Certainly there can be no new federation whilst Milosevic - or worse, Seselj - holds power in Serbia. The Serbian working class is unable to resist at the momentthough it did organise large scale strikes • in 1991. However, Milosevic was able to buy off this opposition by agreeing to the strikers demands. Most opposition to Milosevic comes from the right - particularly since the suppression of the youth revolt in 1991 and the retreat of the working class. However, Milosevic's reliance on ultra-nationalist demagogy cannot indefinitely conceal the fact that his increas-
ing reliance on the market cannot resolve the economic problems of Serbia. (Privatisation in Serbia is more advanced than in Croatia or Slovenia, for example, despite their leaderships being seen by much of the left as openly pro-capitalist). (7) In Croatia too working class resistance has been cowed for the moment, as a result of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.
In Kosova Serbian domination of social and political life is challenged sporadically but not in any co-ordinated way. The gains made by the Albanian population under the 1974 Constitution have all been reversed. For example, virtually all Albanian health workers have been sacked. As a result the Albanian population will not go into hospital in Kosova - for fear of emerging in a worse state than they entered. In Slovenia and Croatia there has been a renewal of independent trade union activity and an independent union exists in Serbia. The Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia openly opposes the war in Bosnia. These are hopeful signs. One of the tasks for socialists is to develop links with the opposition movements, peace movements etc. throughout ex-Yugoslavia and help to rebuild the workers' movement, starting with independent, democratic trades unions. This is one of the goals International Workers Aid for Bosnia has set itself.
When the hold of nationalism begins to weaken, when the working class begins to see that the nationalist regimes in power are incapable of resolving the underlying economic problems then we will begin to see the conditions emerging in which a new federation begins to be posed. The key to the situation is the overthrow of Milosevic by the Serbian working class, though we cannot predict in advance that the Croatian workers, for example, will not overthrow Tudjman first. But even if this were to happen the possibility of any Balkan federation would still depend on the overthrow of the Serbian regime. The slogan of "A socialist federation of the Balkans" is, therefore, an important part of revolutionary marxist propaganda but it cannot take on an agitational quality at present. Certainly it cannot be counterposed to the key demands of the right to self-determination, the rights of national and ethnic minorities, opposition to imperialist intervention (including sanctions) and - above all for the arming of the Bosnian resistance.