Yugoslavia's deepened, the central government was blamed for bad management of the financial transfers from richer to poorer regions of the federation. Slovenia and Croatia refused to continue their solidarity payments. Even Serbia, which had salary levels close to the all-Yugoslav average, wanted to reduce its payments.
This was the background to the whole debate on the dissolution of federation. republics, Slovenia and Croatia,
La looser confederal arrangement, giving them virtual independence.
The poorer republics like Bosnia and Macedonia wanted to maintain a centralised federation, with even stronger income redistribution programmes.
Serbia, the largest republic, and home of the federal institutions, favoured this second option. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic imagined Serbia as the centre of a centralised, • planed Yugoslav economy. He also wanted to increase Serbia's weight in the federation, chiefly by exploiting the Serbian minorities in other republics.
As the conflicts spread in 1992, Milosevic sought to protect these ethnic Serbs, by challenging the frontiers between the Yugoslav republics. He also wanted to increase the size of his own territory. particular, consolidate a corridor of land from landlocked Serbia through southern Bosnia to the Adriatic sea at the port of Dubrovnik.
The conflict with Kosovo is another opportunity for Milosevic to legitimate and consolidate his authority within Serbia. He can present himself as the victim of a plot between the "international community". The victim of NATO strikes, the victim of economic sanctions. This confrontation makes it easier for the population to accept the economic difficulties which have continued to grow over
Despite the strong social tensions in Serbia, Milosevic still enjoys considerable possibility in the rural areas and among working class Serbs, who are the main supporters of the regime. Milosevic presents himself as the protector of private property in the countryside, and social property in the industrial sector - key elements of the
Each of the ex-Yugoslav republics has tried to reorient its economy towards the European Union, and become a privileged partner. Slovenia and Croatia have done relatively well, but the other regions seem condemned to a status of subdeveloped and peripheral regions, not fully integrated into the European economy.
But the transition to the market economy has not fully erased the unique elements of Yugoslavia's self-managed system. Slovenia has the highest GDP in eastern Europe, but There is strong social resistance to the privatisation of the means of production, and to the expulsion of the workforce from workplace decision-making structures.
The Yugoslav federation is gone, and there is no alternative form of stability on the horizon. Even not escaped: unemployment is now above 10% — it was virtually zero in the late
The social transformation is a factor blocking further reforms. Nationalists are in power everywhere, and rejection of regional cooperation is another element of instability.
The struggle for land and wealth is not over. More splits and sessions can be expected. Montenegro is more and more explicit about its desire to separate from Serbia.
But the real solution is the exact opposite. The only way to avoid a Greater Serbia a Greater neighbours, is to find regional structures for cooperation, and common solutions to common
Countries like Macedonia and Slovenia, with populations of about two million, aren't designed to exist completely independently. So there is actually a double process disintegration and recomposition. Recomposition in the direction of dangerous inadequate recomposition, which will leave the Balkan countries weak and peripheral.
The countries of Central Europe are already overexposed to the economic cycles of their huge western neighbours. The region would be more stable if it had its disintegration of Yugoslavia as the failure of an artificial construction. The real failure of the Yugoslav road was a lack of democracy in the decision-making procedure, and a reflection socioeconomic mechanisms which would make it possible to reduce regional disparities. A failure which the European Union should think about, because the same problem is being recreated today. *
• International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 13
* Kosovo
REVOLUTION YOUTH
NO TRIDENT NO
CRUISE SOCIALIST CHALLENCE