Life with Uncle Tito
YUGOSLAVIA
By TIBOR. SZAMUELY
Both this year's literary trials—in Moscow and Zadar—had many other features in com- mon: the undisguised prejudice of the judge, the abuse hurled at the defendants by the `spectators,' the bullyboys intimidating foreign journalists outside the courthouse. The same at- mosphere of lunatic logic pervaded both. The Yugoslav judge was quoting his Soviet colleague almost verbatim when he declared that 'in falsely describing Yugoslavia as totalitarian, Mihajlov ignored the country's direct democracy through workers' self-management, which gave every citizen the chance to express opinions freely.' According to the peculiar mental processes underlying Communist legal thought, the finest proof of freedom of expression is the swift im- prisonment of anyone presumptuous enough to deny its existence.
For the moment, Mihajlov has been dealt with. But what is actually going on in Yugoslavia? One of the most puzzling journalistic mysteries of the past few months has been the Great Yugo- slav Political Reform. For many weeks now the British press has been writing about the 'far- reaching and possibly contagious reforms under- taken in Yugoslavia since last July,' the 'far- reaching political liberalisation programme,' the 'new era of democracy in political life,' the 'rebirth of political life,' and much more to the same effect. And all this refers not to blue- prints for some distant future, but to great reforms already being implemented before our very eyes. Only, strange to say, after one has carefully unwrapped the layers of enthusiastic encomiums, one finds not one single hard fact about the actual nature of these prodigious measures. The reforms are historic, radical and far-reaching—of that we are assured; the only thing is, nobody has bothered to tell us what they actually consist of. Presumably, we must trust Uncle Tito.
Unfortunately, Uncle Tito has not been very forthcoming. In his latest speech, on Septem- ber 4, he promised only to purge the party of politically alien elements, to purge the schools and universities of 'class-aliens,' and to streng- then the leading role of the party in every field of life. Taken in conjunction with the Mihajlov trial, hardly the menu for liberty's glorious feast. So, then, what is all the fuss about?
The mainspring of all the sound and fury emanating recently from Yugoslavia has been the downfall of Aleksander Rankovic, the man who for twenty years directed the country's secret police. This is undoubtedly an event of great importance: to imply that it constitutes a turning-point in Yugoslav history is premature, to say the last. The very unanimity with which all Rankovic's long-time associates and accomp- lices have denounced him, far from indicating a sudden and profound change of heart, shows quite convincingly that 'monolithic unity' and 'democratic centralism'—the .basic principles upon which the Yugoslav police-state was founded—are still the order of the day.
Nevertheless, the fall of Rankovic has had considerable beneficial results: for the first time in its history the Tito regime has started to dis- close some of the lurid details of the oppression and terror that it had practised—whilst basking in the approval of progressive-minded people outside its frontiers. Most horrifying of all have been the accounts of the atrocities systematically committed against the Albanian minority of the Kosmet 'Autonomous Region.' The only word fit to describe this campaign is genocide: over a period of years numbers of Yugoslav Albanians, particularly the intellectual elite— schoolteachers, managers, youth leaders—have been murdered, tortured to death, driven to suicide. In the little town of Djakovica alone, nineteen people have been 'liquidated,' and many more savagely tortured, under a policy which, as The Times quaintly put it, 'was offensive to the feelings of Albanian nationals' (probably in more senses than one).
The facts, however incomplete, allow of only one conclusion: that the state authorities of a civilised European country, a country, moreover, much admired by progressive people, and visited by hundreds of thousands of Western tourists, have been conducting a campaign of murder and violence against a small, defenceless national minority. How strange that in a world positively obsessed by racial and national dis- crimination not a voice should have been raised in horror—not even today, when we know about these crimes on the unimpeachable authority of • the men responsible for them.
Some two weeks ago Professor Vladimir Dedijer, the Yugoslav historian, wrote a letter to The Times explaining his reasons for joining Lord Russell's tribunal to investigate American 'war crimes' in Vietnam. He had been haunted, he says, by une crise de conscience : 'I cannot calmly write books in my study while at the same time people of a small Asian country with a rich cultural heritage are being exter- minated by the most modern means of destruc- tion.' Professor Dedijer has a deserved reputation for courage and integrity. Surely it is only fair to ask whether his conscience has remained un- affected by happenings much nearer home. whether he could calmly write books in his study while members of a small European nation, also With an ancient heritage, were being exterminated in his own country. True, the means of destruc- tion were not particularly modern—could that be an extenuating circumstance? Is there not a CAM: for applying one's humanitarian principles to one's own suffering countrymen, before sallying forth to cure the ills of the world? And if the real reason for Professor Dedijer's silence about his own government's .attitude is his un- awareness of them, then how, in all honesty, can he hope to pass judgment upon events on the other side of the globe?
Professor Dedijer expresses his readiness to 'defend the principles of humanism and basic human rights regardless of whom the violators were and to which block or country they be- longed.' The most appropriate place for this would still scent to be his own country.
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