BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND MAURICE WILLIAMS
For an entire month, daily protests against the Stalinist regime of Slobodan Milosevic have filled the streets of Belgrade and other cities in Yugoslavia. The number of demonstrators in the capital of Serbia has hovered around 100,000. On December 16, the largest march to date took place. According to reporters from B-92, a Belgrade radio station independent of the government, up to 250,000 people took to the streets that day.

The protesters have pressed the Milosevic regime to reverse its decision to annul the results of the November 17 municipal elections, where an opposition coalition reportedly won a majority in many of Serbia's largest cities, including Belgrade.

Faced with such persistent pressure, the regime in Belgrade has begun to offer concessions in an attempt to defuse the protest movement. A local court in Smederevska Palanka, southeast of Belgrade, overturned the cancellation of the election results there. A court in Nis, Serbia's second largest city, made a similar decision December 15.

In Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, the regime of Franjo Tudjman also just faced its biggest challenge since his government broke formal ties with Belgrade five years ago. Over 100,000 students, workers, and others took to the streets November 21 to protest Tudjman's decision a day earlier to close down an independent radio station -forcing the government to back off from shutting down Radio 101.

As the class struggle has heated up in these republics, the various imperialist powers occupying Bosnia have decided to prolong, and in the case of Germany expand, their intervention into the Yugoslav workers state. On December 13, the German parliament decided to dispatch 3,000 combat troops to Bosnia - Bonn's first such mission abroad since World War II (see article above).

Four days later, NATO defense ministers gave the final go-ahead for extending the mandate of the U.S.-led force in Yugoslavia until June 1998. That week, Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, floated the idea of creating a special international police force in Bosnia to hunt down those accused of war crimes by an imperialist tribunal in the Hague.

Milosevic offers concessions
On November 17, the Serb president annulled the results of the municipal elections, in which the opposition coalition called Zajedno (Together) claimed it won majorities in city councils in 15 of Serbia's 19 largest cities. The demonstrations began a day later and have spread to some 30 cities and towns.

After the ruling Socialist Party overturned opposition victories in these cities, it ordered new elections. In some cases, such as Belgrade and Kraljevo, the opposition boycotted the new vote. In others, such as Kragujevac, Uzice, and Cacak, it participated, and won again. In Nis, the local election commission did not order new voting after it appeared the opposition had won in the city. Zajedno supporters said Milosevic supporters on the commission simply forged the vote tallies. On December 15 Ljubisa Ristic, president of the United Left, a party headed by Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic, said that as far as he knew the opposition had won in Nis. That day a local court ordered the local election commission to recount the vote from 26 polling stations within 10 days.

The Milosevic family is using both the Socialist Party and the United Left to paint a facade of political breadth to the regime.

In an attempt to diffuse the protests, Milosevic announced on state-run television December 13 an invitation for a delegation from Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe to "obtain genuine information about all the facts" of the elections results. The proposal was sent to U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher and was Milosevic's first public comment since the protests began. The U.S.-led military occupation force organized the September elections in Bosnia in collaboration with the OSCE.

At their Dublin summit (see front-page article), representatives of European Union governments set conditions for an international team to verify the results of the November poll. "We have no interest whatsoever in an economic and social collapse of Serbia," said EU mediator Carl Bildt.

In another concession, the regime in Belgrade allowed two of three radio stations to resume operations December 5, less than 24 hours after closing them down.

Milosevic also began granting more concessions to working people to stave off serious threats to his regime. The government promised to pay back wages, student grants, and pensions by the end of the year. Some retirees received full pension checks December 14, although the payment only covered the month of October. The regime announced other measures including cheaper electricity rates and lower prices on some foods such as sausages.

`Barely able to survive'
These steps by Belgrade have brought limited relief to Serbia's working people in the middle of deteriorating economic conditions. "We are barely able to survive," said Emma Stefanovic, a 68-year-old former secretary.

Nearly one third of the population -some three million people - live in poverty, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Half of the factories in Serbia are closed down, unemployment is hovering at 50 percent, and annual inflation is 100 per cent. Many workers have not been paid for months. Belgrade also faces a $2 billion trade deficit.

The local currency, the dinar, is dropping in value, raising fears of a return to the days of hyperinflation in 1993, when the currency dropped 10 to 20 percent in a single day. "I expect that by next year we will see an inflation rate of a few hundred percentage points," said Zoran Popov, from the Institute of Economics.

The working class in Yugoslavia had been facing deteriorating conditions of life and work for nearly two decades leading up to the 1990s. This was rooted in the Stalinist bureaucratic and anti-working-class methods of planning and management by the petty-bourgeois layer that controlled state power. The resulting crisis was worsened by the economic stagnation of world capitalism since the mid-1970s. Yugoslavia was particularly vulnerable since the regime of former president Josip Tito had opened up its economy to foreign investment much earlier than other workers states in Eastern Europe.

The assault on the Yugoslav working class took a qualitative turn for the worse when the competing regimes in the different republics - primarily in Serbia and Croatia - launched their war in 1991 in an attempt to control land, factories, and other economic resources. Their goal was to maintain or improve the parasitic and privileged way of life of the castes they represent.

The sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro by the United Nations until early 1996, on Washington's initiative, took a much harder toll on working people there.

In Nis and other industrial centers workers have struck and demonstrated this year demanding back pay and jobs.

Opposition can't rally working class
Despite the hardships and growing discontent, the opposition forces have failed to get large layers of workers and farmers to join the actions. "We've got 50,000 workers in this city and maybe 5,000 jobs," said Bojko Vucic, a union leader in Nis. "What can the opposition do?"

On December 9, workers at the Industrija Motora i Tractora (IMT) tractor factory voted down a union proposal to join demonstrations in Belgrade. A protest rally planned that day at the plant flopped when only a couple dozen workers out of the 1,000-strong workforce showed up. Wages in the factory had gone unpaid for five months. The day of the protest, however, workers were paid 70 percent of their October wages.

Radovan Milanovic, a worker and ex-soldier who had joined the protests since November 20, expressed no support for the Zajedno opposition coalition. "I'm marching for my children and a decent wage," he told the Washington Post at a December 9 demonstration of 100,000 in Belgrade. While thousands of unionists have participated in protest rallies in Nis, participation by industrial and other workers in Zajedno-sponsored actions in Belgrade has been sparse. "The marchers remain largely middle-class, well-educated, and urban," a December 16 Washington Post article said, referring to the Belgrade protests.

This is due to a degree to the political program and class outlook of the leading forces in the opposition coalition. One opposition leader, Danica Draskovic, has publicly urged protesters to throw bombs at the home of Milosevic and threatened others who disagree with her. Her husband, Vuk Draskovic, head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, initially joined the Serbian chauvinist wave that Milosevic unleashed when he took power in a 1987 coup. Draskovic, a former member of the League of Yugoslav Communists that ruled Yugoslavia until 1991, and his supporters call for a return of the Serbian monarchy that ruled the country before World War II. The two central leaders of the opposition, Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic, both support the imperialist-crafted Dayton agreement partitioning Bosnia into two substates.

Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party, had earlier championed the establishment of a Serb-only state in Bosnia through "ethnic cleansing." The big-business press often describes him as an ardent supporter of the return of a "free-market economy."

Milosevic has also had some success in attempting to portray Zajedno leaders as pawns of imperialist powers. "It is perfectly clear no matter how strongly your leaders are asking for help from abroad, Serbia will not be ruled by foreign hands," Milosevic told student leaders from Nis who met him December 17 to present their demands after a 148- mile march from Nis to Belgrade. Excerpts of the meeting were featured on state-run television.

For many in Yugoslavia, including among the majority opposed to Milosevic's antidemocratic measures, there is not a big difference between the regime and the main opposition groups. "We want to show we are citizens of this country with the right to vote and choose," said Uros Bobic, 20, a drama student from Belgrade, explaining his participation in the student marches. "We also want to show the opposition that the moment they start acting like Milosevic we will rise up again."

Political disagreements are rife between the students and the opposition coalition. Students at Belgrade University have occupied the school facilities since the annulment of the municipal elections and have organized their own demonstrations, attracting some 25,000 into the streets daily. They refuse to join the Zajedno rallies or meet with its leaders.

The big-business press has not reported very favorably on the student actions. A lead front-page article in the December 10 New York Times, for example, attempted to paint the students and their leadership as hard nationalists to the right of Milosevic. The article was titled "Student Foes of Belgrade Leader Embrace Fierce Serb Nationalism." The article quoted 19-year-old Goran Kovacevic saying "Milosevic sold us out to the West."

The Times writer complained that students often refer to visitors in their school coming from imperialist countries as "liars" and "American scum." And he noted student leaders had recently expelled Jack Lang, former French minister of culture, when he attempted to barge onto the grounds of the occupied university, allegedly to show his support to their cause. One of the students told reporters Lang had called for bombing Belgrade during the war in Bosnia. Others said the French official did not respect the rules of the student committee on campus.

Many articles in the bourgeois press now openly state why the U.S. rulers and other imperialists are not in a state of euphoria over what the protest movement in Serbia, or the demonstrations that took place in Croatia last month, can accomplish. "Serbia's communism shows staying power," was one headline in the Washington Post.

"Waves of protesting students tooting whistles and kazoos, and opposition leaders calling for democracy and the rule of law recall the heady days of the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia," the article said. "But the differences.... lead Serb analysts and diplomats from the former Communist Bloc to conclude that the protests here have little chance of toppling Milosevic."

One of the main differences the author pointed to was that "Yugoslavia, alone among East European countries, had its own Communist revolution.... Communism was not imposed on this country from Moscow, it was homegrown. Yugoslavia never belonged to Moscow's Warsaw Pact and Moscow's influence on Belgrade was much less than elsewhere in Eastern Europe."

About 80 percent of Yugoslavia's economy remains state owned and hopes for capitalist investment are dimmer than ever. Institutional Investor, a trade magazine, ranked Yugoslavia last summer Number 129 of 137 countries as a prospect for foreign investment.

Attitude of the imperialist powers
The Clinton administration has not embraced the protests nor the opposition leaders. During the first week of demonstrations the White House remained silent. Draskovic has charged Washington and other imperialist powers of propping up the Milosevic regime. At one of the demonstrations, protesters marched past the U.S. embassy and burned a U.S. flag.

"There was a perception [among the demonstrators] that the U.S. had decided to back Milosevic, that he was our man," Warren Zimmerman, U.S. ambassador to Belgrade, told the Washington Post. Washington has since called on Milosevic to restore election results he canceled and has threatened new sanctions. The Clinton administration maintains an "outer wall" of sanctions against Serbia, blocking international bank loans to the regime and its participation in international bodies. Zajedno leaders, however, are not happy. "We all think Western countries support Milosevic and the socialist regime, and now we can freely say the Western world is on their side," said Slobodan Vuksanovic of the Democratic Party.

Washington has its sights instead fixed on its occupation force in Bosnia. It is making long-term plans to use it both for maintaining its military superiority as a European power and as a bludgeon against working people throughout Yugoslavia.

As the NATO defense ministers were making final plans for the new NATO force of 31,000 soldiers that will stay in Bosnia until mid-1998, Gen. John Shalikashvili pushed for instituting an imperialist police force to go after those indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Hague. "I think a way must be found where a police force can be constituted that would take care of those instances where the signatories to the agreement continue to refuse to turn over those war criminals," Shalikashvili said. Paris and Rome balked at the proposal.

So far, the NATO troops have not attempted to pursue such people - who include Bosnian Serb chauvinist leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic - a move that could spark fire fights between the imperialist troops and Serbian armed forces. This would also exacerbate tensions with Moscow, which has so far sided with Belgrade.

In a related development, NATO foreign ministers met in Brussels December 11 and set a date of June 1997 for a conference to issue invitations to some of the former Warsaw Pact members in Central Europe to join the North Atlantic imperialist alliance.

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov stated Moscow's opposition to the expansion plans. "We do not like the expansion of NATO's military infrastructure toward our territory," he declared at the Brussels meeting. "We are against this and are looking for solutions."

Meanwhile, less than half of the $1.8 billion pledged for 1996 by donors for the reconstruction of Bosnia has been disbursed. Total reconstruction costs are estimated at $50 billion. So far, only $800 million has been invested in rebuilding the bridges, sewer systems, schools, power plants and other aspects of the infrastructure that would allow a return to normal living conditions.

Inter-imperialist rivalries are also playing out in Bosnia. Paris is complaining that French companies are being iced out from projects in that republic by Washington. "Sources say much of this year's aid shortfall is due to France," said an article in the December 12 Christian Science Monitor, "which has effectively frozen EC aid because it feels French contractors are not receiving enough work."  
 
 
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