YUGOSLAVIA-THE APPROACHING STORM

...The approaching crisis has so far been staved off by the hope (fading daily) that the ruler of Yugoslavia, who has so often in the past and so skillfully managed to avert disaster, will on this occasion, too, change the direction of a domestic policy that constitutes an extremely serious threat to peace in Europe...

...It is difficult to say how this will all end...

...But these are people remote from any fanaticism, who inevitably gravitate in the direction of the very "liberals" who were previously purged...

...Interminable speeches on the introduction of a party dictatorship in the interest of workers' selfgovernment, in view of the economic crisis and the agricultural impasse, no longer arouse anybody's enthusiasm...

...Activities for which the Pulitzer Prize is awarded in the United States are referred to as "ideological sabotage" and political crime...

...the elimination of liberalism in all spheres of life under the banner of the struggle for self-government...

...A campaign against religious influences has been initiated, a compulsory two-year course in Marxism was introduced into institutes of higher education, and there are calls for the dismissal of some very distinguished university professors connected with the journal Praxis— professors who are the "last of the Mohicans" of Marxist thought—as opposed to party dogmatism— in the Communist world...

...Occasionally the fight against dissidence of any kind adopts sheer Stalinist tactics and the same old formulas begin to reappear: not to be a Marxist is synonymous with betrayal of the fatherland and participation in a "special war of espionage" directed against Yugoslavia...

...The years of relative freedom, when there was an almost independent press and when all the contemporary Western thinkers, writers, and sociologists were translated, have had their effect...

...Though there was widespread and bloody resistance, the process of setting up a Corn370 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS munist dictatorship in Yugoslavia after the Second World War was nevertheless successfully carried out, and but for the conflict with Stalin, Yugoslavia would not now be very different from Bulgaria or Hungary...

...Because of the geopolitical situation of Yugoslavia the storm will scarcely remain an isolated outbreak...

...DISREGARDING the high-flown, monotonous incantations of the party, one can truthfully say that an ominous quiet has fallen on Yugoslav society...

...I.t is clear to everybody, of course, that this persecution has nothing to do with Marxism...

...The only reaction of the intelligentsia to the reestablishment of party committees with the intention of preserving Marxist ideological purity in literature, theater, cinema, music, and art, is a contemptuous smile...

...but the paradox of this attempt at the radical re-Stalinization of a country that has for decades been the least totalitarian of all the Communist countries now becomes clear...

...372 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...

...And sooner or later all the Communist countries will come to this crossroad...

...A different course of action was chosen: the dispersal of party leaders and many thousands of activists in the national Communist parties, and the full reconstitution of a single Yugoslav party...

...A stillness before the storm...

...The danger was all the greater because the national Communist parties were no less intolerant of opposition of any kind in their own republics than had earlier been the single Communist party of Yugoslavia, and nothing could have prevented the possible splitting up of the country...

...and the universal inculcation of Marxism which supplied the ideological basis for the dictatorship of the "proletariat...

...and the likelihood of military conflict is decreasing steadily, somber storm clouds are gathering more swiftly with each passing day over a country that many people have rightly regarded as a model for the possible future democratization of totalitarian Communist states, a test tube in which one hoped would engender the union of Eastern and Western Europe— Yugoslavia...

...The likelihood of this happening, though, is very small, because of the general certainty that the only solution is to democratize the country, which would mean restoring the political rights of citizens...

...But, unfortunately, these freedoms have so far remained mere words on paper as they did in the corresponding paragraphs (39 and 40) of the old Constitution...

...So too has the fact that a million Yugoslav workers (one quarter of all the workers in the country) live in Western Europe and can see the advantages of the democratic system...

...Let us attempt to answer this question...

...But now it seems the fateful time has come when everything the regime does has the opposite effect, and the moment is clearly drawing nearer when some perhaps accidental stimulus will spark off the storm and the ominous silence will be broken by a crack of thunder...

...Yugoslavia was the first country to reach the historic crossroads where she had the choice of two directions: either the transition to democratic, multiparty socialism, or the reversion to Stalinism...

...But this would have meant liquidating the party monopoly, something the leadership could not bring itself to do...

...Unfortunately, therefore, it is extremely improbable that the country will be democratized in the peaceful, evolutionary manner that seemed both desirable and possible only two years ago...

...and second, no opposition class has physically existed in Yugoslavia for a quarter of a century now, unless one counts the permanent party oligarchy termed by Djilas the "new class...

...During recent decades and especially over the last two years, both the so-called liberals and the bureaucrats, the nationalists and the technocrats, in fact, all those who have at any time shown a certain degree of independence and vitality, have been purged from the party, and new recruitment has been made from a working-class environment...

...An unexpected and certainly a positive result of all this, though it has come about in a negative way, is that, for the first time in several decades, the democratic opposition forces of all the Yugoslav peoples are reaching a state of total psychological unity...

...But is such a thing possible in our times...

...Marx was wrong in many respects, but what is happening in Yugoslavia today would seem to illustrate this particular thought...

...The thought is not a cheering one...

...The press, now under very heavy pressure from the party, daily publishes reports of party meetings at which the courts and the police are called upon to apply "revolutionary" and not "formal" legality in the struggle against the "class enemy...

...The envy with which Yugoslav citizens read about the restoraCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS 371 tion of lawful political democracy in Argentina, their realization that social contradictions cannot be resolved within the one-party framework, and the popularity of •the idea of a second socialist party have obliged the regime to end its many years of deliberate silence on the subject of Djilas, the leading exponent of this idea, and to embark on the publication of a series of articles purporting to show the bourgeois, capitalist origin of the very idea of political democracy in socialist society...

...it is part of the fight against all manifestations of dissidence...

...Because of the introduction of "self-government" into the economic and cultural fields, the gradual liberalization of the country, inspired in the first instance by its alienation from the U.S.S.R., began to gather momentum and took a progressively firmer hold, particularly after the disbandment of the security service in 1966...

...Of course, paragraphs 146 and 147 of the new, fifth postwar Constitution, which aims to consolidate the new "revolutionary course," guarantee freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and of political organizations...

...and who knows how it might end...

...It is equally improbable that the current attempt at a return to totalitarianism will succeed without outside help...

...the remonopolization by party members of all the levers of power...

...However, judges do not seem particularly keen to take this advice, for two reasons: first, no one is sure that the new totalitarianization will succeed or that he will not be required at some future time to account for his violation of "formal" legality...

...There must obviously be some historical logic in this paradoxical course of social and political development in a country that a quarter of a century ago broke free of Stalin's sphere of domination, embarked on the road of gradual democratization, and became the initiator of the policy of "peaceful coexistence" now so popular on our planet...

...But the one-party monopoly continued, and in those conditions the liberalization of a dictatorship in a multinational country could lead only to one thing—.,the formation of separate, national Communist parties, which inevitably fanned the flames of dissension between the different peoples, a Balkan disease from time immemorial, and threatened to jeopardize the very existence of the state as an entity...

...Describing Louis Bonaparte's accession to power in France in the mid-19th century, Marx observed wittily that if all historical events repeat themselves, the first occasion is sublime tragedy and the second a farce...

...There was only one realistic way out of the situation that had -arisen: the democratization of social and political life, opening the way to democratic forces which would easily have been able to safe-guard the unity of the country...

...What is happening in Yugoslavia, and, more important, why...

...This is what makes the current Balkan crisis one of paramount significance...

...Today, however, Yugoslavia lacks the most important and decisive prerequisite for the reintroduction of an absolute totalitarian party monopoly, and that is, a fanatical and disciplined party...

...Now, however, parliamentary deputies are to be replaced by deputies who have no immunity, are elected "at factory floor level" (this in conditions of a total party monopoly), and can be promptly relieved if they make any attempt to act independently, something that was rather difficult to do to the [old] deputies and has caused the party a great deal of trouble over the last few years...