The destruction of Yugoslavia -Written by Branka Magas Published by Verso €12.95 Reviewed by Ben Wolfe A NEW Serb offensive is under way in eastern Bosnia, with the familiar flight of starving refugees, the destruction of villages, random murders - the whole panoply of ethnic cleanshis is not the end-game of the Yugoslavian tragedy. New horrors await in the maprovince of Kosovo, which will be the next arena of the That this should have been the fate of Yugoslavia, which unlike most of the non-capitral Europe, emerged out of a nas largely been a mystery on the left.
Horror, and denunciation of all 'reactionary nationalcialist response, while those of a more Stalinoid bent have, openly or otherwise, sympath. sed with the Serb forces of Milosevic and Aaladzic More than any other writer on Yugoslavia, Branka Magas tracked the emergence of the breat sero prosect trom it very beginnings. The first writings from 1982-3, expose the para-military repression in Kosovo by the government in Belgrade. The cracking ation was prepared over a Page 10 March 13, 1993 No. 39 long period. Anyone who wants to understand the mechanisms by which the war was prepared, and made nevitoie, will tina masas account the most illuminating But more important than a chronological account is the political-theoretical understanding of the causes.
The multinational Yugoslavian state emerged from zumn century attemps by the South Slavs to create a viable federal state which would free them from the historic role of pawns of rival imperlalist powers. At the end of the second world war, various figures in the international communist movement, mensely prestigious Dimitrov, floated the idea of a Balkan socialist federation, which would have included Once this option was rejected by Stalin, the modern Yugoslavia emerged as the next best option, but as a state with non-Slay minorities, notably the Kosovo Albanians (perhaps 40 per cent of the Alsanian nation) and the Macocontins. ine nadonal ques tion was built-in as a key However, a viable resolution of the national question, or more formally, the correct resolution of the national and ution, depended on two conFirst, the creation of real equality between the nationalities; second, the all-round development of the economy under the social hegemony of the working class, as the basic material precondition for national equality.
Bureaucratic rule in Yugoslavia never involved the kind of permanent military-police terror characteristic of 1930s Russia. Nonetheless, bureaucratic rule made the resolution of the national question impossible. The famous experiment with self-manage. ment, which in reality was an experiment of local autonomy of enterprises in the context of marketisation, had the eftween the different republics and provinces competing for resources and funds.
In a one sense Yugoslavia is an example of a more general trend; once bureaudemocratic socialist alternative available as an immedtately practical option, broad sections of the masses of the people, who have lost faith in he old system, can invest their hopes in the nation.
Socialists of course reject course to nationalism by the masses can be a more or less rational option, depending on Fighting Greater Serb expansionism: Croatian forces can tall prey to right-wing nationalism circumstances. In particular, when the nationality of which they are part is under sustained, and even military, atlack. defence of the nation is a precondition of survival.
Ex-Yugoslavia should teach us the ABC of the Leninist approach to the national question, namely that respect of national rights, up to and including self-determination, is obligatory for socialists. To denounce all nationalisms as equally reactionary is, in many conditions, to simply capitulate to national oppression; in the Yugoslav context it means to capitulate to the Great Serb project.
But Magas's explicit support for western intervention sa major failing in this otherwise strong work. Sending in possibly solve the crisis Nriting during the first world war, Trotsky pointed out that there was no future for the South Slav peoples outside of a Balkan federation, which is practically viable only on á socialist basis. However, the road to federation today goes through the stage of independence for the different nationalities.
Whatever the horrors inflicted by the warriors of Greater Serbia, historically it is a doomed project. here 1s and will be an independent Slovenia and Croatia. The Al. banian people of Kosovo cannot be held down by force forever. Sooner or later Milosevic and his gang of excommunist bureaucrats in Belgrade, will go.
The best contribution socialists can make to the eventual resolution of this tragedy is to fight for a lasting peacea socialist federation in the and that means the defeat of both the Great Serb project and reactionary forces in Croatia.