CHARLES P.
McVICKER, Titoism, Pattern for International Communism. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1957. 332 pp.
McVicker's
study is a scholarly work in which he tries to trace how the
"titoist" version of Communism is spelled out in the laws and rules
which shape all political and economical life of Yugoslavia. Since Tito's laws
and regulations represent a jungle, one must admire the author for courage to
enter such wilderness and congratulate him for not getting lost.
A Yale
graduate, McVicker entered the Foreign Service, served in Israel and was
American consul in Zagreb from 1950-1952. The book about Titoism is the result
of research done by the author in connection with a dissertation accepted by
the Princeton University for the degree of Ph.D. McVicker now teaches political
science at Yale.
Because of
his status as a Foreign Service official, the author had a unique observation
post for study of Titoism. He relies on his personal notes of discussions he
had with people and Yugoslav officials, upon materials published by Yugoslav
Titoist publications in English and French, upon the Joint Translation Bulletin
of the British and American embassies and some other sources.
In the
first few chapters, the author offers condensed historical background
information. It is herein that most of the deficiencies may be found.
It seems
that the very complicated nationality problems of Yugoslavia cause the most
difficulty for him. Even in the briefest summary of the turbulent political
history of Yugoslavia as it is offered by McVicker, no one should write about
the assassination of King Alexander, without mentioning the murder of the
Croatian peasant leader Stjepan Radić in the Belgrade Parliament, six
years earlier. The author merely states that King Alexander chose to close the
Parliament of 1929, but he does not say, that this happened after some Croatian
deputies, including Radić himself, were shot to death by a Serbian deputy
in this very Parliament. By such an omission, the reader gets a distorted
picture about one of the most crucial periods in Croat-Serb relations.
It is true
that the author in another section of the book, in the chapter dealing with
Tito's agricultural reforms, said that "the increasing electoral strength
of the intensely nationalistic Croatian Peasant Party so impressed the ruling
Serbian military clique that in 1928 it arranged the assassination of the
party's powerful leader, Stjepan Radić." Here it must be said, that
it is most improper to call the Croatian Peasant Party "intensely
nationalistic", because it has been one of the most moderate Croatian
political parties, that has ever existed.
According
to McVicker, the Croats, after the formation of the Yugoslav State in 1918,
insisted upon some form of semiautonomy "which would recognize what was in
their eyes their superior culture." The attitude of Croats could be better
understood if more light were thrown upon the events of that time. It has to be
remembered that most of the work during World War I in propagating the Yugoslav
idea i.e. a common State of Serbs and Croats, was done by the Yugoslav
Committee in London, formed exclusively by the Croats and a few Croatian Serbs.
They looked upon the future Yugoslav State as a union of two States, one being
the Kingdom of Serbia and the other one the State of Croats, Serbs and
Slovenes, comprising the territories which had been part of the former
Austro-Hungarian Empire (Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Hercegovina and
Slovenia.) When the new Yugoslav State failed to be such a democratic union
based on a partnership of equal rights, some of the Croatian politicians, as
for instance Dr. Ante Trumbić, a former President of the Yugoslav
Committee of London and a former Yugoslav Foreign Minister, launched a
political campaign to reorganize the centralized and serbianized State into a
federal one. With Radić's assassination and King Alexander's dictatorship,
all democratic and parliamentary means of the struggle of the Croatian people
were exhausted. King Alexander's assassination was a reprisal of the Croatian
and Macedonian revolutionaries for Radić's death and an act intended to
end the Serbian oppression over the Croats and Macedonians, which under the
King's dictatorship had reached its culmination. The younger generation of
Croats lost its hope that the Serbs would ever accept the idea of reorganizing
the State on a basis of equal footing and therefore they were looking for a
divorce with the former Kingdom of Serbia along the boundary lines as they
existed in 1918. This was how the Croatian "separatism" was born.
This explains why the Croats at the end of World War I were identified as
champions of the Yugoslav idea and at the outbreak of the World War II were
regarded as "separatists" and "anti-Yugoslavs". The same
term "Yugoslav" was profaned and linked with Serbian oppression in
consciousness of the people, so there are many Croats today who feel offended
if they are called Yugoslavs.
Thus the
violent deaths of the Croatian deputies and Serbian King are links of the same
chain reaction as well as of more violent events which followed.
McVicker
accurately observes that the "Croatian influence in the government of the
Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina has been kept to a minimum", and, that,
"the prewar orientation of the cultural relations of the Moslems of this
area toward Zagreb was shifted to Belgrade." Nevertheless, after reporting
these facts, the author arrives to a paradoxical conclusion: "It would
appear that the Serbs may have paid the lion's share in Tito's efforts to bring
about a Serb-Croat equilibrium." The evidence proves that the contrary is true.
The balance of power inside Tito's Yugoslavia among the various nationalities
is adjusted to some extent compared to the situation in prewar Yugoslavia, and
is better than it was, but there is no Serb-Croat equilibrium.
Referring
to the achievements which fostered greater "intranational unity" in
Yugoslavia, the author says that all national groups are represented in
proportion to their number in all the federal, republican and autonomous
district organs. He probably relies on some Yugoslav official or semiofficial
source. But if he himself would make an impartial study of higher echelons of
the Yugoslav Army and Yugoslav diplomatic corps, he would find astonishing
evidence reputing his statements.
Discussing
the religious problems of Yugoslavia, the author rightly observes that they are
to some extent interrelated to the nationality problems. Here again are
passages upon which it is necessary to make some comments.
The author
says: "Catholicism had been the official religion of the wartime Croatian
kingdom, and the Ustaša massacres of Croatian Serbs were as often as not
carried out in the name of Catholicism. This is not accurate. Catholicism had
not been the official religion of the wartime Croatian State. The Moslem
religious organization had been treated equally as the Catholic Church. And in
1942, a Croatian Orthodox Church had been established by the Pavelić
government. Germogen, a Russian émigré bishop, had been consecrated by a
Rumanian and some other Orthodox churchmen as the first Metropolitan and head of
the new Orthodox Church, which, by government plans, would embrace all Orthodox
believers in the territory of the Croatian State, without distinction if they
formerly belonged to the Serbian, Russian or some other Orthodox Church
organization. So far as the Ustaša massacres were concerned it is well known
that they have been strongly criticized by Archbishop Stepinac and that the
Catholic Church and Pavelić government clashed more than once,
particularly in racial questions and retaliation measures employed in civil war
etc.
The
backbone of McVicker's book is a compendium of the major Titoist reforms in
economical, agricultural, political-administrative, social and legal fields.
Even if one does not agree with the author's evaluation of Titoist reforms in
some instances, he must recognize that McVicker did a very good job indeed and
proved to be a shrewd analyst.
Every
impartial observer should gladly subscribe to almost everything which McVicker
wrote about the "workers councils." This reviewer will even agree
with the author that these "councils", as an idea, "will
represent an increasingly potent challenge to worker-management relationship in
all types of economies," but on the other hand this reviewer firmly
believes that the "workers councils" can never "develop into the
establishment of Titoism as a successful new form of socialist
government." The impact of the workers councils idea so far is greater in
the West than in Yugoslavia itself where the experiment is carried out. The
theory and practice are sharply contrasted even in the model factories of
Zagreb and Belgrade, usually visited by foreigners invited to see the system at
work. One can imagine how it is in some distant industrial establishment in
Bosnia. Workers of Yugoslavia, who now, allegedly are co-owners of the
factories, do not feel that they have gained any substantial improvement of
their status. Deprived of the right to strike, underpaid and oppressed by the
large government bureaucracy, they, ironically, envy the workers in Western
countries because of their higher standard of living. They do not care if this
higher standard of living is achieved through direct participation of workers
in management or in some other way. They regard their "councils" as a
farce and make rude jokes about them, because it is the Communist Party and the
Communist Party alone which runs the show.
Although
the author clearly expresses through the book his belief in the superiority of
constitutional democracy as a political system, one becomes surprised and
disturbed upon discovering that he suggests a different system for the peoples
of Yugoslavia. In the concluding chapter of his book there is a passage which
reads: "Localism is aggravated by the national, religious, and cultural
diversity of the various South Slav groups comprising the Yugoslav nation.
While the Titoists have managed to relieve much of the tension among these
groups, racial and religious anthipathies will undoubtedly continue to smolder
just below the surface for at least one or two generations. The tenacity of
these antipathies is an irrefutable argument for the continuing presence of a
strongly centralized government in Yugoslavia."
We cannot
interpret the words "the continuing presence of a strongly centralized
government" otherwise than the author's pleading for continuation of the
Titoist version of Communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia, or some other kind of
dictatorship which might succeed it, and which has to be in force for two more
generations at least. This is an excellent argument for those people from
Yugoslavia, who for many years are complaining that Americans preach about the
superiority of democracy, but for some Balkan or South American country, they
recommend a strongly centralized dictatorship. Why does the author not believe
that the constitutional democracy as a political system is superior for the
peoples of Yugoslavia also? This ilogicallity is both regretful and harmful.
Let us
briefly examine some facts:
— Yugoslavia had been established as a
multinational State under the name of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in
1918.
— Both the Croats and Serbs have had their
own States dating back to the 10th and 12th century respectively, and up until
1918 have followed separate and quite different historical paths of cultural
and political development.
— Most of the antagonism among the peoples
of Yugoslavia has been created by the existence of "strongly centralized
governments" between two World Wars.
— Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1941 at the
first blow of the German Army. A twofolded civil war between Communists and
anti-Communists, and between Serbs and Croats, raged for four years.
Now,
without the necessity of taking sides either with those peoples and nationality
groups of Yugoslavia who would prefer to emancipate themselves from an uneasy
union, or those who would prefer the preservation of a Yugoslav State, we
strongly believe that the worst thing to be recommended for such a State is a
"strongly centralized government."
The system
of the constitutional democracy, because of its superiority, should necessarily
find a better solution for Serbian and Croatian problems than any dictatorship.
We shall make clear this viewpoint in every occasion. The problem of existence
or non-existence of Yugoslavia or the problem of the continuation or
disintegration of the Yugoslav State should be primarily the affair of the
units which entered this multinational union. If one of the partners, through
due democratic process by majority vote and free will decides to discontinue
the partnership, why should we, who believe in the superiority of democracy,
recommend a "strongly centralized government" in order to suppress
such a move? Why should we advocate "the continuing presence" of a
system, which happens to be a hated dictatorship, only, that a relatively new
State, which proved to be of doubtful vitality, can survive? One can derive
from such a recommendation that the author is putting the State, in this case
the Yugoslav State, on a pedestal of superior deity, to whom the peoples and
generations have to be sacrificed. We cannot believe that this was his
intention, because he strongly stresses throughout the book the principle of
human liberty and democracy.
McVicker's
book has a value of technical manual on the structure of the Titoist State and
as such, it is without doubt the best manual available, despite some
shortcomings. It has to be heartly recommended to every student of Titoism.
Generally the author is too optimistic and he takes too seriously all that the
Titoists said and wrote. He nourishes illusions, as many other analysts do,
that the "liberal trend" of Titoism could develop into a full
political democracy, but we do not share this view at all. The sentence of
Milovan Djilas was at the same time a historical sentence of Titoism which
thereby condemned itself to remain a totalitarianism, and not so much
"benevolent totalitarianism" as McVicker concedes.