Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Centrifugal Politics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - ACTUAL federalism in the SU and in Czech (insofar as power was distributed relatively equally) and conferderalism in Yugoslavia (where republics dominated the centre?)
        
        Why did confederalism take hold in Yugoslavia? Decentralization of the constitution in 1974 and Tito's death in the early 1980's meant that Yugoslavia had a very weak political center.
        
        Dominant Republics!
        
        (Serbia within Yugoslavia, Russia within the SU, and the Czech lands in Czechoslovakia). During the socialist period, neither Russia nor Czech lands were allotted the same institutional status as the lesser republics making up their federations. Specifically, they were both denied their own communist parties, their own media, their own secret police organizations. No empowerment, Russian/Czech national identity was far less developed and far more confused with soviet identity.
        
        • Yugoslavia provides a sharp contrast, by the second half of the 1970’, Yugolavia featured equality among the republics. The Serbian republic had precisely the same economic, political, social and cultural institution as existed in… (Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Macadenoia). Thus, Serbia and its leadership had more access to resources for state-buidling. At the same time, Serbia was denied the political power that Russia and the Czech lands enjoyed (overrepresented in things like the corps of the military but were underrepresented in all institutions responsible for making day-to-day decisions within Yugoslavia). As a consequence, its not particularly surprising that Serbs were resentful of Yugoslav developments.
        
        Military Strength!
        
        • Socialist Militaries: In Yugoslavia, the military (JNA) played a central role in the dissolution of the state. The JNA had allies with the republics (the secessionist Serbian minorities within both of these republics). By contrast, the military stood on the sidelines whilst the Czech state was dismantled. In the SU, the military was deployed, but in minimalist short term. However, when the soviet state was formally dismantled in December 1991, the military was not a participant.
        
        • The JNA had close connections in particular with one republic: Serbia. (Serbian historical connections to the miltary)
    - - Failure to establish a national identity led to the failure of Czechslovakia
        
        After WWI, the federal state failed to accomodate tensions in society and heightened ethnic conflict.
      - Errection of an "asymmetrical" federal system
        
        • The asymmetry in the model stemmed from the absence of a corresponding republic government for running affairs in the western part of the country.
        
        • Institutional structure mirrored party structure – there was a nationwide communist party and a Slovak communist party. Though this was designed to provide the solvaks with more autonomy, actually rendered the Slovak government and party apparatus impotent. Czech interested were always represented at the federal level, while Slovaks were only represented ad the republic level.
        
        • Because this power structure granted them symbolic rather than real autonomy, Slovak leaders focused their criticism on the asymmetrical federal system. At the same time, Czechs began to criticize the system for bringing more attention to Slovak concerns than they thought necessary.
        
        • The movement for institutional and political reform became bound up in a broader discussion of state-society relations. The movement for institutional and political reform culminated in the Action Program introduced in April 1968 by Party Secretary Alexander Dubeck (WHICH PROPOSED SLOVAKS WOULD BE GRANTED FULL AUTONOMY IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM)
        
        • Czechoslovakian history suggests that state development was not defined simply by nationalist tensions, but was also a battle for control of state institutions by forces that often resorted to nationalist justifications.