Serbia's antibureaucratic revolution: Milošević, the fall of communism and nationalist mobilization

Abstract

In the 1980s, a wave of popular unrest swept across the eastern part of Yugoslavia. These events peaked in the ‘antibureaucratic revolution’ — a series of large rallies and demonstrations of industrial workers, Kosovo Serbs and other groups, which were strongly backed by Milošević (Milosevic) — and in a counter-mobilization of Kosovo Albanians. The levels of mobilization surpassed those in most East European states at the time of communism’s collapse, and the consequences were no less dramatic. Yet these events and their implications remain largely unexplored two decades later. Blending narrative with analysis, Nebojša Vladisavljević reveals that the antibureaucratic revolution was the most crucial episode of Yugoslav conflicts after Tito. Drawing on primary sources and cutting-edge research on contentious politics, he explains how popular unrest contributed to the fall of communism and the rise of a new form of authoritarianism, competing nationalisms and the break-up of Yugoslavia. This book sheds new light on the meteoric ascent to power of Slobodan Milošević and on the making of the contemporary Serb-Albanian nationalist conflict in and over Kosovo. - Dr Nebojsa Vladisavljevi