Dead heroes and living deserters: the Yugoslav People's Army and the public of Valjevo, Serbia, on the verge of war 1991

Abstract

With the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army from Slovenia, the Yugoslav conflict escalated into a full-scale war in Croatia in the summer of 1991. The article explores the involvement of the Yugoslav People's Army in the war in East Slavonia from the local perspective of the Serbian town of Valjevo. Touching upon Serbia's political and social radicalization in Valjevo in the second half of the 1980s, it discusses the process of the local garrison's military mobilization and an incidence of mass desertion by Valjevo reservists in September 1991. Based on local archive material, press releases, and interviews with former soldiers, the account focuses on the city's national engagement, the garrison's deployment in combat, and the process of “reimplanting” patriotism after the reservists’ desertion. It reveals that the engagement of Valjevo's troops completed the city's mental process of ethnic segregation. The outbreak of violence in Croatia in 1991 destroyed the Yugoslav People's Army as a pillar of Yugoslav statehood and permanently transformed the identities of Valjevo's soldiers.

Keywords:

• Yugoslav People's Army
• Yugoslav wars
• Serbia
• nationalism
• desertion

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Jan C. Behrends and Stephanie Karmann for valuable comments made on drafts of this article.

Notes

1. On the different aspects of Milošević's regime, (see Silber and Little 1997, 37–47 and 58–81; Gordy 1999; Gagnon 2004; Pavlović, Jović, and Petrović 2008; Vladisavljević 2008; Caspersen 2010).

2. Especially the breakup of Soviet-Yugoslav relations (1948), the dismissal of the chief of Yugoslavia's Secret Service Aleksandar Ranković (1966), and the purge within the Croatian League of Communists (Savez komunista Hrvatske) after the ‘Croatian spring’ (1971) contributed to this development; see on this aspect (Stanković 25 May 1980; Bieber 2008, 302–303) on the role and function of the JNA in general, (Johnson 1978; Niebuhr 2004; 2006, 489–504; Marijan 2008, 30–34).

3. On the Mladina-affair, (see Silber and Little 1997, 50–55; Jović 2009, 327–331; Ramet 2011, 424–429).

4. The military high command used the distinction between “unitarist” and “separatist” nationalism – Serbia representing the first and Slovenia and Croatia the second – to describe its own position as equidistant to both extremes (see Hadžić referring to interviews of Kadijević in the army magazine Vojno delo of 1989).

5. On the case of Dragiša Pavlović, see (Jović 2009, 265–272; Ramet 2011, 459–467).

6. All translations from archive documents, newspapers, and interview transcripts are mine.

7. Namely Milan Babić, Jovan Rašković, Milan Martić, and the infamous military leader “Captain Dragan” (see Silber and Little 1997, 92–104, 134–146).

8. For the interpretation that the demonstration took place “because of Milošević's use of the secret police with the aim of setting up Krušik's union,” (see Mihajlović 2005, 152).

9. Dušan Mihajlović's memoirs (2005) contain many pictures in which Valjevo's officials spend free time together – irrespective of political affiliation (139, 146, 163, and 166).

10. On the institutional advantages Milošević was able to use in the election of 1990, (see Thomas 1999, 76–78).

11. For the following data concerning the response to the call-ups, cf. (Dimitrijević 2011, 90–92).

12. The published data about the exact number of deserted reservists range between several hundred and 2,800. Comparing this information with interviews I have conducted with former soldiers from this brigade, I assume a number of more than a thousand (for the different published numbers, see Napred, 4 October 1991, 8; Borba, October 1, 1991, 11; Jelić 1998, 215).

13. The Serbian expression has a more literal reference to “mire”: Valjevski borci u trenucima predaha: Sprati ljag sa imena Valjeva.