– Predrag Milićević –
Before attempting to answer why the “civilized” West charted a course for Yugoslavia’s disintegration and fragmentation in the early 1990s, as well as why Yugoslavia unravelled so quickly, it is necessary to examine other factors that influenced this decision and facilitated the relatively easy implementation of this plan.
If we analyse the SFR of Yugoslavia through a religious lens, it is known that three republics — Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia — were predominantly Orthodox Christian. Two — Croatia and Slovenia — were predominantly Catholic. Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina was home to Orthodox Serbs, Serbs who had converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule and about 18 per cent Catholic Croat population.
It is important to note that long before the Turkish invasion of the Balkans in the 14th century, two religions — Orthodoxy and Catholicism — had been clashing on this territory since the 10th century. The Catholic expansion led by the Vatican, from the early Middle Ages to the present day, failed to take hold because, between the 10th and 14th centuries, Catholicism was not accepted by the Orthodox Serbian principalities and kingdoms located in the territories of what are now Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The dividing line between Orthodoxy and Catholicism ran from Ravni Kotari on the Adriatic coast, through Lika along the Korana, Kupa and Sava rivers, and further to Pakrac. Even Bohemia and Moravia were Orthodox in the 9th century until the zealous servants of Rome blinded and expelled Methodius. The Turkish invasion in the 14th and 15th centuries destroyed the Serbian principalities and led to the spread of Islam in towns and villages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Islamization of part of the Serbian population in these areas.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the dividing line between Orthodoxy and Catholicism shifted eastward — approximately to the Drina River, more precisely to the administrative borders of the Orthodox states of Serbia and Montenegro on one side and the Roman Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other. The struggle against Catholic expansion continued. Small, freedom-loving Slavic states stood in its way, having defended their independence through long national liberation struggles against five centuries of Ottoman rule. Historical facts show that the prolonged struggle of the Serbian and Montenegrin people for their freedom was always supported by the Orthodox Church as much as it could. During the powerful national uprising of 1804-13, the Church openly sided with the insurgents. A hero of the uprising, Archpriest Mateja Nenadović, a close ally of Karađorđe, was not only his secretary, diplomat and chaplain for the troops but also, when needed, the commander of large detachments, often personally engaging in bloody hand-to-hand battles with the oppressors.
During the First World War, when small Serbia in 1914 rejected the ultimatum of the Catholic Habsburg Empire, the Serbian Orthodox Church once again stood by its freedom-loving people and provided whatever support it could. In 1939, the Vatican attempted to sow division within the Serbian Orthodox Church by pushing for the signing of the so-called “Concordat,” an agreement that granted significant concessions to Catholicism, similar to the Greek Catholic Uniate Church in Western Ukraine. Patriarch Varnava of Serbia appealed to the people, gained their widespread support and rejected the Vatican’s demands. The push for Catholic dominance was repelled, but Patriarch Varnava was poisoned as punishment for his defiance.
And during the Second World War from 1941 to 1945, Orthodox clergy were often found among the partisan detachments and in the National Liberation Movement. One such example was Priest Zečević, who joined the uprising and later participated in the highest bodies of the people’s power on the free territories established by the partisans. Another was Priest Ivan Nikolić, who took part in the uprising against the German occupiers and was an active participant in the resistance, for which he was captured and executed with a dagger by the Chetniks. Dozens of names could be cited of clergymen who, in those difficult times, sided with the people fighting for their freedom.
Of course, it must also be acknowledged that when the Orthodox Church became a state religion, it aligned itself with the ruling classes. However, these instances from peaceful times should not overshadow the historical truth that, in the difficult years of the fight for freedom, the Orthodox Church always stood by the people.
The Catholic Church, led by the Vatican, which controlled half the world, had dominated for centuries in all the great empires — from the Spanish and Portuguese empires with their innumerable colonies in the West, to the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the East. Naturally, it protected its own interests and served as a reliable support for the exploitative classes of these states. The historical conditions under which it existed and operated generally dictated its persistent, albeit not universal, reactionary nature.
If we examine its role in the Balkans, in Croatia, for instance, during the Middle Ages, it consistently sided with the “illustrious” ruling elites, primarily German and Hungarian magnates and feudal lords. Therefore, it is logical that while the non-state Orthodox Church supported the great revolutionary leader Karađorđe in his struggle for the freedom of the Serbian peasant masses, the wealthy Catholic clergy, with the blessing of the Vatican, captured and “crowned” another great son of the oppressed — Matija Gubec, leader of the Croatian peasantry in the 16th century fight for social and national liberation — with a white-hot iron crown.
There is no doubt that the Catholic Church also produced many brilliant minds and figures, such as Campanella, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Muntzer, Copernicus, Hus and the Croatian archbishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer. However, almost all of them faced persecution from the Vatican. Strossmayer, for instance, was systematically targeted for merely agreeing with and promoting the idea of the brotherhood of South Slavic peoples.
It is well known that Protestantism dethroned the Vatican as the primary voice and ideological pillar of the exploiting classes. In its struggle with Protestantism for influence, Catholicism changed its strategy in certain regions. In Latin and South America, for example, it often presented itself as the defender of the downtrodden and oppressed. But that is in distant South America. Here, closer to home, in the Balkans, in its battle against Orthodoxy, Catholicism knows no mercy.
In the mid-20th century, the Vatican, with zeal worthy of a better cause, welcomed the creation of a fascist state by Hitler in 1941 on the ruins of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, led by the Ustaše. With the Vatican’s blessing, the Ustaše carried out a genocide of the Orthodox Serbian population, who had lived on their ancestral lands in the Serbian Krajina, Bosnia, Slavonia and Herzegovina for centuries. In terms of savagery and brutality during the Second World War, this genocide can only be compared to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans.
An equally logical move by the Vatican during the Second World War was this: in February 1942, the small region of Srem in Vojvodina, which Hitler had handed over to the newly-established Ustaše state, was suddenly targeted for forced conversion to Catholicism. The population of Srem was entirely Orthodox. Friars and Ustaše thugs were brought in to inform the villagers of the decision. Naturally, the Serbian people, together with their Orthodox priests and under the leadership of the communists, rose in defiance and Srem became one of the strongholds of the National Liberation Movement.
So why, given this record of “contributions” in Yugoslavia under Tito, did the Catholic Church enjoy much greater freedom of action than Orthodoxy? To answer this question, we need to address one more issue.
There was one question that seemingly played no significant role for thirty postwar years but suddenly emerged at the forefront in the late 1980s and early 1990s — a question that became as sharp as a blade. This was the matter of the administrative borders of the six republics. After all, a Croat felt comfortable in Belgrade, Skopje and Ljubljana. A Serb lived peacefully in Slovenia, Bosnia, Osijek and Vukovar, among other places. The rallying cry of “brotherhood and unity” was fundamental during the war and in the first postwar years and appeared unshakable. However, upon closer examination of the administrative borders of the republics, an inquisitive expert in Yugoslav history and ethnography might raise several questions. For instance: Why was the Baranja region assigned to Croatia? Why doesn’t Dalmatia, which historically never belonged to Croatia, have even a degree of autonomy? Why do large regions such as the Serbian Krajina, Lika and parts of Slavonia, inhabited predominantly by Serbs, lack autonomy in Croatia, while Serbia itself has two large autonomous regions (Kosovo and Metohija, and Vojvodina) that hold rights similar to republics? Why was Serbia itself reduced, as under Ottoman rule, to the borders of the “Belgrade Pashalik”? Why is the famous Montenegrin fjord of Boka Kotorska blocked off by a Croatian strip of land? And why does the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, if it was established as an independent unit, have a laughably narrow access to the Adriatic Sea, just a few kilometres wide, while Croatia enjoys over a thousand kilometres of coastline?
Why was it that from 1948 onwards, the Cyrillic script was gradually pushed out of use under various pretexts, and even the famous Serbian plum brandies “Monastirka” and “Klekovača,” which had been written in Cyrillic for over eleven centuries, suddenly started using the Latin alphabet? For the patriarchal Serbian peasant, this was incomprehensible — a nonsensical and unthinkable change.
So why did Tito, despite the fundamental slogans of brotherhood and unity, quietly and without much noise, prioritize Croatia and trim Serbia? These are clear violations of principles, and under certain circumstances, they could come to light and turn against the author of these violations. The explanation lies in a purely subjective factor, which, unfortunately, often operates under the influence of personal interests. Being of Croat-Slovenian origin, and prioritizing his personal interests above all else, Tito — who personally decided the issues of administrative borders — feared that from Serbia, the largest republic in terms of population, fighting spirit, economic strength and its immense contribution to the National Liberation Movement, as well as the sacrifices it made on the altar of freedom, a new leader could easily emerge. This leader might be wiser, more capable and more visionary, thus posing a threat to Tito’s dominance. For this reason, it was necessary to undermine, diminish and constrain Serbia in various ways.
In pursuing this anti-Serbian policy, Tito seemed to conveniently forget the things he had said during the difficult days of November 1942. But what won’t one do to hold on to power and glorify their own greatness? Tito even resorted to an open form of Bonapartism, forcing the obedient parliament to enshrine in the country’s Constitution that he — Tito — was the lifetime President, and in the Charter of the League of Communists to declare that he — Tito — was the irreplaceable Chairman of the organization, which Tito claimed was communist (!?).
In this highly concentrated form, one can see the entire essence of Titoism and the so-called “democracy” of the system built with Western money. Tito’s cult of personality suited the Anglo-Americans and the Vatican as long as he served them faithfully. The absence of feedback mechanisms or controls within the system of state governance further contributed to the inflation of Tito’s cult of personality, as there were no checks or balances to restrain it.
Unfortunately, the cults of personality of leaders were also favoured by the elites of socialist states throughout the postwar period, and as is now clearly evident, they were one of the significant reasons behind the failures of systems of governance in socialist states. As is well known, to this day, there have been neither theoretical, scientifically substantiated developments nor serious practical measures fully eliminating this shameful phenomenon within the workers’ movement. This phenomenon turned the leaders of socialist states into obstacles to social development and contributed to the catastrophic collapse of the first workers’ and peasants’ state — the USSR — in 1991, as well as to a significant defeat of the communist movement of the working people worldwide. Undoubtedly, the genius of the proletarian revolution, V.I. Lenin, would have addressed this shortcoming in the development of the theory and practice of socialist governance with his characteristic scientific depth and clarity. However, as is known, the counter-revolution, unfortunately, did not miss its mark when it delivered its blows to Vladimir Ilyich, inflicting a severe setback on both the necessary theoretical advancements and the establishment of true people’s governance under socialism.
Today, this issue has emerged as a pressing challenge that must be resolved by the leading figures of the workers’ movement in the near future. As the reality of the late 20th century demonstrates, without resolving these issues and bringing them to the awareness of the working masses, there can be no serious consolidation of the forces of the workers’ and communist movement or its progress toward future victories.
(Republished from “Six Aggressions of the West Against the South Slavs in the 20th Century” with permission from Sava Press)