COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENTS IN YUGOSLAVIA: STRUGGLE CONTINUES DESPITE SETBACK IN BELGRADE
By Sara Flounders and John Catalinotto
11 Oct 2000--Faced with enormous pressure from the United States and its NATO allies, a demonstration of 200,000 people in Belgrade demanding that he step down, and violent attacks by smaller organized paramilitary units, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic resigned Oct. 6.
These events pose two questions of vital importance for the working-class, anti-war and progressive movements around the world.
The first is: Which side are you on? Was this a people's victory, as the corporate media claim, or a setback for the working class in Yugoslavia and worldwide?
The second question determines the outcome of this ongoing struggle: Which class will control the state--that is, the army, the police, the laws and the courts? Will the international capitalist class that controls the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the big investment banks and the multinational corporations also control all the levers of economic and political life in Yugoslavia?
The mass demonstration gave the developments the appearance of a revolutionary uprising. But it was a false appearance, for the event was a NATO-backed counter-revolutionary coup that is still incomplete and can be resisted.
NATO LEADERS CHEER KOSTUNICA
The most obvious indication of the character of what happened came from the leaders of the NATO countries that carried out the brutal 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia last year. The wild cheering by U.S. President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Green Party Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer should clarify the significance of last week's events for anyone who thought that the vote for Vojislav Kostunica or the upheaval in Belgrade was a victory for democracy.
Drunk with their apparent success and anxious to take credit for it, politicians from Washington to Berlin are now bragging about their organized efforts to overturn the Milosevic government.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES:
"Oct. 7, 2000 (Reuters)--Germany said on Saturday it had supported the Yugoslav opposition with millions of marks in financial aid.
"Norway also said it had helped fund the Yugoslav opposition's election campaign, which led to victory by opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica and soon afterwards to the overthrow of strongman President Slobodan Milosevic.
"[The German weekly] Der Spiegel said around $30 million, mostly from the United States, was channeled through an office in Budapest.
"Another 45 million marks ($20 million) from Germany and other Western states went to cities that were under opposition control. Der Spiegel said the Foreign Ministry sent around 17 million marks through 16 German towns, which also contributed."
"Oct. 9, 2000 (Agence France Presse)--The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton, praised Bulgaria on Monday for helping bring about the downfall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic."
Their tactics included pumping tens of millions of dollars into opposition parties in a starving economy distorted by eight years of sanctions. Behind this were open military threats to use NATO bombs and troops stationed in surrounding countries if Milosevic won, and well-advertised promises to end the sanctions and begin an era of peace and prosperity if Kostunica was elected.
Kostunica is a minor anti-communist politician and professor of constitutional law backed by 18 small and completely divergent parties that Washington cobbled together into the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" with funds and arm- twisting. Kostunica ran on the economic program of the Group of 17, drafted by economists in Yugoslavia who work for the IMF and World Bank. Their "solutions" for Yugoslavia involve ending free medical care and all subsidies for rent, food and transportation.
They would transform the whole economy, with most industries rapidly privatized and the profitable ones sold cheaply to foreign investors. Even in far more prosperous economies, this shock treatment has resulted in massive layoffs.
One can look at how the living standards for the workers of Yugoslavia's neighbors, Romania and Bulgaria, plummeted after they opened their economies to the imperialist banks and followed IMF rules.
But that seems to be exactly what Kostunica's forces have in mind. Reuters reported Oct. 10 that DOS economist Miroljub Labus said the IMF would allow Yugoslavia into the fold by Dec. 14 if the opposition forms its government soon.
ROLE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY
Despite many concessions and compromises, Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia has struggled to maintain the independence of Yugoslavia. This earned it the animosity of imperialist reaction worldwide. For 10 years the U.S. and European Union imperialists made every possible effort to dismember the Yugoslav Socialist Federation and wipe out even the memory of this multinational state--while the SPS and its partner, the Yugoslav United Left, resisted.
The corporate media demonized Milosevic, calling him a dictator. But he and his party were elected to their leadership role in Yugoslavia, won respect for leading the heroic Yugoslav people during the 11 weeks of fighting NATO aggression, and defended the Yugoslav economy from imperialist penetration.
It's true that the SPS lost the active support of the working class, its original base. The party has so far been unable to mobilize street demonstrations to defend itself while under attack. Still, Milosevic won 2 million votes and the SPS still legally leads important parliamentary bodies, including the Federal Yugoslav and Serb parliaments.
But it would be foolish to believe that Washington and its clients in Yugoslavia will limit their tactics to parliamentary legality.
BATTLE FOR STATE POWER
In a period of peaceful competition and discussion, the 18 DOS parties backing Kostunica would rapidly split apart. Kostunica is a monarchist and Serb nationalist, while other parties in the coalition are anti-monarchist and fight for independence for the provinces of Vojvodina and Sandja from Serbia.
In addition, any long period of peaceful political competition would prove Kostunica's economic program a bigger disaster for the Yugoslav workers than the sanctions. And the inevitable evaporation of Yugoslav and Serb sovereignty would outrage many of his current supporters.
That's why Washington and its agents are switching rapidly to extralegal methods to take over the whole state apparatus. They have targeted essential government ministries, especially state security, police and banking, and the entire media apparatus, while violently attacking the SPS and other left parties.
In the elections the Socialist Party and the United Left won control of both houses of the Federal Parliament. Under the Yugoslav Constitution, Parliament is legally more important than the presidency, a figurehead position. Even more influential is the left-led Serb Parliament, which the DOS government has now maneuvered into calling new elections for December.
The imperialist strategists are pushing to move quickly to command the whole state, which also means purging the leadership of the police and destroying the Yugoslav Army, which is rooted in the 1945 socialist revolution and the anti-Nazi Partisan struggle.
Without an armed apparatus to defend themselves, the people and especially the workers of Yugoslavia will be at the mercy of the imperialist bankers and industrialists, who have NATO forces in Kosovo and surrounding countries and their own agents in Belgrade.
IMPERIALISM'S EXTRALEGAL GANGS
The anti-Milosevic gangs have also attacked left parties and government centers. Velimir Ilic, the mayor of Cacac and a deserter who refused to cooperate with the Yugoslav Army during last year's resistance to NATO, boasted to the New York Times that he organized anti-Milosevic commandos.
Ilic said: "We established a team of young professionals, paratroopers from the Yugoslav Army and young policemen, and we coordinated this with the most elite units of the Interior Ministry Police in Belgrade. We got martial arts experts and professional boxers to join us. We even had plainclothes police coordinating with nearby towns."
Ilic told Agence France-Presse he had 2,000 people and that some were armed. "A number of us had bulletproof vests and arms," he said. "Our goal was very clear, take control of the key institutions of the regime, including parliament and the television." He didn't say if they were paid, and if so, where he got the money. But he claimed his forces, dressed in police uniforms, opened Parliament and sowed confusion in the police ranks. Inside, he introduced his gang to Zoran Djindjic, Kostunica's campaign manager.
According to Michel Collon, correspondent of the Belgian weekly Solidaire reporting from Belgrade, Djindjic coordinated the attacks on Parliament and Serbian television. Djindjic used threats and pressure against journalists to take over the major public television, radio and print media, including the daily newspaper Politika.
Djindjic's gangsters also vandalized and wrecked the Belgrade headquarters of the SPS and the smaller New Communist Party of Yugoslavia shortly after the seizure of Parliament. In addition, homes of SPS activists have been burned in and near Belgrade, and there have been even more serious incidents in the provinces.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
On Oct. 10, the DOS leadership made an agreement with the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro to make that party's leader, Pedrag Bulatovic, the new premier in the Federal Parliament of Yugoslavia. Bulatovic said his party, which had been aligned with Milosevic's SPS, wanted to form a government with the DOS which "balances political forces in the federal parliament."
Another dozen paragraphs would be needed to explain all the possible parliamentary maneuvering. But this is really secondary. Washington and its agents will use every kind of pressure on individuals, political parties and the population as a whole to keep peaceful democratic competition from reversing its counter-revolution.
Collon and other reporters in Belgrade have noted that the population was disgusted by the burning of Parliament and the other violence. "Even the Kostunica supporters say they voted for a better life, not for revenge." But if the police and army withdraw from keeping order, only the active organization of the left can defend its positions.
Yugoslavia's defense minister, Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, urged the SPS to rally. In an open letter, Ojdanic warned the Serbs might otherwise face extinction as a people. He said that "disunity among the Serbs is inciting the plans of our proven enemies" to occupy the country, referring to NATO's ties to the DOS.
Here in the United States it's important first that the left understand that what happened Oct. 5-6 was a setback for the workers and for Yugoslavia's sovereignty. What is called for is active solidarity with those in Yugoslavia who continue to resist these counter-revolu tionary developments, whether they be in the SPS, the other left parties, the unions, or the army and the police.
Imperialism has ripped and clawed its way into a position of considerable power in Yugoslavia today. But the struggle continues.
The writers were organizers of this year's June 10 International War Crimes Tribunal in New York that exposed U.S./NATO crimes during the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia.
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