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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Who & what are really behind Belgrade rallies?

By Gary Wilson

What's behind the pro-Western rallies in Yugoslavia?

Events are unfolding rapidly in what remains of the Yugoslav Federation. Reports in the U.S.-dominated, corporate-controlled media can be confusing as well as misleading. And all the reports are inherently anti-socialist.

For supporters of socialism, it is impossible to understand the events on the basis of these reports alone. Following is background information in a question-and-answer format.

Who is leading the rallies in Belgrade?

The leadership of Zajedno, the opposition coalition, is completely anti-socialist. Its goal is to overthrow the government.

Vuk Draskovic, one of the leaders of Zajedno, advocates a return of the mon archy. He made the opposition's goals clear at a Jan. 11 rally in Belgrade where he demanded that the government of Slobodan Milosevic "resign or face a revolt in the near future."

A Jan. 13 Reuter report identified Draskovic as an advocate of "close links to the West." In practice this really means advocating a U.S. takeover of Yugoslavia.

His organization, Reuter admits, is made up of "old Serbian monarchists and ultra-nationalist Chetniks."

Also at the Jan. 11 rally, Zoran Djindjic-Zajedno's other primary leader-declared that the opposition's goal is to turn Yugoslavia into a "market economy system." (UPI, Jan. 11)

U.S. and German flags can be seen at all the Zajedno rallies. There is no controversy over this. Can it mean anything other than the rallies are not only anti-socialist, but they are for subjugating Yugoslavia to the imperialist powers, the United States and Germany?

A member of the United States Congress, Rep. Bruce Vento of Minnesota, was even in the leadership of a Jan. 10 rally in Belgrade. From the speakers' platform he denounced the Milosevic government and declared the U.S. government's support for the opposition. (UPI, Jan. 10)

What is the U.S. government's role?

The U.S. government is openly supporting the rallies and financing the opposition forces.

The U.S. government is even dictating the terms. At a Jan. 9 news conference in Washington, State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns was brazenly arrogant in the demands made on the Yugoslav government.

The U.S. State Department is openly intervening into the internal affairs of Yugoslavia. And not a word of protest has been raised in the United Nations or by any of the so-called human rights organizations in the United States or Europe.

Burns declared that the Serbian government has no right to make any determination about the disputed elections held last November.

Burns' statement is utter nonsense. Every government makes determinations about its own elections. Even in the United States, local elections are often in dispute and the government must intervene. Some of last November's U.S. election results are expected to be in legal dispute for several years.

Reuter reported Jan. 9 that Assistant Secretary of State John Kornblum is going to the Balkans in order to promote "reform in Serbia."

At a news conference in Brussels Jan. 11, Kornblum outlined a "four-point action plan."

The plan, according to Reuter, will 1) freeze trade and official relations with Serbia; 2) harden international pressure on the Milosevic government; 3) increase funds to the opposition forces; and 4) "target structural obstacles" to U.S. goals.

Kornblum said pressure will be applied to Milosevic "so that he is made fully aware of the dangerous consequences" should he resist U.S. dictates.

Reuter added: "Expanding on the four-point plan, a statement from U.S. officials said Washington was considering denying an application by Yugoslav Airlines (JAT) for landing rights in the United States.

"The United States would also swiftly approve an assistance program that would focus on helping independent media."

Reuter continued, "Washington also wanted to discourage trade missions and high-level visitors to Belgrade and maintain an 'outer wall' of sanctions including prohibiting financial institutions from contact with Serbia." In other words, it wishes to economically strangle the country until it submits to U.S. demands.

The British news agency's report carefully adds that Washington is acting alone in this four-point plan. This does not mean, however, that the Western European imperialist powers of Germany, Britain and France are not conspiring against the Yugoslav government.

In what could be seen as a military threat against the Milosevic government, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. George Joulwan, supported and encouraged the opposition in Yugoslavia and said he hoped they would be victorious. (UPI, Jan. 13)

What about Slobodan Milosevic?

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, rose up as a nationalist leader when the process of dismembering Yugoslavia began in the 1980s.

At first, the U.S. media portrayed him as a "charismatic personality." They supported his nationalist demagogy. It was only later that he came to be characterized in a negative way, as U.S. interests and prospects changed.

Now Washington wants to completely dismantle and privatize the Yugoslav economy. Serbia and Montenegro are the last holdouts in the Yugoslav Federation.

Socialists should not have the slightest doubt that social and national progress in Yugoslavia would be hurt more by an imperialist takeover of Yugoslavia than by a continuation of the government of Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic is not very different from any bourgeois nationalist in the oppressed countries. His politics have degenerated. But that's no reason to support imperialist intervention.

The question for socialists is who would benefit from outside intervention.

What the United States is attempting to do in Yugoslavia is a repeat of what it did in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Most analysis of Yugoslavia ignores the class essence of the struggle. In the age when imperialist finance capital dominates the globe, the primary question is the role of the imperialist powers, the big banks and financial institutions as well as the multinational corporations.

That is necessary to know in order to understand what is really happening.

The Yugoslav Revolution

What is the background?

The history of the Yugoslav Revolution is usually left out of news reports on Yugoslavia.

The establishment of the socialist federation of Yugoslavia was a historic victory. For the first time, there was a united front of the Balkan countries that was completely independent of outside imperialist domination. It was a product of a revolutionary working-class upsurge in Europe.

The federation developed a collective presidency-a progressive new political conception. Each republic had an opportunity to run the federation for a specified time in rotation.

The Yugoslav Communist Party was organized on a similar collective principle.

What happened? An unfortunate and ill-considered split between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1948 left Yugoslavia isolated. Yugoslavia made many economic concessions to the West and the market economy in order to survive. Years later the USSR leadership tried to repair the situation. But the Yugoslav economy had already been damaged by leaning on finance capital, principally the International Monetary Fund.

Yugoslavia opened itself to imperialist penetration in the mid-1960s when it introduced so-called workers' control of management. This sound ed highly democratic-away from the rigid control that stifled the creative energy of the working class.

And workers' control as a step away from capitalism is progressive. But it's a backward step when it ends centralized socialist planning.

The concept of workers' control quickly degenerated into managerial control. By 1981, Yugoslavia found itself under the rigid stranglehold of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Workers' control had given way to the bankers' demands with no centralized force strong enough to resist.

Competition between enterprises as well as regions was introduced. Socialist solidarity was lost and antagonisms began to surface.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, there was no longer any basis for tolerating any remaining communist experiments in Eastern Europe. The imperialist powers moved quickly. The open dismantling of Yugoslavia was launched.

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