Through Bosnian Eyes: The Political Memoirs of a Bosnian Serb

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION ROBERT J. DONIA In early 1990, when this memoir begins, communism was collapsing throughout Eastern Europe. Responding to massive dissatisfaction with single-party rule, communist party leaders agreed to hold multiparty elections. In the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), elections were held on different dates in each of the country's six republics, but country-wide elections were never called. In February 1990, the communist-dominated Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina approved constitutional changes that paved the way for elections later in the year, and leaders of the other three republics were ~ak­ ing similar plans. The first voting took place in the republics of Croatia and Slovenia in April and May 1990. Elections in other republics followed in November and December 1990. Concurrent with the dawn of multiparty politics in 1990, Mirko Pejanovic emerged in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a leader of the Socialist Alliance , the mass-participation organization tasked with implementing the policies of the League of Communists. Pejanovic was born in 1946 in the northern Bosnian town of MatijeviCi. He received his doctorate from the University of Sarajevo and then became professor of political science at that institution. He also worked in the Sarajevo branch of the Socialist Alliance during the 1970s and 198Os, and in March 1990 he was elected President of the Socialist Alliance of Bosnia-Herzegovina with a mandate to transform the organization into a competitive western-style political party. INTERGROUP RELATIONS IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA Transition to democracy held particular perils for the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Unlike the other five republics of federal Yugoslavia , Bosnia-Herzegovina had no single nationality with an absolute majority. The .republic's population consisted of 44°/c, Bosniaks (known prior to September 1993 as ''Bosnian Muslims"), 35% ~rbs, 17°/c, Croats, and lesser numbers of Yugoslavs, Jews, Romany, and others. Members of all three major groups spoke the same South Slavic language (known as "Serbo-Croatian" during the socialist era) and traced their origins to Slavic migrations from north-eentral Europe in the 5th to 8th centuries A.D. Each of the three major nationalities had roots in religious identity (Bosniaks with Islam; Serbs with Serbian Orthodoxy; and. Croats with 1 Robert J. Donia Catholicism), but in the 19th and 20th centuries each group asserted an identity as a secular nation that superseded its religious origins. In the communist era, leaders of the three major groups in BosniaHerzegovina normally worked together to promote the republic's interests while remaining loyal to the SFRY. Members of the republic's assembly showed deep concern for nationalism's potentially corrosive effects by enacting constitutional changes and laws in anticipation of multiparty elections in 1990. In February 1990 the assembly reaffirmed the special rights of Bosnia's three major groups by adopting Amendment #60 to the republic's constitution: The Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a democratic , sovereign state of equal citizens, Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina- Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, and members of others nations and nationalities living therein.l Although the amendment recognized the three major peoples as 1/constituent nations," it neither specified the nature of group rights nor spelled out the means by which they could be asserted. Implementing legislation and legal interpretation were required to give substance to the amendment's provisions. Despite efforts to avoid· friction among the three national groups, disharmony among them was increasing by the late 1980s. More ominously , annexationist aspirations loomed large among nationali?ts in the neighboring republics of Croatia and Serbia. Serbian President Slobodan MiloSevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman each sponsored a nationalist political party in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in March 1991 the two presidents held extensive talks on partitioning most of BosniaHerzegovina between their two countries. THE YUGOSLAV CONTEXT: TRANSITION TO MULTIPARTY RULE After decades of centralized rule, political power in the SFRY during the 1970s and 1980s gradually devolved to the communist party organizations of the country's six republics and two autonomous provinces. De1 Amendment 60 restated the provisions of Article One of the 1974 Constitution but omitted the clumsy and outdated socialist nomenclature. The original 1974 Article One stated, "The Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a socialist democratic state and socialist self-administered demOcratic community of working peoples and citizens, nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina- Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, and members of other nations and nationalities living therein." 2 INTRODUCTION centralization was enshrined in the 1974...