Working Against Time

When Yugoslavia's President Tito entered Sarajevo's magnificent new cultural and sports center last week, the 2,300 delegates to an economic conference cheered wildly and gave him a standing ovation. Then, as he strode to the rostrum beneath portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and himself, the throng broke into the war-time song of the Yugoslav partisans, "Comrade Tito, we give you our word, we shall follow you."

But will they follow anybody else? Tito, who will be 79 on May 25, is given full credit for making Yugoslavia the most democratic of all the Communist states as well as the one with the highest standard of living. Almost all Yugoslavs still support the system of "self-management" that Tito introduced 21 years ago, rejecting Soviet-style planning and central control in favor of economic decentralization, which makes managers of factories directly responsible to the workers.

Into the Open. Tito, however, may well be the only man who can command the allegiance of the disparate peoples of Yugoslavia's six republics and two autonomous provinces. A Croat in a country dominated numerically by Serbs, Tito has been trying for decades to groom a suitable successor. His first candidate, Milovan Djilas, wound up in jail after criticizing some of Tito's methods in the 1950s; his second, Aleksander Rankovic, was banished from the party in 1966 when he opposed Tito's policies of decentralization and liberalization. Both men are free today and live comfortably in Belgrade.

Last fall, the aging Tito faced up to the fact that something would have to be done soon. "We have entered a stage now where we have no time," he told a party meeting in Zagreb. "Time works not for us, but against us." To solve the problem of the succession, he proposed the creation of a collective presidency made up of two or three leaders elected by the assemblies of each republic and one or two by each province. Ironically, the national debate over Tito's proposals merely brought the country's separatist tendencies into the open.

Deep Resentments. To stem the discontent, Tito began stumping the country and threatened a party purge and "administrative measures"--a Communist euphemism meaning summary police action--for enemies of the federal system. Two weeks ago, he summoned party leaders to his Brioni Island retreat in the Adriatic Sea and scheduled a special party conference to convene this summer. Last week, he stepped up his warnings against "those who cannot be convinced," including "some generals who sit around the cafes," "megalomaniacs who want to become President," and intellectuals who have opposed his recent proposals.

Few nations are as vulnerable to internal division as Yugoslavia. Two of its republics, Slovenia and Croatia, were once linked to the Habsburg empire and developed as part of the West; the others stagnated for centuries under Turkish rule. The cultured Slovene has neither language nor heritage in common with the illiterate Montenegran. The independent, expansionist Serbs have dreamed of a true nation of Yugoslavs (literally "southern Slavs"). They formed the backbone of the wartime resistance; to this day, they accuse the Croats of having collaborated with the Germans. Resentments run so deep that the Yugoslavs have never chosen a national anthem.

Unbelievable Pressure. Tito's task of maintaining unity while solving the problem of succession is made even more difficult by the fact that the economy is in bad shape because the Yugoslavs have been living beyond their means. Despite a 15% devaluation of the dinar last fall, Yugoslavia's trade deficit rose 62% in the first quarter of the year, while retail prices soared 12%, and the cost of living 13%.

Two weeks ago, Tito warned his countrymen that foreign agents (meaning primarily Soviet secret police) had been exerting "unbelievable pressure" on the government. "We should allow no sixth column to penetrate our country," he said. It is possible, of course, that he had chosen to fight the drift toward separatism by raising the specter of Soviet troublemaking. But there is no doubt that the Soviets would like to see Yugoslavia disintegrate. If Tito manages to arrange a genuine succession, he will have made another great stride toward achieving a reasonably democratic Marxist society. If he fails, Yugoslavia could splinter under the weight of separatist feeling and Soviet meddling.

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