yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 1
capitalism and the market economy. Serbia was the chief proponent
of a command economy. In 1964–68, Praxis, a group of professors
from Belgrade University’s Faculty of Philosophy (including Mihajlo
Marković, Ljubomir Tadić, and Svetozar Stojanović), couched
the students’ demands in theoretical terms in their journal Praxis. 36
These included the development of self-government (albeit without
decentralization), equality of the forms of property ownership,
a well-regulated market economy, maximum social security guarantees,
and support for science, art, and culture.
However, the students’ momentum was exploited by “highly
organized forces whose aim was to arrest the developments set in
motion by the ongoing economic and social reform and the reorganization
of the lcy.” 37 While the reform-minded forces tried to capitalize
on the student demonstrations, the dogmatic and centralist
camp was bent on achieving the opposite. Milentije Popović, president
of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia between 1967 and 1971,
saw the two-sided importance of the demonstrations: “There are still
people who cannot distinguish between the dissatisfaction of the students
with some phenomena and the reactionary political conspiracy
behind that.” 38
Svetozar Stojanović, a philosopher and a member of the Praxis
group, described the student movement in Belgrade, in the September/December
1968 issue of Praxis in the following words:
The action program of the Belgrade students in June 1968 was identical
to the ideas of the Praxis group. All the people associated with Praxis
took an active part in the June events and the largest portion of them
were expelled from the Party organization because of this activity.
36 According to Mihajlo Marković, the journal Praxis was founded with the idea that
“as committed and responsible intellectuals, we should investigate the crisis, and
as philosophers to identify its underlying causes and explore possibilities for its
practical resolution .” See his memoirs Juriš na nebo, Prosveta, 2008, p . 40 .
37 Latinka Perović . Zatvaranje kruga, Svijetlost, Sarajevo, 1991 . p .54 .
38 Ibid ., 63 .