Balkans

The process of capitalist restoration in Serbia has been brutal. Hundreds of thousands of workers in the old industries have lost their jobs. The old social buffers provided by the planned economy have been dismantled. In this atmosphere a sombre mood dominates the working class. The only outlet the ruling class can offer is to keep whipping up nationalist sentiment.

On Saturday, November 17, a massive demonstration of 70,000 workers and youth took place in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The workers are fed up with low wages, high prices, cuts in services and privatisation. They have had a taste of capitalism and clearly don’t like it.

This article was sent to us by Nikola Vukobratović, who is the Chairman of the Socialist Youth of Croatia, the youth organisation of the Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia. Since most of our readers will not be familiar with the corruption scandals mentioned in the article, we provide here a short introduction.

The collapse of the former Yugoslavia had led to a swathe of privatisations, cuts in social spending and a systematic dismantling of all the gains of the past. But one event back on November revealed that below the surface a new situation is brewing. Suddenly in reaction to worsening conditions, the imposition and increase in fees and so on, the students in one Faculty occupied the university building in an exemplary manner.

We have received this article from the President of the Workers' Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although we may not agree with every point in it, it gives a very good idea of the totally negative effects of the break up of the former Yugoslavia on the living conditions of workers on both sides of the divide. But there are signs that the class struggle is simmering below the surface.

The break-up of the former Yugoslav Federation led to an unmitigated disaster for the workers of all the republics that emerged from the debris. This article shows how the Croatian economy entered a long period of depression, with very high levels of unemployment. Now a certain stabilisation has been achieved but only at the cost of accumulating a huge foreign debt.

We are making available to our readers this platform. It shows that after all the reactionary bloodletting and criminal break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the idea that socialism is possible is not dead.

The recent referendum in Montenegro produced a majority for separation from Serbia, but this small country remains seriously divided. In reality there is no “independence”, but a small nation prey to the whims of imperialism.

In the morning hours of Saturday, March 11, Slobodan Milosevic, was found dead in his prison cell at the Hague. With his death, the bourgeois media began once again to dig through the recent history of the Balkans in an attempt to make sense of the break-up of former Yugoslavia. But what was the role played by Milosevic, and what is the feeling over his death in Serbia?

The workers and students in Slovenia have awakened. For the first time since Slovenia’s separation from Yugoslavia, workers and students from all across Slovenia came together on November 26 to march for a common goal and to clearly demonstrate that they are prepared to fight against the government’s counter-reforms in education and the economy.

The bloodshed that took place throughout the former Yugoslavia in the last decade has been interpreted in many different ways by many different bourgeois theoreticians. In an attempt to explain the ongoing war, the media labelled it as “ethnic”, “religious”, “civil” and in some cases even “tribal”. As Marxists we fight against these misinterpretations which flow from a basic misunderstanding of the causes and nature of the wave of violence which hit the Balkans in the nineties.

Spokesman Air Commodore David Wilby said yesterday NATO would consider the Serbian media part of Milosevic's war machine if it did not report what it considered to be accurate news. He added: "Serb radio and TV is an instrument of propaganda and repression. It is therefore a legitimate target in this campaign." (Morning Star, April 9, 1999) French armed forces Chief General Jean-Pierre Kelche said: "We are going to bust their transmitters and their relay stations." (Morning Star, April 9, 1999)

Militarily, politically, economically, and socially, the war in Yugoslavia will undoubtedly have a lasting effect on the Balkans. But what are some of the other possible consequences of this military action? If the past sheds any light on the present situation, the use of high-tech weapons by the NATO alliance may have some serious, lasting environmental and health effects on the people of the Balkans.

On April 1, 2004 around 200 workers of the Slovenian company Comet, the main producer of wet stones in Slovenia, went on strike. They have now been striking for one week and it seems that the strike will not come to an end if the workers do not get what they demand. In the recent period there has been an ascent in the class struggle in the Slovenian industrial sector. Following the workers' strike in Unior company, which produces all kinds of tools from screwdrivers, spanners, tongs etc., this has been the fourth strike in the industrial sector this year.