FROM DISCOURSE INTO IDEOLOGY: THE ROLE OF STATE DISINTEGRATION

Memories of past victimization, along with themes of historical domination, the need for national unity, and the imperative of confronting external enemies came to define the Serbian nationalist discourse. Accounting for why this discourse consisted of these particular themes were the relative absence of an established Serbian nation-state during the social mobilization period and the historical weakness of successive states under which Serbs lived. However, we have yet to examine how this nationalist discourse developed into an extreme nationalist ideology boasting mass support. In addition, the nationalist ideology espoused by Serbian elites in 1987-1991 contained themes that were strikingly similar to the ideologies of past Serbian nationalist leaders. Yet why did this ideology, having been deprived of mass adherence for nearly half a century, suddenly become popular again in the 1980s and not the 1970s? How did Serbian elites gain the opportunity to employ such an ideology in defiance of the central leadership of the Communist Party? Moreover, why was it during this period that nation members suddenly became more receptive to such an ideology? The disintegration of the Yugoslav state provides the answer to these questions. State disintegration is what determined the timing of the extreme nationalist ideology’s rise to political prominence.

State Disintegration in Yugoslavia

The path towards the disintegration of the Yugoslav state commenced in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the nationalist mobilization of Albanians and Croats sparked a process whereby considerable central powers passed to the regions. The resulting decentralized arrangement was formalized in the 1974 constitution. The process of disintegration began to accelerate again in 1981 following the death of Tito. With him departed the only political figure capable of commanding unified authority over the military and the competing regional leaderships. The declining capacity of the central state to maintain political order forced individuals to increasingly rely on ethnically-defined social networks for security.^[1] As one Kosovar Serb recollects, “After Tito’s death nobody felt secure anymore about living in ex-Yugoslavia, and people went back to their ethnic roots.”^[2] The first sign of state disintegration and the rising importance of ethnicity among citizens appeared with the outbreak of mass Albanian demonstrations that swept Kosovo in 1981. Demanding that the province be given equal status to the other republics, scores of Albanians poured into the streets to protest the existing ethno-federal arrangement.^[3] Many Serbs had already grown concerned as a result of the 1974 constitution, which increased Kosovo’s autonomy along with the dominance of ethnic Albanians in the province’s elite ranks.^[4] Following the 1981 protests, these concerns grew into widespread fear of the possibility of renewed Serbian victimization at the hands of Albanians. State disintegration therefore upset previously stable power relationships between nations. This created an environment of political uncertainty in which nations made competing demands on the state.^[5] Thus, as individuals increasingly relied on the group for basic needs, the ability of the state to maintain stability in inter-ethnic political relationships declined sharply. Put simply, at the same time that the importance of nationality rose within groups, the state lost its capacity to regulate political exchanges between groups.
Apart from destabilizing inter-ethnic relations, state disintegration also weakened the institutional controls that had formerly bound political elites to regime-defined norms of political action. As the 1980s progressed, it became clear that the ability of state institutions to regulate relations between political elites was rapidly declining. For elites who were seeking out autonomous bases of support, state disintegration created opportunities to utilize nationalism as a means of mobilizing a mass following. Slobodan Milosevic undertook such an effort, embarking on a successful bid to consolidate his own power in Serbia at the expense of the central government. Beginning with his famous 1987 speech in front of an audience of Kosovar Serbs, Milosevic went on to stage over 100 anti-government, mass demonstrations throughout Serbia. He succeeded through these protests in removing the leaderships of Vojvodina and Montenegro, replacing them with his own supporters.^[6]
In sum, the disintegration of state power caused the destabilization of inter-ethnic relations, making ordinary Serbs more receptive to the ideas contained in the nationalist discourse. This process also enabled Serbian elites to defy formal rules and procedures in attempts to openly mobilize mass support. In such an environment, the elites who ultimately gained power among Serbs were those who espoused an extreme nationalist ideology. This is because such an ideology was consistent with the themes present in the nationalist discourse. In Serbia in the late 1980s, there was virtually no difference among the political platforms set forth by competing elites; they all amounted to a single ideology that came to reflect what one observer termed “the homogenization of Serbian opinion.”^[7] According to this ideology, the Serbian nation faced a dire threat to its very existence. Vuk Draskovic, who would become a prominent opposition leader, expressed this view quite clearly at a 1986 meeting of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU): “Can we remove the knowledge that one whole nation, the Serbian nation in Kosovo and Metohija, are being subjected to a campaign of organized terror by their Albanian neighbors, and the government in that area, which is now only formally considered part of Serbia?”^[8] The famous SANU Memorandum published a few months later reiterated this point more strongly: “The physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide of the Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohija is a worse defeat than any experienced in the liberation wars waged by Serbia…”^[9]
The nationalist ideology called for extreme measures to confront this threat. All internal divisions would need to be suppressed in the name of maintaining national unity. The nation had to embark on a struggle to gain an independent state that would include all nation members. That objective, according to this ideology, would be pursued through any and all available means, including violence. In the words of Milosevic, “We simply consider it as a legitimate right and interest of the Serb nation to live in one state…And if we have to fight, by God we are going to fight.”^[10] “This is no time for sorrow; it is a time for struggle”, he told a Belgrade rally in November 1988.^[11] At the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1989, he exclaimed: “Six centuries later we are again involved in battles and facing battles. They are not battles with arms, but these cannot be excluded.” “These battles cannot be won without decisiveness, courage, and sacrifice,” he added.^[12] Placards carried by supporters at these rallies expressed unequivocally the lengths to which the nation would go to protect itself against outside threats. Typical were slogans along the lines of “If necessary we will fight for freedom” and “We will not give up the land of Obilić without the shedding of blood.”^[13] Practically all of Milosevic’s speeches warned of the malicious intentions of outsiders. Other nations both within Yugoslavia and beyond were not simply viewed as competitors but as mortal enemies: “We shall win the battle for Kosovo…despite the fact that Serbia’s enemies outside the country are plotting against it, along with those inside the country”^[14]
In accounting for the nationalist mobilization of Serbs, the analysis so far has focused mainly on intra-group factors. However, the process of state disintegration gave rise to important inter-group dynamics as well. The emergence of an extreme nationalist ideology among Serbs provoked similar reactions among Croats and Muslims—themselves having nationalist discourses similar to that of the Serbs. As Yugoslavs witnessed the organization of elections throughout communist Europe in 1989, pressures mounted on the Yugoslav regime to follow suit. Elections subsequently held in the republics brought nationalist elites to power in Croatia and Slovenia.^[15] By forcing republican leaderships to respond to their electorates rather than the central government, the elections destroyed the previous institutional mechanisms that linked regional elites to the central authority. In an environment characterized by increasing fears of renewed Serbian hegemony and diminishing institutional controls on regional officials, political movements boasting extreme nationalist ideologies gained power among Croats and Muslims. The rise of such movements exacerbated nationalist sentiments among Serbs, further entrenching the popular legitimacy of Milosevic and the ideology he espoused.
State disintegration thereby created the conditions in the late 1980s under which a radical nationalist ideology could mobilize large numbers of Serbs. However, this point requires some qualification. After all, this was not the first time in the post-war era that the authority of the Yugoslav state weakened from a previous position of relative strength. A similar process occurred between 1968 and 1974. Why, then, did Serbs rally behind a radical nationalist ideology only in the late 1980s? The answer, in short, is that while the Yugoslav state did weaken in the early 1970s, it had not become weak enough. The weakening of state power from 1968 to 1974 commenced as Tito unveiled his policy of “self-management.” Under this policy, the central government agreed to an extensive decentralization of power to the republican level. However, the Croatian leadership pushed for further decentralization than the central government was willing to permit. Moreover, they publicly sanctioned widespread, nationalist protests among students who demanded greater sovereignty for their republic. In a clear signal that the Croatian party had overstepped the bounds of permissible action, the central government intervened. It crushed the demonstrations and carried out a massive purge of prominent Croats.^[16] Unlike in the 1980s, then, the central state in the early 1970s still retained its ability to force regional officials to comply with formal-institutional rules and regime-sanctioned norms of behavior. Therefore, a precondition for Milosevic and others to mobilize nationalist support was not simply the disintegration of state power; state authority actually had to weaken to the point that it was no longer able to credibly threaten elites with sanctions.

State Disintegration in the USSR

The onset of Gorbachev’s reforms in 1986 set in motion a process in which a highly centralized party-state apparatus disintegrated and eventually collapsed with stunning speed. The introduction of Glasnost in 1987 coincided with greater freedoms for citizens to express nationalist sentiments and for organizations to form and mobilize these sentiments. The holding of democratic elections in 1989-1991 severed the institutional ties that had formerly bound lower level officials to higher level officials, and regional elites to officials in Moscow. These reforms thereby allowed competing political elites to pursue their conflicting agendas out in the open and without sanction from the central authority. In the absence of effective new institutions to take the place of the old ones, competing political elites sought out informal sources of support. Elites at the republican level used nationalism to secure new bases of support among the masses. In places such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, and the Baltic republics, the nationalism espoused by newly-sprouted political organizations came close to approximating extreme nationalist ideologies. Meanwhile, the destabilization of inter-ethnic relations brought about by state disintegration supplied large numbers of enthusiastic followers for these nationalist leaders.
Like in Yugoslavia, then, state disintegration created opportunities for enterprising elites to use nationalism as a political strategy. It also gave rise to conditions that generated mass receptiveness towards nationalist ideologies. The nations that mobilized behind such ideologies were those whose nationalist discourses shared similar elements to that of the Serbs; these discourses stressed the nation’s historical victimization at the hands of other groups residing on the territory of the collapsing state, the imperative of maintaining national unity at the expense of internal divisions, and the need to obtain a national state.
This was not the case among Russians, however. Russians did not have a prevalent nationalist discourse that focused on the need to incorporate all nation members into a national state. Nor did any of the Russian nationalist discourses center around the nation’s historical victimization by other groups in the USSR. Therefore, Russians failed to perceive the changing ethnic balance of power brought about by state disintegration to represent a threat. Even though the non-Russian republics voiced demands for more autonomy, the resistance this garnered among Russians was not nearly as great as the opposition a similar process sparked among Serbs.
However, the muted Russian reaction was not due to a shortage of nationalist policies and rhetoric issued by non-Russian leaders. The Estonian Communist Party under Vaino Väljas, to take but one example, adopted measures designed to reduce the proportion of Russians in the Party and Supreme Soviet, passed laws proclaiming the supremacy of the Estonian language in republican affairs, and restricted the voting rights of recent Russian “immigrants.”^[17] By late 1990, many voices in the Latvian Popular Front under the leadership of Romulds Razukas began calling for the encouragement of Russian-speakers to leave the country and the exclusion of Russian-speakers from citizenship in the new state.^[18]
Yet despite the often chauvinist nationalism advanced by many non-Russians, Russian nationalist elites failed to mobilize large numbers of nation members behind an extreme nationalist ideology. At the Russian polls, nationalists suffered a humiliating defeat. In the March 1990 Russian parliamentary elections, only two out of the 79 candidates of the nationalist Patriotic Bloc secured seats in the Supreme Soviet. Meanwhile, the moderate Democratic Russia received 56 seats.^[19] In the June 1991 presidential elections in Russia, Zhirinovsky, the most popular extremist candidate, collected only seven percent of the vote.^[20] Pro-Russian elites fared no better in the other republics either. The Baltic “Interfronts”, for example, failed miserably in their repeated attempts to organize local Russian-speakers to participate in general strikes and protests against the republican governments. Other pro-Soviet Russian elites tried to establish an “Inter-Regional Council,” which was intended to serve as a parallel administration in northeastern Estonia. Its founders ostensibly created this body to protect Russian-speakers. However, its first meeting failed to attract enough participants to reach a quorum and the plan was abandoned soon thereafter.^[21]
These politicians failed to gain support precisely because the ideas they promoted were inconsistent with the themes present in the Russian nationalist discourses. Most local Russian-speakers simply did not fear the changing ethnic balance of power. Indeed, in the minds of Russians during 1987-1991, socio-economic issues trumped nationalism rather than the other way around. Given the character of the Russian nationalist discourses, this outcome is not surprising. For example, according to polls conducted in Estonia since independence, most Russian-speakers did not wish to reunite with Russia, whether through emigration or Russian territorial expansion. Informing these sentiments was the widespread belief that their living standards would improve by remaining in the country.^[22] Yet perhaps the most striking display of the subordination of national to socioeconomic issues was the 1991 election to the Russian presidency of Yeltsin, who represented a far less nationalist alternative to his rivals. Instead, Yeltsin swept to power on an anti-communist platform whose main element was the promise of economic prosperity to Russians.^[23]

CONCLUSION

Differences in the extent to which Serbs and Russians mobilized behind extreme nationalist ideologies from 1987-1991 were due to the different character of each nation’s nationalist discourses. These discourses had emerged during both nations’ respective social mobilization periods, when significant numbers of people began to think of themselves as Serbs and Russians. The Serbian nationalist discourse highlights the imperative of confronting the dire threat to the nation’s existence posed by hostile outsiders. This goal is to be achieved through the relentless effort to establish a Serb-dominated state, even at the expense of tremendous sacrifice on the part of the nation. The ideas in this discourse were familiar to most nation members and were directed against other nations residing on the territory of Yugoslavia, the current state. Unlike the Serbs, Russians have multiple and competing nationalist discourses which, moreover, are less familiar to nation members. In addition, they focus on themes which are not as consistent with extreme nationalist ideas and tend to target outgroups other than those who resided on the territory of the USSR. The existence of competing discourses, and the nature of the ideas contained therein, limited the prospects that any single nationalist ideology—let alone an extremist one—could rally mass support during the Soviet collapse.
Two underlying factors account for the differences in the nature of the Serbian and Russian nationalist discourses. The first was the existence of an established nation-state during the period in which the nation underwent social mobilization. The Serbs had an established nation-state in the nineteenth century kingdom and interwar Yugoslavia to a far lesser extent than Russians did in the Tsarist and Soviet empires. This compelled Serbian elites to justify their state-building efforts by promoting the ethnic distinctiveness of Serbs from neighboring nations. Since Russian elites were already in full control of a state, they did not confront the same types of nation-building imperatives faced by their Serbian counterparts. Differences in the extent to which Serbs and Russians had an established nation-state also gave rise to variations in each nation’s political relationship towards neighboring groups. While Serbs perceived themselves as a dominated nation, Russians saw their role in the empire to be that of the dominant nation.
Again, the term “established nation-state” is used here in strict accordance with the six conditions that define the concept which were presented earlier in the article. The relevant point for the purpose of this analysis is that states in which Russians historically lived fulfilled those six conditions—and only those six conditions—to a greater extent than did states under which Serbs lived.

• Apart from the existence of an established nation-state during the social mobilization period, a second factor shaped the nationalist discourses of Serbs and Russians. This was the extent to which each nation historically lived under a singular and strong state with other groups residing on the territory of the current state. Serbs traditionally lived alongside Albanians, Muslims, and Croats in states that were fundamentally weak. Relations between these groups were therefore conflict-ridden and often bloody. Over time, then, Serbs developed a collective memory of substantial victimization suffered at the hands of these nations. These memories became a part of the Serbian nationalist discourse. However, since Russians generally did live under singular and strong states with other groups inhabiting the USSR, there were historically few instances of intense conflict between these nations. As a result, the Russian collective memory of victimization was not directed against other groups in the Soviet Union.

• The resulting differences in the Serbian and Russian nationalist discourses shaped the way that each of these nations responded to conditions of state disintegration between 1987 and 1991. In both the USSR and Yugoslavia, state disintegration served to destabilize inter-ethnic relations. As a result, this process prompted fears among Serbs that they would witness a return of the victimization inflicted upon them in the past. The ideas contained in the nationalist discourse took on an added relevance to Serbs, making nation members available to extreme nationalist ideologies. At the same time, state disintegration opened up opportunities for elites to issue such ideologies in attempts to mobilize mass support. The elites who gained political prominence in such an environment were those espousing ideologies consistent with the themes in the Serbian nationalist discourse. However, the differing character of the Russian nationalist discourses ensured that the destabilization of inter-ethnic relations failed to provoke a strong reaction among Russians. Russians did not fear the imposition of a new ethnic political arrangement to the same extent that Serbs did. Political elites attempting to appeal to Russians through the use of extreme nationalist ideologies subsequently failed to mobilize significant levels of support.

• The foregoing analysis provides a way of explaining not only why a nation will mobilize behind a particular nationalist ideology, but also when and against whom nationalist mobilization will occur. In contrast to Gellner, Anderson, Deutsch, Brubaker, and Breuilly, this framework can explain variations within and across nations in all three of these respects. While these scholars set down a frame of reference for understanding the sources of nationalism, the analysis presented here goes further, accounting for relevant variations among cases situated within this frame.^[24] In the cases examined here, the nature of the nationalist discourse determined the extent to which a nation would mobilize in support of an extreme nationalist ideology, and how extreme this ideology would be. In addition, a nation should be expected to mobilize against those groups who serve the role of historical victimizers in the nation’s collective memory. Furthermore, the level of state disintegration determined the timing of nationalist mobilization; nations that had the appropriate nationalist discourses mobilized when the authority of the current state under which they lived collapsed. In order to fully understand variations in the particular ideologies that different nations adopt, it is not sufficient to focus on large-scale processes and institutions alone. One must also look at the ideas comprising a given nation’s nationalist discourse, the forces that historically shaped the content and character of its discourse, along with the changing conditions that affect that discourse. Scholars have over the past several decades laid an effective basis for understanding the conditions that foster the rise of nationalism as a general phenomenon. The task now facing students of nationalism is to devote more attention to explaining important empirical variations in this phenomenon within and across nations.

• How much of each independent variable is necessary if a nation is to mobilize around an extreme nationalist ideology in the current period? While a specific answer to this question would require a systematic comparison of a greater number of cases, the following is a rudimentary attempt to address this issue. There are three independent variables offered in the above framework: the extent to which the nation had an established nation-state during the social mobilization period; the extent to which the nation historically lived under a singular and strong state with other nations on the territory of the current state; and the capacity of the current state. I will deal with these variables in turn. First, the less the nation considered itself to live under an established nation-state during the social mobilization period, the less likely it is to mobilize behind an extreme nationalist ideology in the current period. Any nation that mobilizes behind an extreme nationalist ideology in the current period should have been thoroughly dissatisfied with the extent to which it had a national state during the social mobilization period. Otherwise, a nation in the current period will not be receptive to extreme nationalist ideologies.

• Second, if a nation is to mobilize behind an extreme nationalist ideology during the current period, states under which it has lived did not have to be weak at all times throughout its history. The nation in question should merely be able to remember past instances of severe victimization suffered at the hands of other nations who live on the territory of the current state. That is the important condition for the purpose of this framework. Weak states need not generate violent conflict. Yet violent conflict with other nations could not have occurred had the state in which these nations lived not, at some point, become very weak. If a nation does not remember past instances of victimization by any other group on the territory of the current state, its members will not be receptive to extreme nationalist ideologies that target these groups.

• Finally, the power of the current state must disintegrate to the extent that it casts considerable uncertainty over the future political relationships between competing nations. Otherwise, ordinary people will not be receptive to extreme nationalist ideologies. In addition, the state must unravel to the extent that it is no longer able to pose a credible threat of sanctions towards enterprising elites seeking to mobilize mass nationalist support. If not, elites will not be able to utilize nationalist ideologies in their political pursuits.
The next step is to test the hypothesis developed here against a larger number of cases. Only by undertaking a more systematic comparison would it be possible to state with some certainty which variables, and how much of these variables, lead to nationalist mobilization. If the independent variables outlined here do have a greater explanatory significance, it remains to be seen whether these variables work for a broader range of ideologies besides extreme nationalist ones.