In a century of socialist failure, Yugoslavia has shown remarkable staying power as a model of “socialism with a human face,” an “independent” Communist country that actually works. But is it independent, and does it work?

Last year, 14 émigrés and dissidents from Yugoslavia got together to discuss the state of their native land. Yugoslavia: The Failure of “Democratic Communism” is essentially a transcript of that meeting, organized by the New York-based Freedom House.

The group included, among others, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Vladimir Mijanovic, Momcilo Selic, Mathew Mestrovic, and Rusko Matulic of the Committee to Aid Democratic Dissidents in Yugoslavia. Many of those present had been jailed for their writings or dissident activities, and one, Sami Repishti, has seen the inside of slammers in Yugoslavia and Albania. One can understand why they landed in such places.

As with most dissidents from socialist regions, their minds are largely untainted by Marxist superstition. Indeed, the only places one finds enthusiasm for Marxism would be Western university faculties, or the old-line Protestant denominations, a kind of First Church of Christ, Socialist, where liberal clergy stumble on this decrepit ideology with all the joy of Archimedes. But as far as these products of the system are concerned, Marxism is dead. These are people who see clearly and talk plainly; they think, and write. They provide some idea of what the leadership of a free Yugoslavia might be like. But as Orwell put it in 1984, the party does not care for such people.

Though they differ on certain issues, such as whether Yugoslavia ought to be divided, all seem agreed that the notion of “democratic communism” in Yugoslavia constitutes, in Churchillian terms, a fraud inside a hoax wrapped in a myth. One points out the obvious, that in Yugoslavia 7 percent of the population is Communist and rules over the other 93 percent. The state’s hegemony over the eight national regions is described as “colonial.”

The moderator, Leonard Sussman, asks if the government can continue its “policy of weakening central control” without dismantling the one-party structure. Replies Momcilo Selic: “There has never been an attempt of the Communist government to dismantle control. They have been trying to supplant one type of overt control for another more subtle type of control.”

According to Mathew Mestrovic, Yugoslavia’s “self-management” system has no economic foundation whatsoever. Rather it was simply “a political response to the Soviet Union in the crisis with Stalin.” Selic adds that it was a “cosmetic reform” accepted by Tito for “manipulative purposes” and which further fragmented the country. Self-management was “always used for control of the workers, instead of the other way around.” In the best socialist tradition, the trade unions perform the same function.

This vaunted self-management may give hope to the Michael Harringtons of the world but has done little for the country itself. According to Mestrovic, Yugoslavia is poorer than any nation in Europe except Albania. What prosperity exists, others say, is largely due to Western credits. The contention of the panel that Yugoslav consumer goods are shoddy can easily be verified by a look at that nation’s crowning export, the Yugo, a plagiarized Fiat of quite exceptional horror.

But doesn’t the Yugoslav government allow free emigration? According to Ljubo Sire, the outflow has “practically stopped,” and there are over 20,000 Yugoslavs who cannot get passports for “security reasons.”

To be sure, some one million Yugoslavs live and work abroad, but they do not rest easy. According to Mihajlov, the Yugoslav secret police has remained one of the few such forces that assassinates people in the West. Nearly 40 expatriate Yugoslavs have been killed over the last 20 years, many of them publishers and editors of the emigre press. “The Western world does not respond,” laments Mihajlov. At home, political prisoners number in the thousands. A singer was recently jailed for failing to sing a song about Tito.

As for its “nonaligned” status, Mr. Aleksandar Knezevich points out that Yugoslavia is third or fourth among nations that always vote against the United States in the UN. During Arab-Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973, the Soviets shipped weapons to Egypt through Yugoslavia. If push comes to shove, says Knezevich, “the Yugoslav Communists will side with their Communist brothers against us.”

Many of these émigrés are sharply critical of U.S. State Department policy toward Yugoslavia, which they see as acquiescent and counterproductive support of a corrupt regime. According to Selic, the Yugoslav government is vulnerable and will react to “real pressure” should the United States show itself up to the task. But for the current New Class aristocracy in Belgrade, there seems little cause for alarm. The U.S. continues to shower money on the regime, “largely without conditions,” and continues to work “hand in glove” with the repressive Yugoslav government while ignoring the dissidents’ most elementary requests.

Most notable among the participants is their affirmation of democracy, which they view as the key to solving Yugoslavia’s regional problems. “Democracy is a precondition for a free culture,” says Mihajlov, citing successful multinational democratic states such as Switzerland. According to Knezevich, “the root problem in Yugoslavia is the Communist dictatorship,” hence, “Let’s work together to destroy the Communist dictatorship” and replace it with “one free democratic society.”

The clarity and courage of such statements is inspiring, but in the present moral and intellectual climate, this is blasphemy. Such sentiments are not welcome at Harvard, on Nightline, and certainly not in the Congress of the United States, where Kennedy, Harkin, and Wright hold sway and where the rule is appeasement. What the exiles must understand is that with our New Class, it is only permissible to destroy authoritarian or even democratic societies and replace them with Communist dictatorships.

 

[Yugoslavia: The Failure of “Democratic Communism”, edited by Leonard R. Sussman and Jiri Pehe (New York: Freedom House) $8.50]