Tito on Balance

...But Russia lies just a few hundred miles to the east...

...the peasant farmer entrenched in his dozen or two acres of private land-to these, Tito and the political hierarchy may represent uncontestable power, but they have kept the peace and produced goods and services in ever-increasing quantities...

...Unquestionably, there is grumbling over bread and butter matters, authentic concern about political repression, and guarded whispering for fear that the police are eavesdropping...

...The official attitude seems to be that Czechoslovakia is now history and that no benefits can derive from continued arguments with the Soviet Union-an attitude, emphasized one senior Yugoslav diplomat, not unlike American policy...

...the white-collar office employe trying to outpace inflation...

...Perhaps the main dilemma of Yugoslavia's foreign policy is that economically the country is being pulled and prodded toward the advanced Western nations, while ideologically it continues to be drawn to the Communist states...

...The present course of events may eventually dictate otherwise, but one cannot imagine from the Marshal's speeches that he would voluntarily permit the League to fade into history as an anachronistic debating club...

...His instincts, his career, his intellectual make-up dictate a belief in a society more regimented than spontaneous...

...Old guard politicians (those World War II Partisan alumni who came to Belgrade from the hills to establish a new order) are resisting the "self-management" of factories and enterprises, since it threatens their once commanding authority...

...Yugoslavia's continued balancing of East and West was again demonstrated last fall...

...Militiamen stationed along the route entirely clear the main streets minutes before Tito whisks past in regal solitude...

...on the front pages almost every day, and popularly manifests itself in the ever-present photographs of him in offices, enterprises and shops...

...As one Yugoslav not overly fond of the regime admitted, Tito had the sense to realize that by adopting the Soviet model after the War, he was losing popular support...

...Indeed, there exists a "cult of Tito": a popular admiration or awe surrounding him...

...Anecdotes and solid laughter spice his conversation...

...That the Yugoslav press gives even garbled voice to these divisive issues is at once proof of their seriousness and a claim to Yugoslavia's ability to resolve them...

...To the technocracy, ideology is more often excess baggage than a compass for the future: Political intrusions in industrial production are more resented than welcomed...

...It means restoration of the old slogan, 'Nothing can be done without Serbia, it is the backbone.' " Stambolic's criticisms of surviving Serbian nationalism, far from dispelling it, only sharpen the focus on its reality...

...Of course, geography explains much...

...The economic system, a bewildering mixture of public ownership, state regulation and private entre-preneurship, is now at a difficult moment of transition to market socialism...

...it was savagely denounced for fostering nationalism, not least because a high school boy who was polled had innocently suggested there should be only one Yugoslav language (read "Serbian," suspected non-Serbians...

...Most of his early adult years were spent as a Marxist agitator, then as an official of the incipient Yugoslav Communist party and, before World War II, as Moscow's resident Balkan specialist for the Comintern...

...In short, there is much wrong, yet much that is redeeming to a Yugoslav old enough to recollect the privations during and immediately after the War...

...the surviving conservatives in the political and police organizations are natural allies...

...He continues to talk, in line with the ninth congress of the League of Communists last March, of an advisory, vanguard role for the Party, and authentic representative government for the rank and file...

...Moreover, there is an ideological aspect to Yugoslavia's foreign policy...

...An influx of young people before last year's Party elections increased the proportion of League members under 27 years of age from 11 to nearly 25 per cent...

...This word 'one' means an identification of Yugoslavia as a Serbian state achievement...

...Still, despite the public rupture with Moscow and successive years of polemics, Yugoslavia has closer ties with Russia than its gyrations of foreign policy might indicate...

...As a result, this country is visibly in a state of flux, a period of social instability in which no Yugoslav can convincingly speculate on the immediate future...

...Nevertheless, the economic reform does encourage them and there is fear that the federal machinery will have to be strengthened-that the Communist party apparatus will have cause to reassert itself, and that there will be a backsliding in economic innovation...

...Egalitar-ianism is not much of a public virtue...

...it would be premature to say that the League has transformed itself into the enlightened national commission for Yugoslavia's moral guidance that Tito seems to want...

...While the full, clinical description of political purging here circa 1948 has yet to be revealed, the police state and enforced construction of a Socialist society were stark realities...

...Yet in the political sphere, too, the economic reform is eroding old means of social management...

...It is true that Tito has carved a niche for himself in European history with his resistance to Soviet hegemony...

...It is in some ways an inexplicable loyalty...

...Not all, by far, are active Party workers...

...For the Yugoslav intelligentsia, who feel state instrusions on their lives most of all, the open frontiers are solace...

...What is it to be a Serb, aware of a cultural and economic backwardness, but also of an inbred ferocity that threw off the Turks and, in good measure, the Germans...

...The consequent periodic traffic jams take the police half an hour or more to untangle-an unappreciated inconvenience to thousands of those same magical people...

...Not only do Yugoslavs move easily across the frontiers, but approximately 400,000 of them live and work in Western Europe, predominately in West Germany...

...There is, to be sure, another Tito, the one who speeds from his guarded suburban residence through Belgrade in a large, closed, black Mercedes limousine with a heavy police escort...

...The factory worker now seeing a glimmer of power in the "self-management" experiment...

...But membership remains a pass card to success and privilege...

...The Socialist Alliance, ostensibly a coalition of all political interests, casts a pallid shadow on national policy...

...On the whole, the past year has seen a slight course correction to the west here...

...After hugs and handshakes (as the press reported in glowing tones), he heard out the stories of despair and then, "without any escort or security precautions," walked to the center of Banja Luka, surveying the rubble and startling uncounted townspeople...

...The results of the Gro-myko-Tito talks were apparent in two subsequent speeches by Tito...

...Central authority over the economy has been loosened, refueling regionalism...

...Referring to Gromyko's visit, he said on October 11: "We reached the common view that it is necessary for us to supersede the differences of the recent past, to look toward the future and to cultivate what is common to us and in the interests of both states...

...But in this uneasy atmosphere one must not ignore the personality of Josip Broz Tito, president of both the League of Communists and the Republic...

...and searching, because among the "liberal" Yugoslav social managers there persists a greed for innovation...

...This translated into noticeably less criticism of the Soviet Union in the Yugoslav press and a show trial of a Yugoslav editor who unluckily had denounced Soviet militarism in Czechoslovakia just two days before Gromyko's arrival in Belgrade...

...The effect of this shift on the League's mentality and practices will take time to measure...

...In the area of politics, Tito voices the most optimistic hopes for democracy in Yugoslavia...

...It also says much about the ideological climate in this Socialist state: In none other has the political hierarchy invited the capitalist world to share in the development of a Communist society...

...For this reason economic reform inevitably has divided the League of Communists and its various bureaucratic satellites into segments...

...But they, too, are sensitive to undercurrent hostilities...

...Such bald alternatives, however, are rarely realistic ones...

...If there is any single argument for Tito's successful manipulation of Yugoslavia, it is the country's open borders...

...For most of the postwar period, Tito has kept Yugoslavia free from overbearing influence by the Soviet Union or the United States, while the country has benefited economically from both...

...Tito has allowed both tendencies to flourish without letting one gain decisive influence, not a bad record for a small country in this part of the world...

...The absence of a visible national leader other than Tito leads some to believe that a collective leadership, representing the political interests of the various republics, will eventually replace him...

...Not at least, for the bulk of Yugoslavia's 20 million people...

...Having commanded the Yugoslav state since 1945, the Marshal remains synonymous with it...

...But there is an array of consumer goods in Belgrade and northern cities like Zagreb and Ljubljana that is the envy of Russians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and others who vacation in Yugoslavia...

...The Croats and Slovenes bitterly complain, for example, about the allocation of their resources to advance more backward regions of Serbia or Montenegro...

...Meanwhile, Yugoslavia remains receptive to the United States...

...Tito, of course, plays on the peace and prosperity theme when he sardonically challenges the "so-called intellectuals" to mix with the masses, and when he appeals for popular unity...

...If a foreigner lacks identification with the nationalist emotions here, he can nonetheless appreciate the problem...

...His public speeches, whether one is taken by the thoughts or not, are at least direct, mercifully lacking the verbosity that weights talks of lesser Yugoslav politicians...

...The Russians have done little for the Serbs, far less than for, say, the Bulgarians, who remain almost willingly subservient to Moscow (and consequently the butt of many jokes...

...For a poor country, as for a poor man, independence remains a special luxury...

...The Yugoslav military is believed to harbor pro-Soviet sentiments...

...There can be no place for such people and their behavior in our community...

...The middle road between East and West reflects Yugoslavia's internal situation...

...Most of them return home, and it is largely an indifferent event if some do not -testimony to a general Yugoslav acceptance of Titoism...

...And anti-Russian feeling among the Serbs is such that after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union was subjected to a strong outpouring of vilification...

...But the paradox of the homey and the aloof Tito operates at other levels not so mundane...

...And could any Yugoslav believe, after Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, that the U.S...

...The Slovenes and Croats in the north are substantially oriented toward Western Europe because of their history, while the Serbs retain a Slavic affinity for the Russians...

...But even after 1948 the control lever of the secret police (udba) was often pulled...

...ASSESSING THE YUGOSLAV PERFORMANCE Tito on Balance by Mark W.Hopkins Belgrade Yugoslavia closed out the '60s in a perplexed and searching frame of mind: perplexed, because the direction of the ambitious economic reform undertaken in 1965-the most recent of several experiments in charting a course between East and West-remains uncertain...

...a prudent respect for his power that drives personal criticism into private and careful conversation...

...a deliberate glorification that puts him Mark W. Hopkins is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner now on leave from the Milwaukee Journal...

...But when NIN, the Belgrade weekly paper for the serious reader, ran the results of a public opinion survey on "The Yugoslav-who Is He...

...another, an intimate luncheon for the Apollo 11 astronauts and their wives), Tito has displayed a leisurely demeanor...

...Nationalism is now a pivotal issue here...

...Perhaps the remarkable thing is that one does not see even more portraits, more statuary, more publications and open displays of reverence, given Tito's quarter-century reign...

...This follows from a decision two years ago by the Yugoslav government to encourage foreign capital investment in domestic industry and represents, according to both American and Yugoslav officials, an act of faith in the Yugoslav economy...

...What, after all, does it feel like to be a Croat, given a history in the Austro-Hungarian empire, a Catholic orientation, and an ingrained suspicion that the Serbs will one day exercise a numerical superiority...

...To Yugoslavia, the U.S...

...Tito and other ranking politicians dismiss fringe suggestions for a multiparty system...

...Touching on another facet of the nationalities issue, Vukasin Stam-bolic, a leader of the Serbian republic League of Communists, delivered a frontal attack on Serbian chauvinism...

...The former are riding the crest at present because the economic reform gives priority to local management, but it is easy to see how decentralization can be a vehicle for nationalism...

...Tito regularly enjoins League of Communists members to take a more active part in society...

...Just how the Party bureaucracy can jettison its day to day management of the country without becoming superfluous remains a quandary, since an organization that does not exercise power soon loses it...

...But these expressions of discontent and anxiety are not so intense that the Tito Establishment need close the borders...

...These borders also counter assertions about the authoritarian nature of the Tito government...

...The later gaping fissure between Tito and Stalin began to form during the War...

...One might consider this a trivial and common display of privilege by the powerful...

...Like any politician of common blood who achieved greater power than he may ever have imagined, he has a latent faith in the capacity of the led to nurture its leader...

...Though the political liberties that exist in Yugoslavia today are surprising to anyone familiar with Soviet society, Tito still harbors a strong authoritarian streak...

...The best analysis available in Belgrade argues that three years ago, after the ouster of Aleksandr Rankovic, head of the secret police and once considered Tito's successor, Tito diffused political power...

...The League's ranks are gradually being sprinkled with better-educated people, a balance to the older and generally more conservative members who fought as Partisans...

...Clearly, the Soviets wanted to mollify Yugoslavia's strident criticism of the Czechoslovak occupation...

...It is thus difficult to find a Yugoslav critical of Tito's general foreign policy, although specific events such as Yugoslavia's condemnation of Israel after the June 1967 war) may stir opposition...

...But the same hardness and purposefulness that led to the break with Stalin produced a richly totalitarian society in Yugoslavia...

...Yugoslavia -love It or Leave It" could well be a slogan of superpatriots here...

...He was the man of the hour, and from all outward appearances he relished the role...

...It may, for instance, be highly rational to have a single language in Yugoslavia, in place of several major ones...

...Nothing better illustrates Tito's taste for this sort of precinct level politicking than his visit to Banja Luka two days after the town was shattered by earthquakes...

...He has only scorn for "so-called intellectuals" who, he said recently, are "venturing to insult and sully openly -before all our peoples, by their foul language-the victims of our war, and trying to discredit us before the whole world...

...At 77, Tito shows the benefits of an active life, combined in past years with well manicured surroundings and a robust enjoyment of hunting, travel and good company...

...The reform has also recharged nationalism within Yugoslavia, a multinational state where the traditionally more advanced Croats and Slovenes have always been wary of the more backward but also more numerous Serbs...

...At the same time, attempting to balance the conflicting sectional interests, federal planners expect to set aside one-fifth of the 1970 budget for subsidies to backward regions...

...Nor is there any doubt that despite the public criticism he has permitted, Tito is convinced the League of Communists remains the prime source of national leadership...

...For the moment, Tito appears able to contain separatist tendencies...

...President Nixon's scientific adviser, Lee A. DuBridge, spent a cordial few days here in September...

...This nation counts itself in the Socialist ranks, whatever one may say of its brand of Socialism...

...Put in less cumbersome terms, the battle is between advocates of local autonomy and champions of central authority...

...If talk of internal politics remains an often dreary and fruitless exercise in speculation, it is because of Tito's dominance...

...Today, when one asks informed Yugoslavs who might follow Tito, one receives only unconvincing guesses...

...One is told, too, of a sort of underground of "ib" people, those who continue to sympathize with the Russians even after the Cominform-or Informburs, as it is better known here-expelled Yugoslavia in 1948...

...Flying from Belgrade by helicopter, he had his pilot bypass the formal reception committee of city officials and land instead amid a cluster of Banja Luka refugees...

...Like a Lyndon Johnson or a Nikita Khrushchev, he reaches out for close, personal contact with the common man-a touch of the hand, a grateful word, a confirmation in the eye of the humble that he is still their man...

...may have been a generous supplier of economic and military aid (nearly $3 billion worth) during the tenuous 1950s...

...Various technocratic, etatist and other forces are trying to stage nationalist demonstrations in order to deny the role of the working class, while centralist, etatist, unitarianist and hegemonic forces are trying to deny the role of the republics...

...Indeed, Milovan Djilas' "new class" is a living creature, shielded in the villas, chaffeured in the inevitable black Mercedes...

...His face is full, his flesh firm, his step sure...

...In these circumstances, the Party is searching for a new role...

...But it is surely an error to believe he abandoned the Socialist cause...

...A more concrete instance of closer ties with the West was the creation of an International Corporation for Investment in Yugoslavia, a coalition of 10 Yugoslav and 40 foreign banks (including Chase Manhattan) that will supply an initial $12 million for development...

...Yugoslavia's foreign policies are no less dominated by the Marshal's personality...

...For a foreigner to credit himself with comprehension of a Yugoslavian nationality's feelings on a more than analytical level seems the wildest conceit-like the white man claiming to know what it is to be black...

...Bureaucratic and technocratic forces in our country," he said, "take this word 'one' [country] to imply only one [federal] assembly, only one government, one center of decision-making...

...In the same vein, the Central Committee of the Slovenian republic League of Communists ended its eighth plenum with a statement that in part concluded: "In Slovenia, too, nationalism is becoming a mainstay for those forces which only formally accept self-management...

...And though "centralist" forces can be too readily equated with Stalinist methods of rule and Serbian domination of the country, there is obvious justification for federal controls over the republics: The essential objective is to maintain a Yugoslav nation while treading gently through nationalist feelings...

...National leaders argue, reasonably enough, that the country must develop as a whole...

...Yugoslavia has more than 1 million Party members, who comprise nearly 10 per cent of the country's adult population...

...Where strong central command once suppressed nationalism and forged a Yugoslav unity, the present economic reform encourages the reverse...

...At least before Czechoslovakia," one Serb said, "there was no question that in a European war we would have fought with the Russians...

...It is clear from his frequent travels abroad that he is a believer in personal diplomacy...

...Certainly Tito does not disdain homage...

...The Party apparatus continues to propose and the federal assembly-the parliament-generally continues to dispose...

...That he now encourages democratization speaks less for Tito's innate compulsion than for his shrewdness and flexibility as a politician...

...During a late October visit to the depressed republic of Montenegro, Yugoslav Premier Mitja Ribicic warned that the nation's economy should not be adjusted to primarily benefit underdeveloped areas-comforting words for the relatively prosperous northern republics...

...And he has demonstrated his skill as a statesman in cultivating a "non-aligned" bloc...

...in late October, the Apollo 11 astronauts were cheered by tens of thousands in Belgrade...

...A technocratic elite, composed of industrialists, scientists and economists, presents an indistinct power center...

...would rescue a Yugoslavia besieged by the Soviet Union...

...In early September Tito responded to Moscow's conciliatory overture in the form of a visit by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko...

...Partly, the same diplomat explained, this is because both governments have consistently maintained good lines of communications, even as the Vietnam war progressed, and partly because of the Soviet Union's attack on Czechoslovakia, which showed that Russia is still "prone to violent means in the pursuit of its imperialist aims...

...That its major trading partners are Italy, West Germany and the Soviet Union, in that order, speaks more for flexibility and pragmatism than for political attitudes...

...Other nations, less shrewdly managed, have not enjoyed Yugoslavia's degree of independence...

...In several recent private receptions (one, for example, for President Giuseppe Saragat of Italy...

...Titoism" has its own mystique in the West, elaborated during the Cold War into a daring departure from the Stalinist political model...

...By the same token, there is less authentic affection for the United States than some current official statements would suggest...