Not-So-Secret Secret Police: Yugoslavia’s Intelligence Apparatus

Abstract

Intelligence agencies in former Yugoslavia served as the regime’s political police, which carried out domestic security roles in an internally divided country that was caught at the crossroads of a geopolitical cleavage between great powers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks and gives credit to Ms. Natasha Hunsberger, Dr. Irena Chiru, and Mr. Claudiu Crivat for their support of the research associated with the writing of this article; and Dr. Jeff Rogg for reviewing an earlier draft. The author’s deepest gratitude goes to her colleague, Dr. Alexandar Matovski, for his guidance, assistance, and insights throughout the writing of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Herrick notes, “In efforts to avoid repeating the policies of the pre–Second World War government which exacerbated the ethnic differences, the communist regime established a federation which provided considerable autonomy to the ethnic groups while supporting a movement toward a strong central government and dissolution of ethnic, religious, and cultural differences.” R. C. Herrick, 1980, “The Yugoslav People’s Army: Its Military and Political Mission” (M.A. thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 1980), http://hdl.handle.net/10945/19109. In 1945, emboldened by their military victory during WWII, the Partisans established “the so-called second Yugoslavia.” The Soviet troops assisted Yugoslavia’s liberation endeavors but did not occupy Yugoslavia after the war. F. Ejdus, “Serbia’s Civil-Military Relations,” University of Belgrade, Department of Political Science, 30 July 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1901

2 Tito was the leader of the ruling communist party as well as the commander in chief of the overall Yugoslav armed forces. Florina Cristiana Matei, “Civilian Influence in Defense: Slovenia,” in Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military Relations, edited by T. C. Bruneau and Florina Cristiana Matei (New York: Routledge, 2012).

3 Ibid.

4 J. Baev, “US Intelligence Community Estimates on Yugoslavia (1948–1991),” National Security and the Future, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2000), pp. 95–106; J. J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

5 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation.

6 V. P. (Chip) Gagnon, Jr., “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2010), pp. 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905990903389961

7 Another term used for the “enemies of the state” was “the internal enemy.” According to Nielsen, “this term encompassed categories that were expansively and often arbitrarily defined and could include, inter alia, former members of noncommunist political parties, religious believers, Cominformists, spies, economic “saboteurs,” and anyone else deemed to be “reactionary” or engaged in “anti-state” activities.” C. A. Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship: The Record of Tito’s Yugoslavia, 1945–1953,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2021), pp. 124–152. https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01041

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 The military comprised a federal component, the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), also known as the Yugoslav People’s Army, and various militia units, functioning within the six Yugoslav republics, and known as the Territorial Defense. The military was under the party and Tito’s direct control, but after Tito’s death in 1980, military autonomy increased. Matei, “Civilian Influence in Defense”; Ejdus, “Serbia’s Civil-Military Relations.”

11 As such, in Sell’s view “Poverty, hunger, and disease stalked the land.” L. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2002). Kindle edition, p. 12.

12 In this connection, Gagnon highlights: “From an overwhelmingly peasant, illiterate, and underdeveloped country, Yugoslavia by the early 1960s had become an industrialized and modern society.” He further notes, “The fact that Yugoslav communists allowed peasants to continue farming their own land rather than collectivizing did of course mean that Yugoslavia maintained a significant rural population. But by the 1960s the heroes of the revolution and those who had run the party and the country since the end of World War II—most of whom were from rural backgrounds, often with little formal education—were facing a rising new middle class, a more educated, technocratic, and urban population with rising expectations in terms of standards of living as well as control over working conditions.” Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.” Yugoslavia in the 1950s experienced some of the highest growth rates in the world. These efforts boosted the Tito regime’s popularity across the country. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. It should be noted, however, that Yugoslavia still followed the Soviet-style planned economy and nationalization of large economic enterprises; yet it did not capitalize on the support.

13 Tito’s personalistic rule shaped the country and the intelligence apparatus. Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2003).

14 Lees argues that, between 1945 and 1947, Yugoslavia was the Soviet Union’s “most loyal satellite.” L. M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War, 1945–1960 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010), pp. 1–41; J. Mihaljević and G. Miljan, “‘Humanist’ Marxism and the Communist Regime with ‘Sparkles’ of Totalitarianism: The Yugoslav Communist Totalitarian Experiment (Response to Flere and Klanjšek),” Istorija 20.veka, Vol. 2 (2021), pp. 479–500, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=980296

15 Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship.” In this context, the Partisans killed some 30,000 former enemies: Ustashi, Croatian Homeguard soldiers, Slovenian opponents, and Moslem people. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 12.

16 D. McClellan and N. Knez, “Post-World War II Forced Repatriations to Yugoslavia: Genocide’s Legacy for Democratic Nation Building,” International Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. VII, No. 2 (2018).

17 Sell argues that “[t]he Yugoslavs were prickly proud of their own independent path to power and quickly grew to resent the overbearing approach the Soviets took toward them.” Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 14.

18 SFRY never rejoined Cominform. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 14; B. B. Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966,” The History of 20 Century Journal of the Institute of Contemporary History, Issue 2 (2019), pp. 9–28; Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship; I. Banac, With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).

19 The West feared an armed conflict between Yugoslavia and the USSR. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat; Baev, “US Intelligence Community Estimates on Yugoslavia (1948–1991),” pp. 95–106.

20 Banac, With Stalin against Tito.

21 The United States even discussed the possibility for Yugoslavia to join NATO—an idea that some countries in Europe did not embrace. In this context, JNA strengthened its readiness for a potential Soviet invasion—to which end it received significant resources and autonomy from the federal government. JNA had also an internal security role, as stipulated in all Constitutions (1953, 1963, and 1974). Taken together, these developments paved the way for JNA’s involvement in politics. In this connection, Ejdus reveals that “JNA provided an unconditional support to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ), its interpretation of Marxism…” Ejdus, “Serbia’s Civil-Military Relations.” The military collaboration with Yugoslavia continued to be on the U.S. agenda even after the death of Stalin, when USSR–Yugoslavia relationships improved; especially after a meeting that took place between Tito and Khrushchev in Belgrade in the spring of 1955. It should be noted, however, that Yugoslavia continued its (U.S.-led) anticapitalism propaganda, despite these relationships. Baev, “US Intelligence Community Estimates on Yugoslavia (1948–1991),” pp. 95–106; Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 15; Banac, With Stalin against Tito, pp. 136–257; Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat, pp. 40–79 and 81–118.

22 Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 12. It should be noted that political imprisonment decreased after the mid-1960s, but did not disappear until the end of SFRY. Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship.”

23 Herrick explains that the party’s attempts to “balance regional-ethnic autonomy with centralized nationbuilding … coopted the army into the political decisionmaking process.” Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army.”

24 Input from Dr. Alexandar Matovski, March 2022.

25 The communist party continued, however, to exercise its grip over these entities. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 19.

26 Ibid., p. 36.

27 With the reconstruction done, and emboldened by his successful standing against Stalin on the one hand, and public support on the other, Tito was opened to new ideas. Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

28 Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army”; Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After”; B. Robionek, “State Security out of Control? The Influence of Yugoslavia’s Political Leadership on Targeted Killings abroad (1967–84),” OEZB Working Paper (Berlin: Osteuropa Zentrum Berlin e.V., 2020), https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-66766-6

29 Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

30 SFRY reduced its party’s politburo. Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army”; Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, pp. 21–22.

31 Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army.”

32 Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 22; B. Milinkovic, “The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Suppression of Dissent to Protect ‘the National Interest,’” in Secrecy and Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, edited by S. Colliver, P. Hoffman, J. Fitzpatrick, and S. Bowen (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999); D. Jovic, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away (Purdue University Press, 2009).

33 Via five-year plans, the federal government constantly intervened in the market, by, for example, subsidizing unprofitable companies, and investing based on social and political versus economic criteria. Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army.”

34 Sell explains, “Prices for Yugoslav goods were adjusted to reflect world prices—although not freed completely. Enterprises were given more latitude in business decisions and allowed to keep more of their hard currency earnings.” Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 20. The unified market, and other basic centralization approaches, continued, though. Republics could not stop the free flow of capital, goods, and labor among themselves, while common laws on foreign trade, customs, and duties, as well as a common currency, continued. Herrick, “The Yugoslav People’s Army.”

35 Yugoslavia’s Gross Domestic Product rose, while tourism and foreign trade grew. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, pp. 21–22.

36 Ibid., p. 37.

37 Also, in the 1960s, reformists started to involve rank-and-file party members in decisionmaking processes, in order to diminish the power of the party bureaucracy. Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After”; and V. P. Gagnon, Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Cornell University Press, 2006).

38 Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War; Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.” The fall of Ranković in particular, which will be addressed in detail later in this article, marked the success of reformers. Baev, “US Intelligence Community Estimates on Yugoslavia (1948-1991),” pp. 95–106; Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, pp. 20–22.

39 Gagnon highlights that the conservatives insisted, “The loosening of state and party vigilance and control … had allowed the rise of nationalism and the open activity of nationalist and fascist forces which were undermining the socialist system…” Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

40 Gagnon indicates that the grand finale of the conservatives’ plot against the reformists occurred between 1971 and 1972, when conservatives persuaded Tito to eliminate reformists from the leadership of the Croatian party and the Serbian party, and to stop economic liberalization. Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

41 Paradoxically, Tito’s decentralist approach deepened the interrepublic divide and ultimately heightened ethnic differences, as the majority national group in each republic started to view opposing national groups in other republics as the enemy. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 24.

42 Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War; Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After”

43 Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War; Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After”; Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, pp. 22–28.

44 Ibid., pp. 23–28.

45 Ibid., pp. 23–28.

46 In June 1972, nineteen armed anti-Yugoslav Croats entered Yugoslavia from Austria seeking to instigate pro-reform riots in Croatia, where reforms stopped earlier that year. According to Sell, “The intruders reached central Bosnia, killing 13 members of Yugoslav forces before being stopped. Most of the combat took place in the Raduša region, giving the counterinsurgency operation its name.” Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 23; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”; Ejdus, “Serbia’s Civil-Military Relations.” These events fueled interethnic antagonism and challenged the Yugoslav sense of unity and solidarity.

47 Yugoslavia in the mid-1970s had enough social, political, and economic liberalization to allow it to transition to democracy. What it lacked was (Tito’s) political will to establish political pluralism—which would have enabled it to democratize. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 23.

48 All federal institutions—except for the armed forces—lost most of their authority. Main decisions required the consensus of all six republics and two autonomous provinces. Tito was still the president, but after his death, Yugoslavia was run by an eight-member collective presidency. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 23.

49 As a result, political and economic progress halted. In addition, International Monetary Fund sanctions and pressure challenged the country’s economy. These developments led to a renewed debate about the future of SFRY. Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After”; Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War; Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 24.

50 In this context, Gagnon explains, “In the face of growing reformist successes by the mid-1980s, embattled conservatives resorted to a strategy of conflict, first with the goal of recentralizing the Yugoslav party and state, and then, from 1990 onward, destroying that state in order to maintain their control over and access to resources, which was threatened by the proposed reforms.” Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

51 Ibid.

52 Conservatives, worried about the reformers’ progress/success, started to use violence as a way to thwart these transformations, which ultimately led to the conflicts in the 1990s. They framed these conflicts in terms of “ethnic hatreds,” but the root causes were protracted political struggles between elite factions over economic and political liberalization.. Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.”

53 The majority of recentralizers were the security services.

54 Gagnon further stresses, “The growing violent clashes that occurred over the last half of 1990, and that broke out into open warfare in 1991, were purposeful, strategic policies on the part of conservative elites to demobilize the wider population and to ensure their own continued control over structures of power that were changing.” Gagnon, “Yugoslavia in 1989 and After.” Also see Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War. Nationalism started to accentuate in the early 1980s, when the legitimacy of the SKJ waned, and the communist parties of the various republics started to describe themselves as custodians of the national interest, and accused other republics for the problems befalling SFRY.

55 It should be noted that the predecessor of Yugoslavia’s intelligence apparatus was the Department for Secret Police Work, created in October 1899 by law on amendments of the Central State Administration. Housed by the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the agency was charged with ensuring “the preservation of the internal state order and worldly security in general,” as Boda explains. J. Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” National Security Review—Special Issue 5 (2017).

56 Drvar was the command center of the Partisan Main Stuff. Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944-1966.”

57 Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”; Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966”; B. B. Dimitrijević, “ALEKSANDAR RANKOVIĆ: OSNIVAČ OZNE—SLUŽBE BEZBEDNOSTI PARTIZANSKOG POKRETA,” HERETICUS—Časopis za preispitivanje prošlosti, Vol. 1–2 (2020), pp. 53–75, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=978528

58 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 S. Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism,’” Serbian Society in the Yugoslav State in the 20th Century: Between Democracy and Dictatorship, No. 177016 (2017), pp. 111–144; Dimitrijević, “ALEKSANDAR RANKOVIĆ.”

64 Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” A constitution was also enacted in 1946.

65 He also held additional high-level positions since the late 1950s.

66 Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism’”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

67 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

68 J. Hadalin, “The Civil Repressive Apparatus of the Second Yugoslavia and Its Perception among the Slovenian Public,” https://www.sistory.si/cdn/publikacije/36001-37000/36298/ch14.html

69 Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”

70 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

71 Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”

72 Also known as informants.

73 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

74 As Nielsen notes, “The UDBA had to use the prisoners to recruit informants while simultaneously preventing hostile activity among the prisoners.” Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship.”

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

78 Ibid.

79 The army officer corps in particular was difficult to control and to know where the personnel loyalties laid, as the majority was trained in the USSR. Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

80 Regrettably, the government and UDBA did not imprison only those who were clear supporters of Cominform or the USSR. Scholars indicate that many of the Goli Otok political prisoners were not necessarily supporters of Cominform, while others were totally apolitical people, who did not have even the vaguest idea what Cominform actually was. Scholars attribute these developments to laziness—versus some agenda to imprison all people who were inconvenient to the regime—yet irrespective of the reason, the fact that UDBA did not take any action to acknowledge and/or rehabilitate the individuals who were wrongly convicted or condemned is still an indicator of human rights violations. The only get-out-of-jail card was becoming an UDBA informant. It should be noted that, while the authorities tortured and subjected thousands of prisoners accused of being pro-Stalin to forced labor for years, and treated non-ibeovci prisoners better than the ibeovci, the government did not employ the targeted killings modus operandi of the mid-1940s. Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship; Banac, With Stalin against Tito, pp. 136–257; J. Mihaljević, “‘Comrade Tito, Help!’ Letters of Prisoners and in Favor of Prisoners Addressed to Authorities of Communist Yugoslavia as a Historical Source,” Hrvatski institut za povij est.

81 One of these targets was Ante Pavelić, former dictator of the Axis-allied wartime regime in Croatia, who established the Croatian Liberation Movement (HOP), “a more or less implicit reference to the People’s Liberation Movement (NOP), as the Communist-led anti-Fascist resistance during the Second World War was called”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?” HOP recruited new members from the Yugoslav refugees to Austria or West Germany who targeted SFRY leadership and institutions in Western Europe.

82 Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

83 Ibid.; Banac, With Stalin against Tito, pp. 136–257. In this context, Nielsen explains, “Although the mortality rate at the Goli Otok camp in the first years after 1948 was frighteningly high, and although the deaths of at least some of those confined there were undoubtedly deemed acceptable by the regime, the Yugoslav security services never again after 1945 resorted to large-scale, systematic killings of political opponents.” Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship.”

84 Nielsen, “Imprisoning ‘Enemies of the State’ in a Communist Dictatorship.”

85 Ibid.

86 NATO countries helped UDBA procure wiretapping equipment. Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966.”

87 Wiretapping occurred with Tito’s approval. Ibid.

88 Ibid.

89 It had operatives inside Yugoslav embassies throughout the world. It also had an analytical branch, which provided leadership with reports, analyses and estimates. Ibid.

90 Reformists view UDBA personnel and leadership as obstacles to liberalization reforms.

91 Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

92 Research reveals that the wiretapping affair might have been a setup by Tito and some Croat UDBA branch leaders—who were in favor of reform. Some scholars indicate that the SB was actually involved in the setup. Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism’”; Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966”; Banac, With Stalin against Tito.

93 However, all wiretapping devices were set legally, with Tito’s approval, as part of UDBA’s formal mission, as previously explained. As Cvetković indicates, “All the republic services participated in this action including DSNO [State Secretariat of National Defense], SSUP [Federal Secretariat for Internal Affairs], and SSIP [Federal Secretariat for Foreign Affairs], which were personally praised by Tito and there was extensive technical and other documentation on it.” Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

94 Scholars indicate that the new SB leadership, seeking Tito’s trust, were also involved both in setting up Ranković and planting evidence for his guilt. Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism’”; Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966”; Ejdus, “Serbia’s Civil-Military Relations.”

95 “Ranković retired from public life but continued to be loyal to Tito and the Party until his death in August 1983.” Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

96 UDBA underwent a process of decentralization, which emulated the decentralization policies at the political level; a downsizing of its federal level personnel; and a purging of leaders who were loyal to Ranković (who were either fired or forced into early retirement). Massive investigations into the wiretapping affair resulted in arrests and torture of UDBA personnel to extract confessions. Additional changes included downsizing of the archives (or, rather, getting rid of some archives by burning) under a façade of “de-bureaucratization.” Input provided by Dr. Alexandar Matovski, June 2021. Additionally, UDBA was stripped of its executive functions; its main role was combating hostile activities. To avoid a concentration of power in Belgrade, the reformists strengthened the autonomy of the republic-based agencies versus the federal. UDBA looked more like a constellation of different services than a single agency. In this context, UDBA’s interference in the Yugoslavs’ lives started to wane. SID also underwent some personnel reduction. Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”; Dimitrijević, “Intelligence and Security Services in Tito’s Yugoslavia 1944–1966”; Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

97 The military services’ helpfulness in the Ranković affairs boosted SB’s autonomy from UDBA. Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, p. 20.

98 It operated both internally and abroad. Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

99 Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

100 SDB in Slovenia and Bosnia, for instance, had high autonomy. The SDB was housed by the Ministry of Interior but reported directly to the secretary-general of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party, while each SDB republic branch reported to the Central Committee in the respective republic. H. Lurås, “Democratic Oversight in Fragile States: The Case of Intelligence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2014), pp. 600–618. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2014.915179

101 Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

102 Lurås, “Democratic Oversight in Fragile States.”

103 Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

104 Some of the targets included, for example, Dragisa Kasikovic, the editor of the Serbian-American journal Sloboda-Liberty; his successor, Marijan Šimundić, who was one of the organizers of a failed attack of Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB) combatants in Yugoslavia in 1963; and Nikica Martinović, a Croatian right-wing nationalist. Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

105 These criminals carried false personal documentation courtesy of SDB and rented SDB-owned houses. Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”

106 These assassinations prompted the party leaders (Dolanc in particular) to emphasize the need to keep the intelligence services under control. Despite these objections, assassination attempts—some successful—continued. Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

107 R. W. Dean, “Civil-Military Relations in Yugoslavia, 1971–1975,” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1976), pp. 17–58, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45345995

108 Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”; Yugoslavia Internal Security Forces, December 1990, http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-14956.html

109 U. Komlenovic, “State and Mafia in Yugoslavia,” East European Constitutional Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1997), pp. 70–73; Stojanovic, “Arkan’s ‘Tigers’ Unpunished 20 Years after Leader’s Death”; M. Vivod, “Criminals and Warriors: The Use of Criminals for the Purpose of War—The Serbian Paramilitary Units,” in Crime: Causes, Types and Victims, edited by A. E. Hasselm (Nova Science Publishers, 2009), pp. 1–28; S. Tanner and M. Mulone, “Private Security and Armed Conflict: A Case Study of the Scorpions during the Mass Killings in Former Yugoslavia,” British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 53, No. 1 (2013), pp. 41–58.

110 Komlenovic, “State and Mafia in Yugoslavia”; Stojanovic, “Arkan’s ‘Tigers’ Unpunished 20 Years after Leader’s Death”; Vivod, “Criminals and Warriors”; Tanner and Mulone, “Private Security and Armed Conflict”; Cvetković, “Fall of Aleksandar Ranković and Condemnation of ‘Rankovićism.’”

111 Input by Dr. Alexandar Matovski, March 2022.

112 Assassinations continued. For details on targeted killings, see Boda, “The Secret Police of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”; Robionek, “State Security out of Control?”

113 For details on intelligence democratization, see F. C. Matei and T. C. Bruneau, “Intelligence Reform in New Democracies: Factors Supporting or Arresting Progress,” Democratization, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2011), pp. 602–630; D. Trifunovic and Z. Dragišić, “The Security Intelligence System of the Republic of Serbia,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 28 February 2022, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2021.2022429

114 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan Alan. (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 333; F. D. Dino, “On Panoptic and Carceral Society,” in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University College of Liberal Arts, Modules on Foucault, 2012); J. Ron, “Boundaries and Violence: Repertoires of State Action Along the Bosnia/Yugoslavia Divide,” Theory and Society, Vol. 29, No. 5 (2000), pp. 609–649, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3108548; M. Wheeler, “White Eagles and White Guards: British Perceptions of Anti-Communist Insurgency in Yugoslavia in 1945,” The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 66, No. 3 (1988), pp. 446–461.

115 McClellan and Knez, “Post-World War II Forced Repatriations to Yugoslavia.”

116 Even today, people in Croatia use a play of words for UDBA. They dub it SUDBA, which means fate or destiny, joking that the fate of UDBA awaits for those who do something wrong. Discussion with NS3155—Intelligence and Democracy—M.A. students, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 8, 10, and 15 August 2022.

117 S. C. Greitens, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics) (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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Florina Cristiana Matei

Florina Cristiana (Cris) Matei is a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where she teaches for Homeland Security and Department of National Security Affairs. She is the coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military Relations; The Conduct of Intelligence in Democracies: Processes, Practices, Cultures; and The Handbook of Latin American and Caribbean Intelligence Cultures. She is the Chair of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association. The author can be contacted at [email protected].