The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

38 NOVEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Baby-blue “Trabis” line up to cross the border from East to West. MICHAELHAMMER of communism across Eastern Europe in 1989 and the growing turmoil and weakness in Mikhail Gorbachev’s USSR with a kind of angry disbelief that ultimately led it to play a destructive role in the tragedy of Yugoslav disintegration. In one of its first issues after the Berlin Wall’s fall, the army’s newspaper gravely warned that nothing had changed in the military’s determination to defend socialism in Yugoslavia. The spectacular collapse of ruling communist parties across Eastern Europe also affected the League of Communists of Yugo- slavia, the country’s only party since 1945. Even before 1989, belief in the Yugoslav model of “self-management socialism” was crumbling. In those limited areas where small-scale private enterprises were beginning to be tolerated, they were universally considered to be superior. When I lost a tooth filling, Yugoslav friends warned me gravely to use one of the new private dentists and not a “self-management” type. In January 1990 the LCY effectively vanished when the Slovenian party walked out of what turned out to be the last party congress, and the remaining republics effectively blocked Milosevic’s efforts to take over the rump body. The communist parties in Yugoslavia’s republics, where the real locus of power lay, reacted in different ways to the events of 1989. A liberal Slovene party faction was strength- ened in its already ongoing efforts to transform itself into a social-democratic party, a trend which helped propel Slovenia toward secession in June 1991. In Croatia, a reformist group seized control of the party shortly after the fall of the Wall and announced its support for multiparty elections—which it resoundingly lost five months later to Franjo Tudjman’s Croa- tian nationalists, adding yet another disintegrationist element to the Yugoslav brew. There were, of course, elements within Yugoslavia who took inspiration from the events of 1989 and hoped to emulate the success of liberal East European reformers. During 1989 and 1990 Yugoslavia’s last and greatest prime minister, Ante Markovic, tried unsuccessfully to create a united market economy. Markovic enjoyed enor- mous prestige across the country for having stopped a burst of hyperinflation that rivaled that of 1923 Germany. In January 1990, when the LCY collapsed, a smiling Markovic announced: “Yugoslavia will sur- vive.” His liberal reforms failed because republican leaders, primarily interested in promoting their own separatist agendas, cooperated to block the emer- gence of a powerful rival at the federal level. Portents of Hope and Danger Preoccupation with Yugoslavia did not prevent diplomats there from being drawn to the astonishing events unfolding in neighboring countries. In Europe 1989 was the “summer of the Trabi,” when, just to the north of Yugoslavia, thousands of East Germans flooded across Hungary’s suddenly open bor- ders when the Berlin Wall fell, many in diminutive Trabant autos known variously as a “sardine can on wheels” or a “plastic tank.” One evening while this was going on, after a relaxed family dinner, a European diplomatic colleague and I tried to sum up our impressions of events in neighboring Hungary and beyond. Both of us had long experience in the USSR, as well as Eastern Europe; and, after carefully analyzing all of the options—our deliberations no doubt aided by some excellent wine—we concluded that the communist system was bound to disappear across the region since the people had lost any pretense of belief in it, and local parties were losing control of events. Armed intervention seemed the only way to preserve the communist system, but that option was implausible given events then unfolding in Gorbachev’s USSR. At the end of a long eve- ning, we agreed that our analysis was impeccable, no matter how improbable the putative end point then seemed. I cannot speak for my colleague, but I never sent in that cable announcing to Washington the imminent demise of the communist system across the region—and, as far as I know, Washington never seemed to notice its absence. A few months later the only violence in the 1989 East Euro- pean revolutions began in Timisoara, Romania, just across the Yugoslav border. Yugoslav journalist friends returned from reporting events there with two impressions: One was the murki- ness of who was actually behind the bloodshed, and another was a deep worry that similar violence could occur at home. In 1990 each of the six Yugoslav republics held multi-