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Over the past thirty years many
articles, including serious scholarly studies, have been written
about the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences
(1986). Can one write about this historical document today while
neglecting and not commenting on this huge literature?
Many authors have been trying to answer
the question about what the Memorandum stands for and stands not.
They all agree that this document had not been written in secrecy
and not by one person, let alone a foreigner, and has not been –
like Serbia’s first foreign policy program (Declaration, 1844) –
kept as top secret for decades. They do not speak as one about its
history and contents, and especially the effects it produced, both
immediate and those as seen now, from historical distance that takes
more time in chronological sense. The SANU Memorandum saw the light
of day against a complex historical background (the world was
undergoing changes, Yugoslavia and Serbia too, as well as the SANU
itself). This is why authors disagree mostly about the criteria of
the effects the SANU Memorandum produced.
Yugoslavia was a small and poor country,
its society basically closed or exposed to one ideology only; faced
with changes it was at the same time open and closed them. While
trying after 1948 to distances itself, politically and in military
terms, from the countries of the socialist bloc, Yugoslavia
retained, till its very end, two of the bloc’s major ideological
traits: state ownership and political monopoly of the communist
party. The latter two will be crystallizing various orientations
within the ruling party as well.
Since mid-1960s developments in the
country have followed one another like links in a chain. First came
the economic reform (1965) generating the conflict of interests and
splits in the party leadership, and the outcome of which depended on
whom Josip Broz Tito sided with. Then there came the removal of
Aleksandar Ranković, Serbia’s representative in Yugoslavia’s highest
party and state leadership. The first to react to it was writer
Dobrica Ćosić. In a personal letter to Tito one the eve of the
Brioni plenum, Ćosić hinted that dissatisfaction with Ranković’s
removal would be growing. As a prelude to municipal elections in
Serbia in 1967 an informal opposition was formed. Politically and
ideologically heterogeneous (former Tchetniks, Russia’s supporters,
communists “stripped of rank” in earlier “purges,” retired JNA
generals, opponents of the economic reform – “red directors” whose
enterprisers generated losses – some priests, etc.), this informal
opposition had one goal only: to prepare itself for post-Tito era.
At the 16th session of the Central Committee of the League of
Communists of Serbia (May 1968) two of these oppositionists -
Dobrica Ćosić and Jovan Marjanović, university professor – called
for a change in “national” policy labeling it harmful to Serbia’s
and Serbs’ interests. In June 1968 student protests erupted in
Belgrade as the first anti-regime demonstrations after the WWII.
Inspired by student protests worldwide – under the influence of “a
new left” – Belgrade students demonstrated in the best tradition of
Serbia’s socialist left: against West European course, i.e.
capitalism and liberalism. Their main slogans were against social
gaps and “red bourgeoisie.” In early 1970s (1971-72) and under the
fire from the Yugoslav party center, reformist and liberal
leaderships in Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia were dismissed. The
critical mass for changes was then basically impaired if not
destroyed. Under the stigmata “technocrats, liberals and
Soviet-phobics” thousands of educated people in their prime were
removed from public service, economy, culture and media. The
regime’s answer to these crucial trends decisive to future
orientation was twofold: reforms were given up and constitutional
amendments pursued. The latter (1971-72) prepared the terrain for
the confederative Constitution of 1974.
Declared on the basis of balance of
powers – with Serbia opposed, Tito reserved about it and other
republics saying yes – the 1974 Constitution also triggered off
dissent at the public scene (e.g. debate held at the Belgrade Law
School). Indentifying itself with Yugoslavia, Serbia was constantly
renouncing the idea of a complex state; in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
it was renouncing federalism, and in the SFRY – confederacy. It was
only after Tito’s death (1980) that it called for revision of the
1974 Constitution. For this purpose the so-called Blue Book was
publicized in Serbia. However, protests that broke out in Kosovo
(1981) with Albanians were demanding a republic of their own,
announced sharpening of the relations in the country.
Step by step, Kosovo came into the
focus: 180 Kosovo Serbs and Montenegrins petitioned against their
position before the People’s Assembly (February 1986). A month
later, 216 intellectuals signed a petition calling the Serbian
people victims of genocide. And then, after a long silence, a true
explosion broke out: the term genocide became the most frequent in
public discourse.
Individual academicians were active in
public life but the Academy itself, by tradition, kept silent. Josif
Pančić, its first president, took that it should stay out of
politics so as to be able to play the social role of a scholarly
arbiter. In his inaugural address (1977) Dobrica Ćosić was the first
to try to convert the Academy to politics. The regime responded
strongly: it banned publication of his address. Academics themselves
disagreed over political engagement. But let us see what immediate
sources have to say, which include major memoirs by late Academician
Mihailo Marković, a leading figure in Belgrade’s circle of magazine
of philosophy “Praxis,” who admitted to have “played one of crucial
roles in writing of the Memorandum” (he was a member of the working
group – L.P.).
According to Mihailo Marković, SANU had
been an apathetic and dogmatic institution till 1980s; and this
meant that it “nourished pure, neutral science…just listened and
learned.” A U-turn was made in 1980s. Representatives of a new
generation, economists, demographers, historians, etc. were admitted
to the Academy…They were aware that the world was at the crossroads
of a new epoch and so was Yugoslavia, still overshadowed by very old
Josip Broz Tito, freshly appointed the lifelong president of SFRY.
The SANU, especially its younger
members, would not remain an onlooker: its members were not only
enveloped by developments but generated these developments in
various ways and were after influencing their course. This rooted
the idea of a “program for the future.” The idea was put forward to
the SANU Assembly (May 23, 1985) and the SANU Presidency, having
given it a green light, formed a group for development of the
program. The authors who had scrutinized the Memorandum have
precisely determined the phases of its development. The working
group met several times in January 1986, and the Commission approved
the text submitted to it at its second meeting in a row on March 31.
However, the next day the text of the Memorandum dawned, quite
unexpectedly, in the Belgrade-seated “Večernje Novosti” paper. All
of a sudden everyone was discussing how come it was revealed rather
than its contents. This detail is characteristic of domestic
political culture whereby nothing is being detailed so as to have
room enough for manipulation left.
According to already quoted Academician
Mihailo Marković, it was quite easy to come into possession of the
text of Memorandum in any of its versions: the text “was not written
in secrecy” and was typewritten several times in the Academy. The
mysteries woven around the Memorandum, especially some academicians’
claims that it never existed at all, only minimized, says
Academician Marković, a major document developed in a well-organized
way and meant to provide the answer to the challenges of the
Yugoslav crisis. “I myself have never been exactly fond of the story
about a ‘non-existent’ Memorandum. The text was there for sure, and
in several versions, it was neither approved nor finalized, but it
was there, rich in ideas and observations, and should not have been
renounced just like that.”
Well, then, who could have been in favor
of the pattern of political culture whereby “everything is and is
not” and “can be but need not?” The regime was anxious about being
indentified with the Memorandum in Yugoslavia, but on the other hand
wished not to distance itself too much from public fervor over the
Kosovo issue; and representatives of the Academy probably wished not
to risk their unity. At the SANU Extraordinary Session (December 10,
1986) academicians Vaso Čubrilović, Sima M. Ćirković and Radomir
Lukić stood up against radical – actually archaic – answers to the
challenges of the Yugoslav crisis, the Memorandum had put forth.
Academician Sima M. Ćirković’s study
“Serbs among European Nations” was written during the war: having
taken historical stock he offered different answers to the
challenges of the Yugoslav crisis. His study has been translated
into ten languages while only two reviews about it were produced by
domestic historiography. So, preconditions for dialogue were there
but not political will. The regime was after a consensus on the
solution to the Serbian issue: “A federation tailored to Serbia and
Serbs, or Serbia as a nation-state in the territories inhabited by
Serbs” (Sima M. Ćirković). In other words, it was now or never. This
is why the positions of the parties in conflict – the regime and the
Academy so to speak – do not seem to be basically different, mutual
alternatives. And the effect of the way in which the Memorandum’s
draft became available for all to see was the same: ideas had been
disclosed, while their masterminds remained unknown.
The Memorandum’s draft has been
politically assaulted but the SANU as an institution never. There
are exact figures speaking of SANU’s public visibility at the time.
For instance, from 1988 till 1991 the Politika daily (rubric “Echoes
and Reactions”), with “active participation of members of the
Commission for the Memorandum’s Draft,” ran 306 stories about
individual academicians and another 76 about the work of the Academy
(Olivera Milosavljević, „Upotreba nauke; Javna politička delatnost
Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti 1986 – 1992“). Such publicity,
including a ban on the ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the
Academy, only fueled its influence, especially on the
intelligentsia. The intelligentsia was not the one to enthrone
Slobodan Milošević as a leading politician in Serbia (8th session of
the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia, 1987).
“On the contrary,” claimed Academician Mihailo Marković,
subsequently the vice-president and ideologist of the Socialist
Party of Serbia, “he ensured its (intelligentsia’s – L.P.) support
only after having taken many brave and unorthodox steps. The spirit
of Serbia was magnificent. The SANU’s repute was better than ever
before in history.” But in other parts of Yugoslavia and in the
world few were those sharing his view.
Meant to stand for a signpost for
Serbia’s course at the turn of the century and a list of rational
solutions, the SANU Memorandum simply did not serve the purpose,
agree the authors who have analyzed it. The reality that was created
with the participation of both academicians and the Academy was not
only an aberration and not even a fruit of some individuals’ evil
intent: it has a long history. According to its creators, the
Memorandum was a political program meant to articulate a course for
the future and, with scholarly authority, to mobilize masses. It has
two chapters: I. “Economic and Social Crisis;” and, II.“The
Situation of Serbia and the Serbian People.” Many authors take that
these two parts are mutually controversial; unlike them, I see them
as compatible. Both embed two constants of Serbia’s tradition: state
socialism and nationalism: or, in the final analysis, a popular
rather than a modern state. Hence, at the turn of the 20th and the
21st centuries some academicians advocated the return to the 19th.
They wanted establishment of a state “other nations already have.”
There have been no attempts, to this
very day, at factual explanation of how come that Serbia is now
where it is. Why is this so and where to look for a reason why? It
is hard to ignore the following, well-known fact:
A society’s ability to objectify its
indivisible past matures inasmuch as that society stops living in
that past and, by understanding it, loses an appetite for its rerun.
This is probably the key question that should have been raised on
the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the SANU Memorandum as well.
As things stand now, the same parties seem to be conflicting in
these new-old writings while the sands of time are trickling through
the hourglass.:
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