yugoslavias implosion

accept Yugoslavia only as a unitary state in which the republican
borders delineated national units. They based their arguments on a
provision of the constitution that stated:
The working people and the nations and nationalities shall exercise
their sovereign rights in the Socialist Republics and in the Socialist
Autonomous Provinces in conformity with their constitutional
rights, and shall exercise these rights in the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia when in their common interest it is so specified by the
present Constitution. The working people, nations, and nationalities
shall make decisions on the Federal level according to the principles of
agreement among the Republics and Autonomous Provinces, solidarity
and reciprocity, equal participation by the Republics and Autonomous
Provinces in federal agencies, consistent with the present Constitution,
and according to the principle of responsibility of the Republics and
Autonomous Provinces for their own development and for the development
of the socialist community as a whole. 224
Both Serbia and the Army were pushing for the same change
to the 1974 Constitution—recentralization of the state—and both
were disappointed by the federal constitutional amendments of 1988,
which did not include measures to strengthen the federal state. The
ypa increasingly came to see itself as the only force holding Yugoslavia
together.
Serbia, however, was allowed to amend its Constitution. It proceeded
to adopt some changes to its own constitution in 1990, revoking
the autonomous status of Vojvodina and Kosovo as defined by
the 1974 Constitution. Two provisions of the new Serbian Constitution
defined Serbia as the first separatist republic. Article 83, defining
the role of the president, stated: “The President is in charge of the
armed forces in peace and war and national resistance in time of
the war; he orders general or partial mobilization [and] organizes
224 1974 Constitution of the SFRY, Basic Principles, p . 8 .
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