The Tito legacy

...It is not uninteresting that a number of major academic figures in Yugoslav life, even in the social sciences, are not only not members of the League but explicitly do not consider themselves Marxists...

...Among the non-party masses on the other hand, the break with the Soviets vastly increased the popularity of the party and the regime...

...There is no prior censorship...

...There were roots of the Tito-Stalin break even during the war itself...

...On the other hand, given the absence of the directives and discipline of a central plan, the introduction of market criteria was indispensable to provide minimum efficiency and cost accounting for the economy...

...And here, the uniqueness of the model has a broader relevance than is often grasped by Western analysts...

...In all these areas the party is indeed present as a major factor, but it is by no means the only presence...

...It carried out nationalization and the outlawing of other parties earlier...

...That Tito, a former Comintern functionary, presided over such a drastic reversal of the Soviet experience and canon, is but one indication of his extraordinary flexibility and freedom from dogma when faced with real problems...

...and it would base that collective leadership not on the centralized bureaucracy of a Soviet or Chinese pattern, but on the genuine power centers of present Yugoslav society, i.e., the leaderships of the various republics and institutions in Yugoslavia...

...This contribution of the Yugoslav party leadership, presided over by Tito, not only has become a beacon for most of the reformers in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but has within it serious lessons for the socialist and labor parties of Western Europe...

...The Russians chided their Yugoslav comrades in 1942 with excess zeal, the creation of proletarian brigades, and the wearing of the red stars, rather BOGDAN DENITCH, executive officer (chair) of the Ph.D...

...In rapidly consolidating their power, the Partisans were aided by the ambiguous role of the churches during the German occupation and the civil war...

...it would legitimate an orderly collective leadership...

...His vast prestige has been systematically directed against the assertions by either the federal bureaucracy or by any individual ethnic group of a role which would make the confederation impossible...

...The third major contribution of Tito, and one more intimately associated with him personally than the other specific characteristics of the Yugoslav model, was the development of the policy of non-alignment...

...144 alignment represents the resistance of the weaker independent states, primarily in the Third World, to their integration into the alliances of the two superpowers...

...By appearing, not only as the victors of a civil war and harbingers of a new social order, but as the major force, if not the only force, which had consistently fought against the enemy invader, this Communist party was able to harness both the forces of social reform and the forces of nationalism on its behalf...

...Unlike its East European sisters, the party (and Tito) became, in the eyes of nonand anti-Communist Yugoslavs, the defender of national independence rather than the instrumentality of Soviet rule THIS ROLE of Tito helped legitimate the party' s rule and gave it a broader base of power, enabling it to begin the drastic set of experiments that have produced present Yugoslav society...

...Here again...

...as a consequence, many of the party cadres were badly disoriented...

...As an example, neither the Flemish-Walloon dispute in Belgium nor the French-English dispute in Canada would be conceivable within the Yugoslav system since the component nationalities of Yugoslavia have more rights already than the demands of the national groups in the multi-ethnic Western states...

...That Yugoslavia, a weak, relatively underdeveloped European country, has been able to play such a role in international politics is no mean tribute to Tito's role as a statesman...

...It suggests a real possibility that a sociallyowned economy need not become the bureaucratic nightmare of Eastern Europe or the centralized, inefficient creature of technocratic elites in Western Europe...

...Insofar as there is pressure in Yugoslavia today against potentially dissident currents within the League, the pressure will be against those seen as soft on the Soviets, or those seeking to assert a tougher and more centralized policy internally...

...His successors will undoubtedly continue the policy but, in all probability, will tend to focus more on relations with their European neighbors and will play a less significant global role...

...It is ironic, therefore, to see that present Yugoslavia, in good part through the efforts of Tito himself and his Communist cadres, has developed into what is the most open and permissive of regimes ruled by a Communist party, one in which religious toleration is the norm, and the decentralization of political and economic power has gone further not only than in any other Communist regime but probably further than in many of the West European polities...

...A number of Franciscans fought arms in hand against the Partisans and participated in massacres in Central Bosnia...

...THE second innovation of the Tito regime was the gradual devolution of the party, now the League of Communists, from the complete, ever-present, sole actor on the political and social scene, to the role of a dominant partner in a complex set of institutions which have genuine independence and play an autonomous role in decision-making...

...Yugoslavia has probably gone further in constructing the framework for a multi-ethnic society than any other existing state...

...These innovations were tightly linked...

...Unlike the Polish Catholic church, which had played a heroic role in resisting the Germans, the Yugoslav Catholic church collaborated extensively with the Axis puppet regime and its massacres in Croatia...

...One of the worst extermination camps in Yugoslavia, Jasenovac, was run by a former ordained priest who presided over the massacre of several hundred thousand Yugoslavs, mostly Orthodox and Jews...

...It is now no longer possible to talk about the possibility of self-management and decentralization without coming to terms with the Yugoslav experience...

...His biography is archetypical for a functionary of the Communist International...

...Commonweal: 146...

...It took a good fifteen years for this system to take its present form, but it is now generally agreed that the Yugoslav economy is not only more flexible and dynamic than its East European counterparts but has allowed a vast increase in the participation in government by workers and managers in the individual enterprises...

...than the creation of a broad popular front dominated by the party—this zeal might provoke trouble with the Western allies...

...Nonetheless, in a number of areas—the economy itself, the trade unions, the educational system, and the arenas of intellectual discourse—a considerable autonomy has developed...

...What makes it likely that Tito's successors will maintain that collective leadership is that almost without exception they hold autonomous power earned in their respective spheres rather than wielding their power in different arenas by virtue of being part of a party center...

...The fourth, and perhaps most significant, contribution of Tito to the stability and future of a nonaligned Yugoslavia lies precisely in the arrangements for a post-Tito succession...

...The non-aligned movement is neither ideologically nor politically consistent, including as it does a vast range and variety of regimes, but it has the enormous advantage of frustrating the attempts of the superpowers to divide the world into classic spheres of influence...

...As such, it becomes simultaneously a restraint upon the Soviet Union and the United States and a framework within which the smaller, mostly newly-independent nation-states can assert their right to become subjects rather than objects in international politics...

...The Tito legacy BOGDAN DENITCH I S EACH SUCCESSIVE report emphasized the failing state of Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito, the world's attention turned again to the conflicts and changes within the international Communist movement...

...When Tito's Partisans marched into Belgrade in September 1944, the pre-war parties and elites were shattered, demoralized, and in good part discredited by open or covert collaboration With the enemy occupiers...

...Unlike Mao and Stalin, Tito initiated during his own lifetime a prolonged and systematic debate for the setting up of a succession mechanism which would have three major characteristics: it would guarantee that there would never be another Tito...

...Many thought that the break was based on a misunderstanding—the first party congress after the break ended with cheers for both Tito and Stalin...

...Tito had also played a central role in another transformation—Yugoslavia's unique experiment in the devolution of a totalitarian state and centrally-planned economy into a much more loosely controlled, decentralized, and pluralist society...

...The regime which emerged was harder and more orthodox than the other East European regimes...

...I talked to several seasoned observers of Communist affairs who were astonished at the degree of legality within the Yugoslav system compared to that of the Soviet bloc...

...Moscow probably also feared that the Yugoslav Partisans might suffer the same fate as the Greek Communist Partisans, who found themselves unceremoniously ejected from Athens by British* troops allied with former Axis collaborators at the same time that Tito's forces were consolidating state power in Yugoslavia and eliminating the last vestiges of armed nationalist opposition...

...It found itself in a direct conflict with the Western allies over Trieste and its Western frontiers, and even got into armed incidents with the Americans over violations of Yugoslav air space...

...The first and most critical of the Yugoslav innovations in Communist practice consisted in decentralizing the economy...

...However, it was far from a misunderstanding, and over a hundred thousand mem14 March 1980: 143 bers of the party ended up being purged or jailed for either siding with the Soviets or making insufficiently clear the fact that they were not doing so...

...the trial of Cardinal Stepinac outraged Western opinion, but it hardly shook the new regime...

...All this is the more remarkable given the impeccable orthodoxy of Tito's credentials in the world Communist movement up to World War II...

...Tito has played a major, if not central, role in the development of the notion of a Yugoslav commonwealth, created of equal national groups...

...program in sociology at City University of New York, has just returned from a year in Italy and Yugoslavia...

...In his frequently critical book The Yugoslavs, Dusko Doder compared Yugoslav and Soviet courts:' 'The atmosphere was entirely different...

...There are five languages used in the Parliament, the various national republics have become the national homes of their respective peoples, and the Yugoslav treatment of the large Hungarian and Albanian minorities stands as a continual reproach to the practices of both Eastern and Western European states...

...But unlike his many counterparts who worked for the International and have run their parties under its imprimatur, Tito led a battlehardened party that emerged out of a civil war and resistance against the Axis occupiers to take power primarily through its own efforts...

...The combination of revolutionary elan with national patriotism and such a party's self-assurance all but guaranteed a break between the Soviets and the one regime in Eastern Europe not totally beholden to them...

...Direct political opposition can land one in trouble, and civil liberties are sometimes violated...

...Make no mistake: Yugoslavia remains a one-party state...

...Another strand of decentralization is represented by the unprecedented evolution of genuine autonomy and power for the republics and provinces...

...In the Soviet Union] a timorous defense counsel appeared to be a part of the prosecuting team...

...As a consequence, the church's ability to counterpose itself to the new regime was seriously weakened...

...The partyLeague thus has permitted the legalization of strikes, a vast range of journals in which sharp polemical debate rages, the importation of Western books and journals, and has helped develop the present norm of discourse which is polemical and confrontational...

...Tito had contributed massively to the practical dissolution of that movement, its transformation from a monolithic alliance centered on Moscow to a collection of regimes and parties ranging from faithful followers of Soviet orthodoxy to independent parties that regard the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to the socialism they seek to develop...

...The cumbersome bureaucratic central planning structures were dismantled and gradually replaced by a system of selfmanaged employee- and worker-controlled enterprises operating within a socialist market economy...

...It is idle to speculate on which of the personalities will have more individual, moral, or personal prestige within the collective bodies, but the general profile is clear: this is a leadership which, unlike Tito, has overwhelmingly developed in the period after the break with the Soviets and has been politically formed when the facts of Yugoslavian independence and its specific and separate variety of socialism were already firmly established...

...What the 14 March 1980: 145 Yugoslavs show is that it is possible to evolve from a totalitarian, centralized state-socialist model to one which, while retaining certain authoritarian characteristics, can move far towards increased participation and debate and towards devolving genuine power from the centralized party bureaucracy to elected bodies of citizens...

...In this respect, the legalization of strikes, the almost universal freedom of Yugoslavs to travel, both within the state and abroad, the form that the political debate takes, and the political culture which is emerging within the self-managed institutions are all more characteristic of an open society than of authoritarianism...

...By comparison there was a real struggle in the Yugoslav courts...

...Perhaps Tito's greatest contribution lies in charting a possible path for the development of centralized authoritarian states into societies that are socialist and increasingly democratic...

...In its simplest form, nonCommonweal...

...The new leadership will, if anything, be more independent vis-a-vis Moscow—and consequently will also have to keep a certain distance from Washington...

...To develop a system of self-management required giving the enterprises an autonomy in decisionmaking that was in total contradiction with detailed centralized planning...

...At the time of the break in 1948 between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav party was exemplary in its orthodoxy...

...Most bluntly stated, the Yugoslav economy is not run by party fiat or directives from the center but rather by a complex set of participatory bodies operating within the broad constraints of a market...

...This is a roundabout way of saying, perhaps, that post-Tito Yugoslavia will most likely be even more open and develop even further towards democratic norms than has been the case to date...