Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU)

Memorandum 1986
[The President of SANU at this time was Dobrica Cosic]

There is deep concern in Yugoslavia because of stagnating social development, economic

difficulties, growing social tensions, and open inter-ethnic clashes. A serious crisis has
engulfed not only the political and economic arenas, but Yugoslavia's entire system of law
and order as well. Idleness and irresponsibility at work, corruption and nepotism, a lack of
confidence in and disregard for the law, bureaucratic obstinacy, growing mistrust among
individuals, and increasingly arrogant individual and group egoism have become daily
phenomena. The resulting blow to moral values and to the reputation of leading public
institutions and a lack of faith in the competence of decision-makers have spread apathy
and bitterness among the public and produced alienation from all the mainstays and
symbols of law and order. An objective examination of Yugoslav reality suggests that the
present crisis may end in social shocks with unforseeable consequences, including such a
catastrophic eventuality as the fragmentation of the Yugoslav state. No one can close his
eyes to what is happening and to what may happen. Certainly, our nation's oldest institute of
scientific and cultural creativity cannot do so.

In these fateful times, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences feels obliged to express
its views on society's condition in the conviction that this will help us find a way out of our
present troubles. The nature of this document, however, obliges us to limit ourselves to the
key issues of Yugoslav reality. Regretfully, these issues include the undefined and difficult
position of the Serbian nation, a position brought to the fore by recent events.

In order to understand the primacy of ethnicity in the present practice of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia it is necessary to consider the influence of the Comintern on the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia between the two world wars. The Comintern's strategy
during that period derived from the conclusion that following the failure of the proletarian
revolution in Western Europe, the Communist parties of Eastern, Central, and Southern
Europe had to depend on national movements, even though they were expressly
anti-socialist and based on the idea of national rather than class unity. Stalin engaged in
crushing all opposition to such a strategy (as, for example, in the case of Sima Markovic,
one of the founders of the Yugoslav Communist Party). In this spirit, the solution to the
national question was formulated and developed theoretically by Sperans (Kardelj) in his
book "Razvoj slovenskoga narodnoga vprsanja" (The Development of the Slovene National
Question), which generally served as the ideological model for Yugoslav development in the
direction of a confederation of sovereign republics and autonomous regions, which was
finally achieved by the Constitution of 1974.

The two most developed republics, which achieved their national programs with this
Constitution, are now the most ardent defenders of the existing system. Thanks to the
political position of their leaders at the centers of political power, they have held (both before
and after the decisive years of the 1960s) the initiative in all matters affecting the political
and economic system. They modelled the social and economic structure of Yugoslavia to
suit their own desires and needs. Nothing would seem more normal that they now defend the
structure that they stubbornly took so long to build, a structure that represents the attainment
of most of their national programs.

No one needs convincing that separatism and nationalism are active on the social scene,
but there is insufficient understanding of the fact that such trends have been made
ideologically possible by the Constitution of 1974. The constant reinforcement of and the
competition engendered by separatism and nationalism have driven the (ethnic) nations
further from one another to a critical degree. The manipulation of language and the
confinement of scientific and cultural professionals within the ranks of the republics and
regions are sorry signs of the growing power of particularism. All new ethnogeneses are
unfortunate products of locally closed, regional ideologies and shackled logic, and they are
also symptomatic of a retreat from a common past, a common present, and a common
future. It is as if everyone wished to flee as fast and as far as possible from a collapsing
house. Mental attitudes warn us that the political crisis has reached the critical point,
threatening the complete destabilization of Yugoslavia. Kosovo is the clearest expression of
this.

No form of political oppression and discrimination on the basis of nationality is properly

acceptable in modern society. The Yugoslav solution to the nationalities question could be
considered at its inception an exemplary model of a multinational federation in which the
principle of the unity of the state and state policy was successfully joined with the principle of
the political and cultural autonomy of nationalities and national minorities. During the past
two decades the principle of unity has become progressively weaker and the principle of
national autonomy is stressed, which has in practice changed into a sovereignty of the parts
(republics, which are not ethnically homogenous as a rule). The weaknesses that were
present in the model from the beginning became more and more visible. All nations are not
equal: the Serbian nation, for example, did not obtain the right to its own state. Unlike
national minorities, portions of the Serbian people, who live in other republics in large
numbers, do not have the right to use their own language and alphabet, to organize politically
and culturally, and to develop the unique culture of their nation. The unstoppable persecution
of Serbs in Kosovo in a drastic manner shows that those principles that protect the
autonomy of a minority (Albanians) and not applied when it comes to a minority within a
minority (Serbs, Montenegrins, Turks and Gypsies in Kosovo). Considering the existing
forms of national discrimination, present-day Yugoslavia cannot be considered a democratic
state.

. . .Yugoslavia is seen less as a community of citizens, nations and nationalities all equal
before the law, and more as a community of eight equal territories. But even this variety of
equality does not apply to Serbia because of its special legal and political position which
reflects the tendency to keep the Serbian nation under constant supervision. The guiding
principle behind this policy has been "a weak Serbia, a strong Yugoslavia" and this has
evolved into an influential mind-set: if rapid economic growth were permitted the Serbs, who
are the largest nation, it would pose a danger to the other nations of Yugoslavia. And so all
possibilities are grasped to place increasing obstacles in the way of their economic
development and political consolidation. One of the most serious of such obstacles is
Serbia's present undefined constitutional position, so full of internal conflicts.

The Constitution of 1974, in fact, divided Serbia into three parts. The autonomous provinces
within Serbia were made equal to the republics, save that they were not defined as such and
that they do not have the same number of representatives in the various bodies of the
federation. They make up for this shortcoming by being able to interfere in the internal
relations of Serbia proper through the republic's common assembly (while their assemblies
remain completely autonomous). The political and legal position of Serbia proper is quite
vague-Serbia proper is neither a republic nor a province. Relationships in the republic of
Serbia are quite confused. The Executive Council, which is a body of the republic's
assembly, is in fact the Executive Council for Serbia proper. This is not the only absurdity in
the limitation of authority. The excessively broad and institutionally well established
autonomy of the provinces has created two new fissures within the Serbian nation. The truth
is that the proautonomy and separatist forces insisted on increasing autonomy, but this
would have been difficult to achieve had they not received moral and political support from
those republics in which separatist tendencies have never died out.
Relations between Serbia and the provinces cannot be reduced solely or even primarily to a
formal legal interpretation of two constitutions. It is primarily a matter of the Serbian nation
and their state. A nation that has regained statehood after a long and bloody struggle, that
has achieved civil democracy, and that lost two and half million kinsmen in two world wars
underwent the experience of having a bureaucratically constructed party commission
determine that after four decades in the new Yugoslavia it alone was condemned to be
without its own state. A more bitter historic defeat in peacetime cannot be imagined.

The expulsion of the Serbian nation from Kosovo bears spectacular witness to its historic
defeat. In the spring of 1981 a very special, but nevertheless open and total war, prepared
by administrative, political, and legal changes made at various periods, was declared
against the Serbian people. Waged through the skilful application of various methods and
tactics, with a division of functions, and with the active, not merely passive, and little
concealed support of certain political centers within Yugoslavia (more pernicious than the
support coming from outside), this open war, which has yet to be looked in the face and
called by its proper name, has been continuing for almost five years. It has thus lasted longer
than the entire Yugoslav war of liberation (from April 6, 1941 to May 9, 1945). The Balli
(anti-communist nationalist) uprising in Kosovo and Metohija that broke out just before the
end of the war with the participation of fascist units was broken militarily in 1944-45, but it
appears not to have been broken politically. Its present form, disguised with a new content,
is proceeding more successfully and is moving towards a victorious outcome. A final
showdown with neo-fascism did not materialize; all of the measures so far taken have only
removed the expression of this aggression from the streets and in fact, its racially motivated
and unretracted goals, which are being sought after by all means and at all costs, have only
been reinforced. Deliberately drastic sentences are even pronounced on young offenders in
order to incite and inflame inter-ethnic hatreds.

The physical, political, legal and cultural genocide perpetrated against the Serbian
population of Kosovo and Metohija is the greatest defeat suffered by Serbia in the wars of
liberation she waged between Orasac in 1804 and the uprising of 1941. Responsibility for
this defeat falls primarily on the still living Comintern heritage in the nationalities policy of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia and on the acquiescence of Serbian communists in this
policy and on the exorbitant ideological and political delusion, ignorance, immaturity, and
chronic opportunism of an entire generation of post-war Serbian politicians, always on the
defensive and always more concerned with the opinions others have of them and of their
hesitant explanations of Serbia's position than with the true facts affecting the future of the
nation that they lead.

Kosovo is not the only region in which the Serbian nation is being pressured by
discrimination. The absolute (and not merely relative) fall in the number of Serbs in Croatia
is sufficient proof of this assertion. According to the 1948 census there were 543,795 Serbs
in Croatia (14.48% of the total). According to the 1981 census their number has been
reduced to 531,502 or only 11.5% of the total number of inhabitants in Croatia. Over 33
peacetime years the number of Serbs in Croatia has declined, even in relation to the
immediate post-war period when the first census was taken and when the effects of the war
on the number of Serbian inhabitants in Croatia was well known.

Lika, Kordun, and Banija have remained the most underdeveloped regions of Croatia and
this has greatly encouraged the emigration of Serbs to Serbia and migrations to other parts
of Croatia where the Serbs, being newcomers, are a minority and socially inferior group,
greatly exposed to assimilation. In any case, the Serbs in Croatia are otherwise exposed to
a sophisticated and quite effective policy of assimilation. One component of this policy is the
prohibition of all Serbian associations and cultural institutions in Croatia, which had had a
rich tradition dating from the Austro-Hungarian and pre-war Yugoslav periods, and the
imposition of an official language that bears the name of another nation (Croatia), thus
giving concrete shape to national inequality. A constitutional provision has made this
language obligatory for the Serbs in Croatia, and nationalistically inclined Croatian linguists
are distancing it systematically and by well-organized actions from the language used in the
other republics of the Serbo-Croatian language area, and this is helping to weaken the ties
binding the Serbs in Croatia to other Serbs. Such action is gladly undertaken at the cost of
interrupting language continuity among the Croats themselves and of eliminating
international terms that are invaluable for communicating with other cultures, particularly in
the field of science and technology. But the Serbian community in Croatia is not just cut off
from their homeland culturally; that homeland cannot keep itself informed of their
circumstances or of their economic or cultural situation anywhere near the extent to which it
is possible for some nations in Yugoslavia to maintain contact with their compatriots in other
countries. The integrity of the Serbian nation and its culture in Yugoslavia as a whole is an
issue vital to its survival and progress.

With the exception of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941- 45, Serbs in Croatia have
never been as persecuted in the past as they are now. The solution to their national position
must be considered an urgent political question. In so much as a solution cannot be found,
the results could be disastrous, not just in relation to Croatia, but to all of Yugoslavia.

The question of the Serbian people's position is given considerable weight by the fact that a
large number of Serbians live outside of Serbia, especially Serbia proper, and that their
number is larger than the total number of people of some other nations. According to the
census of 1981, 24% of the Serbian people (1,958,000) live outside of the Socialist
Republic of Serbia, which is considerably more than the number of Slovenians, Albanians,
Macedonians and taken individually, almost the same as the Muslims. Outside of Serbia
proper there are 3,285,000 Serbs or 40.3% of their total population. In the general
disintegration process which has taken over Yugoslavia, the Serbs are hit with the most
intense disintegration. The present course which our society in Yugoslavia has taken is
totally opposite from the one that has moved for decades and centuries until the formation of
a unified state. This process is aimed at the total destruction of the national unity of the
Serbian people.

Having borne for over half a century the stigma and handicap of being the jailer of the other
Yugoslav nations, the Serbian nation was incapable of deriving support from its own history.
Many aspects of this history itself were even brought into question. The democratic
bourgeoisie tradition for which Serbia had struggled successfully in the 19th century has
remained in the shadow cast by the Serbian socialist and labor movement until quite
recently because of narrow-mindedness and lack of objectivity on the part of official
historiography. This so impoverished and restricted the true picture of the contribution made
by Serbian bourgeoisie society to law, culture, and statesmanship that, deformed in this
manner, it could not provide mental or moral support to anyone nor could it serve as a
foothold for preserving or reviving historical self-confidence. The brave and honorable efforts
at liberation exerted by the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina and by all Yugoslav youth, which
included Young Bosnia, experienced a similar fate and were pushed into the historical
background by the contributions of a class ideology whose proponents and creators were
Austrian Marxists, confirmed opponents of movements of national liberation.

Influenced by the ruling ideology, the cultural achievements of the Serbian people are
undergoing alienation, being usurped by others or denigrated, or they are ignored and
retrogress; the language is being displaced and the Cyrillic script is gradually being lost. In
this connection, the realm of literature is serving as the main arena for caprice and anarchy.
The cultural and spiritual integrity of no other Yugoslav nation is so roughly challenged as that
of the Serbian nation. No other literary and artistic heritage is so disordered, ravaged, and
confused as the Serbian heritage. The political criteria of the ruling ideology are imposed on
Serbian culture as being more valuable and stronger than scientific or historical criteria.

After the dramatic interethnic conflicts of the world war, it had appeared that chauvinism has
lost momentum was even on the road to oblivion. This appearance has proven deceptive. It
was not long before nationalism began rising up once more, and every change in the
constitution served to promote its growth. Nationalism has been promoted from above; its
chief proponents have been politicians. The fundamental cause of this multi- dimensional
crisis is to be found in the ideological defeat of socialism at the hands of nationalism, which
has produced the centrifugal processes that have brought the Yugoslav community to the
brink of ruin and which has destroyed the old system of values.

Its roots lie in the ideology of the Comintern and in the nationalities policy of the pre-war
CPY. The revanchism directed at the Serbian nation as an "exploiting" nation that was built
into this policy has had far-reaching consequences for inter- ethnic relations, the social
organization, the economic system, and the fate of moral and cultural values since the
Second World War. The Serbian nation has been encumbered with a feeling of historical
guilt and has remained the only nation not to solve its national problem and not to receive its
own state like the other nations. Therefore, the first and foremost action must be to remove
this burden of historical guilt from the Serbian nation, to categorically deny the contention
that it enjoyed a privileged economic position between the two world wars, and to refrain
from denigrating Serbia's liberation-oriented history and contribution in creating Yugoslavia.

Complete national and cultural integrity of the Serbian people is their historic and
democratic right, no matter in which republic or province they might find themselves living.
The attainment of equality and an independent development have profound historical
meaning for the Serbian people. In less than fifty years, over two successive generations, the
Serbian nation has been exposed to such severe trials-twice exposed to physical
extermination, to forced assimilation, to religious conversion, to cultural genocide, to
ideological indoctrination, and to the denigration and renunciation of their own traditions
beneath an imposed guilt complex, and thereby disarmed intellectually and politically, that
they could not but leave deep spiritual wounds that cannot be ignored as this century of the
great technological takeoff draws to a close. In order to have a future in the international
family of cultured and civilized nations, the Serbian nation must have an opportunity to find
itself again and become a historical agent, must re-acquire an awareness of its historical
and spiritual being, must look its economic and cultural interests square in the eyes, and
must find a modern social and national program that will inspire this generation and
generations to come.

The present depressing condition of the Serbian nation, with chauvinism and Serbophobia
being ever more violently expressed in certain circles, favor of a revival of Serbian
nationalism, an increasingly drastic expression of Serbian national sensitivity, and reactions
that can be volatile and even dangerous. We must not overlook or underestimate these
dangers for a moment under any circumstances. But a principled struggle against Serbian
chauvinism cannot be based on the reigning ideological and political symmetry in historical
guilt. The rejection of this symmetry, fatal to the spirit and morale, with its trite falsehoods
and injustices, is a precondition for mobility and effectiveness on the part of democratic,
Yugoslav, humanistic awareness in contemporary Serbian culture.

The fact that ordinary citizens and the working class are not represented in the appropriate
councils in the Federal Assembly cannot simply be ascribed to favoritism for ethnic
nationalisms; it is also the result of an attempt to place Serbia in a position of inequality and
thereby weaken her political influence. But the greatest calamity is the fact that the Serbian
nation does not posses a state like all of the other nations. True, the first article of the
Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia contains a provision to the effect that Serbia
is a state, but the question immediately arises: What kind of a state is one that lacks
authority within its own territory and lacks the means to protect the personal property of its
citizens, to prevent genocide in Kosovo, and to prevent the emigration of Serbs from their
ancient homeland? This position underlines the political discrimination against Serbia,
especially when one remembers that the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia has imposed internal federalism on Serbia, creating a permanent source of
conflicts between Serbia Proper and the provinces. The aggressive Albanian chauvinism in
 Kosovo cannot be contained until Serbia ceases to be the sole republic whose internal
relations are ordered by others.

The Federal Constitution has formally established the equality of all the republics but this has
been rendered worthless in practice by forcing the Republic of Serbia to renounce many of
its rights and powers in favor of the autonomous provinces, the status of which is regulated
by the Federal Constitution to a considerable extent. Serbia must openly state that this is an
imposed arrangement. This is especially true in regard to the position of the provinces,
which in reality have been promoted to republics and which regard themselves far more as
constituent elements of the Federation rather than as parts of the republic of Serbia.
Besides failing to consider a state for the Serbian nation, the Yugoslav Constitution also
created insurmountable difficulties to the establishment of such a state. In order to satisfy
Serbia's legitimate interests, a revision of that constitution is unavoidable. The autonomous
provinces must become true integral parts of the Republic of Serbia by granting them a
degree of autonomy that would not destroy the integrity of the Republic and would make it
possible to act in the common interests of the wider community.

The unhappy matter of Serbian statehood is not the only deficiency that must be corrected
by constitutional amendments. The 1974 constitution turned Yugoslavia into a very unstable
state community, prone to consider alternatives other than the Yugoslav alternative, as has
been made clear in recent statements by public figures in Slovenia and the earlier positions
taken by Macedonian politicians. Such considerations and fragmentation lead to the notion
that Yugoslavia is in danger of further corrosion. The Serbian nation cannot meekly await the
future in such a state of uncertainty. Therefore, all of the nations within Yugoslavia must be
given the opportunity to express their wants and intentions. Serbia would then be able to
declare and define her own national interests. Discussions and agreements in this vein must
precede an examination of the Constitution. Naturally, Serbia must not take a passive stand
in all this, waiting to hear what others will say, as she has done so often in the past.

The position of equality that Serbia must strive for presupposes the same initiative in
deciding on key political and economic issues as enjoyed by others. Four decades of
Serbian passivity have been bad for Yugoslavia as a whole by failing to contribute ideas and
critical appraisals based on her longer state tradition, enhanced feeling for national
independence, and rich experience in struggling against home-grown usurpers of political
freedom. Unless the Serbian nation within Serbia participate on an equal footing in the
entire process of decision making and implementation, Yugoslavia cannot be strong--and
Yugoslavia's very existence as a democratic, socialist community will be called into
question.

An entire period in the development of the Yugoslav community and of Serbia has clearly
ended in a historically worn-out ideology, overall stagnation, and ever more obvious
regression in the economic, political, moral, and cultural spheres. Such a situation
imperatively requires a profound and well-thought out, rationally grounded, and decisively
implemented reform of the entire governmental structure and social organization of the
Yugoslav community of nations, and speedy and beneficial integration into the modern world
through social democracy. The human resources of the entire country must be involved to the
utmost extent in social reform in order that we may become a productive, enlightened, and
democratic society capable of existing on the fruits of our own labor and creativity and able
to make our fair contribution to the human race.

The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences is taking this occasion to express once again
its willingness to promote this portentous undertaking and the historical aspirations of our
generation with all the resources at its disposal.