The Link between the Berlin Wall and the Eighth Session

While Serbia and Montenegro (as the new Yugoslavia) are waiting to find out whether they will be suspended from the United Nations or "only" have their membership put on ice, let us recall the Eighth Session, on its fifth anniversary. There is only one serious reason to justify this. Namely, there are no longer the forces nor the circumstances that could give birth to the directors and protagonists of such a "historical" session.

The public, however, is still the recipient of the refuse of less important subjects and events. It might be interesting to recall the ones who switched sides - current Speaker of the Serbian Parliament Aleksandar Bakocevic, for example, (again at the last moment) managed to recognize the winning side and, literally within two days of the session, speak of and vote for something completely different. This should not be regarded as spice alone, since an apartment cost at least two thousand German marks per square meter then, and there is not much comfort to be derived from the fact that the victors of the Eighth Session halved this rate, thanks to their subsequent policy.

Economy was being destroyed directly by the persecution of professional, but politically disobedient, people. Serbia's largest and most successful trading company "Genex" was hardly touched in the beginning of the seventies, when the purging of Serbian liberals, techno-managers and re-exporting firms raged the country. It did not survive the Eighth Session. How does this sound today - at the Eighth Session, Mr. Ivan Stambolic called for "reason, tolerance, prudence and temperance, for finding a peaceful and calm way out acceptable to all", the then President of Serbia warned not to take a "short cut", because such "resoluteness" does not unite or mobilize, it disunites and leads to strife...? Words meant nothing then. A machinery was set in motion, carefully concealed behind the unending rehearsed speeches and voting. Only those who had better insight into latter-day history, i.e. the mechanisms of power, could have had an inkling of what was, in fact, going on when telegrams of support to the forthcoming regime started pouring into the Eighth Session.

It must be said openly that this article is not based on reliable information on who, when and how prepared the "historical" turn in Serbia and Yugoslavia, but it is possible to point to some of the more important moments which were by-passed up to now.

One thing is certain: anybody who expresses the ambition to launch a full investigation will have to spend considerable time outside Serbia, and even former Yugoslavia. Serious analysts in the world have known for a long time that Hitler was not only Germany's product. Translated into Yugoslavia in the eighties, this means that one must ask the West why it chose nationalism as the more efficient means to oust communism than political and economic reform? It should be remembered that the Serbian leadership was the greatest advocate of reform in the beginning of the last decade and that the greatest resistance came from the Slovene and Croatian leaderships.

To avoid any confusion, it must also be said that nobody is here either being justified or accused. This is just a recollection of important moments at the end of Yugoslavia. A long, professional and responsible road of research has to be traversed from that point to their linkage with today's tragedy. Nonetheless, many things indicate that this was not the main route in preparing for the Eighth Session. People tend to forget that the first item on the agenda was the disastrous economic situation in Serbia. The session skipped over this as though it were an issue of least importance that figured on the agenda, though nobody knew how. Another thing that had skipped the attention or fallen into oblivion was the Yugoslav military leadership's statement giving unequivocal support to the changes in Serbia. The statement was released on the first day of the Eighth Session. Nikola Ljubicic, a decades-long ardent supporter of Kosovo, and(contrary to the Constitution) Tito's Defense Minister for thirteen years, was among the first speakers and advocates of a brunt on the Eighth Session.

Clearly, the moves made by the circles in uniform will see the light of day much harder and much later than those in civvies, but Ljubicic's role incites attention already now, for at least two reasons. Firstly, it was a public secret that there were two streams in the military leadership - the Ljubicic and the Mamula stream - and that they were mutually fiercely opposed. Secondly, a letter by Veljko Micunovic, the then Yugoslav Ambassador in Moscow, was published. In it, he informed Tito that Ljubicic promoted "closer" ties with the Soviet Union that was customary for an officer in the Yugoslav People's Army. All in all, the question is was the Yugoslav People's Army united at the time of the Eighth Session, and where did Yugoslavia figure in this divided military support to the "historical" session.

Or vice-versa: Where would Yugoslavia have been had the people in Eastern Europe risen instead of the Berlin Wall fallen? Is the Serbian regime's joy during the coup attempt in Moscow indicative, as regards an answer? Be things as they may (even though the answers will not be used only for historical records), yet Yugoslavia is no more. There is no Berlin Wall either. And there has not been an Eighth Session since then. Who does not believe this, let him go and find a difference in what Yeltsin, Kozirev and the Russian patriarch keep telling Serbian envoys. This war belongs only to the Balkans.