Currents of History 3/2018

Petar Dragišić
Institute of Modern Serbian History
petar.dragisic@gmail.com

Operation Phoenix in Yugoslavia in the Summer of 1972 and Yugoslav-Austrian Relations^[1]∗

Summary

In the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, Socialist Yugoslavia was faced with many challenges. The failure of its economic reform, the 1968 student rebellion, and the strengthening of centrifugal tendencies in Yugoslav society, were all factors that shook the very foundations of Yugoslav society, revealing the serious weaknesses of the Yugoslav federation. The Yugoslav crisis was further exacerbated by the anti-Yugoslav activities of emigrant extremist groups, of which the worst was the Croatian political emigration and its most radical organization, the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (CRB). According to available Yugoslav and foreign sources, this organization started conducting a mini war against Yugoslavia as far back as the 1960s. Its modus operandi included, first of all, attempts to make illegal incursions into Yugoslavia in order to conduct subversive activities and carry out attacks on Yugoslav diplomatic missions abroad.

The incursion of the CRB task force into Yugoslav territory in the summer of 1972 was the most serious and dangerous operation ever launched by any extremist Croatian political emigrant organization against Yugoslavia and its government. The scale of this operation unnerved the Yugoslav Government, which, in the summer of 1972, encountered considerable difficulties in dealing with this group of 19 infiltrated armed Croatian emigrants. The annihilation of this group in Western Bosnia, however, did not mark the end of the Phoenix affair. In the weeks and months that followed, the authorities in Yugoslavia analyzed this operation launched by the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood and its background, seeking to find any possible foreign encouragement for the infiltration of the 19 terrorists into Yugoslavia, thus elevating the Phoenix affair to a higher, diplomatic level.

Since the Yugoslav Government suspected that the CRB operation had been backed by certain circles in the West, Belgrade issued a series of diplomatic protests to countries that harbored large communities of Croatian political emigrants. The Yugoslav protests were also sent to Austria, from whose territory the CRB group had penetrated into Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav authorities, in contact with Austrian officials, repeatedly criticized Vienna's attitude toward its extreme Croatian migrant community, demanding Austria's more vigorous measures in disabling the activities of radical anti-Yugoslav emigrants. This topic was also on the agenda of two meetings between Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Austrian President Franz Jonas, conducted in Yugoslavia in September of 1972. The CRB operation in Yugoslavia would thus further jeopardize relations between Yugoslavia and Austria, which were already shaken by the dispute between the two countries over the status of the Slovenian minority in Austria.