Source: http://zagreb.hic.hr/books/greatserbia/sanu.htm
Accessed 24 May 1999

Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences
Memorandum 1986

[Overview]

This memorandum is a critique of the Yugoslav system from a Serbian nationalist point
of view, which assumes that Serbia was exploited by other Yugoslav republics and
must correct the situation without hesitation

The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), released in
1986, is a well-organized list of complaints and criticisms against the Yugoslav system
as it existed at the time. The main theme of the argument in the Memorandum is that
Serbia was wrongfully taken advantage of and weakened under 1974 constitution of
Yugoslavia, and that as a result, Serbians are the victims of genocide (in Kosovo)
among other things. The Memorandum is written in such a way that it acts as a call to
arms for the Serbian people, and justifies any actions taken that will insure the security
of 'threatened' Serbia.

Dobrica Cosic (b.1921) was the president of the Serbian Academy of Arts and
Sciences at the time the Memorandum was written, and he had a leading influence on
its content and direction. Cosic is a writer who has held numerous cultural and political
posts since the end of World War II, among them representative in the Federal
parliament, president of the Serbian literary community, and editor of several papers
and literary journals. He is presently the president of the new Yugoslav Federation.

* * * ****

There is deep concern in Yugoslavia because of stagnating social development,
economic difficulties, growing social tensions, and open inter-ethnic clashes. A serious
crisis has engulfed not only the political and economic arenas, but Yugoslavia's entire
system of law and order as well. Idleness and irresponsibility at work, corruption and
nepotism, a lack of confidence in and disregard for the law, bureaucratic obstinacy,
growing mistrust among individuals, and increasingly arrogant individual and group
egoism have become daily phenomena. The resulting blow to moral values and to the
reputation of leading public institutions and a lack of faith in the competence of
decision-makers have spread apathy and bitterness among the public and produced
alienation from all the mainstays and symbols of law and order. An objective
examination of Yugoslav reality suggests that the present crisis may end in social
shocks with unforseeable consequences, including such a catastrophic eventuality as
the fragmentation of the Yugoslav state. No one can close his eyes to what is
happening and to what may happen. Certainly, our nation's oldest institute of scientific
and cultural creativity cannot do so.

In these fateful times, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences feels obliged to
express its views on society's condition in the conviction that this will help us find a
way out of our present troubles. The nature of this document, however, obliges us to
limit ourselves to the key issues of Yugoslav reality. Regretfully, these issues include
the undefined and difficult position of the Serbian nation, a position brought to the fore
by recent events.

In order to understand the primacy of ethnicity in the present practice of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia it is necessary to consider the influence of the Comintern on
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia between the two world wars. The Comintern's
strategy during that period derived from the conclusion that following the failure of the
proletarian revolution in Western Europe, the Communist parties of Eastern, Central,
and Southern Europe had to depend on national movements, even though they were
expressly anti-socialist and based on the idea of national rather than class unity. Stalin
engaged in crushing all opposition to such a strategy (as, for example, in the case of
Sima Markovic, one of the founders of the Yugoslav Communist Party). In this spirit, the
solution to the national question was formulated and developed theoretically by Sperans
(Kardelj) in his book "Razvoj slovenskoga narodnoga vprsanja" (The Development of the
Slovene National Question), which generally served as the ideological model for
Yugoslav development in the direction of a confederation of sovereign republics and
autonomous regions, which was finally achieved by the Constitution of 1974.

The two most developed republics, which achieved their national programs with this
Constitution, are now the most ardent defenders of the existing system. Thanks to the
political position of their leaders at the centers of political power, they have held (both
before and after the decisive years of the 1960s) the initiative in all matters affecting the
political and economic system. They modelled the social and economic structure of
Yugoslavia to suit their own desires and needs. Nothing would seem more normal that
they now defend the structure that they stubbornly took so long to build, a structure
that represents the attainment of most of their national programs.

No one needs convincing that separatism and nationalism are active on the social
scene, but there is insufficient understanding of the fact that such trends have been
made ideologically possible by the Constitution of 1974. The constant reinforcement of
and the competition engendered by separatism and nationalism have driven the (ethnic)
nations further from one another to a critical degree. The manipulation of language and
the confinement of scientific and cultural professionals within the ranks of the republics
and regions are sorry signs of the growing power of particularism. All new
ethnogeneses are unfortunate products of locally closed, regional ideologies and
shackled logic, and they are also symptomatic of a retreat from a common past, a
common present, and a common future. It is as if everyone wished to flee as fast and
as far as possible from a collapsing house. Mental attitudes warn us that the political
crisis has reached the critical point, threatening the complete destabilization of
Yugoslavia. Kosovo is the clearest expression of this.

No form of political oppression and discrimination on the basis of nationality is properly
acceptable in modern society. The Yugoslav solution to the nationalities question could
be considered at its inception an exemplary model of a multinational federation in which
the principle of the unity of the state and state policy was successfully joined with the
principle of the political and cultural autonomy of nationalities and national minorities.
During the past two decades the principle of unity has become progressively weaker
and the principle of national autonomy is stressed, which has in practice changed into
a sovereignty of the parts (republics, which are not ethnically homogenous as a rule).
The weaknesses that were present in the model from the beginning became more and
more visible. All nations are not equal: the Serbian nation, for example, did not obtain
the right to its own state. Unlike national minorities, portions of the Serbian people, who
live in other republics in large numbers, do not have the right to use their own language
and alphabet, to organize politically and culturally, and to develop the unique culture of
their nation. The unstoppable persecution of Serbs in Kosovo in a drastic manner
shows that those principles that protect the autonomy of a minority (Albanians) and not
applied when it comes to a minority within a minority (Serbs, Montenegrins Turks and
Gypsies in Kosovo). Considering the existing forms of national discrimination,
present-day Yugoslavia cannot be considered a democratic state.

. . .Yugoslavia is seen less as a community of citizens, nations and nationalities all
equal before the law, and more as a community of eight equal territories. But even this
variety of equality does not apply to Serbia because of its special legal and political
position which reflects the tendency to keep the Serbian nation under constant
supervision. The guiding principle behind this policy has been "a weak Serbia, a strong
Yugoslavia" and this has evolved into an influential mind-set: if rapid economic growth
were permitted the Serbs, who are the largest nation, it would pose a danger to the
other nations of Yugoslavia. And so all possibilities are grasped to place increasing
obstacles in the way of their economic development and political consolidation. One of
the most serious of such obstacles is Serbia's present undefined constitutional
position, so full of internal conflicts.

The Constitution of 1974, in fact, divided Serbia into three parts. The autonomous
provinces within Serbia were made equal to the republics, save that they were not
defined as such and that they do not have the same number of representatives in the
various bodies of the federation. They make up for this shortcoming by being able to
interfere in the internal relations of Serbia proper through the republic's common
assembly (while their assemblies remain completely autonomous). The political and
legal position of Serbia proper is quite vague-Serbia proper is neither a republic nor a
province. Relationships in the republic of Serbia are quite confused. The Executive
Council, which is a body of the republic's assembly, is in fact the Executive Council for
Serbia proper. This is not the only absurdity in the limitation of authority. The
excessively broad and institutionally well established autonomy of the provinces has
created two new fissures within the Serbian nation. The truth is that the proautonomy
and separatist forces insisted on increasing autonomy, but this would have been
difficult to achieve had they not received moral and political support from those
republics in which separatist tendencies have never died out.

Relations between Serbia and the provinces cannot be reduced solely or even primarily
to a formal legal interpretation of two constitutions. It is primarily a matter of the Serbian
nation and their state. A nation that has regained statehood after a long and bloody
struggle, that has achieved civil democracy, and that lost two and half million kinsmen
in two world wars underwent the experience of having a bureaucratically constructed
party commission determine that after four decades in the new Yugoslavia it alone was
condemned to be without its own state. A more bitter historic defeat in peacetime
cannot be imagined.

The expulsion of the Serbian nation from Kosovo bears spectacular witness to its
historic defeat. In the spring of 1981 a very special, but nevertheless open and total war,
prepared by administrative, political, and legal changes made at various periods, was
declared against the Serbian people. Waged through the skilful application of various
methods and tactics, with a division of functions, and with the active, not merely
passive, and little concealed support of certain political centers within Yugoslavia (more
pernicious than the support coming from outside), this open war, which has yet to be
looked in the face and called by its proper name, has been continuing for almost five
years. It has thus lasted longer than the entire Yugoslav war of liberation (from April 6,
1941 to May 9, 1945). The Balli (anti-communist nationalist) uprising in Kosovo and
Metohija that broke out just before the end of the war with the participation of fascist
units was broken miltarily in 1944-45, but it appears not to have been broken politically.
Its present form, disguised with a new content, is proceeding more successfully and is
moving towards a victorious outcome. A final showdown with neo-fascism did not
materialize; all of the measures so far taken have only removed the expression of this
aggression from the streets and in fact, its racially motivated and unretracted goals,
which are being sought after by all means and atall costs, have only been reinforced.
Deliberately drastic sentences are even pronounced on young offenders in order to
incite and inflame inter-ethnic hatreds.

The physical, political, legal and cultural genocide perpetrated against the Serbian
population of Kosovo and Metohija is the greatest defeat suffered by Serbia in the wars
of liberation she waged between Orasac in 1804 and the uprising of 1941.
Responsibility for this defeat falls primarily on the still living Comintern heritage in the
nationalities policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and on the acquiescence of
Serbian communists in this policy and on the exorbitant ideological and political
delusion, ignorance, immaturity, and chronic opportunism of an entire generation of
post-war Serbian politicians, always on the defensive and always more concerned with
the opinions others have of them and of their hesitant explanations of Serbia's position
than with the true facts affecting the future of the nation that they lead.

Kosovo is not the only region in which the Serbian nation is being pressured by
discrimination. The absolute (and not merely relative) fall in the number of Serbs in
Croatia is sufficient proof of this assertion. According to the 1948 census there were
543,795 Serbs in Croatia (14.48% of the total). According to the 1981 census their
number has been reduced to 531,502 or only 11.5% of the total number of inhabitants
in Croatia. Over 33 peacetime years the number of Serbs in Croatia has declined, even
in relation to the immediate post-war period when the first census was taken and when
the effects of the war on the number of Serbian inhabitants in Croatia was well known.
Lika, Kordun, and Banija have remained the most underdeveloped regions of Croatia
and this has greatly encouraged the emigration of Serbs to Serbia and migrations to
other parts of Croatia where the Serbs, being newcomers, are a minority and socially
inferior group, greatly exposed to assimilation. In any case, the Serbs in
Croatia are otherwise exposed to a sophisticated and quite effective policy of
assimilation. One component of this policy is the prohibition of all Serbian associations
and cultural institutions in Croatia, which had had a rich tradition dating from the
Austro-Hungarian and pre-war Yugoslav periods, and the imposition of an official
language that bears the name of another nation (Croatia), thus giving concrete shape to
national inequality. A constitutional provision has made this language obligatory for the
Serbs in Croatia, and nationalistically inclined Croatian linguists are distancing it
systematically and by well-organized actions from the language used in the other
republics of the Serbo-Croatian language area, and this is helping to weaken the ties
binding the Serbs in Croatia to other Serbs. Such action is gladly undertaken at the
cost of interrupting language continuity among the Croats themselves and of eliminating
international terms that are invaluable for communicating with other cultures,
particularly in the field of science and technology. But the Serbian community in
Croatia is not just cut off from their homeland culturally; that homeland cannot keep
itself informed of their circumstances or of their economic or cultural situation anywhere
near the extent to which it is possible for some nations in Yugoslavia to maintain
contact with their compatriots in other countries. The integrity of the Serbian nation and
its culture in Yugoslavia as a whole is an issue vital to its survival and progress.

With the exception of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941- 45, Serbs in Croatia
have never been as persecuted in the past as they are now. The solution to their
national position must be considered an urgent political question. In so much as a
solution cannot be found, the results could be disastrous, not just in relation to Croatia,
but to all of Yugoslavia.


The question of the Serbian people's position is given considerable weight by the fact
that a large number of Serbians live outside of Serbia, especially Serbia proper, and
that their number is larger than the total number of people of some other nations.
According to the census of 1981, 24% of the Serbian people (1,958,000) live outside of
the Socialist Republic of Serbia, which is considerably more than the number of
Slovenians, Albanians, Macedonians and taken individually, almost the same as the
Muslims. Outside of Serbia proper there are 3,285,000 Serbs or 40.3% of their total
population. In the general disintegration process which has taken over Yugoslavia, the
Serbs are hit with the most intense disintegration. The present course which our
society in Yugoslavia has taken is totally opposite from the one that has moved for
decades and centuries until the formation of a unified state. This process is aimed at
the total destruction of the national unity of the Serbian people.

Having borne for over half a century the stigma and handicap of being the jailer of the
other Yugoslav nations, the Serbian nation was incapable of deriving support from its
own history. Many aspects of this history itself were even brought into question. The
democratic bourgeoisie tradition for which Serbia had struggled successfully in the 19th
century has remained in the shadow cast by the Serbian socialist and labor movement
until quite recently because of narrow-mindedness and lack of objectivity on the part of
official historiography. This so impoverished and restricted the true picture of the
contribution made by Serbian bourgeoisie society to law, culture, and statesmanship
that, deformed in this manner, it could not provide mental or moral support to anyone
nor could it serve as a foothold for preserving or reviving historical self-confidence. The
brave and honorable efforts at liberation exerted by the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina
and by all Yugoslav youth, which included Young Bosnia, experienced a similar fate
and were pushed into the historical background by the contributions of a class ideology
whose proponents and creators were Austrian Marxists, confirmed opponents of
movements of national liberation.

Influenced by the ruling ideology, the cultural achievements of the Serbian people are
undergoing alienation, being usurped by others or denigrated, or they are ignored and
retrogress; the language is being displaced and the Cyrillic script is gradually being
lost. In this connection, the realm of literature is serving as the main arena for caprice
and anarchy. The cultural and spiritual integrity of no other Yugoslav nation is so
roughly challenged as that of the Serbian nation. No other literary and artistic heritage
is so disordered, ravaged, and confused as the Serbian heritage. The political criteria of
the ruling ideology are imposed on Serbian culture as being more valuable and stronger
than scientific or historical criteria.

After the dramatic interethnic conflicts of the world war, it had appeared that chauvinism
has lost momentum was even on the road to oblivion. This appearance has proven
deceptive. It was not long before nationalism began rising up once more, and every
change in the constitution served to promote its growth. Nationalism has been
promoted from above; its chief proponents have been politicians. The fundamental
cause of this multi- dimensional crisis is to be found in the ideological defeat of
socialism at the hands of nationalism, which has produced the centrifugal processes
that have brought the Yugoslav community to the brink of ruin and which has destroyed
the old system of values.

Its roots lie in the ideology of the Comintern and in the nationalities policy of the pre-war
CPY. The revanchism directed at the Serbian nation as an "exploiting" nation that was
built into this policy has had far-reaching consequences for inter- ethnic relations, the
social organization, the economic system, and the fate of moral and cultural values
since the Second World War. The Serbian nation has been encumbered with a feeling
of historical guilt and has remained the only nation not to solve its national problem and
not to receive its own state like the other nations. Therefore, the first and foremost
action must be to remove this burden of historical guilt from the Serbian nation, to
categorically deny the contention that it enjoyed a privileged economic position
between the two world wars, and to refrain from denigrating Serbia's liberation-oriented
history and contribution in creating Yugoslavia.

Complete national and cultural integrity of the Serbian people is their historic and
democratic right, no matter in which republic or province they might find themselves
living. The attainment of equality and an independent development have profound
historical meaning for the Serbian people. In less than fifty years, over two successive
generations, the Serbian nation has been exposed to such severe trials-twice exposed
to physical extermination, to forced assimilation, to religious conversion, to cultural
genocide, to ideological indoctrination, and to the denigration and renunciation of their
own traditions beneath an imposed guilt complex, and thereby disarmed intellectually
and politically, that they could not but leave deep spiritual wounds that cannot be
ignored as this century of the great technological takeoff draws to a close. In order to
have a future in the international family of cultured and civilized nations, the Serbian
nation must have an opportunity to find itself again and become a historical agent, must
re-acquire an awareness of its historical and spiritual being, must look its economic
and cultural interests square in the eyes, and must find a modern social and national
program that will inspire this generation and generations to come.

The present depressing condition of the Serbian nation, with chauvinism and
Serbophobia being ever more violently expressed in certain circles, favor of a revival of
Serbian nationalism, an increasingly drastic expression of Serbian national sensitivity,
and reactions that can be volatile and even dangerous. We must not overlook or
underestimate these dangers for a moment under any circumstances. But a principled
struggle against Serbian chauvinism cannot be based on the reigning ideological and
political symmetry in historical guilt. The rejection of this symmetry, fatal to the spirit
and morale, with its trite falsehoods and injustices, is a precondition for mobility and
effectiveness on the part of democratic, Yugoslav, humanistic awareness in
contemporary Serbian culture.

The fact that ordinary citizens and the working class are not represented in the
appropriate councils in the Federal Assembly cannot simply be ascribed to favoritism
for ethnic nationalisms; it is also the result of an attempt to place Serbia in a position of
inequality and thereby weaken her political influence. But the greatest calamity is the
fact that the Serbian nation does not posses a state like all of the other nations. True,
the first article of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Serbia contains a
provision to the effect that Serbia is a state, but the question immediately arises: What
kind of a state is one that lacks authority within its own territory and lacks the means
to protect the personal property of its citizens, to prevent genocide in Kosovo, and to
prevent the emigration of Serbs from their ancient homeland? This position underlines
the political discrimination against Serbia, especially when one remembers that the
Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has imposed internal
federalism on Serbia, creating a permanent source of conflicts between Serbia Proper
and the provinces. The aggressive Albanian chauvinism in Kosovo cannot be contained
until Serbia ceases to be the sole republic whose internal relations are ordered by
others.

The Federal Constitution has formally established the equality of all the republics but
this has been rendered worthless in practice by forcing the Republic of Serbia to
renounce many of its rights and powers in favor of the autonomous provinces, the
status of which is regulated by the Federal Constitution to a considerable extent.
Serbia must openly state that this is an imposed arrangement. This is especially true in
regard to the position of the provinces, which in reality have been promoted to republics
and which regard themselves far more as constituent elements of the Federation rather
than as parts of the republic of Serbia. Besides failing to consider a state for the
Serbian nation, the Yugoslav Constitution also created insurmountable difficulties to the
establishment of such a state. In order to satisfy Serbia's legitimate interests, a revision
of that constitution is unavoidable. The autonomous provinces must become true
integral parts of the Republic of Serbia by granting them a degree of autonomy that
would not destroy the integrity of the Republic and would make it possible to act in the
common interests of the wider community.

The unhappy matter of Serbian statehood is not the only deficiency that must be
corrected by constitutional amendments. The 1974 constitution turned Yugoslavia into
a very unstable state community, prone to consider alternatives other than the Yugoslav
alternative, as has been made clear in recent statements by public figures in Slovenia
and the earlier positions taken by Macedonian politicians. Such considerations and
fragmentation lead to the notion that Yugoslavia is in danger of further corrosion. The
Serbian nation cannot meekly await the future in such a state of uncertainty. Therefore,
all of the nations within Yugoslavia must be given the opportunity to express their wants
and intentions. Serbia would then be able to declare and define her own national
interests. Discussions and agreements in this vein must precede an examination to the
Constitution. Naturally, Serbia must not take a passive stand in all this, waiting to hear
what others will say, as she has done so often in the past.

The position of equality that Serbia must strive for presupposes the same initiative in
deciding on key political and economic issues as enjoyed by others. Four decades of
Serbian passivity have been bad for Yugoslavia as a whole by failing to contribute ideas
and critical appraisals based on her longer state tradition, enhanced feeling for national
independence, and rich experience in struggling against home-grown usurpers of
political freedom. Unless the Serbian nation within Serbia participate on an equal
footing in the entire process of decision making and implementation, Yugoslavia cannot
be strong--and Yugoslavia's very existence as ademocratic, socialist community will be
called into question.

An entire period in the development of the Yugoslav community and of Serbia has
clearly ended in a historically worn-out ideology, overall stagnation, and ever more
obvious regression in the economic, political, moral, and cultural spheres. Such a
situation imperatively requires a profound and well-though out, rationally grounded, and
decisively implemented reform of the entire governmental structure and social
organization of the Yugoslav community of nations, and speedy and beneficial
integration into the modern world through social democracy. The human resources of
the entire country must be involved to the utmost extent in social reform in order that
we may become a productive, enlightened, and democratic society capable of existing
on the fruits of our own labor and creativity and able to make our fair contribution to the
human race.

The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences is taking this occasion to express once
again its willingness to promote this portentous undertaking and the historical
aspirations of our generation with all the resources at its disposal.