The Myth of Tito

...Today's Yugoslav Army has also been politically undermined and could suffer rapid defeat...

...One was of the liberal Communist...

...Any regime that resists the Eastern block can count on the support and good opinion of the Western democracies...

...What is more, these men enjoyed a kind of democratic consensus in those years...

...Democratization would have probably been rapid and irrepressible...

...Tito was, in fact, personally responsible for the degree of closeness that persists between the Yugoslav and Soviet societies...

...One aspect of Tito's rule, though, Aleksa Djilas here makes his first appearance in an American publication-As his father, Milovan Djilas, did in 1956...

...Here Tito's patriotism stood out as his greatest virtue...

...He is currently doing graduate work at the London School of Economics...

...Yet Yugoslavia differed from an absolute monarchy-in its failures, rather than its virtues...

...In his youth Tito worked as a metal worker in several Austro-Hungarian provinces...

...In the process, chauffeurs, pilots, secretaries and personal doctors were awarded ranks commensurate neither with their qualifications nor their functions...

...they included people with ideas similar to his own...

...A good part of the nation's armaments also are purchased in the Soviet Union, and many officers are sent there for technical courses????even in such sensitive areas as military intelligence...

...The critical difference is that during the guerrilla days it was impossible to advance on political merit alone...

...One Belgrade story has it that a colonel bitten by Tito's poodle was promoted to major general-As a reward for being heroically "wounded in action...

...It was precisely because of his attitudes inside Yugoslavia that President Tito never allowed Yugoslavia to break completely with the Soviet Union...

...He succeeded in incapacitating every form of human effort that depended upon mutual confidence, solidarity and shared ideas...

...Interestingly, these contrasting views of Tito do not simply reflect the positions of those who hold them...

...Even some who were critical of Tito's internal policies excused them on the grounds that, for all their evils, they strengthened Yugoslavia's chances of survival as an independent country after his death...

...a great proportion of the budget is devoted to armaments...

...Little consideration need be given to the friend's respect for human rights...

...the blame for Soviet aggression is usually shifted to "the system of blocs...

...Anyone who wished to do more and who opposed the "palace intrigue style" of Tito's rule, was deprived of office...

...Thus at the time of Tito's death, no one had been elevated to the position of "Crown Prince...

...Tito sapped the strength of all .hierarchies and structures...

...His knowledge of the literature, culture and history of the Yugoslav peoples was scant...

...has won unanimous approval in the West: his struggle for Yugoslav independence, in particular from the Soviet Union...

...Tito eliminated from the Army command all generals who had made their mark in the War...

...Yet postwar Yugoslavia was marked by a variety of autonomous institutions and governed by a number of individuals of authority and repute...

...Even assuming it would, questions remain about the fighting fitness of the troops...

...The victors-neither having had to rely on compulsion nor owing their positions to a "ruler's" grace-were able to make their own decisions, to command, to govern...

...Moral-political" fitness-meaning chiefly loyalty to Tito-became the principal criterion for promotion and assignment...

...An examination of his early life reveals that he developed no clear national or political consciousness...

...From the very beginning of the War, loyalty to the Communist Party and to the Supreme Commander of the Partisan guerrillas was essential for moving up in the military...

...In a sense, some of this praise is understandable...

...They were replaced by unknown and insignificant officers of unquestionable loyalty to their leader...

...The king, to whom God-like powers were attributed, ruled with the help of a massive bureaucracy (in this case, of middle Party officials), and was...

...Yugoslavs have a glorious military tradition...

...It was born a dictatorship-without free elections, or free speech and criticism, or a free and legal opposition...

...Perhaps more important, this kind of Realpolitik takes no account of the relation of the client's foreign policy to his domestic arrangements...

...But the Army of the old Yugoslavia shared all these apparent virtues, and it capitulated to the Germans in a matter of days...

...He remained in Russia and, following the revolution of 1917, became a Communist...

...It would be superfluous to relate Tito's biography thereafter: Its main features are well known, though most of the details are locked in the Soviet archives...

...Serving as a sergeant during World War I, Tito distinguished himself in several battles, including some against the Serbians...

...Josip Broz Tito was neither a Yugoslav patriot nor an adequate defender of his country's independence...

...In this atmosphere the Army as well, far from being molded into a force for maintaining the country's independence, was turned into little more than a sort of extended Presidential guard...

...His victims were not limited to non-Communists and the opposition...

...Once he consolidated his power, only Tito's criteria mattered...

...Although perhaps moderate by comparison with Stalin, the Yugoslav President unhesitatingly defended his power by any means necessary...

...the number of men in uniform is at all times large...

...Such a policy is now thought to be naive...

...Domestic "liberal deviations," however, represented an authentic anti-Soviet force...

...In any event, a power struggle seems almost certain...

...The equation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact was a mistake, they contended, for the greatest danger to Yugoslavia came from those who advanced the theories of the "limited sovereignty" of Socialist states and of "proletarian internationalism...

...American imperialism and its "pawns" are pictured as no less prepared to attack Yugoslavia than the Soviet Union and its satellites...

...They worried, too, that the propagation of this view would spread defeatism in the ranks, since Yugoslavia would appear to be threatened from all sides, and that the stress on anti-imperialist slogans would foster pro-Soviet factions within the Army...

...If he had abolished the Presidency of the League of Communists, or the League itself, no one in Yugoslavia would have protested...

...Political indoctrination is the principal subject of every soldier's training, and naturally of officers' "advanced courses...

...Personal power was the key to Tito's character and political activity...

...Yugoslav Communists did not discard the line much earlier...

...And so it goes on...

...At one point he planned to emigrate to America and dreamed of achieving wealth...

...In the field of culture he was exceptionally tolerant...

...The net result of Tito's policies, even while formally uniting the diverse Yugoslav peoples, was an atomi-zation of Yugoslav society...

...Indeed, there may be more political commissars than weapons instructors attached to each unit...

...For example, both Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Labor Party's Left-wing leader, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, have praised Yugoslavia's achievements...

...This region belongs to the Creation Zagorje, but Tito never felt any strong Creation national sentiment...

...Enormous material resources and a large number of officers and men were organized in a manner appropriate to police operations, to combating the internal enemy...

...The Western press continues to rate the Yugoslav Army highly...

...Indeed, he so weakened Yugoslavia as to throw its continued independent existence into doubt...

...Tito's propaganda machine invariably described his regime's critics as reactionaries in the service of imperialism, and its backers as progressives and humanists...

...they cannot conveniently be ascribed to the Left or the Right...

...In short, Tito was as much a democrat as was possible in an underdeveloped country with little culture and a low level of political awareness...

...After being wounded and captured on the Eastern front, Tito did not join the Yugoslav volunteer legions or, like many young men of Yugoslav origin, the armies of the Entente Powers...

...His ignorance of the most elementary facts of Yugoslav life, apparent from occasional slips, gave rise to many jokes...

...The capacity of such units to harass, let alone repel, a real foreign enemy is truly doubtful...

...This Tito allowed pluralistic ideas and interests to manifest themselves through the decentralized, self-managing organization of the economy and the federal, polycentric structure of the state and Party...

...like all armies in Communist countries, the Yugoslav Army was completely "ideologized...

...He rejected every opportunity for solidarity with Western countries...

...The frequent jokes about the Army are a good barometer of this tragicomic state of affairs...

...For a state that abets a foreign tyranny might find itself suddenly unpopular in that country...

...He knew that a total rupture with the Eastern block would inevitably have led Yugoslavia to side with Western Europe, and would have brought about radical changes in the economy, the culture and, especially, the internal political situation...

...But this sort of political realism (or is it cynicism...

...The typical dictator, he was jealous of anyone else's glory and, more important, feared strong and popular personalities...

...In its place we have a revival of the old slogan, "The enemy of our enemy is our friend...

...Those who glorify Tito as the defender of an autonomous Yugoslavia must reconcile their view with the great harm he has done to the country's chief instrument of defense...

...To insure his sole rule, Tito undermined the country's political institutions, eventually removing all possible rivals...

...Official military doctrine asserts that the country is threatened from East and West alike...

...Similarly, it is repeatedly said that the essence of nonalignment is anti-imperialism...

...They long ago abandoned the "idealistic" program of "exporting" freedom in the form of parliamentary institutions, an independent judiciary and so on...

...Tito's speech was a strange and slightly comic mixture of Serbo-Croat and Slovene, sprinkled liberally with "Russianisms...

...With a change of regime, the masses could very well turn against those who had supported their oppressors...

...He realized that it was only one step from anti-Stalinism to democratic socialism and liberalism , and just one more step to anti-Titoism...

...Some may seek help from a foreign power...

...Josip Broz-he adopted the name Tito later-was born and spent his childhood in the border land of Slovenia and Croatia...

...Proletarian internationalism, socialism and communism, the national liberation war-All these were of secondary importance to him...

...Further, he gradually rid the Army of all officers with anti-Soviet leanings, rightly suspecting that their disillusioning brush with the Soviet system had made them receptive to liberal ideas and so lessened their loyalty to him...

...Any shortcoming as a soldier immediately became apparent, and ranks were awarded by two interlocking institutions not yet entirely dependent on Tito-the Party and the Army commanders...

...betrays a dangerous naivete of its own...

...These Western assessments-the divided one of Tito's domestic policy and the united one of his foreign policy -do Tito too much justice, or not enough: They fail to grasp his real motivation...

...And a survey of his career shows that in order to secure his personal rule, he was willing to weaken the Army, undermine political structures, and ultimately jeopardize his country's independence...

...He was not particularly interested in the spiritual or political traditions of the land he ruled...

...Consequently, although he preached the right to self-determination in international relations and sought to demonstrate that a "separate road" to socialism was possible, Tito imposed a dictatorship on his own country...

...Despite these arguments, Tito's doctrine prevailed...

...This is why the failure of ideological and political differences with the USSR to take root in Yugoslavia is everywhere evident...

...He even abided political opposition-Albeit not in the classical form of political parties-so long as it did not threaten the social order or the brotherhood of the Yugoslav peoples...

...Of course, Communist Yugoslavia has never been a free country...

...This doctrine, designed by Tito, was opposed by the leaders of the Army's political section, especially those who had distinguished themselves in the clash with the Cominform in 1948...

...Although they had not been formally elected, they owed their positions in large measure to the people who had supported and followed them in the War...

...Nor did he speak a "pure" Croatian language...

...In the schools, and in the Army, the Soviet Union is defined as a "socialist" state-different from Yugoslavia to be sure, but still more closely akin to it than the "capitalist" states...

...Of the two portraits that have been drawn of him in the West, the less flattering is clearly the more accurate...

...The reasons then were essentially political...

...More devoted men were put in their places, among them some who had proved unreliable during the conflict with the USSR...

...The Myth of Tito By Aleksa Djilas London When Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito died last May 4, two quite different portraits of him were drawn by Western politicians and journalists...

...But the charge of expansionism has been leveled most often at the United States and Western Europe...

...No forceful and popular individuals remain today in the Yugoslav Party and state apparatus...

...The Romans wisely observed that a tyrant neither loved his country nor wished it well...

...Political institutions fared no better...

...His supposedly passionate feelings about Yugoslavia were actually rooted in his own ego...

...Meanwhile, Soviet ships and submarines are overhauled in Yugoslav dockyards, and Soviet military transport aircraft, en route to Africa, land at Yugoslav airports...

...They lost that when they agreed merely to carry out Tito's orders...

...And since all top-level Yugoslav officials owed their status to him, they are now equally vulnerable...

...It was thanks to such leaders that Yugoslavia was able to resist Stalin...

...In fact, its Western supporters and opponents have been of every political persuasion...

...The still active leaders who took part in the War and revolution are now without stature...

...Then he settled on a military career in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Germanized his name to "Josef...

...surrounded by powerless nobles vying for empty privileges...

...As a result, the idealism and militancy of the prewar and wartime Communists deteriorated into opportunism and careerism...

...This brings us to the West's primary interest in Yugoslavia -its independence from the Soviet Union...

...The other portrait that emerged was of the typical Communist dictator...

...To those who knew him at the time, Tito seemed a man without a homeland, a man undefined in language and tradition...

...This Tito denied his country any true freedom...

...He allowed critical discussion only when insignificant socio-political issues were at stake...

...To some degree, this had always been the case...

...What is important to note is that the Comintern, to which Tito owed his promotion to General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was opposed to Yugoslavia's becoming independent until the end of the 1930s, considering it a creation of the Versailles Treaty and a successor to Austria-Hungary...

...The belief in his readiness to subordinate personal interests, as well as those of the Party, to the fundamental interests of Yugoslavia as a state was reflected in comments often encountered in the Western press: "Tito is Yugoslavia," "Tito created Yugoslavia," "Is Yugoslavia possible without Tito...

...But the implication of these jokes is serious: Would a nation at war follow officers in whose capabilities and moral qualities it has lost confidence in peacetime...

...Moreover, the chief victims of his oppression were not chauvinists and reactionaries but the most moral and enlightened citizens in the country...

...He tolerated nonconformity in art solely in forms of expression ("modernisms" were permitted), while strictly proscribing all "heretical" content...

...In war and revolution it is impossible to gain victory without mass support...

...In many ways, Tito's Yugoslavia resembled an absolute monarchy...

...And the article in the Yugoslav criminal code prescribing punishments for "insults to a foreign state" is used exclusively against critics of the USSR...

...with their disappearance Yugoslavia lost another bulwark of its independence...