Dushan Ludvig in Borba
Yugoslavia closes out the decade of the Sixties in a perplexed and searching frame of mind. Perplexed because the elaborate and ambitious economic reform undertaken in 1965 — the most recent of several experiments in charting a road between east and west — remains imprecise and uncertain. And searching, because there persists a greed for innovation among at least the “liberals” of Yugoslavia’s social managers.
The result is that Yugoslavia is in a visible state of flux, a period of social instability in which no Yugoslav convincingly speculates on what the immediate years will bring. The economic system, a bewildering mixture of public ownership, state regulation and private entrepreneurship, is in a tenuous moment of transition to market socialism. Old guard politicians, the World War II partisan alumni who came into Belgrade from the hills to establish a new order, reasonably resist the fission activated by “self-management” of factories and enterprises since their once commanding authority is threatened. And therefore, economic reform inevitably has cleaved the League of Communists and various bureaucratic satellites into segments. It also has recharged nationalism within Yugoslavia, a multinational state in which traditionally more advanced Croats and Slovenes have been and are wary of more backward, but also more numerous, Serbs.
The fact that the Yugoslav press voices these divisive issues (granting a certain garbling) is at once proof of their seriousness, and a claim to Yugoslavia’s ability to resolve them. But into this one must inject the personality of Josip Broz Tito, president both of the League of Communists and the republic. At 77, Tito shows the benefits of an active life, combined in past years with well-manicured surroundings and a robust enjoyment of hunting, travel and good company. In several recent private receptions (one, for example, for President Giuseppe Saragat of Italy; another, an intimate luncheon for the American Apollo 11 astronauts and their wives), Tito has displayed a leisurely demeanor. His face is full, his flesh firm, his step sure. Anecdotes and solid laughter spice his conversation. His public speeches, whether one is taken by the thoughts or not, are direct, mercifully lacking the verbosity that weighs talks of lesser Yugoslav politicians. Having commanded the Yugoslav state since 1945, Tito remains synonymous with it. Indeed, there exists a “cult of Tito,” a popular admiration or awe surrounding him; a prudent respect for his power that drives individual criticism of Tito into private and careful conversation and that puts him on the front pages almost every day; a deliberate glorification of Tito, which translates into ever-present photographs of him in offices, enterprises and shops.
Belgradels streets are cleared whenever President Tito, in Mercedes limousine surrounded by motorcycle police, and his retinue of officials travel through the city.
Perhaps the remarkable thing is that one does not see even more portraits, more statuary, publications and public displays of reverence given Tito’s quarter-century reign. It is not that Tito disdains homage. Like any politician of common blood who achieved more power than he may ever have imagined, Tito seems to have a latent faith in the nurturing capacity of the led for the leader. Like a Lyndon Johnson or a Nikita Khrushchev, he reaches out for close, personal contact with the common man—a touch of the hand, a grateful word, a confirmation in the eye of the humble that Tito is still their man. Nothing better illustrates Tito’s taste for this sort of precinct-level politicking than his visit to Banja Luka two days after the town was shaken and shattered by earthquakes. Flying from Belgrade by helicopter, Tito had his pilot bypass the formal reception committee of city officials and land instead amidst a cluster of Banja Luka refugees. After hugs and handshakes (the press reported in glowing tones), he heard out the despair of the people. Then, without any escort or security precautions, Tito walked to the center of Banja Luka, surveying the rubble and startling uncounted townspeople. The man of the hour and, one suspects, relishing the role.
There is, to be sure, another Tito. This is the one who speeds in a large, closed, black Mercedes limousine from his guarded suburban residence through Belgrade with heavy police escort. Militiamen stationed along the route entirely clear main streets minutes before Tito whisks through them in regal solitude. The result, of course, are periodic traffic jams that take police half an hour or more to untangle, and an unappreciated inconvenience to thousands of those same magical people. A trivial and common display of privilege for the powerful, one may say. But the paradox of the homey and aloof Tito operates at other levels not so mundane.
“Titoism” has its own mystique in the west, where it has been elaborated during the Soviet-American Cold War into a daring adventure away from the Stalinist political model. It is true that Tito has carved a niche for himself in European history with his resistance to Soviet hegemony. But it is surely an error to believe therefore that Tito abandoned the socialist cause. Most of his adult years were spent as a young Marxist agitator, then as an official of the incipient Yugoslav Communist Party and, before World War II, as Moscow’s resident Balkan specialist for the Comintern. The later gaping fissure between Tito and Stalin began forming during the war. But the same hardness and purposefulness in Tito that led to the break with Stalin produced a richly totalitarian society in Yugoslavia. The full, clinical description of political purging here circa 1948 has yet to be revealed. In any case, the police state and enforced construction of a socialist society were stark realities. Though the political liberties that exist in Yugoslavia today may be surprising to anyone familiar with Soviet society, Tito harbors a strong authoritarian streak. He has little but scorn for “so-called intellectuals” who, he said recently, are “venturing to insult and sully openly—before all our peoples, by their foul language—the victims of our war, and trying to discredit us before the whole world. There can be no place for such people and for their behavior in our community.”
A roadside portrait of Tito in earlier years and a proclamation of Yugoslav-Italian friendship.
Nor is there any doubt that while Tito has been permissive of public criticism, he is convinced that the League of Communists remains the prime source of national leadership. The present course of events may eventually dictate otherwise, but one cannot imagine from Tito’s speeches that he would voluntarily permit the League to fade into history as an anachronistic debating club. His instincts, his career, his intellectual make-up dicate a belief in a society more regimen-led than spontaneous.
That he now encourages democratization speaks less for Tito’s innate compulsions than for his shrewdness and flexibility as a politician. As one Yugoslav not overly fond of the regime admitted, Tito had the sense and courage to realize that in adopting the Soviet model after the war, he was losing popular support. The control lever of the secret police—the UDBA—was pressed often enough even after 1948. But if there is any single argument for Tito’s successful manipulation of Yugoslavia, it is the fact that the country has open borders. Not only do Yugoslavs move easily across the frontiers, but approximately 400,000 Yugoslavs live and work in western Europe, predominately West Germany. That most of them return home, and that it is largely an indifferent event if some do not, testifies to a general acceptance of Titoism by the population at large. Unquestionably, there is grumbling over bread and butter matters; there is authentic concern about political repression; there are guarded whispers for fear that the police are eavesdropping. But these expressions of discontent and anxiety are not so intense that the Tito Establishment cannot keep the borders open. For the intelligentsia, who most of all feel instrusions of the state on their lives in contemporary Yugoslavia, the open frontiers are solace. They also counter assertions on the authoritarian nature of the Tito government. “Yugoslavia—Love It or Leave It” could be the slogan of superpatriots here, too.
At left, a reproduction of a woodcut by Belgrade artist A. J. Cibe
Such bald alternatives are, however, rarely realistic ones. Not for the bulk of Yugoslavia’s 20 million. The factory worker now getting a glimmer of power in the “self-management” experiment; the white collar office employee trying to outpace inflation; the peasant farmer entrenched in his fortress of a dozen or two acres of private land—to these, Tito and the political hierarchy may represent uncontestable power, but they also have kept the peace and produced goods and services in ever increasing quantities. Indeed, Milovan Djilas’ “new class” is a living creature, shielded in the villas, chauffered in the inescapable black Mercedes. Egalitarianism is not much of a public virtue. But there is also an array of consumer goods in Belgrade, and northern cities like Zagreb and Ljubljana that is the envy of Russians, Bulgarians and Hungarians, among others who vacation in Yugoslavia. That is, there is much wrong, but also much redeeming to a Yugoslav old enough to recollect the privations during and right after the war. Tito, of course, plays on the peace and prosperity theme when he sardonically challenges the “so-called intellectuals” to mix with the masses, and when he appeals for popular unity to forge ahead.
Certainly, a pivotal issue now is nationalism. For a foreigner to pretend comprehension of Yuloslavia’s nationalities problem in more than analytical terms seems the wildest conceit. It is like the white man trying to know what it is to be black. What after all does it feel like to be a Croat, given a history in the Austro-Hungarian empire, a Catholic orientation, an ingrained suspicion that the Serbs will exercise a numerical superiority? What is it to be a Serb, aware of a cultural and economic backwardness, but also of an inbred ferocity that threw off the Turks and, in good measure, the Germans?
If a foreigner lacks a knowledge of the nationalist emotions here, he can nonetheless understand the problem. Where strong central command once suppressed nationalism and forged a Yugoslav unity, the economic reform is encouraging the reverse. Central authority over the economy has been loosened. The industries and their managers have taken refuge in the six republics. A regionalism has been refueled. Ethnic differences proceed along cultural and economic lines as well. The Croats and Slovenes bitterly com-plain, for example, about the shift of their resources to advance more backward regions of Serbia or Montenegro. National leaders argue, reasonably enough, that the country must develop as a whole. But they, too, are sensitive to undercurrent hostilities. Thus, Mitja Ribicic, Yugoslav premier, warned during a late October visit to the depressed republic of Montenegro that the Yugoslav economy should not be adjusted to primarily benefit underdeveloped areas. These are comforting words for the relatively prosperous northern republics that in the past felt exploited by programs to raise up the south. At the same time, attempting to balance conflicting interests, federal planners expect to allot a fifth of the 1970 budget for subsidies to backward regions.
Touching on another facet of the nationalities issue, Vukasin Stambolic, a member of the Serbian republic League of Communists apparatus, made a frontal attack on Serbian chauvinism. “Bureaucratic and technocratic forces in our country,” he said, “take this word lone (country) to imply only one (federal) assembly, only one government, one center of decision-making … This word ‘lone’ means an identification with Yugoslavia as a Serbian state achievement…It means restoration of the old slogan, ‘Nothing can be done without Serbia, she is the backbone.” Stambolic’s criticisms of surviving Serbian nationalism do less to dispell it than to focus on reality. In the same vein, the central committee of the Slovenian republic League of Communists ended its eighth plenum with a document that concluded in part:
“In Slovenia, too, nationalism is becoming a mainstay for those forces which only formally accept self-management… Various technocratic, etatist and other forces are trying to stage nationalist demonstrations in order to deny the role of the working class, while centralist, etatist, unitarianist and hegemonic forces are trying to deny the role of the republics…”
Put in less cumbersome terms, the battle is between advocates of local autonomy and champions of central authority. The former are riding the crest now because the economic reform gives priority to local management, but it is easy to see that decentralization can be a vehicle for nationalism. And while “centralist” forces can too readily be equated with Stalinist methods of rule and with Serbian domination of the country, there is obvious justification for federal controls over the republics. For the essential problem is how to maintain a Yugoslav nation while treading gently through nationalist feelings. It may, for example, be highly rational to have a single language in Yugoslavia, in place of several major ones, But when NIN, a Belgrade weekly paper for the serious reader, ran a public opinion survey on “The Yugoslav—Who Is He?” the newspaper was pounced on savagely for fostering nationalism, not least because a high school boy innocently suggested that there should be but one Yugoslav language (read “Serbian,” suspected non-Serbians). For the moment, Tito contains separatist tendencies. At least, this is what some educated Yugoslavs believe. But the economic reform encourages these tendencies and there is fear that the central federal machinery will have to be strengthened, that the Communist party apparatus will have cause to reassert itself and that there will be a backsliding in economic reform.
At right, the Politika Publishing House where Politika, NIN and several other lg-777e newspapers have editorial offices.
Politically, Tito voices the most optimistic hopes for democracy in Yugoslavia. He continues to talk, in line with the ninth congress of the League of Communists last March, of an advisory, vanguard role for the party, and authentic representative government and self-management for the rank and file. Just how the party bureaucracy can jettison its day-to-day management of the country without becoming superfluous remains a quandary. An organization that does not exercise power soon loses it. There are more than one million party members (1,146,084 last March, to be exact) who comprise nearly 10% of Yugoslavia’s adult population. Not all by far of this number are active party workers. But party membership remains a pass card to success and privilege. The party apparatus continues to propose and the federal assembly—the parliament—generally continues to dispose. Tito and other ranking politicians dismiss fringe proposals for a multiparty system. The Socialist Alliance, ostensibly a coalition of all political interests and lobbies in Yugoslavia, casts a pallid shadow on national policies.
Yet, in the political sphere, too, the economic reform is eroding old forms of social management. A technocratic elite, composed of industrialists, scientists and economists—the familiar and essential partners of the development process—presents a shadowy power center. To the technocracy, ideology is more often disposable baggage than a compass for the future. Political intrusions in industrial production are more often resented than welcomed.
In these circumstances, the party is searching for a new role. Tito regularly enjoins League of Communists members to take a more active part in society. The League’s ranks are gradually being infiltrated with better educated people, to balance off the older and generally more conservative members who fought as Partisans. An influx of young people into the League before party elections later this year and early next will increase the share of members under 27 years old from 11% to nearly 25%. The effect of these events on the League’s mentality and practices will take time to measure. It would be premature to say that the League has reformed itself into an enlightened national comri-lission for the moral guidance of society which is what Tito’s prescription seems to read.
If internal politics remain an often dreary and fruitless exercise in speculation, it is becau-se of Tito’s dominance. The best analysis available here argues that after the ouster three years ago of Alexander Rankovic, head of the secret police and once considered Tito’s successor, Tito diffused political power. If one asks informed Yugoslavs today who might follow Tito, one does not even get convincing guesses. The absence of a visible national leader other than Tito leads some to believe that a collective leadership, representing the various republics’ political interests, will eventually replace him.
Yugoslavia’s foreign politics are equally dominated by the personality of Tito. He is a believer in personal diplomacy, it is clear from frequent travels abroad. And he has shown skill and talent as a statesman in cultivating a “nonaligned” bloc. For most of the postwar period, Tito has kept Yugoslavia free of overbearing influence by one or the other superpower, the Soviet Union or the United States. Simultaneously, the country has benefited economically from both. It is thus difficult to find a Yugoslav who is critical of Tito’s general foreign policy, although specific events (for example, Yugoslavia’s condemnation of Israel after the June, 1967 war) arouse private opposition.
From Student
The middle road between east and west expresses Yugoslav circumstances. The Slovenes and Croats in the north are considerably oriented toward western Europe because of their history, while the Serbs retain a Slavic affinity toward the Russians. “At least before Czechoslovakia,” one Serb said, “there was no question that in a European war we would have fought with the Russians.” It is an inexplicable loyalty in some ways. The Russians have done little for the Serbs, far less than for the Bulgarians, for instance, who remain almost willingly subservient to Moscow (and therefore the butt of many jokes). And there is sufficient anti-Russian feeling that after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union was subjected to an enthusiastic outpouring of vilification.
Yet, despite the 1948 rupture with Moscow and successive years of polemics (mixed, however, with periods of public good will), Yugoslavia has closer ties with Russian than the gyrations of foreign policy might indicate. The Yugoslav military is believed by many to harbor pro-Soviet sentiments; the surviving conservatives in the political and police organizations are natural allies. And one is told of sort of an underground of people, those who continued to sympathize with the Russians even after the Cominform—or the Informburo, as itis better known here—expelled Yugoslavia in 1948.
By the same token, there is less authentic liking for the United States than some current official statements would suggest. Of course, geography explains much. To Yugoslavia, the United States may have been a generous supplier of economic and military aid (nearly $3 billion worth) during the tenuous 1950’s. But Russia lies just a few hundred miles to the east. And could any Yugoslav believe, after Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, that the United States would rescue a Yugoslavia besieged by the Soviet Union? Moreover, there is an ideological content to Yugoslavia’s foreign policy. This nation counts itself in the socialist ranks, whatever one may say of its variety of socialism. That Yugoslavia’s major trading partners are Italy, West Germany and the Soviet Union, in that order, speaks more for flexibility and pragmatism than for political attitudes.
The balancing of Yugoslavia between east and west has been demonstrated this fall. Tito has welcomed both American and Soviet emissaries. He responded in early September to Moscow’s conciliatory overture in the form of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The Soviet interest was in modifying Yugoslavia’s strident criticism of the Czechoslovak occupation. The results of the Gromyko-Tito talks were apparent in two recent speeches by Tito. Referring to Gromyko’s visit, Tito said, on October 11, that “We reached the common view that it is necessary for us to supersede the differences of the recent past, to look toward the future and to cultivate what is common to us and in the interests of both states.” This translated into noticeably less criticism of the Soviet Union in the Yugoslav press and a show trial of a Yugoslav editor who unluckily denounced Soviet militarism in Czechoslovakia just two days before Gromyko arrived in Belgrade. The official attitude seems to be that Czechoslovakia is history and that no benefits can derive from continued polemics with the Soviet Union—an attitude, emphasized one senior Yugoslav diplomat, not unlike American policy.
Meanwhile, Yugoslavia also is receptive to the United States. Partly, the same diplomat explained, this is because both governments have consistently maintained good lines of communications, even as the Vietnam war progressed. And partly the pro-west element of Yugoslav policy is explained by the attack of the Soviet Union on Czechoslovakia which demonstrated that Russia is prone to violent means in the pursuit of her imperialist aims. Thus, this past year has witnessed a reassessment in Belgrade of Yugoslavia’s position in east-west politics. The result has been a course correction to the west. President Richard Nixon’s scientific adviser, Lee A. DuBridge, spent a cordial few days here in September. And in late October, the Apollo 11 astronauts were cheered by tens of thousands of Yugoslavs in Belgrade. A more concrete instance of closer ties with the west was the creation of an International Corporation for Investment in Yugoslavia, a coalition of 10 Yugoslav and 40 foreign banks (including Chase Manhattan) that will supply an initial $12 million for investment here. This follows a decision two years ago by the Yugoslav government to encourage foreign capital investment in domestic industry and represents, according to both American and Yugoslav officials here, an act of faith in the Yugoslav economy. It also says much about the ideological climate in this socialist state. In none other has the political hierarchy invited the capitalist world to help and share in the development of a Communist society.
Milan Gambelic in Student
Perhaps the main dilemma of Yugoslavials foreign policy is that economically the country is pulled and prodded toward the advanced western nations, while ideologically it is drawn to the Communist states. Tito’s diplomatic skill rests in the fact that he has allowed both tendencies without letting one gain decisive influence. It is not a bad record for a small country in this part of the world. Other nations, less shrewdly managed, have not enjoyed the independence that Yugoslavia has. For a poor country, as for a poor man, independence is a special luxury.
© 1969 Mark W. Hopkins
Photographs by MH
Received in New York on November 18, 1969.
Mark W. Hopkins is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on ldave from The Milwaukee Journal. This article may be published with credit to Mr. Hopkins, The Milwaukee Journal, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
