End of the Experiment?

Some people are claiming that Yugoslavia is going back under the wing of the Soviet Union, returning to the camp. Yugoslavia is not going anywhere. Yugoslavia is staying where it is.

--Josip Broz Tito, speaking in Ljubljana last month Thanks to Tito's shrewdness and determination, Yugoslavia for nearly 25 years has indeed managed to stay where it is: perched in fierce independence in the Balkans, astride the treacherous political and geographical fault lines that divide East and West Europe. Now, despite Tito's denials, the sounds from Belgrade suggest that the country is going somewhere, and fast.

In a crackdown worthy of more conventional Communist capitals, Belgrade has been waging a noisy war against villains ranging from "bourgeois nationalists" and "anarcho-liberals" at home to various unnamed "Western powers" abroad. The tough verbal salvos have been backed up by a campaign aimed at administering a strong dose of party discipline to Yugoslavia's once unfettered press, its famed "market socialism," its relaxed, decentralized, federal form of government--just about everything, in short, that Tito eagerly embraced in the early 1950s when he led his vulnerable nation of 21 million on its courageous spin away from Moscow's orthodox Communist orbit. While some believe that the new hard line may be temporary and tactical, the severity of Yugoslavia's swing toward rigidity has led many Yugoslavs to worry that the experiment in Communism-with-a-difference is coming to an end.

The first signs of Tito's new turn appeared a little more than a year ago. His country was hit simultaneously by a shattering economic crunch and an outbreak of Croatian nationalism violent enough to stir fears that the Yugoslavian Federation might soon break up in tribal chaos. Evidently convinced that he had to restore tight, centralized control, Tito turned to the party, the only institution in the country, outside of the army, that could enforce order and discipline. Ever since, the party has been struggling to regain the central role in Yugoslavia's political and economic life that it eased during the reforms of the 1950s. Among the casualties of the resultant purges have been younger party and government officials who argued for more liberal reforms, not less, as the answer to Yugoslavia's problems. Over the past month, liberal editors have been ousted at the weekly newsmagazine NIN and the Belgrade daily Politika; the editor of the popular evening paper

Politika Ekspres was fined for accusing Moscow of trying to exploit Yugoslavia's economic and social troubles.

At the same time, the regime has been pressing an anti-Western campaign on various levels--some frivolous. Peyton Place, charged with having a "petit bourgeois consumer mentality," will wink off Belgrade TV screens next month. The movie Patton was abruptly banished from Belgrade theaters last week for "glorifying the U.S. army of aggression." Yugoslav youths who used to wear G.I. fatigues and U.S. Army insignia are now being urged to switch to "the Partisan look" --belted tunics styled after the uniforms worn by Tito's World War II guerrillas.

Yugoslav leaders have accused the CIA of trying to take advantage of upheavals. The army, which has 650 U.S.-made Sherman tanks and some aging American jet fighters in its inventory, is plainly geared to fight off a Czechoslovakia-style invasion from the East.

Nevertheless an army colonel last month blandly told a group of Western newsmen that his soldiers were training "to defend ourselves against the threat from the West. Why should we fear a threat from the East? After all, it is from the East that our military aid has always come."

What is Tito really up to? It is scarcely remembered now that at the time of his split with Stalin, Tito (now 80) was already an oldfashioned, authoritarian Communist in the Moscow mold. He began to pull Yugoslavia away from the Soviet model partly for economic reasons. While Moscow was wreaking its vengeance on Belgrade with a trade-crippling boycott, Tito discovered that the liberal reforms persuasively advocated by his brilliant lieutenant Milovan Djilas were not only popular inside Yugoslavia but also attracted badly needed sympathy--and aid--from the West.

Now Tito seems once again to be responding to economic necessity--and a genuine conviction that Yugoslavia's reforms went too far. Partly because of mismanagement and corruption, Yugoslavia's hybrid market socialism has faltered. In 1971, as inflation spiraled upward at 15% despite two devaluations of the dinar, Yugoslav firms sank into the red, unable to meet payrolls, fill orders or attract vitally needed capital from the West. The result was that although Yugoslavia continued to depend on the West for considerable aid and the bulk of its trade, Belgrade had no choice but to rely more on Moscow than at any time since the split with Stalin. Currently, the Yugoslavs are negotiating for $1.3 billion in Soviet credits.

Jubilation. The Soviets, who have long been lecturing their East-bloc allies that the only true Communism is orthodox Communism, are jubilant. Despite its new homage to Moscow-style Marxism, Belgrade is not expected to join the Warsaw Pact or seek active membership in Comecon, Eastern Europe's common market. In a New Year's address Tito stressed Belgrade's political nonalignment. The Soviets, he said, "have finally come to see Yugoslavia in her special role as a positive thing."

Some aspects of Tito's double-time retreat from liberalism have been reasonably popular, at least outside intellectual circles. In a country where the average annual wage is $1,000 and no one is supposed to earn more than $7,000, Tito's campaign against the "economic criminals" who in recent years have salted millions away in Swiss and West German banks has a certain appeal. The long-term danger is that when Tito leaves the scene, the levers of power will be in the hands of the new class of rigid party stalwarts and ideological dogmatists that he is now gathering around him.

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