by Adam LeBor
In mid-June 1987 Milosevic set up a meeting of the Yugoslav party leadership to discuss Kosovo. Milosevic and his allies believed that Serbia should be a unified republic, and the autonomy of both Kosovo and Voivodina cancelled. Bosko Krunic was a political leader from Serbia’s northern province of Voivodina.
My first impression of Milosevic was of an ambitious, bold man. He was very straightforward about the autonomy of Voivodina. He opposed it. Even when we met informally, from the beginning our relationship was very cold. Both Stambolic and Milosevic wanted to cut down on this autonomy. Stambolic wanted to do it together with the other republics, Milosevic was strictly against any autonomy.24
With the aid of Miroslav Solevic, three thousand Serbs made the journey from Kosovo to Belgrade. The angry crowd assembled just across from the federal parliament. Such demonstrations were not an everyday event in Communist Yugoslavia, but with the support of Milosevic, Serbian party chief, such events could be arranged. This time Solevic and his ‘lads’ hurled only abuse and invective, not rocks. For now, that was sufficient for Milosevic’s purposes. The Kosovo Serbs demanded the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy, humiliating the federal Yugoslav leadership. Ivica Racan, a Croatian political leader, entered discussions that lasted for several hours, before the Kosovo Serbs eventually went home.
This episode was more than a display of anger by aggrieved Serbs. It highlighted the waning power of the federal authorities, who could no longer even keep proper order on the streets of the capital. It demonstrated that the normal political channels could be circumvented by physical force, or at least its threat. And it showed that when the nationalist mob howled, instead of dispersing it by force the authorities would instead listen and negotiate.
Milosevic’s summer of plotting ended on 3 September 1987, when an Albanian army recruit called Aziz Keljmendi ran amok, shooting four soldiers dead and wounding six more. His victims included Muslims, a Slovene and a Croat, as well as one Serb, almost a microcosm of Yugoslavia, and its multi-ethnic army. Although army doctors ruled that Keljmendi had been mentally ill when he went berserk, the Serb media seized on the event, portraying Keljmendi’s rampage as politically motivated. Zivorad Minovic, editor in chief of Politika, and a key Milosevic ally, knew what to do. Politika reported: ‘Mindless rounds of the murderer Keljmendi, who, everything indicates, did not pull the trigger alone, will not and cannot shake our trust in our army.’25 In one sentence are packed three messages: that Keljmendi killed his fellow soldiers on purpose; that he was part of an Albanian plot, and only the Yugoslav army could prevent future killings by Albanians. The Yugoslav army was being co-opted onto the cause of Serbian nationalism.
Thousands attended the funeral of the one Serb soldier killed in the rampage. Shouting nationalist slogans, they created such a furore that the dead boy’s father demanded some dignity and respect for his son as he was being buried. In Belgrade Ivan Stambolic and Dragisa Pavlovic moved to stop the increasing hatred and xenophobia. Pavlovic, a sophisticated thinker, understood that a showdown was inevitable. Just over a week later, on 11 September, he chaired a conference for senior media editors to try and calm the situation. He delivered a sober assessment of the situation in Kosovo, recognising that Serb nationalism was growing, and that Serbs were feeling increasingly beleaguered. He correctly recognised that the situation had deteriorated into a perilous zero-sum game. Any statement against Serb nationalism was immediately seen as support for its Albanian equivalent. Ill-considered words in public life, or in a newspaper, could lead to an explosion, he said:
How many Albanian shop windows must be broken to convince us that anti-Albanian feeling does not exist only in the warnings issued in the highest [party] organs but in our streets as well . . . Serbian nationalism now feeds not only on the situation in Kosovo, but also on the various ill-considered statements concerning Kosovo that appear in some of our media, public speeches and institutions of our system . . . We must criticise Serbian nationalism today because, among other things, Serbian nationalists imagine themselves as saviours of the Serbian cause in Kosovo, without in fact being able to solve a single social problem, and especially without being able to improve inter-nationality events.26
The speech was a reasoned, well-judged and prescient analysis. It was also a powerful, barely-disguised attack on the Milosevic camp, and was seen by Milosevic and his supporters as a declaration of political war.
8
Et Tu, Slobodan
Ousting Stambolic
August–September 1987
When somebody looks at your back for twenty-five years, it is understandable that he gets the desire to put a knife in it at some point.
Ivan Stambolic.1
As soon as Pavlovic’s meeting with the editors was over, Dusan Mitevic went to see Milosevic. He was sprawled in an armchair, with his tie off and his feet up, watching a report on television. Pavlovic, said the reporter, had attacked a ‘certain comrade’ who ‘made an anti-communist speech’ which ‘pretended to offer a solution to the Kosovo problem’. Everyone knew who he meant. But perhaps it was best this way. The battle lines had been drawn. On top of this, there was a personal grudge as well. When Milosevic had vacated the post of Belgrade party chief Ivan Stambolic had refused to allow Milosevic’s candidate to take over, and had instead chosen Pavlovic. That had been over a year earlier, but Milosevic had not forgotten. All of these were more than enough ingredients to trigger a political war within the Serbian Communist Party.
Even so, it was Friday and nothing could be allowed to interrupt the cult of Pozarevac. The neighbours were waiting with their basket of stuffed peppers. Milosevic and Mira were packed and ready to go. He told Mitevic, ‘OK, now I am leaving, and on Monday we are going to consider what to do.’2 In the event, Milosevic did not wait until Monday. He telephoned Mitevic the next day. Mira had written an article that portrayed the dispute between Pavlovic and Milosevic as a political struggle waged by defenders of Serbian interests against those who would sacrifice them. Milosevic’s ally Zivorad Minovic agreed to print the article in Politika. The problem was, nobody wanted to sign the piece. The Serbian party chief could not defend himself in print in such a manner, and nor could his wife. It would look demeaning. Dragoljub Milanovic, a sycophantic hack who walked around the Politika newsroom with a pistol in his belt, agreed to put his name to the piece.
When the article was published, all of Yugoslavia understood what was happening. The battle between the two factions began in earnest. Ostensibly it was about Kosovo. One side was led by Ivan Stambolic and Dragisa Pavlovic, who sought some kind of consensus, to be achieved through slow and patient negotiations with Albanian leaders. The Milosevic faction, in contrast, demanded rapid and dynamic action. But this was not the real issue. The Milosevic camp had their eye on a much bigger prize. They planned to bring down the whole partisan generation and the Tito-era figures who still ran Yugoslavia. Their method was the expedient exploitation of nationalism, populism and mob dynamics. At that time their objective was ‘merely’ winning domestic political power. But this cold and cynical decision ultimately helped set in motion a chain of events that led to four wars.
If Dusan Mitevic saw himself as a Balkan Machiavelli, Milosevic’s other key ally at this time was more of a Serbian pitbull. A former manager of the Zastava car factory, Borisav Jovic was a senior party official: the archetypal Communist apparatchik who has tasted power in a one-party state and will resort to almost anything to keep it. Short and aggressive, he modelled his political style – quick, decisive, confrontational – on his master’s and shared his taste for double-breasted suits. When Milosevic consulted Jovic about how to deal with Pavlovic, the answer was swift. ‘I was categorical. That man must be expelled from the party. He [Milosevic] liked the idea, but he wasn’t sure we could pull it off. This amounted to going for the President [Stambolic] himself.’3 The split between the Milosevic and Pavlovic/Stambolic factions was symptomatic of the strains – political, economic and nationalist
– now beginning to wrench apart the fragile Yugoslav state.
The Eighth Session of the Serbian Communist Party central committee, scheduled for 22 September, would be a major battleground. The usual preparatory political skirmishes were being fought. In party and government buildings apparatchiks huddled in smoke-wreathed cabals as they plotted their futures. It was increasingly clear to Pavlovic that he lacked the necessary forces to outmanoeuvre Milosevic at the session, so he decided to rebase on his own territory. He called a meeting of the Belgrade party and told those attending that Stambolic had written him a letter which declared that if Pavlovic was called to speak at the Eighth Session, Stambolic should be left to deal with the matter.
This was a blunder. Firstly, in Yugoslav politics to put things in writing was generally a mistake.4 Secondly, Stambolic was the President of the Serbian republic, and the forthcoming Eighth Session was a meeting of the Serbian Communist Party central committee, not the Serbian government. The party was subordinate to the state, but like all political organisations, the Yugoslav Communist parties zealously guarded their territory from incursions, whether from the republic governments or federal institutions. Like British members of parliament who are perpetually dragooned into the voting lobbies by party whips, every now and again they rebelled against authority.
Ivan Stambolic’s letter was not well received by Dusan Mitevic and other members of the Belgrade party committee: ‘The letter said Stambolic was not expecting any discussion about Pavlovic, and the message was that we should shut up. This was unprecedented. I said immediately that I would do what I felt, that as a Communist I would not submit to this pressure.’ Mitevic scented political blood. ‘I also understood that they were losing. This letter was the proof. The president should never pressurise the party.’ Nonetheless, at that meeting, the Belgrade party leadership did vote to support Pavlovic.
Milosevic then upped the stakes. On 18 September the presidency of the Serbian party met. There Stambolic tried to broker a deal between his two protégés. A reasonable and decent man, he repeatedly called for compromise and negotiation to defuse the political tension. He suggested that they meet for coffee every day. Or maybe even lemonade. Stambolic’s touching suggestion showed how much the old-style compromiser was out of his depth. The time was long past for coffee or lemonade. Pavlovic was accused of impeding ‘ideological unity’ by the Milosevic camp. This was a catch-all phrase which essentially meant whatever the accuser wanted.
Still, Milosevic needed something more than this. He was wobbling. Mira telephoned him, to discuss how the meeting was progressing. She told her husband that there was no going back, he was too exposed. She was right. If Milosevic blew this, there would be no second chance. Dusan Mitevic went into action. He drafted a letter saying that he and four other members of the Belgrade party committee had been pressurised by Ivan Stambolic into supporting Dragisa Pavlovic.
The next morning, Milosevic, like Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich, held in his hand a piece of paper. His face was thunderous as he took the podium. ‘I thought the Russians had invaded, or the Third World War had begun,’ recalled Stambolic. Milosevic spoke as though he had just read the letter for the first time.
Comrades, I have hesitated for the last hour or two. We have received a letter. First I asked for it to be checked as authentic, that there wasn’t some mistake. Then I doubted whether one could actually read out this letter at the Presidency itself . . .5
With the full attention of the four-dozen odd people at the meeting, Milosevic backtracked slightly. A little humility was in order before the final act in this brutal piece of political theatre. ‘Maybe I will be making a mistake . . .’
By reading out the letter, Milosevic was arguing he had evidence that Stambolic was engaged in personal intrigues against the best interests of the party. Of course intrigue and plots were the lifeblood of the Serbian Communist Party, like every other political organisation. Milosevic seized the moment, and called for a vote to recommend the expulsion of Pavlovic. But only eleven out of twenty supported Milosevic. Five voted against, and four abstained. It was not a decisive enough victory over the Stambolic group. None the less Milosevic could not resist some parting words to his former friend: ‘I sincerely hope, I believe it firmly, that Comrade Stambolic was manipulated and not guilty.’
Mitevic said that his letter was influential in saving Milosevic that day. ‘The Central Committee was split . . . Stambolic’s biggest problem was that he had not said he had written his first letter to us, so people got angry with him for acting behind the scenes. Even people who were against Milosevic said that they did not know this kind of thing was going on.’
Shortly before the actual Eighth Session was due to begin, a curious buzzing sound filled Milosevic’s office. ‘Milosevic hums to himself when he prepares for political battle. He paces up and down, alone, and hums like a guru or dervish,’ said Mihailo Crnobrnja. But not all the guru’s associates were happy with his new nationalist doctrine and the attack on Pavlovic. Crnobrnja had not taken part in Milosevic’s attempt in 1986 to block Pavlovic’s succession to his post as head of the Belgrade Communist Party. ‘In a sense he let me off the hook then. He did not ask me to support him, because that would have put me in a very difficult position. He did not talk to me about nationalism because he knew I did not agree with it. I liked Pavlovic very much and he was a good friend of mine. On the other hand, the message was that I should not make a show of defiance.’6
The opening day of the Eighth Session, 22 September, would prove to be a pivotal event in Yugoslav history. The meeting was supposedly about economics, but that was merely a pretext for the political assassination of Pavlovic, and, by extension, of Stambolic. Dusan Mitevic prepared to broadcast the events on live television. Thirty years earlier Tito had exploited the radio for live broadcasts of the party meeting that considered the fate of the dissident writer Milovan Djilas. Now Milosevic was learning the power of having the broadcast media under his control. He could speak directly to the nation, and reach straight into the homes of the Serbs.
Milosevic was playing for high stakes. Once he went public with the new, ‘nationalist’ line – even if voiced in Titoist language – there would be no going back. If Milosevic triumphed it would be the end of the ancien régime. But if he and his group failed, Stambolic and his allies would have no option but to crush them politically. Milosevic’s career would certainly be over, and if he went down, all his allies would follow. They might even be sent to prison on some or other charge. In a Communist state such things are easily arranged.
When the session opened Milosevic immediately attacked. He heaped praise on Tito as a leader who had brought unity to Yugoslavia, then accused Pavlovic of being against Tito and Yugoslavia. The charge was absurd. Pavlovic had for weeks tried to maintain brotherhood and unity between Serbs and Albanians, and calm the very nationalist hysteria that Milosevic was fostering. But there was no place for logic. In the Alice in Wonderland world of Serbian Communism, anti-logic ruled. For this was a show trial, part of a tradition that stretched back to Stalinist Russia and the Spanish Inquisition. The grand inquisitor might be Milosevic in Belgrade, Vishinsky in Moscow, or Torquemada in Spain, but the ritual was identical: some or other arbitrary standard was set, theological or ideological, which the accused could never meet. Pavlovic could just as well have been charged with secretly reading the Torah in Catholic Granada, thought-crime against Stalin, or stealing chocolate from Serbian schoolchildren.
The dry words of party rhetoric spoken by Milosevic were long drained of any meaning. He proclaimed: ‘We expected trouble from the Kosovo separatists. But we didn’t expect it from party members here. Those who obstruct our reforms violate party discipline. They can’t deny it.’7 Stambolic proved to be a tough opponent. He attacked Milosevic for calling for party unity, while actually fostering dissent. Milosevic, he said, should try and avoid conflict. The country watched transfixed as the battle played out on its televi
sion screens.
The small minority of liberals at the session were not taken in. They were outnumbered, but they could still speak, for the historical record, if nothing else. A young historian called Ljubinka Trgovcevic accused Milosevic of ‘using methods which were abandoned long ago’.8Milosevic canvassed every possible vote at the Eighth Session, including the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Azem Vllasi. ‘Milosevic said, “Azem, get me the Kosovo delegation’s votes. Help me out on this one.” I said, no way!’9 Vllasi’s refusal sparked a tirade of abuse from Milosevic, who was not used to being thwarted. Milosevic called him a ‘cunt’. Vllasi retorted that Milosevic was ‘a liar and a cheat’. Some delegates carried two speeches in their pockets, depending on how the vote went, recalled Trgovcevic. ‘The atmosphere was terrible. People were standing and biting their nails. Everyone turned greyer and greyer.’
Pre-arranged telegrams of support poured in from provincial leaders, and from the Kosovo Serbs. The Milosevic bandwagon was now unstoppable. Milosevic himself stuck to Orwellian double-speak. It was not acceptable, he said, for the leaders of the Serbian Communist Party to be threatened with accusations of nationalism.
Serbian nationalists would do the greatest harm to the Serbian people today by what they offer as being allegedly the best thing, namely isolating the Serbian people . . . No one can label us Serbian nationalists because we want to, and really will, resolve the problem of Kosovo in the interests of all the people who live there.
