Yugoslavia
A political analyst who often appears on Yugoslav television remarked recently that the greatest achievements of Yugoslav foreign policy since the war were not getting Albania, not getting Trieste, and being expelled from the Cominform.
This kind of appraisal, slightly ironic and self-deprecating, but acute, realistic, and above all, tough-minded, is characteristic of much of Yugoslav thinking. Translated into action, this sort of Realismus means that most intelligent Yugoslavs accept, often despite themselves, the overriding need for a kind of national unity — and as a corollary to that need, there has been an acceptance of the role, in earlier days, of the Communists and Tito, and now of Tito alone, as the foremost instrument for welding that unity.
It is first of all as a multinational state that Yugoslavia must be understood. There are the six republics: Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia — the dominant three; Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina — the poorer relations. Each feels itself an entity, historically, culturally, economically, in a way difficult to understand for any American not from Dixie. Add to this the complicating factors of three major religions, two alphabets, three (or four) languages besides the dominant Serbo-Croatian (the Serbs and Croats are periodically at one another’s throats over whether it is indeed one language or two), and seven borders to defend (more than any other country in Europe). There are also the differing consequences of the long AustroHungarian and Turkish dominations, the split between an agricultural southern backland and a more economically advanced north, the relationship of internationalist ideals to thorny indigenous problems, an uncertain position between the two superpowers, the struggle between the generations, and more.
Favourited areas
Consider briefly only the agrarianindustrial dilemma. Crossing from Austria to Yugoslavia into Slovenia, the richest republic, one is struck by how little mechanization is evident on the land — not a tractor in sight for hundreds of kilometers. Yet the north and its peasantry are certainly prosperous compared with the south. The northern industrial centers and the big cities are relatively favored by history and geography and might conceivably reach their economic takeoff points before too long. But what is the regime to do with the poor peasantry and the struggling cities in the rest of the country? To take support away from the favored areas might very likely slow down the economic growth of the country as a whole, yet it is humanly desirable (and politically very expedient) to come to the aid of the impoverished sections. A centuries-old peasant economy is becoming rapidly urbanized, with all the attendant problems of overcrowding, filth, housing, traffic, social adjustment.
What then is to be done, and is there the cash to do it with? What seems to be happening is an effort to do everything at once, within a context of limited resources and limited experience. So Yugoslav life today is replete with temporary expedients, ad hoc solutions, pragmatic methods. That is the explanation for the recent economic reforms, in the shape of well-publicized moves away from old-fashioned Marxist economics and toward decentralization. Profit and loss incentives are replacing government supports and subsidies, in order to weed out inefficiency and featherbedding. An expanding tourist trade to bring in needed foreign currency is emphasized, as is a free-market economy for the peasants.
A presence
Tito has made significant reforms in the political as well as the economic structure. Entrenched bureaucrats are rotated periodically; he has removed Aleksandar Rankovic, a hard-liner of the old school, and downgraded his secret police. The prestige even ot the League of Communists (which was a watereddown version of the earlier Party) has withered. All this loosening up, along with economic decentralization and reforms, has weakened the basis upon which much of the sem. blance of national unity was builtWhat remains is Tito.
Josip Broz Tito is a considerable figure, staring out of thousands of portraits in barbershops, banks, and fruit stores in his double-breasted ample suits and uniforms. Not Big Brother exactly, not the Leader, in quite that sense; more a presence, a figure on the order of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, out of a mythic past. Whether or not he is George Washington, Lenin, Father, Uncle all in one, or simply vain, shrewd, and tough, he has survived and endured, and brought his country with him.
Everyone, of course, is concerned about what will happen after his death. In the absence of any commanding figure (Kardelj of Slovenia was at one time a frequently mentioned possibility as successor), one plausible view is that a committee kind of leadership, on the Soviet model, may well emerge. The great irony is that the only other national figure of comparable charisma is probably Milovan Djilas. Hardly a Yugoslav is willing to say that Djilas has any chance at all to succeed to power or even to get back into public life. Djilas himself claims an interest only in his literary work. But stranger things are happening in Eastern Europe.
The question of power may finally be resolved by economics rather than ideology. If the dinar is strong, if the reforms work and the economy booms, then the struggle for power should not be too acute; in economic weakness, however, lies the ground for either disintegration or a strong hand, an alternative that the longsuffering Yugoslav people can do without.
Still watching
As for Mihajlo Mihajlov, the young university instructor currently in jail for publishing a book offensive to the Russians at a time when relations between the two countries were especially delicate, he is not taken seriously as a writer or thinker — at best a shadow of his idol Djilas. Hut his persecution has been a source of pain and embarrassment to all liberals. They think it is clearly ridiculous to keep him in jail.
But that no strongly organized expression of this sentiment has appeared is a black mark against the intellectual community. The most cynical view I heard in Yugoslavia was that this imprisonment has been the making of Mihajlov: he had had little academic future in Yugoslavia, but now, after his release, he will surely wind up with at least an assistant professorship somewhere in the United States. A tough-minded people.
This kind of offhandedness, or evasiveness, betrays a real uneasiness. Unquestionably, Mihajlov’s imprisonment forces every Yugoslav to consider the limits of his own literary, personal, and political freedom. Yugoslavia’s continuing theoretical and practical attacks upon the orthodox tenets of sovietized Marxism — at the present moment, there is a controversy among Yugoslav Communists about starting a two-party (albeit both “Socialist”) system — pose a problem for Russians as well as Yugoslavs. If Yugoslav successes materialize, they will represent a dangerous precedent to the restive and watchful Eastern countries (as recent events in Czechoslovakia show), let alone to their own intelligentsia. In certain circumstances it is useful to the Soviets to promote the latitudinarian notion of “many paths to socialism.” Yet it is clearly discomfiting to them to see that elastic clause stretched beyond their point of recognition, and influence. The Soviet outrage over Mihajlov’s book — which, after all, contained nothing startlingly new or threatening — may have been a diplomatic anger designed to force Tito into a public acknowledgment of Soviet weight, prestige, influence. Big Brother is still watching you.
All of this does not mean, as some traditional anti-Communists still argue, that Yugoslavia’s independence from Moscow is largely mythical. Conversely, many liberal critics of our Vietnam policy cite Yugoslavia as a quasi-neutralist ideal that could serve as a model for a new American policy in Southeast Asia. Despite the undeniable merits and attractions of this latter view, much about Yugoslavia suggests that the latter is sui generis. The Yugoslavs are independent, but they are also hemmed in by the realities of their history and geography. As nations must be to survive, they can be realistic — they know there is a Soviet air force in Hungary. But they also know there is a NATO force in Italy, and that Greece and Turkey are NATO allies. So they negotiate and maneuver among various alternatives, within limits, and in the old diplomatic tradition of pursuing what they regard as their own interests. The clinching argument about their ability to sustain a quasi-neutralist position is that they succeeded in doing just that, the hard way, against Stalin and Stalinism; there is no reason to suppose they will readily or for questionable ideological motives yield, in the present historical situation, the opportunity of independent action and thought to less iron-fisted types.
Rational and distant
In Yugoslavia last year there was a refreshing lack of cant in discussion of Vietnam. One would expect sympathy for the NLF to be especially strong in Yugoslavia, if only because of the comparisons to be made with the conditions of their own Partisan war. (Much is still made, and justly, of those incredible days upon which so much of the Yugoslav capacity for independence rests — although the young people have just about had that from the older generation. Topical joke: six men from the village went off to fight with the Partisans; four were killed; after the war eight returned.) A whopping demonstration was mounted by the students of Zagreb last fall against the American role in Vietnam. But after the demonstrators broke the consulate windows, the melee turned into a fight between the kids and the cops. There is a great deal of media coverage of the war, with documentary film from the NLF on television. Nevertheless, it is true that Vietnam is even further away from their concerns than it used to be from ours.
Almost all those I talked with were predictably opposed to America’s actions, although not one was vociferously so. There never was a sense of moral indignation. American intervention may have been opposed, but never because it was “wrong” — such words are naive in a country whose history has been nothing but betrayals, aggressions, power politics. Most frequently, the war was opposed because it was stupid. If it was wrong, it was because the action was not commensurate with America’s role as a great power. Did the United States really want a war with China? Our actions made no sense in any other terms, and on those terms were insane. The feeling was that America would move, or more accurately, perhaps, be moved, to take a saner position, one more beneficial to itself and to the world. Very rational — and very distant.
Tito and Nasser
The Middle East crisis was a different kettle of fish. Closer to home, the fears and emotions aroused by that conflict have not yet abated. Tito directed Yugoslavia’s foreign policy toward the most immediate and extreme pro-Arab and proNasser position of the Eastern and Communist countries’. In line with Yugoslavia’s policy of supporting third-force nations in order to give themselves more leverage in dealing with the two superpowers, Tito last year signed a friendship and trade pact with India and Egypt. Still the depth and sincerity of Tito’s commitment to Nasser after the war broke out did surprise some observers.
Unquestionably Yugoslav intellectuals—certainly the non-Communist ones (which means the bulk of them) — are more pro-Israel than is the official line. One of them told me, “It would be impossible for any thinking and feeling person who knows what was done to the Jews — as we do — to be unsympathetic to Israel.” There are only about 7500 Jews left in Yugoslavia, from a prewar total of about 80,000; the other 7500 who survived chose to go to Israel after the war. There is no overt or officially condoned antiSemitism in the country. There are Jews in high academic, political, and military positions. It seems to the intellectuals to be difficult to follow Tito’s anti-Israel line without sounding anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, chauvinistic. Such an unhealthy tone, I was told, was creeping into some of the local newspapers in Zagreb - the latter leaped gleefully into a denunciation of “Israeli aggression.” What upset thoughtful Yugoslavs was that this sentiment fed upon older Croatian nationalist, Catholic, right-wing sentiments still present in that area. An apparently safe political position — pro-Nasserism — may actually prove very sensitive domestically.
Ironic threat
More significant, as a result of the June, 1967, war, Yugoslavia’s basic security and latitude for maneuver may be more gravely compromised than they have been at any other time since 1948. Ironically, the source of the threat is not the one anticipated in some quarters when Israel defeated the Arabs, of an arrogant and triumphant American dominance in the Middle East, but rather the new and menacing presence of Soviet power in the Mediterranean. Tito’s advocacy of a strong anti-Israel position must have seemed at the time to satisfy a vestigial ideological need (to be for the “progressive” forces in the world) and to promise a strengthening of Yugoslav credit among neutralist and the ever suspicious Communist nations. So Tito the shrewd diplomatist may have allowed a strictly personal commitment to Nasser to carry him too far, blinding him to Mediterranean realities and his own country’s best interest.
Now for the first time, there could be Soviet submarines in the Adriatic, a prospect as displeasing to Yugoslavia, one can be sure, as to Italy and us. Is it an accident that Bulgaria chooses this moment to renew its claims upon Macedonia, or that the Soviet Union snubs Yugoslavia at the Budapest conference? The rumblings in Czechoslovakia and Poland arc loud. Once more the chess game of Balkan and Eastern European politics intensifies.
— Jules Chametzky
REPORT CONTRIBUTORS
Ward S. Just, a previous contributor. is covering the campaign for the Washington POST.Philip D. Carter is a Washington-based correspondent for NEWSWEEK. Jules Chamelzky teaches English at the University of Massachusetts and edits the MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW; he has recently been in Yugoslavia.