The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

the old national tensions. In the search for generally viable models, the
structure of the state leadership was reformed and organized according
to a fixed proportional representation system. It satisfied no one; rather,
all sides felt that their national rights had been constricted. During the
early ‘70s, some segments of the Communist Party in all regions of the
country, including Serbia, developed liberal ideas designed to reform the
country, and turn it into a democratic multi-party system. New tensions
emerged; weapons were used against demonstrators in Kosovo. In
1971, the reaction to the suggestions to seriously implement the necessary
liberalization and decentralization of the country was the arrest and
dismissal of critical activists. This was a tragic situation in which Tito became
aware that his power was slipping away. To protect it, he stressed
the significance of the army for the safety of the state, and pronounced
the reformers nationalists. At the same time however, he tried, in this
first serious crisis of post-war society, to ward off, by a reform of the
constitution, the apparent danger that any ethnic group might place itself
ahead of the others.
In the labyrinth
Under the amendments to the constitution of 1974, Serbia, as the largest
republic, was weakened by the fact that the provinces of Kosovo
and Voivodina were now treated equally to the republics in the national
government. A perpetual motion machine was introduced at all levels:
everything rotated – the party leadership, the state leadership, the regional
leaderships, everything. The monopoly of the party was shifted
to the oligarchies of the six republics and two autonomous provinces.
The newly-created “associated labour” system fundamentally trans -
formed the organization of enterprises. The smallest sub-unit, the enterprise
section, constituted the “base organization of associated labour ",
two of them constituted “a work organization of associated labour”, and
several of them a “composite organization of associated labour”. The coordination
of interests was carried out via a “self-management agreement”,
“social accords”, “organs of workers’ self-management”, “workers’ councils”,
an “administrative committee” and the director. Additional “selfmanaged
communities of interest” were created for coordination in the
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