SANU Memorandum

The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, known simply as the SANU Memorandum (Serbian Cyrillic: Меморандум САНУ), was a draft document produced by a 16-member committee of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) from 1985 to 1986.

The memo immediately captured the public's attention in Yugoslavia, as it gave voice to controversial views on the state of the nation and argued for a fundamental reorganization of the state. The main theme was that Yugoslavia's constitutional structure discriminated against the Serbs, and that decentralisation was leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. It claimed that Serbia's development was eroded in favour of other parts of Yugoslavia, or rather that other more developed regions flourished at Serbia's expense. The memorandum was officially denounced by the government of Yugoslavia in 1986, and the government of the SR Serbia for inciting nationalism. Some consider its publication to be a key moment in the breakup of Yugoslavia and a contributor to the Yugoslav wars.

In the 1980s, a major issue in Yugoslavia was the problem of massive debts accrued in the 1970s and the resulting policies of austerity. Yugoslavia had debts initially valued at $6 billion US dollars, but which turned out to actually be a sum equal to $21 billion U.S. dollars, a staggering debt load. The high debt load led to repeated programmes of austerity in the 1980s imposed by the IMF, and which in turn led to the exposure of so much corruption by the Communist authorities that it had caused a crisis of faith in the Communist system by the mid-1980s. The revelation that corruption was systematic in Yugoslavia and that the Communist elites were plundering the public coffers to support their luxurious lifestyles sparked much resentment, especially at a time of austerity. The fact that it had been the Communist elites who had run up the debts in the 1970s that had led to the austerity policies imposed in the 1980s not only made them unpopular, but also created grave doubts about the competence of the elites. Making the economic crisis more difficult was that Croatia and Slovenia were wealthier than Serbia, and objected to transferring their wealth to support Serbia in times of austerity.

In May 1985, after Ivan Stambolić urged the government to discuss Kosovo for the first time since 1981, SANU selected a committee of sixteen distinguished academics to draft a memorandum addressing the causes of the economic and political crisis and how to tackle the problems. It was planned to be endorsed by the academy prior to being presented to the Communist Party and state organs. The last draft, however, was leaked to a regime tabloid, the Serbian newspaper Večernje novosti in September 1986. The newspaper attacked it, describing it as reactionary and nationalist, but did not publish it. An official campaign by the Serbian state and party officials began against it.

The memo is divided into two parts: the "Crisis in the Yugoslav Economy and Society" and the "Status of Serbia and the Serb Nation". The first section focuses on the economic and political fragmentation of Yugoslavia that followed the promulgation of the 1974 constitution. The memo argued that because Tito had been a Croat, he had designed the Yugoslav federation in such a way to unduly balance the entire economic and political system in favor of his native Croatia together with Slovenia. In this way, the memo claimed that the burden of austerity policies imposed by the IMF fell almost entirely on the Serbs, while at the same time allowing Croatia and Slovenia to keep too much of their wealth to themselves. The second section focuses on what the authors saw as Serbia's inferior status in Yugoslavia, while describing the status of Serbs in the province of Kosovo and in Croatia in such a way as to make its point. The memo argued that because the Serbian provincial authorities in both Kosovo and Vojvodina could deal directly with the federal Yugoslav government, this had made them de facto republics outside of the control of the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Since March 1981, there had been regular riots in Kosovo between the ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority, which in turn had been caused by the competition in the labour market in a time of austerity as the university system produced far more graduates than there were available jobs. The memo claimed that the other republics, especially Croatia, were supporting the Albanian provincial government in Kosovo as part of a plot to force out the Serb minority. Kosta Mihailović made contributions to the economy, Mihailo Marković on self-management and Vasilije Krestić on the status of the Serbs of Croatia.

The memo claimed that at the end of World War II, Tito deliberately weakened Serbia by dividing up the majority of Serbian territory, namely present day Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia, with Serb majority populations. The memo argued that Tito further weakened the SR Serbia by dividing its territory and creating the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, which was not reciprocated in the other Yugoslav republics. A major theme of the memo was that of alleged Serbian victimization at the hands of the other republics, who were portrayed as having profited at Serbia's expense. The authors of the memo wrote that it was time to "...remove this historical guilt off of the Serbian people and to refute officially the claims that they had an economically privileged position between the two wars and that there would be no denying of their liberating role throughout history and their contribution in the creation of Yugoslavia.... The Serbs in their history have never conquered or exploited others. Through the two world wars, they liberated themselves, and when they could, helped others to liberate themselves".

The theme of alleged Serb victimization at the hands of others was at least in part a response to the economic crisis of the 1980s, suggesting that the burden of austerity should fall mostly on the other republics, but the most powerful consequence was that for the first time since 1945 a historical narrative had been aired which portrayed the Serbs as a uniquely and innately virtuous and honourable people who were the perpetual victims of others. The British historian Richard Crampton has written that the real significance of the memo was, that it openly stated for the first time, what many ordinary Serbian people had been thinking, and, because of the intellectual prestige of its authors, it conferred a sort of pseudo-scientific legitimacy on the widespread feelings, that the Serbs were being unjustly singled out by the policies of economic austerity. At a time of widespread economic pain and suffering, the message of the memo that the Serbs were being unjustly forced to suffer more than they should become popular. The message of the memo, that the solution to the economic crisis of the 1980s was for Serbs to aggressively reassert their interests in Yugoslavia, abolish the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina, and bring the prečani Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia into Serbia, led to much alarm elsewhere in Yugoslavia, where the memo was perceived as a call for Serbian domination.

We were portrayed as wanting to tear down the country. On the contrary, the Memorandum was a document which tried to stop the breakup. When the Memorandum controversy broke out, we were applauded in the West. Afterwards, it was interpreted as an anti-communist document, as a breach for some new democratic state. The country's official politics attacked us. In The Hague, the Memorandum was pulled out again. Of course, they now need another variant. That's the vortex of daily politics.