Tremors in Belgrade

...The Yugoslavs watched these proceedings closely and a few days later dispatched Dusan Dragosavac, a high-ranking party official, to Bucharest to be briefed on the Gromyko-Ceausescu talks...

...An alternative version, the "pessimistic version," would look back on the Tito era as a promising experiment which the Soviets had, at all costs, to abort...

...our complete unity, readiness, and the determination of all members of the army to defend, together with all our nations and nationalities, unshakably and resolutely, the inheritance of our revolution, our freedom, and the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia...

...14 March 1980: 147...

...At the nerve center of this phenomenon is the scuttling of the Brezhnev Doctrine of 1968 with its implication of restraint outside the confines of the Soviet camp...

...Brezhnev was more than forthcoming but vague, and the Yugoslavs retained the lingering uncertainty that has haunted them since the dark days in Prague in August 1968 when, concerned that the Soviets might not stop at the Czech borders, the Yugoslavs ordered a full mobilization...

...For Belgrade, the worst nightmare of all is of having to face the Russians alone while an irresolute world looks on...

...Second, the invasion has driven home the impotence of the nonaligned movement—one of the supposed pillars of stability on which post-Tito Yugoslavia might rest...

...The Soviets' prior three armed interventions—East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968—were all compatible with a 'status quo' interpretation of the Brezhnev Doctrine...

...It seemed plausible that the Doctrine was intended to apply only to states which had aligned themselves with the Kremlin...

...sion from the Cominform in 1948, were put on guard by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia...

...In the midst of fulminations against the Soviet Union, they tossed out token denunciations of the U.S...

...In essence, the doctrine could be viewed and in fact was generally viewed in the West as a kind of self-limiting precept...

...Until now the Soviets have never, in the postwar period, invaded any non-Warsaw Pact state...

...Therefore—it followed— Yugoslavia was exempt from the Brezhnev Doctrine...

...Yugoslavia was non-aligned...

...Current Yugoslav saying There are two possible "future histories" of postwar Yugoslavia, such as might be written ten or twenty years from now...

...The first, which might be called the "optimistic version," would describe Yugoslavia's development of self-management and its creative role in the nonaligned movement as setting the multi-ethnic society of twenty-two million inhabitants on an independent course through which it developed certain original approaches to a number of universal problems (such as ethnic heterogeneity in a federal state, regional economic disparity, and the participation of the general public in political decision-making...

...By contrast, the Italian and Spanish CPs firmly condemned the Soviet aggression and underscored the need to resuscitate detente...

...The Yugoslavs, however, refused to allow themselves to be dislodged from their nonaligned perch of concern to all nations...

...It is this fact that gave it such an ominous hue for Belgrade...

...The Yugoslavs, wary of the Russians ever since their expulPEDRO RAMET is a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs currently doing research on Yugoslavia at the University of Belgrade as a Fulbright fellow...

...Nikola Ljubicic, Yugoslavia's Minister of Defense, had warned that' 'our country will never accept defeat and will never recognize any occupation...

...Even before the invasion was launched, but after the Soviets had repaired the runways at Kabul airport and completed other key preparations, Gen...

...That Yugoslavia continues to enjoy tacit protection under the NATO umbrella is generally recognized, but while Yugoslavia wants and needs tacit NATO protection, it cannot afford overt NATO protection—which would compromise Belgrade's nonaligned posture and conceivably serve as a pretext for Soviet interference...

...In the gathering crisis, Borba reported a record influx of applications to join the Yugoslav League of Communists...

...introduction of new, medium-range missiles in NATO, and, after Time magazine published a report claiming that Tito had sought a guarantee of American military assistance in the event of a Soviet attack, huffily denied the report, demanding its official repudiation from the American side...

...In a highly critical article in Pravda, the Soviets singled out Yugoslavia for attack as being among those "who have supported the American standpoint and attacked the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union...

...While Miljan Komatina, Yugoslavia's permanent UN ambassador, denounced the Soviet action before the General Assembly on January 14, Ignat Golob, Yugoslavia's Deputy Foreign Minister, paid an urgent visit to Bucharest to discuss Commonweal: 146 the heightened tension produced by the Afghan situation, meeting with Stefan Andrei, the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs...

...This self-limitation was never entirely explicit, nor even especially definite, but the Yugoslavs continued to hope that Brezhnev would respect Yugoslav sovereignty and attempted to elicit from him, on the occasion of his visit taBelgrade in November 1976, express guarantees to that effect...

...The Soviets, at the same time, were conducting bilateral talks with the Bulgarians, Yugoslavia's long-time foes in the Balkans...

...Naturally Yugoslav nightmare scenarios have long revolved around the death of Tito...

...Belgrade's assiduously cultivated contacts in the nonaligned movement and with the Eurocommunist parties had been designed to reinforce the battlements, as it were...

...In a keynote article in Borba, Vlado Teslic lashed out at the USSR's "flagrant violation of the sovereignty and independence of a country which has been part of the nonaligned movement from the beginning," and rejected as "entirely unacceptable" Soviet claims that imperialist infiltration of Afghanistan had threatened Afghani' 'democracy'' and Soviet security...

...In the most paranoid visions, this signal event is expected to unleash manifestations of separatism within the country, spawn an internal struggle for power, lead to infiltration by Ustashi terrorists trained in West Germany, encourage intensified efforts by the Bulgarians to annex Yugoslav Macedonia, and finally culminate in a fullscale Soviet invasion...

...When the Soviets concentrated troops along the Hungarian and Bulgarian borders with Yugoslavia, Belgrade replied by calling up the reserves, rushing tanks to the borders to face the Soviet troops, and hurriedly installing anti-aircraft guns at Belgrade airport...

...Determined to bring the Rumanians'into line, Gromyko managed to elicit Rumanian agreement to a vaguely worded joint communique condemning "reactionaries and imperialist forces" that want to "exploit the tense international situation" to increase defense spending...

...Then the Yugoslav National Army conducted demonstrative maneuvers in northern Serbia, under the watchful eye of Yugoslav Admiral Branko Mamula...

...IF THE AFGHAN crisis stirred latent fears of invasion, it also threatened to produce other results that the Yugoslavs could scarcely welcome...

...Now it is apparent just how flimsy those 'reinforcements' are...

...With Tito in the hospital and, at that point, already in serious condition, the Yugoslav National Army sent Tito an open telegram on January 18, expressing...

...The Soviets were, meantime, clearly displeased with Rumania's outspoken criticism of the invasion, and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko stopped in Bucharest, on his way back from Syria, for talks with Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu...

...In short, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has significantly raised the level of apparent threat to Yugoslavia...

...And, at Belgrade's invitation, Manuel Azcarate, member of the Executive Committee of the Spanish Communist Party, came to the Yugoslav capital at the end of January for consultations with Aleksandar Grlickov, member of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists...

...Yet they took refuge in the fact that under the Brezhnev Doctrine, the ostensible rationalization for the invasion, the Soviets appeared to limit their sphere of self-proclaimed jurisdiction to those countries in alliance with Moscow...

...THE SOVIET INTERVENTION in Afghanistan, however, lays this interpretation to rest, and forces one to conclude either that the Brezhnev Doctrine is no guide at all to Soviet behavior or that it must be given a much more radical interpretation...

...Paradoxically, Yugoslav foreign policy has probably never been more constrained than now: if Yugoslavia is not exactly a prisoner of its own nonaligned posture, it nonetheless finds, in the present situation, far less room for maneuver than it has enjoyed in the past...

...First of all, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has sharply repolarized the international system and may signify a definite end to detente—something the Yugoslavs cannot afford, both for reasons of trade (they are associated with both the EEC and COMECON, for instance) and because of the delicate balancing act which lies at the heart of their foreign policy...

...But the consequences of the invasion for detente, for die nonaligned movement, and for Eurocommunism, are also deeply unsettling for the Yugoslavs...

...The Yugoslavs live in full consciousness of the existence of these alternative "future histories," and Belgrade's repeated public insistence on the certainty of the former path of development is itself a confirmation of the persistence of nightmares about Soviet invasion...

...With the commander of the Warsaw Pact, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, engaged in secret talks with Bulgarian General Anatolii Gribkov, the Yugoslavs scrupulously held to their nonaligned position...

...Today still in Afghanistan: Tomorrow already in your apartment...

...Paolo Bufalini, member of the CPI Directorate, rushed, not to Moscow, but to Belgrade, in an expression of solidarity with the Yugoslavs...

...Third, the invasion has broken up the waxing entente among the three chief Eurocommunist parties, and once more drawn the French Communist Party back into the Soviet fold...