Which Way Tito?

WILLEN, PAUL

Yugoslavia's greater measure of internal freedom and her widespread contacts with Western culture make any return to the Soviet bloc highly unlikely WHICH WAY TITO? By Paul Willen Immediately...

...So far as Soviet literature is concerned, the only Soviet book in translation which I saw on display in Belgrade was Sholokhov's great classic, The Silent Don...
...Yugoslavia was spared the full impact of the 1946-47 Zhdanovshchina in the arts and letters, the anti-cosmopolitan drive of 1949-50, the purges connected with the Rajk, Kostov and Slansky trials...
...These broad contacts with the West are not merely the result of deliberate post-1948 Government policy...
...It will take them much longer...
...When Khrushchev and Bulganin were here, he said, "they got directly acquainted with the situation with us...
...the failure of the Yugoslavs to protest Khrushchev's interpretation intensified the concern...
...nor is its present system merely a modified version, with local adaptations, of the Soviet model...
...today you can find one in every respectable home...
...But even Tito's authority is not unlimited...
...So long as the people are relatively free to select the books they want to read on a wide variety of topics, these contacts are likely to continue...
...Not yet," the Czech Communists are supposed to have said...
...For it is upon these achievements that Tito has given both himself and his country the much-treasured "reputation in the world...
...In the theater proper, the modern repertoire is almost entirely Western, with American playwrights like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams especially prominent...
...In the following two weeks, the whole story of the continued satellite hostility to the Yugoslav regime was made known in the Yugoslav press...
...Specifically Marxist literature is available, but it is not prominently displayed and not in abundance...
...Tito proudly told the American students: "The Soviet leaders' statement that they had nothing against good relations between Yugoslavia and the Western countries was of utmost importance to us...
...There is hardly a sign of it anywhere, except in the Soviets' own information center...
...The most solid bulwark against Yugoslavia's reintegration in the Soviet sphere is neither the lingering bitterness toward the Russians nor the regime's obsession with independence, but rather the Yugoslav social and political system itself...
...Times correspondent...
...The Russians had come and gone, and Tito had not been "lured" back into Moscow's imperial clasp...
...Furthermore, Yugoslavia was connected with the Soviet Empire for a relatively short period in the history of the modern Yugoslav Communist party (three years out of fourteen), and the period of intensive Sovietization of Eastern Europe did not really begin until after the Tito-Stalin break in 1948...
...The continuity of rule is such that the Government is now preparing a Who's Who in Yugoslavia, surely a hazardous undertaking anywhere else in Eastern Europe...
...Occasionally, someone does "defect...
...Belgrade citizens were still raving about last winter's production of The Teahouse of the August Moon...
...inspection of Yugoslav military units seemed to confirm the suspicions...
...The traditions and institutions over which Tito rules also rule him, and he cannot at will defy the interests of the medley of groups upon whose support his "reputation in the world" depends...
...reconciles itself, as it seems to be doing, to Yugoslavia's independence of the Western alliance...
...We shall not go back to that one-sided course again...
...This is the second of two articles by Panl Willen, who has made several trips to Yugoslavia since World War II...
...One need only browse through one of Belgrade's many bookstores to realize how deeply Yugoslavia's culture has become integrated with our own...
...he talks freely with anyone, although with perhaps a little more discretion than elsewhere...
...Djilas expressed his "anti-state" views directly to a N.Y...
...The mounting difficulties in trade relations with the West make it necessary for Tito to turn to the East to obtain whatever assistance he can consistent with Yugoslavia's sovereign status...
...One is conscious, too, that the Djilas case itself defined the limits of public discussion on the question of internal democracy, and that one does not publicly question Kardelj's dogma of January 1954 that political democracy is unacceptable in Yugoslavia for some time...
...Khrushchev's jubilant trip to Sofia and Bucharest, in which he saluted the talks as a great victory for socialism, roused certain misgivings...
...Yugoslav publishing houses and booksellers must make a profit (upon which the success of the municipally-owned enterprise is partially judged...
...Thousands of Yugoslavs go abroad every year, some on Government missions, some to attend Western universities, others as tourists...
...In addition to denying that such a moratorium existed, they said they believed that, if too much was said about the encouraging developments in the Soviet Union, these developments might cease...
...Having fought against Soviet domination for five years, and having resisted U.S...
...there is no evidence that such measures have even been considered...
...efforts to incorporate Yugoslavia into its military system, Yugoslavia was now independent, in a position to use one bloc as a makeweight in its diplomacy with the other...
...However, as the recent ppearance of mystery hrillers and Hollywood-movie novelettes indicates, public taste remains largely guided by rules of its own...
...By Paul Willen Immediately following the visit of Khrushchev and Bulganin in May, Western diplomats in Belgrade heaved a great sigh of relief...
...This explains both the complete absence of Soviet literary output and the rapid growth of cheap sensational literature...
...Nevertheless, suspicions began to crop up in June and July...
...Unlike the other Eastern European parties, Yugoslav Communism had taken power alone...
...His position is secure only so long as he can reconcile the variety of interests of the new bureaucracy...
...First, Tito demanded that the U.S...
...In his interview with the students, Tito thoughtfully remarked: "We have had very bad experience in trading with one side only...
...The Government has largely given up its effort to fix the reading habits of the nation, except, of course, insofar as its general control over the educational system affords it the opportunity to participate in the fashioning of public tastes...
...In the Karlovac speech, Tito also gave his version of the Belgrade talks...
...But its size has been so much diminished, its activities so much curtailed, since 1949-50 that it has turned over many of the large buildings it once occupied in key cities to other Government agencies with better prospects for expansion...
...The Djilas case, for example, has not been mentioned in the press in nearly six months...
...Certain topics and ideas are simply not raised for public discussion...
...Why no more...
...To say nothing of the inclusion of the "heretics" Kautsky, Luxemburg, Hilferding among the Marxist classics, an inclusion which is not surprising if one recalls Kardelj's statement at Oslo last November: "History has passed its final judgment on the old dispute between evolutionary and revolutionary socialism—it has approved both of them...
...nor is it easy to see how he could by fiat establish such intimate ties with the Soviet world...
...Yet, with all this, one still can say that Yugoslavia has become, to a limited degree, part of the Western intellectual community...
...Furthermore, an ever-increasing number of foreigners--over 300,000 last year--visit Yugoslavia annually: businessmen, artists on lour, but mostly tourists...
...Yugoslav efforts to deal directly with the artists involved have met with little Soviet or satellite response, and the Yugoslav offer to arrange for Czech tourists to resume their once-popular vacations on the magnificent Dalmatian coast has apparently been turned down...
...In the past few months, a few Soviet films have made their way down to Belgrade, but their popularity is not much greater than in New York...
...The Yugoslavs were discovering that the satellites were not expanding relations with the rapidity and cordiality on which Belgrade had originally counted...
...Like a new seedling, liberalization required the most favorable climate in which to grow...
...the one-party state could hardly function without one...
...In mid-August, the fare in Belgrade's 29 movie theaters was exclusively Western...
...In this sense, his position is more limited than that of his satellite counterparts...
...The depth and breadth of Yugoslavia's contacts with the West reflects her internal social development...
...As a result, there has been a considerable diffusion of power and responsibility inside the bureaucracy, a development which might have led to an openly-recognized intra-bureaucratic struggle were it not for the tremendous prestige and authority of Tito himself...
...When I arrived in Yugoslavia in mid-July, I asked various officials: "Why the moratorium on commentary on the Soviet bloc...
...I think," Tito told 30 American students late in July, "that Beria, too, should be included [among those guilty], but that the main person was Stalin...
...The basic historical difference between Yugoslav and satellite Communism explains why the thought of Tito's "return'' arouses such scorn in Belgrade.Yugoslavia is not merely a satellite which, for obscure doctrinal reasons, temporarily went astray...
...But the basic structural differences between Yugoslav and Soviet "socialism" are of equal importance: the decentralization of the administrative apparatus, the almost-complete abandonment of collectivization and the abolition of compulsory farm deliveries, the localization of economic decision through the creation of "workers' councils," the genuine strengthening of law, the sharp decline of police power, the perceptible increase in the area of individual initiative, the abandonment of "socialist realism" in the arts, etc...
...the rest were Italian, French, English, with one joint Yugoslav-Greek product...
...Belgrade's stiffened attitude toward U.S...
...Under these circumstances, it is difficult to see how Tito could, even if it were in his interest, sever by fiat the extensive relations the Yugoslav Government and people have developed with the non-Soviet world since 1948...
...Since the Khrushchev-Tito talks, a number of Soviet musicians and dancers have toured the country with considerable success, but these visits are only a drop in the bucket already well filled with Western cultural missions, tours, presentations, conferences, etc...
...Sovereignty, indeed, is still the primary issue, as it was in 1943 when the present state was organized against Stalin's orders and in 1948 when that state thrust its head out of the Soviet imperial straitjacket...
...With the exception of the Djilas-Dedijer ouster of 1954, the Yugoslav party has not undergone a major purge since the late 1930s...
...To break these ties and reorient Yugoslavia to the East would require the reimposition of the most drastic police regime...
...We must be patient...
...The existence of these similarities largely explains Tito's fear of excessively intimate ties with the democratic and semi-capitalist West...
...Even Khrushchev's glib reference to Beria as the original culprit in the Yugoslav-Soviet rift, upon which there was a "no comment" cover in June, was subjected to question...
...In Yugoslavia, as elsewhere, books cannot be published unless a market can be discovered for them...
...they saw that we were not a "sold' country . . . that we are building our domestic socialist life in our own way that Yugoslavia is independent and wants to remain independent of all powers, from the West and East, that she has her own way of development, that she cannot allow anybody to interfere with her domestic affairs," etc...
...There simply is no market for the sterile products of modern Soviet literature...
...Indeed, it is unlikely, as one Foreign Office official told me, that extensive cultural relations with the Soviet world will be established so long as the Soviet-bloc governments insist on conducting everything on an official level...
...Second, he urged the satellite regimes to accelerate "normalization" and delivered a short attack on "certain Communists" in Czechoslovakia and Hungary who, because of their attachment to past Stalinist practices, were still imprisoning people favoring closer relations with Yugoslavia...
...The largest group are Germans and Austrians, with a heavy representation of British as well...
...In certain basic respects, of course, the Yugoslav system resembles the prevailing Eastern European norm--state ownership of the major productive forces, the one-party system, basic totalitarian controls, etc...
...Yugoslav claims that these changes have produced a new form of "economic democracy" cannot be taken too seriously, but counter-claims that these changes have had only a superficial impact are equally unsupportable...
...The subject of Yugoslav-satellite relations was again open for public discussion, after a two-month period in which the regime had waited in silence to see how far "normalization" would proceed without outside prodding...
...To the 30 American students, Tito was even more explicit: "It goes without saying that no agreement was concluded which might have the consequence of placing Yugoslavia back in the position it occupied before 1948...
...The seedling democracies needed some watering, and, if the Kremlin itself would not oblige, Yugoslavia had to take the matter in its own hands...
...Some time in July, the regime apparently decided that commenting on a good thing did not necessarily stop it...
...These "local adaptations" spring from the indigenous struggles of Yugoslav Communism, and have far deeper roots in the country than the Stalinist excesses in which the regime once indulged...
...it was quite capable of ruling Yugoslavia alone...
...After all," I was told, "it took us three or four years to realize fully how wrong the Stalinist path had been...
...The fact is, of course, that a secret police does exist...
...It is generally something of a surprise for the foreign tourist who leaves Yugoslavia to discover that in this "police state" he has not had a single encounter with the secret police...
...The contrary is true: The split occurred precisely because Yugoslavia was not basically a satellite, or, at least, because it refused to behave like one...
...The result was one of Tito's longest speeches, delivered on July 27 before 200,000 Croatians gathered in the town of Karlovac for a day of merriment and festivity...
...While passports for foreign travel are not granted to all who request them, a surprisingly large proportion are given permission to leave the country, even many about whom one might imagine the Government entertains certain suspicions...
...All enjoy most of the privileges and freedoms which any nation grants its citizens...
...The permanently critical economic situation in Yugoslavia guarantees, in fact, that future relations will contain much friction, even if the U.S...
...Would any Yugoslay politician--especially one with so acute an understanding of political realities as Tito--attempt to sever these extensive ties simply to meet the requirements of the very doctrine he discredited seven years ago...
...Approximately two-thirds of the books on display are by Western Europeans or Americans??Gide, Mann, Huxley, Hemingway, etc...
...The official character of the Soviet tours detracts somewhat from their capacity to win friends...
...One official had a quick explanation: "No one would buy them...
...they are, above all, the natural consequence of the degree of internal freedom granted to the Yugoslav people in the last five years...
...Modern art on display is almost exactly what is considered modern art in Western museums, although there is an indigenous tendency to prefer semi-realistic drawing...
...The integration is by no means complete, and the regime is at pains to make this clear--when, for example...
...There are fundamental historical differences between Yugoslavia and its neighboring satellites...
...they would not dare stock books which no one wants to purchase...
...Over half the films playing were American (three to four years old...
...This speech, the first important policy declaration since the Soviet visit, clarified a number of points hitherto obscure to worried foreigners...
...The general absence in the Yugoslav press of commentary on the developing Yugoslav-Soviet relations --plus the rumor that the Yugoslavs were planning to manufacture MIGs with Soviet assistance--produced an atmosphere in which the wildest sort of conjecture was possible...
...There are practically no restrictions on the foreign traveler...
...It is often supposed that, when Tito broke with the Kremlin in 1948, Yugoslavia was a full-Hedged satellite...
...To a degree unappreciated in the West, these institutional changes have become rooted in the entire national life, and have created interests, traditions and expectations in the bureaucracy which are, in a sense, independent of the will of the ruling clique itself...
...The extent and depth of Yugoslavia's present ties with the West are not fully appreciated...
...Willen has written on Soviet affairs for Antioch Review, Commentary, Encounter, the Reporter and many other periodicals...
...It is also true that, despite the wide latitude of books available, anti-Tito and anti-Communist books are conspicuous by their absence...
...The contacts between Yugoslavia and the non-Soviet world are not limited to cultural affairs...
...There is a film magazine crammed with photos of American and European movie stars...
...And Soviet culture...
...When the press officer of the Yugoslav Foreign Office was asked in June to comment on the Beria-Abbakumov explanation for the anti-Tito campaign of 1948-53, he replied that he preferred not to...
...The penetration of Western culture was summed up by one friend in this way: "In 1952, possession of a copy of Life magazine was considered a great prize...
...respect Yugoslav sovereignty in giving aid, and that the West show more consideration on the problem of repayment of its huge loans to Yugoslavia...
...The existence of these ties, however lasting and secure, does not automatically assure the durability of cordial Yugoslav-American relations...
...the remainder are either from the common European classical tradition or of contemporary Yugoslav origin...
...He sees troops everywhere--marching on the dusty roads, preparing for maneuvers in the field--but few police...

Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 41


 
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