JUGOSLAVIA: HOW FREE? NOT A PRISON, BUT THE IDEOLOGY SACROSANCT

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 16

JUGOSLAVIA: HOW FREE? NOT A PRISON, BUT THE IDEOLOGY SACROSANCT

(By a correspondent of the “Guardian”) (Reprinted by arrangement)

Marshal Tito was given a huge reception in Prague because he personifies the idea of freedom within communism. Jugoslavia is the freest of the Communist countries; the first superficial impression of the casual visitor is only reinforced by greater knowledge.

It is moreover a freedom which is well-rooted; It would be almost impossible now to put the clock back. The apparatus of repression was severely curtailed after Rankovic’s fall in 1966 and today the growing professional and managerial class, the academics and the technocrats —many of them active members of the League of Communists—would rebel, and rebel successfully, against any attempt to reimpose totalitarian methods. The party, now known as the League of Communists, announced several years ago its intention gradually to assume a position of leadership rather than command, and in spite of a good deal of internal resistance, it is genuinely moving towards devolution of its power. But freedom is still circumscribed. It is fascinating to see where the boundaries lie and the tensions which arise in the process of enlarging them. The Jugoslavs are like men walking along a narrow dike between the sea and the polders, being slapped first on one side and then on the other to keep them in the straight way. The dangers on one side, of national chauvinism and separatism, going far back in the history of the Balkans, are real. Two alphabets, three languages, and four religions: if federation can be made to work here, it will work anywhere. Tito, Genuine Hero The dangers on the other side exist largely in the minds of the more rigid leaders, and the measures taken or threatened against them put a serious brake on Jugoslav development. Tito is beyond criticism, but he is a genuine national hero, and the outstanding political personage in Jugoslavia; since the student disturbances in June and his visit to Prague he has acquired a special aura. Certain aspects of the ideology, however, are also sacrosanct: anyone who criticises the economic reforms or workers’ self-management, or discusses a multi-party system in anything but the most carefully abstract terms lets loose a chorus of well-orches-trated denunciations, pompous, self-righteous, and couched in wearisome ideological jargon and cliches: “anarcho petty-bourgeois Djilasism, bureaucratic Rankovicites, Stalinists,” etc. Serious economists, sociologists and philosophers of European standing, such as Branko Horvat, professor of economics at Belgrade University, the Zagreb philosophers who publish the controversial neo-Marxist journal, "Praxis,” and the Belgrade University

sociologists, must find this galling and time-wasting when they are trying to conduct an intelligent, constructive discussion. Nevertheless the discussions continue, the struggle is far from unequal, and if critics are sometimes expelled from the party—as Professor Gaja Petrovic, editor-in-chief of “Praxis,” has just been—this carries no punitive sanctions. Forbidden Subjects Foreign policy in its mainoutlines is also forbidden ground: non-alignment, the justice of the Arab cause in the June, 1967, war, American aggression in Vietnam, are not to be discussed. The astonishing thing is that so much excellent and original reporting appears; the Jugoslav news agency correspondent in Peking, until he was expelled last year, was the best-informed European newspaperman there, and some of the reporting from Prague during the last few months has been brilliant. Workers’ self-management is an interesting and original experiment in the management of industry. If it can be made to work, the theorists assert, it will be the answer to the problem of man’s alienation from his work. It is a utopian conception, and the reality, as it develops, will probably look rather different. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that it has no builtin conflict situation between managers and men, and it will be in the development of this feature that the experiment may have some interesting lessons to teach. Tito’s Dualism When strikes occur—and there are a good many—they act as alarm signals, and reaction is swift. Recently four strikes took place in Slovenia; two were in factories, one was of teachers, and the fourth of municipal health employees. All the strikers held street demonstrations. “Politika” analysed them

with detached interest, as a new phenomenon in Jugoslav life. In the last resort Tito usually comes down on the side of the liberalisers, but he has an old revolutionary's longing to be at peace with Moscow, and he can be got at by the hard-liners. It was his prestige and skill which finally overthrew Rankovic in 1966, after a bloodless but ferocious behind-the-scenes struggle, and blew a tremendous gust of fresh air into Jugoslav life. Yet shortly afterwards he was putting out warning signals against going too far and assuming that freedom included anything so unorthodox as a multi-party system. Last June, when the student disturbances all over Jugoslavia were only a symptom of a much wider unrest, and the internal situation was very fluid, Tito, now 76, gave the students his blessing and offered to resign if he could not meet their just demands; his gesture was met by a great wave of enthusiasm and affection. A Homeland One of the wisest measures the Jugoslav Government ever took was to open its borders to tourists coming in and emigrant labour going out, even the highly skilled and expensively trained. The tourists brought money, new standards of comparison, and the assurance that everybody loves Jugoslavs and their beautiful country; the emigrants export a part of Jugoslavia’s unemployment, but also give Jugoslavs the secure feeling that they are living in a homeland, not a prison. Many Jugoslav intellectuals have emigrated, but many more stay at home, struggling with the intractable problems, grumbling explosively, but getting on with the job, especially now that there is the sharp incentive of the economic reform. In this climate, there is every hope that the bounds will continue to widen and the restrictions ease.