Two Faces of a Nation

...Two Faces of a Nation TITO'S SEPARATE ROAD-AM ERICA AND YUGOSLAVIA IN WORLD POLITICS Bv John C Campbell Council on Foreign Relations, Harpei & Row 180 pp S3 95 Reviewed by BOGDAN RADITSA Professor of Balkan Histor\, Fauleigh Dickinson University Communists and non-Communists alike m Yugoslavia will readily admit that their country is crippled by a major crisis that involves political ideology, the national economy, and nationalistic disputes between the peoples who make up the federation To those of us who witnessed or participated in the formation of the two Yugoslavias (the first was created 50 years ago b\ the Versailles Treaty, the second at Yalta), the present situation is hardly a novelty Yugoslavia is eternally becoming, throughout its history it has struggled along from one crisis to the next, never managing to achieve stability But somehow if only through the Bergsoman elan vital of its diverse and quarrelsome peoples, the uneasy union of the South Slavs has managed to survive An ancient Byzantine writer observed that the South Slavs, when threatened by a foreign enemy, would unite and firmly resist, but when left in peace, would mevitablj fight among themselves And today the Yugoslavs, who are not threatened by any neighbor and are regarded by the great powers as a key to world peace and coexistence hate each other as never before The Serbs and Croats, for instance, have broken the last feeble link after a hundred years of trying to establish a single literary language Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serb They have finally given up and accepted the principle that each nation has the right to call its language by its own name—a decision which leaves Yugoslavia with four separate languages Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Slovenian The rivalries and disputes between the nationality groups?Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Macedonians—are age-old, but the traditional hatreds are being exacerbated now by the economic crisis that started in 1956 with "economic reform" The wealthier, more advanced nations?the Slovenes and the Croats—have separated themselves from the Serbian-dominated central government and from the rest of the country bv what amounts to an economic blockade A. similar division exists on the ideological plane, where the Croat-led "Socialist humanists" and 'federalists" are at odds with the Serbian "Stalinist positivists" and "centralists ' The ouster in 1966 ot Vice President Aleksandr Rankovic, the leader of "Serbian centralism," promised to alleviate this bitter conflict, vet the situation appears instead to have deteriorated still further The Marxists seem to have proved themselves even less capable of achieving Yugoslav solidarity than their prewar "bourgeois" predecessors The Communists took over the country declaring, and indeed believing, that national and economic contiadictions were the products of bourgeois society and would disap-peai with the establishment of a Communist system But the Communist slogan, "brotherhood and umt> ' was an effective rallying cry only during the War Since then it has achieved nothing The Communist power structure is itself divided along nationalistic lines, and the country is scarcely more united than it was before the Versailles Treaty These facts should be kept in nvnd while reading John C Campbell s important new book Campbell is a keen political observer who has a thorough knowledge of Yugoslavia's history, politics, and languages, and a great love for all ot its peoples Currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, he ran the Yugoslav desk at the State Department tor 10 years and frequently visited the country Tito's Separate Road deals principally with Yugoslavia's position in world affairs as it has affected the interests of American foreign policy, and his preoccupations lead him to largely ignore the dismal reality of the country's internal crisis The native Yugoslav observer, absorbed as he is m domestic considerations, is apt to find Campbell's point ot view overly abstract The Yugoslav is not accustomed to assigning any great importance to his country's role in international affairs, nor is he able to regard that role with the kind of analytical detachment that Campbell has achieved in his book Campbell's approach is nonetheless valid, and ot great value m demonstrating that despite its internal problems Yugoslavia can be credited with important achievements in international politics Campbell begins his searching analysis with the year 1948—the year of Tito's triumph in his battle with the Kremlin—and proceeds to point out the various means by which Tito made his country attractive and valuable to the West The author is convinced that the breakup ot the Soviet monolith should be dated from Tito's break with Stalin Tracing the zigzag course from rupture with the Kremlin to reconciliation, and then through rupture and reconciliation a second time, Campbell presents a most convincing picture of Tito as a mastermind of foreign policy—the kind of diplomat that Yugoslavia has rarely produced By manipulating both the West and the Kremlin to his own ends, Tito has succeeded in preserving Yugoslavia from foreign intervention, and given it a leading international role The Third World has also been a factor in Tito's sly and changeable strategy for enhancing Yugoslavia's position Although the policy of neutrality seems—with the disappearance of Nehru, Nkrumah, Sukarno and Ben Bella, as well as the weakening of Nasser—to be on the way to oblivion, for a few dramatic years Tito made effective and historically significant use of it in his diplomatic maneuvers Campbell is convinced, despite the skeptical opimons of anti-Tito elements m our government, that Yugoslavia's policy of ' neutrality" served the West, and particularly the United States, better than it did the Kremlin And he feels that American aid to Tito has been a positive investment As he points out, the American establishment, working within the Department of State from the Truman Administration through the present one, has had to brook constant opposition from anti-Com-munist elements m Congress and certain government bureaus m order to supply this aid But, he argues, m so doing the U S has achieved a great diplomatic and ideological success One might take issue with the existence of such an "invisible" diplomatic apparatus in an "open" democracy, but, as Campbell also points out, the results in this case are readily apparent U S aid has helped make Yugoslavia strong enough to resist the dictates of the Kremlin and has encouraged other Communist states to follow the path of national independence The author cites Poland and Rumania as examples, not forgetting the 1956 rebellion in Hungary—in which, however, Tito's role was at best ambiguous All in all, Titoist "contamination" has paid off for Washington Because this book offers convincing proof for all its assertions, Campbell's ideas should be pondered by those Yugoslavs who have never properly recognized the vital role their country plays in the world Campbell also comes close to a complete appreciation of the Yugoslav predicament when, in his concluding remarks, he observes that the Yugoslavs' capacity for maintaining a major role in world affairs will depend on their ability to solve "the conflicts of their own different nationalities "The country," he writes, "may become absorbed in its own internal crisis, a Balkan backwater, or it may become a stage where the great forces of our time meet in contention or in reconciliation, with consequences extending tar beyond Yugoslavia's borders...