Milosevic by Adam LeBor Page B

Milosevic, how could we help him make his political career? You could not just take someone from a bank and put him in a political position. You needed some kind of credentials, to be promoted in politics you need a base.’
    The two walked some more and considered the matter. Parachuting Milosevic in from a great height, for example, straight onto the Serbian central committee would only backfire. There were too many powerful vested interests who would resent a newcomer without adequate political experience. On the other hand, if Milosevic’s starting point was tooobscure, he might never emerge into the bright lights of big city and national politics. It could not be a post in the provinces, it had to be something in Belgrade. A position with suitable gravitas, but not too presumptuous. The two men decided that Milosevic would be made the head of Belgrade Stari Grad (Old Town) party committee. Stari Grad was the biggest municipality in the city. Stambolic made the requisite calls, meetings were held, and votes cast. Although this was not a full-time post, and Milosevic kept his day job at UBB, his political career had begun.
    These were times of growing political and economic uncertainty. Yugoslavia was more than ever a ‘state of nations’ rather than a nation-state. Each time a concession was made to the republics, they gained more political power at the expense of the federal government. The weaker the federal government became, the more power the six republics demanded. Yugoslavia was devouring itself.
    â€˜Tito created the idea of Brotherhood and Unity. He succeeded in that we forgot many of the scars of the war, which was right in a way because that was not conducive to keeping the country together. But he regarded the autonomous republics as competitors, and he never came to terms with them. He did not understand the new people leading them, and he became gradually isolated,’ said former Belgrade mayor Zivorad Kovacevic. Tito’s crushing of the Croatian spring and the Serbian liberals showed that he was out of touch, said Kovacevic. ‘That was the last chance for change. That was the best proof that he did not understand the situation.’ 3 Many felt that Tito had held on to power for too long. There is certainly a powerful argument that had Tito resigned gracefully in the 1970s, groomed a successor, and retired to enjoy his string of lavish villas and hunting lodges the whole course of Yugoslav history would have been different.
    In addition, Yugoslavia’s increasing reliance on foreign aid and loans was destabilising the economy. The bill for Yugoslavs’ material comforts was mounting. By early 1981 the foreign debt had reached $19.2 billion, and inflation was running at over 25 per cent. Market socialism was proving increasingly expensive. Ironically, Tito’s opening to the West, and the comparative lack of firm central economic planning made the Yugoslav economy much more vulnerable to global economic trends. The country’s strategic importance, as a bridge between East and West, was also declining. Détente was good news for those who feared anuclear war, but bad for Yugoslavia’s creaking economy. As tensions between the superpowers eased, the West’s enthusiasm for pouring cash into Belgrade’s coffers diminished.
    And the Iron Curtain was twitching. In 1981 martial law was imposed in Poland after workers in the Baltic port of Gdansk set up the independent trade union Solidarity. There were tanks on the streets of Warsaw, mass arrests and state-imposed terror of the kind not seen for decades. Yugoslav party hardliners and army chiefs watched events in Poland with alarm. Such chaos, they concluded, showed the consequences of too much tolerance. But Belgrade was not Warsaw. There would be no tanks on the streets there yet. So many articles supportive of Solidarity appeared in the Yugoslav press that the Polish embassy protested. Petitions were