Grassroots groups, Milošević or dissident intellectuals? A controversy over the origins and dynamics of the mobilisation of Kosovo Serbs in the 1980s

Abstract

The mobilisation of Kosovo Serbs, barely noticeable from the capital initially but highly visible at the centre political stage between 1986 and 1988, played an important part in the political struggles of the late socialist Yugoslavia. The prevailing view in the literature is that Kosovo Serbs were little more then passive recipients of the attitudes and actions of high officials and dissident intellectuals. The elite thesis says that Belgrade-based dissident intellectuals initiated and guided the mobilisation of Kosovo Serbs, aiming to undermine the party's approach to Yugoslavia's national question and to initiate reassessment of the official policy on Kosovo and Serb-Albanian relations. According to the thesis, Milošević then took over and orchestrated the action of various groups of Kosovo Serbs in order to make the case for the removal of Kosovo's autonomy. The intellectuals and Milošević have generally supported this interpretation, claiming their role in the events leading to the constitutional change to the disadvantage of Kosovo Albanians in 1989-1990. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, I have found that various grassroots groups of Kosovo Serbs played a decisive role in the mobilisation, originating from the post-1966 twist in the politics inequality and thier rapid demographic decline in Kosovo. I show that the mobilisation of Kosovo Serbs was autonomous through a close look into thier protest networks, demands and protest strategies as well as their links with the dissident intellectuals, other confidants and high officials of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo. The high officials tolerated the mobilisation partly because of the political changes that occurred in the first half of the 1980s, partly because of the small scale of mobilisation and partly due to the moderate strategies of the protest groups. Having in mind the episodes of mobilisation in socialist Yugoslavia, such as the 1968 and 1981 protest of Kosovo Albanians, it is hardly surprising that changes in political context favourable to a group, rather than a deterioration of its relative position, often lead to the protest of its members. The argument in this article only partly touches upon the role of institutional factors in the rise of the movement of Kosovo Serbs, since I have discussed this relationship elsewhere.