March/April 1954

When the Soviets stormed across the border into Yugoslavia to depose Kardelj and his clique, they found their strongest supporters in two diametrically opposed groups. The first, broadly construed as the "Great Serb" clique of the new President Žujović, advocated not just for the maintenance of Yugoslavia's current borders, but for the greater centralization of Yugoslav power. This goal was irreconcilably opposed by a group broadly construed as the "autonomists"--members of Yugoslavia's non-Slav and Macedonian minority groups who advocated for (depending on who you talked to) something between much greater autonomy or full integration into one of Yugoslavia's neighbors.

Ultimately, it was the second faction that the Soviets catered to more. At the end of 1953, the Soviets announced a slew of referendums to be held in Macedonia, Kosovo, Vojvodina, and a number of minority-majority districts in Serbia proper at the beginning of the 1953. These referendums, administered by the Yugoslav government but overseen by the Soviet forces occupying based inside of Yugoslavia, would determine the fate of the territories and the people within them.

Though they had the support of one government (that in Belgrade), the referendums of 1954 were strongly opposed by Kardelj’s government-in-exile in Thessaloniki. From just over the border, signal boosted by Radio Free Europe and other western-aligned outlets, Kardelj railed against the referendums as “illegitimate and fraudulent, arranged against the will of the Yugoslav people and disgracing the memory of Marshal Tito.”

Despite his rage, the referendums continued.

Vojvodina Referendum (15 March)

Held in the districts of northern Vojvodina, which are divided between ethnic Hungarians and Serbs, the Vojvodina referendum was meant to determine what territories, if any, should be appended to Hungary, and which should remain in Serbia. Voting was held on the district level, with each of the ten or so districts within the voting zone able to join Hungary or remain with Yugoslavia separately.

Voting here was more or less peaceful and orderly. Far from the bases of insurgent operations in the Dinarides, there was no real armed opposition to the referendums to speak of, with voting progressing uneventfully. What few incidences of unrest occurred were swiftly dealt with by Yugoslav forces--or, failing that, by Soviet ones.

After the ballots were counted, four of the ten districts holding the referendum (corresponding to the modern divisions of Subotica, Backa Topola, Mali Idos, Srbobran, Becej, Ada, Senta, Kanjiz, Novi Knezevac, and Coka) voted to join Hungary. The transferred occurred a little over two months later, with the districts joining as the new “Szabadka” County (a deliberate decision to steer clear of the region’s historical name in Hungary, Bács-Bodrog County, which implied a claim over all of Vojvodina).

Bulgarians in Serbia (15 March)

Separate referendums were held in Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad, two Bulgarian-majority municipalities on the border between Serbia and Hungary. Voting in these quiet and rural localities was uneventful, largely because the results were so clear cut: both regions held a staunch Bulgarian majority, had no serious economic ties to the rest of Yugoslavia (being in one of the most remote and least industrialized regions of the country), and had local leadership in favor of joining Bulgaria, which had governed the territories prior to the 1920 Treaty of Neuilly and again during the Second World War.

Kosovo, Albanian Macedonians, and Albanians in Serbia (15 March)

The referendums for Yugoslavia’s Albanians were technically many separate referendum (one in Kosovo, one in each district of Macedonia, and a separate referendum in each of Presevo and Bujanovac, two mixed ethnicity districts in the south of Serbia proper near the Macedonian border.

These referendums were the most contentious of the lot. Kosovo, despite being overwhelmingly Albanian, formed an integral part of the Serbian national identity. Although Tito’s government had put some effort into dismantling the “Kosovo Myth” and excising Kosovo from the Serbian national identity, these efforts had limited impact--probably in part because his government had been deposed only a few years later. As a result, Kosovo was still seen by the average Serb as very much a part of Serbia.

Beyond Serbian conceptions of Kosovo as part of Serbia, there was the very real issue that Kosovo had a small, but geographically compact, minority of Serbian residents–mostly in the north of Kosovo near the city of Mitrovica (a city split between Albanians and Serbians), but with other concentrations south and east of Pristina. The issue of Mitrovica and its environs was handled by awarding North Kosovo to Serbia without a referendum (using the Ibar River as the border in Mitrovica itself), but that did nothing to help the thousands of Serbs stranded further south in Kosovo. They protested the referendum vociferously, even in one instance burning down a polling place, but to no avail.

The worst violence, though, was in the Serbian municipality of Bujanovac. According to 1948 Census data, the municipality was almost perfectly divided between Serbs and Albanians, with other ethnicities making up the other 6.5 percent of residents. To make matters worse, Presevo and Bujanovac controlled the South Morava river valley that connected Serbia and Montenegro. Should these municipalities go to Albania, it would mean that Macedonia was functionally cut off from the rest of Yugoslavia--something that was likely to damn the pro-Yugoslav vote in Macedonia in the referendum there a month later. Voting in Bujanovac was not just a dispute of the character of the region as “Serb” or “Albanian”, then. It was a proxy over whether Macedonia was “Yugoslav” or not. Add into this the proliferation of arms throughout the region when the Kardeljites had thrown open the Yugoslav armories to the people, and the situation had both the reason and the means to escalate to violence.

And escalate it did. In the run-up to the referendum, the Serbs of Bujanovac, who had fared much better in obtaining weapons from the Yugoslav armories, wreaked a bloody vengeance on the local Albanian population, leaving some hundred dead and many more wounded. Only the timely intervention of the Soviets forces prevented the violences from spiraling out of control. Perhaps ironically, this great violence galvanized the Albanian community. The peace, enforced at the barrel of a Soviet rifle, bought the local Albanians enough breathing room to show up in their multitudes at the polls, supported by Romani and Muslim voters who thought they might fare (marginally) better in Albania than they did in Serbia. By a razor thin margin--under a percentage point in the official counts--Bujanovac went to Albania.

About a year after Kosovo, Presevo, and Bujanovac were transferred to Serbia, almost no Serbs remained in the territory. Whether they were forced out by the threat of violence or left willingly is a matter of who you ask.

Compared to the referendums to the north, those held in the Albanian-majority districts of Macedonia were quite peaceful. These districts had strong Albanian majorities, with only a relatively small Macedonian minority. That is not to say there was no drama. Most notably, a large group of Macedonian protesters attempted to march from Skopje to Tetovo with the goal of intimidating the Albanians there against voting, but they were stopped by Albanian and Soviet forces. Likewise, the sporadic violence launched by Kardeljite insurgents still operating in the region was not organized enough to cause significant disruptions in the proceedings. When the votes were counted, Debar, Lipkovo, Gostivar, Bogovinje, and Tetovo had voted to join Albania.

Macedonian Referendum (20 April)

The Macedonian Referendum, meant to determine whether Macedonia would remain in Yugoslavia or join Bulgaria and an autonomous province, scheduled for a little over a month after the other referendums of the year. By the time campaigning began in earnest in Macedonia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, Presevo, Bujanovac, Bosilegrad, and Dimitrovgrad had already decided their fates--all of them voting, to some extent, to separate from Yugoslavia. Accordingly, the atmosphere in the pro-Yugoslav camp in Macedonia was bleak.

The pessimism was, in some sense, understandable. The transfer of Presevo and Bujanovac to Albania, already set in stone, made the prospect of a continued union between Macedonia and Yugoslavia more or less unviable. All of the infrastructure connecting Macedonia to the rest of Yugoslavia--the roads, the rails, the telephone lines, and so on--ran through the flatlands of the South Morava valley, now cut through by Albania. When the territory was finally transferred, the route from Skopje, Macedonia’s capital, to the border of Serbia would triple, replacing paved roads and railway tracks through flat land with dirt roads through the foothills of the Osogovo mountains. Macedonia, already the poorest of Yugoslavia’s republics, would be destined to fall further and further behind the rest of the country.

Macedonia was also the region whose referendum was most impacted by Kardeljite propaganda. Situated only a short skip across the border in Thessaloniki, the Kardeljite government, with the support (or at least tacit approval) of Athens, set up their own radio station that blasted anti-referendum propaganda into Macedonia. More than supporting voting for Yugoslavia, though, these broadcasts promoted something between apathy and hostility to the referendum, lambasting it as an affront to Marshal Tito’s legacy. This message was further supported by American and Greek stay-behind agents in Macedonia.

There was no great stirring of the Macedonian people against the referendum. Nor, really, was there a great stirring against it. The leadership of When the Macedonians went to the polls on 20 April, it was with the resigned attitude of a people whose fate was already sealed, or of a condemned man marching to the hangman’s noose. The vote, with its comfortable margin of victory, indicated that Macedonia wanted to join Bulgaria, but to what extent was this a they made, versus a choice that circumstance had already made for them? The turnout--the lowest out of any referendum discussed here--might give some indication.

Regardless, the Macedonian people were further united. Macedonia would go to Bulgaria, and there, be united with Pirin Macedonia as a heavily autonomous region of a fellow socialist state.

Summary

As the referendums ran their course, Yugoslavia shrank considerably, and its pride was bruised. Territories in Vojvodina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia had been annexed to her neighbors--and everyone knew it was the Soviets who had allowed this to occur. This bred a deep resentment to the Soviets and their “velvet occupation” of the country among hardline Serb nationalists, including both communists supporting Žujović and right-wingers lurking either in exile or in hiding.

Just as it bred resentment among the hardline Serbs, though, it engendered a great appreciation within the autonomists of the affected territories. It was hard to find an Albanian now--especially a Kosovar--who had anything ill to say about the Soviets. Likewise too for the Bulgarians of the transferred territories, and for the Hungarians of Subotica.

Still, for some in Yugoslavia, the partition was not all bad. Macedonia and Kosovo, now removed from the country, had been the two poorest and most backwater parts of Yugoslavia. With those countries removed from the union, government funds, largely collected from the rich territories of Slovenia and Croatia, that were once earmarked for economic development in those rural regions were now free to go elsewhere--to Serbia, perhaps, or to Montenegro or Bosnia. It also considerably expanded the demographic dominance of the Serbs in the country, who now constituted close to a majority--and indeed, were a majority if Montengrins were included, as the most ardent Serb nationalists would. Economic development and greater control of the state might, in time, prove a salve to the wounded pride of Serbs. Or it might not. Who can really say?