Anti-bureaucratic Research Articles

The Hot Vojvodina Summer Of 1988: Did Vojvodinians Seek to Overthrow Their Government?

AbstractSeveral watershed events preceded the dissolution of Yugoslavia. One of these was the toppling of the Vojvodina autonomist leadership in October 1988. This was preceded by a series of rallies throughout Vojvodina in the summer of 1988, which may have seemed like a spontaneous affair and the work of “ordinary citizens.” It was called “the antibureaucratic revolution.” However, these rallies, including a standing group of demonstrators, continually and always referring to the grievances of Kosovo Serbs, turned out to be supported by the Serbian political elite centered in Belgrade. The elite, still headed by the Serbian Communist Chief Slobodan Milošević, gave thrust and coordination to efforts to organize the rallies. The Vojvodina leadership was toppled for their alleged “failing to understand the plight of Kosovo Serbs.” The overthrow was, further, with a view to achieve the Serbian elite’s pet project, the “united Serbia”—that is, doing away with Vojvodina’s and Kosovo’s autonomy. Written sources (including recollections by Yugoslav leaders of the time) and written sources are considered in research on the events.

The politics of a rock ‘n’ road docudrama—genre and intertextuality in Želimir Žilnik’s Oldtimer (1989)

This article examines Želimir Žilnik’s telefilm Stara mašina/Oldtimer (1989) as an example of the politically engaged use of genre and intertextuality in televisual representation. As a road movie, Oldtimer highlights how the journey trope imbued visual representations of movement with ideological and political meanings. At the same time, the film exposes the nationalist motivations behind the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution in Serbia in 1988 and emphasizes television news department staff’s complicity in concealing them. This article argues that, by incorporating television news into its diegetic universe, the film displaced the content presented as informational into the realm of fiction. In this way, Oldtimer not only exposed this case of misinformation but modeled a critical approach to the consumption of television. The paper shows that Žilnik’s work contributed to the broadening of televisual potential for ideological signification, allowing the medium to function not simply as a propaganda instrument but as a space of contestation of different ideological positions. Žilnik’s choice to realize this project as a film for television shows the televisual capacity for self-awareness, and Oldtimer points to the medium’s potential to address the problems that political pressures create.

U raskoraku ili u zajedničkom stroju - u susret tridesetoj godišnjici raspada SFRJ

This paper gives a recapitulation of the Yugoslav crisis and considers the role of western states in the breaking up of Yugoslavia (SFRY and SRY). The author is of the opinion that the transformation of Serbian society began with the "antibureaucratic revolution" and that it concluded with the "bulldozer revolution" on October 5, 2000. The fall of Milosevic marked the final collapse of the entire political course he led during the Yugoslav crisis. The principal defeat of Serbian politics was the state split with Montenegro in 2006, while the de facto loss of Kosovo took place before the rise of Milosevic with the forced evictions of Serbs from this region. Nevertheless, the loss of Kosovo, which unilaterally declared its independence in 2008, is perceived as more painful in the national consciousness. Parallel to this, the main achievement of the Serbs during these troubled times was the creation of the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose broad autonomy was given international recognition in 1995 after the Dayton Agreement. Tito's Yugoslavia and the states that appeared on its ruins, all their differences notwithstanding, developed and continued to evolve within the framework of general law, which applies to all the countries that occupy the vast region of Central, South-East and East Europe. Serbia is not an exception, although the process of its transformation, for the mentioned reasons, is slower and more painful than that of many of its neighbors.

Disputes over the autonomy of Vojvodina from the creation to the breakup of Yugoslavia

The so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution in Vojvodina in 1988 was usually seen as an introduction to the breakup of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, and in fact represented the end of decades-long disputes over Vojvodina’s autonomy. The aim of this paper is to present to the scientific public the genesis and course of the disputes over the autonomy of Vojvodina, which ended in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia. This synthesized work is the result of years of research in the Novi Sad and Belgrade archives and literature mostly written by contemporary witnesses.

Masovne demonstracije i pad režima SAP Vojvodine 1988. godine

The main cause of demonstrations was Vojvodina leadership's persistent refusal to accept changes to the Constitution that would confirm the sovereignty of Serbia in its autonomous provinces. After Slobodan Milosevic rose to power, the Serbian authorities developed two different policies regarding autonomous provinces. In case of Vojvodina, the main emphasis was on using the lack of democratic capacity and legitimacy of the leadership in Vojvodina, while leadership of Kosovo was the subject of party pressure through the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Leadership of Vojvodina, which has been decisively and confidently rejecting any thought in which Vojvodina could be politically subordinated to the Republic, was confused by the July and August demonstrations. In absence of finding an adequate response to the new situation, leadership remained passive, which ultimately led to complete paralysis of Vojvodina government. The confusion and passiveness of the main Vojvodina communists during the summer and autumn of 1988. indicates that demonstrations hit their weakest point - democratic capacity. It turned out that the stern attitude of Vojvodina Communists towards Serbia was not supported by the population of Vojvodina, and that the province government policy was not legitimate.. Second key factor in the Anti-bureaucratic revolution in Vojvodina was the influence of media, which was controlled by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. The anti-bureaucratic revolution in Vojvodina represents a historical phenomenon of a unique kind, which at the same time contains the elements of the Revolutions of 1989, in which Eastern European regimes were down due to the lack of their own legitimacy and under the burst of the popular rebellion, as well as elements of the "Cultural Revolution" in China, when the most powerful man of the party used and manipulated national dissatisfaction in order to remove political opponents and reduce the influence of competitive fractions in the party.

Looking Back at Milošević’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: What Do Ordinary Participants Now Think of Their Involvement?

AbstractMost scholarship on Serbia’s antibureaucratic revolution of the late 1980s has emphasized elite actors while ignoring the motivations of ordinary participants. How do ordinary people describe their involvement? Moreover, given the antibureaucratic revolution’s dark side—such as exclusionary nationalism and political authoritarianism—it is important to investigate whether participants are willing to critically engage their personal political histories. What do they now say about their roles in this episode? In order to provide answers to this question, six focus groups with a total of 34 participants were organized in the town of Novi Sad, the location of one of the best-known rallies of the antibureaucratic revolution, the so-called yogurt revolution. Most people see their involvement in a rather negative way and regret taking part. However, two blind spots also appear that lessen their sense of personal responsibility: conspiracy theories and notions of urban superiority. The former shifts blame onto secret forces and the latter onto nonurban outsiders. Overall, the long-term legacies of the antibureaucratic revolution are negative: they are associated with cynicism and apathy.

The Hybrid Discourse of the Serbian Antibureaucratic Revolution

AbstractThis article investigates the discursive logic of the antibureaucratic revolution through discourse analysis of three Serbian dailies:Politika,Borba, andVečernje Novosti.We conceptualize this discursive logic as a “hybrid discourse,” employed by Slobodan Milošević’s faction of the political elite and by prominent Serbian press outlets in their discussions and reporting on the diverse Serbian protest movements of the day. The core of the hybrid discourse, as our analysis demonstrates, consisted of the symbolic interweaving of different types of citizens’ discontent in order to present them as one single demand for societal “reform” that resonated with the agenda of the Serbian political elite. We argue that the hybrid discourse and the antibureaucratic revolution itself had a structural role related to the crisis of systemic legitimacy in Yugoslavia. The hybrid discourse performed the operation of what we term the “reversing of the symbolic fixing of antagonism between the ordinary actors’ discontents and the structurally inevitable reforms,” introducing instead the discursive fusion of the two vocabularies.

Thirty Years of Yugoslavia’s “Antibureaucratic Revolution”: A Long-Run Appraisal and New Avenues of Research

This special issue ofNationalities Paperspresents an attempt to provide a fresh perspective on Serbia’s and Yugoslavia’s “antibureaucratic revolution” of 1988 and 1989. The 30th anniversary of this turbulent episode provides an opportunity to rethink our interpretation and offer a new appraisal of the event as well as open several new avenues of potentially productive research. This special issue builds on older research (Vladisavljević 2004, 2008; Vujačić 1996, 2003) and is part of a series of more recent as well upcoming contributions (Musić 2016; Musić forthcoming; Archer et al. 2016; Grdešić 2016; Grdešić forthcoming; Vujačić 2017; Archer and Musić 2017). Given the complexity of the event, the contributions collected here cannot exhaust all of the antibureaucratic revolution’s many facets. We do, however, hope that these contributions cover some of the main lacunae in the scholarship published so far. We also hope that this special issue will spark researchers to turn to this immensely interesting and deeply important event.

Provincial, Proletarian, and Multinational: The Antibureaucratic Revolution in Late 1980s Priboj, Serbia

AbstractMoving the focus away from the epicenters of the antibureaucratic revolution, this article looks at the echoes of this movement in the provincial, multinational, working-class community of Priboj, Serbia. A microstudy of Fabrika automobila Priboj, the town’s largest employer, and its surrounding community through records of self-management and party meetings and through the local press reveals some of the less-researched aspects of the social mobilizations in Serbia in the late 1980s. Without downplaying the spread of national grievances, this study highlights parallel phenomena taking place on the ground, such as labor solidarity, growing socioeconomic grievances, and the participation of non-Serb (in this case, Muslim) populations. The argument is that the presence of a large factory with a multinational workforce in the center of the municipality as the organizational core of the mobilizations and their focus on local problems helped Priboj’s antibureaucratic bevolution resemble the proletarian, pro-Yugoslav image that the leadership of the Serbian party often hoped to project.

“Antibureaucratism” as a Yugoslav Phenomenon: The View from Northwest Croatia

AbstractMost studies of the antibureaucratic revolution have focused on political elites and activists in Serbia, Montenegro, and the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. Recent scholarship has focused on individual participants, often workers, and takes their agency seriously. Building upon such research, this article explores the antibureaucratic revolution as a particular manifestation of a larger sociocultural process, constitutive of long-term structural changes across the whole of Yugoslavia. An analysis of workplace documents and local newspapers in northwest Croatia demonstrates that antibureaucratic sentiment was not the prerogative of Serbian and Montenegrins but of Yugoslav citizens more generally. Yugoslavs were conditioned by the party-state to be critical of bureaucracy. Workers began to admonish the expansion of administrative positions, which they blamed for their falling living standards. Despite decentralizing and autarkic tendencies in political and economic life in late socialist Yugoslavia, working class discontents (and representations of it) remained remarkably similar across republican boundaries. In Rijeka and its environs, a shift does not occur until in mid-1988. Condemnations of nationalism become more urgent and a skepticism toward the mass protests occurring in Serbia is palpable from this point onward.

Images of Populism and Producerism: Political Cartoons from Serbia’s ‘Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution’

This article contributes to debates about the break-up of Yugoslavia by focusing on Serbia’s ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’, a large protest wave that occurred in 1988. Unlike most discussions which focus on elite involvement, this article emphasises the wider cultural resonance of anti-bureaucratic populism. More generally, this article shows that populism can be strengthened if it is coupled with producerism, that is, a discourse that divides society into productive and parasitic groups. Around 800 political cartoons from three Serbian newspapers are analysed. The common theme that emerges is the opposition of the blue-collar worker to the parasitic political functionary.

Serbia's Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution as Manipulation? A Cultural Alternative to the Elite-Centric Approach

AbstractWhy did nationalism and socialism combine during Serbia's “anti-bureaucratic revolution”? This article critiques the elite-centric approach prevalent in the literature and suggests a cultural argument instead. Three interconnected “elective affinities” brought nationalism and socialism together and separated them from a weak liberal alternative: (1) the emergence of bureaucracy as a “floating signifier”; (2) the search for enemies and a predilection for conspiracy theories; and (3) anti-intellectualism with special emphasis on the search for “one truth.” The elite-centric approach is assessed by looking at actors who, if the thesis is correct, should have been the least likely adopters of nationalist ideas.

The Political Mobilization of Montenegrin Communists in The “Anti-bureaucratic Revolution”

The “Anti-bureaucratic revolution” in Montenegro lasted from August 1988 to January 1989. It ended in the resignation of the complete state and party leadership of Montenegro pressured by relatively low party functionaries and a mass social movement. In this paper I will analyze the specific actions and legitimacies as well as the elements of the action and legitimacy bases of political mobilization of Montenegrin communists in the “Anti-bureaucratic revolution”.

The Political Mobilization of Serbian Communists in the First Phase of the „Antibureaucratic Revolution“

This paper offers an analysis of concrete actions and legitimations, and also of the elements of the action- and legitimation basis of the Serbian communists’ political moblization conducted during the first phase of the so-called Antibureaucratic Revolution, which began in April 1987 with Slobodan Milošević’s speech in Kosovo Polje, and came to an end with the intra-party showdown at the Eighth Session of the Serbian Communist Party’s Central Committee in September of the same year. The paper also provides a reconstruction of the political context in which the mobilization was conducted.

Serbia's antibureaucratic revolution: Milosevic, the fall of communism and nationalist mobilization

Serbia's antibureaucratic revolution: Milosevic, the fall of communism and nationalist mobilization

Aleksandar Lukashenko - Slobodan Milosevic: A comparison

The first period of Milošević's rule, dominated by plebiscitary-populist legitimacy, bears an uncanny resemblance to the rule of Napoleon III. But there is also one contemporary whose regime can also be taken for a close cousin of Milošević's - the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Like Milošević Lukashenko also represents a relict of dogmatic communism. Lukashenko, too used populism in his rise to power. And though this populism had no nationalist traits, its basic idea also rested on a kind of anti-bureaucratic revolution - the struggle against corruption. Lukashenko's rise, too, was accompanied by support or silent passivity of the strategic elites. He, too, acted in conditions with weakened social and political institutions. He, too, enjoyed (and still largely enjoys) support from the population. As soon as he gained power, he, too, started reorganizing the main political institutions according to his own measure. He, too, created an authoritarian system of personal power, with a dependent and controlled political elite. He, too, first stopped privatization, then annulled its previous results, taking control of economic resources and making the economic elite dependent on the power center. It can be said for his regime as well, that the longer it lasts, the harder it will be for the country to turn from an authoritarian to a democratic system afterwards. In the structural sense, the histories of Milošević's and Lukashenko's regimes are the same - a history of an ambitious agent taking advantage of a historically rare occasion, with weakened political institutions and strategic elites, to fundamentally influence the shaping of social structures. And they took advantage of this occasion, to the disadvantage and sorrow of their own people.

Galdós and the anti-bureaucratic tradition

Galdós and the anti-bureaucratic tradition

Anti-Bureaucratic Utopias in Highly Industrialized Societies

Anti-Bureaucratic Utopias in Highly Industrialized Societies