yugoslavias implosion

156
ChApter 2
said Yugoslavia should be organized as a “federation with a Socialist
system,” and accused unnamed “extremist groups” of attempting to
“degrade the very idea of Socialism” and of denying of all achievemnets
of the country’s postwar development. 231
General Marjan Čad charged that the United States had decided
to crush Socialism once and for all, that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
worked for Western interests and capitalism, and that the
dissolution of the Warsaw Pact was not in Yugoslavia’s interest. At
a meeting with Kadijević in Belgrade on November 12, 1990, he also
claimed that the greatest threats to Yugoslavia were “alien” forces
from within the country as well as from within the nato Alliance. 232
Despite these perceived dangers, the ypa felt confident of preserving
a unified, Socialist Yugoslavia. This (mis)placed confidence
was based in part on a (mis)perception of the evolving situation in
the Soviet Union. In February 1991, for instance, General Mirković
averred that “the ussr has lost some of its positions in Europe but is
still strong, so nobody can threaten it.” 233
A secret document from the Political Directorate of the Defense
Ministry that was leaked in March 1991 through Croatian and Slovenian
officials to the media stated that the process of disintegration
in the ussr had slowed down and that the Soviet authorities had
begun to act rationally by trying to preserve the federal state and
institutions; decisive measures had been taken to halt separatist tendencies
in some parts of the country; and even the Soviet Army had
been engaged. Socialism had not been finished off. Nor had Yugoslavia
been brought to its knees. Yugoslavia had, at great cost, resisted
the anti-Communist hysteria, and the prospects of maintaining
the integrity of Yugoslavia were realistic. The West had achieved
231 Veljko Kadijević, Moje viđenje raspada, p . 109 .
232 Angst vor militiaerischer Gewalt nimmt zu” FAZ, November 22, 1990, p . 8 .
233 “LC-MY Member Comments on NATO ‘Pressure’”,Narodna Armija (Belgrade), March 1,
1991, trans . in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Eeu-91–041, p .33 .