Serbia Offers Poor Ground for a Velvet Revolution, Observers Say

Serbian students protesting against President Slobodan Milosevic plan to march to the Czech Republic Embassy today to place flowers in honor of the so-called Velvet Revolution that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia seven years ago.

The comparison between anti-Milosevic rallies here and the domino demonstrations that ended communism in most of Eastern Europe in 1989 is a common one. It is an analogy that the students and opposition parties leading the Serbian protests enjoy and promote.

But, as many Serbian analysts and Western diplomats point out, Belgrade is not Prague.

The differences between last decade’s Eastern Europe and today’s rump Yugoslavia--dominant Serbia and tiny Montenegro--are significant and complicate any prediction of the outcome of the most tenacious campaign against the authoritarian regime of the Serbian president.

“In Eastern Europe, you had imposed systems and governments, imposed against the will of the people and with no legitimacy,” Belgrade analyst Zarko Korac said. “Here you have a mutant Communist system, and taking down a mutant system is a lot more difficult.”

Predrag Simic, who runs a Belgrade research institute, said: “This is 1996, not 1989. A lot of things have changed.”

For one, the world is no longer bipolar, divided into Washington and Moscow’s spheres of influence. Other factors that belie easy comparisons, in addition to the nature and history of communism here, are the vicious war that accompanied the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation; the nature of the opposition to Milosevic; and the fact that he continues to enjoy considerable support.

And the momentum for change that swept Eastern Europe in the autumn of 1989, bringing the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending in the execution of Romania’s totalitarian dictator, has long passed.

In contrast to most of the rest of Eastern Europe, communism in the former Yugoslav federation was not imposed by Moscow and an army of occupation but was indigenous. It came in the person of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the native-born leader who ruled from the end of World War II until his death in 1980.

Communism was a system that Tito used to paper over the deep ethnic differences within old Yugoslavia’s borders--the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim tensions that exploded into warfare, at Milosevic’s instigation, after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.

Milosevic used communism to rise to power, and Serbia today resembles a one-party state in the classic Communist sense. The president’s Socialist Party and two smaller leftist parties--one run by Milosevic’s wife--control the media, the police, most large businesses and organs of state.

Yet until war erupted in Croatia in 1991, Yugoslavs enjoyed a modicum of economic freedom and were allowed to travel relatively freely, gaining a sense of well-being that kept a lid on dissent.

As communism began to crumble elsewhere in Europe, Milosevic scrambled to find a new ideology to protect himself. He so whipped his people into a frenzy of nationalism that few dared challenge the system in place--or the man who promised a Greater Serbia.

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Suddenly, bigger enemies than Communists faced the Serbian people: Croats, and later Muslims and the entire Western world. With his distortion of nationalism, Milosevic successfully co-opted or corrupted potential opponents, especially from among the intellectual and artistic segments of society--the fertile ground for democratic movements in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.

War that raged in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the international economic sanctions imposed on Serbia for starting it, left a country psychologically and financially crippled. Some analysts say they believe the specter of traumatic war and chaos prevents many Yugoslavs from joining the street demonstrations that have been targeting Milosevic daily for six weeks.

The Serbian protest movement, in another contrast to the Czechoslovak, Polish and Hungarian experiences, is not a national phenomenon.

Under the Moscow-imposed communism of Eastern Europe, hatred for the authorities was widespread. Although there have been smaller rallies in other towns, the campaign against Milosevic is largely Belgrade-based and dominated by students and the middle class; retains the fairly narrow goal of overturning election fraud; and has failed to attract organized labor or rural supporters in significant numbers.

“The country as a whole is not ripe for revolutionary change,” said a Western diplomat with experience in Eastern Europe.

In addition to the students, Serbia’s opposition is led by a coalition of three political parties known as Zajedno (Together). Its leaders have vacillated and fought over the years, some plunging into the same strident nationalism that Milosevic promoted and some voicing support for the war at one time or another.

A number of Serbian analysts say they believe the West remains ambivalent in its support for Vuk Draskovic, Zoran Djindjic and the rest of the opposition leaders, whose commitment to democracy is still in question.

Although Washington and European capitals--once allied with Milosevic in brokering an end to the Bosnian war--now insist that the Serbian president restore the municipal elections won by the opposition, such support for the protests was slow in coming.

“There are no great fans of the Serbs in the West. Even the Serbian opposition is not that welcome,” Simic said. “For good or bad, the Serbs are blamed for a lot of things, and [the opposition] cannot count on the same kind of support that Havel and Walesa had from the West.”

Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech playwright, and Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader, both became president after leading the campaigns against communism in their countries. They emerged as leaders with respectable credentials during their respective revolutions, and each gave his people a legitimate alternative to the Communist rulers.

In the Prague of 1989, as students, intellectuals and other dissidents staged day after day of peaceful demonstrations, the Communist leadership evaporated once it became clear that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would not be sending in tanks to help out. So went the Velvet Revolution.

In Bucharest, the Romanian capital, revolt was bloody. Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his power-grabbing wife, Elena, faced rioting mobs and were executed on Christmas Day. An estimated 1,000 people died in the rebellion.

Because of similarities between the Ceausescus and Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, many Yugoslavs wonder aloud if the Bucharest scenario is the most likely denouement here. The more harsh among them demand it.

Again, however, there are significant differences. The demise of the regime in Romania was in fact more of an internal coup than actual revolution, historians now agree. In Serbia thus far, no one has emerged from within the system with the power or backing to overthrow Milosevic.

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Yet many in Serbia believe that Milosevic has been mortally wounded by the protests. Milosevic’s strategy has been to pit one part of the population against the other--his rural, poor party faithful against the urban, educated opposition. Overall, he apparently hopes to wear down, weaken and outlast the opposition.

With each passing day, though, the risk of greater violence grows as protesters and police face off in tense confrontations and the rhetoric of civil war escalates. Scores of people were beaten last week. Society is more polarized than ever.

After the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, Simic and others said, revolutionary change in Serbia would almost certainly be bloody.

“It wouldn’t be a Velvet Revolution,” he cautioned. “There’s not much velvet in the Balkans.”