yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 1
secession and thereby broke up Yugoslavia is marching in the Balkans
again.” The denial of the Serbs’ right of self-determination,
Ćosić lamented, was “the harshest decision of the twentieth century,
depriving the Serb people of their freedom.” The Serbs were
not fighting to create a Greater Serbia but for state unity, to be able
to live as a free people where they live now: “[E]veryone fighting
against Serb nationalism is fighting against human freedom.” 115
A minority in the Serbian political elite was of a different opinion
and advocated a pro-European policy that would promote Serbia’s
modernization. Among such dissenters were Dimitrije Tucović,
the first to report on Serbia’s criminal policy toward the Albanians
during the Balkan Wars; Svetozar Marković and the Serbian Social
Democrats and Communists; Serbian liberals such as Marko Nikezić
and Latinka Perović; and the reformers under Ante Marković, who
coalesced around the Civic Alliance of Serbia (gss). Other dissenters
included the Social Democratic Union, an offshoot of the gss and
even more radical in its criticism of Serbian expansionist policy, the
League of Democrats of Vojvodina, the Reformers of Vojvodina, and
some smaller parties such as the Coalition for Šumadija.
The Propaganda Campaign
The Albanian demonstrations in Kosovo in March 1981 demanding
the status of a republic was a trigger for the already latent
Yugoslav crisis. Yugoslav leadership brutally suppressed Albanians
characterizing demonstrations as “irredentism” and “counterrevolution”
while the Serbian media started a propaganda war employing
a “rhetorical strategy” based on the alleged ethnic cleansing of Serbs
in Kosovo, raping of women and girls, beating up Serbian men, all
leading to repression in the southern province. A similar rhetoric was
employed later regarding Croatia and Bosnia as an excuse, first, to
spread fear among Serbs of a repetition of genocide and later to wage
115 Ibid ., p . 416 .