Abstract
In the 1960s, Yugoslavia faced street violence and riots during demonstrations against the Vietnam War. These protests can be understood only in the context of Yugoslav foreign policy, as they represented political balancing between East and West. The state sponsored and organized demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, events at which strong anti-American sentiments were expressed, while on the other hand the state used violence to stop such demonstrations in order to maintain its good relations with the United States. Displaying sympathy with the Vietnamese people while playing the role of America's communist ally was part of Yugoslavia's political double game, which the country had played since its break with the Soviet Union in 1948.
Keywords
Introduction
The 1960s were a period of student riots, civil disobedience and Cold War crisis. All over the world in that decade, protesters issued political demands, used violence and provoked authorities to escalate their use of repression in response. 1 In West Germany, Italy, France and the United States, reports of brutal police actions and images of policemen equipped with guns, clubs and tear gas filled newspaper columns and television screens. 2 Such images mirrored the reality of the 1960s in Yugoslavia.
The echoes of the global student unrest could be found not only in various Yugoslav media at the time but also in the streets. In that decade, Yugoslavia faced street violence and riots during demonstrations against the Vietnam War. As I argue in the following article, these protests must be understood in the context of Yugoslav foreign policy.
Different forms of antiwar sentiment appeared from 1965 onwards in a number of demonstrations that took place in various parts of Yugoslavia. The focus of this article, however, will be the 1966 demonstrations, because they were the culmination both of the street protests against the war and of the display in Yugoslav policy of double standards concerning the war in Vietnam. The first Yugoslav student protest against the Vietnam War was organized as early as February 1965 in Belgrade, but it was a peaceful demonstration. A new wave of unrest and discursive attacks on American foreign policy occurred in 1966, and it peaked in December of that year during violent demonstrations in Zagreb and Belgrade. Even though these protests were organized by the state-controlled student and party organizations, they were violently suppressed by the police.
The use of violent antiwar demonstrations by the government was a double game that was characteristic of Yugoslav policy-making in general. On the one hand, the state sponsored demonstrations against the Vietnam War to reflect a strong anti-American sentiment, and on the other hand, it used violence to stop these demonstrations in order to maintain good relations with the United States. Expressing sympathy with the Vietnamese people while performing the role of America's communist ally was just another aspect of the ambivalent political game that Yugoslavia had played since its break with the Soviet Union in 1948, and continued to play until its disintegration in 1991.
Yugoslavia and the Vietnam War
In the 1960s, student and antiwar protests became practically synonymous. In this turbulent decade, the echoes of antiwar sentiments were omnipresent in Yugoslavia – on the front pages of newspapers, in the TV news, in political speeches, in student and youth organizations and also on the streets. Street violence and riots were part and parcel of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, with the most intense ones occurring in December 1966. Antiwar demonstrations were a transnational phenomenon that assumed many different shapes and meanings. 3 The Yugoslav case was unique, however, because demonstrators there adopted experiences and models of antiwar protest from both East and West. As M. Klimke and J. Scharloth write, protests against the Vietnam War could broaden into protests against domestic repression, societal problems, bureaucracy and party oligarchy. 4 In a way, this is what happened in socialist Yugoslavia.
From the beginning of US combat in Vietnam in 1965,Yugoslavia was part of a network of transnational protest. 5 As elsewhere around the globe, students and society at large in Yugoslavia reacted to the Vietnam War with strong antiwar sentiment. In Yugoslavia, the first antiwar protests began as early as 1965 in reaction to the deployment of US combat units in Vietnam, and from then on a number of activities were organized to show solidarity with the Vietnamese people. Yet these protests and actions must be interpreted against the backdrop of both Yugoslav foreign policy and internal politics. Most of the antiwar actions were in fact organized by the state and various state institutions, and, in contrast to the student protests of June 1968, 6 they came as no shock to the political elite, but were understood as a way to achieve political balance between East and West. In fact, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) interpreted the global student revolt as a confirmation of its own political agenda, and more than welcomed it. 7
During the 1960s, Yugoslavia, in the domain of international relations, was one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. It espoused a communist ideology but also had strong political, economic and cultural ties to the West. Starting with the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, relations with the United States had been improving. In 1965, however, with the beginning of the US bombing campaign in Vietnam, the Vietnam War became the most sensitive issue in Yugoslav-American relations. Writings in the Yugoslav press, along with other harsh attacks on American war policy, led the American ambassador to Yugoslavia, Charles Burke Elbrick, to protest that ‘the Yugoslav press place[d] all the blame on the US’. 8 In spring 1965 the leading party newspapers, Borba and Komunist, published a number of articles in which the United States was declared identical to fascist states, 9 and in August 1965 American soldiers were equated with Hitler's troops. 10 Because of this negative press coverage, US diplomatic pressure did not abate, and in February 1966 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk warned the Yugoslav ambassador in Washington of negative consequences should the Yugoslav position regarding the Vietnam crisis be ‘entirely anti-American and identical to the viewpoints of other communist countries’. 11
Despite the regular warnings from Washington to Belgrade to ‘soften’ its pro-Vietnamese position, 1966 was marked by protests and demonstrations in Yugoslavia with openly anti-American messages, and also by widespread public support for the Yugoslav antiwar orientation. The escalation of the Vietnam conflict with the beginning of US involvement on the ground through operation ‘Rolling Thunder’ in February 1965 brought a first Yugoslav student protest against the war. That demonstration was peaceful. From that point on, a number of mass solidarity campaigns took place in Yugoslavia, reaching their height between 1966 and 1968. A new wave of unrest and discursive attacks on American foreign policy peaked in November and December 1966 with demonstrations in Zagreb, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skopje and Sarajevo. These protests were organized by the state-controlled student and party organizations, but they were then violently suppressed by the state police in Zagreb and Belgrade. The culmination of the antiwar sentiment came in April 1968, when 300,000 people, again in a protest organized by the state, demonstrated in Belgrade against the American policy in Vietnam. 12
It appears that the antiwar demonstrations (1965–1968) and the accompanying violence resulted from political pragmatism and the ‘double game’ of the Yugoslav regime. The ‘double game’ meant that the regime flirted with all the sides involved in the antiwar demonstrations (students, organizers of the protests, socio-political organizations, Vietnamese National Liberation Front, United States) and that it tried to use all the groups involved for its own political purpose of balancing East and West. The use of physical violence allowed the regime, with or without premeditation, to send different messages to different sides of the Cold War, as well as to differing sociopolitical groups within Yugoslavia. By organizing antiwar protests and by using violence against them, the Yugoslav regime sent a clear message to America that Yugoslavia remained its communist ally, but also sympathized with the Vietnamese people. At the same time, with that same violence, it gave the message to the Yugoslav protesters that only tightly controlled protests were acceptable, and nothing that was not in complete accordance with the plans of state organizations would be allowed.
The Antiwar Movement in Yugoslavia in the 1960s
The farthest reach of the Vietnam War's transnational effects was represented by the antiwar and protest movements that it set off. In the protest movements of the 1960s, activists from different political and cultural frameworks tried to construct a collective identity based on notions of solidarity and cooperation, as well as a more global consciousness. Activists were inspired by one another's protests, visited one another's conferences and imported new protest techniques and strategies into local contexts. 13 For example, Yugoslav student activists gained experience with the non-violent protest methods of the civil rights movement in the United States, such as sit-ins, teach-ins and happenings. 14
That Yugoslavia's Vietnam antiwar protests were part of a broad movement of student rebellion was evident to the Yugoslav press, which emphasized that the demonstrations were a global phenomenon and antiwar protest something quite normal and welcome all over the world. Following Yugoslav foreign policy directives, the newspapers offered examples from the West, the East and the Third World. Just before the Zagreb demonstrations in December 1966, the party organ Borba mentioned demonstrations in Algeria, Ohio, Tokyo, Karachi and Rome as examples (or possible role models) of protest against the Vietnam War. 15
By importing this global model of protest and describing it in detail, the press could use it as a blueprint to describe events in Yugoslavia. The day after mentioning all these countries and cities where antiwar sentiments had been openly shown, Borba published a story on ‘Demonstrations all over Yugoslavia’. Readers could thus learn that antiwar protests had occurred in Zagreb, Belgrade, Split, Sarajevo, Skopje, Tetovo, Bitola and even the Serbian mining town Bor. 16 Moreover, the article was designed to illustrate that not only the entire country (geographically speaking), but also people of all ages and social strata had taken part in these protests: workers from the Split shipyard, workers from the Šibenik-based Electrode and Ferroalloy Plant (Tvornica elektroda i ferolegura), pupils from Sarajevo, students and miners from Bor, members of different socio-political organizations and still others. 17
Events related to the Vietnam War, including the protests against it, were directed from the highest positions in the party-state. Just as in the overall life of socialist Yugoslavia, the issue was given a democratic appearance. Yugoslav reality, especially after the split with the Soviet Union, was marked by the government's ambition to portray social life as run not merely by the party and Josip Broz Tito but also by myriad ‘socio-political organizations’. In the case of Vietnam, this meant that the issue was taken up not only by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije, SKJ) but also by organizations such as the Socialist Alliance of Yugoslav Working People (Savez socijalističkog radnog naroda Jugoslavije, SSRNJ), the Yugoslav Student Association (Savez studenata Jugoslavije, SSJ), the Yugoslav Coordinating Committee for Aid to the People of Vietnam (Jugoslovenski koordinacioni odbor za pomoć narodu Vijetnama) and a number of individual artists and intellectuals. Judging by what can be found in the archives and the contemporary press, all antiwar movements were supported by the government, which sought, however, to lead and direct their activities. For example, beginning in 1966, each year saw the observance of a Day of Solidarity with the Struggle of the Vietnamese People (in October or November), a Solidarity Week with the Struggle of the Vietnamese People (in December) and the Anniversary of the Founding of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam. Most of the activities were organized through the Yugoslav Coordinating Committee for Aid to the People of Vietnam, formed in February 1966. Among other activities, it organized the previously mentioned ‘Solidarity Week’ every year between 1966 and 1973. 18
The issue of the Vietnam War and antiwar sentiment was omnipresent in the Yugoslav media from 1965 onwards, and, as noted above, it provoked harsh criticism from American officials. Without doubt, the ‘anti-imperialist hysteria’ in the media aroused strong anti-American sentiment in the general public, especially within the student population. The entire Yugoslav media – the press, radio and TV – carried information not only about ‘American crimes’, but also about the different antiwar movements and their activities all over the world, in an effort to give a transnational dimension to this form of activism. The student press featured the most intensive antiwar campaign. 19 Anything connected to the Vietnam War found a place here: antiwar demonstrations in the United States and Europe, student movements’ activities, international peace conferences, Vietnamese resistance, antiwar resolutions and American war crimes. Although this publicity was part of official Yugoslav policy towards the war in Vietnam, the student press wished to dramatize the issue. It took a less compromising and more overt antiwar position than the party and the state. 20 As Slovenian sociologist Rastko Močnik, who was a student at that time, remembers, the Ljubljana-based critical student magazine Tribuna featured articles on the Vietnam War, anti-Americanism and student movements and demonstrations ‘in Prague, Berlin, Athens, Amsterdam, Madrid, Portugal, Egypt, Great Britain, Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Poland, Italy, Iran, Lebanon, France, Algeria and Belgium’ in each issue. 21
Aside from the press, antiwar sentiment was expressed in popular culture. The famous antiwar protester and folk singer Joan Baez visited Belgrade in May 1966 during her European tour, with the support of the Yugoslav ambassador to the United States. 22 The musicals Viet-rock and Hair were performed on Yugoslav stages, and American avant-garde theatre groups (La Mama, Living Theatre, Bread and Puppet Theatre) staged antiwar performances in the framework of the International Belgrade Theatre Festival (Beogradski internacionalni teatarski festival – BITEF). 23
It is hard to understand how these politically endorsed antiwar sentiments could lead to violence on the streets of Zagreb and Belgrade in December 1966. It seems that the political aim of balancing between East and West was frustrating for young people, who did not know what to think or how to behave. The continuous press coverage of American crimes in Vietnam, with its strong anti-imperialist agenda, led a majority of young people to identify with the Vietnamese and their struggle against imperialism.
Violence during the 1966 Demonstrations
After World War II, the Yugoslav regime worked to create an image of presiding over a peaceful socialist society. Although the country's first violent street demonstrations occurred in 1953 during the Trieste crisis, these events remained the only occasion of public riots until the 1960s. 24 That decade brought new energies for street protests and riots. Historian Predrag Marković has described the demonstrations involving students throughout the 1960s (with the exception of the previously mentioned one in June 1968) as ‘controlled’ demonstrations – directed against a given antagonist country in order to apply political pressure and to bolster Yugoslav foreign policy through a ritual of mass support. 25 An example from the early 1960s is provided by the demonstrations in Belgrade on 14 February 1961, following the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who had been forcibly ousted. After the ‘official’ protest by 150,000 demonstrators on Marx and Engels Square, several thousand persons continued to demonstrate in front of the embassies and cultural centres of Western countries. They managed to break through the police line in front of the Belgian embassy, burned cars and wrecked the building. 26 During the police intervention, water cannon were used, and the clashes lasted until evening. More than eighty policemen and protestors were injured, and the city was paralysed. 27
Soon thereafter, on 18 April 1961, following the Bay of Pigs invasion, a group of students in Belgrade broke the windows of the cultural centre America House (Američka čitaonica), provoking an official protest by the US Embassy. The following year, 1962, anti-imperialism appeared once more on the streets of Belgrade during the Cuban missile crisis, when the windows of the America House were again smashed. 28
These violent riots against colonialism and imperialism marked the first clashes between the people and the police after World War II. At the end of this turbulent decade came the best-known protest in the Yugoslav socialist period – the student demonstrations of June 1968. Unlike many such events around the globe, they did not concern the Vietnam War, but only the problems within Yugoslav society.
Between the Patrice Lumumba demonstrations in 1961 and the student demonstrations of June 1968 were protests against the war in Vietnam. These riots were one indicator of the double game the Yugoslav regime was playing with respect to the superpowers. The very first protest took place immediately after the commencement of the US bombing of North Vietnam, on 8 February 1965. American policy was sharply criticized both by the press, which was quick to report it, and by the broader public, which was eager to be kept informed by that same press. As a reaction to the events in Vietnam, Yugoslavs expressed their opinions in the streets. Students at Belgrade University, ‘along with their colleagues from Asian, African, Latin American and European countries studying in Belgrade’, held a protest on 17 February 1965, in which they condemned the American attacks on Vietnam and ‘expressed their solidarity with the people of Vietnam in their struggle for freedom and independence’. 29 At this meeting, the language that was going to be used in the following years was defined: ‘aggression by the United States’, ‘imperialist intervention’, ‘reactionary regime’. 30
A new wave of antiwar protests erupted in the second half of 1966. A series of demonstrations began with a gathering to express solidarity with the struggle of the Vietnamese people, on 18 November 1966, at the Faculty of Technology in Belgrade. The gathering, which was organized by the University Committee of the Yugoslav Student Association (itself tightly controlled by the state), 31 was in complete accordance with Yugoslav official antiwar and anti-imperialist policy, set forth in all media and party statements.
These antiwar demonstrations were not only state-sponsored: the new, officially announced ‘imagined transnationalism’ sparked unofficial activism that went beyond what the state desired, critiqued the limitations of state solidarity in the anti-imperialist struggle and challenged the state's control of public space and institutions. Indeed, anti-imperialist feeling mobilized citizens to take part in the first public uncontrolled mass demonstrations in Yugoslavia.
What is important in understanding the use of violence is that the strong antiwar sentiment was not always expressed in accordance with Yugoslav foreign policy. The first instance of open non-conformity to the party line, followed by violence, occurred in December 1966 in Zagreb and Belgrade. 32 It is important to stress that the Yugoslav media stoked antiwar sentiment by publishing a number of extremely anti-American articles on the days of these demonstrations. For example, on the day of the scheduled protest of 23 December in Belgrade, the party organ Borba published the article ‘Horrible Vietnam War – 250,000 Children Killed’ on its front page. 33
The first violent demonstrations against the Vietnam War occurred in Zagreb on 20 December 1966. On that day, the Yugoslav Student Association celebrated the sixth anniversary of the founding of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam to manifest solidarity with the Vietnamese people. Approximately 10,000 students gathered at the protest organized by the Zagreb Student University Association in front of the Students' Centre. Their dissatisfaction with American war policy earned them the support of many more citizens of Zagreb, so that by evening the number of protesters grew to about 20,000 people, at which point the demonstrations turned violent. Protestors attacked the American consulate, throwing bricks and stones, breaking windows, pulling down the national coat of arms and trying to burn the American flag. The reaction of the state was violent in equal measure – strong police forces attacked students using clubs, water cannon and tear gas. 34 The demonstrations were intense and lasted for hours. Starting at 11 a.m., they finished only after 9 p.m. 35
At the same time as the events in Zagreb, a ‘gathering to condemn the American aggression and to support the struggle of the Vietnamese people’ was organized in the area of the student campus, ‘Studentski grad’ (‘Student City’), in Belgrade. 36 It was to be a warm-up for a larger protest to take place in Belgrade on 23 December. That event would end in the biggest riots and clashes of students with the police since World War II.
The protest on 23 December was organized by the University Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia, the Association of University Professors, the Writers' Association and the Pugwash Group, 37 with the assistance of the Institute for Social Sciences. The speakers at this protest were prominent Serbian university professors and intellectuals, including critics of the regime from New Left positions. These were the years when the New Left movement was very strong in Yugoslavia. Among the best-known institutions were the journal Praxis and the summer school organized annually on the island of Korčula with Yugoslav intellectuals such as Mihajlo Marković, Gajo Petrović, Milan Kangrga and Ljubomir Tadić. The Korčula summer school attracted a considerable number of Western intellectuals, such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Henri Lefebvre and Jürgen Habermas. 38
It is unclear how the violence started. The original idea was to hold a peaceful demonstration at the university, after which a protest letter was to be handed to the American ambassador. This idea was abandoned because the police had prohibited demonstrations outside the university after the gathering. However, the atmosphere at the gathering, inside the university building, was heated. There was a harshly anti-American agenda. The meeting began with slogans such as ‘we don't want American grain’ and ‘all Americans out of Yugoslavia’ and ended with shouts of ‘to the [America] House!’ and ‘to the [American] embassy!’ 39 Because the police had forbidden demonstrations outside the university building, when the demonstrators came out, the police, including some mounted units, assaulted them with clubs, tear gas and water cannon (it was a cold and snowy December day). Numerous cases of police violence were recorded in the minutes and documents of party organizations at various levels.
Police officers beat students on the streets and went so far as to ignore the formal autonomy of the university by entering the building of the Faculty of Philology. 40 Alija Hodžić, a student and the president of the Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy Student Association, testified that policemen were ‘cursing at, insulting the students, beating them with clubs and fists’. 41 The police also acted violently against women. On one occasion, a police officer caught up with a woman on the third floor, hit her with his club and caused her to fall down the staircase to the first floor. 42 One student, in tears, testified about being clubbed in the head. 43 Two others reported heavy beatings during arrest. 44 The police continued to use violence (including violence against women) in the police station.
The riots and clashes continued on the streets of Belgrade until evening – mostly around the main street in Belgrade's city centre (Knez Mihailova Street, where the Faculty of Philology, Faculty of Philosophy, America House and the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences are located) and in front of the American Embassy, which was near the city centre.
The protests and violence near the American Embassy had an interesting feature. To prevent or stop police attacks, the students began to sing the Yugoslav anthem ‘Hej Sloveni’ (‘Hey Slavs’), as well as ‘Comrade Tito’ and revolutionary songs. They also organized an impromptu sit-in (rather, a squat-in, because of the snow) and a moment of silence for the Vietnam dead. Nevertheless, when they stopped singing, the mounted police attacked them. 45 These songs, like the anti-American slogans in the prior meeting, show the students’ use of socialist discourse and their alignment with an anti-imperialist agenda. The songs and the anthem also show their wish to emphasize that the protest sought only a ‘corrective’ to Yugoslav foreign policy, not to the system as such. Parenthetically, during the police violence, students showed extreme bravery. Although they were severely beaten, they found the courage to ask for police badge numbers, which the policemen readily gave them. This situation suggests a certain trust in the system as a whole on the part of the students. 46
The wave of ‘street democracy’ continued in Novi Sad, where the demonstrators broke the windows of the America House. 47 Skopje saw a ‘spontaneous outpouring of solidarity with the Vietnamese people and protests against the American aggression’, starting in October and coming to a head on 20 December, the declared Day of Solidarity with the Vietnamese People. 48 The demonstrations in Sarajevo were led by the University Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in these protests the dean of the University of Sarajevo compared the struggle of the people of Vietnam to the national liberation struggle of the Yugoslav peoples. 49
The violence during the demonstrations in Belgrade resulted in dozens of injured students (the precise number is unknown) and 30 injured policemen. 50 Yet the political consequences were larger still, and they led to rising dissatisfaction, which culminated in the June 1968 demonstrations.
The chronology of events shows that the violence during the December demonstrations was directed at the symbols and institutions of American power: in Zagreb, protesters attacked the American Consulate, and in Belgrade, protesters attacked America House and the American Embassy. This symbolism seems to have been influenced mostly by protest patterns in West Germany, where the student movement's actions were frequently aimed at American military, cultural and political institutions. For example, during antiwar demonstrations in February 1966, demonstrators threw eggs at the America House in West Berlin. 51 The America Houses, as places of transatlantic cultural exchange, remained targets of West German protesters until well into the 1970s. As in other protest movements worldwide, attacks on America Houses were, according to Klimke, an apt mirror of the generational divide in attitudes towards and representations of the United States and were a serious challenge to American foreign policy. 52
In an assessment of the demonstrators’ use of violence, Yugoslavia's ambivalent foreign relations with the United States need to be given a crucial role. For instance, the necessity of good relations with the United States meant that only a ‘tempered anti-Americanism’ could be tolerated and excessive anti-imperialist sentiments had to be suppressed, violently, if necessary. From this perspective, what was striking was the readiness of the Yugoslav youth protesters to use violence, as well as their willingness to go beyond the peaceful anti-Americanism encouraged by the state, and to critique and ignore the imposed limitations of official solidarity.
‘We Didn't Start the Fire’. But Who Did?
In examining the transfer of responsibility by the party and its role in the antiwar gatherings and demonstrations in Yugoslavia from the beginning of the US campaign in the Vietnam War, the question of who organized the events is crucial. In both Zagreb and Belgrade, the ‘impulse’ for the gatherings came from the party and party organizations (such as the University Committee of the League of Communists), and they were set in motion by ‘socio-political organizations’, with the participation of eminent professors and writers (the Belgrade gathering had Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andrić in its audience). The fact that these anti-American activities featured functionaries of the League of Communists could give an outside observer the impression that the wave of anti-Americanism had an ideological and party-line basis. However, the violence that occurred not only raised the question of responsibility, but also exposed Yugoslavia's double foreign-policy orientation. On the one hand, the party participated in creating antiwar and anti-American sentiment, mostly through the media, but on the other hand, it did not allow the crossing of a line that would jeopardize Yugoslav–American relations. As Alija Hodžić stated, the police started beating students after they had articulated their slogan ‘Johnson – killer’. 53 It was precisely the manipulation of the media and public opinion that contributed to things getting out of hand, and to the government itself coming under criticism both by the United States, for its anti-American campaign, and by its own public, for its insufficiently defined antiwar and anti-American campaign.
A whole set of actions that intensified in 1966 shows that the party tried to direct the antiwar sentiment of the citizens. It is also clear that the demonstrations, being large, organized and announced well in advance, could not have been ‘spontaneous’, nor was there any effort to hide who was behind them, as the protest gathering of 23 December in Belgrade was announced in all the leading dailies, including the party's own, Borba. In Zagreb, the organizers were the University Committee of the League of Communists and the University Committee of the Student Association; in Belgrade, they were the local chapters of the same organizations, with the support of the Association of Professors and the Literary Association. 54
However, after the riots that broke out in Zagreb and Belgrade, the LCY took responsibility neither for organizing the gatherings nor for the consequences. Rather, the chain of responsibility descended from the highest state level down to ‘responsible individuals’. As soon as the question of responsibility was posed, the information provided by the party organization about the gathering and demonstrations of 23 December 1966 stated that the events included ‘communists, students and teachers’, thus spreading the responsibility to persons who were not necessarily members of the LCY. 55 Nevertheless, after the demonstrations it was estimated that around 80 per cent of the protesters had been party members, a figure that implies deep dissatisfaction with(in) the party line. 56 The list of organizers and participants shows that the protests were not simply the usual student antiwar actions, but represented a much wider social gathering, which included party members, different ‘socio-political organizations’, New Leftists and critics of the regime.
Open discussions about the question of responsibility within the University Committee, City Committee and Central Committee pointed to the fact that everyone was aware of the shifting of responsibility. Thus the secretary general of the University Committee (UC) himself stated that there was no direct initiative by the UC, but rather a ‘transfer of initiative’, starting with teachers, members of the UC of the Faculty of Philosophy. 57 Through its assessment of the events, the party very rapidly sought to place the responsibility with the lowest-level initiator of the gathering, Aleksandar Kron (a teaching assistant, the secretary of the Faculty Committee of the UC of the League of Communists of Serbia), who came up with the idea that students, public employees and artists should hold a protest gathering. Kron was joined on 17 December by Jadran Ferluga, the secretary of the Association of University Professors and assistant dean, and Alija Hodžić. 58
To clear up the question of responsibility in the wake of protest violence, a commission tasked with determining what had taken place was formed, with the participation of the City Committee of the League of Communists and the University Committee. The question of ‘organizers’ responsibility’ (transfer from state/party to individuals), after an investigation that lasted a few months, resulted in Aleksandar Kron being charged with organizing the student revolt, being dismissed from his position on the University Committee, and being expelled from the League of Communists of Serbia. Professor Jadran Ferluga received a ‘last warning’. Although these verdicts were handed down after the ‘investigation by the special commission’, the impression of the ‘accused’ was that judgment was passed even before the defendants were granted a hearing. 59
Meanwhile, the question of responsibility and the reason for the outbreak of violence raised related problems: the dissatisfaction of participants and state legitimacy. In the latter half of the 1960s, there were innumerable problems and contradictions in Yugoslav society. The 1965 reforms, intended to introduce market mechanisms, had little success, and both unemployment and dissatisfaction were growing. At the same time, there were conflicts within the LCY. In the summer of 1966, Aleksandar Ranković, the vice president and head of the secret police, the second most important person in the state, was removed from office, which caused turmoil in the ranks. He was dismissed as being a representative of a conservative, hard line. 60
Giving voice to widespread dissatisfaction, the leaders of the Student League of Yugoslavia (SSJ) took a critical position regarding social problems and authoritarian political structures. 61 The critique of the LCY came from dedicated communists (students and professors alike) who sought to redirect Yugoslavia ideologically, culturally and politically. 62 A famous professor and New Leftist, Mihailo Marković, criticized police violence during the demonstrations, saying that ‘communists have never feared demonstrations if they knew what they were struggling for’. 63 The students’ reactions were also full of bitterness and disillusion. One female student, who was beaten during the demonstrations, claimed, ‘I am not a member of the League of Communists. After these events I don't even intend to become a communist. … I believed in communism, but now I am deeply disappointed’. 64 The intensity of the criticism of society at the time manifested itself in various ways – in forums of ‘socio-political organizations’, in panels and lectures, in the press and also in the streets. It appears that for the first time since World War II, expression of dissatisfaction with those in power was not taboo. 65
A few months after the violence during the antiwar demonstrations, students from Ljubljana openly showed their dissatisfaction with the system. In April 1967, the walls of the university corridors were covered with slogans: ‘We demand the freedoms of speech, press and assembly, a de jure consequent separation of the Socialist Union of Workers from the Communist Party and a release of political prisoners. We disagree with the dictatorial and demagogic leadership of the Communist Party’. 66
Not only students and intellectuals were dissatisfied. For the first time in socialist Yugoslavia, allegations of ‘hooliganism’, especially among adolescents, were made and debated. Only a week after the violent antiwar demonstrations, a new wave of street riots erupted, but this time the police did not intervene. As the party organ Borba put it: Demolishers raged again, like vandals, through Belgrade during the night of New Year's Eve. The incomprehensible demolition mania, seen during the recent demonstrations when a humane appeal to save Vietnamese children turned into a scene of primitive hooliganism, was revived. There were orgies, rows, vandalizing, arson, lunatic excesses, fist-fights, scenes of terror – and all this happened in the heart of Belgrade. The frenzied demolishers were young, beardless boys, fifteen years old. Booths were overturned, windows of decorated shops were broken, cars full of passengers were overturned and the large kiosk and wooden structures in the middle of Terazije were set on fire.
67
The issue of hooliganism and violence opened the question of the role of the police. The antiwar demonstration, its course and the opposition to the police were discussed after the 23 December violence and, only three days before the New Year, at the session of the Executive Committee of the City Committee of the Socialist Alliance of Belgrade. The ‘vandalism’ in the demonstrations was condemned at the session, but there was dissatisfaction with the role and the competence of the police as well. It was claimed that the police, by using horses and tear gas, were fairly successful in preventing the centre of Belgrade from being demolished, but the question of responsibility and competence had nevertheless been raised: ‘Certain comrades even demanded the dismissal of the head of the Internal Affairs Secretariat of Belgrade’. 70
The popular Croatian illustrated magazine Vjesnik u srijedu started the debate on violence after the antiwar demonstrations of December and New Year's Eve by raising the question, ‘Is our militia supposed to tolerate destruction and demolition on behalf of “democracy” and “celebrations”?’ Then it commented: Although newspaper stands and placards were set on fire, automobiles turned over, show-windows and teeth smashed – our militiamen have not arrested one single perpetrator. Why has a minority misused the demonstration against the war in Vietnam? Democratic phrases were used against democracy. The militia should be more energetic, and it should also have greater support. …The militia did not interfere, although it was a question of typical cases of violation of the law on public order, of an explosion of vandalism. … The question arises – what would have happened had the militia interfered?
71
All this violence and dissatisfaction in various spheres of life revealed that the state's legitimacy was deeply weakened. As a loss of control may arise when state legitimacy is called into question, both state violence and the violent protests of social protagonists against an order they perceived as illegitimate were indications of the state's loss of control over violence. 74
So, everything that had been smouldering since 1965 erupted in December 1966. As Andrea Kirschner and Stefan Malthaner point out in their study on the control of violence, a discrepancy in policy shows that the role of the state in controlling violence is ambivalent. In Yugoslavia, on the one hand, the state tried to regulate social affairs and limit violence, but, on the other hand, it acted as a protagonist of violence. 75 The violence at the antiwar demonstrations also indicated that there was great dissatisfaction with Yugoslavia's foreign policy. In the party's analysis after the demonstrations, it was noted that the clash of police and students was also an expression of general feelings in Yugoslavia about the country's foreign policy, and that criticism of Yugoslavia's moderate policy on Vietnam was growing. 76
It seems that the inconsistent Yugoslav foreign policy lacked support not only among the student population but also in the wider public, as evinced by the demonstrations in Zagreb, when almost 10,000 citizens joined the students in their antiwar and anti-American demonstrations. The anger of the public was a logical consequence of the official campaign in the media concerning American war crimes in Vietnam, and of the strong antiwar sentiment in the country. However, the desire to maintain good relations with the United States, an important objective of Yugoslav foreign policy, led to a situation in which antiwar demonstrations could be supported but a strong anti-American agenda had to be suppressed, even if violently. The party supported anti-American feelings on the Vietnam War but would not allow an attack on America. As was common in the history of socialist Yugoslavia, the country's ambivalent policy resulted in deep confusion among ordinary people, about what to think and what to do.
This confusion among the participants in the 1966 demonstrations can also be seen in their subsequent statements. The dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Mihailo Marković, openly criticized the fact that the Yugoslav public was passive regarding the Vietnam War, and viewed the dissatisfaction of students as a result of this passivity. From a New Left position, Marković expressed his satisfaction with ‘our youth who, despite the clear and considerable influence from the West, were ready to decisively oppose the politics coming from the ruling circles in the West’. 77 Aleksandar Kron emphasized that the responsibility lay with the state, which heated up the atmosphere through the press. He added that he hit upon the idea of holding a gathering when the press started covering the bombing of Hanoi. 78 Jadran Ferluga also testified to the fuelling of an anti-American atmosphere, saying that the press, radio and television incessantly announced the number of innocent victims of what they called the American ‘genocide’ (genocid) and mentioned the protests around the world. 79
Even the influential daily paper Politika, immediately after the violence at antiwar demonstrations, stated on the front page that the ‘anger was understandable and justified’ because of the American policy in Vietnam and the aggression against the Vietnamese people, ‘the suffering of whom knows no bounds, because of decisions made by “hawks” in the Pentagon’. 80 The confusion concerning the war in Vietnam persisted in the following years. After the bad experience in 1966, the state never again let things get out of hand. Nevertheless, the public discourse concerning antiwar sentiment did not change much. The press continued to foster an anti-American atmosphere; a Week of Solidarity with the Vietnamese people was organized all over the country every year (the last one in 1973); and antiwar brochures, books, exhibitions and theatre productions were part of everyday life for years.
In addition, on 6 April 1968, a Gathering of Solidarity with the Vietnamese People, organized by the state, was attended by 300,000 people. They condemned ‘the brutal and dirty war that America was leading against the heroic people of Vietnam’. The list of speakers included high-ranking members of the state and the party, a sign that the government was behind the organization of the event. 81 Their speeches focused on US President Johnson, who, ‘as the organizer of the aggression, was responsible for crimes against peace and humanity’. 82 The mass revolt, encouraged by fiery showmanship from the leading figures in the party, quickly spread through Belgrade streets: the demonstrators chanted, ‘the whole world admires you, Vietnam’, ‘Johnson, America needs a president, not a sheriff’, and ‘America, we do not want a new Hitler’. But lines of policemen, protecting America House and the American Embassy, prevented serious rioting. 83 On this occasion, the police were better prepared, or had better or different instructions, so that the attempt of the protesters to violently attack America House and the American Embassy was unsuccessful. Security measures had been in place since the day before the meeting.
After the student demonstrations of June 1968 and the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August of that year, the party did not organize any antiwar demonstrations on a large scale. The task was left to smaller ‘socio-political organizations’ and to the Yugoslav Coordinating Committee for Assistance to the People of Vietnam. Pragmatism prevailed – Americans were no longer exposed to violent assault in the streets, and the suppression of criticism directed at the regime by Yugoslav intellectuals intensified. After June 1968, the party reconsolidated its position both in rhetoric and in practice, and the state hardened its line against critical voices. 84 The final blow came in 1975 when the prominent university professors and assistants known as the ‘Belgrade Eight’ 85 were dismissed from the University of Belgrade because of their dissident activities, which for most of them included participation in protests in December 1966 and June 1968.
Conclusion
The Vietnam War and antiwar sentiments provided language that the young generation in the 1960s used to express its frustration with international and domestic politics. The violent demonstrations in Yugoslavia during the protests against the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1968 were thus a part of the global student rebellion and also a sign of the problems within Yugoslav society. For young leftists, there was not enough socialist solidarity with the Vietnamese and not enough criticism of American policy. For a much wider group of students and citizens of Yugoslavia, the street violence was intended to show that dissatisfaction with various aspects of life in Yugoslavia was growing. Yet, while the demonstrators used the antiwar protests as an outlet for their frustration with the sociopolitical system in which they lived, the same protests served the Yugoslav government's policy of political balancing between East and West.
Although Yugoslav society was tightly controlled, the manifestations of antiwar sentiments were not always in accordance with Yugoslav official policy. The first instance of open non-conformity to the party line, followed by violence, occurred in December 1966 in Zagreb and Belgrade when protestors attacked America House and American Embassy. Over the following weeks, violence continued to be directed at symbols and institutions of American power. Even though this might have resembled the behaviour seen in youth protests around the globe, it was a product of the domestic political context.
The regime's use of violence against the antiwar demonstrators illustrated the double game that generally characterized Yugoslav policy. In this game, the regime flirted with all sides involved in the antiwar demonstrations and sought to use them for political purposes. The state sponsored demonstrations against the Vietnam War to voice anti-American feelings and socialist solidarity, and then it used violence to stop the demonstrations and maintain good relations with the United States. The use and instrumentalization of physical violence allowed the regime to send different messages to different actors in the Cold War – the United States, the Eastern Bloc and the Third World – and to different sociopolitical groups within Yugoslavia, communicating above all that only tightly controlled protests were acceptable. In general, socialist states attempted to exert close control over the Vietnam solidarity movements and asserted their right to guide and manage any political expression in the public sphere.
Finally, the violence revealed that the legitimacy of the Yugoslav state was called into question. Dissatisfaction with Yugoslav foreign policy, concern about domestic problems and growing opposition to the regime, in addition to the increasingly unruly antiwar demonstrations of the late 1960s described in this article, indicated that things had started to slip from the government's grasp. In the area of foreign affairs, the frequent change, progress and retreat that were typical of Yugoslav–American and Yugoslav–Soviet relations meant that ordinary people were never certain how to react to a given political situation. From 1944 until 1948, Yugoslavs had been asked to love the Soviet Union and Stalin unconditionally, but after 1948, such love could mean incarceration in the Goli Otok prison camp. Similarly, an anti-American atmosphere was encouraged during the Vietnam War, but bodily harm could result from an overzealous expression of anti-American sentiments. Yugoslavia faced irreconcilable contradictions: America and the Soviet Union, Coca-Cola and Russian kvass, Disney and the oath of the Young Pioneers, good relations with America and anti-American demonstrations. These inconsistent elements shaped the social context of the Yugoslav socialist state. Its story did not have a happy end.