Forging the Antibureaucratic Revolution

The prolonged political and economic crisis of Yugoslav socialism in the 1980s triggered popular mobilizations addressing regional, national, and class inequalities. After the federal government’s clampdown on the street protests organized by Kosovo Albanians in 1981, the region’s Serbian population led the way in public expressions of dissatisfaction during the second half of the decade. In the course of 1986 and early 1987, various initiatives of Serb activists, fed up with the treatment they received from the local Kosovo authorities and purported daily harassment by the Albanian majority, evolved into a unified, persistent, and relatively well-organized social movement, with contacts to Belgrade-based dissident intelligentsia and parts of the Serbian party apparatus. Using the citizens’ assembly (zbor građana), an institution introduced as an application of the self-management organizing principle in the local communities, the Serbian activists started launching a series of protests in Kosovo, Belgrade, and other cities in Serbia, with the aim of attracting attention to the stated plight of national minority rights in their municipalities (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 91–92).

Parallel to the protests of Kosovo Serbs and their supporters inside of Serbia, the growing number of workers on strike decided to exit their factories and protest in front of the government buildings. The number of strikes recorded nationwide went from 247, with 13,507 workers involved in 1980 to 1,851 strikes involving 386,123 workers in 1988 (Marinković Reference Marinković1995, 83). Unlike the movement of solidarity with Kosovo Serbs, which was quick to adopt the emerging nationalism-colored rhetoric of the Serbian dissident intelligentsia and focus on the legal status of Serbia as a republic, the labor mobilizations still clung to the inherited language of class unity and tried to tackle Yugoslavia as a whole. This does not mean that Serbian workers were somehow immune to calls for national rights. Workers in Serbia reflected the general public outcry against the alleged systematic harassment of Kosovo’s non-Albanian population and passionately endorsed the cause of the local Serbs. However, inside the factories, the calls for a clear, unified, party line and state centralization were connected primarily to the protection of social property and the curbing of managerial privileges and working-class unity beyond ethnic divisions (Musić Reference Musić, Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016).

The party-state was not spared from dissent within its ranks. Inside the Serbian League of Communists, frustration was mounting over the slow pace of reforms seen as necessary to overcome the crisis. The younger generation of cadres positioned in the lower party echelons and standing closer to the economic institutions started identifying the constitutional solutions and the reorganization of workers’ self-management reached by the senior communist elites during 1970s as the main causes of the political deadlocks and economic inefficiency.

The hegemonic critical understanding of the crisis blamed the decentralized structure of the central state and obligatory consensus vote in the federal institutions for the inability to reach any decisive political change. When it came to Serbia as a republic, the high autonomy given to its two provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, allegedly replicated these same problems inside its borders, placing Yugoslavia’s largest territorial unit in an unequal position in comparison to other republics. Economically, the administration of atomized enterprises divided into what were known as basic organizations of associated laborFootnote ⁴ and the adjacent labyrinth of self-management bodies appeared to be a bureaucratic burden, causing low productivity and preventing the Yugoslav industry from catching up with the latest global trends of lean production. The surge of ethnic strife in Kosovo was seen as a symptom of these larger issues faced by Yugoslav socialism.

Serbian leadership flirted with the nationalist discourse of the dissident intelligentsia. However, the official media articulation of the grievances of Kosovo Serbs was careful not to appear opposed to the main values of socialist ideology, thus relying on the notions of national equality, integral Yugoslavism, and working-class solidarity and presenting the movement as the continuation of the World War II–era partisan legacy. On the ground however, the more radical ideas tapping into the Serbian Kosovo myth, religious themes, claims of victimhood, anti-Albanian sentiment, and ethnicity-based unity were gaining strength. The media started reporting on “men with beards” wearing Serbian peasant caps (šajkače) and national symbols (Kerčov, Radoš, and Raič Reference Kerčov, Radoš and Raič1990, 160).

Vojvodina was a particular target of antibureaucratic activists because its local leadership aligned itself with the northern republics on the issue of centralization and prevented Serbia from having a united representation in the federal forums. During July and August 1988, the movement there started relying on rebellious party branches inside factories and on sympathetic managers of local enterprises to provide infrastructure for its rallies. The positive media coverage of the protest staged in front of the Federal Parliament on 4 October by workers from the Belgrade suburb of Rakovica and the open support extended to them by Milošević inspired workers from single factories across Serbia and Montenegro to connect their long-standing grievances with the official platform of the new Serbian leadership (Musić Reference Musić, Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016). Local gatherings started using the political purge at the highest levels of the party-state as a pretext for the removal of elites in the factory and local governments. The dividing lines between the workers’ strikes and the protests of the Kosovo Serbs became thinner, as entire enterprises started joining the antibureaucratic revolution.

The hitherto dominant notion of a dichotomy between the “exploiter” and “exploited” was thus rearranged in nationalist terms, creating divisions between workers of various nationalities. Yet, the relation of non-Serb nationalities, blue-collar workers in particular, to these “happenings of the people” was far more ambivalent in hindsight than one might assume. The assertion of Serbian national interests through the language of integral Yugoslavism, focusing on both the Albanian non-Slavic minority as the proscribed Other and the anti-elitist themes of the ongoing struggle against bureaucracy made many dissatisfied citizens of non-Serb origin identify with the movement and its goals, especially in its early stages. The case study of Priboj, a small, working-class community located in Serbia’s multiethnic region of Sandžak, can help elucidate these ambiguities in a more concrete manner.

The Crisis of Socialist Modernity in Sandžak

During the creation of the modern Balkan nation-states in the 19th century, the Sandžak region remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire and subsequently Austria-Hungary. Wedged between Serbia and Montenegro, this mountainous border region was incorporated into the two neighboring states after the First Balkan War but remained isolated, troubled by economic underdevelopment and strained relations between its Muslim and Christian populations. In the course of World War II, the occupation of Sandžak by German and Italian forces prompted the formation of rival Serbian and Muslim militias, which committed acts of ethnic cleansing,Footnote ⁵ but also of the multinational partisan army. In the initial phases, mostly Serbs and Montenegrins filled the ranks of the local partisan units. However, after the capitulation of Italy in the autumn of 1943, the military advancement of the partisan movement, and the spread of its political influence through the establishment of anti-fascist councils, the Communist Party managed to gain influence among Sandžak’s Muslim population, especially in the Western part of the region (Morrison and Roberts Reference Morrison and Roberts2013, 118–121).

In the decades of socialist modernization, Sandžak continued to struggle with the legacy of underdevelopment. Until the 1980s, most of its economy was still based in agriculture and livestock, with sparse larger industrial capacities. One of the exceptions was the town of Priboj, at the northwestern tip of the region. The town was home to Fabrika automobila Priboj, or FAP, Yugoslavia’s second-largest truck producer, employing around 6,000 workers in the municipality of 35,000 inhabitants. Contributing 60 percent of the total income created in the municipality and employing a large staff of experts, the factory was the key driver of economic development and administrative governing of Priboj and its surroundings. The factory attracted most of its low-qualified workforce from the surrounding villages. However, the enterprise also invested heavily in apartment construction in Priboj, creating a nucleus of urban working-class laborers, engineers, and professionals of all trades. The employees perceived FAP as the harbinger of civil values and cultural emancipation in a region long dismissed as a backwater. FAP’s contributions were crucial for the municipal infrastructural investments, while its management and political delegations had a decisive say in the local government.

The popular participation in the struggle against fascism and the heroic Partisan myth became the foundations of the postwar ideology of national equality and the building of a new multiethnic community in Sandžak. At a little under one-third of the population, Muslims were well integrated into the factory and Priboj’s economic, political, and cultural life. The town was an exemplary carrier of “brotherhood and unity” policies, with the local party carefully applying national keys in the selection of the delegates in the sociopolitical organizations and the municipal government.Footnote ⁶

The surge of Serbian nationalism after the street protests and riots of Kosovo Albanians in 1981 did not bypass the municipality. In 1983, the media reported incidents of people singing Chetnik songs and the local church portraying a large picture of a local World War II cleric and Chetnik leader Mihailo Jevđević (Morrison and Roberts Reference Morrison and Roberts2013, 130). However, the annual reports given by the municipal public prosecutor to the local parliament show that Priboj’s communists did not give much weight to such incidents, viewing them as isolated rather than as an indication of rising nationalism among the broader population. A few drunken brawls with nationalist undertones in the taverns were no reason for concern when seen against a harmonious collaboration of Serbs, Muslims, and Montenegrins in villages, schools, factories, and municipal institutions.Footnote ⁷

This does not mean that Priboj’s politics went on without contention. A closer look at the discussions taking place between the delegates inside self-managed bodies and the municipal legislative chambers in the 1980s reveals bourgeoning controversies perhaps not expected from a small industrial town located far away from the centers of high politics and dissident elites. Until the end of the decade, the dividing lines in these debates had little to do with nationalist politicization. They were instead focused on economic problems, the decrease in living standards, failing infrastructure, and the perceived incompetence of those at the top of the municipal party-state.

As the largest enterprise in Sandžak, FAP was too big to fail, and unlike many industrial facilities in Serbia whose workforces were already staging strikes by the mid-1980s, the factory seemed to be conducting business as usual. Wages were still arriving on time, yet the workers were aware that the enterprise was living on borrowed time. The finished trucks were beginning to pile up on the factory parking lot. The demand for domestically produced trucks was cut back due to lack of investment in the Yugoslav construction industry and liberalized foreign trade. The engine and component producers positioned lower in the production chain were unable to deliver the contracted quantities, often causing standstills on FAP’s shop floors. In the winter of 1987, the situation became so dire that the factory was producing at 30 percent of its full capacity and 450 workers were sent back home daily due to lack of work. At the end of the business year, management declared that FAP took a net loss for the first time since its founding (Pribojske novine, December 16, 1987).

The scarcity of raw materials and components in the production halls was matched by the shortages of basic foodstuffs such as coffee and detergent in the shops. Accustomed to the consumption-oriented socialist economy of the 1950s and 1960s, the citizens were suddenly forming rows in front of convenience stores. On occasion, this caused small incidents in public with people “acting in a petty-bourgeois manner,” as one FAP communist noted in the factory paper. The condemned behavior included arguments among customers and with the sellers, elbowing in lines, and pushing crowds accidentally breaking shop windows, thus forcing the police to intervene and maintain order. FAP workers suspected the traders of hoarding and speculating with the shortage goods (FAP Informator, March 3, 1983). The wages were losing a race with inflation, and living standards started falling drastically especially for the lower-qualified blue-collar workers without land. In their testimonies, many workers reported spending their entire wages on food, unable to afford most of the benefits associated with the “good life” in socialist Yugoslavia, such as cars, household appliances, or holidays (FAP Informator, January 30, 1985). By 1985, the factory trade union decided to form solidarity funds, covering basic foodstuffs for workers with low incomes (FAP Informator, November 28, 1985).

The steady decline in living standards was supposed to be offset through socialized goods and services distributed on non-market principles. In the late 1970s, public services were reorganized on the basis of self-managed communities of interest (Samoupravne interesne zajednice, or SIZ). These were independent associations of consumers controlled by elected delegates that would allegedly assure the fair usage and spread of social infrastructure. Yet these institutions of self-management became targets of popular dissatisfaction as the quality of public services declined and the delegations kept voting for new costly projects reaping no clear benefit for the community. In February 1983, workers’ assemblies in FAP launched an attack against the municipal SIZ structure that constantly extracted more contributions from the factory while showing very little transparency in return (FAP Informator, February 2 1982).

The symbol of the careless management of public funds was a large hotel built by FAP in the center of the town. It took 10 years to finish the project, and when it was finally opened in 1987, the grand hotel seemed to have little value for the population apart from the municipal government’s using its restaurant hall for meetings. The local infrastructure was in a fragile state. The water supply and sewer system were unreliable despite years of direct citizen financing by the decision of the SIZ delegates (mesni samodprinosi). Running water was available only a couple of hours per day, while the streets were flooded after each rainfall. The medical staff was leaving the municipal hospital because of low wages and bad conditions of work, forcing the citizens to travel to the nearby cities of Titovo Užice and Prijepolje for medical services.

The construction of the cultural center, planned since the late 1970s, was never finalized and the FAP workers complained about the youth being forced to socialize in taverns (kafane; FAP Informator December 29, 1984). The criteria for the allocation of social flats were also a continuous source of grievances inside the enterprises. Workers mentioned cases of privileged individuals receiving company flats and cheap credit for the construction of private houses. Some flats were allegedly unused while others were rented out for profit. Because of the scarcity of social housing stock, many workers were forced to rent rooms on the black market at prices 10 times higher than the official rent in a factory dormitory or socially owned flat (FAP Informator, February 2, 1983).

The final incident that painfully exposed the incompetence and corruption of the local authorities to the wider public and created a popular outcry was the outbreak of dysentery in early 1988. For months, the disease had spread unhindered, turning into an epidemic with more than 2,000 people affected, most of them children. The local government was unable to trace the source of the epidemic, giving way to a wave of rumors and panic. Most citizens suspected the water supply, claiming the infrastructure was badly kept, thus allowing sewage to contaminate the drinking water. Others claimed the source of the disease could be traced back to the meat supply. In any case, no officials were ready to accept responsibility and the population of Priboj felt abandoned, forced to come up with makeshift solutions (Pribojske novine, September 14, 1988).

For decades, FAP remained the sole large job provider in the area and authorities were unable to diversify the local economy. One of the measures to confront the economic crisis was giving the green light to more small private businesses and craftwork. Nevertheless, small businesses were not opening many workplaces, but they paved the way for corruption and individual enrichment. The delegates in the municipal assembly were showing disgust toward “uneducated millionaires” and raised voices against the allocation of attractive locations downtown to private restaurants and taverns.Footnote ⁸ There was a widespread feeling that individuals were enriching themselves through the abuse of their positions and social property. In September 1988, the workers’ assembly (zbor radnika) of FAP’s blue-collar department, Montaža, pointed out that factory social capital was being damaged and privatized through theft, irresponsible usage, unnecessary business trips, the selling under the costs of production, advertisement, and the lavish pampering of business partners.Footnote ⁹

Identifying the Culprits

A curious New Year’s resolution in the form of a caricature appeared on the pages of FAP factory press on the eve of 1983. The cartoon depicted a group of managers walking in a circle around comfortable armchairs. The parody of the children’s’ game of musical chairs was aimed at the alleged culprits of the impasse the company had run into. The guilty ones were an unaccountable and incompetent clique of senior cadres constantly rotating in top positions and dominating the economic and political life of the factory.

Figure 1

Directors’ musical chairs, FAP Informator, December 31, 1982.

The accompanying text of the New Year greeting was telling and thus worth quoting in full:

This ironic note reveals a damning view of the factory elites as a secure group of men occupying high positions for two decades despite their lack of management skills. The reforms of workers’ self-management, initiated in the 1970s and crowned with the Associated Labor Act of 1976, were officially implemented precisely as a safeguard against the bureaucratization inside the enterprises—a dangerous phenomenon seen as the main cause for the economic and political crisis of the late 1960s. The radical decentralization of the enterprises into basic organizations of associated labor, new shop floor organs, plebiscite decision-making, and the delegate system of representation were all supposed to prevent the privatization of self-management. The mandates of most elected positions in the economy and politics were limited to one- and two-year terms. Despite all these efforts, the popular view was that the same cadres were simply rotating through different functions, disconnected from the influence of their self-management base.

The quotation above also alludes to the functionaries’ lack of qualifications and instructs them to return to the occupations for which they were trained. After the political purge of the most successful managers advocating liberalization in the early 1970s, a number of senior, politically active, blue-collar workers and foremen used the stronger integration of business management and political legislature with self-management to occupy mid-level positions in the industry and lower-level party-state organs. On the other hand, like many other Yugoslav industrial facilities in the 1980s, FAP was employing an ever-greater number of young and educated people of all occupational profiles. FAP employed 550 people with higher education, many of whom saw few prospects for advancement through the factory hierarchy. This caused major frustrations among the young employees with the leading cadres, often perceived as narrow-minded, inapt, and reliant on the political apparatus, instead of their own expertise, for their positions of power.

The news of a generational change in the Belgrade party apparatus, with young leaders well acquainted with modern management, like Ivan Stambolić and Milošević, advancing to key positions, resonated strongly inside FAP. In December 1983, the factory press alluded to changes in the Belgrade party, confidently stating, “Obviously, the time of uneducated, half-educated, mediocratic and below average cadres bounded by generational or home village [zavičaj] ties has expired. We hope the time has come for the competent ones” (FAP Informator, December 30, 1983). None of these criticisms of the factory elites written in the pages of the factory journal were signed, yet their insistence on meritocracy indicates the source were white-collar units and factory professional staff.

This does not mean that the blue-collar workers were more lenient toward the enterprise elites. Quite the contrary, the shop floor resented the former manual workers who had been promoted to desk jobs, perceiving them as opportunists who turned against their class background. Common grievances among the manual workers were high expenditures made by the professional management and the self-management bureaucracy. The blue-collar workers were of the opinion the enterprise could save money through tougher control of business trips and perks enjoyed by the directors.Footnote ¹⁰ Yet the daily running of a bloated self-management apparatus was seen as a costly process as well. The most prominent theme was that of lacking “accountability.” The complex web of workers’ self-management institutions and the unclear interlocking of professional management and workers’ participation awoke a desire for clear leadership, direct communication, and assignment of responsibility to concrete persons, instead of collective bodies. Many blue-collar workers saw the joint decision-making in self-management as a smokescreen, hiding the failures of the incompetent bureaucracy (FAP Informator, July 14, 1984).

The grievances against the factory elites were routinely extended to municipal leadership. The factory leadership was well connected with the municipal administration and cadres often moved back and forth between the two institutions. As critically minded FAP communist Mujo Bjelopoljac explained, even when dissenting voices gained ground in the factory sociopolitical organizations, the important points would be lost once the conclusions reached higher organs of the municipality (FAP Informator, July 3, 1985). It is easy to understand how similar ideas about incompetent, corrupt, ignorant, and aged leadership circulating inside FAP gained ground among the citizens of Priboj when one looks at the unemployment statistics. The number of persons out of work grew steadily each year after the late 1970s, reaching 3,369 people by 1987. The undiversified structure of the local economy made it especially hard for women, the youth, and the highly educated to find employment.Footnote ¹¹ Close to 60 percent of Priboj’s unemployed were listed as “professionals.”

FAP’s manual workers and white-collar professionals were often at odds with each other when discussing internal factory matters but, interestingly enough, they stood united when confronted with the hated “bureaucrats.” The two best-organized and most-critical party cells in the municipality were probably FAP’s Montaža and Planiranje. The former was the hotbed of skilled blue-collar workers with vocational schooling, whereas the latter gathered highly educated economist and engineers. The communist activists from both departments were in the habit of connecting dissatisfaction over local issues with broader themes of political democratization. The talk of “grey eminence” and demands for the party cadres to show a “publicly recognized color” in the ironic 1983 New Year note were all codes for ambivalent political positions and widespread reluctance to differentiate one’s political orientation openly.

In the course of 1985, the idea of grading the work of the leading functionaries (ocena rezultata rada funkcionera), from the municipality all the way to the federal bodies, spread across the factory party (FAP Informator, January 30, 1985). Similar to manual workers, whose work was constantly measured and rewarded accordingly, the party-state employees were supposed to be held accountable in a similar manner. Moreover, FAP’s party base expressed desire for the introduction of multi-candidate lists for each position as the best measure to stop the spinning wheel of the same-old functionaries, but also as a way to introduce “healthy competition” (FAP Informator, September 18, 1985).Footnote ¹²

The impulse for grassroots change accumulated by the mid-1980s was well reflected in the words of Ferzo Ćelović, a communist of Muslim origin from FAP’s Planiranje unit and a delegate in the municipal assembly:

The idea that changes had to be initiated at the grassroots level and that there was no point in relying on leadership changed somewhat with the appearance of Milošević at the top of the Serbian League of Communists in the second half of the 1980s. Many party members and ordinary workers pushing for radical reforms came to believe they gained not only an ally at the top of the party-state, but also guidance for a tangible reformist political program beyond vague reliance on moral values and the virtues of youth. Yet this disclosure of a political line, combined with more freedom to address grievances of all kinds, also led to an increase in divisions inside the working-class communities along class and national lines.

The Boogeyman of Nationalism Comes to Town

The Eighth Session of the Serbian League of Communists Central Committee, which took place in September 1987, was a watershed political event. In a publicly broadcasted meeting, Milošević openly accused the leader of the Serbian communists, Stambolić, of cliquish behavior, pursuit of personal interests, and hindering party unity, thus preventing an efficient solution to the Kosovo crisis. After years of cautious, consensus-seeking internal political culture, such sharp language sent shockwaves throughout the Serbian party-state state (Pavlović, Jović, and Petrović Reference Pavlović, Jović and Petrović2008). In Priboj, the event polarized the local communists. In the first municipal party meeting discussing the events in Belgrade, held in November that year, the local leadership paid lip service to the ongoing campaign of political “differentiation,” promising the forging of a new unified party line and more discipline and accountability, but made no concrete steps in terms of initiating internal removals or calling out individual functionaries.

The records show many ordinary party members were caught off guard by the sudden tumultuous events, puzzled at why the leadership was divided, and wondering about the political future of Stambolić (Pribojske novine, November 25, 1987). At the same time, the critically minded group members applauded the confrontational style of the new leadership and the media limelight. For them, the Eighth Session finally forced politicians to take a clear stand on the burning issues and the presence of cameras signaled a new spirit of openness. The adversaries of the status quo were determined to turn this rupture to their own advantage and insert the long-standing demands into the party reform platform. The eruption of critical voices between late 1987 and the summer of 1988, encouraged by the purge at the top, shows just how diversified the grievances congested under the seemingly unified struggle against bureaucracy actually were for the good part of the decade. The unity of Yugoslavia was still a central leitmotif, yet its exact meaning was not set in stone.

For many blue-collar workers in FAP the trope signified integral Yugoslavism maintained by the predominance of class over national identities. Salem Salkanović, a skilled worker, was of the opinion that priority had to be given to the interests of Yugoslavia as a whole instead of particular regional and republican demands. His colleague, Čedomir Mlađenović, appealed for a more equal quality of medical services and schooling in different parts of the country (FAP Informator, March 7, 1988). Mujo Bjelopoljac, the party secretary of Montaža, called for new investments in the factory machines and protective measures for domestic producers. Other blue-collar speakers demanded a stronger voice for the working class in federal political bodies with the introduction of a chamber of associated labor into the Federal Parliament. The chamber would be made up of delegates from the industry and decisions passed on the simple majority principle instead of consensus seeking, as the workers in all republics allegedly shared the same interests (FAP Dnevne vesti, March 30, 1988).

Unlike the manual workers who connected Yugoslav unity primarily to a fight against social inequality, the white-collar units wished to see a joint federal effort toward economic marketization, uniform legislative solutions, and liberalization of self-managed industry. Mustafa Kašić, an engineer, argued for an integrated Yugoslav market and a more efficient political system that would allow urgent reform laws to be passed without veto by single republics. Savo Prčetić, a highly skilled worker, suggested the merging of large economic systems in order to rationalize scattered production. Želimir Vukosavljević, an engineer, advised greater inclusion of scientific research into the economy, the production of knowledge without political tutorship, and opening the country for foreign investments (FAP Informator, March 7, 1988).

Another set of grievances was focused on the national question. The relations among different nationalities were discussed in a more open fashion in Priboj, at least after 1986. The media coverage of the alleged flight of Serbs from Kosovo and the spread of belief that the top communist leadership was simply covering up harassment of the non-Albanian population, incapable of defeating the “counterrevolution,” opened doors for discussing national issues outside of the usual canon of sometimes challenged, but always victorious, “brotherhood and unity.” In September 1986, FAP’s outspoken delegate in the municipal assembly, Ferzo Ćelović, opened a question of migration from Priboj. For years, the municipality was experiencing a net outflow of population toward larger industrial centers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro. At first glance, there was nothing controversial about this phenomenon as it followed the pattern of many smaller and economically underdeveloped municipalities in Yugoslavia. Still, Čelović claimed there was a clear tendency for Priboj’s Muslims to head toward Sarajevo and for its Serbs to move to Belgrade; he demanded a candid analysis and discussion of the trend (FAP Informator, September 26, 1986).

In October 1986, the municipal party committee received a number of complaints from the local cells criticizing the party leadership for ignoring the spread of nationalist ideology on the ground. The cell in FAP’s Alatnica unit was particularly worried about the spread of chauvinism among the youth, claiming that churches and mosques are full of young people, while private cafes are places where youngsters pick up nationalist ideas. Communists from the local primary schools warned about the increase of absences during religious holidays and students of Muslim and Serb origin attending religious education. The party organization of the municipal court claimed that private construction of buildings ethnically segregates parts of the town, with certain new buildings inhabited exclusively by families of the same nationality.Footnote ¹³

These were all warnings from concerned party members about the rising national consciousness on the ground rather than nationalist intrusions into local politics. Some of the interventions were attempts to break taboos and discuss provocative issues for the sake of liberalization of political discourse, while other were reports of the communists convinced that addressing such topics head on would better serve the cause of brotherhood and unity than hiding under weary slogans. All of these voices clearly built upon the topics already mainstreamed by the media in the case of Kosovo (such as migration along ethnic lines, chauvinism, and religious revival) and attempted to draw parallels within their own community.

By the summer of 1988, the discussion of the national question gained sinister undertones and transgressed the traditional frame of a balanced critique of national egoism on all sides from the moral high ground of communist internationalism. The responsibility for the spread of nationalism was no longer placed exclusively on the usual suspects, such as the clergy and small business owners, but parts of the party-state, standing in confrontation with the new Serbian leadership as well as the population loyal to them. The most visible new tendency in the public debates was the unconstrained promotion of a tougher stance on Kosovo Albanians and reduction of the autonomy of the Serbian provinces as the only ways to secure the purported goal of Yugoslav unity. The vision of a newly unified Yugoslavia through a stronger Serbia and the substitution of class solidarity with Serbian national interests was encouraged by the official campaign launched by the Serbian League of Communists in support of the amendment of the Serbian and Yugoslav constitutions in the summer and autumn of 1988.

The Serbian League of Communists was trying to narrow the debate and direct the grassroots mobilizations toward concrete political reforms. Out of the plethora of themes circulating in the party cells and self-management organs, Serbian national rights received the most attention. On 6 October, just one day after street protests overthrew the regional authorities in Vojvodina, FAP’s factory paper carried a charged appeal for the renewal of Serbian statehood rather than the usual cry for a united Yugoslavia. The article used the motifs circulating among the nationalist dissident circles extensively, instead of the traditional party-sponsored ideology of class solidarity. The creation of the autonomous republics in 1974 allegedly degraded the Serbian state to the status it had under the Ottoman Empire. Serbs were presented as a people who had paid a dear price over centuries in their struggle for independence and yet renounced their sovereignty in peacetime under acquiescent leadership. The existence of two autonomous provinces allegedly put Serbia in an unequal position compared to all other Yugoslav nations. (FAP Informator, October 6 1988).

The debates in the self-management organs during the constitutional amendments campaign reflect this shift in rhetoric. The speakers insisted that Kosovo should officially be referred to as “Kosovo and Metohija” in order to emphasize the wish for a decreased level of autonomy or complete abolition of its special status altogether. The decentralizing Constitution of 1974 was condemned as the root cause of all political and economic problems, while demands were made for investigation of illegal entry by Albanian refugees into Yugoslavia since 1941 because of suspicion that the number of Albanians increased via illegal immigration from Hoxha’s Albania. The push for ideological opening was now followed by cries for strong leadership and closing of the ranks. In the words of Mujo Bjelopoljac, “empty stomachs do not understand ideological differentiations.” The Eighth Session and its reverberations allegedly unmasked the positions inside the party. The reformist forces had won and it was time to stand behind them and apply democratic centralism (Pribojske novine, November 25 1987).

Unsurprisingly this nod toward Serbian nationalism had a negative impact on the coworker relations on the shop floor. FAP’s party was forced to recognize instances of conflict among workers along ethnic lines, but refused to detail them, insisting they remained marginal and insufficient to prosecute the perpetrators.Footnote ¹⁴ Blue-collar workers were allegedly still united, despite occasional attempts at provocation. This claim seems plausible, as the factory and broader working-class identity, constructed in opposition to the “bureaucracy” as an articulation of common economic demands, prevented deeper fragmentation of the workforce. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that ethnic relations in the broader community were deteriorating rapidly during the second half of 1988.

Rumors started to circulate about the biased issue of gun ownership permits by the municipal police, who favored the Muslim population. Meanwhile, delegates in the municipal assembly started asking for investigation of the claim that 30 Muslim families left the municipality under the pressure from Serbian nationalists.Footnote ¹⁵ These disturbing stories concurred with smaller incidents on the ground to introduce uncertainties into the community. There were reports of the tearing down of Milošević’s portraits in public. The Serbian nationalists would allegedly provoke Muslims coworkers by placing pictures of Milošević in their drawers and posting them on the walls in offices (Pribojske novine, February 1, 1989). A quarrel between the citizens of Kalafati and Mažići, two neighboring Serb and Muslim villages, about stalled road construction passing through their land and a shared ambulance building gained nationalist connotations, with a Kalifati delegate in the municipal assembly, Ahmet Nurović, talking about the appearance of “hate between villagers of different nationalities.”Footnote ¹⁶

In the official language of the local institutions, the claim of unspoiled brotherhood and unity was giving way to a euphemism: “cooling inter-ethnic relations.” Nationalism was starting to be perceived as an overwhelming force, a threatening virus capable of spreading fast in a multinational community such as Priboj. Communist leadership advised party members to be vigilant and pay attention to how they discussed politics in public and with whom they associated. Yet, the local leadership was discredited, accused of allowing nationalism to blossom in the first place as Kosovo controversies spread to other communities. The concoction of different themes within the reformist forces, such as class solidarity, integral Yugoslavism, demands for national rights for the Serbs, and claims of victimization from both Serbs and Muslims, made the situation very murky and tense with no clear wrongdoer.

A Delayed Revolution

In the second half of 1988, various local enterprises forwarded petitions to the municipal government asking for an antibureaucratic rally to take place in Priboj. In September 1988, a massive antibureaucratic rally with 100,000 participants was held in the nearby industrial center, Titovo Užice. The gathering was very militant, with guest speakers from Kosovo and the local partisan veterans’ organization asking for immediate action to stop the “counterrevolution” in Kosovo and accusing Slovene leadership of consciously downplaying the persecution of Serbs. FAP’s sociopolitical organizations arranged busing for their workers to join the rally (Pribojske novine, September 28, 1988). The spread of street politics to Priboj made sympathizers of the antibureaucratic movement inside the municipality restless. It seemed that protesters in Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro were toppling their “armchair politicians,” making concrete effort to help the Serbian leadership and break the stronghold of bureaucracy on Yugoslav politics. Meanwhile, despite all the commotion on the ground, Priboj’s leadership remained untouched, seemingly confirming the town’s image as a political backwater.

The energy of all oppositional forces in Priboj in the autumn of 1988 became focused on winning the right to hold a rally and informing fellow citizens about the municipal party leadership’s refusal to permit such an event. Local authorities systematically rejected all of the organization’s demands for an antibureaucratic rally in Priboj. Well aware that this type of street protest might be used as an excuse for their removal, Priboj’s functionaries claimed there was no need for street gatherings. The sociopolitical organizations allegedly fully supported the political efforts of the new Serbian leadership. The citizens of the municipality already had a chance to be informed about the grievances of Kosovo Serbs and express their solidarity through official meetings organized in the communities and the workplaces. Besides, in the opinion of the municipal functionaries of both Muslim and Serb origins, street protests were a risk to internal security. The weak local leadership did question the officially proclaimed pro-Yugoslav and antinationalist character of the popular gatherings yet they still argued that there was risk of nationalist provocateurs infiltrating the protest.

Ironically, the ban of the rally sharpened the polarization along national lines inside the party, the factory, and the wider community even further. In FAP, individual Muslim workers decided to oppose the initiative, hinting at the nationalist content of rallies being held across the republic. During the meeting of the factory party in November 1988, Ibro Smailbegović explicitly rejected any form of non-institutional action and the ensuing discussion mentioned the occurrence of verbal incidents inside the factory between Serb and Muslim workers (Pribojske novine, December 14, 1988). Unlike Serbia and Montenegro, the party-state of neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina was actively preventing any street gatherings on the pretext of preserving the fragile brotherhood and unity.Footnote ¹⁷ According to the report of the Municipal Public Attorney’s Office distributed to the Municipal Parliament in late 1988, local Serbian nationalists, angered by the resistance from the top, started spreading the notion that the Muslim population was blocking political changes in the municipality.Footnote ¹⁸

The reformist activist core in FAP was of the opinion that the sole beneficiaries of the protest ban were the local elites and the nationalist opposition. On the morning of January 26, 1989, FAP’s white-collar department, Razvoj, organized a protest meeting inside the enterprise, formed a protest committee, and decided to walk out and stage a protest in the city center. The workers of the two largest blue-collar departments, Mašinska obrada and Alatnica, spontaneously followed their example. The workers’ strike grew into an antibureaucratic rally, as numerous ordinary citizens joined the protest, contributing to a crowd of some 4,000 people. In defiance of the party leadership, the FAP workers managed to organize a sizeable gathering in downtown Priboj. None of the official demands launched from the meeting dealt specifically with factory matters but rather tackled broader political issues in the municipality and Yugoslavia. The main theme of the protest was the responsibility of the local functionaries for all the misfortunes that struck the community in the previous years.

Draped with Yugoslav and party flags and carrying pictures of Tito and Milošević, the protestors demanded the disclosure of the individuals responsible for (1) the stalling of political differentiation, (2) neglect of the water supply system and the spread of dysentery, (3) the catastrophic state of communal services, (4) the failed investments and growth of unemployment, (5) the shortage of social housing, (6) the badly implemented concept of small businesses, and (7) numerous corruption cases. The gathering also demanded accountability for the resistance of local government to organize a solidarity rally with the Kosovo Serbs. The concluding demand was for all the Priboj’s leading functionaries to resign in a publicly broadcasted session of the municipal assembly (Pribojske novine, February 1, 1989).

The speakers in the town center were keen to stress that municipal leadership was the sole guilty party for the “cooling of inter-ethnic relations” in the local community. For the local activists, it was important to brush off any accusations of the antibureaucratic rally as nationalist and maintain the image of a multi-ethnic movement for a united Yugoslavia. The protest was presented as a crucial evidence that the ongoing mobilizations were not about the confrontation of Serbs and Muslims, but popular struggle against the armchair politicians.

It is impossible to determine the exact ethnic composition of the 4,000 protesters that day. The names of people in the organizational committees formed by the three factory departments that mobilized the initial protesters, but also names of the speakers who presented the demands in front of the crowd, suggest that Muslim citizens indeed took part in the event, beyond playing the role of token representatives. The mobilization was spontaneous by all accounts and it is highly unlikely that the organizers had time to plan and select speakers in a calculated way. It is safe to assume that the majority of the Muslim protesters came from the factory. FAP remained a multinational stronghold in the middle of Priboj despite growing gossip and intrigue. By late 1988, there were signs that national divisions had reached the shop floor, yet the prevalence of the moderate fraction inside the local antibureaucratic movement and presence of Muslim communist activists probably helped the mobilization to bridge the lingering cleavages of Serbs and Muslim workers. In a similar way, the vision of a common enemy personified by the municipal political leadership helped keep manual workers and professionals united.

The unity created through continuous factory meetings and the internalization of common grievances by FAP’s workers was the major factor that helped Priboj’s antibureaucratic revolution constitute itself as a class platform across ethnic lines. The meeting records of various political bodies show that some of the party members and delegates of Muslim origin, such as Mujo Bjelopoljac and Ferzo Ćelović, were the staunchest defenders of the rally and the antibureaucratic campaign all the way through early 1989. There were probably various personal motives behind this support. Some Muslims were genuinely attracted to the criticism of the privileges enjoyed by the local elites and calls for a more united Yugoslavia, choosing to separate the official party politics from the more nationalist-minded elements of the movement. Some of the lower-level party participants were probably guided by political opportunism, hoping to advance to the higher echelons of the local government. None of the activists denied the existence of ethnic tensions, but they were of the opinion the grassroots movement was the main channel for mending the broken trust among the residents of Priboj.