„WEAK SERBIA – STRONG YUGOSLAVIA“: SANU MEMORANDUM ON SERBIA’S POSITION IN YUGOSLAVIA

Abstract

In mid-1985, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts formed a commission to write a document on the crisis of Yugoslav society. By September of 1986, the work was not completed. There was only a working version composed of contributions from several scholars. It analyzed several aspects of the Yugoslav crisis, demanded a change of the system in the direction of democratization, and pointed out the unfavorable position of Serbia under the 1974 Constitution, its economic backwardness, the violence to which Serbs were exposed in Kosovo and Metohija, and the deprivation of their political and national rights in Croatia. The position of Serbia in communist Yugoslavia was discussed in several places. It was shown that, according to the 1974 Constitution, Serbia was in an unequal position compared to other republics, that due to obstruction by the provinces, it was unable to adopt even the laws to which it was entitled under the Constitution, and that the provinces were elevated almost to the status of republics and were opposed to Serbia. The academics wrote that 40% of Serbs remained outside the territory over which Serbia, as their mother state, had jurisdiction. They pointed to the constant interference from other parts of the country in the internal relations of Serbia and the maintenance of a politically unstable situation in the republic. The roots of such a policy are found in the legacy of the national policy of the Comintern, which was accepted by the CPY, and according to which the Serbs were unfairly represented as a nation that oppressed other nations in the interwar period, and therefore were victims of a policy of revenge after World War II.