SERBIA AND THE SERBIAN PEOPLE’S POSITION - Part 01

SERBIA AND THE SERBIAN PEOPLE’S POSITION

6. Many troubles that plague the Serbian people emerged in circumstances that are common to all Yugoslav peoples.

However, the Serbian people were also pressured by other troubles. The long-term lag in the development of the economy in Serbia, the non-regulated state-legal relations with Yugoslavia and the provinces, as well as the genocide in Kosovo, appeared on the political scene, with a strong joint force, that made the situation tense, if not explosive. These three burdensome issues, arising from the long-term policy towards Serbia, with its own dramatics, threaten not only the Serbian people but also the stability of the whole of Yugoslavia. Because of that, these issues must be given full attention.

It does not take much knowledge and information to determine the long lag in Serbia’s economy. However, this was officially done in the 1981-1985 Plan, in which was written that; measures will be taken in this era to stop such tendencies. That obligation quickly fell into oblivion. Five years were spent doing new tests to determine if Serbia had lost pace in its development. However, arguably the findings confirmed what was already known which, according to important indicators, was that the economy was constantly moving below the Yugoslav average, with increasing lag. The slower development lacked the strength to overcome the economic underdevelopment of part of its territory that comprised 1.5 million people with a GDP per capita of over 30% lower than the corresponding income in the three underdeveloped republics.

The tests left no shadow of doubt about Serbia’s relatively backward economy which was primarily due to lower investment per capita, and not due to the lower efficiency of investment. According to official statistics, performance in Serbia on the whole post-war period was second only to Slovenia and Vojvodina, and in the past decade (1973-1983) was highest in Yugoslavia. Greater efficiency could partially complement the loss of the social product for smaller investments, but could not prevent the formation of the value of fixed assets per capita for a total of 80.5% of the Yugoslav average, which was even less than that of Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the two underdeveloped republics.

During the entire post-war period, Serbia’s economy was exposed to unequal exchanges. The most current example of such an exchange was the low-cost electricity being shipped in large quantities to other

republics. Instrumental measures taken in its current economic and credit-monetary policy, contributions to the federation fund, in particular, for the development of economically underdeveloped areas, more recently were the most important contributing factors to Serbia’s relatively lagging economy. If we add to this that the most developed republics, because of the poor conditions in Serbia, began to pour their capital into Serbia’s economy (agriculture, food industry, commerce and banking), we get a picture of a subordinate and neglected economy within the Yugoslav space.

The consistent discrimination against Serbia’s economy in the postwar period cannot be fully explained without accepting the inter-nation relations that took place between the two World Wars, the way in which the Communist Party of Yugoslavia viewed and assessed them. In this respect, the authoritative Comintern had decisive influence on the effort to achieve strategic and tactical ideas internationally, which at the time pursued the policy of dismantling Yugoslavia. The ideological justification used was that the Serbians were an “oppressive” nation with the others being the “oppressed” people. This kind of policy was a dramatic example of the Marxist doctrine used for class division on every nation before its political pragmatism which, in its attempts to use national inter-friction, pushed class internationalism into the background. That somewhat explains why the CPY did not bother to do its own research in order to get to the truth about the economic nature of inter-nation relations. The assessment of these relations, which came down to the political hegemony of the Serbian bourgeoisie, followed by appropriate economic domination of Serbia, in fact, was taken from the separatist-oriented civil parties. Neither before nor after the war was the CPY in a position where it had direct knowledge of directly determining the true situation...

The consistent repetition of the pre-war assessment, during the course of the four decades that followed, suggests that there was an extremely large political and economic need to maintain this wrong assessment. It was meant to instill a sense of historical guilt in the Serbian people in order to frustrate their resistance to the political and economic system to which they were subordinated.

The pre-war assessment of Serbia’s economy was based on postwar politics which, clearly enough, was declared in the interpretation of the first five-year plan. It was then decided that Serbia would follow a slower pace of industrialization following Slovenia. In practice, this policy began with the relocation of industrial plants for building airplanes, trucks and weapons to the other republics, it continued with compulsory purchases of raw materials and agricultural products are cut prices, with lower investment per capita in terms of the Yugoslav average and made contributions to the development of underdeveloped areas... Slovenia and Croatia started at the highest level of development and had the fastest growth. With the improvement of their position, a relative gap between them and the rest of Yugoslavia began to develop and deepen over the years. With this turn of events, which deviated from the originally proclaimed policy of balanced development, it was made impossible for the economic system not to be biased, and made it possible for those two republics to be able to impose solutions that suited their economic interests...

Serbia’s economic subordination cannot be fully understood without understanding its inferior position, which determined all its relations. The economic hegemony of the Serbian people between the wars was not in dispute for the CPY, regardless of Serbia’s industrialization being slower than the Yugoslav average. Opinions and behaviours, which had decisive influence on subsequent political developments and on international relations, were formed on that ideological platform. The Slovenes and Croatians, before the war, had created their own national communist parties and gained decisive influence in the CPY central Committee. Their political leaders had become arbiters in all political questions during and after the war. These two neighbouring republics shared a similar historical fate, had the same religion and strived for greater autonomy and, being the most developed, shared common economic interests, which were sufficient reasons for a permanent coalition in trying to achieve political dominance. The coalition has solidified a long cooperation between Tito and Kardeli, the two most prominent political figures of post-war Yugoslavia, who enjoyed undisputed authority in the centres of power. This monopoly on power allowed them to significantly influence the composition of the Yugoslav political leadership in all the republics and provinces. Everybody

was familiar with Edward Kardeli’s unprecedented contribution in the preparation and adoption of the AVNOJ decisions and all post-war Constitutions. He had the ability to incorporate his personal views in the foundation of social order, which were not subject to challenge. The determination with which Slovenia and Croatia oppose constitutional changes today, shows how the 1974 Constitution was derived. Changes to social order could not be accepted if they differed from the views of both political authorities; nothing could be done even after they died because the Constitution allowed veto which was insurance against any changes. Bearing all this in mind, it cannot be disputed that Slovenia and Croatia dominated politically and economically, which helped them realize their national aspirations and economic programs.

Under such circumstances, and being constantly accused of being “oppressive”, “unitary”, “centralist”, “imposing”, the Serbian people could not achieve equality in Yugoslavia, which turned them into the biggest victims. This retaliatory policy towards the Serbians began before the war when the Communist Party was in need of an “oppressive” nation. The Serbians were relatively underrepresented in the CPY Central Committee and some, probably to gain support, were declared as members of other nations. During the war Serbia was in no position to fully participate as an equal in the decision making process which would decide future inter-relations and the social structure of Yugoslavia. Serbia’s Anti-Fascist Assembly was created during the second half of 1944, later than those of the other republics. The Communist Party of Serbia was created even later, after the war. For the second AVNOJ Session, delegates were elected from the Serbian military units and members of the Supreme Headquarters who happened to be in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, unlike some other Republic delegates attending the Session who came from their territories and who had national and political organizations behind them with pre-prepared stands and programs.

These historical facts show that during the war Serbia was not formally, and especially not essentially, in an equal position when decisions of far-reaching significance were made with regards to future state affairs. It does not mean that the Serbians would not voluntarily have decided on federalism as the most suitable solution

for the post war national community, but keep in mind that Serbians had no previous preparation and were without support from their political organizations, and found themselves in a situation, in military terms, where they had to accept solutions that left wide open opportunities for breakup. The position Serbia was put in, must be duly considered and regulated in terms of its national integrity and its continuous cultural development, and not just for the outstanding question to remain open to solutions which affects the vital interests of the Serbian people...

(Left out are two pages which were part of the original text- DM).

With a clear conscience and with the belief that it had fulfilled its solidarity debt, Serbia feels it has earned the right to end its contribution to the fund. Serbia alone has born full responsibility of assisting the development of the three undeveloped republics and Kosovo, at its own economic expense; which was not the case with the three developed regions. The contribution rate in proportion to the GDP, according to basic rules, was unfairly applied without weighing the economic strength of the obligated. The proportional rate spared Slovenia, Croatia and Vojvodina from having to progressively contribute, which allowed them to not only develop normally, but to also improve their relative position against the Yugoslav average. In Serbia, however, these rates posed a huge burden. Its economy amounted to about half of the net accumulation of the undeveloped regions, so much so that it came quite close to the economically undeveloped republics.

Besides its contribution, which helped the underdeveloped regions develop, it lessened the burden on the developed regions. For its own economic lag, Serbia found no understanding from either the underdeveloped or from the developed regions. Their mutual interests brought them into a coalition by which they maintained the current situation in which their interests were satisfied at Serbia’s expense. This anti-Serbian coalition, with regards to the rate contribution, participated more openly and with less political savvy than before. Serbia was openly pressured to accept the overall imposed contribution rate. It is important to emphasize that this pressure is an important symbol of the traditional discrimination against Serbia which never weakened; if not increased.

Given what had happened in the postwar period, this kind of pressure was nothing new. What could have been new was Serbia’s determination to resist that pressure. Unfortunately that did not happen. Its resistance was a little more than before, but still quite insufficient. Serbian leaders did not even use all legal means, such as the ability to apply veto, which left them in a situation all alone with their justified demands unfulfilled. And you would think that an appropriate response would have been to create a political crisis, if there was no other choice. Unfortunately that did not happen either. Politicians in Serbia proved to be unprepared for the historical task that was imposed on them during the extremely difficult relations in the Yugoslav community. At that historical moment, it was demanded of them to realize that the end of the war was coming and that the politicians would have to shift practice in the postwar period which would raise the question of Serbia’s equality, the practice of discrimination of the economists, sociologists, philosophers and writers from Serbia who pointed out malignant social phenomena and warned of the consequences of wrong decisions, and the practice of removing capable businessmen and thus disarming Serbia’s economy in a strong market competition.

7. Behaviour towards Serbia’s economic backwardness has shown that the retaliatory policy towards Serbia had not weakened over time. Quite the opposite, fed by its own success, this kind of behaviour increasingly became stronger until it finally manifested itself in genocide. This kind of discrimination against the citizens of Serbia could not be tolerated politically. Serbia, despite its size in population and parity representation compared to the other republics, in practice had less say than the others when it came to appointing federal officials and delegates to the Federal Assembly. Serbian voices and voters were worth less than those of any other republic or province.

(Shortened- half-page DM)

8. The persecution of the Serbian people in Kosovo was spectacular testimony to our historic defeat. During the spring of 1981, the Serbian people experienced something truly undeserving; open and

total war prepared in the form of a variety of administrative, political and legal changes. Led by a skillful application of various methods and tactics, with a split role, with active, not just passive and not very covert support of certain political centres in the country - more fatal than that which came from the neighbourhood - that war, which had not yet been faced and called by its real name, lasted almost five years. It even took longer than the liberation war of this country from April 6, 1941 to May 9, 1945. The Nazi created Balist units rebelled in Kosovo and Metohija in 1944-1945, before the end of the war, and were smashed, but as time has shown the Balist movement was not politically defeated. The Balist movement in its current form, remade in a new fashion, was successfully being developed to a point that approached a victorious outcome. The old aggression in the neo-fascists was absent; measures taken took the aggression away from the streets and manifested it in strong racist and irrevocable goals that had to be achieved at all costs and by all means. Even trumped up charges against young offenders were used to ignite and deepen ethnic hatred.

The five year long Albanian war waged in Kosovo reassured its leaders and followers that they were stronger than they thought, that they enjoyed support from various power centres in the country, far more than the Kosovo Serbs enjoyed from Serbia, or the republic that has remained with the other republics in Yugoslavia. Aggression was encouraged, so much so that even the most official representatives of the province, as well as its scientists, behaved not only arrogantly, but also cynically, calling their slander and blackmail their legal rights. The organized political forces in our country, which concluded the revolution in almost impossible conditions, under the most powerful enemy in the entire century -suddenly showed themselves to be not only inefficient, restricted, but almost disinterested in fighting back and in coming to the defense of their people and territory. And when aggression is defeated, the political measures taken must not be tied with arrests, with “differentiation”, with false loyalties, but with the real revolutionary struggle, with open debates, with the right to freedom of expression and by demonstrating different opinions.

The physical, political, legal and cultural genocide of the Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohija was the worst defeat in the

battles for freedom that Serbia led from Orashets 1804, until the 1941 uprising. The responsibility for that loss falls primarily on the still living Commintern heritage in the national policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the blind following of the Serbian communists that followed that policy, the extremely expensive ideological and political delusions, ignorance, inconsistency, or the already entrenched opportunism in Serbian politicians generations after the war, always being on the defensive and always caring more about what others thought of them and their timid “settings” about Serbia’s position, rather than caring about objective facts and conditions and being in charge of the future of the people that elected them.

The equitable national relations, for which the Serbians fighters fought hardest, in Kosovo and Metohija - with a very specific policy of “development” conducted with planned procedures and with a clear purpose - began to be turned against them by the Albanian nationalists in the Kosovo political leadership.

The autonomous region at that ripe moment in time received the rank of autonomous province, after that its status was upgraded to “constituent part of the federation” with greater prerogatives than the republic to which that province formally belonged. The next step of “escalation” that occurred, as well as the Albanian-ization of Kosovo and Metohija, was done by most legal means. Also things including the unification of the literary language, the national name, flag, textbooks - under instructions from Tirana - were done quite openly, as a matter of fact, and so was the state border between the two territories. Plots, which are usually forged secretly, in Kosovo were created openly and pointedly. This is why for many people the mass riots in 1981 seemed more like old habits, rather than like some new phenomenon. This was dangerous for the entire country, as was later revealed when the truth came out about Serbians being expelled from Kosovo, viewed as “digging the intestines of the Albanians” about which the “Belgrade press” wrote. This was a greater sin than the burnings, murders, rapes, desecrations, etc., many of which to this day have not been solved...

(Here are some pages with examples of the violence perpetrated against the Kosovo Serbs and about the destruction of Serbian monuments and Kosovo traditions - DM).

The rest of the Serbian people are not only constantly leaving their place of birth with an unabated tempo but, according to current practice, are being exiled through oppression, physical, moral and psychological terror. They are being prepared for their final exodus. If things do not significantly change, less than ten years from now the Kosovo Serbs will be gone and Kosovo will be “ethnically pure”. The racists have clearly expressed their purpose by following the programs and actions of the Prizren League from 1878-1881, which will be realized in full.

As a legal consequence of this situation, a petition was signed by 2016 Serbs from Kosovo Polie and submitted to the Federal Assembly and other bodies in the country. There is no forum for the Serbian people by which they can challenge this violence by legal means, and fight to protect themselves against the violence and destruction waged against them. If the province cannot protect them then they have no choice but to seek help from their Republics and from the Federation. The people have the right to express their civic conscience before the State and Federal Assembly. The steps taken by the citizens can be condemned as unacceptable and considered hostile only from an autonomous-separatist and chauvinist aspect...

In accordance with the ethnic profile of the Balkan Peninsula, the ethnic mixture in many Balkan regions, and a requirement for a pure homogeneous ethnic Kosovo, which will be carried out in part, is not only a direct and serious threat to the people who happened to be in the minority but, if accomplished, the initiated wave of expansion will be a real and daily threat to all nations in Yugoslavia.

Kosovo is not the only area in which the Serbian people are under the pressure of being discriminated against. Absolutely, and not just relatively, the decline in the number of Serbs in Croatia is sufficient evidence for this claim. According to the 1948 census, there were 543,795 Serbians in Croatia, or 14.48 percent of the total population. According to the 1981 census, the number dropped to 531,502, or 11.5 percent of the total population. No growth, only decline in the

33 peaceful post-war years, after the first census was carried out and when, because of the consequences of the war, the number of Serbian citizens was well known.

Lika, Kordun and Bania remained underdeveloped in Croatia, which strongly encouraged the Serbians living there to migrate into Serbia and into other parts of Croatia where the Serbians, as settlers, and other minority groups were highly susceptible to assimilation. The Serbian people in Croatia were indeed exposed to refined and effective assimilation. It was an integral part of the Croatian policy to ban all Serbian organizations and cultural institutions in Croatia, which had a rich tradition during the Austrian-Hungarian occupation and during the interwar years in Yugoslavia. After that an official language was imposed on them named after another nation (Croatia), which embodied national inequality. With constitutional provision this language became a required language for the Serbians in Croatia. Then Croatian nationalist-minded linguists with a systematic and well-organized action plan distanced this language more and more from the languages of other republics which spoke the Serbo-Croatian language. This contributed to weakening the ties between the Serbians in Croatia with other Serbians. This was done at the cost of tearing the linguistic continuity between the Croatians themselves and with removing precious international terms of communicating with other cultures; especially in science and engineering. But the Serbian people in Croatia are not only culturally cut off from the mainstream, but the mainstream is unable to inform itself about this fate, economic and cultural position, as long as some nations in Yugoslavia have contact with their compatriots in other countries. The integrity of the Serbian people and their culture throughout Yugoslavia lay in the fateful question as a matter of its survival and development.

The general picture fits the fate of Serbian institutions created during the war and immediately after. During the national liberation struggle and shortly thereafter, the national life of Serbians in Croatia intensively developed in their specific political, cultural and educational institutions. And thus with the ZAVNOH Executive Board’s principle decision, made on November 10, 1943, the first Serbian club of ZAVNOH advisors was established on January 12, 1944 in free Otocets, to act as a political leadership of the Serbian

people in Croatia. After the war ended, at the initiative of the Serbian club, on September 30, 1945 the First Congress of Serbs in Croatia was held in Zagreb, where over 30,000 participants formed the Main Serbian Board in Croatia as a “broad political organization of the uniquely Serbian people of Croatia” in the composition of a Popular Front. By direct involvement, these political Serbian bodies then established their own cultural institutions and began to work towards national Education. And thus on October 22, 1944, on top of the ruins of the Glina church in which the Ushtash committed a terrible slaughter, the Serbian singing club “Obilich” was founded and less than a month later, on November 18, again in Glina, the Serbian cultural and educational society “Prosveta” was formed. In addition to “Prosveta”, which owned its own printing press and served as a publishing house, on January 4, 1948 a Serbian Central Library and a Museum of the Serbians in Croatia were established in Zagreb. Besides all that, starting from September 10, 1943 and onwards, NOP addressed the Serbian people in Croatia with a particular journal, printed in Cyrillic letters, called the “Serbian word”. In the postwar years, the name of the “Serbian word” was changed to “Prosveta”. During the 1944-1945 academic year NOP of the Serbian children in Croatia delivered a Cyrillic alphabet book, and the Presidency of ZAVNOH, with its decision, made on July 18, 1944, guaranteed to treat the Cyrillic alphabet as equal to the Latin and at the same time, above all, apply its use in the schools in the territory of Croatia with a Serbian majority.

All this, for the Serbian people in Croatia, had greater and deeper meaning than just recognition for their role in NOB (People’s Liberation War). With a special proclamation of “The Serbian people in Croatia”, on January 12, 1944, the ZAVNOH Serbian club advisers announced its emergence as “a sign of equality between the Serbs and Croats” and “guaranteed that the interests of the Serbian people will be properly represented in free Croatia”. During the establishment of the Main Serbian Board in Croatia it was designated as “a political organization of the unique Serbian people in Croatia”, whose task was to facilitate “the development of free thought” and that it will “sufficiently guarantee that the Serbs in Croatia will continue to enjoy benefits as equal people”. The Serbians earned these benefits by themselves with their own blood

and felt they were “significant signs of equality between the Serbian and Croatian people in Croatia”.

This situation lasted well into the war and immediately after the war, and then it all changed. It is not known whether the Serbs ever considered that some of these institutions were unnecessary, and that they should be abolished or replaced with different institutions that would live up to the spirit of the time. However, all these institutions were consecutively repealed during the fifties by decisions from the competent Croatian authorities. Last in the series to be canceled was the Serbian Cultural Society “Prosveta” decided by RSUP of Croatia on May 23, 1980. For the justification of that final act the SSRNH Republic Conference was engaged. It talked about the radical turn of events in relation to wartime and through the post-war time period at the conclusion of its consultation, held on October 2, 1980.

These findings essentially leave no room for any special requirements for establishing institutions for the Serbian people in Croatia: “Taking care of the complex issues of culture, history, life and work of the Croatian or Serbian nation in the Socialist Republic of Croatia cannot be left to the special national companies or organizations”. This attitude is explained by the following interpretation: “As far as it is justifiable our nations can independently develop cultural institutions and clubs, it is not justified however for such institutions to be opened by members of nations elsewhere in Yugoslavia, and especially not by the Serbs in Croatia and the Croats in Croatia”. At the end the following was said:

“We need to fight; the Serbs in Croatia are not silent as a people, they are not to be called settlers, as they are in some books. Our history is common, and so is our culture and language, but the specifics need to be recognized”. It was also said at the event that there is need to work harder towards learning the Cyrillic alphabet in Croatia.

With this kind of attitude, expressed by the SSRNH Conference, which no political body in Croatia or no one outside of Croatia stood against, one can only imagine what kind of life the Serbian people in Croatia lived, a life that was established during the course of the

long history of NOB. Inter-nation relations formulated by NOB were radically revised since then and so were constitutional guarantees of minority rights and freedoms, including the rights of citizens. The practical significance of the statements: “We must take care of”, “we need to fight”, “we need to learn the Cyrillic system”, and so on, can be assessed only when confronting the real language policy pursued by Croatia. The hard drive to constitute a special Croatian language is built in opposition to any notion of a common Serbian-Croatian language which, in the long term, does not leave much for the Serbian people in Croatia to preserve their national identity.

Excluding the period of Croatia’s existence, in the past, the Serbians in Croatia have never been as threatened as they are today. In an attempt to resolve their national position, the Croatians have imposed a first-rate political issue. If no solution is found, the consequences will be repeatedly harmful, not only in Croatia’s internal relations but also for the whole of Yugoslavia.

An important question, regarding the standing of the Serbian people, given the circumstance that they are outside of Serbia, especially outside of Serbia proper, where many Serbs live, a much larger number than other nations, must be asked. According to the 1981 census, 24 percent, or 1,958,000, of Serbs live outside of Serbia’s territory, which is significantly more than the number of Slovenians, Albanians, Macedonians, taken separately, and about the same as the Muslims. The total Serbian population living outside of Serbia proper is approximately 3,285,000 Serbs or 40.3 percent of the total Serbian population. The Serbian people were affected worse than any other nation by the general disintegration process that engulfed Yugoslavia. The current flow by which our Serbian society is moving in Yugoslavia today has completely reversed from that which it went through decades and centuries ago since our common homeland was formed. The process is aimed at completely breaking up the national unity of the Serbian people. The best illustration of this is how everything today is being aligned towards delivering autonomy to Vojvodina.

Vojvodina was given its autonomy because, among other reasons, the Serbian people purchased it from the Habsburg Monarchy at the

end of the XVII century. The Serbian people in Austria, and later in Austro-Hungary, tended to lean towards an autonomous region (towards despotism or dukedom which they called Serbia) surrounded by the larger and pre-eminent Hungarians and Germans to preserve their national individuality and Orthodox background. By creating a separate autonomous region in another state’s territory, the Serbians worked on weakening that state with aims at making it easier to separate from it and unite with their brethren in the Sava and Danube.

That’s how it was in the past with Serbian Vojvodina, created in 1848/49 with the blood of the Serbs living on it and with help from the Serbs from Serbia. Today it’s the other way around. The political leaders in Vojvodina are not for creating unity and closeness; they struggle towards greater independence and separation from Serbia. Regardless of how unnatural the process is, contrary to historical logic, it delivers obvious results, powerfully contributing to the disintegration of the Serbian people.

9. For more than half a century now, the Serbian people have carried the load of being a prison guard of the other Yugoslav nations. The Serbian people have not been able to seek support from their own history. In many instances history itself was in doubt. The democratic civil tradition for which Serbia fought, and again fought for in the nineteenth century, because of the narrow-mindedness and partiality of its official historiography, until recently, remained completely hidden in the shadow of the Serbian socialist and labour movement. With such a historical picture of actual legal, cultural and state contributions, Serbia, as a civil society, is impoverished and narrowed down, so distorted that no one could spiritually and morally help it or give it support for the preservation and restoration of its historical consciousness. The dignified and brave liberation efforts of the Bosnian Serbs and the entire Yugoslav youth, to which Young Bosnia belonged, suffered a similar fate and, before history, were caught by a second plan with contributions to class ideology whose carriers and authors were the Austro-Marxists and not the national liberation movements.

Under influence of the ruling ideology, cultural benefits for the Serbian people were appropriated or devalued, ignored or not

appreciated. The language too was suppressed and the Cyrillic alphabet was left to fade away. The field of literature, in that sense, served as a major training area for arbitrariness and lawlessness. This was not done to any of the other Yugoslav people as was so rudely done to Serbia’s cultural and spiritual integrity. No other literary and artistic heritage was so torn, broken down and looted as was the Serbian heritage. Political measures were imposed on Serbia’s culture by the ruling ideology to devalue its valuable and powerful scientific and historical collection. While today the Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian and Montenegrin culture and literature are integrated, the Serbian culture is left out to disintegrate. Ideologically it is legitimate to freely separate and distribute Serbian literature and call it Vojvodian, Montenegrin and Bosnian. The most significant work of the best Serbian writers is broken off and is artificially established as new regional literature. The appropriation and dissolution of Serbian cultural heritage goes so far that now it is taught in schools that Njegosh is not a Serbian writer, and that Laza Kostich and Veljko Petrovich are from Vojvodina, and that Petar Kochich and Jovan Duchich are writers from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mesa Selimovich was not allowed to declare himself a Serbian writer, and now his work is not respected because it is part of the Serbian literature. Serbian culture has more ineligible, banned, unspoken and undesirable intellectual writers and artists than any other Yugoslav literature, and many are even completely erased from the literary memory.

Prominent Serbian writers are the only ones that are blacklisted by all the Yugoslav mass media. In compulsory school literature, Serbian literature is heavily damaged, in other words, mechanically subordinated by administrative measures by Republic-Province reciprocity, not by the standard of quantity or value. In school programs in some republics and provinces the history of the Serbian people is not only grossly reduced, but exposed with chauvinistic interpretations. Thus, the Serbian cultural and spiritual heritage seems smaller than it is, and the Serbian people are losing their important mainstay of moral and historical consciousness.

The impressive and, indeed, revolutionary measures and cultural enthusiasm expressed in the first post-war decades for opening an

extensive network of educational institutions, from primary education to higher schooling, slackened off in the late sixties.

There appeared a phase of stagnation and even more pronounced regression, so today our education and upbringing with the existing school and educational system is very extensive and primitive with much lag for the needs and goals of our modern society and for the civilization in which we live. The school system is based on the so-called vocational education, with low quality teaching, which is a complete failure. Several generations have been spiritually crippled and impoverished; we have succeeded in the overproduction of primitive semi-skilled workers, unqualified to engage in economic and social activities and unprepared for the needed creative and intellectual development. There is no country in the world which has organized its educational system with such jagged legal regulations, as ours.

In total, Yugoslavia has one hundred and ten federal, state and provincial laws dealing with various types of education, many of which are repeatedly modified so that sometimes research is necessary to come to a final version of the law.

However, schooling in Yugoslavia has never been so extensively crushed and so low in quality as it is today.

Our legislative practice has legally created eight educational systems which have been increasingly moving away from each other and no agreement has been reached on a common core to stop these legally grounded developments. No discussion or negotiation lately or in the last fifteen years has taken place to reach a common goal. This has led to systematic disintegration of the Yugoslav community resembling a barren utopia. The most important first step is to repeal the laws that lead to separation. This will allow us to continue the line of togetherness and unity in this region which had been drawn more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Otherwise, we will create, and create, generations which will be less and less Yugoslavs, and to an increasingly greater extent, dissatisfied national romantics and lovers of nationalism. A country that has no single educational system cannot count on being unique in the future.

Since the XV and XVI century, the thinking was that schools would serve the intellectual needs of every individual to achieve a higher level of intelligence which will serve them in their entry into life. The idea that a school should serve only work and profession and be conditioned by it, is dead. It was a consequence of unsurpassed prolet-cultural sentiments which, ultimately, led to the creation of a primitive, slave consciousness.

The ideological battle against “elitism” bore bitter fruit: we, for at least two decades, pandered mediocrity in all social areas and education. No community fought against the elite of knowledge and skill and science and innovation. With the war against these elite, we created an elite of well-off individuals who were able to give their children opportunities to acquire greater knowledge than just primary and secondary education, but that did not happen.

The financial status of the school system disparaged its social status, and the term “moral-political suitability”, particularly in universities, dreadfully encouraged moral and political conformism and careerism, and the universities, and especially some humanities faculties, were deprived of the best intellectual staff of our generation. In no other European country was enlightenment so stagnant, materially and socially, as it was here.

Exactly during the time when funds were spent on frivolous things without thinking, was also the time when a restrictive policy towards universities was enacted by which the schools were provided with less and less resources. For a decade and a half faculties were unable to obtain new assistants and, as such, the oldest universities in Yugoslavia, mainly in Belgrade, never had such a high average of aged teaching staff. University science, which in all countries is a primary driver of growth during the tech-computer revolution, was completely neglected in our country. The “reforms” of universities, often imposed by political power, and not for scientific reasons (three - stage instruction, “ozeitization” of the faculties, etc.) were missed. Great damage was especially inflicted on the separation of science from the university, creating systematic and administrative compartments, including the “institute” and “university” science: the university lost its laboratory base, through the creation of parallel programs, and science from lack of staff unraveled and became

disabled by the normal flow of scholars from universities to institutes and from universities to faculties.

Because of all this: there is need to change the school system, the educational laws, to modernize and humanize the school curriculum, to open specialized schools, especially to help talented students to fully change the unfavourable financial condition of education, to pay special attention to the spiritual, not just the ideological profile of the teacher. There is need for the universities to attract the strongest scientific and intellectual forces and laws to achieve unity in the educational system in Serbia.

In this difficult crisis we must, today, begin to think about tomorrow, for the XXI century, even though current economic circumstances are not allowing us to create a vision for tomorrow’s world in which our civilization will be based on micro-electronics, artificial intelligence, robotics, computer science, artificial insemination, manipulation of genes, etc. Because of all this, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts proposes that, immediately and without any kind of dogmatic ideological burdens and “governmental” inertia, a studious approach be taken to reorganize the social and institutional basis of our science that would lead towards modernization and efficiency, with greater material investments, with greater attention to scientific offspring, broader freedoms and autonomy for creative figures in the creation of scientific and research programs. In a word, it is very important for us to move faster and with all our scientific potential and join the modern trends of world science.

10. After the dramatic inter-nation clashes during the course of the Second World War it seemed that nationalism abruptly subsided, that it was on the way to completely disappearing. This impression however proved to be incorrect. It did not take long before nationalism began to rise and to complement institutional conditions fighting against any sort of constitutional change. Nationalism was generated from above; its main initiators were political people. The main reason for the multidimensional crisis lay in the idea that nationalism will defeat socialism. The disintegration processes, from all views, which brought the Yugoslav community to the brink of

collapse, along with the disintegration of the valued system, are a consequence of that defeat.

Its roots are found in the Comintern ideology and in the CPY national policy from before the war. Embedded in this policy is the retaliatory branding of the Serbian people as an “oppressive” nation which had far-reaching consequences in international relations in the social order, in the economic system and in the fate of the moral and cultural values of the people after World War II. A sense of historical guilt was imposed on the Serbian nation which, not only got in the way of solving the Serbian national question, but did not provide the Serbian people with a state like the other nations. Therefore, first and foremost, we need to free ourselves from the mortgage of this historical guilt imposed on the Serbian people, and to officially abandon the claim that we had a privileged economic position between the two wars and to not deny our liberation history and contribution to the creation of Yugoslavia.