Review article

Yugoslav People's Army: Key Features

Davor Marijan

Abstract

The paper describes the key features of YPA: its position within the overall framework of SFRY armed forces; its development from within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and its position as a militarized fraction of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia; its organizational framework; the diversity of its military hardware given its peculiar combination of East and West weaponry; the military education and training system; the importance of military-industrial sector as the push factor for research and development; its recruiting model; its lines of command (with special reference to the relations towards Tito); the main characteristics of Federal Ministry of People's Defence; unrepresentative national/ethnic structure of its professional cadre, that continued to persist in spite the demands for national/ ethnic representativeness declared as the important goal, stated within the 1974 Federal Constitution. The second part of the article gives the review of the organizational restructuring plan codenamed "Unity" that has been implemented without the regards for the Federal Constitution. Achieving the new organizational framework, YPA sided with Serbia and took part in war from 1990 to 1992.

Keywords

Yugoslav People's Army; "Unity" organizational restructuring; SFRY breakdown

Hrčak ID:

17159

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/17159

Publication date:

30.6.2006.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 13.680 *