|
Yugoslavia League of Communists of Yugoslavia
Through the end of the 1980s, Yugoslavia remained a one-party
state. All government officials at national and republic levels,
and a very high percentage of local officials, were chosen from
among the two million members of the League of Communists of
Yugoslavia (LCY). The 1974 Constitution described the LCY as "the
prime mover and exponent of political activity," using its
"guiding ideological and political action" to foster self-
management, the socialist revolution, and "social and democratic
consciousness." In the process of government reforms in the 1960s
and 1970s, the dominance of the LCY began to erode, especially in
the area of economic policy. Through the 1980s, however, the LCY
remained nominally the primary nongovernmental political
institution, with continued heavy influence on matters of
political policy at all levels of the federal state. In practical
input to policy decisions, the power of the LCY leadership
overlapped and often blended with that of the Collective
Presidency and the Federal Executive Council. But party influence
and respect in Yugoslav society at large lagged noticeably, and
alternative political organizations proliferated. By 1990 the
constitutional guarantee for the existence of LCY-sponsored
organizations was being used to justify the formation of
noncommunist parties without further amendment of the
Constitution.
LCY membership decreased slightly in the 1980s. The last
increase was recorded in 1982, and in 1988 membership fell below
two million for the first time since 1979. The death of Tito
deprived the party of its only unifying element, and after 1980
the party suffered from the same fragmentation and diffusion of
power as government institutions.
Founded in 1919, the party came to power in 1945 and followed
the organizational pattern of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union until the Sixth Party Congress (1952). The first major
party decentralization occurred at that time, beginning a long,
uneven process of reducing direct party authority in society. The
Sixth Party Congress also changed the name of the party to the
League of Communists of Yugoslavia, to differentiate it from the
other East European Communist parties.
Under Tito, a series of pragmatic adjustments were made after
1952 to counteract the decentralization trend, when more control
was needed in the central party organ. The first major event in
that series was the 1954 condemnation of Milovan Djilas,
architect of the 1952 reforms. Beginning in 1963, major
structural changes affected the national role of the LCY. Early
changes were the introduction of direct channels of influence for
self-management groups into policy-making (1963), and the
mandated separation of top party and state positions (1966).
Until the removal of Rankovic in 1966, a strong conservative
element sought to restore the direct, central role that the party
had gradually lost after the split with the Soviet Union.
Beginning in 1966, however, the party assumed an atmosphere of
open, regionally based disagreement that intensified for the next
twenty-five years. In 1969 the failure of the prestigious
Executive Bureau of the Party Presidium to act as a truly
national mediator within the party signaled growing fragmentation
in the LCY structure
(see Political Evolution after 1945
, this
ch.). The open rebellion of the Croatian party between 1969 and
1971 had negative repercussions for the LCY, despite Tito's
decisive purge. Croatia remained tranquil in the 1970s, but the
Serbian and Slovenian parties criticized the national
organization periodically. The Serbs were especially restive
after passage of the 1974 Constitution. In 1976 Najdan Pasic, in
the name of the Serbian Central Committee, presented a document
known as the Blue Book to the LCY leadership. That
document was a list of damages suffered by the Serbs because of
inequities in the Constitution. Tito suppressed the Blue
Book, but six years later Pasic attracted more attention by
suggesting that a commission study problems of government
function.
Efforts to streamline Yugoslavia's economic and political
systems always involved making changes in the LCY. All parties
understood that no meaningful change was possible in those areas
without cutting through the cumbersome lines of power held by
party elites at all levels. All the major reform efforts of the
1980s (the Pasic letter of 1982, an open call for reform
proposals in 1985, and the national working group report and
Serbian Academy of Sciences document of 1986) listed party reform
as the starting point for political progress
(see Reform in the 1980s
, this ch.). Nevertheless, in 1990 the LCY was still
organized in substantially the same way as it had been at the
time of Tito's death. By that time, the LCY was commonly called
"not one party, but eight," a description that accurately
reflected its fragmentation.
In theory, the National Party Congress was the highest
authority of the LCY; it was mandated to meet at least every five
years. Accordingly, the Twelfth Party Congress met in 1982, the
Thirteenth in 1986, the Fourteenth in 1990. The main goal of
recent congresses was reconciliation of regional differences on
reform that would restore the party's leading role in shaping
national policy. The 1982 and 1986 congresses each began with
hopeful rhetoric and dissolved into renewed regional squabbles.
The 1990 congress was the first since 1945 to be labeled
"extraordinary" (meaning "emergency"). It was widely viewed as
the party's "last chance" for constructive action to improve its
sagging national image.
A commission on party statute reform met six months prior to
the Fourteenth Congress to develop reform proposals for
discussion at the congress. This commission reaffirmed the
Leninist principle of democratic centralism--meaning that diverse
views were to be heard, but the will of the majority would
determine policy. The commission also recommended streamlining
the party hierarchy for greater accountability. But the vague
language of the commission report addressed none of the deep and
controversial statutory changes universally acknowledged as
necessary. The stimulus for change would thus have to come from a
platform adopted by the Fourteenth Congress itself. By party law,
such a platform was required to precede statutory changes. In
fact, prior to the opening of the congress, no formal proposal
for party transformation had ever been made.
The Fourteenth Congress included 1,688 delegates, of which
994 were elected by local commune party conferences (1 delegate
per 2,000 party members). Each of the six republic party
organizations then added 60 delegates. The two provincial party
organizations added 40 each and the army, 30. Other party
organizations sent a total of 204 delegates. Regional
representation was divided as follows: Serbia had 360 delegates,
Bosnia and Hercegovina 278, Croatia 240, Macedonia 166, Vojvodina
157, Slovenia 139, Montenegro 123, and Kosovo 112.
Doctrinal reform was the central task of the Fourteenth
Congress. The congress voted to relinquish the LCY's monopoly of
political power and allow multiparty elections, in response to
similar moves in neighboring communist countries. But the meeting
was cut short when the Slovenian delegation departed in protest
of the defeat of its proposal to restructure the LCY as a league
of republican organizations freely associated under the national
party. The departure of the Slovenian League of Communists left
the national organization weakened and uncertain, especially
because national television had revealed acrimonious conflicts in
what was supposedly the strongest unifying political force in the
country. In the months following the congress, the status of the
party remained unknown, as Serbian and other members attempted to
reconvene the congress and complete the much-needed new party
platform. Both the passage of electoral reforms and the
interruption of the congress by the Slovenes dampened Serbian
ambitions for using the party to control national politics.
The procedure and structure of the LCY remained largely
unchanged during the 1980s. The party was directed between
congresses by the Presidium, the twenty-three member steering
body for the Central Committee. The Presidium oversaw a variety
of commissions and organizations and implemented party policy.
Specific Presidium members directed party activities in ideology,
organizational development, socioeconomic relations, political
propaganda, and international relations. Nationalities were
apportioned in the Presidium according to republic and province
(three members per republic, two per province, one representing
the army, plus the president, who was elected by the party
Central Committee). Of the Presidium membership, fourteen were
full members; the others were ex officio members (one from the
army, plus the presidents of the party presidiums of each
republic and province). Ex officio members could not be directly
removed. Because the Presidium thus provided the Yugoslav army a
direct role in decision making, that organization strongly
opposed legalization of other political parties that would not
provide it such input
(see The Military and the Party
, ch. 5).
Tito's last major adjustment to the party system had established
rotation of major party leadership positions, which after 1979
were assumed by a representative of a different region every one
or two years. When Tito died, the Presidium seemed to be
increasing its influence on national policy making. That trend
ended in 1980, however, when the position of party president was
abolished in favor of collective leadership in the Presidium.
In the late 1980s, the Central Committee comprised 165
members. Those individuals were nominated by the central
committees of the republics and provinces. The national Central
Committee was called into plenary session at irregular intervals
to discuss urgent policy questions. In less than one year in
1988-89, ten such sessions--some held consecutively--were called
to discuss party reform. Both the Presidium and the Central
Committee were targeted in reform agendas; reform efforts removed
five Presidium members in 1989, and an 1989 LCY commission
proposed reducing the size of the Central Committee to 129
members.
Membership policy for the LCY differed markedly from that for
other communist parties. Until the reforms of 1952, Yugoslavia
followed the Soviet model. Recommendations for party membership
were required from two party members, then a candidate for
membership was placed on probation for eighteen months. Both
those requirements were dropped in 1952; after that time,
nominations also were accepted from nonparty Yugoslavs in good
standing. During the 1970s, party membership nearly doubled,
despite the large-scale expulsions of the Tito era (170,000 left
the party forcibly or voluntarily between 1972 and 1979).
Membership reached two million in 1980. From 1983 until 1988,
however, the number decreased slightly every year, although
massive expulsions did not recur after the purge of the Kosovo
party following the 1981 riots. About 5 percent of party members
left voluntarily in the 1980s, and the percentage of worker and
peasant members declined. In 1987 workers comprised only 30
percent of the total membership and 8 percent of the Central
Committee, while peasants made up only 3.5 percent of total party
membership. Increasing party elitism was indicated by the stable
percentage of the intelligentsia, who depended on party
membership for upward professional mobility. In the mid-1980s
some 95 percent of top managers and 77.6 percent of professionals
in Yugoslavia were party members. In 1980 only 25 percent of
party membership was younger than twenty-seven, including only 1
in 200 students.
Authoritative studies and surveys in the 1980s showed that
most Yugoslavs, whether party members or nonmembers, viewed the
LCY as a practical avenue to success, not as a leading force in
the ideology or ethics of the nation. Many LCY members did not
participate in political activities, and power positions remained
in the same hands for long periods of time. A considerable number
of Central Committee members served more than one term, some as
many as seven.
Party organization at the republic and province level was
identical to that of the national party. A group of executive
secretaries of the national Presidium served as the liaison
between the national party and the next level in the hierarchy.
In the 1980s, the republic and provincial parties were the most
important arenas for formulating and expressing the positions of
their respective jurisdictions toward national political and
economic issues. For example, the central committees of Slovenia
and Serbia framed much of the political polemics between the two
republics. Slobodan Milosevic used the presidency of the Serbian
presidium in the late 1980s as a platform to advocate Serbian
nationalism and recentralization of party and state institutions.
Approval by the Slovenian and Croatian Central Committees for
multiparty local elections in 1990 signaled a major breakthrough
toward a true multiparty system in those republics
(see Regional Political Issues
, this ch.). And the purging of provincial party
leaders in Vojvodina and Kosovo under pressure from the Serbian
party in 1988 marked a turning point in Serbia's struggle to
reassert control over its two provinces.
Thus in 1990 the LCY was decentralized in exercising
authority, but increasingly elitist in terms of who occupied
positions of power in the party organizations. Party
configuration was the most formidable obstacle to reform of the
national political system, but structural change could come only
from a centralized authority whose mere existence would threaten
regional elites. Even as actual LCY power waned, Tito's legacy of
party policy--making dominance remained the theoretical,
paralyzing basis of government operations.
Data as of December 1990
|
