("Memorandum SANU" as published in Nase teme, Zagreb, 33:1-2 (1989), 147-63, passim. Translated by Dennison Rusinow and Aleksandar and Sarah Nikolic. The first part of the Memorandum (pp. 128-47), omitted here, discusses "the crisis of the Yugoslav economy and society" in terms widely accepted throughout Yugoslavia by 1986. the more "Serbo-centric" portions of that first part are generally repeated in the second sections translated here.)
The Situation of Serbia and the Serb Nation
6. Many of the misfortunes suffered by the Serb nation originate in circumstances that are common to all the Yugoslav nations. However, other calamities also burden the Serb nation. The long-term lagging behind of the economy of Serbia, undefined state and legal relations with Yugoslavia and the provinces [Kosovo and Vojvodina], and also genocide in Kosovo have appeared on the political scene with a combined force that has created a tense if not explosive situation. The crucial nature of these three tortured questions, which derive from a long-term policy toward Serbia, threaten not only the Serb nation but also the stability of Yugoslavia as a whole. They must therefore be given central attention.
Extensive knowledge and data are not required to confirm the longstanding lagging-behind of the Serbian economy.... Throughout the postwar period the Serbian economy suffered from lopsided terms of trade. A primary example is the low price for electrical energy, which is supplied in large quantities to other republics. Economic instruments and measurs taken in credit, monetary policies, and especially the contribution to the federal fund for the economic development of inadequately developed regions, have lately been the most important factors in its relatively slow growth. Along with the fact that the most developed republics, because of Serbia's lack of capital, have penetraated its economy (agriculture, the food-processing industry, commerce, and banking) with their capital, the picture is one of a subordinated and neglected economy within Yugoslavia.
Consistent discrimination against the Serbian economy in the postwar period cannot be fully explained without taking into consideration the nature of inter-nationality relations during the interwar period as these were seen and evaluated by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The decisive influence in shaping these views was the authoritative Comintern, which in its efforts to achieve its strategic and tactical international goals sought the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Finding its ideological justification in the opposition between a Serb "oppressor" nation and other "oppressed" peoples, this policy is a drastic example of the retreat of Marxist teaching about every nation's class divisions in the face of political pragmatism, which pushed classic internationalism into the background in an effort to exploit international tensions. That at least partly explains why the CPY [League of Yugoslav Communists] did not attempt to arrive at the real truth about the economic nature of internationality relations by means of its own investigation. Its view of these relations, reduced to the conclusion that the political hegemony of the Serbian bourgeoisie was accompanied by corresponding Serbian economic domination, was in fact taken over from bourgeois parties with separatist orientations ....
Postwar policy toward the Serbian economy, very clearly described in commentaries on the first Five Year Plan, was based on this prewar judgment. In that plan Serbia was unjustifiably assigned the slowest tempo of industrialization, after Slovenia. In practice, that policy began with the transfer to other republics of industries for the production of aircraft, trucks, and armaments, and continued with compulsory purchase [of agricultural products from peasants] at price scissors to the disadvantage of raw matrials and agricultural products; per capita investment lower than the Yugoslav average; and [Serbian] contributions to the development of underdeveloped regions. Nothing more clearly indicates the subordinate position of Serbia than the fact that it did not take the initiative in a single crucial question concerning the political and economic system. The position of Serbia can therefore appropriately be examined in the context of the political and economic domination of Slovenia and Croatia, which proposed all changes in the systems until now.
Slovenia and Croatia started at the highest level of development and enjoyed the fastest growth. With the improvement of their relative positions, the gulf between them and the other parts of Yugoslavia drastically deepened. Such a process, which deviated from the proclaimed policy of equal development, would not have been possible if the economic system had not been biased, if those two republics had not been in a position to impose solutions that corresponded to their economic interests. Processing industries, relatively more imortant in their economic structures, enjoyed more advantageous conditions, especially in terms of price ratios but also in tariff protection, throughout the postwar period. Greater emphasis on the market in the 1960s was more beneficial to developed regions. Suspension of the 1961-65 Five Year Plan, which gave priority to developing the production of raw materials and energy, can be interpreted as an evasion by the republics to invest in less developed regions that are relatively rich in raw materials. From that time development in Yugoslavia was based more on the composition of production of the two developed republics than that of the rest of the country. The labor force therefore did not receive adequate attention in the orientation of development, from which Serbia and underdeveloped regions suffered.
The economic subordination of Serbia cannot be fully understood without its politically inferior position, which also determined all relations. For the CPY the economic hegemony of the Serbian nation between the wars was not disputable, although the industrialization of Serbia was slower than the Yugoslav average. Thinking and behavior with a dominant influence on later political events and inter-nationality relations were formed on the basis of that ideological platform. Slovenes and Croats created their national Communist parties before the war and achieved decisive influence in the CC [Central Committee] of the CPY. Their political leaders became the arbiters of all political questions during and after the war. These two neighboring republics shared a similar history, had the same religion and desire for ever-greater independence, and as the most developed had common economic interests, all of which supplied sufficient reason for a permanent coalition in an attempt to realize political domination. This coalition was solidified by the long lasting co-operation of Tito and Kardelj [respectively, a Croat and a Slovene], the two most prominent personalities of post-war Yugoslavia, who enjoyed unlimited authority in centers of power. A cadre monopoly allowed them essential influence over the composition of the political apex of Yugoslavia and all the republics and provinces. The exceptionally great contribution of Edvard Kardelj in preparing and carrying out the decisioins of AVNOJ and of all post-war constitutions is well known to all. He was in a position to build his personal views, which could not realistically be opposed, into the foundation of the social order. The determination with which Slovenia and Croatia today oppose any constitutional change shows how much the Constitution of 1974 suits them. Views concerning the social order had no chance of being accepted if they were different from the conceptions of [those] two political authorities, and it was not possible to do anything even after their deaths, given that the Constitution insured against any such change by granting the possibility of a veto. In view of all of this, it is indisputable that Slovenia and Croatia established a oplitical and economic domination through which to realize their national programs and economic aspirations.
In such circumstances and subject to continuous accusations that it is an "oppressive," "unitaristic," "centralistic," and "gendarme" nation, the Serb nation could not achieve equality in Yugoslavia, for whose creation it had made the greatest sacrifices. A policy of revenge against the Serbs began even before the war, in the view that a Communist party need not be given to an "oppressor" nation. Serbs were relatively under-represented on the CC CPY, and some of them, probably so that they could stay there, declared themselves as members of other nations. During the war, Serbia was not in a position to participate in full equality in adopting decisions which prejudiced future inter-nationality relations and Yugoslavia's social order. The Anit-Fascist Council of Serbia was founded in the second half of 1944, later than in the other republics, and the Communist Party of Serbia only after the end of the war. Delegates to the Second AVNOJ Congress were elected from Serb military units and members of the Supreme Command who happened to be on the territory of Bosnia and Hercegovina, in contrast to delegates of some other republics, who came to the meeting from their territories and who had behind them national political organization with developed positions and programs.
These historic facts demonstrate that during the war Serbia was not formally, and certainly not actually, in an equal position when decisions of long-term significance for the future state order were adopted. That does not mean that Serbs would not have voluntarily decided in favor of federalism as the most suitable order for a multi-national community, but only to note that they found themselves in the situation of accepting - in war conditions and without proper preparation and the support of their own political organizations - solutions which created wide possibilities for their fragmentation. The position of the Serbs should have been considered and regulated from the standpoint of their national integrity and undisturbed cultural development and in good time, and not that this exceptional question, which concerns the vital interests of the Serb nation, should remain open ....
[Note: Five paragraphs on the "capitulation" of postwar Serbian Communist leaders in the face of this situation that follow here are omitted. - Ed.]
7. The attitude toward the economic lagging behind of Serbia demonstrates that a revanchist policy toward her did not weaken over time. On the contrary, nourished by its own success, it became ever stronger until it finally expressed itself also in genocide. It is a politically unacceptable discrimination that citizens of Serbia, because of equal representation by the republics, have less access than others to positions as federal functionaries and delegates to the federal parliament, and that the votes of voters from Serbia are worth less than those of any other republic or province. In this light Yugoslavia does not appear as a community of equal citizens or equal nations and nationalities, but as a community fo eight equal territories. However, even this equality does not hold for Serbia because of its special legal-political situation, which supports a tendency to keep the Serb nation under constant control. The dominant idea of such a policy has been "a weak Serbia, a strong Yugoslavia," advanced under the influence of the view that if the Serbs, as the most numerous nation, were permitted rapid economic development, that would represent a danger for the other nations. From this stems the exploitation of every possibility to limit its economic development and political consolidation in ever greater measure. One of these very acute limitations is the present constitutional position of Serbia, which is undefined and full of internal contradictions.
Serbia is in fact divided in three parts by the Constitution of 1974. The autonomous provinces are equivalent to republics in everything except that they are not defined as states and do not have the same number of representatives in some federal organs. They compensate for this deficiency through their ability to intervene in the internal affairs of Narrow Serbia [i.e., Serbia without the two autonomous provinces] through a common republican parliament, while their own parliaments are totally autonomous. The political-legal situation of Narrow Serbia is completely undefined, it is neither a republic nor a province. Relations in the Serbian republic are confused. The Executive Council [Government], which is an organ of the Republican Parliament, is in reality the Executive Council of Narrow Serbia. That is not the only illogicality and restriction of competence. The excessively wide and institutionally firmly anchored autonomy of the provinces creates two new cleavages in the Serb people. The truth is that autonomous and separatist forces insisted on a widening of autonomy, but this would have been difficult to realize if they hd not received moral and political support from republics in which sepratist tendencies hae never disappeared.
Enlarged autonomy was justified by assurances that it would lead to greater equality among the nations and better performance of public functions. Events in Kosovo at the end of the 1960s were a warning of all that could happen if autonomy were enlarged. There was absolutely no reason for greater autonomy of Vojvodina. Its enlargement gave a powerful support to bureaucratic autonomist tendencies, to serious expressions of a separatism that had never previously existed, to closing of the economy, to political voluntarism. The influence grew of those outside the province and in Vojvodina who sought, by spreading disinformation, to divide the Serb people into "Serbians" and "precani Serbs." With the enthusiastic help of others, the provinces became "a constitutive element of the federation," which gave them inducement to feel and behave like federal units, ignoring the fact that they are a component part of the Republic of Serbia ....
Relations between Serbia and the provinces are not only and not primarily a matter of formalistic-legal interpretation of two constitutions. It is primarily a question of the Serb nation and its state. A nation which after a long and bloody battle again achieved its own state, which itself opted also for bourgeois democracy, and which in the lst two wars lost 2.5 million co-nationals, has had the experience of an arbitrarily constituted party commission established that, after four decades in the new Yugoslavia, is the one that does not have its state. A worse historical defeat in peace cannot be imagined.
8. The exile of the Serbian people from Kosovo is a spectacular testament to its historic defeat. In the spring of 1981, the Serbian people received a declaration of a special but also open and total war, which had been prepared during different periods of administrative, political and judicial-state changes. This war was waged with the skillful application of various methods and tacics, with not only passive but very active and not so tacit support from various political centers in the country. This support was even more fatal than that coming from neighboring countries. This unconcealed war, which we have yet to face clearly or call by its true name, has been going on for almost five years. It has thus lasted much longer than this country's entire war of liberation - from April 6, 1941, to May 1945. The rebellion of the Balisti in Kosovo and Metohija at the very end of the war, begun with the help of Nazi units, was militarily crushed between 1944 and 1945, but it was not politically beaten. Its present form, disguised in a new context, has been developing more successfully and has been approaching a victorious outcome. Therefore a true reckoning with neofascist aggression never occurred. All measures taken to date have only hidden it from view, and in fact have strengthened its irrevocable goals, which are motivated by racism and which must be achieved by all means regardless of cost. Even the intentionally drastic sentences given to young offenders were pronounced in order to provoke and deepen inter-ethnic hatred.
The five-year Albanian war in Kosovo has convinced its organizers and supporters that they are even stronger than they thought, that in the various power centers of the country they enjoy immensely greater support than the support the Kosovo Serbs have from the Republic of Serbia or than Serbia itself has from the rest of the country. Their aggression has been encouraged to such an extent that even the highest officials of the province as well as its scientists have become not only arrogant, but also cynical, when they proclaim slanders to be truths and blackmail to be their inalienable right. The organized political powers of our country, who carried out the revolution under almost impossible conditions, fighting the most powerful enemy of our century, suddenly appear to be not only inefficient and unfree, but almost uninterested in responding to this unconcealed war in the only possible way: by a determined defense of their people and their territory. Once the aggression is defeated, political reckonings cannot be carried out through more arrests, "differentiations," or false oaths of loyalty, but must be carried out through true revolutionary strife, open confrontations, freedom of expression, and even the voicing of opposing opinions.
The physical, political, legal and cultural genocide of the Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohija is the worst defeat in the serbian-led battles of liberation from Orasac in 1804 to the 1941 uprising. Responsibility for this defeat falls primarily on the Comintern heritage present in the policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the loyalty of the Serbian communists to this policy, to the extremely costly ideological and political delusions, ignorance, immaturity, or already incorrigible opportunism of the generation of Serbian politicians who arose after the war, who are always defensive and always care more about what other people think of them and their timid "postings" of Serbia's status than about the objective facts which determine the future of the people they govern.
Egalitarian national relations, for which Serbian soldiers in Kosovo and Metohija fought more than anybody else, have been turned upside down - through a very clearly defined policy carried out "developmentally," with planned steps and with a clear goal - by Albanian nationalists in the political leadership of Kosovo. The autonomous region, in a convenient moment, obtained the status of an autonomous province, and thereafter the status of a "constitutional part of the federation" - with greater prerogatives than the rest of the republic to which it only formally belonged. This next step in the "escalaton," which appeared together with the Albanization of Kosovo and Metohija, had therefore been prepared in a very legal manner. In the same way, the unification of the literary language, national name, flag and schoolbooks - according to instructions from Tirana - was completely open as well as was the border itself between the two state territories (Albania and Yugoslavia). Conspiracies, which are usually organized secretly, were created in Kosovo not only in an obvious manner but with arrogance. That is why the poular unrest of 1981 appeared to many more like an act of consummation than like a new phenomenon that could be dangerous to the whole country, just as later every bit of truth about the exile of the Serbs from Kosovo was considered "digging through the Albanians' guts." That is why the writings of the Belgrade press were considered a greater offense than the arsons, murders, rapes and sacrileges that actually took place - many of which to this day remain politically and judicially unidentified ....
The Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija have not only their past, personified in precious cultural-historic monuments, but also living spiritual, cultural and moral values: they hae the motherland of their historic existence. The violence which has, over the centuries, thinned out the Serbian poulation in Kosovo and Metohija is - in this our time - entering its relentless endgame. The emigration of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija in socialist Yugoslavia exceeds in numbers and in character all former phases of this great exile of the Serbian people. Jovan Cvijic in his time estimated that in all migrations, beginning with the great one under Arsenije Crnojevic in 1690 to the first years of our century, more than 500,000 Serbs had been exiled; of that number between 1876 and 1912 about 150,000 Serbs had to leave their hearths under the ruthless terror of the local and privileged Albanian "basibazuks" [local confederates of the Ottomans]. In the course of the last war, over 60,000 Serbian colonists and natives were exiled, but after the war this wave of emigration really reached its crest: in the last 20 or so years, 200,000 Serbs left Kosovo and Metohija. The remaining Serbian people are not only leaving their land at an undiminished pace, but, being persecuted by oppression and physical, moral and psychological terror, they are preparing for their final exodus, according to all sources of information. In less than the next ten years, if the situation does not change considerably, there will no longer be any Serbs in Kosovo, and an "ethnically clean" Kosovo - that unequivocally expressed goal of the "Greater-Albanian" racists established in the programs and actions of the "Prizren League" as early as 1878-1881 - will be completely fulfilled.
The petition of 2016 Serbs from Kosovo Polje, submitted to the Federal Assembly and other political institutions in the country, is the lawful consequence of the above-described state of affairs. There are no formal assessments that can dispute the right of the Serbian people to defend itself from violence and destruction by all legal means. If it cannot exercise this protection in the Province, the people can and must look for protection in the Republic and the Federation. The visit of the citizens of the Province to the Federal Assembly is an expression of civil consciousness about this right. Only an autonomous-separatist and chauvinist viewpoint could judge the actions undertaken by the citizens as unacceptable and hostile.
The destiny of today's Kosovo is no longer "complex," nor can it still be reduced to empty self-assessments, evasions, illegible resolutions, and overgneeralized platforms - it is simply a question of Yugoslav consequences. Between provincial segregation, which is becoming more and more exclusive, and federal arbitration, which only paralyzes every correct and often also unpostponable measure, the interplay of unresolved situations becomes a closed circle of the unresolvable. If this question is not resolved through the only just outcome of the imposed war; if true security and unequivocable equality for all peoples who live in Kosovo and Metohija are not established; if objective and lasting conditions for the return of the exiled people are not created, then that part of the Republic of Serbia and of Yugoslavia will bcome a European question as well with very serious, unpredictable consequences. Kosovo represents one of the most important points in the inner Balkans. Ethnic variety on many Balkan territories is congruent with the ethnic profile of the whole Balkan peninsula. Therefore, the demand for an ethnically-pure Kosovo, which is being acted upon, is not only a direct and serious threat to the peoples who have found themselve in the minority in this region, but will (if this demand is fully realized) begin a wave of expansion which will represent a real and constant threat to all Yugoslav peoples.
Kosovo is not the only region in which the Serbian people has found itself under the pressures of discrimination. Not only the relative but the absolute decline in the numbers of Serbs in Croatia is evidence enough for the above claim. According to the census of 1948, there were 543,795 Serbs in Croatia, that is, 14.48 percent of the Croatian pouplaton. According to the 1981 census, these numbers had diminished to 531,502 which was 11.5 percent of the entire population of Croatia. During the 33 years of peace, the number of Serbs in Croatia had declined even in relation to the immediate postwar period, when the first census was carried out, and when the consequences of World War II on the number of Serbs were well known.
Lika, Kordun and Banija have remained the least developed regions in Croatia, which greatly motivated Croatian Serbs to migrate to Serbia as well as to other regions of Croatia, where Serbs, as a minority group of newcomers and a socially inferior people, were extremely susceptible to assimilation. The Serbian people have been, in general, exposed to a sophisticated and efficient assimilation policy. A consistent part of this policy is a ban of all Serbian societies and cultural institutions in Croatia. They were part of a rich cultural tradition during the reign of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between the wars. This policy also includes the imposition of an official language, which is named after another people (Croatian), thus signifying national inequality. That language was, through a constitutional act, made obligatory for all Serbs in Croatia. Also, nationalistically inclined Croatian language experts, through systematic and extremely well-organized action, have ben distancing that language from the language spoken in other republics where Serbo-Croatian is the mother-tongue. This action contributes to the weakening of connections between Serbs in Croatia and other Serbs. In order to achieve this goal, the Croats are ready to sacrifice the continuity of their own language and lose from it international terms necessary for communication with other cultures, especially in the fields of science and technology. Moreoever, the Serbian people in Croatia are not only culturally cut off from the mainstream of the Motherland, but the Motherland hs no possibility of informing itself - to nearly the extent that other nations who live in Yugoslavia are connected with their fellow peoples - about the Serbian people's economic and cultural position in Croatia. The question of the integrity of the Serbian people and their culture in all of Yugoslavia is a fateful one for their survival and progress.
The fate of Serb constitutions created during and immediately after the war are also part of this picture ....
Except for the period of the existence of the NDH [the Independent State of Croatia], serbs in Croatia were never so endangered as they are today. The solution of their national position imposes itself as a first priority political question. Unless a solution is found, the consequences can be damaging in many ways, not only for the situation in Croatia but for all of Yugoslavia.
What gives important weight to the question of the position of the Serbian people is the fact that outside the Republic of Serbia, and particularly outside the geographic region of Serbia proper, there live a great number of Serbs, a number greater than the total number of people of any other one nationality. According to the 1981 census, 24 percent of all Serbs live outside the territory of the Socialist Republic of Serbia - that is, 1,958,000 people, which is a grater number than the number of Slovenians, Albanians, and Macedonians in Yugoslavia respectively, and almost as many people as there are Muslims in Yugoslavia. Outside the region of Serbia proper, there are 3,285,000 Serbs, or 40.3 percent of the total number of Serbs. In the genral disintegrative process that is affecting all of Yugoslavia, the Serbs are more affected than anyone else. The present trend in our society in Yugoslavia is in total contrast to that of decades and centuries before the creation of a common fatherland. This process aims to destroy completely the national unity of the Serbian people. The best illustration that this process was dedicated to such a goal is today's Vojvodina, with its autonomy.
Vojvodina was given autonomy, among other reasons, because the Serbian people in the Habsburg monarchy aspired to it since the end of the 17th century. The Serbs in Austria and later Austria-Hungary sought the creation of an autonomous region (a despotate or dukedom [vojvodina], which they called Serbia) in order to preserve their national identity and their Orthodox faith even while surrounded by more numerous and more powerful Germans and Hungarians. By creating a separate autonomous region in another state's territory, Serbs worked to weaken that state with the goal of having a better chance, in a convenient moment, to separate from it and unite with their brethren south of the Sava and Danube.
That is how Serbian Vojvodina came to be, for the creation of which Serbs from Serbia also shed their blood in 1848-49. Today this development has been stood on its head. The political leadership of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina does not work for closer relationships and unity, but for ever greater independence and separation from the Socialist Republic of Serbia. But however much this process seems unnatural, contradicting the logic of history, it yields obvious results, powerfully contributing to the disintegration of the Serbian people.
9. Carrying upon itself for more than half a century the brand and the burden that it was a warden of the other Yugoslav peoples, the Serbian people was incapable of finding support in its own history. In many of its aspects, that very history was brought into question. The democratic civil tradition for which Serbia fought and won in the 19th century had remained, until recently, completely in the shadow of the Serbian socialist and workers' movements because of the narrow-mindedness and bias of official historiography. Thus the historical picture of the true judicial, cultural and political contributions of Serbia to divil society was so impoverished, reduced and warped that it could serve no one as spiritual and moral support or as a basis for the preservation and restoration of historic self-awareness. A similar fate befell the righteous and brave efforts of Serbs from Bosnia and Hercegovina and all Yugoslav yough, of which Young Bosnia was a part. They were all pushed out of their place in history by a class ideology whose carriers and creators were Austro-Marxists, renowned enemies of national liberation movements.
Under the influence of the ruling ideology, the cultural heritage of the Serbian people is being alientated, usurped, invalidated, neglected, or wasted; their language is being suppressed and the Cyrillic alphabet is vanishing. The field of literature in this sense serves as a main arena for arbitrariness and lawlessness. No other Yugoslav nation has been so rudely denied its cultural and spiritual integrity as the Serbian people. No literary and artistic heritage has been so routed, pillaged and plundered as the Serbian one. The political maxims of the ruling ideology are being imposed on Serbian culture as more valuable and stronger than scientific and historic ones. While Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian and Montenegrian culture and literature are today being integrated, Serbian culture and literature alone are being systematically disintegrated. It is ideologically legitimate and in the spirit of self-management to divide and disperse freely the Serbian literary heritage and attribute it to authors from Vojvodina, Montenegro or Bosnia and Hercegovina. Serbia's best authors and most significant literary works are being torn from the Serbian literary canon so that new regional literatures can be artificially established. The usurpation and fragmentation of the Serbian cultural heritage goes so far that children in schools learn that Njegos is not a Serbian author, that Laza Kostic and Veljko Petrovic were from Vojvodina, and that Petar Kocic and Jovan Ducic are from Bosnia-Hercegovina. As only yesterday Mesi Selimovic was not allowed to declare himself a Serbian author, even today his wish to be classified as a Serbian author is still not respected. Serbian culture has more politically incorrect, banned, unmentioned or undesirable authors and intellectual creators than any other Yugoslav literature; many of them have moreover been erased from literary memory.
Reputable Serbian authors are the only ones who are blacklisted by all Yugoslav mass media. In compulsory school texts, Serbian literature has been severely harmed, since it has been mechanically submitted to the administrative doctrine of republican-provincial reciprocity, and not represented according to quantity and value. In the school curricula of certain republics and provinces the historical past of the Serbian people has not only been rudely ideologically reduced but has been laid open to chauvinist interpretations. Thus the Serbian cultural and spiritual heritage seems less significant than it actually is, and the Serbian people is losing an important base of moral and historic self-awareness ....
[Note: Six paragraphs of criticism of Yugoslav educational reforms of the 1970s that follow here are omitted. - Ed.]
10. After the dramatic inter-ethnic conflicts of the Second World War it seemed that nationalism suddenly deflated, that it was about to perish. This impression proved fallacious. It was not long before nationalism began its ascent as the institutional preconditions for its flourishing grew with every constitutional change. Nationalism was created from above; its chief initiators were politicians. The basic cause of our multi-dimensional crisis lies in the ideological defeat that nationalism delivered to socialism. Disintegrational processes of all kinds, which have brought the Yugoslav community to the brink of disaster, are, together with the demise of our value-system, the consequences of this defeat.
Its roots can be found in the ideology of the Comintern and the national policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia before World War II. This policy included revanchism toward the Serbian people as an oppressor-nation.It had far-reaching consequences for international relations, domestic politics, the economy and the fate of moral and cultural values after World War II. A feeling of historic guilt was imposed on the Serbian people, although only they did not solve their national question, or receive their own state like other nations did. Thus, our first and basic objective is to remove the mortgage of this historical guilt from the Serbian people, to refute officially claims that they had an economically privileged position between the two world wars, and to ensure that the denial of their liberating history and contribution in the creation of Yugoslavia end.
The Serbian people have a historic and democratic right to establish full national and cultural integrity independently, regardless of the republic or province in which they live. The acquisition of equality and independent development have a deeper historic meaning for the Serbian people. In less than 50 years, wihtin two consecutive generations, twice exposed to physical annihilation, forceful assimilation, religious conversion, cultural genocide, ideoligical indoctrination, invalidatoin, and denunciation of their own tradition under the imposed complex of guilt, intellectually and politically disarmed, the Serbian people were exposed to temptations that were too great not to leave deep scars on their spirit. We cannot allow ourselves to forget these facts at the end of this century of great technoligical achievements of the human mind. If the Serbian people see their future in the family of cultured and civilized nations of the world, they must find themselves anew and become a historical subject; they must once again acquire a consciousness of their historic and cultural being; they must put forth a modern societal and national program, which will inspire contemporary and future generations.
The existing feelings of depression among the Serbian people, accompanied by the growing fierceness of chauvinistic and Serbo-phobic displays, are fertile ground for the revival and increasingly more dramatic displays of the national sensitivity of the Serbian people, and for reactions that can be contagious, and even dangerous. It is our duty not to oversee and underestimate these dangers for a single moment, whatever form they may take. But in the course of this princpiled fight against Serbian nationalism we must not accept the pervading ideological and political symmetry of historic guilts. Denouncing this symmetry - which is spiritually and morally fatal - along with denouncing cliches of injustices and untruths, is a prerequisite for the mobility and efficacy of a democratic, Yugoslav, humanistic consciousness in contemporary Serbian culture.
The fact that citizens and the working class are not represented in the Federal Assembly in appropriate numbers cannot be attributed only to priority for the national [units], but also to an aspiration to bring Serbia into an unequal position and thus weaken her political influence. However, the greatest misfortune for the Serbian people is that they do not have a state like all other nations. It is true that the first article of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia includes the declaration that Serbia is a state, but it must be asked what kind of a state it is that is proclaimed to lack competence over its own territory, and that does have the means to introduce order to one part of its territory, to provide personal and material security to its citizens, to stop the genocide in Kosovo and the migration of Serbs from their ancient hearths? Such a position demonstrates political discrimination against Serbia, especially taking into considerataion the fact that the Constitution of the SFRY imposed upon her an internal federalization as a continuous source of conflicts between Serbia proper and the provinces. Aggressive Albanian nationalism in Kosovo cannot be suppressed if Serbia does not stop being the only republic whose internal relations are regulated by others.
The equality of all republics, formally affirmed by the Constitution of the SFRY, was in reality invalidated when the Republic of Serbia was forced to give up a good part of her rights and authority in favor of the autonomous provinces whose status is for the most part regulated by the Federal Constitution. Serbia must openly state that this system was imposed upon her. This [imosition] especially pertains to the position of the provinces, in reality promoted into republics, which think of themselves much more as constituent elements of the Federation than a part of the Republic of Serbia. In addition to ignoring the state[hood] of the Serbian people, the Constitution of the SFRY also created insuperable barriers to its constitution. A revision of this constitution is unavoidable in order to satisfy Serbia's legitimate interests. The autonomous regions must become genuine constituent parts of the Republic of Serbia, giving them a level of autonomy which does not hamper the integrity of the republic and which provides for the realization of the general interests of the broader community.
The unsolved question of Serbia's statehood is not the only defect which ought to be removed through constitutional changes. Through the Constitution of 1974, Yugoslavia became a very loose state community in which consideration is given to alternatives even to Yugoslavia. this is evident from recent statements by Slovenian public officials and earlier positions taken by macedonian politicians. Such thinking and basically completed disintegration lead one to believe that Yugoslavia is in danger of further fragmentation. The Serbian people cannot calmly wait for its future in such uncertainty. That is why a possibility must be created for all nations in Yugoslavia to declare their aspirations and intentions. In that case, Serbia herself could define her national interests and commit herself to them. Such a discussion and agreement would have to precede the re-examination of the [Federal] Constitution. Naturally, in that case, Serbia must not allow herself a passive attitude, merely awaiting the others' statements, as she has done so frequently to date.
Espousing AVNOJ's tenets, Serbia must also realize that this espousal does not depend only on her, that others might have different alternatives. This is why her taks is clearly to assess her economic and national interests lest she be surprised by future events. By insisting on a federal system, Serbia would contribute not only to the equality of all nations in Yugoslavia but also to the solution to the political and economic crisis.
The egalitarian position which Serbia must insist on also presupposes her taking the initiative in solving key political and economic questions to the same extent that others take such initiative. Four decades of Serbia's passive position have proven wrong for all of Yugoslavia which was deprived of the ideas and criticism of a region with a long-standing tradition of statehood and an acute sense of national independence and rich experience in fighting domestic usurpers of political freedoms. Without the equal participation of the Serbian people of Serbia in the entire process of creating and carrying out all vital decisions, Yugoslavia cannot be strong. Her very existence as a democratic and socialistic community would be in question.
One epoch in the development of the Yugoslav community and of Srebis is obviously ending with a historically exhausted ideology, global stanation and ever greater regressions in the economic, political, moral, cutural and civil spheres. Such a state of affairs urgently calls for basic, carefully considered, scientifically-based and decisively executed reforms of the whole state structure and social organization of the Yugoslav community of nations, and in the sphere of democratic socialism also a quicker and more fruitful inclusion into contemporary civilization. Societal reforms also must activate, to the greatest extent, the country's human resources in order for us to become a productive, enlightened and democratic society capable of living off its own labor and creations, capable of offering its own contribution to the world community.
The first condition of our metamorphosis and rebirth is democratic mobilization of all the creative and moral powers of the people, but not only to carry out decisions made in political forums, but to create programs and a blueprint for the future in a democratic manner. By this means, for the first time in recent history, a task engaging the whole of society will unite experience and knowledge, courage and consciousness, imagination and responsibility on the basis of a long-term program.
On this, as on other occasions, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts expresses its readiness to apply itself wholeheartedly and with all its means to the fateful and historic tasks of our generation.