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ABSTRACT
Whilst scholars have examined the long-term political, social, and cultural dynamics with regards to Yugoslavia’s collapse, the military has largely escaped similar scrutiny. This paper explores the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’s attempt to solve the nationalist problems of Yugoslavia through the ideology of self-management, and how the failure to do so affected the strategy of Total National Defence. The republics were able to construct their own armed forces due to Total National Defence’s devolution of powers and self-management making changes to the policy extremely difficult for the federal government and Yugoslav People’s Army.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Vidoje Zarkovic, ‘The LCY in the Struggle for Socialist Self-Management’, Socialist Thought and Practice 25, no. 1 (1985): 12.
2 Lazar Kolisevski, cited in Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise (London: Routledge, 1999), 23–4.
3 Robert W. Dean, ‘Civil-Military Relations in Yugoslavia, 1971–1975’, Armed Forces and Society 3, no. 1 (1976), 24
4 See: Miroslav Hadzic, Yugoslav People’s Agony: The Role of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2002). Passim; Paul S. Shoup Steven L. Burg, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (New York: Routledge, 1999). Passim.
5 For representative articles in this vein see: Marko Attila Hoare, How Bosnia Armed (London: Saqi Books, 2004). Passim; James Horncastle, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind: Total National Defense's Role in Slovenia's Bid for Secession’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 26, no. 3 (2013). Passim. James Horncastle, ‘Croatia's bitter harvest: Total National Defence's role in the Croatian War of Independence’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 26, no. 5 (2015). Passim; Davor Marijan, Slom Titove armije (Zagreb: Hrvatski istitut za povijest, 2008). Passim; Branka Magas and Ivo Zanic, ed., The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991–1995 (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001). Passim.
6 For representative articles in this vein see: Iva Vukusic, ‘Plausible Deniability: The Challenges in Prosecuting Paramilitary Violence in the Former Yugoslavia’, in Perpetrators of International Crimes - Methodology, Theory and Evidence, ed. Maartje Weerdesteijn Alette Smeulers, and Barbora Holá (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019). Passim; James Horncastle, ‘Unfamiliar Connections: Special Forces and Paramilitaries in the Former Yugoslavia’, Special Operations Journal 2, no. 1 (2016). Passim; James Ron, ‘Territoriality and Plausible Deniability: Serbian Paramilitaries in the Bosnian War’, in Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, ed. Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Passim; Catherine Baker, The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Passim.
7 This subject was approached in a brief manner from a force based organisational perspective in: James Horncastle, ‘A House of Cards: The Yugoslav Concept of Total National Defence and its Critical Weakness’, Macedonian Historical Review 2, no. 1 (2012): 298–9.
8 One notable work that takes a long-durée perspective with regards to paramilitary violence is: Stevan Bozanich, ‘Masculinity and Mobilised Folklore: The Image of the Hajduk in the Creation of the Modern Serbian Warrior’ (Master of Arts University of Victoria, 2017). Passim.
9 From a Letter to the First Conference of the Third Session of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in the Yugoslav People’s Army. Cited in: Josip Broz Tito, ‘President Tito on Total National Defence’, Yugoslav Survey 18, no. 4 (1977): 16.
10 For the disparity in the size of the armies Yugoslavia would face in the result of a generalised conflict see: The Military Balance, 1969–1970, Institute for Strategic Studies (London, 1969). Passim for a comparative look at the size of the different country and bloc’s armies at that time.
11 The Yugoslav belief that they were promoting international peace through co-existence is seen with the extent that, even in 1969, Yugoslavia emphasised it and Non-Alignment in the Yugoslav Survey. For example, see ‘Resolution of The League of Communists of Yugoslavia in its Struggle for International Cooperation in Equality and for Peace and Socialism’, Yugoslav Survey 10, no. 2 (1969): 59–64.
12 Lt.-Col.-Gen. Milojica Pantelic, ‘The Role of the Armed Forces in the System of National Defence’, Yugoslav Survey 10, no. 4 (1968): 29–38.
13 Pravda, September 25, 1968; translated by Novosti, Soviet press agency. Reprinted in L. S. Stavrianos, The Epic of Man (Eaglewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971), 465–6.
14 ‘Pravda accuses Yugoslavia of joining NATO countries in supporting the ‘anti-socialist forces’ in Czechoslovakia, 25 August 1968: excerpt’ in Stephen Clissold, ed., Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939–1973 : A Documentary Survey (London: Oxford UP, 1975). 297.
15 Worker’s self-management, in fact, was done for ideological reasons to contrast Yugoslavia’s socialism with the Soviet Marxist-Leninist approach. As such, the first law on Self-Management was adopted in 1950, despite the claims of Edvard Kardelj that it was an evolutionary process. See: Edvard Kardelj, ‘Contradictions of Social Property in Contemporary Socialist Practice’, Socialist Thought and Practice 12, no. 4 (1972): 35–9.
16 ‘Tito defends the Yugoslav concepts of self-management and socialist democracy and attacks the doctrine of limited sovereignty, 20 October 1968 excerpts’ in Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939–1973 : A Documentary Survey, 298.
17 ‘Communique of the Moscow conference of CPS is conciliatory towards the LCY, July 1969: excerpt’ in Clissold, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939–1973 : A Documentary Survey, 300.
18 Robert W. Dean, ‘The Yugoslav Army’, in Communist Armies in Politics, ed. Jonathan R. Adelman (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 87–8.
19 For an examination of Hybrid Warfare see: Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Warfare (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007). Passim.
20 Adam Roberts, Nation in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Total National Defence (London: Chatto and Windus for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1976), 187–8.
21 Unidentified Author cited in A. Ross Johnson, Total National Defense in Yugoslavia, Rand Corporation (Santa Monica, CA, 1971), 4.
22 Roberts, Nation in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Total National Defence, 173.
23 Marko Milivojevic, ‘The Political Role of the Yugoslav People’s Army in Contemporary Yugoslavia’, in Yugoslavia’s Security Dilemmas: Armed Forces, National Defence and Foreign Policy, ed. John B. Allcock & Pierre Maurer Marko Milivojevic (New York: Berg, 1988), 36.
24 Col.-Gen Milan Jovanovic, ‘Compulsory Military Service’, Yugoslav Survey 21, no. 3 (1980): 48.
25 For a full breakdown of Total National Defence, and its constituent elements, see: Horncastle, ‘A House of Cards: The Yugoslav Concept of Total National Defence and its Critical Weakness’, 285–302.
26 Petar Dragišić, ‘Operation Phoenix in Yugoslavia in the Summer of 1972 and Yugoslav-Austrian Relations’, Tokovi istorije 3 (2018): 87–106.
27 Tito, ‘President Tito on Total National Defence.’ 54. Furthermore, Branko Mamula, the Secretary of Defense for much of the 1980s, noted that ‘it is only partially possible to influence these soldiers during their service in the army.’ See: Interview with Mamula in Narodna Armija, 14 April 1983’, (Foreign Broadcasting Information Service – Eastern Europe, 6 May 1983).
28 John B. Allcock, ‘Yugoslavia’s Defence Preparedness in the Context of Yugoslav Society’, in Yugoslavia’s Security Dilemmas: Armed Forces, National Defence and Foreign Policy, ed. John B. Allcock & Pierre Maurer Marko Milivojevic (New York: Berg, 1988), 298–302.
29 Hadzic, Yugoslav People’s Agony: The Role of the Yugoslav People’s Army, 18.
30 Ibid.
31 Many of the explanations in this article for socialist concepts are admittedly from one man – Edvard Kardelj. This is because, as Dusan Ckrebic explained ‘Edvard Kardelj's thought and work provide a lasting basis for present and future research in the sense of development of the theory and practice of socialist self-management, especially in a multinational state community such as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).’ See Dusan Ckrebic, ‘Self-management Based Integration and the Yugoslav Reality’, Socialist Thought and Practice 27, no. 1–2 (1987): 4.
32 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Edvard Kardelj's Interview with “La Nacion”’, Socialist Thought and Practice 12, no. 4 (1972): 65.
33 For an explanation of how this ideology came into existence, albeit through the idealised lens of Edvard Kardelj, see Edvard Kardelj, Reminiscences: The Struggle for Recognition and Independence: The New Yugoslavia, 1944–57 (London: Blond & Briggs Limited, 1980 (1982).
34 In fact, there was considerable variance in the implementation of Self-Management and what it meant, particularly in its early years. See: Vladimir Unkovski- Korica, ‘Yugoslavia’s Third Way: The Rise and Fall of Self- Management’, in The Routledge handbook of Balkan and Southeast European history, ed. John R. Lampe and Ulf Brunnbauer (New York: Routledge, 2021), 466–8.
35 While, in the political and economic sense Yugoslavia did not effectively implement the reforms until much later, Yugoslav citizens did have significant cultural and mobility freedoms in the 1950s, at least in comparison to the rest of the Eastern Communist States. See: Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 384–405.
36 For an explanation of how Yugoslavia maintained etatist principles throughout the 1950s see: James H Gapinski, The Economic Structure and Failure of Yugoslavia (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1993), 1–4.
37 The temporary triumph of the reformist forces was signalled by the expulsion of Aleksander Rankovic from the party, formerly one of Tito’s top lieutenants, in 1966. See: Joze Pirjevec, Tito and his Comrades (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), 263–392.
38 ‘Conclusions of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’, Socialist Thought and Practice 6, no. 1 (1966): 131.
39 Ibid 134.
40 This was a problem that self-management would also fail to correct, even twenty years after its implementation. See: Avdul Kurpejovic, ‘The Development of the Economically Less Developed Republics and Provinces in Yugoslavia’, Socialist Thought and Practice 25, no. 4 (1985).
41 As Rusinow notes, some elements within Yugoslavia even sought to say that nationalities and class were equivalent, much to the discontentment of the Yugoslav authorites. See Dennison I. Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 245–307.
42 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Towards Higher Forms of Integration’, Socialist Thought and Practice 1967, no. 2 (1967): 38
43 An important note is that Yugoslavia was deliberately ambiguous if this would apply to other states, such as the USSR. See Kardelj, ‘Towards Higher Forms of Integration’, 38–9.
44 Other authors in the Yugoslav Survey and Socialist Thought and Practice both took their lead from Kardelj and, from the records available, never contradicted this position.
45 Examination of the 1971 Constitutional Reforms reveals that they formed the basis for many of the 1974 Constitution principles. For an outline of the 1971 reforms see: Djordje Miljevic et al., ‘The Latest Changes (1971) in the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’, Yugoslav Survey 12, no. 4 (1971).
46 Although most prominent in Croatia, nearly all Yugoslav republics and autonomous provinces at this time were dealing with forces that exploited nationalism for their own end. See: Sabrina P. Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006).
47 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Principle Causes of Constitutional Changes’, Socialist Thought and Practice 13, no. 3 (1973): 3.
48 Dr. Ante Fiamengo, ‘From Statism to Self-Management’, Socialist Thought and Practice 7, no. 1 (1967): 53–7.
49 Kardelj, ‘Towards Higher Forms of Integration’, 30–3.
50 The LCY’s dedication to the principles of self-management was exemplified in the fact that the 1974 Constitution was the longest constitution in the world at the time it was written. In total, the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 406 articles in length. See: The Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, (Ljubljana: Dopisna Delavska Univerza, 1974).
51 Josip Broz Tito, ‘We Must Have a Vanguard and United Party’, Socialist Thought and Practice 12, no. 3 (1972): 16.
52 Article 281 of The Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Short.
53 For example, while the 1974 Constitution made the federation dominant in foreign affairs, the republics, appendix A demonstrates, had considerable influence. Appendix A was taken from: Ivo Viskovic, ‘Foreign Policy Making and Implementation in Yugoslavia’, Socialist Thought and Practice 26, no. 3 (1985).
54 The strength of this rhetoric is seen in that it survived Tito’s death. At the Thirteenth Congress of the LCY it was reiterated that bratstvo i jedinstvo (brotherhood and unity) was what the majority of Yugoslav’s believed in, and those that did not were merely self-interested actors. See ‘The Tasks of the LCY in Developing Self-Management-Based Socio-Economic Relations and the Political System of Socialist Self-Management Democracy’, Socialist Thought and Practice 26, no. 6–7 (1986): 54–5.
55 Korica, ‘Yugoslavia’s Third Way: The Rise and Fall of Self- Management’, 467–9.
56 Najdan Pasic, ‘Integration based on Self-Management and the Political System’, Socialist Thought and Practice 10, no. 2 (1970).
57 Tea Sindbaek, Usable History?: Representations of Yugoslavia's Difficult Past – From 1945–2002 (Aarhus: Aarhus Univ Press, 2013). Passim.
58 Veljko Vlahovic, ‘The Development and Current Tasks of the LCY’, Socialist Thought and Practice 12, no. 1 (1972): 21.
59 Tito in Zdravko Vukovic, ‘President Tito's Interview to Belgrade Radio Television’, Socialist Thought and Practice 12, no. 2 (1972): 19.
60 Ibid 23.
61 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Current Problems of our Political System’, Socialist Thought and Practice 10, no. 4 (1970): 5.
62 Vukovic, ‘President Tito's Interview to Belgrade Radio Television’, 19.
63 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Address by Edvard Kardelj at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Communist Youth League of Yugoslavia’, Socialist Thought and Practice 9, no. 4 (1969): 105.
64 Kardelj, ‘Current Problems of our Political System’, 21
65 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Report on the Amendments to the Constitutions, Submitted to the Meeting of the Presidency of the LCY’, Socialist Thought and Practice 11, no. 1 (1971): 17.
66 Edvard Kardelj, ‘Economic Reform – New Stage in Self-Management’, Socialist Thought and Practice 7, no. 1 (1967): 30.
67 An example of this problem never being addressed is in the Yugoslav Survey’s explanation of Trade Unions role in self-management, where all that was stated in regard to regulating self-management was that it was ‘always evolving.’ See Zvonko Simic and Milos Marinovic, ‘The Confederation of Trade Unions of Yugoslavia’, Yugoslav Survey 11, no. 3 (1970): 41.
68 Vlaskalić, cited in: Dejan Jović, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away (West LaFayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2009), 188–89.
69 For a full elaboration of this point see: Mihajlo Basara, ‘Titov kult u Jugoslovenskoj narodnoj armiji’, in Tito - Viđenja i tumačenja, ed. Mile Bjelajac Olga Manojlović Pintar, Radmila Radić (Beograd: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2011), 779–96.
70 Jović, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away, 184.
71 Anton A Bebler, ‘The Yugoslav People’s Army and the Fragmentation of a Nation’, Military Review 73, no. 8 (1993), 46.
72 ‘Interview with Mamula in Narodna Armija, 14 April 1983’, (Foreign Broadcasting Information Service – Eastern Europe, 6 May 1983).
73 James Gow, ‘Legitimacy and the Military: Yugoslav Civil-Military Relations and Some Implications for Defence’, in Yugoslavia’s Security Dilemmas: Armed Forces, National Defence and Foreign Policy, ed. John B. Allcock & Pierre Maurer Marko Milivojevic (New York: Berg, 1988), 82.
74 Branko Mamula, Slucaj Jugolsavija (Podgorica: CID, 2000), 61.
75 Veljko Kadijevic, Moje Vidjenje Raspada: vojska bez drzjave (Beograd: Politika, 1993), 7.
76 Ivan Stefanovich, ‘Yugoslav Leaders Try to Defuse Crisis; Army on Alert’, The Associated Press, 7 May 1991.
77 Horncastle, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind: Total National Defense's Role in Slovenia's Bid for Secession’, 528–50; Horncastle, ‘Croatia's bitter harvest: Total National Defence's role in the Croatian War of Independence’, 744–63.
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James Horncastle
James Horncastle is an assistant professor and holder of the Edward and Emily McWhinney Professorship in International Relations at Simon Fraser University. His recent manuscript, The Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, 1944–1949, examines how the Macedonian Slavs participation in the conflict, and the attempts by other groups to manipulate them, gave rise to modern issues that continue to affect politics in the region today. His research interests include: refugee and migration studies; international relations; conflict studies; history of modern Greece; and Yugoslav studies.