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Yugoslavia Internal Security Forces
Internal security forces were instrumental in establishing
and maintaining the communist-controlled Yugoslav state after
World War II. They were responsible for identifying and
prosecuting Ustase leaders and others who collaborated with
occupying German and Italian forces during World War II. But
alleged collaboration became a pretext for reprisals against
political opponents such as the Cetnici and others who did not
support Tito's Partisans. Many, including Cetnik leader Draza
Mihajlovic and Croatian Roman Catholic archbishop Stepinac, were
executed or imprisoned after summary trials.
After the break in relations with the Soviet Union in 1948,
the Yugoslav government feared that the Soviet Union might find
or create a group within Yugoslavia to request Soviet
intervention to assist it in "preserving socialism." The Yugoslav
security agency investigated more than 50,000 alleged
"Cominformists" or pro-Soviet party members, who were
subsequently purged from the party. Several thousand were
eventually jailed, either without trials or after show trials.
They were interned in political prisons at Goli Otok in the
Adriatic, Sremska Mitrovica in Vojvodina, and Stara Gradiska in
Bosnia. Others were subjected to administrative punishment or
petty harassment.
The Soviet Union formed the orthodox Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (CPY) in exile in 1948 to rally Tito's opponents and
to topple him. An estimated 200 to 300 Yugoslav "Cominformists"
(
Cominform--see Glossary) took up residence in Moscow. The YPA
was an important target of their anti-Tito propaganda. The CPY
held meetings outside the Soviet Union and clandestine party
congresses inside Yugoslavia. During this time, Yugoslav internal
security forces exercised great power and directed much of it at
the army. Security agents exposed many real or suspected Soviet
operatives in high positions in the army, and some of those
accused were executed. The resulting bitterness and rivalry
between the internal security forces and the army survived for
decades afterward.
In 1966 a major purge of the Yugoslav internal security
forces benefited the military in this rivalry. The de facto chief
of the Department of State Security, or secret police (Uprava
drzavne bezbednosti--UDB), Aleksandar Rankovic, was involved in
the behind-the scenes struggle to succeed Tito. Allegedly on
orders from Rankovic, the UDB covertly monitored the telephone
calls of all major party leaders, including Tito. When Rankovi
was finally dismissed, however, the official announcement
mentioned only his responsibility for UDB brutality and
repression of Kosovo's Albanian population. The military
equivalent of the UDB, the Military Counterintelligence Service
(Kontraobavesajna Sluzba--KOS) was instrumental in exposing UDB
activities. The UDB was purged, its name was changed to State
Security Service (Sluzba drzavne bezbednosti--SDB), and a YPA
colonel general became its chief. In its new form the agency
retained substantial secret police powers.
The army has maintained some control over the civilian
security service since the 1966 purge. After the Croatian
nationalist unrest of 1971, a colonel general became federal
secretary for internal affairs (the secretariat controlling the
SDB), and another became federal public prosecutor. Using such
appointments, the military controlled the internal security
forces until 1984. In 1990 a former chief of the YPA general
staff was federal secretary for internal affairs.
During the 1980s, the SDB actively pursued its mission of
identifying and neutralizing émigré organizations in foreign
countries to inhibit their efforts to establish contacts and
support inside Yugoslavia. A small number of émigré groups of
various political persuasions and nationalities committed violent
acts against Yugoslav interests abroad. Those acts sometimes
included assassinations of Yugoslav diplomats or representatives
abroad. Special attention went to pro-Soviet Yugoslav exiles,
whose activities against the Yugoslav government were well
supported by Soviet funds. Believing that such groups threatened
public order, the SDB and its clandestine foreign intelligence
units used various means to counter their activities. The SDB
monitored the activities of the pro-Soviet CPY in Yugoslavia and
other countries. In 1974 thirty-two Montenegrins convicted of
organizing a CPY congress received prison terms of up to fourteen
years. A long investigation of this case ended in the arrest of a
Soviet diplomat in 1976.
Another major task of the SDB was to monitor Croatian
organizations in Austria, Sweden, France, West Germany, Canada,
and the United States. Surveillance of those groups provided
evidence for prosecuting Yugoslavs who contacted them when abroad
and then returned home. The SDB reportedly abducted and
assassinated prominent émigrés. A former YPA colonel who escaped
imprisonment as an alleged "Cominformist" in 1948 was seized in
Romania in 1976, clandestinely returned to Yugoslavia, and
jailed. As many as twenty troublesome émigrés may have been
killed in Europe by the SDB, other Yugoslav operatives, or their
paid agents since the early 1970s. In 1981 two West Germans and
one Yugoslav were convicted for murdering an émigré in West
Germany. They were allegedly paid a large sum to kill a former
SDB agent who defected from the security service while abroad.
However, the Yugoslav government contended that most violence
against emigres was committed by rival émigré organizations, not
by the SDB.
Data as of December 1990
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