Within Yugoslavia, the various nationalisms were used, on the one
hand, as an ideology of separatists, and as a demagogy of (rather caste
than crypto-communist) "elites", on the other. They used it to mobilize
their "own"national "masses"and confront them against others for the
purpose of preserving and strengthening their own power. The
ideological heritage of (Austro-)Marxism20 provided many good ideas for the
"nationalization"of socialism and communism (in the form of
national-communism) so that for the "new"ideologues (Kardelj and the
like) it was not difficult to devise different varieties of Marxist,
socialist, self-management, etc. doctrines that were in line with
different stages of the "building the socialism." At the end of this
road there opened a question of whether these were stages in the
progress of the socialist society or stages in attaining strategic
goals of the national development of various Yugoslav nations.
Differences in traditional national programmes occasionally
manifested themselves in the form of "crises of growth"(e.g. around
1970). In the 1990s, previously carefully hidden behind the screen of
communist, socialist and self-management phraseology, the long-term
strategies of the secessionist nations (in the first place the Slovenes
and Croats) dramatically came to the fore, or, in other words, the last
stage in the achievement of national goals and interests was launched.
Victory in this stage is usually won by the cunning of the secessionist
political mind, strongly supported and aided by a foreign factor.
However, it seems that the internal factors of the break-up were
dominant, at least in the initial stages of the process. At the
beginning, actions of the foreign factor were discreet, but then
acquired a more direct form of supporting the integration of some parts
of Yugoslavia into (Central) Europe (Alpe-Adria), ending in military
assistance to the secessionist Yugoslav nations and even with a threat
of international armed intervention against "uncooperative"Serbs.
For Marxists, revolutions were national in their form and class in
their content. Yugoslav separatist (r)evolutions (except in their final
stages) were "class"in form (ideology), and national in content. But
did they, in the Yugoslav case, imply only a victory of the national
idea or of the communist idea (as well)? The boundaries of the newly
emerged states are communist, and so was the idea of achieving national
"equality"through secession. It should be noted here that objections
pointing to the risk of the disintegration of a state were overruled by
Lenin with the following question: "from the point of view of democracy
in general, and of the proletarian movement in particular,"... "is
there any freedom greater than the freedom to secede, freedom to create
an independent national state?" In the Yugoslav case Lenin's concept of
the right to national self-determination, ultimately seen as the right
to secession, prevailed over the current Western ("civil") concept of
this right as the right to choose the type of government within
("inviolable") state borders. With a triumph of the Leninist concept of
the right to national self-determination, that is with a triumph of the
separatist revolution, the Yugoslav state collapsed and so did
Yugoslavism as a pseudoreligious zeal.
It is usually thought that a growing region-centre disparity should
for the most part be attributed to economic exploitation, with the
region being the victim. Schumacher argues that it is "the normal
case... that the poor provinces wish to separate from the rich, while
the rich want to hold on because they know that exploitation of the
poor within one's own frontiers is infinitely easier than exploitation
of the poor beyond them."21
It is undoubtedly true that a separatist movement is very strong in
regions that lag behind average the economic development of the country
of which they are part. Hansen points out that economic backwardness of
poor regions should not be equated with their exploitation by the rich,
particularly because the latter usually subsidize the former (in many
different ways). Therefore an analysis of exploitation costs suffered
by a given region and of its benefits from subsidies could reveal
whether it is a "loser"or actually a "winner." Because, according to
Hansen, in region-centre disputes it is likely that the major issue
will be regional equality rather than global efficiency.22
This is also true for the cases when the rich regions believe that
they are being exploited by the poor regions. However accurate the
cost-benefit analysis of interregional relations, it cannot solve the
problem of interregional conflicts by itself. Namely, whether
subsidized or exploited, a region may strive for independence for
non-economic reasons. Actually, regions with strong separatist
movements are characterized by a cultural identity which their
inhabitants want to preserve. Most often, the question of cultural
identity is intertwined with the economic motives for separation,
combining into a more general question -that of power.
In the attainment of a non-economic goal of separatism, besides
formulating political arguments in favour of separatism, often used are
economic problems that have a great significance for decision-making
connected with political choice. When a struggle for separatist status
is only politically motivated, the cost of separation and the possible
adverse consequences for a given region are not much of an issue. It is
believed that in the case of strong political will for independence
considerable economic sacrifices are acceptable. The economic
consequences of independence are usually taken to be relative or even
irrelevant when politics prevails over economy, and particularly if
separation is taking place in a subsistence (more precisely,
seminatural) rather than a market economy, as was the case with
Yugoslavia.
The political and economic objectives of separatism are often
incompatible, partly because very few separations in history have been
achieved by "consensus"(they have mostly been characterized by bloody
wars, the costs of which in terms of material destruction and human
lives should also be charged, contrary to usual practice, to separation
accounts). Another form of incongruity between the economic and the
political objectives of separatism is that, even when a region achieves
political independence, it remains dependent in trade, in putting joint
ventures into operation etc. because of the previously established
relationship of technological and economic interdependence between
regions. That is why secession is often preceded by a policy to
decrease dependence through a geographical redirection of economic
flows or through increased self-reliance (autarky), coupled with a kind
of a general self-segregation which, under a widespread political
arbitrariness, appears to be an easier and faster road to independence.
That a "break-up"and independence are not positively correlated is
illustrated by numerous cases among which, as we have already shown,
the Yugoslav case is very striking. A "fast and easy"road relatively
quickly shows its real costs. And thus a need arises for a (relative)
decline in real income to be increasingly compensated by the so-called
psychic income (Albert Breton23
).