Introduction
This special issue of Nationalities Papers presents an attempt to provide a fresh perspective on Serbia’s and Yugoslavia’s “antibureaucratic revolution” of 1988 and 1989. The 30th anniversary of this turbulent episode provides an opportunity to rethink our interpretation and offer a new appraisal of the event as well as open several new avenues of potentially productive research. This special issue builds on older research (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2004, Reference Vladisavljević2008; Vujačić Reference Vujačić1996, Reference Vujačić2003) and is part of a series of more recent as well upcoming contributions (Musić Reference Musić, Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016; Musić forthcoming; Archer et al. Reference Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016; Grdešić Reference Grdešić2016; Grdešić forthcoming; Vujačić Reference Vujačić2017; Archer and Musić Reference Archer and Musić2017). Given the complexity of the event, the contributions collected here cannot exhaust all of the antibureaucratic revolution’s many facets. We do, however, hope that these contributions cover some of the main lacunae in the scholarship published so far. We also hope that this special issue will spark researchers to turn to this immensely interesting and deeply important event.
The antibureaucratic revolution is the name usually given to a prolonged episode of social and political upheaval which took place in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s. More specifically, it refers to many street rallies that occurred in central Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro in 1988 and 1989. The entire episode played out before the revolutions in Poland, East Germany, or Czechoslovakia. Thousands of workers and citizens went to the streets and squares of many towns across Yugoslavia. The name of the episode refers to the target of most protests. In the political parlance of socialist Yugoslavia, the word “bureaucrat” was a political insult. To be called a bureaucrat meant that one lost touch with the way ordinary people work and live. Blame for all sorts of negative phenomena was pinned on bureaucrats and on bureaucratization.
The events of 1988 and 1989 have mostly been remembered for the way they provided fuel to exclusionary nationalism and thus accelerated the dissolution of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Indeed, in the chain of events that led to the violent breakup of the federal state, the antibureaucratic revolution is certainly a key link. As it mostly took place in Serbia, politicians in other republics, notably Slovenia and Croatia, saw the event as deeply worrying. The immediate political casualty were Kosovo’s Albanians since a state of emergency was proclaimed in 1989 in this province and the federal army moved in to repress all visible forms of Albanian discontent. The political impasse at the federal level became more protracted in 1989 and 1990, in the wake of the antibureaucratic revolution. Of course, the event is not solely responsible for the outbreak of military clashes and ethnically motivated violence, as these began to occur in 1991 in Slovenia and Croatia, and in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the path toward a violent outcome had been consolidated and switching away from it became increasingly difficult. All in all, nationalism is certainly an important facet of the antibureaucratic revolution. But the phenomenon is more interesting than this, as most contributions to this volume aim to show. The discontent that exploded onto the political stage in the late 1980s was not based solely on ethnic grievances but also included various social, economic, and political strands.
The antibureaucratic revolution has also been remembered for the way it propelled Slobodan Milošević to political stardom. It is beyond doubt that Milošević profited greatly from the antibureaucratic revolution and used it to consolidate power within Serbia as well as to transform himself into a charismatic leader, a true man of the people. Yet, an exclusive focus on Milošević is something of a distraction as it leaves out many relevant aspects of the episode. Bringing up Milošević often has the effect of simply dismissing the episode through its association with him, as he is now thoroughly discredited, primarily for his role in the wars of the 1990s. This cannot be a productive way forward in terms of understanding the various strands that made up the antibureaucratic revolution. But it also does very little to help us understand what Milošević actually did during the late 1980s, the role he played in the escalation of the antibureaucratic revolution and the formation of the antibureaucratic discourse.
Most of the existing literature on the antibureaucratic revolution has stayed on the terrain of this simple, rather superficial interpretation of the antibureaucratic revolution. It has seen the episode primarily in terms of nationalism and it has approached it as an instance in which Milošević manipulated popular discontent in order to promote his personal political agenda (for overviews of the literature see Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 2–4; Grdešić Reference Grdešić2016, 775–777). Although both aspects are certainly present in the broader social dynamic that constituted the antibureaucratic revolution, such an interpretation does not go beyond the surface of the phenomenon. The goal of this special issue is to go further and present innovative ways of approaching, understanding, and analyzing the phenomenon.
Readers of Nationalities Papers may find this collection of articles useful for several reasons. First, Nationalities Papers has traditionally been a venue where many well-known articles and important discussions on the former Yugoslavia have been published (Pavković Reference Pavković1997; Emmert and Ingrao Reference Emmert and Ingrao2004; Gagnon Reference Gagnon2010; Kanin Reference Kanin2010; Klanjšek and Flere Reference Klanjšek and Flere2011). In other words, for researchers who focus primarily on the former Yugoslavia, Nationalities Papers is one of the most important publications to follow. But additionally, we also hope that the articles collected here will be of interest to scholars whose expertise focuses on other parts of the world. Aside from topics of nationalism, nationhood, and ethnicity, which constitute an important part of the antibureaucratic revolution, the episode may also be of interest to scholars who want to better understand how large-scale popular mobilization takes place, what makes authoritarian and Communist systems stable and unstable, what discourses both elites and ordinary people employ, how this varies over time and space in a multi-ethnic and federal political system, and what long-term legacies an episode of popular upheaval and contention can leave in its wake. The articles collected here speak, in their various methodological and disciplinary ways, to these issues.
Naturally, this is a long and diverse list of topics and issues. That is why we feel that the articles collected here do not exhaust the possible research avenues one may pursue with regard to the antibureaucratic revolution. There is still a wealth of empirical topics that await the attention of researchers. As mentioned, the impulse of much research which first dealt with the event was to emphasize nationalism and the impact of elites. This is an understandable reaction. Indeed, it is difficult to write a chronology of the main political events of the late 1980s without doing so. The short overview of the episode included in the next section attests to this. But, we ask readers to not stop there. The steps that come next are in our opinion more interesting then the nationalist manipulation of unscrupulous elites. They speak to the complexity of a revolutionary time, the diverse motivations of ordinary people, and the many cultural layers which made up the socialist political landscape of the time.
The Antibureaucratic Revolution
It may be helpful to provide a brief historical introduction and chronological overview of the antibureaucratic revolution, especially for readers unfamiliar with the details of Yugoslav politics in the late 1980s. The decade began with the death of Josip Broz Tito, the country’s uncontested ruler since the end of World War II. While the immediate transition to post-Tito rule was handled rather smoothly by the country’s Communist elite, problems began to accumulate as the decade wore on. Economic troubles, especially high debt and accelerating inflation, were a constant feature of Yugoslavia’s final decade. While the country experienced constant increases in living standards throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s put an end to such positive trends (on the economic situation see Woodward 1995). The economic malaise also spurred on an increase in worker unrest which by 1987 and 1988 began to take the shape of a strike wave (Fočo Reference Fočo1989; Jovanov Reference Jovanov1989: Stanojević; Reference Stanojević2003).
Politically, the country was gridlocked. Its complex and decentralized political structure, as established by the constitution of 1974, made decision-making difficult and fed the centrifugal tendencies present in the multi-ethnic state (Bunce Reference Bunce1999; Jović Reference Jović2009). At the federal level, each republican elite essentially had the power of veto, requiring unanimity for any important decision. With the death of Tito, the country had no ultimate arbiter in times of crisis and the collective leadership system put in his place could not replace his charisma and authority. Serbia was in a particular position because it was the only republic that featured two autonomous provinces on its territory: Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. This frustrated Serbian elites in Belgrade and led to prolonged efforts to pass constitutional revisions that would take away power from the provinces and centralize Serbia. Naturally, provincial leadership circles in Kosovo and Vojvodina resisted this.
The situation in Kosovo was especially combustible. In 1981, a protest of Albanian students over the quality of food at the university cafeteria morphed into a massive revolt throughout the province. The authorities responded with a heavy hand and the protest was called a “counter-revolution,” a term soon extended to all potentially destabilizing Albanian activity. Relations between the Albanian majority and Serbian minority in Kosovo were tense, with many Serbs deciding to move away from the province, amidst a climate of fear, distrust, and constant low-level violence (Petrović and Blagojević Reference Petrović and Blagojević1989). Although inter-ethnic relations between the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia were generally good, Albanians were the exception. Slovenians, Croats, and Serbs had few problems if their friends, neighbors, or even family relations came from one of the other dominant Slavic groups, but this was not the case if they came from the culturally more distant Albanian minority (Popović et al. Reference Popović, Janča and Petovar1990).
The demographic composition in the province had also changed since the end of World War II. The share of Albanians increased, through higher birth rates as well as Serbian emigration. This led to fears of an “ethnically clean” Kosovo, which was politically very worrying for Serbian politicians and for all those receptive to the Kosovo myth, long a staple of Serbian politics. Kosovo remained important as the site of the Serbian medieval state, the Serbian Orthodox church, and the site of the mythological Battle of 1389. Kosovo had, and continues to have, a lot of symbolic weight in the Serbian national imagination.
By the late 1980s, a group of Serbian nationalist activists located in Kosovo Polje, just outside of the provincial capital of Priština, began to organize small protests, launch petitions, as well as travel to Belgrade to plead their case to anyone who would listen. They complained of Albanian abuse and urged the Communist leadership to halt the emigration of Serbs from the province. These protests became quite visible publicly and overlapped with the nationalist concerns of certain intellectual circles in Belgrade (Dragović-Soso Reference Dragović-Soso2002). However, outside of a few dissident writers and poets, the Serbian activists from Kosovo had few allies. Traditionally, members of the Serbian leadership did not encourage such initiatives and the man in charge throughout much of the mid 1980s, Ivan Stambolić, was a man of intra-party diplomacy. His preference was to cool nationalist flare-ups when they arose. However, when in the spring of 1987 he sent his right-hand man, Slobodan Milošević, to Kosovo for a visit, a change in political direction unexpectedly came about. This visit has since become something of a myth itself. When he was told that police were beating the crowd of Serbian protesters who had gathered outside the building in Kosovo Polje, Milošević responded by telling the crowd: “Nobody should dare beat you!” (Jović Reference Jović2009, 258–261; Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 100–101). His popularity with Kosovo Serbs skyrocketed.
After this event, Milošević increasingly began to use nationalism in general and the Kosovo issue in particular as a chip in intra-party conflicts. Tensions with Stambolić came to a head at the eighth session of the Serbian party in September of 1987 (Stambolić Reference Stambolić1995; Lekić and Pavić Reference Lekić and Pavić2007; Pavlović et al. Reference Pavlović, Jović and Petrović2008). Here, Milošević managed to defeat Stambolić and his allies. He consolidated power within Serbia, but still had to oust the leadership of Vojvodina and of Kosovo if he was to pass the constitutional revisions and recentralize Serbia under his command. The antibureaucratic revolution is deeply intertwined with these goals of the new Serbian leader. In pursuing them, Milošević was not averse to using public pressure, especially via street protest.
During the summer of 1988, protests became a daily phenomenon. The event that really kicked things off was a July protest of Kosovo Serbs in Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina. Though only a handful of Kosovo Serbs arrived—and though even fewer locals joined—the protest was crucial for the way it reverberated throughout the media. Soon, politicians were called out by Milošević’s allies if they did not express support for the Kosovo Serbs or if they seemed disinterested in their plight. In August, protests began to grow in size, with particularly notable events taking place in other towns across Vojvodina, Nova Pazova, and Titov Vrbas, for example (Kerčov et al. Reference Kerčov, Radoš and Raič1990).
In September, Milošević organized a session of the Serbian party and came out in support of the protests. Soon regime institutions were helping Kosovo Serbs organize rallies all across Vojvodina, as well as central Serbia (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 150; Jović Reference Jović2009, 310). The involvement of the party meant that some of the more dangerous messages, such as anti-Tito rhetoric, would be curtailed. The rallies were more scripted then before and resembled the populist rallies of the early Titoist years (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 166–169, Lekić Reference Lekić, Pavić and Lekić2009, 48, 89). They also grew in size. Events with 100,000 people were common and at times crowds were even twice as large. Participation was often boosted by enlisting the many workers who worked in the socially-owned industrial sector.
In early October, Milošević scored a large victory when a large two-day rally in Novi Sad forced the Vojvodina leadership to resign. This event has since been called the “yogurt revolution” because of the packages of yogurt that the crowd threw at the building of the provincial committee. Simultaneously, the workers of Belgrade’s industrial suburb Rakovica marched to the Federal Assembly building in order to protest conditions in their factories as well as the broader political stalemate in Yugoslavia. They famously demanded that Milošević talk to them and responded positively to his reassurances (Musić Reference Musić, Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016). Other parts of the country were caught up in the political turbulence as well. Montenegro was destabilized by protests in October of 1988 and again in January of 1989. Kosovo witnessed a counter-mobilization of Albanians in November of 1988 and again in February of 1989, spearheaded by the miners of Trepča in Stari Trg. Throughout this period, factory strikes became increasingly common and frequently spilled over into large street protests. In early 1989, Milošević achieved his goals. He managed to oust the Kosovo leadership led by Azem Vllasi. At a large rally in March of 1989 in front of the Federal Assembly in Belgrade, the crowd demanded that Vllasi be arrested. Milošević pretended to not hear them, telling them “I can’t hear you very well.” The next day, Vllasi was arrested.
Milošević’s brinksmanship pushed Yugoslavia to the edge, but he did achieve the constitutional revisions that he—as well as most of Serbia’s leadership—sought for years. They were passed in March of 1989. Milošević and his allies now controlled the votes of Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, setting the stage for even more gridlock at the federal level. This began with a series of conflicts with the leadership of Slovenia (Belić and Bilbija Reference Belić and Bilbija1989). Milošević’s celebratory conclusion to the antibureaucratic revolution took place in June of 1989 in Gazimestan, Kosovo. This event was aimed to mark the 600-year anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, but will mostly be remembered for Milošević’s warning that future wars cannot be ruled out.
It should be reiterated that most of these events unfolded before the other East European revolutions of 1989. For example, elections in Poland took place in June of 1989 as did the reburial of Hungarian hero Imre Nagy. In East Germany, the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig did not escalate until October of 1989, while large protests in Prague forced the Czechoslovak party to resign in November. Therefore, the antibureaucratic revolution remained, for better or worse, largely insulated from events in the broader region. By mid- to late-1989, popular protests entered into a phase of exhaustion. Most of society’s revolutionary zeal had been spent, especially in Serbia. Thus, the large-scale mobilization of ordinary people was not channeled into democratic changes, but instead served to aid a segment of the Communist elite in its conflict with other segments of that same establishment. As much of the East European region was moving toward liberal democracy and political pluralism, Yugoslavia witnessed an emergence of new forms of authoritarianism as well as unexpected forms of violence and conflict.
Overview of Contributions
While acknowledging the relevance of nationalism and elite politics, the contributions collected here aim to push beyond this conventional perspective. Each article brings a distinct focus. One important perspective is comparative. In order to assess the nature and relevance of the antibureaucratic revolution, it needs to be placed in comparative perspective. Vladisavljević’s contribution to this special issue compares the antibureaucratic revolution with similar episodes of popular protest in various socialist countries. Indeed, most of the revolutions of 1989 which happened in the socialist bloc—from Poland to Czechoslovakia to East Germany—are usually celebrated for the way they overturned oppressive authoritarian regimes. The antibureaucratic revolution does not fit this stylization very well, if at all. It has much more of a dark side, with the rise of exclusionary nationalism and Milošević’s political authoritarianism. Furthermore, it contained important pro-socialist strands and was never aimed against the regime as a whole.
Vladisavljević places the Yugoslav case alongside other East European cases but also the Soviet Union and China. An analysis of other countries that, like Yugoslavia, were based on the foundations of a domestic socialist revolution, makes it easier to understand the particular dynamic which took shape in Yugoslavia. Placed in comparative context, the Yugoslav case ceases to be an exception. Vladisavljević argues that in cases where the socialist regime enjoys legitimacy through domestic revolution, political protests take place within the contours of the regime or on its margins and do not take the shape of society struggling against the state as happened in Poland or Czechoslovakia. Protesting within the existing institutional framework creates certain trade-offs for challengers. They are provided legitimacy and given access to resources. On the flip side, however, they open themselves up to state co-optation, especially since no independent political organization is constructed. In addition, this political constellation is also susceptible to a nationalist turn, especially in diverse ethnic settings such as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. This is indeed what took place in these countries, in contrast to China.
Another way of enriching our knowledge of the antibureaucratic revolution is to stay within the Yugoslav context of the late 1980s but to shift focus away from the main sites of contention such as Belgrade, Kosovo, and Vojvodina. This is something that Musić’s contribution aims to achieve. Musić goes outside the main hot spots of the revolution and investigates the town of Priboj in the southwestern region of Sandžak, on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a peripheral setting, the case of Priboj offers a glimpse into the way the political instability played out in those settings that were out of the political limelight. Despite being mostly irrelevant to the broader dynamic which was playing out elsewhere, the town of Priboj and its flagship truck-company FAP were nevertheless swept up in the tide of events. Moreover, they tried to give their contributions to the political struggles that were taking place in Serbia and Yugoslavia.
By delving outside the epicenters of the antibureaucratic revolution, Musić shows that the mobilizations of the late 1980s were a mixture of top-down and bottom-up impulses. Actors in the small town of Priboj used some of the themes and grievances circulating on the national stage but combined them with local concerns and motivations. In addition, an analysis of the setting of Priboj is useful because Sandžak is a multi-ethnic setting, populated by a mix of Serbs and Muslims. The fact that the workers and citizens of Priboj wanted to participate in the antibureaucratic revolution shows that a simple categorization of the revolution as a nationalist one is unsatisfactory. Important pan-Yugoslav themes run throughout the entire episode, both in Priboj and more widely. At the same time, by examining the case of FAP, a large company, Musić can highlight the different views within the workforce, in particular the differences between blue collar and white collar workers. Once again, this shows how diverse the grievances of citizens were and how attacks on the bureaucracy often papered over rather stark differences in opinion.
Yet, another way of approaching the antibureaucratic revolution is to place it in a longer time horizon. Grdešić’s contribution aims to do this by conducting focus groups with participants of one particular antibureaucratic rally, the well-known “yogurt revolution” in Novi Sad. Many years after the event took place, what do ordinary people now think of their participation in this event? This article can help us understand the long-run legacies of the antibureaucratic revolution, by examining how participation in this event shaped the subsequent political histories and political attitudes of ordinary citizens. As the discussions from the focus groups show, most participants who took part in the rally now regret doing so. They have mostly retreated from politics into their private lives, which suggests that the antibureaucratic revolution did little to create confident and capable political citizens.
This contribution is also useful for the way it turns to the experiences of ordinary people. As mentioned, the antibureaucratic revolution was often approached as an elite-driven phenomenon, as if the many thousands of people who took part are completely irrelevant. In order to gain a firm grasp on the phenomenon it is important to add a bottom-up element to the research agenda. Simply put, it is important to talk to ordinary people, the mere “foot soldiers” of the antibureaucratic revolution. As is suggested in Grdešić’s contribution, most participants present the entire episode as well as their own personal involvement in a rather negative light. The long-run effects of the episode seem to be rather detrimental, though they combine with many later shocks and disappointments to create the particular combination of disenchantment, apathy, and cynicism that many ordinary people in the region exhibit.
Archer’s contribution is useful for shifting the temporal and the spatial focus simultaneously. By analyzing the setting of Rijeka throughout the 1980s, his contribution shows that many of the same antibureaucratic themes prevalent in Serbia in 1988 and 1989 were also present in the setting of northwestern Croatia, a few years prior to the antibureaucratic revolution. The industrial town of Rijeka, located on the northern Adriatic coast, is far removed from the protests in Kosovo or Serbia. Indeed, given the decentralized character of the Yugoslav political system and the fragmented media landscape that shaped the worldviews of ordinary people, the case of northwest Croatia could be expected to be quite separate from the Serbian political dynamic. Yet, there are important commonalities, especially with regard to the strength of antibureaucratic attitudes. Therefore, suspicion of bureaucracy is not something peculiar to Serbia. It was present more broadly, in working class communities in particular. Only in later stages of the antibureaucratic revolution did ethnic boundaries harden.
Archer’s contribution also shows that this widespread antibureaucratic attitude was not simply a political fiction imposed by the party or the media. Instead, it was based on the lived experiences of the industrial working class. For them, the expansion of administrative services at the expense of manual labor was a phenomenon they witnessed firsthand. Given the emphasis of Yugoslav socialism on the role of workers as self-managers and producers, the industrial blue collar workers could symbolically juxtapose their position to the parasitic role of white collar workers and administrative staff. The expansion of such paper pushing activity was connected to the economic troubles of Yugoslavia in the 1980s. This type of interpretation was quite compatible with the antibureaucratic rhetoric employed by politicians in the context of intra-party conflicts.
As this and other contributions show, the antibureaucratic discourse was quite a complex and shifting phenomenon. The contribution of Ivković, Petrović-Trifunović, and Prodanović investigates this discourse in more detail. They approach it as a hybrid discourse which managed to unify many various strands of protest and discontent. As such, the discourse managed to link the various demands coming from below with a political demand for “reform” which served the agenda of Milošević quite well. It provided the momentum for the constitutional changes that would recentralize Serbia at the expense of Vojvodina and Kosovo. The success of this discourse also paved the way for later reforms, especially the market-driven liberalization which was implemented in 1989 and 1990.
This contribution is useful for providing a closer examination of what Milošević and his allies in the media actually did in this discursive terrain of the time. Instead of simply referring to Milošević as manipulative and Machiavellian, this article is more specific about the type of discursive moves he and his allies made during the late 1980s. Although Milošević’s reliance on the “bureaucracy” as the enemy was not very innovative—as this was a staple of Yugoslav politics—this does not mean he and his allies in the media were unoriginal. Their success lay in the way this hybrid discourse managed to appeal to both economic and ethnic concerns while linking these to a specific political response, that of “reform.” The exact content of such “reform” was to be filled in subsequently, but the antibureaucratic revolution gave Milošević the legitimation to do so.
Along with providing various thematic, spatial, and temporal foci, each contribution to this special issue has a distinct research methodology and source of data. This special issue brings together scholars with various disciplinary backgrounds: political science, sociology, history, and philosophy. Some contributions rely on historical sources such as factory archives or press materials, while others use discourse analysis or the firsthand accounts of participants. This diversity is quite natural given the complexity of the revolution, but it also speaks to the utility of combining different methodological approaches in order to tackle various aspects of the same phenomenon. We hope the contributions collected here point the way for future work. The antibureaucratic revolution still has insights to offer to researchers who are willing to approach it in fresh ways.
Disclosure.
Author has nothing to disclose.
