yugoslavias implosion

The popularity Milošević enjoyed was best explained by Ivan
Stambolić:
The Serb people worshipped him like a god and believed that by identifying
themselves with him they would become celestial. Milošević
remained on his cloud while the people sank deeper and deeper into the
mud. He always ridiculed the Serb people, who for him were a mere
object of manipulation. Milošević and the Serb people were one, but
today this synthesis does not exist: They are apart. The Serbs must
face this fact. It will be a problem for them, but only in this way can
they acknowledge and deal with their own defeat. Only by condemning
Milošević can they acknowledge their defeat. 105
Economic Woes and “Enemy Activity”
The federal leaders’ inability to confront Milošević, who
destroyed everything in his path “institutionally and extrainstitutionally”
106 with increasing speed, stemmed from the exhaustion of
the Socialist model and the leaders’ disinclination to do more than
tinker with it. Because they were afraid of Serbian nationalism, they
appeased Milošević (by allowing him to change the Serbian constitution,
even though any change was meant to require the consensus of
the other republics), which soon destroyed the already fragile balance
in the federation. Since the early 1980s, the economic situation
had been a serious challenge to the credibility of the federal leadership,
which, although aware of the gravity of the economic problems,
preferred to see the main threat as coming from abroad. The
notion of a “special war” waged by both external and internal enemies
against Yugoslavia was a thesis propagated chiefly by the ypa.
In 1981, General Branko Mamula told the Internal Policy Committee
that “enemy activity of all kinds against the armed forces has
105 Ivan Stambolić, Koreni zla, HOPS, Belgrade, 2002 .
106 Slobodan Milošević, Godine raspleta, p .333
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