[Marxism] re: demonizing Milosevic as demonization of the Serb nation.

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, I;m going to take a stab at this although I have insufficient factual 
knowledge, and have not reviewed it.  I have just had a basic feeling that the 
old axis I inherited from the Socialist Workers Party on this was off -- not 
right-wing off like about some things, but just off.  Part of the problem was 
the assumption that the parts of Yugoslavia are all workers states.  I don't 
think that any of them are and I suspect that none of them (including Serbia) 
were by the time the wars started. I believe that the workers state in the 
Soviet Union was already gone when Brezhnev died, and I suspect the same may be 
true of  Tito, although I have fewer facts to go on.  The end of the workers' 
state is not  privatization, it is what makes privatization possible as a 
necessary and natural consequence. Privatization is one of the things that 
registers and concretizes a change in class power that has occurred.

But I suspect that the biggest thing I kept forgetting about Serbia is that it 
is an oppressed nation, traditionally the most formed nations among the 
semicolonies oppressed by imperialism in Yugoslavia and therefore both helping 
lead the struggle against imperialism and also, through its privileged layers, 
attempting to assert its domination against the others.

The tendency is to talk about the Serbs as though they were virtually an 
imperialist power or at least a Brave (or Wicked)  Little Israel contending 
against the others. (Sometimes rightist Serb nationalists sound this way 
themselves, I admit, and some of the defenders of Serbia in this conflict have 
adopted the same tone.)

The tendency of the imperialists, which developed after some hesitation 
including by the United States who at first saw Milosevic as a potential 
stabilizer of the situation but came to see Serbia and Milosevic as obstacles 
to taking what was there for the taking.

The attempt to strengthen Serb independence and block the imperialist takeover 
by military action against the other states was an adventure and doomed to 
fail.  But I believe this was a real part of the motivation -- especially 
towards German imperialism (who had replaced the Ottomans as the traditional 
enemy), but also toward American as they moved forward to take the lead.

The demonization of the Serbs seems to me to be the heart of the demonization 
of the reactionary nationalist Stalinist politician Milosevic.  The portrayal 
of them, not as an nation oppressed by imperialism (not, by the way, primarily 
by Croats, Albanians, and Muslims as the Serb rightists  and Milosevic liked to 
portray matters).

Was Serbia a pure and classic Oppressor Nation, as it  was portrayed across the 
board in the imperialist media? No, it was an oppressed nation, like Iraq which 
oppressed the Kurds and Shiites (and where broad layers fear to recognize the 
Kurds' right to independence, a potentially powerful weapon against the 
occupation, for fear it will mean the end of their nation).

Was the breakup of Yugoslavia a result of independence movements?  Argiris 
Malapanis, for whom I have high respect for his capacities as a journalist, 
made a couple of trips to Yugoslavia as a Militant reporter.  In every 
Republic, except among the Albanian Kosovars, he found many who expressed the 
view that independence was not something they had done, but something that had 
happened to them, something done from above, a breakup in relations with others 
that they had come to take for granted.  

And now they were at war with the Serbs and what were they to do. (By resorting 
to a war that had to be objectively a war for their domination, the 
Servb-"Yugoslav" government cut off the possibility of reaching out to such 
people.)

There is no question that Albanians were an oppressed nationality in 
Yugoslavia, by every applicable standard.  They made advances through the 
Yugoslav revolution, but the refusal to permit their adhesion to Albania was 
probably a crime, with harmful effects on both countries.  (It became a big 
part of the  pretext for Hoxha regime's hyper-militant anti-Titoism which 
helped him impose the ultrarepressive regime whose consequences we see today.)  
As national divisions worsened under Titoist decentralization and post-Titoist 
disintegration, the Albanians' situation tended to worsen and politicians like 
Milosevic were no different than his opponents in other republics in playing 
the national card in a reactionary way.

But I believe that we will not get clear on Yugoslavia until we see Serbia and 
the other republics primarily as nations oppressed by imperialism.
Fred Feldman


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