He is among those who have been sacked by the Serbian regime, which found their output insufficiently committed. "Our aim was to give courage to the other peoples of Yugoslavia, to protect civilization. We pointed out the lies in the information given out. We wanted to form a union that would be independent of all the regimes throughout Yugoslavia, not only in Serbia." Even in Kosovo? "Me, I wanted that too, but I have to say that this was not true of all the journalists here." As for Croatia and Slovenia, "we have not found journalists sharing our decision."
However in Slovenia — and unlike in
Croatia — the union scene is beginning to stir. The reason is that the danger of war has receded with the retreat of the federal army. "The proclamation of independence (June 25, 1991) was made in
International Viewpoint #218 • December 9, 1991 the context of an economic crisis affecting the stability of the new leading teams of the ruling liberal coalition, DEMOS" Rastko Mocnar told me. He is the leader of the Social Democratic League of Slovenia, a small, extra-parliamentary organization whose idea is to bring together the "68" intelligentsial, "socialist self-management" orientated managers and unionists.
He considers that the divergences had been provisionally stifled by "the logic of the state of war" and the accompanying censorship. "The witch-hunt in the media and the economy took the place of a programme. But now the problems are coming back to the fore. The new independent unions are the transmission belts of liberal government policy." At the same time he has a positive assessment of the changes underway in the former official unions, re-baptized as "free unions" ', to which two thirds of workers are affiliated. But despite this potential, in reality their actions have so far only involved small numbers.
Labour Party formed in Slovenia
"Despite the fact that everything was 'worker' we had forgotten what a workers' struggle is", says Milos Pavlica, a leader of the Labour Party which has just been formed, essentially on the basis of some 10,000 members of the former official unions. "The unions cannot go into parliament, but workers are not represented there, and this is why we have formed a party." Rajko Lesjak, the general secretary of the Free Unions of Slovenia, is also a member of the Labour Party. However, in his union offices, he speaks as a unionist.
He explains the recent changes: "We dissolved the old unions at a congress a year ago. We established new organizational and programmatic bases. Formerly, every worker was automatically a union member. Now you join voluntarily. We have got 450,000 members, that is 60% of the active population. We also replaced the former territorial organization with a branch structure. Finally, we are independent of any party. Only clearly expressed convergences over objectives can give rise to collaboration."
In the past year there have been over 1 million working hours lost through strikes. However of most immediate concern are the draft laws on property coming before parliament. On September 10, on the eve of a parliamentary debate, the
Free Unions called a demonstration: "We asked for the vote to be delayed until a vast debate could take place; as it is fundamental decisions were being taken just after the holidays and after a summer spent in a state of war. Our view is that such decisions should be made by referendum."
The draft law, which led to the break-
YUGOSLAVIA / CZECHO-SLOVAKIA up of the ruling coalition, was aimed at taking property into state ownership in order to privatize it later, the immediate result being the suppression of any right to self-management. The question of the restoration of agricultural property to former owners is also being discussed. In Slovenia, these legal changes have not even gone as far as in Czechoslovakia. As elsewhere, private capital is a rarity here. The Yugoslav conflict is not an attractive background for potential investors, despite the efforts of the Slovene authorities to get banks to deal with them separately.
The instability of the new governments is a reflection of the social instability, despite the inability of a fragmented left to put forward credible answers. The demonstration of September 10 only brought out 5,000 people. On the other hand, this is not negligible in a country of less than 2 million people. Furthermore the demonstration was very spectacular, with chains of buses travelling around the city. And it was enough for the vote in parliament to be deferred. * * This article first appeared in the French trade union magazine, Collectif. 1. In June 1968 there was a wave of occupations in Yugoslavia's main universities, against a background of workers' strikes. In this movement, which was hostile to the pro-market reforms and privatizations introduced in 1965, the critical intelligentsia expressed overwhelming support for a self-managed and pluralist socialism. The main slogans of the movement, apart from egalitarian and social demands, were "self-management from top to bottom" and "down with the red bourgeoisie."
E all like to be told what we want to hear. And the other way round. Nonetheless it remains true that even this rule has its exceptions. For example President Masaryk in the 1920s received [the social democrat] Ferdinand Peroutka precisely because they publicly disagreed. But there are of course not many people like Masaryk.
When in the spring of 1968 I visited my family in Ostrava our old neighbour, the father of my closest childhood friend, lay in wait for me and finally, by the door of the rabbit hutch, gruffly demanded: "This Sik [a pro-reform economist of 1968 vintage] wants to shut the pits. The miners will be out of work. And are you helping him, Olga?" And other co-workers of my dad — neighbours and fathers of my school-fellows — reproached me for supporting the reform current. They were
Two years after the "Velvet Revolution"