Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
superiority. With the collapse of communist ideology under increasing
pressure for political pluralism in all parts of Yugoslavia and in particular
in Serbia, but in the continuity of the hegemony of narcissistic-collectivist
discourses, “more homogeneous collectivities could and did easily challenge
the Yugoslav idea” (Wachtel, 1998: 10). These new collectivities
were instrumentalized and incorporated into the political strategy of the
conservative elite in control of the ruling Serb-dominated Yugoslav
Communist party.
In retrospect, the virulent and violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia can thus
be seen as part of a “purposeful and rational strategy planned and carried
out by the minority of political actors in Serbia who were most threatened
by democratizing and liberalizing currents within the Serbian Communist
Party”. It follows that “conflict along ethnic lines was (…) actively created
and provoked by certain political actors in order to forestall native
trends towards democratization”. In addition, “war was begun precisely
because of the relative strength of home-grown pressure for political
pluralism and support for liberal democratic values, especially in Serbia”
(Gagnon, 1994: 118). In order to conceal the political relevance of the call
for pluralism that rang within the political elite of the late 1980s, the conservative
section of the Yugoslavian Socialist parties articulated existing
economic, social and political divisions and antagonisms into a comprehensive
logic of ethnic antagonism (Gagnon 1994).
Keeping the Yugoslavian situation in mind, one might say that from the
beginning of the 1980s, ethnic and nationalist discourses were mobilized
by a conservative minority at the top of the Serbian Communist Party, by
old-line Marxist intellectuals and by elements of the Yugoslav National
Army “to prevent newly active non-communist democratic forces in
Serbia from mobilizing the wider population against the regime” (Gagnon,
1994: 118). From this perspective, nationalist discourses were mobilized
to conceal the alternative and opposing political categories along which
Yugoslavia was re-articulating its identity according to two different moral
and political worlds, as homogeneity/totalitarianism was being challenged
by heterogeneity/democracy.
However, if the main culprits responsible for the explosion of Serbian violence
in the Balkans of the late twentieth century were the political and
cultural elite whose position of prestige and power were integrally bound
to the old system, it is also true that they easily managed “to convince fellow
Serbs that their moral superiority [was threatened] by a worldwide
conspiracy. Thus, it is fundamental to underline the fact that the Serbian
elite could not have succeeded in mobilizing the support of large masses
of the population for the war had the latter not already been under the
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