yugoslavias implosion

148
ChApter 2
breakthrough and saw radical social transformation in the period
between 1989 and 1995.” 210
RESISTANCE TO DEPOLITICIZATION, RUMORS OF COUPS
Any mention of the “depoliticization” of the Army was understood
by the ypa as the “excommunication” of the armed forces from
the social and political life of the country, thus erasing the “people’s”
character of the Yugoslav People’s Army. In the ypa’s view, cutting
off its roots among the Yugoslav people would mean the Army’s subordination
to the ruling elite. 211
In November 1989, the ypa’s Communists asserted that the future
of Yugoslavia lay not in the restoration of the bourgeois parliamentary
system or in etatist centralism, but in the federal Socialist and
self-managing development of equal nations and nationalities. They
argued that their opposition to a multiparty system was not connected
to any special military interest but to the interest of a Yugoslavia
built on the avnoj principles and the defense of that country.
They believed that a multiparty system would exacerbate national
and nationalistic divisions in the country. 212 Lieutenant General
Blagoje Adžić, ypa chief of general staff between 1989 and 1991, said in
an interview in the Army weekly Narodna Armija that pluralization
of Yugoslav society had no negative connotation because different
views and interests exist in every society. Yet he believed that political
struggle among various parties “does not suit the sfry, its social
nature, and its further development.” He also argued that depoliticization
of the Army would separate it from society’s basic problems
and from the social mainstream. Should that happen, the Army
would cease to be a “people’s” army. 213
210 Mihajlo Marković, Društvena misao, SFRY Official Gazette, 1999, p . 132 .
211 Tomislav Peruničić: “Suština zalaganja za depolitizaciju”,
Narodna Armija, January 25, 1990, p . 22 .
212 Čvrsto jedinstvo armije, Narodna armija, November 30, 1989, p . 1 .
213 Narodna Armija, December 7, 1989 .