequitable “winner-take-all” electoral
system to maintain themselves in power, but ended up consolidating the dominance of the fanatically anti-communist HDZ.
A law designed to ensure a significant presence for recycled communist parties was the reason the parliamentary
representation of HDZ was 1/3 larger than it earned in the ballots.
105
Djilas 2005, 14.

70
important positions to Muslims, including in the media, government and cultural

organizations. Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović not only excluded all Serbs and Croats

from state positions, but marginalized Muslim leaders who failed to renounce secularism and

multi-ethnicity. Like Tudjman, Izetbegović enjoyed credibility as a former victim of

Communist persecution, but his dissidence left much to be desired: in 1983, he was tried for

membership in a Muslim youth organization that had recruited for the Waffen SS. 106 His

movement was part of a more general “rebirth of Islam” 107 in Yugoslavia in the 1970s,

during which a new generation of Muslims asserted Islam more forcefully (sometimes

violently) against communist rule. 108 Yearly, hundreds of Bosniaks traveled abroad for

Islamic educations in Iran and elsewhere, a spurt of militant Muslim youth organizations was

registered in urban centers like Sarajevo, and widespread construction of new mosques took

place throughout the 1980s. Though still a minority in the 1990s, fundamentalist Islam

gained enough momentum to pose a lethal challenge to multi-ethnicity in Bosnia-

Herzegovina.

Some of the same World War II concerns regarding Croatia applied to Bosnia-

Herzegovina as well. The latter had also been under fascist Croatia during the war, relying

somewhat on Muslim assistance in its campaign to eliminate Serbs from the area. It was the

site of the fiercest slaughter during the war, with the Serbs decisively in the lead with

casualty numbers: they accounted for 72% of the total number of World War II deaths in

Bosnia-Herzegovina. Over 290,000 Serbs (1/10 of the entire population) lost their lives,

while Croats and Muslims lost “only” 79,000 and 75,000 souls, respectively. Another

106
Malić 2003.
107
Guskova 2003 (vol.1), 306.
108
As mentioned in Chapter 1, it was in 1971 that “Muslim” was recognized as a separate ethnic category in the Yugoslav
census.

71
200,000 Serbs had fled from fascism in Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia and Montenegro. 109

Historical revisionism similar to that of the Tudjman camp, though less extreme, could be

heard from leaders of Bosnian Muslim parties, who sought to minimize the extent of the Nazi

Muslim SS division or other Muslim collaborators in the early 1940s. 110 By 1991, it became

clear that, given Croatia’s push for territory from the west, the Bosnian Muslim leadership

was closer historically and ideologically to Croatian than to Serbian nationalism. Not only

was a revival of genocidal ustašluk lurking from Croatia, in other words, but a potential

Islamic fundamentalist ally to it was seemingly rising as a buffer between the Serbian and

Croatian areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Also analogous to Croatian nationalists were certain Muslim intellectuals and

politicians fueling Serbian anxiety with provocative ideological attitudes. Though less

aggressive than Tudjman, Izetbegović had equally exclusionary and sinister ideas about those

who were not his co-nationals. An Islamic Bosnia as part of a broader “Islamic Order” was

his priority, with no alternatives for followers of other religions except expulsion or

“Islamization.” Western society (and even secular states with Muslim majorities) suffered

from spiritual and political corruption, in his view, and only a Pan-Islamic global power

could redeem Bosnia-Herzegovina. “The Muslim,” Izetbegović’s Islamic Declaration

reaffirmed in a republished 1990 edition,

…does not exist at all as an independent individual. […] It is

not in fact possible for there to be any peace or coexistence
between 'the Islamic Religion' and non-Islamic social and
political institutions. 111

109
Guskova 2003 (vol.1), 303.
110
Djilas 2005, 16.
111
Izetbegović 1990, 22.

72
In these and other publications, as well as in speeches, the idea of a hierarchy of

religious/national castes – reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire – was evoked, striking a

familiar note to Serbian national mythology. Local calls for militants to support the Bosniak

cause often took on jihad overtones, and young recruits from the Middle East frequently

traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina at the behest of the Muslim authorities to fight Serbian

aggression. As diplomat Warren Zimmerman recounted, Izetbegović’s rejection of the

Lisbon arrangement had partly been motivated by the belief that a better deal (i.e. a Muslim-

dominated, independent Bosnia-Herzegovina) would nevertheless come about if he refused

the offer. 112 While Slovene and Croat leaders promoted their causes in Germany and Austria,

Izetbegović’s government focused on Islamic regimes in the Middle East and Asia, signaling

sympathy for Salafism and Wahhabism. As a member of the Islamic Fida’iyan e Islam and a

visitor to Tehran, Izetbegović especially elicited financial and diplomatic support from

Iran. 113 Countries like Libya and Turkey also provided loans in the tens of millions of

dollars. In June of 1991, before the nationalities question in Bosnia-Herzegovina was

anywhere near settlement, Izetbegović’s government pushed for Bosnia-Herzegovina to

acquire observer status at the Organization of Islamic Conference to better promote the faith

globally. 114 This ideology and its supporters portrayed Serbs as members of a degenerate,

secular European order that had unjustly suppressed Islamic expression under Titoism

(mixed marriages, for example, were denounced as a corrupting and immoral influence on

Bosnian society). Overall, Serbs reluctant to integrate Bosnia-Herzegovina into an Islamic

global order had reasons to renounce their ties to the republic and affiliate with the one to the

112
See Zimmerman 1994.
113
Guskova 2003 (vol.1), 306.
114
Ibid, 309.

73
east of it, which “truly” belonged to them. As discussed in Chapter 1, many of them did

precisely that between 1981 and 1991.

A fitting illustration of the kind of perceived threats Serbs were exposed to from

Bosnian nationalism is a September 1991 issue of Vox, a popular Muslim youth publication –

one of many articles that received massive attention in Serbia itself when picked up by

Politika. In an article forecasting the fate of Serbs in the future Islamic state of Bosnia-

Herzegovina, Vox described the ways Serbs would work twelve hours a day for salaries that

are only 70% of those of believers and that are, moreover, conditional on their loyalty to the

Muslim authorities. Administrative buildings and outdoor public areas would, the article

continued, be off limits for Serbs without issued passes. Purchasing goods would be allowed

only at restricted, designated places, while forming new political parties or participation in

politics would be forbidden. “A good Serb,” the piece concluded, “is alive and obedient,

while a disobedient one is dead.” 115 Deluged by similar predictions in media from several

republics, many Serbs genuinely began fearing for their lives and opting for Serbian

autonomy within Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Although Bosniak nationalism was the most “benign” of the bunch – without serious

ambitions for territorial expansion and with comparatively little military might – it did

exhibit significant intolerance and discrimination. Yet again, a significant gulf existed

between leadership and popular will. In polls in May and June 1990 and in November 1991,

majorities ranging from 70% to 90% expressed support for remaining within Yugoslavia and

opposition to ethnic partition. 116 Nevertheless, a radical minority of Islamic fundamentalists

115
Andrić 1991, 8. Translation mine.
116
Hammond and Herman 2000, 24.

74
monopolized the Bosnian public sphere and government, strongly inducing rival nationalisms

to toughen their own positions.

A New World Order

Yugoslavia’s post-World War II stability was largely a result of Cold War

geopolitics. The US shared with the USSR an interest in maintaining an integrated and

neutral Yugoslavia as a buffer on the European frontline for superpower expansion. Although

“Titoism” symbolized principled hostility to the Soviet block throughout the Marshal’s life,

Yugoslavia enjoyed intimate contacts with the USSR from the moment Khrushchev came to

power and reconciled Belgrade and Moscow. On the other side of the iron curtain, a (recently

declassified) National Security Directive approved in 1984 stated that

Yugoslavia is an important obstacle to Soviet expansionism

and hegemony in southern Europe. Yugoslavia also serves as a
useful reminder to countries in Eastern Europe of the
advantages of independence from Moscow and of the benefits
of friendly relations to the West.

Although its socialism was not looked on favorably (US planners hoped for a more

“efficient, market-oriented Yugoslav economic structure” friendlier to Western capital),

Yugoslavia was a valuable asset not only as a political ally, but as a symbol of socialist

dissent from the Soviet communist model. To sustain this “independent and viable force on

the Warsaw Pact’s southern plank,” the US pledged unwavering diplomatic and even military

support (through arms and technology sales) for the maintenance of the “territorial integrity

and national unity of Yugoslavia.” 117 Nationalist quibbles within the country were perceived

as destabilizing at best and susceptible to Soviet takeover at worst.

117
Reagan Administration’s National Security Decision Directive 133, “US Policy Toward Yugoslavia,” March 14, 1984.

75
 The fall of the USSR complicated matters in numerous ways, including militarily.

Yugoslav authorities (misguidedly, as it turned out) were genuinely distressed over the

possibility of a Soviet invasion or other military expedition against Yugoslavia. In the

months surrounding Tito’s death in 1980, the JNA was ordered to be in a state of alert for

fear of potential invasion from the Warsaw Pact. “In reality,” Christopher Bennett wrote,

“Yugoslavia’s new leaders exaggerated the Soviet threat in an effort to bring the country

together.” 118 Dreadful as it was, this menace from the East was highly functional: the

Yugoslav state could compellingly inhibit internal quarrels when such a grave external

menace loomed over the entire country. Who has time for ethnic or republican differentiation

when a rampant superpower is about to occupy “us” all? As the Soviet satellites in Eastern

Europe began collapsing along with the USSR itself, Yugoslavia was left a lonely outpost of

state socialism in the region – a state without partners, but also without certain enemies.

Although initially against any division of Yugoslavia in the immediate aftermath of

the fall of the USSR, the Cold War strategy outlined above turned 180 degrees by 1991. Just

as it had been pressured by the US for independent and constructive non-alignment a decade

earlier, the US-led international community designated itself the champion of separatist “self-

determination” in Yugoslavia. By the end of 1991, the Bush administration successfully

pushed for Congressional approval of military and other foreign aid to Yugoslavia’s

republics against its federal government. Slovenia and Croatia received massive arms

shipments and military advisors primarily from the US, Britain, Germany and Austria. The

last of these was especially invested in Slovenian independence because of apparent hopes to

rebuild a kind of “Habsburg” sphere in Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary by “striving to

118
Bennett 1996, 77.

76
assimilate the Slovene minority in the Klagenfurt Basin and the Croats in Burgenland.” 119

Similarly, the Hungarian government funded and sold arms to Slovenia and especially

Croatia partly due to ambitions over Serbia’s Vojvodina province (with its Hungarian

minority). In July 1991, the Hungarian Prime Minister went as far as to publicly question the

legitimacy of Hungary’s southern borders with Serbia: "We gave Vojvodina to Yugoslavia. If

there is no more Yugoslavia,” he explained, “then we should get it back." 120 On all sides, it

seemed, Serbia was being challenged, isolated and steadily stripped of its sovereignty by all

the foreign players involved in the Yugoslav crisis. By 1992, the American press assigned

Milošević the notorious label of “the butcher of the Balkans,” and the US-led international

community began treating him as such. In September of the same year, Yugoslavia became

the first and only country in history to be expelled from the United Nations.

As far as Serbian public opinion was concerned, however, “self-determination” was a

hypocritical facade that did not apply to Serbs. When the Serbian Autonomous District

(SAO) was declared in what was to become the Republic of Serb Krajina in Croatia in 1991,

it likewise appealed to “self-determination” to remain a part of Yugoslavia. If Croatia

secedes from Yugoslavia, SAO leaders promised, Krajina will seceded from Croatia. In

Bosnia-Herzegovina, similarly, Serbs voted overwhelmingly for remaining in Yugoslavia.

The West, however, defined “self-determination” as applicable only to republics, not to

peoples. Before the status of Serb minorities could be settled, the European Commission’s

Badinster Commission – appointed to settle the secession question with a group of

international jurists – ruled that the republic’s borders were inviolable. The difficulty was

that these dated borders were largely arbitrary, drawn for administrative purposes unrelated

119
Zametica 1992, 50. (Cited in footnote #9 in Gowan 1999).
120
Gowan 1999.

77
to ethnic demographics. If anything, they were designed to prevent the possibility of national

homogeny within republics; the republic’s borders, in other words, divided whatever ethnic

contiguity “naturally” existed in the region and created diversified, heterogeneous sub-state

units. Since Serbs were the primary population of concern, the Serbian population was

scattered the most across the republics, especially with Bosnia’s indiscriminate eastern

border. Almost a third of Serbs were left outside “their” republic. 121 Treating such borders as

inviolable entailed, nationalists argued, a double standard to the Serbs’ disadvantage; both in

raw numbers as well as in percentages in relation to total population, Serbs would be the

most displaced people in the region if republican boundaries were to become sovereign. Such

considerations were easily presented as proof of a biased international scheme against the

Serbs, warranting distrust and contempt of most foreign mediation.

Perhaps the single greatest decision from the NATO powers kindling Serbian

nationalism was the unconditional recognition of Croatia and Slovenia as independent

national states. Germany and the Vatican recognized both republics immediately following

their declarations of independence in 1991. Initially, virtually all the other EU members, the

US, and several other relevant actors took the opposite view on the question of recognition,

anxious about potential instability in the region. International mediators involved in peace

negotiations like Lord Carrington and Cyrus Vance, the UN Secretary General, as well as

Alija Izetbegović himself, who (rightly) feared the cost that Bosnian Muslims would pay

because of premature recognition. However, largely due to issues unrelated to Yugoslavia

(including a crucial recent step towards European integration – the Maastricht Agreement –

with provisions on unified foreign policy), the other EU member states did not challenge

Germany on its threat to unconditionally recognize the new states alone if necessary. By
121
Croats were the second-most scattered population, with 20% of Croats left outside Croatia.

78
January 1992, they all recognized Croatia and Slovenia. Thereafter, the US, NATO and other

Western European armies invested their own military resources to ensure that the newly-

recognized borders are made permanent. In March 1994, for instance, the US inspired and

sponsored a Muslim-Croat federation within Bosnia-Herzegovina, involving a joint Muslim

and Croat army allied against Republika Srpska and Belgrade. The policy consistently

escalated until the 1995 Dayton agreement and continued after it through peacekeeping

missions.

Unsurprisingly, the complexities of the Maastricht Agreement were not offered to the

Serbian public as the true reasons for recognition; Western imperialism, the superior strength

of Croatian public relations campaigns, 122 and the desire to complete the failed genocide of

decades ago, were. To make matters worse, recognition came in the face of Croatia’s public

refusal to grant its sizable Serbian minority the rights assigned to it by the Conference on

Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE’s predecessor). That the US and Europe were

rewarding Croatia’s violation of international law and its denial of Croatian Serbs’ rights

soon became notorious information fueling nationalist sentiment. It corresponded nicely to

extreme nationalists fantasies concerning Serbia’s “traditional enemies” and their historical

anti-Serb hatred, fueled (for instance) by Catholic resentment. In August of 1991, in the

middle of ongoing clashes between Serbian and Croatian militias, Serbian media diligently

conveyed Pope John Paul II’s then-recent statement from a mass in Pecs, Hungary, that

Croats have “legitimate aspirations” in their struggle to secede. Analogous “insults” were

registered (and widely publicized) from both religious and ideological perspectives. In the

immediate aftermath of the fall of Communism, the British Conservative Party extended an

invitation to Tudjman to London in May of 1991, where he delivered a lecture to an elite

122
Pavkovic 2000, 170.

79
parliamentary audience and met with Margaret Thatcher, who told the media she believed he

was “one of us.” When asked why British officials are backing such a problematic figure, the

Prime Minister responded “that she would always defend a democrat (meaning Tudjman)

against a communist (meaning Milošević).” 123 The irony was renewed when, at a London

dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the allied victory over fascism, Foreign Secretary

Douglas Hurd refused to invite a Serbian representative from Yugoslavia but seated Tudjman

on his right for the occasion. Even as repression of Croatian Serbs continued to escalate in

1991 and a report from a European commission working with the Yugoslav Peace

Conference warned of Croatia’s low human rights standards, German foreign minister Klaus

Kinkel praised Croatia’s democratic reforms and its respect for minority rights in

particular. 124 Given Tudjman’s signals at ustaša values and connections, the level of Western

support he enjoyed was, for the frightened and indoctrinated Serbian population,

undisputable evidence of Western malevolence.

Finally, an unmistakable theme that arises from content analysis is that of the

Western-imposed sanctions as nationalist unifiers. The call for self-determination for nations

and not republics owed its popularity largely to the suffering and humiliation that Serbians

themselves were enduring. As will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, the UN managed a

strict economic embargo on Yugoslavia beginning in 1992 to sever alleged connections to

the Bosnian Serb forces in the conflict. In 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the

former Yugoslavia was created by the United Nations to bring Serbs behind atrocities in

Bosnia-Herzegovina to justice. Tightening the noose around Serbia was necessary, the US

123
Beloff 1997, 65.
124
Cited in Djilas 2005, 21.

80
argued, because “Bosnian Serbs must be made to pay a ‘higher price' for their aggression.”125

In 1992, the German foreign minister famously insisted that “Serbia must be brought to its

knees.” 126 Serbian officials, however, incessantly repeated that the JNA never formally

supported the Bosnian Serbs in the first place. Many in Serbia believed them. The

assumption of a connection between Serbs in Bosnia and Serbians was, in effect, an imported

idea taken up as justification for Serbian unity – supporting Serbs across republican

boundaries became a necessary act of self-defense, provoked by a Serb-hunt “we” did not ask

for. Western leaders partly viewed the Bosnian Serbs “not as independent actors with goals

and minds of their own but as puppets of a Belgrade-sponsored aggression.” 127 The flipside

of this, however, was the legitimization of such a relation on the part of Serbs in Serbia.

Since “we” are suffering the penalties for supporting Bosnian Serbs, the argument went,

there better be a compelling reason. The words of one secessionist are emblematic of what

was perceived to be the West’s mentality: “we will attack Serbs wherever they are.” The

implication unavoidably became that “Serbia [must be] where Serbs live” and nothing short

of that. 128 As an active obstacle to this project, the Anglo-American world was increasingly

denounced by previously moderate segments of the population; even Orthodox Christian

bishops began directing unflattering messages to the outside world: “Damned be the hand

that is putting up walls between us and our brothers in distress.” Demanding that Serbia stand

shoulder-to-shoulder with “our crucified brethren,” 129 the Church voiced the growing

demand for national unity in response to Western plots to undermine it.

125
Jeffries 1996, 571.
126
Klaus Kinkel made the statement on May 24th, 1992 in the presence of German journalists.
127
Woodward 1995, 290.
128
The statement by a Kosovo Albanian militant was carried by The Scotsman on April 3, 2000.
129
Thomas 1999, 206.

81
 To most Serbs, the sanctions appeared selective in the context of the broader civil

war. By no means did Serbs believe to have the monopoly on violence and terror in the area.

From October 1992, Bosnian Croats and Muslims began years-long fighting independent of

the Serb and Croat front lines that had been set between UN buffer zones. A year later – in

October 1993 – Muslim forces loyal to Izetbegović and Muslim forces loyal to local leader

Fikret Abdić (who had proclaimed an independent Autonomous Republic of West Bosnia,

appealing to the recently failed Owen-Stoltenberg peace plan) began slaughtering each other

at the expense of innocent lives in the Bihać enclave. The intense fighting between these co-

nationals went on for a year, with tens of thousands of Muslim refugees fleeing the area into

Serbian-held territory in Croatia. In this chaotic campaign of Croats killing Muslims who are

killing Muslims who are allying with Croats protecting other Muslims, and in this seemingly

free-for-all carnage for territory, singling out Serbia appeared to Serbs to be prejudiced and

unfair. In fact, UN resolution 757 (which instigated the sanctions) was phrased in a balanced

and diplomatic way, assigning the guilt for armed conflict on all three sides and even singling

Croatia out for its failure to withdraw troops from Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was irrelevant,

Serbian nationalists skillfully argued, because only Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro)

was penalized. Playing on the perception of unjust foreign intervention, the Belgrade regime

offered the dream of a single state for all Serbs as the only remaining option, anything short

of which will lead to catastrophe.

82
 CHAPTER 3:
United in Misery, 1993-1995

Thus far, we have surveyed the early 1990s, during which Serbs were a divided

population with complex and sometimes incoherent values. This chapter covers the

subsequent period when Serbian nationalism became more unified, where public opinion

became homogenous and where variations in nationalism across socio-economic and

geographic differences declined. Above all, Serbian nationalism in this period is

unmistakably “reactive” in its goals and purposes, as its bearers take on an isolated,

conspiratorial and often paranoid worldview in response to outside pressures. The “value

crisis” discussed in Chapter 1 gave way to a hegemonic nationalist value system, and the

differences among sub-groups of Serbs gave way to considerable unanimity. Nationalism had

“filled” the identity vacuum.

While Chapter 2 focused mostly on political forces fueling nationalism, this chapter

emphasizes the centrality of socio-economic influences. I argue that the 1,584 days of UN

sanctions had a decisive impact on this intensified nationalist sentiment, and that they

interacted with the simultaneous wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in formative ways

for Serbian collective identity. I first summarize some of the basic economic and social

effects of the sanctions; I then offer a description of four “new” constituencies that grew

from them and explain how and why each was conducive to the spread of nationalism.

Finally, I explore this newer stage of Serbian nationalism in more detail through surveys and

polling data.

83
Sanctions and the War

Beginning in 1992, Serbia experienced what the New York Times called “the most

sweeping sanctions in history,” with a total blockade on the import and export of all goods to

and from Serbia and Montenegro. Everything from retail beer shipments to private postal

packages was forbidden to leave the country; everything from the national airline to the local

football team was banned from visiting the outside world. Faced with a raging war over

territory in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (and still shaken by the popular discontent

expressed in 1991), the state responded to the economic isolation by aggravating it through

what economist Mladjan Dinkić called an “economy of destruction.” 130 Devastating as it

was, this harsh fiscal policy managed (intentionally or otherwise) to increase the dependence

of the Serbian electorate on state services, to make oppositional activity virtually impossible,

and to unite and mobilize the population around a nationalist cause. Continuing the unsound

policies of their predecessors, the authorities responded to reserve shortages by imposing

severe restrictions on access to hard currency savings in state banks. With a worldwide freeze

on all Yugoslav financial assets and a complete embargo on all land, water and air

commerce, these savings continued to decline steeply. A widespread collapse of social (and

especially health) institutions plagued the country. In all, the UNDP estimates that the short-

lived sanctions caused a GDP loss of $58 billion. 131

The period marks one of the most spectacular instances of economic decline ever

recorded. Yugoslavia continues to hold the record for worst episode of hyperinflation in all

of history, having superseded inter-war Germany’s experience by a landslide. Between

130
Dinkić 1997.
131
The estimate comes from the 1996 Human Development Report for Yugoslavia.

84
October 1st 1993 and January 24th 1995, prices in Yugoslavia increased by five quadrillion

percent. In many of the months of this period, the average daily rate of inflation was over

100%. Thus the average wage of roughly six dollars – if one was fortunate enough to receive

it – could become worth three dollars overnight. 132 In just one month’s time (November-

December 1993), prices rose 1,790 times; the value of agricultural foodstuffs grew 3,586

times. Compared to 1992, prices in 1993 rose by a factor of over 1.165 billion. 133 With the

disappearance of raw materials, foreign investments and markets to which manufacturers

could sell, thousands of firms and enterprises formally shut down and thousands more did so

in practice, though not officially. Within a year of the sanctions, the estimated cost to the

state was ten billion dollars; within three years, it reached $45.1 billion, decisively sinking a

former symbol of stability and economic growth in Europe into the so-called Third World. 134

Sanctions were most visibly impacting health standards (including psychological) and

mortality rates. Since as much as 90-95% of hospitals and other medical institutions in Serbia

and Montenegro depended on imports of medicaments, the entire health system fell into a

state of disarray. The embargo not only blocked medical assistance and equipment, but the

importation of raw materials required for domestic production of medications as well.

Already in 1992 – in the immediate aftermath of the introduction of sanctions – 50% of

equipment required for first aid was unavailable. Infant mortality rate, as well as the rate of

death of patients with curable illnesses, began increasing dramatically, while the birth rate

132
Vreme News Digest Agency No 89 (June 7, 1993).
133
Guskova 2003 (vol. 2), 366.
134
The outrage at the symbolic isolation caused by the sanctions was interesting in its own right. Given the dire economic
and social situation, a surprising number of “letters to the editor” and newspaper articles during this period addressed issues
that are seemingly trivial compared to questions of survival, but are nevertheless discussed with enormous passion and
indignation. The fact that the sanctions banned, for instance, all Yugoslav national sports teams from participating in any
international competitions (including the Olympics) was a frequent subject. Some were outraged at a widely-publicized
cancellation of a concert by the Belgrade string orchestra that had been scheduled in London. And still others found the fact
that Hungary had forbidden the import of scenery for a play in a Serbian national theater more upsetting that this or that
fiscal punishment. The fact that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia remained unrecognized by most of the world while
Croatia had been recognized for years was, judging by amounts of column space, more alarming than the refugee question.

85
began declining – both at speeds unprecedented for Serbia since the Second World War.

Compared to 1991, the number of births decreased by twenty-four thousand and the number

of deaths increased by over ten thousand by the embargo’s second anniversary. In a little

over one year, the average age for lethal cardiac arrests moved from 56 to 46 years. In 1992

alone, the mortality rate of diabetics doubled, while that of the elderly increased sixfold. 135

The number of deaths due to infectious diseases increased by 37.5%, while the average scope

of epidemics grew by a rate of 2.5 from 1991 to 1992. Since many citizens could not afford

to turn to the black market for essential drugs and doctors’ services, curable diseases became

common causes of death. Ambulances became largely useless, as they often arrived too late

even in the rare periods when enough petrol was available for them to function regularly at

all. Pairs of hospitalized patients typically shared single beds, while many suffering from

“minor” illnesses such as pneumonia, meningitis and cancer were denied hospitalization

altogether for lack of space. 136 Pharmaceutical stores were enormously scant, and even the

occasionally available supplies were frequently stolen in robberies and resold in the black

market. In November 1994, a shortage of food, heat, medicine and electricity led to the death

of 87 patients in a large psychiatric hospital. Two years prior, the Kovina psychiatric hospital

recorded 200 deaths – a two-fold increase since 1991. 137

Predictably, living standards in general were not far behind in their decline. By 1994,

36% of Serbia (some 2.1 million people) was below the poverty line, though the figure

probably underestimates. The consumption of all staple goods (except flour) began declining

from early 1992 for the first time in Yugoslavia’s post-1945 history. In a sharp departure

135
Extensive documentation is available in: Dve Godine Posle: Pravni, Humanitarni I ekonomski odraz sankcija Saveta
bezbednosti UN protiv SR Jugoslavije, a 1994 report by the Ministry for Human Rights and the Rights of Minorities.
136
Milošević 2006.
137
Guskova 370.

86
from distributions of poverty in the preceding years, most of the poor now lived in urban

areas. Social inequality also increased sharply: according to the Gini index, Serbia in 1993

had an index of 0.45 (a rise from 0.28 in 1990). 138 As the public transportation authorities

declared it impossible to transport students, elementary and high schools as well as major

universities frequently shut down indefinitely throughout the republic. Virtually all state

enterprises experienced strikes at one point or another, many of them closing down

completely. Heating became a luxury, as did electricity: high-risk surgeries at Serbia’s most

prestigious hospital, the Military-Medical Academy, were conducted by doctors in winter

coats. 139 To the delight of elementary school students, the 1993 school winter break was

prolonged for more than a month throughout the country because of the intolerable coldness

in classrooms.

Weekly schedules were regularly announced over state media letting citizens know

when electrical outages could be expected, though constant shortages made these timetables

unreliable. Expensive gas stoves, flashlights, candles and a willingness to climb stairs when

elevators cease running became indispensable for cooking, nightlife and day-to-day

movement in what was dubbed “Serbia unplugged.” In December 1994, as winter made

electricity especially scarce, a Belgrade daily noted that Serbia was “the most romantic

country in the world – we all live by candlelight.” 140 Crime rates skyrocketed, as vandalism,

robbery, and violence became commonplaces in urban centers. From 1990 to 1993, the

yearly murder rate in Belgrade more than tripled. 141 In a country with formerly one of the

138 Djurić-Kuzmanović and Žarkov 1999, 4. The Gini index is a measure of inequality of a distribution. It is defined as a
ratio with values between 0 and 1, with 0 corresponding to perfect income equality (i.e. everyone in a given population has
the same income) and 1 corresponding to perfect income inequality (i.e. one person has all the income, while everyone in
the same population has zero income).
139
Milošević 2006.
140
Gordy 1999,190.
141
Vreme News Digest Agency No 143 (June 20, 1994).

87
lowest suicide rates in the world, one suicide began occurring on average every two days in

Belgrade throughout 1992 and early 1993 (by way of comparison, when the worst drought in

Australia’s history threatened the livelihood of its farmers, one committed suicide on average

every four days). 142 Generally, a state of enormous despair, insecurity, confusion and anomie

defined this period.

As many authors have pointed out, these and other effects of the sanctions were in a

seemingly hopeless symbiosis with the ongoing war; every deterioration of the economic

situation further intensified the bloodshed, and vice versa. This symbiosis of the war and

economic ruin was also reflected in diplomatic developments: Bosnian Serb leader Radovan

Karadžić, according to journalists Silber and Little, conditioned acceptance of a June 1994

peace plan drawn up by the Contact Group on the lifting of sanctions off of Belgrade.

“Sanctions first, then peace” became the “new Serb chorus,” partly reflecting the fear of

Karadžić and others from Milošević’s retribution. This order, however, was the exact reverse

of what the international community was demanding: a guarantee of peace from Serbia first,

followed by a loosened embargo scheme as the carrot. 143 Predictably, this Catch-22 led to

further war, a gradual tightening of the sanctions, and an expansion of “safe areas” in Bosnia-

Herzegovina. Numerous other diplomatic initiatives followed a similar pattern.

A New Kind of Society, New Vested Interests

To understand how these economic and social pressures boosted nationalism, it is

helpful to sketch the emergence of a new social composition of Serbian society. Four distinct

constituencies may be though of as products of the sanctions period and the intensification of

the civil war. With all due respect to overlap and internal complexity, I offer these four

142
Guskova 2003 (vol. 2), 368.
143
Silber and Little 1996, 337.

88
groupings as idealized types to later illustrate how their general interactions perpetuated

nationalism. 144

The Helpless

First and foremost, there was a majority of Serbian citizens that was, when it came to

economic stability and security, practically powerless – those without any formal source of

income or even prospect for it. The unemployed, who had previously not been such a sizable

segment of the population and who had enjoyed at least minimal socialist protection, now

represented a massive group of people barely surviving. Difficult as it was, the period of

1990-1993 did see an increase in the number of citizens receiving benefits from 11,000 to

35,000. By 1994, however, no more than 10,000 people in all were receiving any

unemployment benefits. 145 Unemployment oscillated around half the population, and often

reached as high as 70%. In January 1994, 760-800 thousand unemployed adults were

reported by the regime, though this figure is misleading. Beginning in 1993, when a wave of

bankruptcies of enterprises and closings of key industries swept the economy, an additional

(and partially unreported) source of unemployment became the “forced vacation”: a status of

de facto unemployment without entitlements for social benefits and without the right to

reemployment. Some 900,000 such workers were left jobless and wageless in the 1992-1994

period, driving the actual number of unemployed well above the official figure.146 Manual

workers were especially represented in this category, as were most farmers and residents of

rural areas. Since exporting agricultural products became illegal, farmers sustained an

estimated loss of 600 million dollars. Since shortages needed attention most urgently in urban

144
I rely loosely on Djurić-Kuzmanović and Žarkov 1999, where the emergence of a new social composition is hinted at.
145
UNDP estimates. See p.20 of their August 2000 report entitled Suspended Transition (1990-2000) [“Suspended
Transition” in subsequent footnotes].
146
Guskova 2003 (vol. 2), 366. See also UNDP’s 1996 Human Development Report on Yugoslavia.

89
centers, farmers were mostly denied the opportunity to purchase gasoline for tractors, trucks,

etc. Transporting goods to cities for sale became impossible in many areas, leading to a sharp

separation of the village from the town throughout Serbia. 147 From 1990-1994, the average

poverty rate in rural areas went from 7.1% to 11%; in urban areas, it went from 8% to 30%.

Children, of course, were virtually all in this category, but so were many of their guardians.

Not only was “[p]overty particularly prevalent among urban families,” but “urban families

with children” disproportionately suffered the pressure. 148 An average 50% of all children in

Belgrade were malnourished in 1993-1994, and every second schoolchild was anemic. 149

Maternity leaves were revoked in most state firms, thousands of mothers were left widowed

by the war, and orphanages and child-support centers closed down throughout the country.

In addition, we must include here arguably the most vital of all categories: refugees.

Those who failed to find relatives, friends or host families to stay with resorted to public

collective housing arrangements, in which sanitary conditions were often unsatisfactory, and

heating and shelter from rain and snow were by no means assumed. By the end of 1991,

“only” 170 thousand refugees reportedly entered Serbia; for the period of 1991-1993,

however, over 800,000 registered refugees fled into Yugoslavia (excluding Kosovo), with

numerous others unregistered. After a peak period in late 1992, the number of registered

migrants 150 gradually began to decline and stabilized to around 395,000 in Serbia and

another 50 thousand in Montenegro.

147
This development was an important precedent for the city-village divide that characterized the post-Dayton period within
Serbia; as we will see in the final chapter, it set the groundwork for a more general divide between nationalists and their
opponents.
148
1996 UNDP Human Development Report on Yugoslavia [“1996 HDP” in subsequent footnotes].
149
Guskova 2003 (vol.2), 368; 369.
150
Including the category “displaced persons” which was established in a 1992 Serbian law on the treatment of IDP and
refugees.

90
Table 3.1. Numbers of Refugees in 1994
From Into Serbia Into Montenegro
Number % Number %
Bosnia-Herzegovina 180,000 46.6 42,256 89.6
Croatia 175,000 44.3 4,865 10,4
Macedonia 3,700 9,3 n/a n/a
Slovenia 3,000 0.8 n/a n/a
Note: Percentages refer to percentages of refugees from the given republic out of all those going into
Serbia or Montenegro alone (not Yugoslavia as a whole).
Source: “Izbeglice iz bivše SFRJ Jugoslavije” in Jugoslovenski Pregled (Belgrade, Serbia: 1994), 107-124.

These figures included roughly 100,000 schoolchildren (7-18 years of age), 1,200 children

without parents, 10,000 children born into refugee families, 50,000 old-age persons, 350

persons in need of dialysis, 6,000 diabetics and 25,000 suffering from chronic illnesses

requiring treatment. 151 Given their uncertain legal status, their homelessness and their lack of

social capital, this population was especially vulnerable and incapable of pursuing sources of

income from any formal institutions. Like the unemployed, children, single mothers, those on

“forced vacation,” etc., refugees received no meaningful state support whatsoever.

These groups were by far the most vulnerable to nationalist mobilization. As we saw

in Chapter 1, the bulk of para-military group membership consisted of destitute young men

(often children) without any better prospects for making a living. Children of war victims

were all the more inclined for political/ideological reasons, as well as for the popular

economic ones. In addition to the obvious “spoils of war” available by looting and pillaging,

certain militias attracted recruits with promises of private health insurance and veterans’

benefits for a relatively short period of military service (sometimes as short as two months).

More often, however, the jobless – young and old – were likely to look to organized crime

for opportunities. Numerous youth gangs in Belgrade and elsewhere were organized to

manage the growing weapons, cigarette, gasoline, prostitution and drug trades. Many laid-off

151
Guskova 2003 (vol.2), 373.

91
workers turned their apartments or vehicles into storage facilities for smuggling rings in

return for kickbacks. If not for employment, this entire constituency certainly depended on

the black market and its leaders for food, gasoline and other staple items.

As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, there had always been a clearly disproportionate

affinity to nationalist values among Serbs living as minorities in Croatia, Bosnia-

Herzegovina, Kosovo and elsewhere. As the Serbs who experienced the most violence and

insecurity, these constituencies were more likely to reject multi-nationality, were most in

favor of a “strong state” and the maintenance of “order,” were much more likely to vote for

nationalist candidates and expressed the most xenophobia and intolerance. What the massive

influx of refugees into Serbia in this period meant, in effect, was the diffusion of these values

among Serbs who had previously been isolated from the experiences of these groups. Two-

thirds of refugees from the former Yugoslav territories found residence with local Serbian

families – a fact that is reflected in the nationalist radicalization (remaining to this day) of

areas such as Vojvodina, where refugees settled in the largest numbers. For thousands of host

families now sharing their lives with their exiled co-nationals, horror stories of “ustaša

atrocities” became more than TV reports; the importance of military aid for Bosnian Serb

militias became personal; and the bond between Serbs everywhere based on a common threat

became obvious. To be sure, even at the peak period of refugee inflows, this constituency

never represented more than about 6% of the Serbian population and never more than about

50% in any single Serbian town; nevertheless, their presence should be understood as a

powerful instigator of nationalist values well beyond this constituency alone. Even at just

10% of the population of Belgrade, these 200,000 refugees asserted enormous power over the

capital’s public discourse. Politika editions through 1993 and 1994 overflowed with refugee

92
testimonials, and RTS’s daily Dnevnik regularly interviewed displaced persons for

propaganda purposes. A comprehensive study of 2,076 families (half refugee) throughout

Serbia and Montenegro noted an interesting fact: 20% of Serbian families that hosted

refugees and even more of the refugee families themselves had personally gone through

experiences of displacement or forced exile during World War II. 152 In much more than a

symbolic sense, therefore, the integration of these refugees into the Republic of Serbia

encouraged a new understanding of national identity: one based on a shared victimhood at

the hands of the international community, Croats, Muslims, etc., and a knowledge about what

“they” would do to “us” as Serbs. By the time of the Dayton agreement – following the

Croatian offensive Storm, which suddenly brought another two-three hundred thousand into

Serbia – Yugoslavia claimed the world’s greatest per capita refugee population. The more it

appeared that Serbs were being (mis)treated as a unified, single nation, the more it made

sense to be one. The line between Serbians and Serbs, if you will, became blurred.

The Dependent

Secondly, there are those dependent on the state for at least limited income or direct

aid – these include pensioners, workers in government enterprises, social security recipients,

unemployment beneficiaries, etc. The state sector employed more than four times as many

workers as the private one, though the latter almost equaled the state in its ability to give

what it owes to its dependents. In practice, therefore, “the dependent” are a significantly

smaller category than the previous one; most people nominally entitled to state support in

effect never received it. Those employed in industries with particularly low wages (e.g.

textile, construction, automobile manufacturing) were, for all intents and purposes, in the

152
The study was a UNHCR-financed project executed by the Institute for Social Policy in Belgrade, led by Dr. Miloslav
Milosavljević.

93
“helpless” category, even though they were receiving meager state support. As mentioned

above, only 10,000 jobless Serbs were actually receiving unemployment benefits, and only

an additional few hundred thousand employees were placed on paid leave of absence. 153

Skilled workers were more likely to belong to this category, though most of them joined their

unskilled colleagues in having no formal income. Some depended, nevertheless, on goods

administered directly by the state. In 1993, for instance, the government took on the task of

distributing all flour, potatoes, meat and other staples through state enterprises (and their

workers’ unions), who in turn distributed these goods to their workers. 154 A very limited

number of refugees, in addition, applied for legal residence status with guaranteed benefits.

Finally, we may also include here those returning from the frontlines in Croatia and Bosnia-

Herzegovina. In addition to a dozen (sometimes up to a hundred) mildly-to-heavily injured

soldiers returning to Belgrade hospitals every month, cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD) were rampant and contributing to alarming levels of homicides and suicides.

Despite receiving salaries and occasional benefits, not even this group was guaranteed

the essentials, including food. Not only did the incessant hyperinflation risk evaporating a

salary before it reached the store, but the stores themselves were as empty for this

constituency as they were for “the helpless.” In October 1993, for instance, Belgrade bakeries

simply ceased production, leaving the entire city without bread for a week. Old age

pensioners and social security recipients cued in endless lines at post offices to receive

money that was not there. “They waited in line,” as economist Thayer Watkins wrote,

“knowing that the value of their pension payment was decreasing with each minute they had

153
1996 HDP.
154
Djurić-Kuzmanović and Žarkov 1999, 5.

94
to wait.” 155 The highest possible pension from the 1993-1994 period (enjoyed by roughly

300 citizens) was enough to buy one soap. The average salary was the equivalent of the price

of six ink pens. An electrical plug box was worth two average salaries, while no less than 97

average wages could purchase a baby’s carriage. Even though army members – and

especially JNA soldiers, prisoners of war and veterans – were guaranteed privileges in

treatment and allocation of goods, the already-meager resources of public hospitals and

clinics were stretched far too thin. 156 Just like the previous category, therefore, the

“dependent” relied extensively on the black market and illegal sources of income and goods,

which – as we will see shortly – largely implied collaboration with the nationalist cause.

Finally, it should be remembered that most dependents supported relatives and friends

(who were in turn often “helpless”) in addition to themselves. This enhanced what

Woodward called a “fortress mentality”: a retreat from the cash economy and a “resort to

familial systems of support and resources of rural households” that not only intensify distrust

of the outside world, but which “entail the social obligations and patriarchal culture tied to

defense of the land and nation.” 157 The greater the pressure to find alternatives to the

“normal” economy, in other words, the more likely it is that social arrangements conducive

to nationalism will develop.

War Profiteers

Thirdly, there are the black marketers, war profiteers, smugglers, racketeers, and

other criminal interest groups that arose in the 1990s – what one author called the “new

criminal class” of Serbia. 158 To meet the many demands of the period, criminal

155
Watkins N.d.
156
In 1995, a former army volunteer activated a hand grenade under his body in a Belgrade psychiatric clinic after the staff
failed to immediately respond to his plea for help. He was apparently suffering from PTSD. See Perić Zimonjić 2000.
157
Woodward 1995, 386.
158
Gordy 1999, 195.

95
entrepreneurship flourished in the fields of narcotics, tobacco, medical equipment, arms and

pirated CDs. By a conservative estimate the “hidden market” constituted 40% of the

economy in 1995, and 54% in 1993. 159 In many ways, organized crime networks were the

first to introduce a true market economy to these areas. “Organized crime [in Serbia in the

mid-1990s],” as a UNDP report put it, “can perhaps best be understood as an economy in

itself, a more or less self-sufficient world of income-generation and consumption control.” 160

As such, it managed to monopolize the sale and distribution of goods indispensable for the

state’s tireless war efforts. Most importantly, with government gasoline stations shut down,

gasoline smugglers and currency dealers developed one of the richest criminal markets on the

continent. Businesses gradually abandoned the unstable Serbian Dinar in favor of the

German Deutsche Mark – the de facto, if unofficial, currency of the time. 161 Accordingly, the

so-called dizelaši, smugglers and dealers situated on the side of most roads with overpriced

plastic bottles of (often impure) gas, became the only available sources of both petrol and

reliable money. Most car owners abandoned the privilege of driving, only to face a collapsed

public transit system in Belgrade and elsewhere. Delivery trucks, public service vehicles,

garbage trucks, fire brigades and ambulances all lacked enough fuel to function. Railroad and

public transportation workers quickly became desperate strikers, further complicating

movement within the country as well as the war effort. 162 Aside from keeping transportation

alive, arms flows to Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina could never have continued without the

circumvention of the UN-imposed arms embargo. A criminal network covering all the former

159
1996 HDP.
160
“Suspended transition,” 37.
161
In January 1994, the government simply could no longer resist declaring the DM an official currency of Yugoslavia.
Soon thereafter, a new “new Dinar” was announced at the rate of 1 DM = 6,000 new “new Dinars” (it had been roughly 6
trillion Dinars previously). By January 11, the exchange rate had reached a level of 1 DM = 80,000 new new Dinars. On
January 13th the rate was 1 DM = 700,000 new new Dinars and six days later it was 1 DM = 10 million new new Dinars.
162
Lyon 1996.

96
Yugoslav republics (especially Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia) controlled the production of

tanks and other military equipment, and continued to operate (even to export outside the

Balkans) throughout the civil war. 163 The petrol and arms smugglers, therefore, had the

power to paralyze the Serbian nationalist crusade in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, and

were indispensable in perpetuating it for their own interests. As Woodward wrote,

In place of a system of law and order that would counteract the

insecurity, distrust, and resort to arms that had made war
possible, entire networks of criminals, sanctions-busters, war
profiteers, gun runners, gangs, and local paramilitaries arose.
Even as populations tired of war, more and more people had a
vested interest in its continuation. 164

Crucially, this criminal constituency was by no means hidden from official

government structures; far from being “underground,” it was very much integrated into state

organs like the police forces, the JNA, the Ministry of Finance and, of course, the presidency.

“The dimensions of smuggling certain high-demand items” across borders, Eric Gordy noted,

“required the knowledge and cooperation of both the customs service and the police” who,

needless to say, profited from the smuggling themselves. 165 Recent investigative reporting

has reconstructed a multi-billion dollar, inter-continental tobacco smuggling route controlled

by organized crime groups and members of the Milošević family (including the president’s

son, Marko) throughout the mid-1990s, partly in an effort to raise funds for the war. 166

Loyalty to state institutions was therefore indispensable in keeping the trade alive and

maintaining the necessary network of large and small government enterprises, Ministries,

state banks for laundering money, etc. Nationalism, in this context, was a prudent ideology to

adopt for the likes of Dragan “Captain” Vasiljković, who notoriously made a fortune as a
163
Woodward 1995, 428.
164
Ibid, 335.
165
Gordy 1999, 195.
166
Recent investigative reporting through television B92’s Insajder program (especially in its 2007 series) has exposed these
and other criminal schemes after over a decade of public ignorance about them. Transcripts are available at www.b92.net.

97
smuggler by becoming a regime favorite because of his outspoken commitment to the

Serbian national cause. In addition, pioneers of criminal activities within Serbia itself sought

to win the affection of the authorities by adopting the rhetoric, if not ideology, of the Serbian

state elite. The so-called Zemun Clan (Zemunski Klan), for instance, grew to become one of

the most successful organized crime networks in Europe by skillfully camouflaging its

activities under a nationalist banner to win tacit government approval. 167

Similarly, Belgrade-based corruption and extortion rackets were operated largely with

the state’s blessing. Despite the fact that racketeering was rarely ever investigated in the

press, every respectable bank, grocery store, café and restaurant was forced to choose

between paying for unwelcome protection and being blown up by one crime group or

another. In a rarely publicized case, Vreme reported in June 1994 that an owner of a fitness

club turned himself in to the police for paying extortion money to a police officer; the police

officer was released, but the club owner preferred to remain in prison for safety reasons. 168

The story illustrates the system at large: criminal activity sanctioned by the state transcended

the law. Even those crime networks relatively independent of direct state involvement

depended on at least implicit protection from prosecution. Although the exact extent of

organized crime with the state “looking the other way” cannot be reconstructed, consider the

fact that (according to official figures), the bulk of “economic” crimes in 1994 supposedly

consisted of minor tax evasions by small enterprises. For example, of the total of 4,272

criminal convictions in 1994, 1635 were “accounting offences,” “meaning false book-

keeping to avoid the payment of taxes, mostly by street stalls and small private shops that

167
Vasić 2005.
168
Vreme News Digest Agency No 143 (June 20, 1994).

98
had to survive on the very brink of the economy.” 169 In a sea overflowing with blood-thirsty

sharks, in other words, the government was focusing on a few little fish struggling to get by.

In return, these sharks became the most forceful advocates of Serbian nationalism the state

could have wished for.

State Elites

Finally, there is the centralized constituency of the political, diplomatic and military

elite that controlled the state apparatus, the army, all social services, most banks and the

media. Having freed itself of the bureaucratic pressures and complications of the old

Yugoslavia (e.g. the rotating presidency), this new minority revolved around Milošević and a

small clique of loyal party chiefs who seized the comprehensive sanctions as an opportunity

to consolidate power and maximize citizens’ dependence on state services. To this end, a

worsening of the economic situation and a further deterioration of social conditions was seen

as a small price to pay. 170 Government-operated stores, in which citizens were promised

essential goods at artificially low prices, were overwhelmed with scarcity and corruption. As

hyperinflation increased, so did the reasonableness of closing down stores and businesses for

inventory instead of obeying government-mandated prices. So fanatical was the state’s

economic policy that, when farmers refused to sell food at government-fixed prices, the

Ministry of Agriculture decided to purchase it from abroad with hard currency. State attempts

at maximizing citizens’ dependence were made easier by the fact that international

humanitarian groups often had their hands tied in providing relief and aid. In addition to

explicit bans, many NGOs were reluctant to intervene even if it were legal for political

reasons. When it came to refugee relief funds, for instance, all foreign humanitarian

169
“Suspended transition,” 37.
170
Dinkić 1997.

99
organizations provided no more than 30% of the total financial input in the spring of 1993

(which was near the climax of economic collapse), while 10-15% was closer to the general

average for the entire period. This meant that an overwhelming majority of refugee aid funds,

goods and services were administered and distributed by the Serbian state. All this lent

credibility to conspiratorial notions of how all “our” misery is due to the indifference or

outright cruelty of the outside world, with the patriotic Serbian government being a lonely

light in the darkness.

Nevertheless, the state’s primary goals during the period were not internal, but

directed to the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia – a fact that inevitably led the

government to cooperate with the constituency of war profiteers. It was stressful enough that

sanctions were strangling military supplies, but the failed mobilization of 1991 still had

repercussions on troop morale and made it clear that nationalism alone was not going to

suffice for victory in the war. The necessary economic supplement could only come from the

black market: even as Dubrovnik was bombarded repeatedly and Vukovar was being reduced

to rubble, Yugoslavia continued instating that it was officially uninvolved in the armed

conflicts. This encouraged extensive employment of military irregulars for operations in

Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; training and equipment for Croatian Serb and Bosnian Serb

paramilitaries was the dominant kind of interference in the war on the part of Belgrade. At

most, the JNA or Serbian Secret Service would coordinate air strikes or military intelligence

sharing with formations like Arkan’s tigers or Šešelj’s Četniks, but involvement was mostly

indirect. War profiteers were employed to circumvent the sanctions and direct arms flows

and financial support to Serbian enclaves and militias outside Serbia. The helpful aspect of

this approach was that plausible denial could be offered to the outraged international

100
community when the question of massive ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces came up – how

could Serbia be responsible for a war it was not involved in? A negative aspect, however,

was the emergence of uncontrollable elements among paramilitary formations – most

notably, Radovan Karadžić and the Bosnian Serb politicians who became increasingly

unresponsive to Milošević’s commands and began steering a different brand of Serbian

nationalism. 171 In either case, however, nationalist doctrine prevailed. The state elite and war

profiteer constituencies were mutually dependent, each heavily invested in perpetuating

nationalist goals for their own purposes.

Chart 3.1. Interactions of Four New Constituencies (in need Î fulfiller of need)

Protection, “looking the other way,” institutional backing, etc.

WAR PROFITEERS ←←←→→→ STATE ELITES

Circumventing sanctions, financing war efforts, smuggling weapons, etc.

↑ ↑
Staple items, jobs in para-militaries Salaries, pensions, medical care,
and gangs, drugs, gasoline, unemployment benefits, protection
kickbacks, etc. from crime, etc.

↑ ↑
↑ ↑
THE HELPLESS →→→→→→ THE DEPENDENT
Supporting relatives, hosting refugees, etc.

In addition, this new social composition of Serbian society allowed nationalism to

become so hegemonic because of another crucial development: the disappearance of much of

the anti-nationalist constituency of the country. As sanctions and the war intensified, Europe

saw the greatest flow of refugees and asylum seekers since the Second World War coming

out of Yugoslav territories. According to UNHCR estimates, 819,815 refugees from

171
For a comprehensive account of the clashes between Milošević and Bosnian Serb leaders, see Cohen 2001.

101
Yugoslavia were reported in the summer of 1993 – an increase of over 200,000 since

December of 1992. Fleeing primarily to Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Austria and

Switzerland, many of the refugees became involved in drug trafficking and other illegal

activities in their countries of destination, producing enormous concern among European

officials about the instability of this migration wave. 172 Other parts of this migration wave

were comprised not of asocial criminal types, but of the intelligentsia and members of the

highly-skilled work force – not a surprising fact, given the high financial costs of emigrating.

From 1992-1994, 370,000 educated and specialized experts left Serbia; 40% of them were

under 40 years of age, and 40% of them held PhDs or MAs. 173 In 1990, Serbia produced

1,569 articles in prestigious scientific and academic journals; five years later, it produced

460. 174 This brain drain not only further devastated the economy but, more interestingly for

our topic, stripped any conceivable anti-nationalist movement of a sizable chunk of its base.

Rather than assimilate into any of the four constituencies sketched above, the sectors of

Serbian society that could have resisted the homogenization and radicalization of Serbian

national identity simply chose escape instead. 175

The Dayton Agreement of November 1995 ended the armed conflict, followed by a

partial suspension of the sanctions regime one month later. 176 We now return to

measurements of public opinion to investigate the impact this new social composition (as

well as the sanctions/war pressures) had on nationalism among the population before the war

ended.

172
Woodward 1995, 368-369.
173
Guskova 2003 (vol.2), 366.
174
1996 HDR.
175
“Exit,” in Albert Hirschman’s influential vocabulary. Hirschman 1970.
176
According to Sarajevo’s Center for Research and Documentation, Bosnia-Herzegovina saw over 100,000 casualties from
1992-1995, a large proportion of whom died at the hands of Serbian forces.

102
Public Opinion and Values

In harmony with processes from the earlier period, the trend of abandoning

“Yugoslav-ness” continued in 1993-1995 (and does so to this day). The number of those

expressing allegiance to Serbia and Serbian-ness was growing at an unparalleled rate in this

period. By 1996, roughly one third of Serbs prioritized “belonging to Serbia” as the most

important kind of belonging, followed by “place of residence.” In third place, only 24% of

Serbs chose “belonging to Yugoslavia” as the most important kind. 177 Even these 24%,

furthermore, could be understood as indicators of nationalism; the new, post-Dayton

boundaries in the Balkans made it perfectly clear to all sides that Yugoslavia now represented

a Serb-dominated state. In addition, some of the post-Cold War confusion and

disillusionment covered in Chapter 1 was still visible. In 1993, enormous lament for the

Soviet Union was recorded (over 66% disagreed with the idea that its collapse was a good

thing for Yugoslavia), and even greater anxiety (>75%) could be seen about the perception

that “the US has too much influence over our country.”

Overall, however, nationalism in this new period is a significant departure from the

preceding periods. In contrast to the earlier confusion and contradiction discussed above, a

radical “homogenization” of public opinion occurred between 1992-1995, characterized by

“authoritarianism, etatism, traditionalism and nationalism.” 178 Data from Chapter 1 noted

that authoritarianism and “love of a strong state” was largely the priority of Serbs from

Kosovo and other areas where they feel like threatened minorities, while Serbs in Serbia and

other comfortable majorities cared about economic issues instead. This no longer applied in

1993, even though it was precisely this year that marked the peak of economic crisis. The

177
“Suspended development,” 33.
178
Djurić-Kuzmanović and Žarkov 1999, 5.

103
most popular solution and response to the devastating war and sanctions was thought to be a

strong state, strong leadership and strong authority.

Although authoritarianism had been a recurring finding among not only Serbs but all

Yugoslavs 179 – not in small part due to the decades-long cult of Tito that had dominated the

educational, media and political systems – it reached new, unprecedented heights in 1993-

1995. In a representative sample of 1,550 Serbs, moderate or strong authoritarianism

appeared in 71% of the answers. 75% of the sample believed that “the state should act more

firmly in order to introduce order in the country,” an interesting comparison to the

significantly lower value assigned to similar “strong-state” considerations in Table 1.3

dealing with values in 1990. As much as 60% of the sample confirmed the statement "A

person without a leader is like a person without a head," while a solid 40% agreed with the

sweeping declaration that “every society should have an authority that should be followed

without any comments.” The surge in authoritarianism quickly becomes understandable

when we consider how this value is distributed across social stratifications: “very strong

authoritarianism is present predominantly in the lower-lower (79%) and lower-middle (67%)

social strata” while “moderate anti-authoritarianism is a characteristic of the middle-lower

(22%) and middle-higher strata (50%).” 180 Generational differences had become much less

pronounced, as had the previously sharp divide between highly-educated and uneducated

sectors of the society. A survey conducted among law students at an elite Serbian university

revealed that even these highly-educated young people believed that “laws are less important

than a leader whom the people can trust”; that 60% of them believed that state security forces

should be at liberty to search homes without a warrant; that 51% recommended giving the

179
Baćević et al. 2003, 126.
180
Djurić-Kuzmanović and Žarkov 1999, 6.

104
police the right to freely open private letters; and that 41% of them believed that Serbs should

have “greater constitutional rights” than other nationalities “because they live in their own

state.” 181 Generally, therefore, the variance in authoritarian and nationalist values across

socio-economic groups was greatly narrowed. The period in question was characterized by a

“lower-classization” of Serbian society as a whole, as the most general detrimental effects of

economic isolation affected a broad range of people equally. As the middle class dissipated,

it seems, moderate nationalism and authoritarianism gave way to harder, more extreme forms

of both.

Accordingly, these values were reflected in voting and support for nationalist political

figures. Nationalist-communist parties swept the 1993 elections, with Milošević’s SPS in the

lead. Two years later, citizens asked to rate their trust in Milošević were divided as follows:

27.8% had “very favorable” views of him and 24.6% had “mostly favorable”; barely one

third of Serbs expressed “very” or “mostly unfavorable” attitudes towards the leader. 182

When choosing from a list of all major political figures, Serbs overwhelmingly selected

Milošević as their favorite; in fact, the percentage of Serbs identifying him as their most

trusted politician was greater than the sum of all the other percentages distributed for all the

other options. Ratko Mladić – the Bosnian Serb general behind the Srebrenica massacre –

also enjoyed a “very” or “mostly” favorable view from more than half of the population, with

only 26.55% of Serbs holding unfavorable views of the figure. Warlords like Vojislav Šešelj,

the most fanatical proponent of Greater Serbia, saw significant increases in popularity. In

addition, opposition leaders who were perceived as generally trustworthy in the 1993-1995

period were mostly representatives of nationalist political options. Vuk Drašković, perhaps

181
Cohen 2001, 180.
182
Unless otherwise noted, figures from hereon rely on CPIJM data.

105
the most notable opposition leader, was an unwavering supporter of the Bosnian Serb cause,

while Vojislav Koštunica (later to become Serbia’s first democratic president) and his

Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) surged in popularity in the polls from late 1994 to 1995 by

criticizing Milosević for not being assertive enough in the war. In both government and

opposition, therefore, overwhelming militarism and nationalism were promoting leaders who

had previously enjoyed only factional (and, in the case of Šešelj, negligible) popular support.

Recalling how divided and partially accidental the nationalist triumph in the Panić-Milošević

run-off in 1992 was, it becomes clear that the sanctions period marked a qualitative change

for the role of nationalism in the political order.

In the hopes of testing the war and sanctions as independent variables causing

nationalism, it may be helpful to compare nationalist attitudes before and after them. If we

compare Serbian perceptions of other nationals in 1993 (the absolute peak of sanctions and a

period of brutally intense warfare) to ones in 1996 (when the war had been over for almost a

year and most sanctions have been lifted), we may record changes in the level of nationalism

in popular attitudes. Indeed, the war/sanctions experiences seem to have been so instrumental

in sustaining nationalist perceptions that the latter declined considerably as soon as a degree

of socio-economic normalcy and stability was restored in 1996.

Table 3.2. Ethnocentrism and Opinions about other Nationals, before and after Dayton and the lifting of
sanctions.
Change in “Distance”
Serb Opinions 1993 1996
from 1993 – 1996
About (unfav - fav in 1996) -
Favorable Unfavorable Favorable Unfavorable (unfav - fav in 1993)
Themselves 92 6 78 9 +17
(Serbs)
Macedonians 34 57 34 21 -36
Slovenes 19 71 16 44 -24
Hungarians 20 69 17 36 -30
Muslims 10 84 7 67 -14
Croats 12 82 7 70 -7
Albanians 6 88 7 63 -26

106
Note: Numbers refer to percentages expressing favorable/unfavorable views of the national groups in
question. “Distance” is the percentage of “unfavorable” attitudes after “favorable” ones are subtracted
(for instance, “-14” means that the overall percentage of “unfavorable” minus “favorable” attitudes
decreased by 14 percent). Unfortunately, the 1996 survey included – besides “favorable,” “unfavorable,”
and “I have no specific opinion” – the category of “I am neutral,” which explains the lower percentages
in 1996.
Source: UNDP’s “Suspended transition” report, 30-31.

Most generally, negative attitudes towards other nationals and very positive attitudes towards

one’s own were characteristic of the height of the sanctions. An impressive 92% of Serbs saw

themselves favorably and overwhelmingly disapproved of not only their war rivals, but

Hungarians and Macedonians as well. By 1996, however, nationalist perceptions (though far

from disappearing) clearly plummeted. As an indicator of nationalism’s decline, I defined

“distance” in Table 3.2 as the overall, sum difference in favorable/unfavorable views of the

national groups in question. Not only were distances reduced for all categories, but Serbs’

“distance” from Serbs themselves increased by 17%; nationalist self-perception, in other

words, was not as easy to sustain without an ongoing economic and military war. Clear

differences exist between perceptions of nationals with whom war was waged and those of

nationals with whom it was not. In fact, the change in “distance” is directly correlated with

how intense, prolonged and costly war with the nation in question was. Attitudes towards

Macedonians and Hungarians were the fastest to improve because relations with these groups

were entirely peaceful. “Distance” from Croats, in contrast, underwent by far the lowest

decrease (only 7%) because the war with Croatian armies was the central preoccupation of

Serbian military campaigns. Muslims (presumably evoking the meaning of Bosnian Muslims

to most respondents) had the second lowest decrease in “distance” and, not surprisingly, were

the second-greatest military and political adversary prior to 1995. It should be noted that

“distance” from Albanians is a constant phenomenon in surveys like these, reflected

throughout decades among Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians (who have the most

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contact with Albanians); Albanians in turn reflect the strongest “distance” from all national

groups, and especially from these three. In general, however, it appears clear that the lifting

of the sanctions and the war contributed to a lifting of nationalist perceptions of actors

involved in it; furthermore, this decline in nationalism was varied across national groups in

precisely the manner one would expect if the war and sanctions were the crucial factors.

Yet, aside from perceptions of neighboring and regional nationalities, Serbian

nationalism in this period was marked by another critical development in its outlook at

others. Chapter 2 had discussed the specificity of rival nationalisms and their unique histories

in interacting and promoting their Serbian counterpart – in this context, we saw that Croatian

nationalism, its ustašluk and its right-wing/Catholic/Germanic supporters were portrayed as

significantly distinct from, say, Slovenian secessionism and its Austro-Hungarian backers.

Though all threatening, the various secessionist movements were condemned in differing

degrees, with the “international community” also perceived as diverse and complex. The

“distance” between Serbs and other groups, in other words, varied very much according to

differences among these groups. The Serbian nationalism that began evolving under

sanctions and intensified war in late 1992, and that progressed steadily to 1995, undermined

the importance of these differences. The “distance” Serbs began perceiving increasingly

became equal for all non-Serbs. Table 3.3 hints at the novelty with two interesting indicators:

Table 3.3. “Distance” from other nationalities in 1995 according to two indicators
“With members of which nationality “With members of which nationality
from the former Yugoslavia would you from the former Yugoslavia would
most willingly live as a neighbor?” you most “willingly drink coffee?”
With Macedonians 16.4 15.8
With Slovenes 6.7 5.6
With Croats 0.3 1.1
With Muslims 0.8 0.9
With none of them 25 23
Any one of them 48.6 50.9
Don’t know 2.1 2.7
Source: Originally appears in “Susedi,” Vreme, no.223 (January 30, 1995), p.30. Cited in Gordy 1999, 3.

108
The importance in this survey does not lie in the fact that Serbs seemed to think that Slovenes

are better neighbors than coffee guests, or that drinking coffee with a Croat is about three

times as “popular” as living next to one, or even that Macedonians are the easiest to tolerate

of all the former Yugoslav peoples. As Eric D. Gordy noted, the crucial fact is that most

Serbs responded to these trivial questions generally – “none of them” or “any of them” –

without making specific ethnic choices. More respondents made seemingly tolerant choices

(“any of them”), but the near-quarter of Serbs who find it equally repulsive to live or share

coffee with any of the choices equally are the nationalist core. This reflects a new,

increasingly isolated, conspiratorial and cruder brand of nationalism – one in which subtleties

in “distance” according to group differences or specificity are reduced to a minimal

dichotomy, best phrased by para-military head Branislav Pelević: “either you’re a Serb, or

you ain’t.” The trend is especially visible in polling data investigating Serbs’ perception of

who bears the responsibility (or blame) for Serb suffering and of the reasons for territorial

losses.

Table 3.4. Perceived Responsibility for Serb Suffering (1995)

Q: “Who, in your opinion, is the most responsible for everything that Serbs from the Republic of Serbian
Krajina and from the Republic of Srpska had suffered and still suffer?”
International Community (UN) 8.2
Western Countries and organizations (EU, NATO, USA, Germany,
34.85
etc.)
Russian Government 0.4
Tudjman and Izetbegović 6.8
Leaderships of RSK and RS 9.95
Slobodan Milošević 15.90
Serbs from RSK and RS themselves 7.5
Other 16.4
Note: numbers refer to percentages of respondents assigning responsibility to only the category in
question when offered the full list. “Don’t know” answers excluded.

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Table 3.5. Perceived Reasons for Loss of Serbian Territory (1995)
Q: “What of the following, in your opinion, is the main reason for the loss of Serbian territories in
Western Slavonija, the Republic of Serbian Krajina and North-West Bosnia-Herzegovina and the exodus
of the Serbian population?”
Military Defeat which is to blame on military leaderships from Knin and Pale 9.85
NATO air strikes on Serbian targets in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the open siding of the USA with
25.45
Croats and Muslims
Missing support of Russia to Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia 2.5
Agreement between Milošević and Tudjman 11.4
Pressure from Western powers on Slobodan Milošević that territories be divided in accordance to
14
the plan of the Contact Group
Wrong Politics of Karadžić and Pale leadership 12.75
FRY blockade over Drina border and its passivity towards Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and
5.55
Croatia
Other 2.15
Note: numbers refer to percentages of respondents selecting the category in question when offered the
full list. “Don’t know” answers excluded.

Recall that these polls were taken at a time when clear and present dangers to Serbian

communities in eastern Croatia and throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina were being posed by

military and political actors unambiguously identifying themselves with Tudjman and

Izetbegović. Notwithstanding this, only 6.8% of this representative sample identified them as

the primary culprits behind Serbian suffering in Krajina and Republika Srpska (RS). Not only

is the generic “international community” (8.2%) ahead of these two nationalist heads, but

many more Serbs even point to their own nationals (7.5%) and leaders (9.95%) as bearing

more responsibility for the mess. Of course, this assignment of blame to the Serbs and

Serbian leaders in RSK and RS is probably not a self-critical, reflective analysis; on the

contrary, it surely reflects a disillusionment with local community leaders in RS and elite

ones such as Radovan Karadžić who were perceived – at worst – as betraying the nation by

negotiating for peace or – at best – as being militarily squeamish. This is all the more true for

those 15.9% of Serbs who pointed to Milošević as the most responsible for Serb suffering –

his ties with the Bosnian Serbs and the JNA’s incursions into Bosnia-Herzegovina were not

seen as fanatical or nationalist enough. Well beyond these categories, however, Table 3.4

shows that most of the blame is assigned to the broad coalition of “Western Countries and

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organizations” such as the EU, NATO, the US, Germany and so on. Notwithstanding the

enormous differences these organizations and countries had had in approaching the civil war

(especially diplomatically), 34.85% of Serbs saw this vast amalgam of external forces as the

primary bearer of responsibility for all the suffering. Strikingly, even if “the Muslim people”

or “the Croatian people” were perhaps on the minds of those 16.4% who opted for “other,”

the role of external forces and pressures from outside of Serbia’s immediate neighborhood

are perceived as more dominant and formative. Moving to the equally revealing Table 3.5,

we see the same notion confirmed by over one quarter of respondents who blame NATO

bombings and US support for Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina for Serbian territorial losses,

as well as by another 14% who affirm the (practically identical) “pressure from Western

powers.”

As a final illustration, consider another astounding finding in an earlier survey,

conducted in 1993. After having been asked whether it is likely that Yugoslavia be

significantly threatened in the next year or so (>60% believed this to be the case), subjects

were offered a comprehensive 13-item list of states, peoples and institutions to choose the

most likely source of this danger. Were the seemingly obvious choices – Bosnia-

Herzegovina, Croatia and Albania – the actual ones? In fact, they received a meager 0.45%,

2.32% and 2.89%, respectively. The “real” threats were thought to be elsewhere: 10.13%

believed Germany was the most likely menace, 21.73% were most concerned about the

United States, while an incredible 34.69% believed the UN was Yugoslavia’s gravest threat.

To restate it another way: the threat from the US was almost ten times more likely to be

deemed a threat than Croatia was. Incorporating the remaining categories, more than 93% of

Serbs believed that the most likely threat to their state was from outside the region. In fact,

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more Serbs believed the threat from the “Western European Union” was the most important

one than all those who believed this to be true of all the Balkan categories (including Bosnia-

Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary) combined.

These novelties might be summarized in three general points. Firstly, this new brand

of nationalism adopted a rather conspiratorial, if not paranoid, streak. When asked to evaluate

the claim that “foreign conspiracies are responsible for most of our countries problems,”

33.45% of Serbs agreed strongly and another 31% somewhat agreed. Croatian and Muslim

politicians are largely, in the two preceding tables, stripped of agency for major

developments in the civil war. Even as Serbian armies were clashing with Bosniak and

Croatian militias, less than three-hundredths of the Serb population viewed these two

constituencies as the true decision-makers. Instead, a vast anti-Serb alliance was perceived –

consisting of everyone from the Vatican to the EU-appointed Contact Group – to be

orchestrating the conduct of the war and “pulling the strings” in the background. “Never

forget,” Serbian warlord Željko Ražnatovic “Arkan” urged a crowd in 1993,

“The Serbian people are now fighting against fascist Germany.

[…] The ustaša [the Croats] are small, pathetic and miserable
and we could eat them for breakfast. But behind them is the
Third Reich. […] Understand that, we will – if necessary – go
all the way to Berlin and liberate that people from the new
fascism.” 183

Secondly, both Serbian collective identity and that of non-Serbs seemed to have congealed

and homogenized dramatically. Previously, not only was “us” complicated (Serbs from

Croatia vs. Serbs from Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. Serbs in Serbia) but so was “them” (ustaša

vs. Catholics, Bosnians vs. Bosniaks, the EU vs. the UN, etc.). By 1995, Serbs saw little

difference between, say, Croats and Muslims when selecting neighbors or sharing coffee was

183
“Arkan Marches on Berlin” – subtitled video footage of the speech is available in the archives of the Croatian
Information Center (Hrvatski Informativni Centar).

112
at issue; and they saw even less difference between this or that branch of the international

order that had imposed such draconian economic measures on them. The sanctions had

selectively isolated “us” from the outside world, making that world appear increasingly

uniform and hostile. Finally, this nationalism is characterized by a level of xenophobia and

chauvinism that was certainly not as prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With the

equation of the misery and humiliation of the sanctions with the monolithic “international

community,” everything foreign became, virtually by definition, suspect. In the 1993 and

1995 surveys, a notable 52% of Serbs agreed with the sweeping claim that “one should

always be cautious and reserved towards other nations [and nationals], even when they are

friends.” 184 Overwhelming majorities rejected the belief that American and other investments

should even exist in the country. More than 69% of those who had an opinion on the question

“when, if ever, should Yugoslavia become a member of NATO?” answered “never.” In 1993,

79.78% distrusted the entire “European community” and 75.78% distrusted the UN. More

than half of Serbs agreed strongly or somewhat that “foreign influences are a threat to our

culture” in 1995. In sum, by 1995, there was only one “us” – the Serbs – and only one

“them” – the entire world, and a cruel one at that.

184
Mikloš et al 2002.

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 CHAPTER 4:
Something Borrowed, Something New (1996-2000)

This chapter deals with the post-Dayton period in Yugoslavia, focusing especially on

two episodes of anti-establishment activity among the Serbs: the massive student protests in

1996/1997 and the October 5th 2000 revolution which belatedly unseated Milošević’s

nationalist coalition from power (I also briefly discuss the effects of NATO’s 1999 bombing

on nationalism in between the two). The extent of nationalist sentiment during these two

waves of oppositional activity remains a politicized issue. Many contemporary pro-EU

parliamentary forces in Serbia insist that these events were revolutionary in the truest sense

of the word: abrupt discontinuities from the nationalist hysteria of the preceding war period

and signs of a decisive popular abandonment of Serbian nationalism. In contrast, other pro-

Western forces (in curious agreement with sympathizers of the extreme right-wing Serbian

Radical Party) insist that these two events marked no substantive difference in popular

sentiment; they were merely, the claim goes, nationalist challenges to Milošević’s particular

brand of nationalism. By sketching a more nuanced trend, this chapter argues that, while both

claims are simplistic and misleading, there is something to each. Serbian nationalism did

indeed experience an unprecedented challenge by an anti-nationalist, democratic movement

based on civic rather than national/ethnic values; nevertheless, denying certain continuities of

the Serbian nationalism of the first half of the 1990s would be highly disingenuous.

Public Opinion in the Second Half of the 1990s

Before examining the two moments (the 1996/1997 protests and the October 5th

uprising) in more detail, I first explore some general features of Serbian public opinion for

the 1996-2000 period to better contextualize the significance of these two specific events.

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Since these two historical episodes were largely defined by massive collective actions, it is

important to roughly discuss who participated in them (e.g. educated vs. uneducated sectors

of the population), why they did so (e.g. anger and helplessness vs. hope and optimism), and

how they did so (e.g. through party politics vs. through street protesting). We can better

understand the motivations of those who challenged and finally overthrew the nationalist

order only by attempting to understand how this challenge and overthrow were understood in

public opinion and what people’s expectations actually were. A concise summary of the

general “moods and aspirations” of the Serbian population is available from none other than

Miloš Nikolić, “one of the great old men of Yugoslav Communism.” 185 Based on opinion

polls conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences, the Center for Policy Studies, the

Association for the Advance of Empirical Research and the United Branch Trade Unions

Nezavisnost (“Independence”), 186 Nikolić’s findings are relevant here in three regards.

Firstly, though both are similar popular reactions to a pair of attempts at electoral

fraud, these two popular uprisings had radically different constituencies behind them. In

particular, we may say the 1996/1997 protests were significantly less “popular” than the

October 5th revolt – the former was led by students, intellectuals and other educated sectors

of Serbian society, primarily centered around urban areas and probably remaining

unrepresentative of the entire society in many of their demands. In contrast, October 5th

involved farmers, unskilled workers, old-age pensioners and those without much formal

education as well as their urban, intellectual, young and educated counterparts. Related to

this are the differences in what motivated the participants of each of these events, as well as

what their expectations were.

185
Becker 2005, 2.
186
The first was conducted May 7-21, 1996; another in July 1999 and again on Sept 9-12 of the same year; another in July
2000; one during August 25-31 2000; and a final one in December 9-11, 2000.

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Table 4.1. Moods and Emotions Among Serbs in 1996 and 2000
Perception May 1996 September 2000
Indifference 12 13
Rage 9 39
Powerlessness, Helplessness 15 31
Anxiety, Fear 27 42
Note: Figures represent percentages. Neither set of percentages adds up to 100% because only categories
common to both polls were included.

Presumably, the “moods” or “emotions” of rage, powerlessness, helplessness, anxiety, and

fear can be considered conducive to mobilization against the nationalist leadership because of

its failure to satisfy basic needs and its increasing illegitimacy in the eyes of most Serbs. The

increase in these perceptions from May 1996 to September 2000 was determined, many have

argued, by the transformation of Milošević’s rule into a highly repressive one (the movement

from “soft oppression” into “hard oppression,” in the words of Miloš Nikolić). 187 Indeed, the

dissatisfaction with the direction Serbia was headed skyrocketed in these four years:

according to the May 1996 survey, only 43% considered that Serbia functioned well while

29% considered it functioned poorly; by September 2000, as many as 83% of Serbs said they

were dissatisfied with the entire situation in their country. Simultaneously, hope and

optimism were much more prevalent among Serbs in general in 2000 than they were four

years prior. In 1996, only about one in every ten respondents believed that the protests of

1996/1997 would lead to the formation of a provisional “technocratic” government and only

one in seven that free and fair elections would eventually be honored. Only one-tenth of

Serbs expected that Milošević would be forced to resign, which roughly corresponds to the

number of active participants in the protests. In September 2000, however, indicators of

“hope” were at an all-time-high of 42%, while a majority 52% shared the belief that a “better

state” would result from the electoral process. In sum, therefore, although neither the

187
Nikolić 2002, 135.

116
constituency behind the 1996/1997 protests or the one that generated October 5th was

homogenous, the former was less representative of Serbs at large than the latter. 1996/1997

protestors were less hopeful, optimistic, enraged and anxious, while October 5th participants

(like Serbs at large in 2000) were considerably more enraged, fearful and expecting imminent

change to the nationalist order.

Secondly, the two constituencies involved in the two waves of oppositional uprising

also had quite different methods. More Serbs overall expressed readiness and willingness to

act within the communist-nationalist system and its institutions (courts, parliament, parties,

etc.) in 1996 than in 2000; as rage and helplessness rose, so did the willingness to engage in

direct actions (such as civil disobedience) as opposed to going through parliamentary or party

channels. By the time the NATO bombing ended, almost nine out of ten uneducated

respondents, three-quarters of those with elementary schooling, two-thirds of those with

vocational training and secondary education, and three-fifths of the highly-educated

expressed complete refusal to engage in any kind of party activities. Interestingly, people

with secondary and higher education were becoming less willing to participate actively in,

for instance, street protests (a drop from 29% to 26% in the first group and from 39% to 23%

in the second), whereas the interest in organizing such actions expressed by both groups

simultaneously increased (from 12% to 26% and 11% to 30%, respectively). It would appear,

therefore, that the core participants in the 1996/1997 protests later preferred to relinquish

their leadership roles in direct involvement to the less educated (and more numerous) sectors

of Serbian society. This partially explains the aforementioned difference between the

1996/1997 protests and the October 5th revolt in social composition: the latter was much

more mass-based and inclusive of uneducated sectors of society and those from rural areas.

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In summary, the later oppositional wave was characterized by an increased willingness to

work outside the system of the nationalist state, as well as a broader and more representative

participation of Serbs in oppositional activities.

Finally, most relevant to our topic is the self-identification of Serbs according to

various identities at three moments in this period.

Table 4.2. Attachments and Social Self-Identification

Attachment/Identification May 1996 August-September 1999 November-December 2000
Family 82 n/a n/a
Nation 52 37 30
Religion 41 33 12
Class 22 n/a n/a
Profession 20 36 14
Generation 17 42 29
Political n/a 20 n/a
Note: Figures represent percentages.
Source: Compiled from Nikolić 2002, and Baćević et al. 2003, 116.

These figures indicate that nationalist belonging and ethnic self-identification were losing

their strength and priority; the more time passed from the civil war and the sanctions, the

more so. In 1993, as we saw earlier, nationalist self-identification prevailed (with negligible

variance) across all socio-economic categories for a decisive majority of the population. Less

than one year after Dayton, only a slim majority (52%) prioritized belonging to the nation of

Serbia. By 1999, this had dropped to 37%; by 2000, after Milošević’s overthrow, it fell even

further to 30%. In addition, identification and attachment to the Serbian Orthodox

Christianity – one of Serbian nationalism’s most active partners – declined even more

dramatically from 41% in 1996 to 12% in 2000. Ironically enough, the collapse of a

nominally atheist, Communist regime was accompanied by an apparent collapse of religiosity

among Serbs – an indication of how symbiotic religious and nationalist self-identification

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were. 188 The fluctuation of the priority assigned to “generation” (from 17% to 42% to 29% in

1996, 1999 and 2000, respectively) is a direct reflection of the 1996/1997 protests. As we

will see below, the generational chasm between (roughly speaking) nationalist forces and

their opponents became strikingly visible and politicized during this oppositional wave,

leading to more than a doubling in its priority by 1999. Fittingly, the more age diverse

moment of October 5th was followed by a sharp decline in the importance assigned to

generational belonging. The general trend before the fall of the regime, in other words, was

one of increased emphasis on (primarily) generational identity and attachment and

(secondarily) profession and other localized categories. In the immediate aftermath of

October 5th, the extent of nationalist and especially religious self-identification continued to

decline at an increased rate. The overall trend was that, as time passed from the period of

sanctions and war, citizens perceived themselves less as Orthodox Christian Serbs and more

as old or young, workers or farmers, etc.

It should be noted, however, that Table 4.2 is misleading insofar as it ignores the

impact of a highly formative three-month event that had just ended before the August-

September 1999 data was gathered: the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. As we will see

below, the war interrupted the gradual trend towards abandonment of nationalism with a

sudden, war-driven unification of Serbs around their state for protection and survival. The

conspiring of literally all of Western Europe and the US against Serbia in a seemingly

ruthless, indiscriminate campaign of terror appeared only to vindicate what Serbian

nationalism had held all along: that outsiders cannot be trusted, that the “international

community” is a subversive and destructive force intent on destroying Serbia, and that

188
For more on the role of Serbian Orthodox Christianity and, more specifically, the Orthodox Church in propagating
Serbian nationalism, see: Tomanić 2001.

119
internal divisions within Yugoslavia are unaffordable luxuries so long as “national questions”

remain in places like Kosovo. The severe socio-economic pressures, pervasive violence and

general insecurity that the air campaign produced led even the most oppositional, anti-

nationalist segments of the population into temporary support for the regime, though not

necessarily of its nationalist policies. After the war (Serbia’s fifth in the past decade) ended,

after the bombs stopped falling and after economic normalcy was restored, nationalist self-

identification largely resumed its steady pre-war decline, while anti-regime sentiments and

activities (which had been disastrously hindered by the intervention) eventually continued to

rise. Hence the NATO war and the violent skirmishes in Kosovo that preceded it can be

thought of as a relatively fleeting suspension of longer-standing trends – a severe but

temporary postponement of the general decline in nationalism among the public.

Table 4.2 does, therefore, illustrate the partial retreat of nationalism appropriately. It

is in this general context – of decreasing feelings of Orthodox Christianity and Serbian-ness

and of increasing rage, helplessness, disillusionment with the nationalist leadership and

willingness to engage in direct political actions outside formal institutions – that the two

major episodes of Serbian opposition unfolded.

“The Walks”: Novelties

In November 1996, parliamentary and local elections were held throughout

Yugoslavia. In the former, Milošević’s SPS (in coalition with his wife’s Yugoslav United

Left and New Democracy) won 42.41% of the vote, the opposition coalition Zajedno

(“Together”) won 22.25% and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) won 17.88%. The outcome

appeared at first glance to be a clear affirmation of the nationalism of the preceding periods.

Nationalist-communist parties attracted by far more votes than in the 1992 and 1993 federal

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elections and opposition parties lost almost 300,000 supporters since that time. Local election

results appeared even direr: SPS won 1,227 seats, the Yugoslav Left (JUL) won 111, SPS

and JUL won 32, SRS won 16 and New Democracy won 6; against all these nationalist seats,

the Zajedno coalition together won only 313. However, the second round of elections that

followed in November was an enormous surprise for both the ruling parties (who expected

certain victory) and the opposition (who did not expect to do particularly well, given their

poor results in the federal elections). Against expectations, Zajedno won municipal power in

all the major cities in Serbia – some 39% of the population was now living in municipalities

controlled by opposition leaders. The ruling nationalist-communist parties reacted with an

attempt at major electoral fraud, as Milošević’s narrow circle of Party leaders falsified

minutes of electoral commissions in favor of SPS and directed hundreds of fraudulent

objections concerning the electoral process to courts asking that the elections be annulled (a

request that many courts indulged). These and other blatantly undemocratic measures

provoked the largest and most sustained mass demonstrations in Serbia’s history: “the

Walks” (šetnje), as they were known, stretched incessantly from November 18th, 1996 to

mid-March, 1997. This outburst of mass collective action turned what first appeared to be

another electoral victory for the nationalist order into the most effective and enduring popular

challenge to the state that Serbia had seen since the XIX century.

In these 79-100 days (and often nights), 189 citizens and students organized mass

protests and marches in more than 30 cities in Serbia; on every single day of this period,

between 100,000 and 300,000 citizens and 30,000-40,000 students demonstrated in Belgrade

189
If one includes the smaller student-only actions that continued even after the Zajedno coalition abandoned the protests,
the Walks in fact stretched continuously for 119 days. See Antić 2006, 41.

121
alone. 190 This far-from-modest crowd was willing and able to produce widespread public

disturbance, chronic disruption of traffic, paralysis of major state institutions (especially

educational) and, to be sure, unrelenting noise. Thousands of students from outside Belgrade

often marched to it across long highways and regional boundaries to protest, and later walked

back only to return again the following day. A memorable photograph of one of the many

walks that gave the entire period its popular name featured a young lady from Novi Sad

strolling on her way to Belgrade with a banner reading “we feel bad if we do not walk at least

120km a day.” 191 Trumpets, plastic whistles, and pots/pans serving as drums became

trademark items of the era. Even those remaining inside due to old age or the severe cold

engaged in the political noise pollution at their windows, as every day’s state television news

broadcast was greeted with thousands of pottery-banging sessions in virtually every urban

neighborhood. On Serbian New Year’s eve, between 400 and 500 thousand illegally gathered

in the capital’s main square in what one of its organizers referred to as the largest concert in

history, “bigger than Woodstock.” 192 On one occasion, when a police cordon blocked a

major street in Belgrade’s center, some 400 students stood continuously in front of it for

eight days and nights in shifts of six hours until the police barricade was forced to pull out.

Such confrontational actions were met with fierce police repression, as truncheons, tear gas

and water cannons were generously employed. 193 Having just recently recovered from

external conflicts, Serbia was now engaged in fierce internal ones that persisted for months,

with both opposition and regime spokesmen warning of a potential civil war. On February

190
Nikolić 2002, 82.
191
Antić 2006, 204.
192
“Woodstock” remark made on B92’s Poligraf show (February 1st, 2007). Transcript available online:
www.b92.net/info/emisije/poligraf.php.
193
Nikolić 2002, 83.

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4th, 1997, Milošević conceded victory to the opposition leaders in the local elections and, by

the end of March, the Walks were officially over.

For all its diversity and complexity, this movement represented something new in

being the first major anti-nationalist force to be reckoned with in the latest Yugoslavia. What

had previously been default political ideology – the righteous crusade to unite all Serbs into a

single Serb-run state, by force if need be – was suddenly being renounced not by marginal

sectors of the population but by a critical mass credibly threatening state stability. March

1991 did mark massive anti-regime processions leading to violent clashes, but the event took

less than two days and a few tanks in the streets of Belgrade to pacify completely. The

Serbian Orthodox church did unite with opposition forces in 1992 and 1993 to mobilize

people against state power, but its demands were largely nationalist (as symbolized by

opposition leader Vuk Drašković) and at best ambiguous about whether Milošević was being

faulted for too much or too little nationalist fervor. During the sanctions/war period, even

these anti-establishment forces largely evaporated; active resistance was limited to the

feminist/pacifist organization Women in Black (Žene u Crnom) and other groups so tiny that

their public gatherings were virtually meaningless.

“It was only in 1996,” historian Čedomir Antić noted, “that Milošević’s regime lost

majority support from the citizens of Serbia.” 194 An opinion poll in early December 1996 (as

the Walks were only heating up) showed an unprecedented low in Milošević’s approval

ratings (16.5%) and a five-fold increase in the popularity of previously-distrusted anti-

nationalist opposition leader Zoran Djindjić. 195 For nationalist politicians, this was the

beginning of the end. It was the first occasion on which most of the antagonism to the regime

194
Antić 2006, 9.
195
Cited in Ramet 2006, 506.

123
did not come from supporters of alternative nationalist forces. Šešelj’s SRS (to name the one

that was most formative in the preceding periods) bitterly condemned the 1996/1997 protests

and dissociated itself from all subsequent incarnations of this movement, including what it

called the coup d’état of October 5th. Unlike many of the anti-regime gatherings of the early

1990s (such as the commemoration of fifty years since the overthrow of the Nazi puppet

government in Belgrade, which was cited in Chapter 2), the Walks condemned Milošević’s

nationalist critics and supposed “opponents” as equally if not more contemptible than the

autocratic ruler himself. 196 Instead of endorsements from former leaders of the Serbian war

effort or Serbian nationalist parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Zajedno coalition and its

“walkers” brandished the support they enjoyed from the Montenegrin opposition coalition

and the Albanian human rights activist and nationalist-labeled “anti-Serb” Adem Demaqi.

More generally, in a radical break with precedent anti-regime activities, the Walks

articulated demands largely unrelated to Serbian nationalism.

Table 4.3 Demands and Expectations of 1996/1997 Protest Participants

Feel greater dignity and freedom 52%

Be sure of the future of my children and myself 32.1%
Increase in the overall social standard 19.9%
Serbian nation to win the right to live in a single state 8.3%
Advancement in professional career or a new job 7.5%

Source: Nikolić 2002.

Less than 10% of the protestors, we notice in Table 4.3, prioritized Serbian nationalism

(offered in this questionnaire precisely in the form of the definition this thesis uses). On

several indicators which had revealed overwhelming nationalism among all Serbs in 1993,

nationalism was declining in 1996 – largely a reflection of the rejection of nationalism

among the active minority of protestors and “walkers.” In 1993, 54.4% of Serbs agreed with

196
A joke surrounding the period was that Milošević kept Šešelj around intentionally as a reminder of how much worse the
alternative might be if he himself is overthrown.

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the claim that the most important thing for Serbs is “to find an energetic and just leader

whom everybody will respect and obey”; in 1996, this percentage dropped to 43.5%. 52.2%

of the population endorsed the claim that “one should not trust foreigners too much” in 1993;

three years later, only 44.1% agreed. 197 Though not a majority, therefore, this anti-nationalist

section of the population nevertheless reached a record scale, apparently even large enough

to shift Serbian public opinion as a whole.

As ethnologist Ivan Čolović compellingly argues, the most significant aspect of these

protests was not these particular distributions of opinion, nor the exact number of supporters,

nor even the concrete political victories that emerged from the entire affair. 198 Rather, the

most essential development was their “symbolic communication” – the novel political

demands articulated through “slogans, catch-phrases on placards or badges and lines of verse,

or [through] a gesture, a performance, a caricature, a puppet, a sculpture or a mask” and the

countless other forms the carnivalesque manifestations offered. 199 Focusing on the speeches

of opposition party leaders or academics at rallies is not nearly as instructive as studying the

“unfolding street burlesque” 200 and its various creative forms. Reviewing an extensive

archive of slogans and visual representations that appeared during this period, 201 one is

struck most by the absence of nationalist themes and the prevalence of concrete civic

demands – freedom of the press (particularly independent radio B92), the right to free and

fair elections, and transparency at universities being foremost among them. Allusions to any

of the recent conflicts in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were all vastly

197
Lazić 1999, 73.
198
Most notably, Zoran Djindjić became Mayor of Belgrade and dozens of other pro-Western social democrats unseated
nationalist officials in cities throughout Serbia for the first time in twenty years.
199
Čolović 2002, 295.
200
Torov 2000, 262.
201
I am fortunate to have a comprehensive archive of slogans and pictures from the era, complied by two prominent
organizers of the Walks at the time. It includes hundreds of signs, banners, cartoons and slogans.

125
outnumbered by the number of items referring to the corruption of the rector of Belgrade

University alone. References to folklore tradition – an indispensable tool for nationalist

rhetoric – were present exclusively in satirical contexts. 202 Many slogans even violated the

most sacred of tenants of Serbian nationalism, that of Serb unity; instead of the primeval

mantra “Only Unity Saves the Serb” (Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava) that had dominated state

institutions for centuries, the 1996/1997 protests suggested instead that “Only Strolling Saves

the Serbs,” and advised their fellow-citizens to “Stop Being Cattle, Resist!” One ill-mannered

protestor responded to the popular nationalist appeal to “Fate of Our Children” with a banner

reading “We Love You, Children. – Belgrade Pedophiles.” Other items resurrected themes of

the 1960s, including the celebration of free love, pacifism and humanism across class and

certainly national boundaries. Far from avoiding elements of what nationalists held to be the

decadent and imperialist West, the protestors proudly displayed foreign flags, logos of car

manufacturers and other brands unavailable in Serbia, quotes from European literature, icons

of Western role models, and quips from animated American TV shows. Indeed, Serbian and

Yugoslav flags and emblems were virtually never carried or displayed. 203 Against the

nationalist obsession with pride in the Serbian language and alphabet, many placards and

badges of the time were written in foreign languages. The most renowned slogan – “Belgrade

is the world” (Beograd je Svet) – reflected not only a contempt for the isolation Milošević

was held responsible for bringing onto Yugoslavia, but an affirmation of a basically

cosmopolitan understandings of who Serbs (or at least Belgraders) were. In a culture

dominated by nationalist indoctrination at all levels of society, the novelty of these symbolic

messages should not be underestimated.

202
Serbian epic poetry and nationalist slogans from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as nationalist party campaign slogans from
the 1990s, were the most frequent targets of satirical protest texts. Čolović 2002, 299.
203
Djilas 2005, 117.

126
 Finally, also in contrast to similar activities of the past, these anti-establishment

protests were mirrored in several former Yugoslav republics. Student protestors demanding

education reform and European standards engaged in numerous strikes and massive

demonstrations throughout Macedonia in 1997. In November 1996, the anti-HDZ opposition

in Croatia staged the largest protest in the newly formed country’s history in Zagreb,

demanding a reversal of the shutdown of Croatia’s only remaining independent radio

station. 204 Not only were these protesting Serbs acutely observing and communicating with

their counterparts in the region, but much of the demonstrating was directed primarily at

them and other audiences abroad. The importance to the demonstrators of being heard and

seen by the outside was visible “in their disappointment that it took more than ten days for

the foreign media and politicians to take an interest in the events.” 205 Indeed, comparing the

anti-nationalist and antiwar movements in Serbia and Croatia, a curious similarity emerges in

the fact that a failure to penetrate beyond republican boundaries to capture the attention of

“the outside” was common to both, and probably contributed to the triumph of state

nationalist forces in both. 206

For a movement contesting stolen elections and governmental corruption inside

Serbia, the 1996/1997 protestors dedicated a remarkable portion of their messages to

international audiences: “F*** you, deaf Europe,” charged one banner, while another

celebrated “The Student Protest: The Joy of Europe.” Allusions to anti-communist

movements in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Poland were pervasive; “It’s Spring,”

a popular adage of the period read, “but I live in Serbia.” On one occasion, a massive crowd

in Belgrade even honored a minute’s silence for a teacher of Albanian nationality who had

204
Sremac 1999, 204.
205
Čolović 2002, 300.
206
For a review of the Serbian opposition’s counterpart in Croatia, see: Balas 2000.

127
been beaten to death in a police station in Kosovo – no small feat for any large crowd, let

alone one that had absorbed a decade of nationalist indoctrination about the wickedness of

Albanians. Overall, just as Serbian nationalism in the early 1990s was a force constantly

observing, reacting and interacting with external pressures, its first significant challenger

likewise looked beyond Serbia’s borders for guidance, reinforcement and hope. Many of the

testimonials of the 1996/1997 protest leadership themselves place enormous stress on the role

of contact and mutual recognition with forces abroad; commonly, the former organizers seek

place blame for Milošević’s continued rule after 1997 on insufficient help from Western

democracies. 207

“The Walks”: Continuities and the Nationalist Reaction

All of the above notwithstanding, it would be incorrect to treat this period as a

straightforward sign of nationalism’s retreat in general. Indeed, it would not even be

warranted to describe the Walks as exclusively anti-nationalist themselves. Summarizing his

review of the mottos and visual messages of the era, Čolović also observed the remarkable

way those “two great political themes – the Kosovo problem and Serbia’s responsibility for

the recent war – were largely ignored during the protest.” 208 As many as 36% of the students

involved expressed support for the idea that Kosovo be stripped of its status of autonomy – a

quintessentially nationalist stance.209 To take a more formal, institutional example of

nationalist currents within the Walks: the very same 63rd Parachute Brigade which had been

called upon to crush anti-regime protests in March of 1991 was, in December 1996, publicly

207
Antić 2006.
208
Čolović 2002, 302.
209
Nikolić 2002, 83.

128
refusing to employ army weapons “against the people of Serbia.” 210 Though certainly a blow

to the regime’s expectations and strategies, this was hardly a blow to Serbian nationalism. On

the contrary, the army’s gradual abandonment of Milošević’s nationalist agenda was

motivated by an even more aggressive one. In this regard, features of Serbian nationalism of

the earlier periods found their way into (at least) some aspects of the student protests.

More importantly, “walkers” were a highly unrepresentative sample of the country as

a whole. Numerous indicators of nationalism existed among the Serbs at large which were

virtually absent within the sub-constituency of protesting Serbs. Throughout 1996,

Milošević’s SPS remained the single most popular political party in Serbia, with 20.98% of

Serbs’ reported support. 34.4% of all Serbs continued to support the idea that “the army

should rule the country.” For all their sympathy towards Western Europe and America, the

protestors were a world away from their nationals at large, 71.5% of whom had little or no

trust whatsoever in the European Union. 52.81% of Serbs believed “we should be careful and

restrained in dealing with people of other nationalities even if they are our friends.”

Table 4.4. Attachments and Social Self-Identification during the Walks

How important is your national
Serb Population at Large (1996) Protest Participants (1996/1997)
affiliation to you?
Very Important 54.25 27
Fairly Important 35.68 31
Fairly Unimportant 7.21 11
Unimportant 2.85 11
Note: Figures represent percentages. The survey of protest participants included a category of
“somewhat important” in addition to the four listed, which the general population questionnaire did not
offer.
Source: Lazić 1999, 143 + CPIJM.

A majority of Serbs, in fact, believed that “children and youth” (i.e. the protestors) should

simply “not be allowed to express disobedience” (67.78%). 55.85% of Serbs believed that

“citizens should be denied the right to strikes and demonstrations if these disturb public order

210
Ramet 2006, 506.

129
and peace.” In the end, to make no mistake about it, 88.51% of Serbs agreed with the

statement that “the interests of the nation as a whole must be above all particular

interests.” 211 As Table 4.4 proves, although unprecedented assaults on Serbian nationalism

were widespread, one did not have to look far for it in the general Serb population.

Continuities from the early 1990s (such as authoritarianism, xenophobia, etc.) were

undeniably present.

As mentioned, educated and urban populations were overrepresented in these

protests. In a country where less than 10% of the population held university degrees, 45.8%

of the protest participants were university graduates; an astonishing 98.3% held

secondary/high school or university/higher academic degrees. 212 In a predominantly rural,

agricultural country, only 4% of the protestors were farmers and only 1% of them came from

villages outside Belgrade; 49% of the participants were specialized experts or students and

only 6% were workers. 213 In addition, the urban/rural divide was largely nonexistent in the

“walking” community but ubiquitous in Serbia at large. As we saw in Chapter 3,

“Milošević’s rule opened a chasm between city and countryside.” 214 Although the former

was now aggressively resisting the communist-nationalist order, the countryside remained a

substantial nationalist base for Milošević’s rule in 1996. Citizens of villages and other small

rural communities were culturally and politically distant from urban Serbs, their utter

isolation from anything but state propaganda as a source of information being one of their

most unique characteristics. 215 Support for Milošević-style nationalism was, furthermore,

most represented among the elderly (those over 45 years of age) and those with lower

211
Emphasis mine.
212
Lazić 1999, 36.
213
Ibid, 36-40.
214
Ramet 2006, 495.
215
Ibid 1996.

130
degrees of formal education. The previously-described migration of over half-a-million

young university-educated Serbs left this rural, uneducated and nationalist sector of the

population a majority. An intense mutual distrust characterized the two spheres, as each

scapegoated the other for all of Serbia’s major woes: the anti-nationalist “walkers” wondered

endlessly at the “idiocy of the countryside,” while rural communities dismissed protest

participants as hooligans, terrorists, spies and national traitors. 216

Finally – and most interestingly – this popular uprising induced not just a novel wave

of anti-nationalist sentiment, but it also provoked Serbian nationalism to take on new,

domestic enemies. The targets of Serbian nationalism had previously been straightforwardly

“distant” from who Serbs purportedly were ethnically (Croats, Albanians, etc.) and

ideologically (fascists, imperialists, etc.). Suddenly, Serbian nationalism was being not only

rejected by large numbers of Serbs themselves, but it was being re-appropriated by groups

that threaten state stability in the name of Serbia. The “good of the Serbian people” and the

“Serbian national interest” became contentious political values open to interpretation. How

could Serbian nationalist identity, with the state as its champion, survive these

inconsistencies and divisions?

In a fascinating maneuver, the regime’s official stance became that, in fact, there was

nothing “internal” about these disorderly protestors at all. They were, the party line asserted,

strani plaćenici. This term – by far the single most pervasive description attached to

opposition activity in state press and TV reports during the Walks – meant “ones who are on

foreign payrolls,” or foreign payees. Embedded in a more general conspiratorial theme of

grand power games and extensive international spy networks, foreign payees were thought of

as malicious infiltrators from abroad – pervasive and treacherous undercover agents and
216
Ramet 1996.

131
traitors controlled by powerful interests in the US, Western Europe, the Vatican or elsewhere.

Legally, the state treated these criminals not so much as national citizens as invaders. Smear

campaigns were directed at student and opposition party leaders almost daily in Politika,

accusing them of receiving funds from the CIA, organizing subversive activities in

orphanages and schools, plotting terrorist schemes against unsuspecting Serbian refugees,

and visiting American embassies in the region to report to their imperial bosses. One study of

a typical week on state TV RTS found that even the four (out of a total of one hundred and

three of electoral political programming) dedicated to presentation of oppositional leaders

and policies was dominated by descriptions of the “vandalism” and “treachery” of the foreign

payees. 217 Serbian Assembly Speaker Dragan Tomić was only one of many regime officials

to routinely refer to the students and other nonviolent protestors as “fascists” funded and

trained by Germany, Austria, the US and all those who had failed to destroy Yugoslavia

before 1995 and are now returning to complete the mission.

All the major student unions and organizations running the Walks’ daily activities

were dismissed as treasonous if not terrorist cliques committed to serving anti-Serb interests

at the behest of foreigners. In a typical recollection of the time, a former student activist

engaged in protest security recalled the way his peers primarily worried not about his being

injured or arrested, but advised him instead to make sure “to appear at rallies only insofar as

your colleagues do not begin to suspect you are a traitor.” 218 The Soroš Foundation – due to

its “subversive” support for antiwar groups, independent media outlets, refugee support

programs and medical centers – earned the position of symbolic popinjay for the persistent

nationalist paranoia. It “was always officially considered the principal ‘anti-Yugoslav’ [i.e.

217
Cited in Djilas 2005, 116.
218
Antić 2006, 43.

132
anti-Serb] organization to be avoided by patriots.” 219 Everyone from the vulnerable young

minds of Serbian elementary schools to the elderly patients in medical institutions was

portrayed as a potential target of Soroš “infiltration.” This all contributed to a curious nuance

in Serbian nationalism in this period: the anti-regime demonstrators were not “real” Serbs;

for all intents and purposes, they were foreign soldiers on an anti-Serb crusade who just

happen to be located inside “our” brave, beleaguered republic. Serbs could now be “anti-

Serb” at the behest of non-Serbs, in which case they are no better than the familiar enemies

of yesteryear.

Thus the dilemma of an unprecedented internal division in the ranks of the Serbian

nation itself was alleviated: just as the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was only

sustained by CIA funds and arms shipments, so did the students and other protestors exist

only because power centers from abroad continued to bolster them. Out of panic and fear as

much as out of rational statesmanship, the regime thus removed all reservations about

applying the same treatment to foreign payees as to the standard foreign enemies dealt with

in the early 1990s. Not only was retaliation against the Serbian hazards to Serbia conducted

through institutional purges (some two hundred professors were fired from their university

posts), 220 but for the first time in Serbia’s modern history was state violence employed on

such a large scale internally in the name of Serbian nationalism. In a parody of Milošević’s

famous pledge to Kosovo Serbs, poet Djordje Balašević wrote of the 1996/1997 struggle

between the nationalist regime and its challengers: “No one is allowed to beat you….except

me.”

219
Udovički and Štitkovac 2000, 260.
220
Antić 2006, 15.

133
 Shifting its repressive energy from Croats, Muslims, NATO and even Albanians,

Serbian forces were now directed at the very constituency they were allegedly protecting

from outside threats. On a particularly bloody occasion, 58 demonstrators were taken to

hospital on December 25th, one of whom eventually succumbing to the wounds. Three days

later, 18 were hospitalized with severe injuries and overnight of February 2nd-3rd, several

hundred were beaten and over one hundred arrested. In the most infamous clash of what

some call “the two Serbias,” 221 Milošević organized a counter-protest on the eve of Catholic

Christmas 1996 by bussing in thousands of loyal supporters from rural areas in Central

Serbia to respond to his student opponents with a nationalist rally of his own. The purpose

was, as one protest organizer recalls, “to ‘cleanse’ from the streets of Belgrade the ‘handful’

of foreign payees and restore peace in the streets.” 222 Naturally, the patriotic turnout was

pitiably small in the face of a record number of anti-regime protestors that day, many of

whom had joined only then, after feeling provoked. An eyewitness recalls the way the

indoctrinated nationalist crowd, after many hours of traveling to Belgrade, appeared

uncharacteristically humbled and crestfallen:

The prevailing impression these people left was one of being

worried. They believed what television had told them – that the
city was being terrorized by a rebellious minority. They
expected the real Belgrade to greet them with bread and salt, as
brothers and liberators. Instead, they found themselves trapped
[by the outnumbering mass of student protestors], like inside a
barrel. From all sides, one could hear the threatening hollers of
the masses from surrounding streets. As they walked from their
[subsidized] buses to [the pro-regime meeting place], they had
fierce insults and objects thrown at them from all sides. Their
faces said so much. They mostly stood silently, their hands in
their pockets, awaiting further developments. Hardly anyone
expressed signs of zeal.” 223

221
Batić 2007.
222
Antić 2006, 106.
223
Ibid, 56. Emphasis mine.

134
The testimony aptly illustrates both the above-described novelties and continuities of the

period. Less than five years earlier, tanks on their way to the Bosnian and Croatian fronts

were greeted with euphoric nationalist folk music and flowers in the very same Belgrade

center. That Serbs were now intimidating other Serbs into restraining their nationalist “zeal”

was truly an unparalleled development. 67.14% of Serbs in 1996 strongly or completely

disagreed with the idea that the use of violence could be justified to achieve a “unitary state”

and “national unity,” 224 a figure that was unheard of in studies of public opinion during the

sanctions.

As far as die-hard nationalists were concerned, however, these segments of Serbia

were not “real,” just as the Belgrade that greeted them was not “real,” nor were the Serbs that

insulted them “real” Serbs. It is this aspect of Serbian nationalism alone that clearly indicates

continuity with its earlier forms in the 1990s. The crude, conspiratorial and paranoid streaks

of Serbian nationalism that had developed under conditions of extreme isolation did not

disappear in 1996; rather, they targeted a new, internal constituency to replace the perceived

enemies of the war and sanctions period. Furthermore, this curious defensive reaction of the

nationalist propaganda machine – to strip disobedient Serbs of their Serbian-ness on the

grounds that they are being financed and controlled by the outside – demonstrates just how

fundamentally reactive and sensitive to perceived outside threats Serbian nationalism is.

Even conflicts within the boundaries of the Serbian nation are unavoidably reinterpreted as

necessary struggles against external enemies; alternative justifications for Serbian

nationalism simply could not compete.

224
CPIJM, 1996.

135
The NATO Bombing: A Temporary Upsurge in Nationalism

Before proceeding to the second great episode of oppositional activity, I will briefly

review the straightforward effects of the 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia – a

conflict over an unfailing source of Serbian nationalism: the disputed province of Kosovo. In

sum, the intensive three-month war can best be understood as an interruption of the gradual

decline of popular nationalism since 1995; it temporarily restored nationalist fervor,

revitalized suspicion and contempt for the outside world, and returned Serbs to conditions

similar to those of the sanctions period, thus uniting them again “in misery.”

A brief contextualization of the Kosovo conflict may be in order. The early 1990s

directed most Serbian state resources to the raging wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia,

but the conflict with Albanians over the southern province remained a painful question. From

the lens of Western observers, Serbian claims to Kosovo appeared – of all attachments to

disputed territories of the former Yugoslavia – the most irrational. Not only was the province

demographically impossible to maintain as a Serbian territory, but much of the rhetoric

behind attempting to do so appealed to irrelevant primordial claims to Serbian uprisings

against the Ottoman Turks centuries ago. The medieval rhetoric aside, however, an ongoing

campaign of violence did menace the Kosovo Serbs for decades. The origins of the term

“ethnic cleansing” are usually identified in the 1990s; in the Serbian media, however, the

phrase is traceable to Albanian expulsion of Serbian families from Kosovo twenty years

prior. Serbian migration from the area was a powerful instigator of nationalist paranoia.

Censuses show that, in the two decades of 1971-1991, the number of Serbs in Kosovo

dropped by over 33,000 despite a natural growth rate of the Serbian population that was

136
higher than that of other parts of Serbia and Yugoslavia as a whole. 225 From 1961 to 1991,

the percentage of Serbs in Kosovo relative to total population in the region fell more than

double (from 23.5% to 10%), reflecting a high Kosovo Albanian birth rate as well as

increased Serbian fleeing from the province into Serbia proper or the other republics. In

efforts to maintain good relations with communist Albania, Tito had prohibited reporting on

anti-Serb incidents from Kosovo – a policy of censorship that Milošević’s propaganda outlets

opportunistically reversed full circle. 226

Fearing the loss of the province due to such a “biological” disadvantage, the Serbian

government repeatedly increased its military presence in Kosovo and offered economic aid to

Slavs seeking to resettle in Kosovo. Following the constitutional amendments of 1989 that

sought to weaken the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina, Serbia ended the Kosovo

parliament in July of 1990. On September 28, a new Serbian constitution was adopted

signifying the end of autonomy for both provinces. The occasional rioting and the deaths

accompanying it vastly intensified, with over 100,000 Kosovo Albanians going on strike in

early September. In March of 1991, Serbia decided to cut educational funding to Kosovo

because local schools refused to honor new Serbian restrictions on the teaching of Albanian

history and literature. When similar “soft measures” failed, the regime engaged in harsh

police repression – including beatings, political arrests and killings – that gradually escalated

throughout the 1990s. Anger over the Serbian exodus from the region helped maintain steady

support for the crackdown. Despite such efforts, Kosovo’s overwhelming Albanian majority

(ranging from 80-90% of the area since 1991) simply could not be brought under Serbian

control by force. Uniquely in Europe, a “parallel society” was built within the province, with

225
Growth indices and Serbian population numbers in Yugoslavia, Population Censuses in 1971 and 1991.
226
Beloff 1997, 56.

137
a wholly separate structure of government, ranging from “President” Ibrahim Rugova to the

most local administration and management. Albanian was used in schools and universities,

Serbia’s authority in local municipalities and elections was disrespected, and de facto

sovereignty slowly began to be transferred to local Albanian leaders with closer ties to Tirana

than to Belgrade.

The Kosovo Albanians – in a movement led by Rugova – initially pursued nonviolent

methods directed merely at restoring autonomy to the province. However, given Milošević’s

refusal to give even the slightest concessions or recognition to moderate Kosovo Albanian

representatives, and given the intensifying police presence, more extreme and militant

factions soon acquired considerable public influence, with the Kosovo Liberation Army

(KLA) forming in 1993 and mounting guerrilla operations against Serbian police stations by

the mid-1990s. In a pattern similar to the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts, the KLA enjoyed

financial and diplomatic support from the US, Germany and other countries in addition to its

extensive ties to Albania. Particularly upsetting to Serbs was Western support for KLA leader

Agim Cheku, a warlord wanted by Interpol, responsible for mass murder in places such as

Meduk and Knin and, as a Croatian officer, a commander of one of the most massive ethnic

cleansing campaigns in the entire Yugoslav breakup: Operation Oluja (“Storm”) in the

summer of 1995. Just as the West intervened to tear Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Croatia away from Yugoslavia, the perception was, it is attempting to do the same with

Serbia’s medieval heartland.

By 1999, the Albanian-Serbian violence escalated to a degree that drew the attention

of the international community, ultimately leading to a 78-day bombing campaign by NATO

138
forces. The exact causes of the intervention are beyond the scope of this thesis, 227 but it is

important to emphasize that, although the formal purpose was merely to unseat the regime,

most of the war’s destructive effects were directed at the population itself. As Michael

Ignatieff pointed out, “[t]here is no guarantee that war directed at the nervous system [the

people] of a society will be any less savage than war directed only at its troops.” 228 Not only

was NATO’s war the most devastating defeat Serbia suffered in the decade but, more

importantly, it was the first conflict to directly jeopardize the civilian population in Serbia

proper. NATO’s war cost between two and three thousand lives, 229 employed cluster bombs

and depleted uranium, destroyed or damaged 53 hospitals and clinics (by the end of May,

Serbia’s Republic Minister of Health reported that 50,000 patients are endangered due to lack

of electricity and water shortages), left roughly half-a-million unemployed, and exposed a

previously isolated and protected population to direct violence and trauma. After four years

of slow but significant recovery from the sanctions period, the Serbs were again subjected to

what appeared to them an international assault on their livelihoods; this time, with direct

military as well as economic pressure.

The belief was widespread among NATO war planners that the pressures of the war

would drive Serbs into rebellion against the regime. 230 Instead, the Serbian public response

overwhelmingly denounced this American intervention as criminal – a humiliating act of

aggression designed, if not in utter contempt of Serbian casualties, at least in utter

227
Ali 2000 is a diverse collection of essays addressing the question thoroughly from a variety of angles.
228
Ignatieff 2000, 170.
229
Overwhelmingly civilian: more than the total number of Serb and Albanian casualties prior to US intervention combined.
230
One NATO planner explained the targeting of civilian infrastructure as follows: “If you wake up in the morning and you
have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the
Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we
have to withstand?' And at some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb machismo against the world to
thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues.” See “Air Supremacy," Daily Telegraph (London), May
25, 1999.

139
carelessness and arrogance. The regime tapped into the public outrage with a deluge of

nationalist propaganda. The daily Politika routinely ran titles such as “The Perverted

Saxophone Player and His Armada of Death“ and “1941 and Today: The Nazi Bombs

Return.” The government immediately shut down free radio B92 and a draconic press law

was passed to stifle dissent in media discourse. The murder of Slavko Ćuruvija in April sent

a loud message about how criticism was dealt with. Anti-nationalist opposition leaders such

as Zoran Djindjić fled the country for fear of their lives, while young Otpor activists (carriers

of the anti-nationalist legacy of the Walks) suffered increasing blacklistings, jailings and

beatings. A disappointed Serbian diaspora (consisting, we recall, largely of young, educated

non-nationalists who had fled the country) seemed to have the nationalist fears of its most

hated regime confirmed: the Serbs were indeed facing the entire world. The nationalism,

predictably, worked to the fantastic benefit of the government’s popularity, as essential

services necessary for survival could now be provided exclusively by the state:

Serbs were brought together by the raids, and despite the many
hardships they faced, including wage shortages, no one
complained about the regime. […]. Many Serbs came to despise
the Miloševićs’ regime, but NATO’s raids served to redirect their
mounting intolerance of the regime toward America, Great
Britain, and France, traditional allies from whom democrats in
Serbia expected assistance, not bombardment.

Nationalism had been on the decline, but “when Serbia was attacked by nations whose flags

they had admiringly carried during months of protest [the Walks],” nationalist identity

resurged as the most sensible one. 231 Reviewing the political messages of all the collective

actions (i.e. protests, concerts, rallies, etc.) during the NATO war, a study found that support

for Milošević was constant throughout the period (regardless of socio-economic hardship or

regime repression levels), and that “national mythology” (a crucial component of Serbian
231
Djukić 2001, 133; 135.

140
nationalism, characterized by perceived historical victimhood and mythologized narratives of

Serbian identity) was pervasive, apparently increasing in intensity with the severity of the

NATO campaign. 232

In search of protection and unity in a time of a war without an end in sight, the

previous divisions of the 1996/1997 period gave way to the familiar outrage at the

international community, conspiratorial explanations of American and Albanian intentions,

and a rhetoric of primeval Serbian identity based on archaic ancestral ties to Kosovo. Above

all, given the strictly sealed borders of Yugoslavia during the three months in question, and

given how thorough the NATO campaign was across the entire territory, the Serbs as a whole

were subjected to roughly the same pressures without much variance across groups. Virtually

no Serb, in other words, was exempt from the most basic, widespread effects of the bombing

– a forceful reason to understand one’s national group as unified and coherent, its members

literally tied together by a common set of challenges for survival. 233

The Bulldozer Revolution: Nationalism Defeated

In the 2000 presidential elections, opposition candidate Vojislav Koštunica won

54.6% of the vote against Milošević’s 35.01%, signifying no need for a run-off election

under Yugoslav electoral rules. Despite the clear first-round victory, the regime maneuvered

to arrange run-off elections in an apparent attempt by Milošević to rig them when all else has

failed. Beginning on September 25th, crowds ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands

began occupying Belgrade squares to demand recognition of the electoral results and to

refuse the staging of another round of voting. On October 2nd, the opposition announced a

232
Mandić 2007.
233
The bombing ended in June 1999 with a withdrawal of all Serbian forces from Kosovo. Following the bombing, the
UNHCR estimated that 210,000 Serbs and Roma fled Kosovo by the year 2000 – a further source of nationalist aggravation.

141
general strike until its victory was honored; railroads, mines, factories, universities and

schools all shut down, as even Milošević’s reliable comrade Vladimir Putin recognized

Koštunica’s victory. 234 Regime officials – including top-ranking members of Milošević’s

ruling SPS – began resigning and state institutions began turning against their decade-old

commander-in-chief. On October 5th, over one million are estimated to have stormed central

Belgrade, occupying a burning parliament building and the headquarters of RTS television

(“TV Bastille,” as critics dubbed it), the heart and symbol of the regime’s propaganda

machine. Like the “refolutions” 235 in neighboring ex-communist countries, this popular

uprising shed no blood and marked the end of state socialist rule. Faced with the most

populous public gathering in Serbia’s history, Milošević conceded victory and accepted all

the opposition’s demands on October 6th. In the initial euphoria, the peaceful uprising was

described as nothing less than a reversal of national ideology – an overthrow of nationalist

leaders and goals through a radiant eruption of democracy. “The hour is near,” then-US

president Bill Clinton told a Princeton audience on October 5th, “when [the Serbs’] voices

can be heard and we can welcome them to democracy, to Europe [and] to the world's

community.” 236 More generally, foreign news services unanimously adopted the phrase

“Serbian democratic revolution” – a label that some today argue is problematic in all but its

first word.

The foremost difference between this revolution and the Walks – arguably the one

that determined its success – was its greater socio-economic diversity. In addition to the

intellectuals, students, urban residents and young people who had led the anti-nationalist

struggle earlier, October 5th mobilized farmers, rural residents, uneducated workers and

234
Ramet 2006, 521.
235
Garton Ash 1993.
236
Speech available at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/10/05/yugo.clinton.reax.

142
contentious Serbs of all ages. Opposition leaders from smaller cities in Serbia and rural areas

mobilized convoys of cars, vans, trucks, bulldozers and tractors into Belgrade’s center,

tearing down police barricades throughout the country and vastly outnumbering police forces

in the capital. The very symbol of this revolution – far from the juvenile, urban-trained

university student displaying cultured quotes on protest banners – was national hero “Joe the

Bulldozer Operator” (Džo Bagerista), an enraged middle-aged farmer who drove his trusty

bulldozer over a hundred kilometers in order to ram it into the federal parliament. With his

disgruntled, lowbrow attitude and working class ethic, Joe became a cultural and political

icon of a sort that the Walks could not have offered four years earlier. If the 1996/1997

manifestations were student protests, October 5th and the events immediately leading to it

were workers’ protests; it was factory laborers, miners and other state industry employees

who played the decisive role by immediately heeding the call for a general strike and quickly

paralyzing the economy. The roughly 18,000 underpaid workers at the Kolubara coal mine

and power station (a pillar of nationalist support for the regime throughout the decade) not

only refused an offer to have their salaries doubled in return for an end to the strike, but

mobilized communities from nearby towns to resist a police crackdown, eventually leading

to a withdrawal of police units. 237 Other industries – often through unions and other workers’

associations – organized a massive presence in front of the parliament building in Belgrade.

Joining them were old-age pensioners, retired army veterans, football fan clubs, Church

representatives and farmers, all facing a great deal of tear gas and sporadic beatings. The

actors behind the Bulldozer Revolution, therefore, were not only a more representative

sample than the “walkers” in virtue of their greater number, but geographically,

economically, professionally and by their generational composition as well.

237
Nikolić 2002, 148.

143
 Clearly, an unprecedented public exercise in democracy took place in which many

civic values unrelated to nationalism were affirmed. A detailed “before and after”

comparative study of survey results in March 1998 and December 2000 (just months after the

euphoria of the popular uprising) shows an overwhelming rejection of the communist-

nationalist leadership. The general approval rating of the Milošević regime fell from 58% in

1998 to 22% in 2000 and the general disapproval rating jumped from 34% to 66% in the

same period. The general approval for a “system of governing with free elections and many

parties” went from 31% of Serbs to about 61% in those two years, while the disapproval

rating of such a system fell by more than 66%. 238 Similarly, polls showed that preferences for

“strong leadership,” military rule over the country, “Communism” and dictatorship had

decreased dramatically. Recalling that an intense three-month war had unified and

popularized the authorities in between these two years, one is especially amazed at how

dramatic these indicators of state unpopularity nevertheless were. Whether they necessarily

imply a rejection of nationalism itself is unclear, but a slight reduction in nationalist self-

identification did in fact accompany this affirmation of democratic/civic values:

Table 4.5. Self-Identification before and after the Bulldozer Revolution

With Which of the Following Do
You Most Closely Identify 1998 2000
Yourself?
Europe 10 16
Country/Nation 42 38
Region 4 7
Local Community, city where I
25 29
live
Other (family, etc.) 9 6
And which would be your
second choice?
Europe 10 14
Country/Nation 29 24
Region 14 17
Local Community, city where I
27 26
live

238
Lazarsfeld Society 2001, 14-16.

144
Other (family, etc.) 5 7
Combined Identities
European 20 29
Nationalist 36 31
Localized Nationalist 22 16
Localized, Regionalist 11 16
Other 2 4
Note: Figures represent percentages. Survey data from Serbia excluding Montenegro. “Don’t Know”
responses excluded. For Combined identities: “European” is respondent who names Europe as first
or second identity; “Nationalist” names country/nation as first identity; “Localized Nationalist”
names country/nation as second identity and region, locality or other as first identity; “Localized,
Regionalist” names only region or locality among the first and second identities; “Other” names
other among first and second identity or can’t name any.
Source: Lazarsfeld Society 2001, 23.

Firstly, a fair increase (9%) in the number of Serbs identifying themselves with Europe can

be seen in these two years – a figure that would surely have been even greater if the NATO

bombing had not interceded in between the two dates. Serbian nationalism had always

emphasized cultural and political ties to the Russian-led East (and even ideological ones to

China) in favor of those to Western Europe and the US-led West, which were perceived as

hostile to Serbian-ness and largely responsible for its sorry state in the past decade. Thus it is

perfectly warranted to treat this increase in European self-identification among Serbs as a

clear sign of nationalism on the retreat, if only modestly.

Secondly, the number of citizens declining to prioritize the nation/country as their

most important category of identity was on the rise: a more localized and regionalized set of

loyalties and allegiances seems to have taken precedent over nationalist ones, as the

“nationalist” cluster of respondents dropped by 5% and the “localized nationalist” by 6%,

while the “localized/regionalist” increased by 5%. Although all the recorded change is only

in single-digit percentages, it is a significant indicator of an anti-nationalist trend, given how

short this two-year time period is, and given the fact that the influence of the NATO war (and

a de facto loss of territorial control over Kosovo in the meantime) is unaccounted for.

145
However, when compared with the continuities of nationalism within the October 5th revolt,

this indicator might unfortunately appear trivial.

The Bulldozer Revolution: Nationalism Lives

Though certainly democratic, this revolution was anything but spontaneous. In the

spirit of Tillyian analysis of state power, one must understood October 5th as a revolution

whose success depended crucially on the refusal of state apparatuses to continue upholding

Milošević; specifically, the state institutions of violence. Yugoslav Army heads, police

officers, para-military leaders, etc., were all interacting with opposition leaders in ways that

sometimes undermined their incentives to sustain the regime, and secured the willingness of

the opposition to return favors once it seizes power. When Milošević recognized how tight

the noose around his neck was becoming, he issued orders that hypothetically might have led

to massive violence, numerous casualties and a failure of the opposition. Numerous

contingencies shaped the actual direction of events. The arrest and/or liquidation of fifty

major opposition leaders was ordered; the army and police refused to obey. Milošević

commanded that tanks be sent to the city center to protect the besieged parliament and state

TV buildings by shooting dead the protestors storming them; the army Chief-of-Staff refused

to act. The state then ordered “helicopters to spray protestors with tear gas and other

chemical agents”; officials at the Ministry of Internal Affairs defied the orders. 239

Some of this defiance was authentic solidarity with “the people” or at least fear of

mob retribution; much of it, however, was a gesture of allegiance to those who were

presumed to become the next government shortly. Unlike in their previous campaigns, the

2000 oppositional leadership had secured the support of over one thousand military veterans,

239
Ramet 2006, 522.

146
several special anti-terrorist units, paramilitaries and numerous defecting police officers, all

extensively armed and evoking predictions of a “Romanian scenario” for the ruling family.

Many of the convoys of Serbs descending on Belgrade from all directions were armed with

more than pitchforks. While most protestors were busy occupying the parliament and

television headquarters, a small group of mostly opposition officials meanwhile surrounded a

Belgrade police station to negotiate the policemen’s turning over to the side of the

revolutionaries.

Needless to say, such support often came at a price. In each of these instances,

opposition leaders negotiated and compromised with state organs or institutions affiliated

with the regime in order to secure their cooperation. It was in these compromises that

nationalist doctrines and leaders often “survived” the uprising, as sacrifices made by the

opposition in the interests of ensuring Milošević’s defeat. One particularly striking example

is the outcome of negotiations between opposition leaders and the Unit for Special

Operations (JSO) – a criminal para-military group that not only made fortunes through state

privileges under the sanctions, but committed atrocities against non-Serbs during the civil

war and in Kosovo. As was revealed years after the October 5th uprising, the nationalist JSO

joined the protestors in a spectacular public appearance not spontaneously but as a quid pro

quo for guarantees against persecution given to them from several opposition

representatives. 240 In the years following, this unit played a formative role on the Serbian

political scene (including assassinating Serbia’s first democratic Prime Minister) and

represented arguably the best-organized, most influential nationalist institution in the

country. Other unknown negotiations were probably conducted with other elements of the

former regime that determined the specific outcome of October 5th. Similar deals that were
240
Vasić 2005.

147
struck with state and quasi-state institutions at the time ensured protection for many former

regime officials and created political shelters for nationalist interest groups to continue

functioning in the new, democratic Serbia. In this regard, the interactions and negotiations of

elite actors from the opposition and the state resulted in nationalist continuities, regardless of

any potential anti-nationalist trend among the general populace.

Furthermore, even the sentiment of the general populace, as reflected in the electoral

result, could be interpreted as ambiguous vis-à-vis nationalism. Not only did Milošević’s

platform gain a solid 37.15% (over 1.8 million votes) and his two nationalist runner-ups

roughly an additional 8% together, but the 50.24% in Koštunica’s favor were not all anti-

nationalist votes by any means. This revolution presented what Lenard J. Cohen called “the

Koštunica phenomenon”: the ascendance of a previously unknown and marginal figure with

an even more obscure political party to a sweeping presidential election victory in the matter

of a few months, all in virtue of his nationalist reputation. 241 The decision of the opposition

to unite behind Koštunica was counterintuitive insofar as two other potential candidates –

Zoran Djindjić and Vuk Drašković – had been far better known and more outspoken. The

decision by the 18-party coalition DOS to favor Koštunica instead was partly a result of the

poor ratings these two candidates had but, more importantly, it was a result of his “record as

an uncorrupted, democratically oriented nationalist,” with an emphasis on the last

descriptor. 242 Only a nationalist, in other words, was thought to be able to defeat another

nationalist. Koštunica’s utter anonymity and lack of charisma were thus compensated by

other credentials. In 1974, he had famously been fired as a university instructor for opposing

the Titoist constitutional assignment of autonomy to the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo

241
Cigar 2001.
242
Cohen 2006, 430.

148
– a courageous attempt, in the nationalist view, to prevent all the secessionist ills that befell

Yugoslavia since. During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Koštunica was a critic of

Milošević; namely, a harder-line nationalist one. He and his DSS faulted the leadership in

Serbia not for its treatment of civilians, or for its apparently expansionistic policies, or for its

internal repression, but rather for its failure to more aggressively support Serbian interests

outside the republic.

Though never a proponent of violent expansionism, Koštunica’s stated ideal had

always been a closely-associated federation of all Serbian communities in the Balkans under

a unified state. During the Walks, Koštunica’s DSS boycotted the entire anti-regime

movement, maintaining a distance from all the other democratic parties and refusing to

endorse what it viewed as unpatriotic protesting. As for the question of “the most expensive

Serbian word” (Kosovo), Koštunica was as clear then as he is today as prime minister: the

province is an integral part of Serbia that was occupied by an illegal foreign intervention. 243

In a rhetorical style not dissimilar from the nationalist he was seeking to unseat, Koštunica

promised on September 18th, 2000 “an uprising against the Dahis,” the robber baron families

that had exploited Serbs alongside Ottoman rule in the early 19th century. 244 Perhaps most

appealing to Milošević’s former nationalist base was the fact that Koštunica unequivocally

condemned the UN sanctions against Yugoslavia, foreign intervention in the civil war, the

NATO bombing campaign, as well as the International War Crimes Tribunal that had been

set up in the Hague to try Serbs accused of the highest crimes. His interviews with Western

media in the immediate run-up to the Bulldozer Revolution were overflowing with

condemnations of US foreign policy, especially its democracy-exporting campaigns and its

243
Koštunica’s slogan in the 2007 parliamentary election campaign – borrowed from nationalist icon Matija Bećković – was
“every Serb knows that ‘Kosovo’ is the most expensive Serbian word.”
244
Cohen 2001, 429.

149
interference in other states’ internal affairs. 245 As all these facts were well publicized and

purposefully displayed in the electoral campaign to thwart “foreign payee” accusations, it is

safe to assume that many of Koštunica’s supporters in 2000 were casting their votes for one

brand of Serbian nationalism against another.

Finally, to return to more concrete indicators, polling data shows Serbian nationalism

– especially its paranoid/conspiratorial streak, covered in the preceding chapter – as still

clearly in attendance in 2000. When compared to the anti-nationalist trend described above,

the persistence of indicators of Serbian nationalism makes the former seem rather weak by

comparison. In 1998, 38% of the population preferred that Serbia and Montenegro develop

“according to our national traditions and values” instead of developing “like Western

European countries.” How much did the October 5th revolution decrease this percentage? A

meager 2%. 246 In Chapter 3, we saw that 41% of students in 1993 believed that Serbs should

have “greater constitutional rights” than other nationalities “because they live in their own

state.” 247 Seven years later, 55.3% of all Serbs believed that “Serbs need to have more rights

in their own state than other nations.” Insofar as the comparison is appropriate, this suggests

an increase in nationalist sentiment on this question. When offered the blanket nationalist

statement “All our major state problems would be solved if Serbia would be cleansed from

other nations,” a not insignificant 27.7% of respondents confirm the statement, while 71.6%

continued to believe in 2000 that “one should always be careful with other nations, even

when they are our friends.” 248 A comparison of ethnic “distance,” as measured by

245
Cohen 2001, 431.
246
Lazarsfeld Society 2001, 25.
247
Cohen 2001, 180.
248
Biro et al. 2002, 42-43.

150
willingness to accept one’s child’s marriage to a member of other national groups, for the

years 1997 and 2000 shows a dramatic increase in nationalist “distance.”

Chart 4.6. Nationalist Distance, 1997 & 2000

"Distance" for Blood Relationships, 1997 & 2000

100 88 82
72 79
80 68 58
58
% of Respondents not 60 45 46
accepting as a 1997
son/daughter-in-law 40 26 2000
20
0
Albanian Muslim Croat Hungarian Roma

Source: Biro et al. 2002, 44.

Amazingly, this particular increase in “distance” seems to be a general, across-the-

board enhancement of nationalist xenophobia (perhaps a result of the recent NATO war).

Even though direct and massive violent conflict was conducted with Albanians between 1997

and 2000 while absolutely none was with Hungarians, the increase in “distance” from

Hungarians is 32% while the increase in “distance” from Albanians is only 20%. Similarly,

there is a 27% increase in “distance” from the Croats (even though no conflict with them

took place in the meantime) but a slightly smaller increase of 24% in “distance” from

Muslims (with whom conflicts in Kosovo were raging, leading eventually to a costly war and

loss of territory). Rather than being proportional with intensity of actual hostilities, therefore,

this nationalist “distance” seems to be generalized in application in a way suggestive of the

conspiratorial/paranoid outlook of “Serbs against the entire world” that was discussed in

Chapter 3. Aside from increased “distance,” the only apparent change between 1997 and

2000 is that nationalist aversion to nationalities is more equally distributed – Serbs

increasingly disliked the idea of entering into blood relationships with non-Serbs per se, not

151
necessarily with one non-Serb nationality as opposed to another. In any event, this is hardly

the grand defeat of nationalism that October 5th purported to symbolize.

More generally, a prevalent sense of fear and distrust based on perceived outside

threats and foreigners continued to dominate public opinion. A series of extensive studies of

“threat perception” among Serbs in 2000 by Strategic Marketing 249 found that 64% of the

population, even after the introduction of the democratic regime, perceived Serbia as being

“highly” or “extremely” endangered. On a ranked scale of specific threats, Serbs are

strikingly afraid of exclusively outside threats, rarely potential “internal” threats such as

instability, corruption, domestic crime, their own government, etc. As noted earlier, the

numerous polls and surveys analyzed were employed as (at best) indirect indicators of what

the source of nationalism actually was; literal questions about the source of respondents’

nationalist beliefs and identifications were never included. In 2000, Strategic Marketing’s

study tackled this question directly, with a revealing inquiry into the actual source of

perceived threats:

Chart 4.7. Sources of Threat to National Pride

Former Regime,
Lost Wars, 5.29% 6.89%

International Politics, Kosovo Crises,

29.37% 27.67%

Crime, Lawlessness,
Corruption within
Serbia, 2.10%
Instability of Internal Terrorism, 5.39%
Political Situation,
23.28%
Source: Strategic Marketing 2000, 40.
Note: Percentages represent portion of respondents identifying the given source as the primary threat to
Serbia’s national pride.

249
Strategic Marketing 2000. Further references from same study.

152
Chart 4.8. Source of Threat to Political Independence

Instability of
Internal Political
Situation, 29.07%

Terrorism, 3.60% International

Politics, 62.14%
Crime,
Lawlessness,
Corruption within
Serbia, 1.30%
Kosovo Crises,
3.90%

Source: Strategic Marketing 2000, 42.

Note: Percentages represent portion of respondents identifying the given source as the primary threat to
Serbia’s political independence.

When asked to identify the single most important source of threat to “national pride,”

therefore, most Serbs point to, firstly, the international community (29.37%) and, secondly,

the crises surrounding Kosovo (27.67%), which are in turn largely controlled by international

forces (the poll was taken after more than a year of UN administration of Kosovo). Thus well

over half of all Serbs point to perceived external threats, with the realm of internal affairs

(instability) in third place (23.28%) as a threat worth identifying as primary. Perhaps the

most surprising aspects of Chart 4.7 are the single-digit percentages associated with the

former regime and the “lost wars.” The latter probably attracted few respondents because the

notion that Serbs “lost” any of the wars cannot be reconciled with Serbian nationalist

ideology, lest these wars for a Serbian homeland become meaningless wastes of life. Indeed,

even the NATO air campaign – the most blatantly “lost” Serbian war by every reasonable

measure – was declared a victory by the regime and trumpeted exclusively as such through

state media. Despite the democratic revolution, therefore, a seeming victory of nationalist

propaganda seems to be at work when most Serbs adopted an essentially nationalist narrative

153
of their recent history: defeat cannot be a source of humiliation or wounded pride if it never

happened. The absence of assigned blame on the former regime (at a meager 6.89%) is at

first glance at odds with the overwhelming aversion to the regime in 2000 described earlier;

in fact, the tension disappears when the motives of most anti-Milošević voters are understood

to be unrelated to Milošević’s destructive nationalist policies. He was punished in the ballot

for the economic deterioration of Serbia, the lawlessness and the attempted electoral fraud,

but not for his nationalism.

In Chart 4.8, the essential “reactive-ness” of Serbian nationalism is illustrated even

more sharply. Out of over a dozen items, the one that best encompasses the broad amalgam

of foreign nationalities and institutions that are believed to be conspiring against Serbia –

“international politics” – is prioritized by no less than 62.14% of the population as the utmost

danger to the nation’s political independence. Internal political instability is a distant second,

with not even half the priority assigned to it as to international factors.

Albanians, the only remaining separatist force within Yugoslavia’s borders, were

perceived as the threat of the highest order, 250 with more than half the population predicting

“high” or “extreme” probabilities of violent clashes with them; following in second and third

place were Croats and Bosniaks, respectively. In a comparative analysis of Serbia and other

Balkan states, Strategic Marketing found that Serbs feel more threatened by Western nations

than other populations in the region do. Predictably, Americans, Germans and the British –

the most active interveners in Yugoslav affairs in the past decade – were perceived as the

most serious Western threats.

250
As they are in Macedonia and Montenegro as well, incidentally – the phenomenon is apparently regional.

154
Chart 4.2. Nations Perceived as Highly Threatening to Serbia

Regional Western
78.60%

70.00%

57.00% 55.00%
41.20%
35.10%

Albanians Croats Bosniaks Am ericans Germ ans British

Source: Strategic Marketing 2000.

Note: Percentages reflect numbers of respondents selecting given national group as primary threat.

Likewise, Serbs are irregularly hostile to and afraid of international institutions when

compared to other groups in the Balkans; NATO and the Hague war crimes tribunal were

perceived as the most threatening, with the UN Security Council and the OSCE lagging

closely behind. As with the early 1990s, Serbian nationalism seems to rest greatly on the

perceived interference of foreign forces – the greater the interference, the greater the aversion

and perceived threat believed to be coming from that group or state.

In conclusion, like the 1996/1997 protests, October 5th was a mixed historical

moment for Serbian nationalism. The Otpor slogan that won the day was “He’s finished”

(Gotov je). Although certainly true of Milošević and (most) of his immediate regime

partners, it is only partially true of Serbian nationalism in general. To argue that nationalism

disappeared completely with the ouster of Milošević from office would be as inaccurate as to

argue that October 5th was a mere continuation of the nationalist past without any novelties.

155
 CONCLUSION

Reactive After All

In a characteristic summary of Yugoslavia’s civil war, Christian V. Balis drew on the

canonized works of Tim Judah, Noel Malcolm, James Gow and others to describe modern

Serbian nationalism as a Trojan horse – a deceitful ideology that the Serbian Academy of

Sciences and Arts had given birth to, and that was later offered to the Serbs by a reckless and

ambitious Party opportunist in his own interest. Unprovoked, unthreatened and without any

apparent rhyme or reason (Balis wrote), “the [Serbian] people,”

…in their blind, spontaneous devotion – a loyalty that defies

conventional logic – welcomed and willingly dragged the horse
past their defensive mental fortifications. […] The question of
how almost an entire nation came to support the dangerous
propaganda of such a mediocre demagogue cannot bear an easy
answer. 251

It cannot even, Balis might have added, bear a single answer at all, even if complex. At best,

this thesis has suggested a direction for research that has been neglected, in the hopes of

discouraging misguided understandings of nationalism in the future. With this narrow goal in

mind, the results of this work may be significant in their contradiction of the standard

interpretation that Balis represents: although certainly “dangerous” and perhaps “blind” by

the standards of educated observers, the embrace of Serbian nationalism appears in this study

to be fairly understandable, graspable by “conventional logic,” and most certainly anything

but “spontaneous.” In fact, the rise of nationalism among Serbs was shown to be itself a

“defensive mental fortification” – a reaction to perceived threats to Serbian-ness. Serbs did

not, to paraphrase Dobrica Ćosić, make themselves Serbs; nationalist identity was

251
Balis 2000, 181. Emphasis mine.

156
manufactured only through interactions with and reactions against external forces and

perceived enemies. 252

The overall trend of Serbian nationalism from 1990 to 2000 does confirm the notion

of “outside” forces being the independent variable. The greater the (perceived) external

threats to Serbs, the greater the nationalism in the given period. During the Cold War, we

saw, Serbian collective identity (along with almost all other former Yugoslav ones) was

steadily declining since Serbia’s comfortable position within the federation warranted

absolutely no fear from any of its sister republics, let alone from abroad. 253 On the contrary,

Serbs (with the due exception of those in Kosovo) enjoyed unparalleled security and stability

on the geopolitical border of two superpowers as well as the non-alignment movement, all of

whom were invested in Yugoslavia’s well-being and unity. Despite sore World War II

memories, “Yugoslavs” continued to increase and “Serbs” continued to disappear well into

1981, including in ethnically mixed areas. It was only when Yugoslavia’s strategic friendship

with both East and West began slowly transforming into hostility in the 1980s that nationalist

collective identity began decisively rising. Furthermore, it was only after sustained episodes

of violent clashes along ethnic lines that areas with non-Serbs began registering an increase

in nationalist collective identity – clearly a reactive, not spontaneous, phenomenon. As soon

as the sources of the (perceived) threats described in Chapter 2 – Slovenian secessionism,

Croatian nationalism, the Islamic challenge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, US and European

military and economic statecraft – waned after 1995’s Dayton peace accord, Serbian

nationalism began its gradual retreat.

252
I remind the reader of Baćević’s quote from Chapter 1 on the “value crisis” that resulted in nationalist takeover: “In the
general breakdown of value systems and the resulting confusion, identification with traditional social groups and institutions
is a logical reaction.”
253
Here I do not refer to the exaggerated fears of a Soviet invasion held by Yugoslav military planners mentioned earlier,
but to the attitudes of the general public.

157
 The homogenization and rigidifying of nationalism was most visible precisely when

economic and other pressures imposed by the international community were at their highest:

from 1993-1995. When the consequences of external interference were most tangible and

ominous, Serbian nationalism overcame previous boundaries, like those between the city and

the village, to “unite Serbs in misery.” When sanctions were lifted and relative order

restored, diversification again increased and nationalism ceased to hold a straightforward

hegemony over Serbian public opinion, including Serbian perceptions of other nationalities.

The first major anti-nationalist challenge only became possible in 1996, after the pressure of

sanctions and war had dropped off sufficiently. The Bulldozer Revolution, though partly

nationalist itself, represented the hardest blow to Serbian nationalism to date, with a

replacement of the entire institutional order on which nationalist rule rested for over one

decade. Even many of the residues of nationalism in the post-Dayton period covered in

Chapter 4 are largely attributable to the 1999 NATO intervention and the new set of “enemy

perceptions” it introduced. Generally, then, Serbian nationalism does not appear to be any

sort of impulsive popular combustion that emerges independently of international context

and the actions of competing political forces and ideologies; rather, it is inseparable from

them.

Secondly, this research has shown an enormous discord between popular nationalism,

as reflected in public opinion and surveys of representative samples of all Serbs, and elite

nationalism, as reflected in state propaganda, nationalist intellectual works and the

manifestos of non-state nationalist leaders (including oppositional ones). More specifically,

this thesis contradicts the suggestion that the level of nationalist extremism among Serbs in

general was the same as that among state and other elites in this crucial decade; to the

158
contrary, the two were rarely ever congruent. State nationalist posturing was arguably most

intense in 1991-1992, yet Serbian nationalism among the populace was to reach its apparent

climax only in the following few years; inversely, when elite nationalism relaxed most in the

months leading to October 5th 2000 (with the proliferation of independent media, the gradual

disillusionment with nationalism in military and government ranks, and the gaining

momentum of the oppositional parties), indicators of nationalism among the general public

showed no dramatic regression.

Furthermore, Serbian public opinion was enormously divided along geographic and

socio-economic differences in the early period of 1990-1992 and, even in the period when

nationalist consensus and homogeneity was recorded as strongest (1993-1995), the

population remained significantly divided along urban/rural boundaries, and according to the

newly-formed social composition of the sanctions period. Striking differences also existed

between masses and elites when it came to the impact of the US-led international community

on Serbs throughout the first Yugoslavia. Chapters 1 and 2 revealed enormous variation

between Serbs in different regions, which partially reflected differences in their material,

socio-economic conditions (Serbs from underdeveloped, impoverished Kosovo vs. Serbs

from Slovenia, etc.).

As Chapter 3 emphasized, the majority that carried the brunt of sanctions was never

absolute: a small class of active organized crime participants, war profiteers, state and

military elites and nouveau riche opportunists emerged in this period with the capacity to

avoid the pauperization of most of their countrymen. As was suggested, this new class was

nationalist only to the extent that this aided their elite status: weapons smugglers paid lip

service to the glory of the Serbian fatherland and paramilitary generals trumpeted World War

159
II slogans, but they were primarily concerned with their own wealth, influence and status.

JNA commanders stood behind Milošević’s nationalist program but, when the tide of

October 5th came, acted to make sure they are on the winning political side, the Kosovo Polje

battle probably not troubling them as much as the prospects of a Hague jail cell. In contrast to

this kind of nationalism, most of the population seems to have embraced nationalism out of

more “authentic” reasons: despair, fear, anxiety, helplessness, xenophobia, “distance” from

other ethnic groups and so on.

Although this thesis focused on those forces actively opposing nationalism (loosely

referred to as “anti-nationalist” above) only partially and insofar as they impacted nationalist

public opinion, much of the data presented suggests that even the most alarming periods of

nationalist fervor should not be exaggerated. Reviewing numerous surveys before and

immediately after the cessation of armed conflict, Leonard J. Cohen argues that “the ‘reactive

ethnocentrism’ and intolerance expressed in a kind of hyper-nationalism…depends a good

deal on citizen perceptions of the changing situation faced by Serbia”254 – a conclusion this

thesis wholeheartedly corroborates. In this sense, Serbian nationalism was conditional and,

hence, not inevitable.

A question that may rightly have occurred to readers is: to what extent were these

formative external forces and perceived threats genuine and to what extent were they

fabricated by state dogma? Propaganda at times appeared to hold such a dramatic monopoly

over discussions of reality that one wonders whether the very basis of Serbian nationalism is

fact or fiction. The answer, naturally, is that it is both: external force was enormously

influential in shaping both the behavior of formal state institutions and the lives of ordinary

Serbs, but most of its targets were grossly misinformed about the exact nature and extent of
254
Cohen 2001, 423.

160
this force. As Chapter 2 described, significant numbers of Croatian Serbs certainly faced

violence and expulsion under a government that resurrected ustaša features, but many Serbs

were deluded about the existence of a global, Anglo-American, Catholic and fascist

genocidal conspiracy that is nearing World War II standards in its enmity to Serbs. As

Chapter 3 illustrated, the economic sanctions did impose widespread misery, but most of

Serbia’s population remained ignorant of the regime’s role in exacerbating it for its own

purposes.

As Chapter 4 mentioned, Serbian threat perception was outlandishly unrealistic in

identifying the major threats to Serbia, but was nevertheless loosely basing its attitudes

towards Americans, Germans, the British and Albanians on actual military threats from these

national groups regarding the Kosovo conflict. In sum, to return to the Tillyian perspective

developed at the onset, nationalism is here best understood as a political, largely state-driven

phenomenon that develops in a context of inter-state rivalry, competition and conflict.

Nationalist construction of enemies becomes easiest and most likely, as is obviously the case

with Serbia, through war. State dogma, therefore, can only determine concrete aspects of

nationalism (who Serbs are most “distant” from, whether Croats or Slovenes are fascists,

who’s side the Vatican is on, etc.) loosely within the framework of what threats actually

exist. The reality of the external pressures, in other words, is only partially relevant for the

livelihood of Serbian nationalism. On the other hand, successful nationalist mobilization

must be based to some extent on the ability to credibly identify real, genuine threats;

compelling reasons for nationalist self-identification cannot be based on thin air.

Hence, instead of treating Serbian nationalism as an utterly irrational, unprompted

torrent out of a clear blue sky, which initiated the chain of reactions that led to Yugoslavia’s

161
downfall, this thesis suggests that it should be understood as a fundamentally reactive and

interactive force, considerably shaped by perceived threats. This understanding obviously

does not (and should not) imply vindication, but may be a constructive step towards

attributing causes to collective behavior more truthfully. The most obvious political and

ethical weight of this argument is the question of remedy. How does one overcome the

“poisonous nationalism” that has dominated Serbian society during the brutal decade and that

continues, the authors of the recent term add, 255 to dominate it today? No magic key exists,

needless to say, but the evidence presented suggests that increasing outside pressure and

sustaining the sources of popular perception of threats is the surest way to fail in this remedy.

Implications for Theory and Future Study

One theoretical interpretation of Serbian nationalism in particular may deserve

rethinking in light of this research: the so-called “ancient hatreds” explanation of the Balkan

wars. Anthony Smith has (unfairly) been designated the champion of this often-caricatured

thesis – the academic leader of the “primordialist” school, “the straw man of ethnic

studies.” 256 The general claim is that nationalist mobilization is based on longstanding ethno-

symbolic and highly instinctive senses of national belonging, around which political demands

are designed and acted on. Wars like the Yugoslav ones, in this view, are eruptions of ancient

hatreds between age-old national identities that had only been temporarily constrained by

various factors (e.g. Titoism, many have argued). This research showed reasons to believe

that, to the contrary, Serbian nationalist mobilization seemed to have numerous distinctly

modern causes – the various external pressures and internal regime handlings of them led to

second-order effects that would have promoted nationalism with or without its “primordial”

255
Washington Post, Monday, July 24, 2006 (p.A18).
256
Horowitz 2004, 72-73.

162
foundation. Some of these second-order effects were structural (the mass migration of Serb

refugees into Serbia, the exit of hundreds of thousands of young, educated, would-be anti-

nationalists out of the region, the disappearance of the middle class under the sanctions, etc.);

some were voluntary actions of individuals in a “market” where the most “rational” choices

were conducive to nationalism (the thousands who enlisted in para-military units or the JNA

for economic self-interest, the turn of many members of the “helpless” and “dependent”

constituencies to organized crime and the black market, the mostly rural citizens who

traveled to resist the student demonstrators at Milošević’s 1996 counter-protest in Belgrade,

etc.); some were purely regime actions (e.g. the vicious media propaganda campaigns, the

“economy of destruction” during the sanctions, the crackdown on “foreign payees,” etc.);

and, to be fair, some were induced by successful challenges to the nationalist authorities (the

reliance on para-militaries because of the popular draft resistance, the repression resulting

from the Walks, the “Koštunica phenomenon” of the October 5th revolution, etc.). One does

not have to understand the history of Serbian victimhood under the Ottomans, nor the role of

the Catholic Church in thwarting Serbian independence, nor the genocidal suffering of Serbs

during the Second World War to evaluate the impact of factors such as these.

Related to this is a refutation of the idea that, given the supposed ancientness of the

collective identities involved, the conflicts among them were inevitable. Indeed, as the

census data from Chapter 1 illustrated, Serbian nationalism was on the decline in many areas

of the former Yugoslavia in the decades preceding war, in what was (arguably) a successful

experiment in building a new national consciousness that defies all ancient hatreds and

“primordial” identities. The idea that this experiment was predestined to collapse (as it did) is

by no means clear; enormous contingencies were involved in the rise of Serbian nationalism,

163
and still others in fact suppressed equally “primordial” hatreds in the region (anti-Semitic

World War II legacies were largely not resurrected, for instance). To be sure, the Serbian

regime certainly propagated a “primordialist” perspective of Serbian nationhood and identity

(as Chapter 3 discussed), but its success in promoting it is quite understandable as a result of

its near-perfect control over organs of state power (the media especially). The regime’s

monopoly over truth was itself, of course, neither natural nor inescapable; had the March

1991 anti-regime demonstrations succeeded and pre-empted the period of the most fanatical

nationalist indoctrination, for example, it is conceivable that Serbian nationalism would have

had a less fruitful future.

Therefore, insofar as the hackneyed dichotomy is useful, this thesis falls on the side

of the so-called “constructivists” as opposed to the “primordialists.” The former – perhaps

more accurately known as “instrumentalists” – study nationalism as a dependent variable

shaped and controlled by other circumstances, and mostly developing according to its

functionality or value for achieving goals unrelated to national sentiment per se (be they

industrialization, territorial expansion, or the maintenance of an elite in power). Against the

precious convictions of nationalists themselves, Serbian nationalism was not shown to be

akin to “tidal waves,” “winds,” “fires” and other spontaneous natural disasters, 257 but instead

to be a human-crafted set of attitudes and actions – one that can be deconstructed and

unmade, if understood properly.

As a modest recommendation for future research, this thesis demonstrates the

superiority of measuring nationalism empirically (if only indirectly and incompletely) to

257
These metaphors are widespread. See, for instance, Ramet 2002, 561, where “a tidal wave of Serbian nationalism” is
being deplored because it mysteriously arose on its own – without good cause or reason – and disturbed an otherwise
dormant Croatian nationalism, ultimately leading to Tudjman’s election (which would not have occurred, the argument is
explicitly made, had the unprovoked “tidal wave” not come along.

164
evaluating its supposed “lifespan” through impressions and speculations. Although the words

“rise of” and “fall of” regularly precede “Serbian nationalism” in academic studies to

delineate supposed epochs or stages of its progression, very few authors offer verifiable

indicators of just what it is that is being measured. The definition employed here – Serbian

nationalism as those actions promoting an arrangement of all Serbs under one Serb-run state

– allowed us to trace its exact progression with extremely similar polling and survey data

indicators over time. Methodologically, this is a refreshing reminder of how complex and

contradictory nationalist sentiments are. Even at the height of what I have argued to be the

climax of Serbian nationalism – the hyperinflation period – 66% of Serbs told polls that

different nations can live together, while a surprisingly low 30% considered that it was better

for a country to be comprised of members of only one nation (November 1993). 258 Without

concrete empirical yardsticks for studying the phenomenon, such paradoxical features of the

phenomenon will be regrettably lost.

To illustrate the potential pitfalls involved in avoiding empirical measurements,

consider the example of the 1990-1992 period covered by Chapters 1 and 2. Virtually

without exception, analysts point to this period as the beginning, if not pinnacle of Serbian

nationalism – an observation usually justified by the fact that serious armed conflict began

precisely at that time. Yet, as was argued, it is not immediately clear whether we can

generalize at all about nationalism in this period. Firstly, enormous inter- and intra-

regional/republican differences existed among Serbs in Vojvodina, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia-

Herzegovina and Serbia itself on a range of indicators: some prioritized economic issues over

“the national question” while others did the opposite; some exhibited xenophobia, intolerance

and authoritarianism significantly more than others; some continued to defy nationalist self-
258
“Suspended transition,” 6.

165
identification while others dropped “Yugoslav-ness” like a bad shoe; and finally, a sharp

divide was present between supporters of the national-communist party and the democratic

opposition blocks – a rift that varied enormously across regional boundaries. Far from a

unified, homogenous nationalist ideology, Serbs in this period exhibited at best an incoherent

value system that is ambiguous with regard to support for “all-Serbs-in-one-state.” At worst,

they showed such a disunited set of beliefs and such large variance that generalizations are

impossible.

Secondly, it cannot be ignored that a majority of Serbs explicitly prioritized economic

and democratic development, along with an end to the war, over “the Serbian national

question” around the 1992 elections. Indeed, a strong majority of the Serbian voting public

believed the nationalist candidate was incompetent at dealing with the top four major

challenges they believed were facing Serbian society; his stubbornly anti-nationalist

opponent, on the other hand, was thought most capable by absolute majorities to deal with

the same issues. An October 1992 poll even recorded that more than 60% of Serbs supported

the prosecution of Serbian nationalists seeking to evict Croats from their homes in

Vojvodina. Thirdly, the remarkable failure of the military mobilization in this period

encourages a skeptical inquiry into what nationalism means: even if young people were

raving nationalists at government rallies and football matches, how can we account for the

fact that most of them risked imprisonment in order to avoid fighting for their fatherland? We

saw that, to the regime’s great surprise, and in contradiction to some opinion polls, roughly

200,000 reservists defied the draft, outnumbering the JNA as whole. With such a

contradiction between stated values and collective actions, to say that the zenith of Serbian

nationalism was at this time can be quite misleading. The beginning of the war in this period

166
should not be confused with a milestone birth of Serbian nationalism; the outbreak of

violence and the triumph of Milošević’s aggressive nationalist clique were primarily results

of other factors, such as a failure of the opposition to mobilize around the superior

confidence it enjoyed and the independent, completely unaccountable behavior of Yugoslav

military forces outside Serbia. As in this example, constant verification of preconceived

notions of nationalism is indispensable to avoid both over-simplification and over-

generalization.

167
 Appendix #1. 259

259
Reproduced from Milena Spasovski, Saša Kicošev and Dragica Živković. 1995. “The Serbs in the Former SFR of
Yugoslavia” in The Serbian Questions in The Balkans. Belgrade, Serbia: University of Belgrade Faculty of Geography.

168
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