12th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) convened the highest forum for its 12th Congress from 26 to 29 June 1982 at the Sava Centar in Belgrade, Socialist Republic of Serbia. It was the first party congress in four years and the first since the 4 May 1980 death of Josip Broz Tito, the long-standing leader of the LCY and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The congress was attended by 1,570 delegates, 355 guests and 118 foreign delegations. Preparations began on 29 September 1980, and its date was set at the 25th Session of the Central Committee of the 11th Congress on 8–9 April 1982. The congress was preceded by the congresses and conferences of the LCY constitutive branches which elected delegates and members of the Central Committee, Commission on Statutory Questions and Supervisory Commission of the LCY.

The congress was expected to provide answers to the socio-economic difficulties Yugoslavia was facing. With Tito's death, his dominant one-person leadership was replaced by a system of collective leadership centred on the presidency of the LCY Central Committee and the presidency of the SFRY. This leadership had to grapple with the 1981 Kosovo riots and their repercussions and the state's economic crisis. Congress proceedings went smoothly, ending with the verification of the Central Committee, Commission of Statutory Questions, and the Supervisory Commission of the LCY. The 1st Session of the Central Committee of the 12th Congress, held on 29 June and tasked with the election of the presidency of the 12th Congress, nearly provoked a party split.

At the Central Committee's 1st Session, Branko Mikulić (with the help of Dušan Dragosavac, the president of the Presidency of the LCY Central Committee) tried to block the election of Draža Marković, an outspoken member of the League of Communists of Serbia who advocated reducing the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina within the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Petar Stambolić, a member of the LCY Central Committee and president of the Presidency of the SFRY, accused them of foreign interference in Serbia's internal affairs of and threatened to resign from office. Marković's opponents eventually relented, and he was elected to the presidency.

The 12th Congress was considered the most-free party gathering to that point, with open and candid criticism and differences aired in public. However, the congress has been considered a failure; it neither suggested or adopted solutions to the major problems the country was facing, and it contributed to intensifying the conflict between the Serbian branch and the other branches.

Background Succession

This was the highest party gathering convened since the 4 May 1980 death of Josip Broz Tito, the longstanding leader of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY). The 11th LCY Congress, held from 20 to 23 June 1978, had amended the party statute to institute a system of collective leadership based on term limits and the rotation of cadres. Collective leadership was instituted immediately after Tito's death. The office of President of Yugoslavia was, in accordance with the constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), abolished at his death and its powers transferred to the Presidency of the SFRY.

Branko Mikulić, a member of the Presidency of the 11th LCY Central Committee, noted that (unlike the state constitution) the party statute had no stipulations on which organs the party president's powers were to be delegated at Tito's death but "The question regarding the transfer of power after Tito's death has been partially resolved by the adoption of the standing rules of the Central Committee and the Central Committee Presidency and by the decision of the Party Presidency on collective leadership". The 11th Session of the Central Committee of the 11th Congress, held on 12 June 1980, decided that the powers of the LCY president would be transferred to the LCY Central Committee and its political-executive organ, the Presidency. This was an informal decision; the party congress, not the LCY Central Committee, was empowered to amend the party statute. The committee also rejected a proposal to convene an extraordinary congress to amend the statute. At that session, Mikulić argued against immediately initiating a broad discussion on the party statute; the debate should be part of the preparation for the 12th Congress.

According to scholar Jens Reuter, it was "remarkable" that Mikulić's statement only dealt "with the question of which party organs the powers of the President of the LCY should be transferred to, but he does not mention the possibility of electing a new party leader." There seems to have existed political forces that favoured the retention of a strong leader while opposing the introduction of a collective leadership based on short-term limits and cadre rotation. The Yugoslav magazine NIN noted in their coverage that the office of LCY president had been vacant since 4 May 1980 and, in accordance with Article 69, it was the responsibility of the party congress to elect a new officeholder.

The party leadership seems to have seen the NIN article, and the Telegraphic Agency of New Yugoslavia (TANJUG) released commentary with several counter-arguments: "Although the above-mentioned interpretation [the NIN article] does not state this explicitly, it nevertheless falsely suggests that the election of a new president of the LCY is imminent at the upcoming 12th Congress of the SKJ. The truth, however, is different and, it seems, simpler." According to TANJUG, Tito was elected president of the LCY with an unlimited term because of his unique historical role. It also noted that Tito had, during his last years, delegated some of his powers as LCY president to the Presidency as the political-executive organ of the LCY Central Committee. It concluded, "Since 4 May 1980, the Presidency of the LCY has taken on the entire burden of responsibility of the function of the President of the LCY. In this very important respect, nothing has remained 'vacant. Tanjug, like Mikulić, also recommended initiating extensive consultations on amending the party statute throughout the party as part of preparations for the 12th Congress.

The TANJUG commentary did not end the debate. A new article in the NIN criticised it, saying that TANJUG had caused "a certain degree of confusion" since it described the LCY Presidency as the "collective president of the LCY". This was an "awkward formulation", they said, since nowhere in the party statute was the Presidency granted such a status. The newspaper Politika agreed, noting that the party statute defined the Presidency as a political-executive organ of the LCY Central Committee and not as the "collective president of the LCY". In theory, the 11th Session of the Central Committee of the 11th LCY Congress had transferred the powers of the LCY president to the LCY Central Committee. In practice, the following powers of the LCY president were delegated to the LCY Presidency: the power to convene, preside and direct the work of the LCY Central Committee; the right to propose proposals to the sessions of the Central Committee and the party Congress; initiating broad discussion with the LCY branches before central-level meetings, and the power to nominate the secretary of the LCY Presidency and executive secretaries for election at sessions of the LCY Central Committee.

Economic crisis

Beginning in the mid-to-late 1970s, Yugoslavia began experiencing an economic crisis. The internal federal market began to splinter into republican markets, and inter-republic trade began to sink. At the same time, the republics began to export and import more goods from abroad. The 1974 constitution called for the decentralisation of enterprises and worker management. These reforms produced bottlenecks; the republics centralised more authority and called on the federal government to devolve more authority to them. This further splintered the domestic Yugoslav market. In 1970, 59.6 percent of goods and services were traded within the republics; in 1980, it increased to 69 percent. At that point, only 21.7 percent of goods and services were traded between the Yugoslav republics and 9.3 percent were exported abroad. This led to strange situations. The socialist republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Serbia produced electricity but exported it instead of selling it to the other republics, and the socialist republics of Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro were forced to import electricity from neighbouring countries.

Yugoslavia's state-party leaders were slow to recognise the country's economic crisis. By the mid-1970s, several Yugoslav economists warned about the economy's low labour productivity and high inflation and foreign debt. From 1973 to 1981, foreign debt increased from US$4.663 billion to $21.096 billion. Several short-term loans were made between 1977 and 1980 with interest rates which increased from 5.5 to 16.8 percent. Although Yugoslav politicians usually blamed the foreign economic environment for the crisis, economists cited errors in economic reforms. Until 1961, only the federal government could make loans on behalf of Yugoslavia; by 1971, each republic could borrow money itself. Beginning with Veselin Đuranović, who served as the president of the Federal Executive Council, the federal government began calling for greater centralisation; the LCY opposed the reforms, which contradicted the ideology that produced the 1974 Yugoslav constitution. This led to calls from the Federal Executive Council to begin a new round of economic reforms centralising state power, liberalising the economy and establishing a market economy, but the Presidency of the 11th Congress opposed such measures. Milka Planinc, the president of the Federal Executive Council from 1982 to 1986, experienced (like her predecessor, Đuranović) ideological opposition from the party leadership to enact reforms that could have halted the economic crisis. Posthumously, in 1998, Planinc summed up the problem:

The Party was supposed to be a cohesive force, but by then it had become, on the contrary, the main source of conflicts and conservatism in Yugoslav society. In Tito’s time, changes were still possible if Tito was convinced they were necessary. But after him, it was much more difficult. There was no money anymore to satisfy everyone's needs. And the federal government had no instruments to run affairs on its own. It had to rely on the republics, on the federal presidency, and on the Party presidency. When members of the Party leaderships became the main defenders of their own republics, Yugoslav cohesion became impossible.

Kosovo