Bureaucracy in Late Socialist Yugoslavia

In Yugoslav socialism, the designation of the state bureaucracy as the “main adversary of working-class interests” (Archer and Musić Reference Archer and Musić2017, 47) ensured that the abstract specter of bureaucracy in opposition to self-managing socialism would be a frequent and legitimate trope of discussion in public life (Zukin Reference Zukin1975, 210). Birokratizam was considered by Edvard Kardelj in the early 1950s as “the final and most stubborn legacy of the class system and therefore the most dangerous enemy of socialism” (cited in Suvin Reference Suvin2012a, 142; for a detailed discussion of the concept of bureaucracy, see Darko Suvin Reference Suvin2011, Reference Suvin2012a, Reference Suvin2012b; Zukin Reference Zukin1975, 210–212).

In the vocabulary of Yugoslav socialism, bureaucracy [birokracija] was often used alongside other negative markers of anti-socialist behavior such as nationalism, liberalism, techomanagerialism, and perhaps that most negative of terms, counterrevolution (Jović Reference Jović2009, 8). A 1981 dictionary of self-management terminology defines bureaucracy as both a layer of professional managers and a system of social and political relations in which bureaucrats have the leading role. The even more negative term birokratizam is understood a “set of occurrences which are the result of the actions of bureaucracy; the way in which bureaucracy manifest and affects society” (Sorić Reference Sorić1981, 21). The bureaucracy was an omnipresent if indistinct term of derision in Yugoslav socialism from the inception of the socialist state, and it was a sufficiently flexible empty or floating signifier (Grdešić Reference Grdešić2016, 779) to be molded according to the needs of the day. Thus, as Nebojša Vladisavljević (Reference Vladisavljević2008, 176) writes, “[t]he embeddedness of the antibureaucratic theme in Yugoslavia’s political and cultural life explains why it resonated so well with its citizens in the autumn of 1988.”

Yugoslav reflexive socialism enabled quite a broad degree of public discussion and constructive criticism to occur, albeit within certain parameters and provided it was couched in the appropriate terminology of socialist self-management (Robinson Reference Robinson1977; Ramet Reference Ramet and Ramet1985b). The bureaucratic theme was a legitimate framework within which to critique the work of officials in the press. The bureaucratic “cruelty” of municipal staff was a ubiquitous topic from at least the late 1970s in a media market that was increasingly commercialized and oriented toward proto-tabloid formats.

Reporting on the problems of the day, however, was not only the preserve of tabloids. Established broadsheets like Borba and Vjesnik also reported more often on human interest stories and controversial issues like “work stoppages” and inefficient municipal bureaucracies. In the fallout of the quelled demonstrations in Kosovo in 1981 the press was “full of revelations on political and economic abuses … becoming increasingly frank in its criticisms.”Footnote ³ This was not lost on the Yugoslav party-state, which was frustrated with the “sensationalist and ill-intended [nedobronamerno]” reporting on sensitive issues like instability in Kosovo.Footnote ⁴ Documents from the mid-1980s also suggest that the upper echelons of the party-state were aware of the growing frustration of ordinary citizens in their dealings with state and municipal officials.Footnote ⁵ A 1986 report about the political and security situation in Serbia cautioned,

A more robust and inquisitive press concerned with stories of interest to ordinary Yugoslavs emerged at the same time that layers of bureaucracy across the country were objectively expanding, and citizens were losing their patience in their dealings with them. Dejan Jović, in his detailed study of the ideological impetus underscoring Yugoslavia’s disintegration—the “withering away” of the state—details how the 1976 restructuring with the Law on Associated Labor saw the economy devolve “into various small units, all becoming more and more ‘autarkic.’ Instead of enabling direct democracy within ‘selfmanagement’ [the party-state], became more bureaucratic than ever” (Jović Reference Jović2009, 83). Instead of the “debureaucratization of society,” a sea of new regulations was issued to support and explain new structures” (Jović Reference Jović2009, 143).

With the economic crisis of the post-Tito era and the response by federal authorities disproportionally affecting workers in production and squeezing living standards (Magaš Reference Magaš1993, 190), the context was set for increasingly populist representations of divisions between “us and them.” In the view of most workers, bureaucrats were overpaid, nonproductive, white-collar administrative workers and lower-level managers (režija) who did not directly create wealth. In the 1980s, however, the categorization broadened to include functionaries, initially municipal and regional officials but later also high officials (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 173).

The antibureaucratic theme was not just a resonant aspect of Yugoslav political discourse but also fed into popular culture. Marko Grdešić (Reference Grdešić2016, 775) provides a cultural argument to explain the interlocking of Serbian nationalism and Leninist socialism (and the relative weakness of liberalism) in the context of the antibureaucratic revolution drawing on Veljko Vujačić’s (Reference Vujačić2003) work on ideological convergence between orthodox communism and extreme nationalists in late socialist Serbia. In addition to this convincing argument, I suggest that there is a broader cultural dimension to “antibureaucratism” in Yugoslavia that is not specific to Serbia and was visible across the country during the early 1980s. The 1980s witnessed what S.P. Ramet (Reference Ramet and Ramet1985a, 3) has termed an “apocalypse culture,” an introverted anomie and “quest for meanings” that brought into question the “fundamental political and social values of the society.” Perhaps in response to an ever more cynical citizenry, the party-state launched various ad hoc measures to tackle corruption and the abuse of power in the immediate post-Tito era. Rather than shore up the League of Communists, however, the tepid results damaged the party’s reputation further (Archer Reference Archer2015).

A series of widely reported public scandals reached a peak in late 1987, when the Agrokomerc food-processing system in Velika Kladuša, northwest Bosnia Herzegovina, collapsed under the weight of a scheme of unsecured promissory notes (Andjelic Reference Andjelic2003, 57–61; Woodward Reference Woodward1995, 295), an event that further mainstreamed the notion of corrupt bureaucrats abusing positions of political power. Publicized instances of corruption like Agrokomerc created a direct link in the minds of many Yugoslavs between the machinations occurring in their workplaces and the republic and federal political nomenklatura. For example, in the wake of the Agrokomerc scandal, a Tanjug news agency interview with Branko Mikulić, then president of the Federal Executive Council, addressed the danger of federal (Yugoslav) “centralism, statism and bureaucratisms“ (Novi list, September 8, 1987, 3).

In the media of late socialist Yugoslavia, many municipal bureaucracies were described as “heartless” and accused of improperly interpreting regulations and hampering the possibilities for residents to access permits in order to build suitable housing (Archer Reference Archer2018, 144–145). Sympathetic newspaper reports would side with ordinary citizens, acknowledging the unfair and uneven application of rules. Zagreb daily Vjesnik (October 26, 1980), for example, announced in a headline that “life does not wait for spatial plans.” On April 4, 1987, regional newspapers Novi list (Rijeka) and Glas Istre (Pula) ran as their headline “theme of the week” on concerns about bureaucratic procedures on the island of Pag relating to housing construction, “The Cry against Bureaucratic Arbitrariness.”Footnote ⁷ The municipal assembly was accused by journalists of “bureaucratic violence” by incorrectly enforcing building regulations that prevented individuals from legally building on their own land for four years.

Workers in Northwest Croatia in the 1980s

Politically, Croatia has been termed by observers as “the sullen republic” between 1974 and 1989 (Irvine Reference Irvine, Cohen and Dragović-Soso2007, 168). Its political culture tended to be more inert and conservative than those of Slovenia and Serbia, which had witnessed the development of increasingly lively and autonomous subcultures and social movements, as well as combative political groupings in the League of Communists by the 1980s. Croatian socialist conservatism was largely a consequence of the removal of nationalist and liberal cadres and party members following the Croatian Spring in the early 1970s. However, despite the region’s designation as “sullen,” workers in Croatia were as politically engaged as were their counterparts elsewhere in Yugoslavia. While workers were underrepresented in power structures throughout Yugoslavia (Obradović and Dunn Reference Obradović and Dunn1978), their concerns and perspectives were sometimes critically expressed in the party-state. For example, in November 1981, a worker member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, Pavao Bežan from Duga Resa reportedly spoke up at a Central Committee meeting, attracting attention with his critique of the party:

Perhaps influenced by the dramatic activities of the Solidarity trade union in Poland, in the early 1980s, domestic and foreign observers took the “mood of the workers” seriously. For example, documents from the British embassy in Yugoslavia from 1981 repeatedly mention the challenge of gauging the elusive “mood of the workers.” The disposition of Yugoslav workers was discussed in a telephone conversation between the British ambassador and Vladimir Bakarić, a member of the Yugoslav presidency, in October 1981. In the same month, the British ambassador met with the chairperson of the Croatian Trade Union Federation in Zagreb and received a report on the 21 strikes that had occurred in Croatia between July and September 1981.Footnote ⁹ Initially, labor mobilizations were more numerous in Croatia (and Slovenia) than they were in less developed parts of Yugoslavia (Vladisavljević Reference Vladisavljević2008, 111). In 1987, the most high-profile strike in Socialist Yugoslavia to date took place in the Labin mine in Istria (Kuzmanić Reference Kuzmanić1988).Footnote ¹⁰ Another notable strike saw workers from the Borovo plant near Vukovar march to the Federal Parliament building in Belgrade in July 1988 (Ivčić, Nekić, and Račić Reference Ivčić, Nekić and Račić2014; Cvek, Ivčić, and Račić Reference Cvek, Ivčić and Račić2015).

A growing literature on Yugoslav “worlds of work” takes the agency of workers seriously and engages with theoretical and methodological advances in the field of global labor history that it couples with rigorous empirical research (Bonfiglioli Reference Bonfiglioli2015, Reference Bonfiglioli2018; Calori and Jurkat Reference Calori and Jurkat2018; Cvek, Ivčić, and Račić Reference Cvek, Ivčić and Račić2015; Musić Reference Musić, Archer, Duda and Stubbs2016; Rutar Reference Rutar and Rutar2014, Reference Rutar2015; Schult Reference Schult2017). Rather than revealing “the syndrome of radical egalitarianism” as per Josip Županov (Reference Županov1983), whereby Yugoslav workers allegedly claimed “they could not pay me as little as I can work” (Jović Reference Jović2009, 163) an analysis of the crisis of the early 1980s at the level of the self-managing workplace reveals that workers, far from being a homogenous grouping, had a range of motivations, concerns, and interests (Archer and Musić Reference Archer and Musić2017).

While cynical representations and dissatisfaction were tangible, this intersected and coexisted with a meaningful commitment to labor and the workplace; a “structure of feeling” (Williams Reference Williams1978, 131–132; see also Bonfiglioli Reference Bonfiglioli2019) and sociality shaped by factory work. The factory was often considered as a “second home” and the center of one’s community. The sometimes ambivalent state-society relations thus cannot be reduced to jealousy, begrudgery, or “equality in poverty” on the part of workers (Jović Reference Jović2009, 162–163) as a close reading of sources from the workplace and local communities reveals. Presuming that elites and blue-collar workers entered into a pact underwritten by laziness and deceit risks reproducing what Alexei Yurchak (Reference Yurchak2005, 9) critiques as the “underlying assumption that socialism was based on a complex web of immoralities.” It also overlooks the various formal and informal mechanisms that workers and other actors engaged in as a means to address social conflict in Yugoslavia. For example, in 1971, a report by Radio Free Europe on a strike by Rijeka dockworkers noted that the conflicting sides entered into negotiations in a businesslike manner and media reports were accurate and measured in tone. In fact, what made this labor mobilization notable, the report opined, was that it was unremarkable and procedural (Antic Reference Antic1971).

“How Much More Will Individuals Take over Social Property?” Representations of Worker Dissatisfaction in Northwest Croatia

Alison Stenning (Reference Stenning2005, 987) writes that the centrality of workers in state-socialist societies “tended to encourage extreme representations of working-class communities—ranging from the heroic to the ridiculous.” Yugoslavia was no exception in this regard, with the representations of workers and factory work shifting between inherent reverence and deep skepticism, the contrasts between which were brought into even greater relief throughout the 1980s as the incomes and symbolic capital of industrial workers declined. Workers themselves were concerned with a wide range of “negative phenomena” in the factory, relating both to the economic performance of the collective and to work ethic. In documents from workplaces like company periodicals, detailed commentary and biting cartoons and aphorisms rued a sharp drop in living standards workers in production; the ever-growing divisions between blue-collar and white-collar workers; housing shortages; the proliferation of bureaucracy, careerism, corruption, and the theft of social property; and the waning of a socialist work ethic on the part of both blue-collar and white-collar workers, as evident in the increase in shirking, absenteeism, and sick leave. Such themes were in broad public circulation in industrial centers like Rijeka, Labin, and Pula.

In early 1977, a couple of years in advance of the economic crisis that would envelop the country, a sailor, Živko Mataija, wrote an open letter to the workplace periodical of Jugolinija. He claimed to have witnessed captains and first officers “privatizing social property” (in other words, stealing) on board Jugolinija ships. The ship’s inventory would be removed and sold off to wheelers and dealers while in global ports like Alexandria, Suez, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and a cut given to the crew. Mataija stated that it was not his wish to write a letter due to “bad intentions” or “because of a run-in with someone.” Rather, his aims were “in accordance with societal norms” and represented a “call to working people of Jugolinija to fight for a better tomorrow.”Footnote ¹¹

The editor of the Jugolinija periodical—a glossy but serious publication with a print run of around 7,000 copies—supported Mataija’s viewpoint and suggested that his letter was very apt; Jugolinija found itself in economic difficulties, and the previous year had been the most difficult in its 30-year history. As in many discussions published in workplace periodicals, a direct connection was made between theft from the company and the economic difficulties the company found itself in. Thus, the editor endorsed the call of Mataija, encouraged other Jugolinija workers to be equally conscientious, and committed to reporting on each suggestion and comment that might further this goal.

Mataija’s intervention, however, does not appear to have had the desired effect of reining in theft and recouping losses for the company. Examining Jugolinija workplace periodicals in the decade after his letter was published, along with documents from other work organizations in the regions of Kvarner and Istria and the Rijeka branch of the League of Communists of Croatia, it is evident that economic and political crisis in Yugoslavia also had an impact on this comparatively wealthy corner of northwest Croatia. By 1987, over a quarter of the workforce in northwest Croatia worked at regional industrial heavyweights that were running losses.Footnote ¹² Strikes were increasing in number and intensity. The League of Communists and major industries were attempting ad hoc reforms in a response to public discontent and calls for the removal of compromised functionaries. Similarly, theft from workplaces, the phenomenon that Mataija had decried, remained a perennial problem. Theft took the forms both of the casual pilfering of items that were then transported out of the factory perimeter (for example in the case of Uljanik shipyard, often by small boat)Footnote ¹³ and more elaborate schemes involving individuals in positions of authority, such as the senior kitchen workers on a Jugolinija ship who sold off much of the food for the crew while at port and then proceeded to serve inferior, cheaper food while at sea, even making the crew fish for their dinner when supplies dwindled.Footnote ¹⁴

The theme of bureaucracy, closely connected to theft and the abuse of one’s position, was also a regular feature in company periodicals and documents, particular in the less formal cartoons and images accompanying texts and in letters and complaints from individual workers, where criticism was particularly pronounced (Archer and Musić Reference Archer and Musić2017, 55). The bureaucracy was directly linked to the abuse of power, inhibiting business and contributing to growing social inequalities and other pathologies. For example, in a 1983 edition of Jugolinija’s periodical, in the section “Questions without Answers” a subheadline asked, “What Does ‘Vulnerable’ Mean?” The comment detailed how free holidays had been taken up by 170 Jugolinija workers, only 80 of whom were sailors (blue-collar workers) while the rest were in administrative positions. “If we are not mistaken, the [social welfare] institution of a free holiday is earmarked for workers in the most vulnerable positions with weak material status … We ask ourselves, are so many administrative workers really ‘vulnerable’ or are they a ‘vulnerable’ category?”Footnote ¹⁵

Yugoslav workplace periodicals and proto-tabloids consistently presented in text and images workers being taken advantage of or in some way negatively affected by the actions of white-collar workers. A 1983 cartoon in Jugolinija’s periodical suggests that blue-collar workers were silenced by bureaucrats: a booming white-collar worker has his voice amplified by five separate microphones, but the voice of the dejected blue-collar worker, speaking unamplified, goes unheard (figure 1). Similar imagery positioning workers against bureaucrats can be seen in Pula’s Uljanik shipyard. In one telling image on the back cover of the company periodical, blue-collar workers are shown in a tug-of-war with portly, suited men. The activity is rigged in favor of the bureaucrats, however: the rope is tied to a pole behind them.Footnote ¹⁶ Austerity measures are presented as a burden placed on the shoulders of blue-collar workers, not affecting white-collar workers to the same extent. A cartoon in the periodical of the Brodokomerc trade and tourism firm depicts a uniformed blue-collar worker buckling under the weight of the heavy end of a tree trunk called “intervention measures” that he is carrying, while behind him, an administrative worker in a suit holds a much smaller part of the burden (figure 2).

Figure 1. Cartoon from Jugolinija (List radne organizacije Jugolinija, Rijeka, no. 104, 1983, 17).

Figure 2. Detail from the back cover of Brodokomerc (Vjesnik SOUR-a Brodokomerc, no. 65–66, 1987).

During the course of the 1980s, excessive bureaucracy in the workplace began to be more forcefully linked to criticisms of bureaucracy at the municipal, republican, and federal levels. This was a point of resonance not only in Serbia and Montenegro but also among Croatian workers. Sometimes bureaucrats were represented as foteljaši (“armchair hoggers”), occupying positions of power solely due to the fringe benefits they received. They were presented in worker periodicals and the popular press as rotating between positions and behaving arrogantly, not in the interests of the workers, the work collective, or the broader society (figure 3). On other occasions, bureaucracy was represented as holding back business and inhibiting economic activity. A 1984 edition of the Uljanik periodical depicts a large ship called “Yugo-administration” that a small boat called “business,” rowed by a frantic worker, is unsuccessfully attempting to tow (figure 4). The bloated administration is unambiguously presented as a hindrance to profitability. Thus, antibureaucratic sentiment could be deployed from an economically liberal position as well as from a more familiar blue-collar, redistributive one.

Figure 3. “Rotation.” Cartoon from Jugolinija (List radne organizacije Jugolinija, Rijeka, no. 106, 1984, 44).

Figure 4. “Yugo-administration.” Detail from the back cover of Uljanik (Uljanik: Mjesečnik SOUR-a brodograđevna industrija, no. 38, 1984, 5).

When speaking about their workplaces, many blue-collar workers, in addition to stressing the burden of low wages and disappointment at federal measures further reducing their pay, also criticized the administration and management of their companies. A transport worker in Rijeka port, Branko Bitunjac, stated that he did not believe “that such a high number of administrative staff exist in any other developed country.”Footnote ¹⁷ Not only was the proliferation of bureaucratic positions called into question, but so was their moral standing. A survey of Rijeka port workers about morality and ethics undertaken in the weeks after the Agrokomerc scandal made its first shockwaves gave voice to many workers who were dissatisfied and confused about the role of their workplaces in the affair. In particular, they were concerned about the actions of directors and managers who may have knowingly colluded with Fikret Abdić and the Agromkomerc system or were guilty by association.

Ivan Obajdin, a worker in the tool storage unit of Rijeka Port, declared,

Obajdin’s colleagues expressed similar views—change was needed in management structures to reduce administration and increase output. A group of his colleagues expressed their frustration with the differentiation in treatment between blue-collar workers and management. Perhaps in no small way inspired by dominant media discourses of the period, their views corresponded to the type of populist sentiment emerging from Serbian and Montenegrin workplaces in the late 1980s:

A human interest report from 1989, investigating how the workers of Uljanik shipyard in Pula lived, featured an interview with security guard Marijan Posavac, who expressed similar views to the Rijeka port workers. Regarding the crisis in Uljanik, Posavec stated that it was essential to immediately “reduce the enormous and unnecessary administration” not only in the shipyard but in the country more generally. He believed it was necessary to “reduce the enormous state [federal], republic and municipal apparatus,”Footnote ²⁰ paralleling views emanating from Serbia that called for a recentralization of Yugoslavia, purportedly on an economic basis.

From Kosovo to Agrokomerc: The Circulation of Tropes in Late Socialist Yugoslavia

A Jugolinija cartoon showed the various problems facing the ordinary Yugoslav, who is termed a “consumer, struggling to hold up a burden of heavy rocks that include shirking, huge administration, massive meetings, negligence (javašluk), irrationality, nonproductivity, and faking (folirancija) (figure 5). The respective problems visually conflated in this cartoon were frequently presented as interlinked in workplace periodicals and the Yugoslav press.

Figure 5. Burden on the Yugoslav consumer. Cartoon from Jugolinija (no. 104, 1983, 17).

Certain representations and themes are specific to the particular region, industrial sector, or company identity. In coastal Pula and Rijeka, for example, drawing upon nautical themes is common, as are references to the local dialect. Other representations, however, draw from a Yugoslav-wide repertoire of ideas, themes, and images. In many cases, texts and images were directly reproduced from publications of other Yugoslav republics. Some images were submitted by workers, others were composed by professional cartoonists, such as Predrag Koraksić “Corax” (Jovanović Reference Jovanović, Halpern and Kideckel2000). Cartoons from Titograd’s Pobjeda or an article from Belgrade’s Borba or management magazine Direktor might be reproduced for the local and factory press in Rijeka and Pula. In other cases a Yugoslav perspective, for example, from news agency Tanjug, would be provided.

Political histories of 1980s Yugoslavia rightly point to the polycentric or even fractured media space (Jović Reference Jović2009, 41n15). Yet, a comparison of factory sources in the late 1970s and 1980s from a range of industrial sectors and diverse geographical sites—such as the garment industry in Zrenjanin, Vojvodina; the automotive sector in Maribor, Priboj (Sandžak) and Rakovica (Belgrade); metal works in Montenegro; and the shipbuilding industries and shipping companies in Bar, Montengro, and Rijeka and Pula in Croatia—points toward commonalities. Despite decentralizing impulses, there was a coherent repertoire of themes familiar to Yugoslav workers in circulation across the country. This repertoire was informed by workplace socialization and the various institutions of the party-state through which workers learned to “speak self-management” (Kotkin Reference Kotkin1995).

An obvious source of commonalities in antibureaucratic tropes in Serbia and Croatia includes the publication of aphorisms and cynical commentary of writers like Milovan Vitezović. These were a ubiquitous item in Serbian and Montenegrin workplace periodicals throughout the 1980s and also made inroads in Croatia.Footnote ²¹ In 1982 for example, Jugolinija’s periodical ran a sarcastic passage written by Vitezović on careerists, “the hero of our era.”Footnote ²² His work was frequently reproduced in company periodicals, appearing on the front cover of Uljanik’s paper in 1987.Footnote ²³ Vitezović would later be closely associated with Milosevic’s antibureaucratic revolution, allegedly coining the phrase “the happening of the people” while speaking at the largest protest meeting in Belgrade (Ušće) in November 1988 (e-Novine 2015) Prior to this, however, his maxims and aphorisms were popular across the country as part of a cynical pan-Yugoslav popular culture that predominated in the 1980s. Similar satirical quips and aphorisms by other authors abound in workplace documents. One instructive example was featured in Jugolinija’s peridical; authored by “Frane,” it posits, “What is the working class? The working class is a mass without a voice. It can rise if yeast is added.”Footnote ²⁴ A 1987 issue of Uljanik’s periodical featured the following stark comment on its back cover: “In capitalism the differences are social, but in socialism the differences are capital.”Footnote ²⁵

By the mid-1980s, venerated symbols of communism were the butt of jokes in worker periodicals. Jugolinija’s periodical featured a set or irreverent cartoons under the title “Marx and Us.”Footnote ²⁶ One featured Karl Marx reading a book, commenting, “You translated me well, but when will you be implementing it?” A second cartoon depicts two workers in overalls looking at a departing car (presumably with white-collar workers as passengers) commenting, “That’s really not fair. He left them the capital but for us just the manifesto!” A third one features a worker snoozing in a hammock inside a hammer and sickle. Despite this widespread cynical humor and political intimacy (Klumbytė Reference Klumbytė2011) demonstrated by workplace publications and regional press regarding the deviant behavior of managers and functionaries, the sometimes lackluster work ethic of blue-collar workers and toying with fundamental symbols of communism like Karl Marx, the topic of nationalism and discrimination on the basis of ethnicity was not readily addressed. In documents from workplaces and local party organizations, no overt nationalist agitation is evident. Of course, one cannot draw firm conclusions from this absence. In the case of Kosovo, for example, it is clear that workplace periodicals are not useful sources to inform upon the demonstrations of 1981 and issues of interethnic relations. Although documents sent by the League of Communists of Kosovo to other republican and provincial party leaderships indicates that workers were mobilized,Footnote ²⁷ the view from workplace periodicals runs contrary. In Suva Reka rubber plant for example, a successful industry in the early 1980s for Kosovo standards, their workplace publication simply ceased in the spring of 1981, only to emerge in the summer with bombastic claims (drawn from a report by Politika ekspres) of “labor against counterrevolution.”Footnote ²⁸

In Rijeka and its environs, the issue of ethnic polarization in Kosovo was not at the forefront of inhabitants’ concerns, but nevertheless the issue did become topical. In the spring of 1981, immediately after the protests of Kosovar Albanians in the autonomous province, a three-page article in Jugolinija’s periodical described the “attempt at counterrevolution in Kosovo.” It lumped disparate enemies of the state together, like Hoxhaists and Ballist fascists who allegedly had links to the Croatian emigre Ustashe movement.Footnote ²⁹ Reports in Novi list following the shooting of Yugoslav People’s Army recruits by a Kosovo Albanian conscript in the army’s Paraćin barracks in September 1987 similarly followed the official (federal) line from Belgrade, claiming that the perpetrator “shot at Yugoslavia” and linking his actions to “counterrevolution in Kosovo,” describing it as a “Yugoslav problem.” In early 1988 authorities in Labin investigated graffiti daubed on the walls of a cement factory calling for “Kosovo republika.”Footnote ³⁰ In Rijeka a working group was formed by the League of Communists to address the problem of Kosovo and to help foster political and economic links between the city and the autonomous province.Footnote ³¹ Not until the summer of 1988 did explicitly critical views about rising Serbian nationalism find expression; prior to this the key focus was on Albanian “irredentists.” By late 1988, however, Novi list and Glas Istre dispatched two reporters, Veljko Vičević and Edo Stojčić, and a photographer, Silvano Ježina, to Kosovo, and they covered the tumultuous events of early 1989 in detail and independently of the prevailing discourse from Belgrade.

The Antibureaucratic Revolution and the View from Northwest Croatia

In Rijeka and the wider region, the last years of the 1980s saw a rise in strikes and demands that certain managers, directors and functionaries be removed from their positions. The Yugoslavia-wide scandal of the Agrokomerc food production complex had a particularly strong impact on the city, paralyzing political and economic activity during the autumn of 1987, and it led to a “noticeable shaking of confidence of a large number of people in the League of Communists and the system itself.”Footnote ³² Not only was Rijeka the closest port to Velika Kladuša, but many Rijeka-based companies worked closely with Agrokomerc, and when the extent of the corruption became public knowledge it created shockwaves in socially owned enterprises in the city. A number of Rijeka’s firms were implicated in illegal operations, including the Brodokomerc trade and tourism company, the local bank (Riječka poslovna banka), Brodomaterijal, Transjug, and the port facilities (RO “Luka”).Footnote ³³

The Agrokomerc affair damaged even further the trust that blue-collar workers had in management and functionaries, and it encouraged an outpouring of antibureaucratic sentiment in Rijeka. A September 24, 1987, meeting of management and all political and social organizations of Brodokomerc in Opatija “aroused public interest like never before” due to its association with Agrokomerc and the possibility that suspected illegal business practices in the Brodokomerc system would be confirmed.Footnote ³⁴ The front-page coverage sympathized with Agrokomerc workers, however, claiming that they “could never have guessed that their management and president of the executive board, Fikret Abdić, showing bureaucratic and technocratic arbitrariness [birokratska i tehnokratska samovolja], would alienate their self-management rights and devalue their work efforts, and not only theirs but that of the entire working class of the country, which has been inflicted a blow with far-reaching consequences.”Footnote ³⁵

The backlash of the Agrokomerc affair provoked cadre changes. The director of Brodokomerc, for example, immediately resigned, and investigations began at all segments of the company. Jugolinija also experienced cadre turbulence in the second half of 1987, with the general director resigning before the end of his mandate, ostensibly for personal reasons. An ad hoc group was formed to investigate the “sad state of the communists in the collective” amid reports of divisions between Jugolinija workers (“Jugolinijaši”) and those close to the former director, Josip Štefan (“Štefanovci”).Footnote ³⁶

Despite the rather tumultuous events in workplace and replacement of cadres, the strikes and protests in Rijeka between 1987 and 1989 did not aim to provoke the same kind of fundamental change that the more organized waves of protests sought to induce in Serbia and Montenegro. Rijeka League of Communists reported that during strikes in city, workers never left the perimeter of the factory, and they were primarily concerned with low wages.Footnote ³⁷ A report in Novi list stressed that money was the “only motive” in the 16 strikes that had occurred in the first two months of 1989 in Rijeka (Novi list, February, 26–27, 1989, 5). As Serbian protests became more visibly associated with Serbian nationalist demands, Croatian communists began to guardedly express concerns about interethnic relations and nationalism in their own republic. While local and regional industrial disputes and the expression of workers’ grievances occurring in Rijeka continued to be reported on widely in the factory and local press, a more cynical attitude regarding the aims and means of Serbian protesters began to be expressed as the antibureaucratic revolution gained traction in the summer of 1988.

On August 8, 1988, a comment by young Rijeka based journalist Branko Mijić appeared in the daily Novi list. Referring to the protests sweeping through Serbia and Montenegro during the summer, he accurately described the situation by which the cult of Tito could be (ab)used to conceal less salubrious activities:

The unconditional support that had been proffered when dealing with Kosovo in the early and mid-1980s was now interspersed with concerns about interethnic relations in Croatia. During the summer of 1988, the local political organizations in Knin intervened to prevent Serb workers from holding meetings in support of Kosovo Serbs (Marijan Reference Marijan2016, 440). When the Kosovo miners’ strike broke out in February 1989, polarizing the Yugoslav federation, this same polarization began to be remapped across Croatia, and a protest meeting in support of Kosovo Serbs was held in Knin (Marijan Reference Marijan2016, 441). The Croatian Trade Union Federation broke with the federal ranks and supported the Kosovo Albanian miners, opening a bank account for donations to the striking miners and their families (Novi list, March 1, 1989, 2). Objections to this were voiced by workers from Serb-inhabited areas of Croatia, including the bauxite mine in Obrovac, the Borovo rubber factory near Vukovar, and the trade union of Benkovac, which demanded that donations to the Kosovo Albanian miners immediately cease and the account be closed (Novi list, March 2, 1989, 2).

In Rijeka, the League of Communists declared that “Nationalism will not pass—In Rijeka stable interethnic relations rule” (Novi list, 3 March 1989, 5). Reports referred to Rijeka as a multinational city, a bastion of Brotherhood and Unity, and “Yugoslavia in miniature.”Footnote ³⁸ According to Novi list (March 3, 1989, 5), rather than ethno-national affiliation the most important personal quality was “the kind of person you are, the kind of worker you are.” Rather than ethnonationalism, the largest concern of Rijeka’s citizens and workers was how to raise wages and improve living standards (Novi list, March 3, 1989, 5).