Milosevic (16 page)

If Milosevic was losing old friends, he soon gained new ones. His speech in Kosovo found an appreciative echo in an unusual constituency. A week after his visit to Kosovo Polje, a poem appeared in the cultural magazine
Knjizevne Novine
.

But a handsome young speaker arrived
the setting sun falling on his brushed hair
I will speak with my people in open spaces, he says,
in schoolyards and in fields
¹⁸

For liberals such as Zivorad Kovacevic, this sudden outbreak of mutual admiration between nationalists and a Communist official was both curious and significant. ‘Milosevic immediately gained the support of the Serbian intellectual and nationalist elite. They thought that after the famous Kosovo episode that Milosevic was their man. The idea of course was that they would use him. But he used them.'
¹⁹

Now began a delicate wooing. During the summer of 1987 Milosevic deployed all his powers of political seduction to his different constituencies. The nationalists were simple, especially after Dusan Mitevic went to work at Belgrade Television. Film of Milosevic proclaiming, ‘No one should dare to beat you again' was broadcast repeatedly. It
was a well-turned phrase, with some factual basis. More problematic was the way in which Milosevic's promise was exploited. Milan Kucan remembered: ‘The fateful words by Milosevic, when he justifiably reacted to the Albanian policemen beating the Serbs in Kosovo, are well known. He said: “No one will beat you again,” “you” being Serbs. He did not say, no one will ever beat anyone again in Kosovo. He said the Serbs will never be beaten again.'
²⁰

But Milosevic faced strengthening opposition among Stambolic and his associates, who still exerted considerable power and influence. It was still too early to move against them openly. Milosevic bought time to prepare his campaign, and in public still spoke the language of Titoism, stressing his commitment to Yugoslavia. He visited the interior minister to assure him that he had not meant to denigrate the police in Kosovo by his rhetoric. ‘Milosevic was afraid of the reaction of the Communist apparat when he came back from Kosovo Polje. In one party meeting, he even said that Serb nationalism was dangerous,' said Tahir Hasanovic.
²¹
In June 1987 Milosevic delivered the following analysis of the Memorandum to a select audience of party officials:

The appearance of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences represents nothing else but the darkest nationalism. It means the liquidation of the current socialist system of our country, that is the disintegration after which there is no survival for any nation or nationality . . . Tito's policy of brotherhood and unity . . . is the only basis on which Yugoslavia's survival can be secured.
²²

All this left Stambolic with a serious problem. Attempting to reconcile the demands of both Serbian nationalism and Titoist Communism, he ended up satisfying no one. Although he was essentially a man of good will, a pragmatist ready to negotiate, he was a prisoner of his upbringing in a one-party state. The nationalists believed that, unlike Milosevic, he was not a strong enough defender of Serbian interests in Kosovo. The Communists – especially among the military – believed he was not a strong enough defender of Yugoslavia. The next logical step would be for Stambolic and others in the leadership to move towards liberalisation, as Gorbachev was doing in Moscow.

But Stambolic could not make the political leap of faith, said Milos Vasic.

He was aware of the crisis in Kosovo and the growth and revival of
Serb nationalism. Stambolic tried to negotiate with them. But this was an inevitable shortcoming of the Communist way of thinking, and the Communist apparatus. They could not conceptualise a political alternative to nationalism. They saw that the whole structure of Communism was falling apart world-wide. But by definition they could not support liberal democracy. It was unthinkable for them.
²³

Milosevic had grasped something more than the power of nationalism on his visit to Kosovo. He witnessed at first hand the power of the mob. He had been seduced by the mercurial ferocity of the crowd, its easy menace and hair-trigger potential for violence. Milosevic himself was a somewhat wooden speaker, who lacked the charisma of Tito. But he was an able student of mob dynamics, who could, through simple and repetitive language, voice the grievances of the Serbian masses, and manipulate them for his own ends.

Like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Milosevic understood that whoever controls the streets will ultimately control the government. Especially at a time of transition, when control is slipping away from the ancien régime – whether Germany's Weimar Republic or Tito's Yugoslavia – and the old instruments and symbols of authority are losing their power. Still, he had to be careful. Milosevic did not want to make a revolution and smash Tito's Yugoslavia. He wanted to co-opt the existing power structures – of state, party and army – for Serbia. So the power of the mob had to be deployed quite carefully. State power – especially Yugoslav, federal power – had to be steadily transferred to the Serbian Republic. To do that the Yugoslav leadership and its political prestige had to be weakened.

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.

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.