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Yugoslavia Reform in the 1980s
In 1982 the new Yugoslav government was faced with a serious
economic crisis that included rising unemployment, prices, and
national debt. In 1983 the national sense of crisis was strong
enough that the Federal Assembly passed austerity measures that
temporarily curbed spending and controlled inflation
(see Managing the Crisis of the 1980s
, ch. 3). In 1983 the Long-Term
Economic Stabilization Program (also known as the Krajgher
Commission Report) was issued, after two years of debate, as the
official blueprint for economic reform.
The Krajgher Report was evidence that even in 1983 most
Yugoslav politicians agreed in theory that development of a
market economy was necessary to restimulate growth throughout the
country. But in practice this would have meant a drastic
reduction in the policy--making role of the LCY, hence a total
repudiation of the Tito legacy. Free enterprise also would mean
that government agencies at all levels would lose their control
of economic affairs. For these reasons, market reform met strong
institutional resistance. The alternative reform, a return to
Stalinist central planning, had few Yugoslav advocates in the
mid-1980s and was totally discredited by the fall of central
planning governments across Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
While the government debated reform, the self-management
system further dispersed control over economic and financial
resources vital to the national economy. In the 1960s and 1970s,
individual enterprises had formed alliances with local party
machines, protecting uneconomical industries by giving them
disproportionate influence on policy making, and eroding regional
support for price and wage controls. Many of the short-term
austerity measures of 1983 were relaxed by the national
government even before their expiration dates. The national
political system then drifted into inaction, ignoring the need
for fundamental economic reform that had been obvious since 1980.
The Thirteenth Party Congress briefly rekindled activism in
1986 by restating the conclusions of the Long-Term Economic
Stabilization Program, and by officially recognizing serious
economic defects such as insufficient support for the relatively
profitable private enterprise sector and unwise investment of
foreign capital. The next years produced many official lists of
resolutions and targets, all politically unpopular and aimed at
imposing short-term austerity in order to effect long-term
economic reform. Beginning in 1987, austerity wage freezes and
plant closings were met by industrial strikes of increasing
magnitude, and for the next two years government policy wavered
between hard-line measures (such as threats to use the army to
break strikes) and accommodation (such as replacement of
unpopular party and state figures in Montenegro). Strikes
contributed the 1988 fall of Prime Minister Branko Mikulic, and
they threatened to topple Mikulic's successor, Ante Markovic, in
1989.
The 1980s also brought many proposals for political reform,
some of which were drastic. Suggestions included abolishing all
political parties and running the system through citizens'
associations; holding multiple-candidate elections within the
party; and introducing a full multiple-party system that would
have meant electoral competition for the LCY. Once the pattern of
intraparty debate was established at the Twelfth Congress of the
League of Communists, variations on all these themes appeared in
official and unofficial forums throughout the decade. After the
1982 Party Congress, Najdan Pasic, a Serbian member of the LCY
Central Committee, wrote a letter summarizing Serbian reform
demands to alleviate the stalemate of Tito's government by
consensus. The working group that grew from these demands took
three years to produce its "Critical Analysis of the Functioning
of the Political System of Socialist Self-Management," to which
over 200 individuals contributed. The final report was so
nebulous that both sides of the centralization issue claimed it
as a victory. In 1984 the Serbian League of Communists officially
demanded repeal of autonomy in Kosovo and Vojvodina, plus
reinforced federal government power, liberalized control of
economic enterprises, and democratization of the electoral
system. The main result of this proposal was angry dissent in
Kosovo and Vojvodina. In 1986 a lengthy memorandum by the Serbian
Academy of Sciences attacked the 1974 Constitution for blocking
Serbian control of its provinces, and criticized the party for
failure to implement the program of the Krajgher Commission. The
memorandum brought polemical responses from Kosovo and Vojvodina,
as well as official censure of the academy by the party.
At the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1986, advocates of strong
central government gained wide support among all delegations
except the Slovenian. There was general agreement that
decentralization had led to a dangerous proliferation of narrow,
technocratic local interests, beyond the control of the LCY.
Centralist forces won a victory when a new party statute
transferred election of party Central Committee members from the
republic parties to the LCY Congress, and gave the national party
the right to curb deviation by republican parties. In a massive
transition of party power, only 38 of the party's 165-member
Central Committee were re-elected at the Thirteenth Congress.
The Thirteenth Congress also formed a commission to write a
new series of constitutional amendments. Amendments proposed in
1987 sought to reduce the obstructive influence of decentralized
government. The federal planning system was to be strengthened
and the relations of the republics and provinces to the federal
government redefined. Several aspects of economic reform were
addressed, but the main impetus behind the amendments was the
Serbian drive to regain control over its provinces. After twentytwo months of heated regional debate, the amendments were
approved by the Federal Assembly. Because of their broad
application in economics, government, and the party, they were
expected to form the basis for yet another completely new
Yugoslav constitution in the early 1990s. The idea of a new
constitution was supported most strongly by the Serbs, who saw it
as a vehicle to officially ratify their control of Kosovo and
Vojvodina and achieve at least parity with the other republics
(which had no such problematic semi-autonomous provinces). An
estimated six million people took part in public debate on what
finally emerged in 1988 as thirty-nine amendments.
Data as of December 1990
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