The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

No rational analysis which balanced the relationships and prospects of
the nationalistic movements was possible, not even one that secured
Serbian interests. An irrational attitude won out against the politicians
who demanded sensible policies. Even many intellectuals defined the
central arguments of the movement. The Academy of the Sciences and
Art issued a “Memorandum” in 1986 in which it accused the Titoist regime
of being anti-Serbian and of having prevented a Serbian state with -
in the federation, of having suppressed Serbia politically and eco nomically,
and of having thrust Serbia into a subordinate role. Claiming that Serbs
in Kosovo and Croatia are threatened and forced to emigrate or assim -
ilate, they urgently demanded intervention to protect their cultural and
national integrity.
The authors of the Memorandum had thus reversed the thesis of the
Communist Party during the period between the World Wars, according
to which Yugoslavia was a prison-house of non-Serbian nations; now,
they said, Titoist Yugoslavia was a prison only for the Serbian people.
The supporters of the Greater Serbian idea put heavy pressure on the
Serbian and Yugoslav leaderships to get tough with the Albanians in Kosovo.
Kosovo was pronounced the issue determining the survival and
destiny of the Serbian people, and main factor demanding a historic reexamination
of the reasons for the existence of Yugoslavia. The constitution
of 1974 was used as a key argument to support the thesis that
the Serbians were threatened in Yugoslavia. The revision of this constitution
was declared the condition for the restoration of Serbian dignity.
The Serbian leadership started an initiative in 1985 to change the constitution
of 1974; however it failed to pass the State Presidium. Large
parts of the disappointed Serbian elites reacted to that aggressively, determined
to wage the battle further. The moderate faction, the “cooler
heads”, who were ready to accept the status quo, were removed, and
in 1986, Slobodan Miloševi was elected chairman of the Serbian Communist
Party. In 1987, he went to Kosovo and stood at the side of Serbian
demonstrators. He returned to Belgrade as the leader of the Serbian
people. Starting in 1986, his “anti-bureaucratic revolution” regularly and
successfully used organized mass rallies with paid demonstrators to dis-
90