Tito's road to socialism
F. B. Singleton
During the last two years the remarkable octogenarian President Tito has conferred With all the world's major political leaders, in China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, in all the EEC countries, and in Africa, Asia and the Americas. This week he is on the move again — meeting President Carter for the first time in Washington and calling on
the British government on the way home.
He is regarded as a world statesman and the founding father of the non-aligned move ment. He personifies the independence of his country and its determination to survive despite the pressures both internal and external which strain its stability.
All this is no small achievement for a man Who started life in a poor village on the Slovene-Croatian border eighty-six years ago, and became an apprentice to a locksmith in Zagreb. In the first world war he served in the Austro-Hungarian army, was taken prisoner on the Russian front and witnessed the Russian revolution. Later Joining the Yugoslav Communist Party, he worked as an underground agent for the Comintern and spent several years in jail. In 1937 he became secretary general of the faction-ridden, illegal Yugoslav party — in the Comintern it used to be said that if there were two Yugoslays you had three factions. By the time the Axis powers invaded 'Yugoslavia in April 1941 Tito had managed to reconstruct the party and to draw into its ranks a group of dedicated revolutionaries from all parts of Yugoslavia and all walks of life. This was the nucleus on which the resistance movement which he led was built. Tito conducted two wars between 1941 and 1945. One was a broad patriotic war against the invaders. The other was a revolutionary struggle against Serbian royalists and Croat nationalists. He triumphed in both, and became. head of the first post-war government. He has remained in power ever since.
The Yugoslav road to socialism, which he Symbolises, began along a route signposted by Stalin. The first constitution was moulded on Stalin's 1936 Soviet Constitution. Soviet planning methods were followed in the first Five Year Plan which began in 1947. In 1948, however, Stalin turned on his loyal follower, and expelled the Yugoslays from the Cominform. Djilas — Tito's close associate until his fall from grace in 1954 — records how Stalin thundered at him, 'I will shake my little finger sand Tito will be no more'. But Tito survived Stalin and lived to see Khrushchev apologise for the Soviet campaign against Yugoslavia, which Khrushchev blamed on Beria.
After the breach with Stalin, the Yugoslays began to move away from Stalinist methods. The experiment in constructing a decentralised self-managed society began modestly with the establishment of the first workers' councils in 1949 and 1950. By the 'sixties Yugolsav 'revisionism' had gone so far as to adopt the phrase 'market socialism' to describe the system under which autonomous, worker-run enterprises competed with each other. They went further, and opened their frontiers to competitive trade from the advanced industrial nations of Western Europe.
There is in the Yugoslav system a great deal of pragmatism and flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances. This reflects Tito's temperament — and that of many of his fellow-countrymen. He is a man of action and a shrewd politician who knows how to make the most of his opportunities. His political principles are grounded in Marxism, but he is no academic theoretician. His political education has been through the hard school of experience and he is impatient with dissident academics like those in the 'Praxis' group who criticise the Yugoslav system from a Marxist standpoint.
Yugoslavia has made undoubted progress during the last thirty years and its position today compares favourably with its East European neighbours, both in a material sense and in the greater degre)e of freedom which its citizens enjoy. There are,
however, underlying strains and tensions which Tito's departure may bring to the surface. Tito himself raised the problem in 1970, when he warned of 'the very grave crisis that might face Yugoslavia' if no arrangements were made for an orderly succession. The 1971 constitutional amendment introduced the idea of a collective presidency, with balanced representation from the six national republics and the two autonomous provinces of the federation. This body will annually elect a chairman to serve as titular figurehead, the choice following in orderly rotation round the national groups.
The problem of relations between the nationalities in this multi-nation state has been a source of tension ever since the first Yugoslav kingdom was created in 1918. The federal political structure has not solved it. Recognition oflinguistic and cultural autonomy is not enough when great economic disparities remain. Slovenia, the richest republic, has a per capita income six times that of the Albanian-speaking privince of Kosovo. Nationalist agitation reached boiling point in Croatia in 1971, when grievances about the alleged exploitation of the Croat economy by the less developed areas provided slogans for the demonstrators in Zagreb. Tito intervened, with the backing of the army and the party, and a purge of nationalists in all republics ensued. Tito's famous letter of 1972 castigated dissidents of all varieties — liberals, nationalists, cominformists and bureaucrats.
After a period of apparent inactivity, the Communists jumped back into the driving seat, and it was made plain that they were still the only centre of political authority. The new constitution of 1974 reaffirmed the leading role of the party and dispelled any illusions about possible developments towards parliamentary democracy on the Western model.
The party is 'the tissue which binds socialist Yugoslavia together', according to Tito, and it is likely to play an increasingly important role when he has gone. Apart from fears of internal dissension, there is also worry about possible external interference. I can see no possible benefit to the Soviet Union in an invasion of Yugoslavia. Even if it did not bring about a third world war it would still land the invader with a war of attrition against a well-organised citizen army. The only people likely to benefit from a Red Army involvement in the Balkans would be China. The other possibility is that KGB or CIA agents would seek to use the internal tensions to cause a break-up of Yugoslavia. I cannot see how this would serve anyone's interest. The preservation of a strong, prosperous, non-aligned Ytigoslavia is in the interests of the Yugoslav peoples and of all who value world peace. I think it is likely that the edifice which Tito has helped to build is strong enough to stand the inevitable strain of his departure, but it is easy to understand why he feels he must — as I am sure he has been doing on this trip — continually remind the leaders of the world that it will be in their interests to help his country economically and politically to weather the storm.
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