The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, known simply as the SANU Memorandum (), 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.
Overview
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 the fact 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 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 status of Serbs in the province of Kosovo and in Croatia in such a way to make its point. The memo argued that because the provincial authorities in both Kosovo and Vojvodina could deal directly with the federal 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 its Serb minority, which in turn had been caused by 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 on the economy, Mihailo Marković on self-management, and Vasilije Krestić on the status of the Serbs of Croatia.