Yugoslavia and Political Assassinations

The History and Legacy of Tito's Campaign Against the Emigrés

Christian Axboe Nielsen

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781788316866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia russa

Yugoslavia and Political Assassinations is the first book in English to analyse how and why the Yugoslav State Security Service carried out multiple targeted assassinations, over the country's forty-six years of existence, under the pretext of protecting the Yugoslav communist party-state. Offering a detailed history of the programme, from the inception of the State Security Service to the recent trials of individuals involved, it draws on Christian Axboe Nielsen's unique wealth of experience and research as an academic and as an expert witness in numerous criminal trials. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the history of targeted assassinations, communist history, state security services and related criminal trials.

1

The Establishment and Structure of the Yugoslav State Security Service

The Yugoslav State Security Service or ‘Udba’ was a complex, multi-layered and deliberately byzantine state apparatus that for obvious reasons abhorred transparency and had no desire to make its inner workings understandable to the general public. Much of the same can be said for the Yugoslav party-state as a whole, and this hence presents enormous challenges to researchers wishing to understand and analyse how the Service operated as a pillar of the system. Therefore, this chapter provides the reader with a succinct summary of the establishment and structure of the Yugoslav State Security Service. Based on internal documents from the Service, the ambit of its work is sketched, with an emphasis on its crucial role in maintaining the hegemony of the party-state against real and perceived enemies both internal and external. Special emphasis is placed on explaining why the Yugoslav regime continued to see itself as being under a permanent existential threat.

Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito and his colleagues in the communist-dominated partisan movement idolized the Soviet Union and were also heavily influenced by its security services. In establishing socialist Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav communists initially slavishly imitated their idols, and the 1946 Yugoslav federal constitution was a slightly reworked version of the 1936 Soviet constitution. Like the Soviet Union and the ‘people’s republics’ in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia was conceived of as a party-state, where all matters would be decided by the ruling communist party, initially called the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Komunistička partija Jugoslavije, KPJ) and since November 1952 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije, SKJ). Until 1990, no free multi-party elections were held in Yugoslavia, and all posts of importance in the government and in the state apparatus were thus reserved for party members. The leading role of the SKJ was emphasized in the four constitutions promulgated in Yugoslavia in 1946, 1953, 1963 and 1974, with separate constitutions for the six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia) and the two autonomous provinces (Vojvodina and Kosovo).

As is the case with virtually all institutions in socialist Yugoslavia, the origins of the Yugoslav State Security Service are to be found in the Second World War, known in Yugoslavia as the People’s Liberation Struggle (Narodnooslobodilačka borba, or NOB).¹ On 29 November 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifašističko veće/vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije, or AVNOJ), which had convened for the first time precisely one year earlier, agreed on the outlines of the structure of postwar Yugoslavia. The AVNOJ in turn elected a National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (Nacionalni komitet oslobođenja Jugoslavije, or NKOJ). Approximately six months later, with the partisans increasingly confident of victory and needing to consolidate control over those areas liberated from Axis and collaborationist control, the NKOJ decided to establish a unified intelligence agency to replace the disparate partisan-controlled intelligence agencies operating from Slovenia to Macedonia. Significantly, a Soviet military mission arrived in Bosnia in February 1944. Led by Lieutenant General Nikolaj Kornjejev, its members, particularly Colonel Nikolaj Timofejev, seem to have advised the Yugoslavs on how to establish and structure the new intelligence service.² Subsequently a number of leading officers of the service also received formal training in the Soviet Union.

On 13 May 1944, Tito, in his capacity as supreme commander and commissioner for people’s defence, established the Department of the Protection of the People (Odjeljenje za zaštitu naroda, OZN-a). Tito wrote that ‘it is already now necessary to create a unified powerful organization which would direct a political intelligence service abroad and on occupied territory, and a counter-intelligence service in the NOVJ [People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia], both on liberated and non-liberated territory’.³

The chief of the Ozna, Lieutenant General Aleksandar ‘Marko’ Ranković, was directly subordinate to Tito and reported on the work of the Ozna to the NKOJ.⁴ Ozna representatives in the main staffs were responsible directly to the chief of Ozna, providing a direct line of command for their work and reporting. Significantly, the Ozna was explicitly introduced as an organization that would form the nucleus of the future system of state security.

Five days after Tito’s decree, Ranković sent his first communication as chief of the Ozna. Neither a decree nor an order, Ranković’s dispatch resembled a musing on the rationale for the existence of intelligence services, which ‘had always been a strong tool in the hands of a country/state in the struggle against its internal and external enemies’.⁵ Following the official rhetoric of the AVNOJ, Ranković further wrote that the state security service would be ‘one of the guarantees for the preservation of the new democratic authority in a federal democratic Yugoslavia. … The organs of Ozna must be the most consequential protectors and keepers of the legacies of the people’s liberation struggle. Strict and implacable towards enemies, just toward every honest person. Ozna will become the most cherished organization among our people.’ Ranković sounded the warning that the forces of the NOB must continuously be on guard against those enemies who sought to infiltrate and thwart it.

On 15 August 1944, Tito signed a decree establishing the Corps of the People’s Defence of Yugoslavia (Korpus narodne odbrane Jugoslavije, KNOJ), an internal army which could be resubordinated under Ozna command and which had the task of ‘liquidating’ all remaining enemy activity on the liberated territory of Yugoslavia.⁶ As the Partisans expanded their grip to control ever larger portions of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1945, the Ozna functioned as the extended arm of the Communist Party. In addition to maintaining discipline in the KPJ and the partisan movement, and uncovering any ‘enemy’ elements, the Ozna also sought to constrict and control the activities of those ‘bourgeois’ political parties that had joined the anti-fascist coalition. Both internally and externally, the Ozna was ‘the auxiliary organ of the Party,’ as noted by Savo Zlatić at a July 1945 meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia.⁷

The Ozna existed until March 1946, when it was split into separate civilian and military intelligence and state security services. From March 1946 until the middle of 1966, the state security service was known as the Administration of State Security (Uprava državne bezbednosti, UDB-a, or Udba), a change in name which also signified the shift from the revolutionary seizure of power to protector of the security of the existing state. Although the Udba retained a system of internal military-style ranks until the early 1950s, a gradual demilitarization of the service also took place.

Throughout the first two decades of socialist Yugoslavia, Ranković and the Udba functioned as the party-state’s most formidable shield against ‘internal enemies’. Widely feared and with a reputation for being omnipresent and omniscient, the Udba bore down hard on anyone suspected of the least opposition against the regime. In the Yugoslav case, after the historic split between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1948, the might of the state’s repressive apparatus also came to be felt by pro-Stalin ‘Cominformists’. No one living in Yugoslavia, including members of the League of Communists, could afford to doubt the Udba’s might and reach.

In July 1966, the dismissal of Aleksandar Ranković, who had under Tito exercised command and control of the Udba and had in his capacity as vice president been generally perceived both at home and abroad as the likely successor to Tito, rocked Yugoslavia.⁸ Although he had formally ceased to be the minister for internal affairs in 1953, Ranković was widely considered to have retained control over the police. Yet now he was removed from his post and later from the SKJ on charges of having organized the illegal surveillance of Tito and other senior SKJ leaders. After this date and until the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the state security service was known as the State Security Service (Služba državne bezbednosti, SDB), and in a linguistic foreshadowing of the impending decentralization, in Croatia as the SDS (Služba državne sigurnosti). Colloquially, however, the Service remained known as ‘the Udba’. Ranković and those most closely associated with him were accused of ‘bureaucratic statism’, as they had resisted a liberalization of the Yugoslav state and economy.

The purge of Ranković initiated more of a decentralization than any real liberalization of the state security service, accelerating up to the 1974 constitution, which massively decentralized the structure of the Yugoslav state.⁹ Briefly put, the League of Communists was determined to ensure that no one other than Tito could ever again amass the amount of power that Ranković had held, but not so interested in dismantling the party-state’s grip on the population. Notwithstanding the new constitution in 1974, the federal authorities continued to have primary responsibility for all matters affecting the security of the country as a whole. The SSUP had a directing, coordinating and supervisory role with respect to all matters pertaining to internal affairs.¹⁰ The federal secretary could still define the overall policy orientation of the work of the SDB, including its republican and provincial components. Most saliently for the present topic, the Federal State Security Service until the dissolution of Yugoslavia retained primary authority and responsibility for all activities of the civilian security services outside the country.

Nonetheless, given the extent of the decentralization effected by the new constitution, it is correct to speak from 1974 onwards of state security services in the plural form in Yugoslavia. In addition to the Federal State Security Service, all six republics and the two autonomous provinces Vojvodina and Kosovo operated state security services. Legally and operationally, these state security services were interlinked and hierarchically subordinated to the Federal State Security Service. Very specific rules and regulations existed for cooperation, exchange of information and joint operations, but particularly in the last decade of the Yugoslav state’s existence, the Federal State Security Service gradually became less of a commanding instance and more of a clearinghouse and coordination mechanism. This meant that to the degree that a republican state security service was conducting operations which were limited to its own area, then it largely sufficed to provide general notice subsequently to the federal authorities that this operation had been carried out.

However, it should be noted that until the death of Tito in May 1980, he as the supreme leader of the country had the final say in all matters of state policy and operations. Likewise, it is necessary to emphasize that the decentralization did not translate into a weakening or disintegration of the principles of the party-state. As such, the state security services still primarily served the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the hierarchy of which itself mimicked the structure of the Yugoslav state. In this manner, the party-state power nexus remained intact, albeit with its own concurrent process of increasing autonomy for the republican and provincial leagues.

The Yugoslav State Security Service and the Constitutional Structure of the SFRJ

In socialist Yugoslavia, matters of policing were coordinated and controlled by the Ministry for Internal Affairs, also known during much of this period as the Secretariat for Internal Affairs (Ministarstvo za unutrašnje poslove, MUP, or Sekretarijat za unutrašnje poslove, SUP, respectively). Mirroring the federal structure of the country, ministries/secretariats of internal affairs existed at the federal level, in the six republics, and in the two autonomous provinces. At the top of each ministry/secretariat stood the minister/secretary, who was a member of the respective federal, republican or provincial government, known in the official terminology as the executive council (izvršno veće/vijeće). The republican and provincial ministries of internal affairs existed alongside, but were subordinate to, the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs. As noted above, particularly during the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Establishment and Structure of the Yugoslav State Security Service
• 2 Defining the Enemy: The Struggle against the ‘Fascist Emigration’ and the ‘Enemy Emigration’
• 3 Agents, Infiltration and Surveillance: The Methods of the Yugoslav State Security Service in Émigré (Diaspora) Communities
• 4 Taking the Fight to Them: The 1972 Bugojno Uprising and the Shift to an Offensive Stance
• 5 Murder in Munich: The Assassination of Stjepan Đureković
• Conclusion and Epilogue
• List of Acronyms
• List of Archival Collections Consulted
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint