The Slovenes opened the door to the Yugoslav crisis. Although I can’t say they were the only ones to blame.
Slobodan Milosevic.1
Milosevic’s nationalist drive, and the subsequent weakening of federal authority, was having a rapid knock-on effect. Slovenia was thinking about leaving for the European Union. Its most popular slogan was ‘Europe Now’. Slovenia was a country of tidy farms and Germanic work ethic. Unlike Belgrade or Sarajevo, the capital Ljubljana had never been occupied by the Turks. Ljubljana boasted pretty piazzas, arched bridges over the river Ljubljanica and fine secessionist architecture. The alpine republic was Yugoslavia’s richest. Its sensible, reliable and industrious citizens enjoyed something approaching western levels of prosperity.
The Slovenian language was different from Serbo-Croat, and was not fully understood across Yugoslavia. Overwhelmingly Catholic, and sharing borders with Italy, Austria and Hungary, Slovenia saw itself as part of Mittel-Europa, not the Balkans. In the nineteenth century, Slovene culture had faced extinction and, in 1918, the Slovenes sought security within the framework of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In truth, many Yugoslavs considered Slovenes smug and just a tiny bit boring, unlike their more flamboyant neighbours to the south.
Milosevic’s Serbian nationalism ensured that during the late 1980s, such feelings of cultural alienation were reciprocated. The youth magazine Mladina published sensational articles that broke Yugoslav taboos by criticising Tito and the army. A rock group called Laibach, the German name for Ljubljana, exploited Nazi imagery. Artists around the NSK (New Slovenian Art) movement used radical and avant-garde symbolism. Even the British television programme, the Rough Guide to Europe, filmed an episode in Ljubljana, rhapsodising over its hip street-scene.
‘Burek, nein danke,’ proclaimed a slogan sprayed on a wall in Ljubljana in the late 1980s. A burek is a southeast European delicacy, a pie made of flaky pastry that may be filled with cheese, meat, spinach or potato. But a burek is not just a snack. It is, as critical theorists might say, a signifier. The layered pastry and stuffing brings in its wake a whole set of cultural and historical assumptions, especially for Slovenian graffiti artists. For them burek means Balkan, and an implied heritage of sloth, corruption and devotion to a godlike national leader. The Ljubljana graffiti writer had used German, daubing his slogan at a time when the slogan Atomkraft nein danke’ (Nuclear Power No Thanks) was ubiquitous across Europe. But the choice of language on a Ljubljana wall was deliberate. What the slogan really meant was ‘Yugoslavia, no thanks’.
As the country moved inexorably towards independence, the Slovene leader Milan Kucan had attempted to turn Milosevic’s tactics against himself. In March 1989 the Slovenes had watched Milosevic rewrite the Serbian constitution to abolish the autonomy of Kosovo and Voivodina, so that the provinces were brought under central control. Kucan demanded the power to alter the Slovene constitution so that federal Yugoslav authorities could no longer interfere in Slovenian internal affairs. The Slovenes merely asked for similar powers to those Milosevic had already taken for Serbia. What could be fairer than that?
Milosevic refused outright. Instead he discussed with Borisav Jovic and the federal defence minister General Veljko Kadijevic whether martial law should be imposed on the alpine republic. Not yet, was the answer. Kadijevic, a former partisan of mixed Serb-Croat origin, was a career military man. As a loyal JNA (Yugoslav National Army) officer he believed in Yugoslavia, not Greater Serbia. But the JNA was a Communist army, thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that military authority was absolutely subordinate to the politicians. General Kadijevic believed that if Slovenia left, Yugoslavia would collapse. Over the next few years General Kadijevic would be increasingly persuaded by Milosevic’s arguments that as Yugoslavia could only be defended by force, it was necessary to go to war against the republics that wished to secede.
Those were the dog days of federal Yugoslavia, and times of great tension between the republics. Serbia was not an island, but one of six Yugoslav republics. Milosevic’s politics – of crowds and power, demonstrations and intimidation – were fomenting an atmosphere of menace through the neighbouring states. Everywhere there was a sense of uncertainty, tinged with fear for the future. The symptoms of imperial terminal decline were brilliantly described by the Hungarian writer Sandor Marai, in his novel Embers. The book is set at the turn of the century, during the last years of Austro-Hungary, but change the nationalities and it just as well describes Yugoslavia:
The inhabitants – Ukrainians, Germans, Jews and Russians – lived in a kind of turmoil that was continually being smothered and contained by the authorities; something seemed to be fermenting in the dimly lit, airless apartments, some uprising or perhaps just an ongoing seditious muttering and wretched discontent, or perhaps not even that, merely the uneasy disorder and permanent restlessness of a caravanserai.2
Through the months of constitutional wranglings as Kucan and his officials tried to stop, or at least stall, Milosevic’s centralising drive, there ran an undercurrent of apprehension. Kucan feared being arrested, or even eliminated. When he and the Slovene leadership flew to Belgrade they took separate planes, in case of assassination attempts. They made plans for emergency evacuations, via the Bulgarian border, to exit Yugoslav territory as quickly as possible before returning home.
At an epic meeting in Belgrade at the end of September 1989 Kucan and the other Slovene leaders had come under intense pressure from both the Serbs and the Yugoslav army to back down from their plans. Borisav Jovic threatened Kucan that ‘all means’ would be used to stop the Slovenes altering their constitution to remove the power of the federal authorities. When Kucan asked what that meant, Jovic replied, ‘Ask your lawyers, I’m not going to explain the law to you.’3 After their return to Ljubljana, on 27 September, the parliament of the Slovenian republic voted itself the right to secede from Yugoslavia, as ‘an independent sovereign and autonomous state’. The Slovene MPs cheered and sang songs. Milan Kucan went home to sleep. The parliament vote was not a declaration of independence, not yet anyway.
Milosevic’s rise and consolidation of political power was greatly aided by Yugoslavia’s parlous economy. Soaring inflation and increasing economic instability fuelled a sense of insecurity, boosting nationalism. State-run industries were uncompetitive and ineffective. The value of the dinar, once one of the more resilient currencies in eastern Europe, had plummeted. In 1987 prices rose by 120 per cent, and in 1988 by 194 per cent. The Yugoslav economy was being kept afloat by IMF loans, which also helped subsidise a near western standard of living for many, and ensure a ready supply of western consumer goods. But loans ultimately had to be paid back. By 1987 Yugoslavia’s foreign debt stood at $22 billion. There was no realistic hope of repaying this, especially when Yugoslavs – understandably in such uncertain times – preferred to keep their hard currency in foreign not domestic banks.
By the end of December 1989 inflation had reached 2,600 per cent. The devaluation of the dinar was having a profound effect, not only in financial terms as dinar savings became worthless, but also in psychological terms. The dinar was the national currency, in use in all six republics, and so could be seen as a symbol of the multi-national state. The weakening of the currency seemed an awful portent of the eventual collapse of the whole country. There were echoes of Weimar Germany, of an economic collapse that was fuelling a dangerous nationalism.
Liberals and reformers rallied around Ante Markovic, the prime minister of federal Yugoslavia. A genial Bosnian Croat, Markovic (no relation to Mira Markovic) was a popular leader. With Markovic at the helm, many Yugoslavs believed, their country could still follow the Hungarians, Czechs and Poles into western peace and prosperity. And might even stay together. But Markovic faced an unsolvable dilemma. He was prime minister of Yugoslavia, but federal power was increasingly irrelevant. The six republics, especially Milosevic’s Serbia, were calling the shots.
Economics also helped fuel the republics’ independence drive. Both Slovenia and Croatia were increasingly unwilling to have their financial fortunes tied to the whole of Yugoslavia, especially the poorer southern regions. If a factory in Slovenia was showing a good profit, then why did it have to subsidise Macedonia and Bosnia? Two million Slovenes produced nearly one third of Yugoslavia’s hard currency exports. In fact such arguments failed to recognise that the Yugoslav economic structure greatly subsidised the prosperity of Slovenia and Croatia. Both countries enjoyed easy supplies of cheap labour, subsidised raw materials and a captive market in the rest of Yugoslavia.
Markovic fought back with a programme of austerity measures. He also called for the introduction of a western-style economic and political system of political democracy with full freedoms and human rights. The old dinar was converted to the new dinar, at a rate of 10,000 to one, wages were frozen and the powers of the National Bank of Yugoslavia were boosted. A new arrangement was negotiated with the IMF and inflation began to fall. Perhaps Markovic could yet pull a western rabbit out of Tito’s battered old hat.
Many of Markovic’s ideas were similar to those first proposed by Milosevic’s 1988 Presidential Reform Commission. But Markovic would get no help from Milosevic. By autumn 1989 Milosevic had abandoned modernisation for nationalism. For the Serbian leader a healthy economy, freedom, human rights and democracy would be an absolute disaster. Milosevic knew he would never be able to retain power in a modern Yugoslavia of six republics that peacefully co-existed. Ante Markovic had to be stopped. Here Milosevic found allies in both Ljubljana and Zagreb, as nationalists united to stop the Markovic reforms, as a prelude to breaking up federal Yugoslavia.
Ljubica Markovic recalled:
Ante Markovic was the last big opportunity to reform the Communist state we had. Not only Milosevic brought him down, but also Slovenia and Croatia. They didn’t want to hear what he said, they hated it. His was a completely modern approach that was so different from everything else we heard all those years. Markovic said ideology is not important, the economy is important, we have to work, produce and open to the world because we are part of the world. Milosevic hated this, it was the opposite of what he said.4
Milosevic attacked the reforms from a bizarre but effective angle. He evoked the spirit of Gazimestan for Serbia’s shoppers. ‘Markovic began importing cheap food and other goods from the west,’ said Ljubica. ‘You could get cheese, ham and oil at a low price. So Milosevic immediately went on television and started attacking these imports. The televisions, the kitchen and bathroom equipment you could get, Milosevic attacked everything for being third class.’ Considering that the Serbian economy would spin into a black hole would make even professional economists shake their heads in wonder, this was the darkest irony.
Milosevic needed to provoke more tension between Belgrade and Ljubljana, and decided to deploy his favourite weapon: the roving band of Kosovo Serbs. In the winter of 1989 Belgrade announced plans for a ‘Meeting of Truth’ in Ljubljana. The Serbian leadership claimed this was necessary so that the Slovenes could be properly informed about Kosovo, as though this was still the issue at stake. The Kosovo Serbs headed north again.
Kucan hit back. The ‘Meeting of Truth’ was banned by the Slovene authorities. Geography was also a useful ally. To get to Ljubljana Milosevic’s demonstrators had to pass through Croatia, Slovenia’s intermittent ally in the struggle against Belgrade. The trains were stopped at the Croatian border and the demonstrators turned back. A few dozen Serbs already living in Ljubljana turned out to demonstrate but were bundled into police vans.
In December Belgrade announced that all economic ties with Slovenia would be cut, and that Serbs would launch an economic boycott of the alpine republic. Less than two months after the Berlin Wall had come down, Milosevic was building a financial one, inside Yugoslavia’s frontiers. On one level this was a surprising decision: the Serbs and the Serb-dominated Partisans had fought the Croatian Ustasha in the Second World War, and had struggled with the Albanians for mastery of Kosovo for six hundred years, but there was no history of conflict or real antipathy between Slovenia and Serbia. Despite their cultural differences, the countries had got on reasonably well. During the war Serbs had sheltered thousands of Slovene children from the Nazis. Milosevic’s move also made no economic sense, since Slovenia was Yugoslavia’s most economically successful republic. Dozens of Serbian companies were forced to break off their contracts with Slovenia.
At this time the community of interest between Kucan and Milosevic crystallised. Kucan needed the failure of federal economic policies, and the weakening of federal authority to facilitate Slovenia’s departure from Yugoslavia. For Milosevic the departure of Slovenia was greatly to be desired: it presented no strategic problems. Its fate did not greatly affect Serbian interests. The country was ethnically homogenous. There was no shared border, substantial Serbian minority or history of Serb settlement. Not even the most fervent irredentists, of which there was no shortage in Belgrade, could claim that Slovenia was ancient Serbian territory.
When Milosevic launched a political and economic offensive against Slovenia, he knew that such heavy-handed tactics would only strengthen the nascent Slovenian independence movement. This suited Kucan, as he could argue he was being forced down a path he wanted to take in any case. At the same time Slovenia’s drive for independence also boosted Milosevic: by refusing Slovenia’s demands, he could present himself as the defender of Yugoslavia, even as his Serbian nationalist policies were leading to its break-up. Kucan and Milosevic were de facto allies.
Even so, like every divorce, the departure of the Slovenes was marked by anger, bitterness and no small emotional toll, on all sides. On 23 January 1990 the fourteenth – and last, as it turned out – congress of the Yugoslav party had been held in Belgrade’s Sava congress centre, its modern hall and conference rooms once the pride of the Tito era. By this time Slovenia and Croatia, like other former Communist countries, had already announced their first multi-party elections to be held that spring. Even Romania had toppled the hated Ceausescus. A new era was dawning – except in Serbia. Every Serb speaker expounded the Milosevic line, emphasising the primacy of the party, the need for a strong central authority, and making demands phrased in the kind of Leninist rhetoric that was now barely heard in eastern Europe.
As a good Bolshevik, Milosevic knew that the chairman of such a gathering, especially in the age of electric microphones and loudspeakers, had a vital position, controlling who spoke and for how long. Momir Bulatovic, the moustachioed president of Montenegro dubbed ‘the waiter’, was chosen for the job. The waiter delivered. Every single Slovene proposal on the future of Yugoslavia was voted down. The Slovenes threatened to walkout.
Dusan Mitevic broadcast the three-day event live on television. It was as rancorous as the end of any forty-five-year marriage could be, even thought the betrothal had been an arranged one. Serbs and Slovenes accused each other of being ‘national socialists’. The Yugoslav Communist Party was dead, and with it the idea of a multi-national Yugoslavia. Milan Kucan recalled:
The atmosphere was horrible. There was whistling, chanting, insults and cursing. I would not want to live through that again. We knew that we could never identify ourselves with such a political organisation. We left the congress. By doing that we also knew that the state, which was so closely bonded to the party then, could not be our state.5
Cyril Ribicic, a Slovene delegate, walked up to the microphone and dolefully declared: ‘Under these circumstances, we have to leave the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.’ Many Serbs applauded, believing they had won a victory. Months later, Milosevic would mock his former Slovene comrades, accusing them of being more concerned with their hotel bills than their country. ‘It was a dirty game, but I could see right through it. They’d checked out of their hotels. Those stingy Slovenes saved a night’s bill. They’d left their bags at reception.’6
At the time Milosevic had not been quite so cocky. His manipulation of the Serbian bloc vote at the congress had engineered the Slovene walk-out. But until then Milosevic had won all his major triumphs – from the toppling of Ivan Stambolic to the adulation of the masses at Gazimestan – within the Serbian political arena. Now he was actually engineering the break-up of federal Yugoslavia. Television footage shows Milosevic looking uncertain. Huddled with his allies in a corner, his head swivelled back and forth across the congress. He appeared aware that he had to take control or the congress would collapse. Striding up to the microphone, he suggested that the delegates should be counted to establish a new quorum. It was a holding move.
Milosevic then lobbied the Croat delegation, led by Ivica Racan, who told him that a Yugoslav party without the Slovenes was not acceptable. ‘Milosevic went quiet. For the first time, I saw him worried. His charm deserted him.’7 The Croats then followed the Slovenes and walked out. The break-up of the Yugoslav Communist Party heralded that of the country itself. Congress Chairman Bulatovic called a quarter of an hour break. It lasted, he later noted, ‘through history’.8
Now the Slovenes had the excuse they needed to press ahead with plans for full independence. Yet the walk-out from the fourteenth congress was not without personal cost. Some Slovene delegates filed out in tears. ‘As children we had grown up in the second [federal] Yugoslavia, both in good times and harsh times, and there were many good times. The sudden realisation that our country had collapsed was not easy. This did not happen without emotions,’ Kucan remembered.
What had been political issues soon became military ones. With new coalition governments taking power in Slovenia and Croatia, it was clear that the northern republics were headed for independence. But they would not be allowed to fight for it. Under Tito each of the republics had its own national territorial defence organisation (TO), as well as garrisons for troops of the Yugoslav army (JNA). In May 1990, General Kadijevic ordered the JNA to take steps. Troops, under the control of the general staff in Belgrade, would stay in Slovenia and Croatia, while Slovene and Croatian TOs were disarmed to prevent them transforming into the armies of any future independent republic.
In response, Slovenia’s interior minister, Igor Bavcar, and the defence minister, Janez Jansa (a former Mladina journalist), launched a clandestine arms-buying programme. Within three months the nascent Slovene army had 20,000 soldiers under arms. It is highly unlikely that the JNA, which at this time retained all its barracks, garrisons and intelligence organisations within Slovenia, was unaware of this. In October Slovene television showed film of Slovene troops blowing up a tank. Still no order came from Belgrade to halt Ljubljana’s armaments drive. In December the Slovenes voted overwhelmingly for independence in a national plebiscite.
Slovenia’s momentum was now unstoppable. Milosevic did not object, as long as he could benefit from events. Kucan recalled, ‘Milosevic had said to me we should reach some agreement on Slovenia’s desire to leave Yugoslavia. He said he would not stop us, and that the others didn’t understand what the whole thing was about anyway. But he said he cannot let Croatia go, because Croatia was bound to Serbia by blood.’ On 23 January 1991, Milosevic and Kucan headed a meeting of two delegations in Belgrade. Flanked by their aides, the two men eyed each other warily across the table. It was decision time.
Asked whether there was a community of interest between Slovenia and Serbia at this time, Kucan replied: ‘One could say that. At a certain period of time Slovenia and Serbia had a common interest for reforming the society, but obviously based on completely different principles. This created the “community of interest” in that Milosevic’s Yugoslavia had no room for Slovenia and Slovenia did not want to be in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.’ Like Kucan, Milosevic knew exactly what he wanted. After lengthy negotiations, a joint communiqué was issued. Serbia would respect ‘the right of the Slovene nation and the Republic of Slovenia to their own path and their stance regarding the form of future ties with other Yugoslav nations or republics’.9
What was the deal? Milosevic’s price was hidden in the small print: ‘Slovenia respects the interest of the Serbian people living in one state and ensures that the future Yugoslav government must give proper consideration to this interest.’ Behind the bland diplomatese lay the rationale for the coming wars. Yugoslavia was a balancing act of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia. But because of Yugoslavia’s ethnic jumble – mirrored across the Balkans – the nations did not all live within the borders of their republics.
While Yugoslavia remained united this did not matter. Croatia and Bosnia were not independent republics but part of Yugoslavia, so the Serbs did indeed live in one state: Yugoslavia. But Milosevic argued that if Yugoslavia broke up and its constituent republics became independent states, then all Serbs, as part of the Serbian nation, should also have the right to live in one republic: Serbia. At first this sounded reasonable enough. If all the Slovenes had the right to live in one state, then why should the Serbs be denied something similar? The answer, of course, was that while over 90 per cent of Slovenes lived in Slovenia, the Serbs were also spread through Croatia and Bosnia. There were 600,000 Serbs in Croatia, and they made up 31 per cent of Bosnia’s population.
Milosevic was introducing a new and highly dangerous principle: the primacy of nation over republic. This was a deliberate act of political destruction. It invalidated the borders of the republics within federal Yugoslavia. It was a recipe for chaos, uncertainty and, ultimately, war. Yugoslavia was an ethnic patchwork. As well as Serbs in Croatia, there were, for example, Albanians in Macedonia, Muslims in Serbia and Montenegro, and Croats in Bosnia. There was no way to satisfy each ethnic group’s territorial demands. Milosevic, however, was concerned only with the Serbs. How would he bring them all into one state? By moving the borders, that is, by invading and annexing territory. This was Milosevic’s plan for a Greater Serbia.
But Slovenia did not share a border with Serbia, and so could be let go. Slovene officials deny that the January 1991 meeting endorsed Milosevic’s plan for Greater Serbia. They point to another sentence in the communiqué, which declares that while the Yugoslav nations do have the right to self-determination, that right must also take into account the equal rights of other nations. Thus Serbia cannot just slice off a chunk of Croatia or Bosnia because Serbs live there. None the less, the fundamental principle that led to the redrawing of the Yugoslav borders had been established.
On 25 June 1991 Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav flag was taken down, and the Slovene one raised. Slovene border and customs guards sent their Yugoslav predecessors packing. It was daring and audacious, and it triggered the first of four wars that would tear Yugoslavia apart. Milan Kucan denied that by leaving Yugoslavia when it did, Slovenia bore responsibility for later events. Although Milosevic and Kucan had agreed a form of words about Slovenia’s future development in their January communiqué, it did not provide for outright independence. There was no agreement to simply surrender Yugoslav strategic assets such as Ljubljana airport, and federal border crossings.
Slovenia invested a lot of effort into reforming the Yugoslav federation. We first proposed an asymmetrical federation. Then, we proposed a confederation as a transitional arrangement until either the dissolution or the reintegration of the country. Finally, we proposed an agreement on the dissolution of the country, knowing that the whole thing could end in tragedy. When it became clear that none of the proposed solutions would be adopted, we had to focus on our responsibility towards our own nation. I have heard this allegation several times. I have asked others what they would do in the same position. Would they primarily consider the interests of others and not those of their own nation? I never got an answer.
For Milosevic, everything was going to plan. By declaring independence for the Slovene nation, and arguing that all Slovenes should live in one country, Ljubljana was setting a useful precedent. But Milosevic played his usual double game: although he had no real objection to Slovenia leaving Yugoslavia, he publicly presented himself as the defender of Yugoslavia. He could not be seen to sit back contentedly and watch Yugoslavia’s richest republic stroll off into the European dawn. Milosevic needed the support of the army generals, who believed in federal Yugoslavia, and who were fervently opposed to the break-up of the country. By getting the JNA to fight to keep Slovenia within Yugoslavia he set a second precedent: that the army would go to war to prevent secession, which he could later exploit in Croatia and Bosnia.
There were two war options. Plan A involved 670 police and customs officers, accompanied by 2,000 troops being deployed to retake the border posts and the airport. In Plan B the 63rd Airborne Brigade would spearhead a full-blown invasion of Slovenia, backed up by the JNA’s Fifth Military District. Martial law would be declared and the independence movement crushed. There would, the generals warned, be ‘heavy casualties’.
Plan A was implemented. In the early hours of 27 June, Kucan was informed by his chief of staff that the JNA was moving through the country. At 5.00 a.m. he summoned his war cabinet. Two-day-old Slovenia had two options: to fight back or surrender.
Slovenia went to war. The Slovene militia surrounded the JNA bases and cut off the water and electricity. A JNA helicopter flying over Ljubljana was shot down. Pieces of charred machinery and two men’s bodies lay on the streets of the capital, while pedestrians looked on in awe and fear. There was no going back from this. If anything, Slovenia had declared war on the JNA. The 35,000-strong Slovene army, highly motivated and well trained, proved superior to the lightly-armed JNA troops, most of whom had no idea why they were fighting.
In Belgrade Milosevic watched the generals rage at the JNA’s humiliation. It was all falling into place. The JNA was involved, but it couldn’t win without going to Plan B. The generals demanded authorisation to pour in the troops and put down the uprising. But Milosevic and his allies would never allow this, because he wanted Slovenia to secede. Borisav Jovic recalled: ‘I put it bluntly. We didn’t want a war with Slovenia. Serbia had no territorial claims there. It was an ethnically pure republic – no Serbs. We couldn’t care less if they left Yugoslavia . . . We would have been overstretched. With Slovenia out of the way, we could dictate terms to the Croats.’10
Forty-four JNA soldiers were killed and 187 were wounded in ten days of fighting. Slovene casualties were in single figures. The Yugoslav casualties were mostly frightened and bewildered teenage conscripts. This was the human cost of the ‘community of interest’ between Milosevic and Kucan. Seasoned officers like Colonel Vaso Predojevic were utterly confused by being ordered to fire on their former countrymen. Predojevic, a Bosnian Serb married to a Slovene, was stationed at the Fifth Military District headquarters in Zagreb. ‘We couldn’t believe it, because before we were friends, living together, and then we had to fight each other. It was very hard to understand, because I was a Yugoslav, an army officer, then all of a sudden I realised that there was no more Yugoslavia. It used to be one country and it would never be the same anymore. It was very difficult.’11
Predojevic soon retired from the JNA. When the Slovenian war broke out, he had told his superior officer that he would not take part. ‘He told me not to worry, that there would not be an attack on any JNA army officer or soldier, and that not even a stone would be thrown. He said everything had been decided in Ljubljana and Belgrade.’