THE PRESS TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1980. The Tito achievements

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 24

THE PRESS TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1980. The Tito achievements

The death of President Tito would seem like the end of an era. It is nothing short of astonishing that the leader of a country that is not large by world standards, nor rich, nor powerful should have achieved a stature that his death raises fears among many people that the world will change. Will Yugoslavia collapse? Will the Soviet Union intervene in Yugoslavia in the way that it did in Afghanistan in December and in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1968 and 1956? Will that mean that all East European countries will have to conform more closely to the Moscow line? Have the non-aligned countries any way of standing up against the advances of the Soviet Union? All of these questions have arisen as the world has waited for the death of President Tito.

President Tito’s accomplishments lay in three main fields. He held Yugoslavia together in spite of all its language and regional differences. He broke away from Moscow and destroyed the idea of monolithic communism; the effect was eventually to make communism almost as varied in its forms as capitalism. He established the non-aligned movement, which achieved something of its aim of being a bridge between the super-Powers, and also enabled a number of countries to exist independently of the super-Powers. These achievements were not ' managed without some ruthlessness; nor can it be argued that he was always a patriot first and a Communist second; for a period he was Stalin’s strictest follower. “The Yugoslav brand of communism.” President Tito once said, “had its origin in the hills and forests and was not imported ready-made from Moscow.” By the time he said that he had conveniently forgotten just how. close he had been to Moscow. . President Tito was a Croat. He adopted communism when the Royal Government of Yugoslavia was trying to make a union out of the Triune Kingdom of Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes. Yet its concept seemed to be that of a greater Serbia. The young Tito looked to communism to provide

a unifying factor. During the Second World War he became renowned as a partisan leader. Three years after the war ended President Tito broke with Stalin and the next year — 1949 — the Soviet Union imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia. President Tito turned to the West for aid, all the time espousing communism. Yugoslavia struggled through to a far less doctrinaire version of communism. The new order carried its own dangers for Yugoslavia because less rigid control from the centre opened up the possibility that one of the regions would break away again. Never enthusiastic about the. idea, Moscow come in time to accept the divergence from the Soviet model of communism. Probably those in the Soviet Union who hanker after the days of Stalin and see the heresies of China blame their idol more for tolerating the upstart of the Balkans than for any other fault. President Tito organised the Belgrade Conference of 1961; it was the beginning of the non-aligned movement which has become a powerful force in world politics. In a splendid contradiction in terms, but with the style of Moscow, the non-aligned group in the United Nations is one of the least individualistic of any grouping. But will it all come an an end? The Soviet Union would find ideological and military trouble if it tried to invade Yugoslavia. The reins of power had passed from President Tito before he died. Measures have been taken to ensure that Yugoslavia would seem to speak with a unified voice. The Soviet Union would need a remarkable excuse to invade if it is to avoid the disaffection of its East European allies.. Even if it did invade Yugoslavia on some pretext, the Soviet Union would face one of Europe’s strongest armies with an ability to fight indefinitely from the mountains. The cost would probably be too great for Moscow. President Tito’s greatest accomplishment was that he has left his work intact. He began three new eras but his death has not brought any of them to an end.