SOUTHEAST EUROPE SERIESVol. XIX No. 5

(Yugoslavia)

CRISIS IN CROATIAPart II: Facilis Decensus Averno

by Dennison I. Rusinow

September 1972

They came to power on a platform of "Decentrali-zation, De-6tatization, De-politicization, and De-mocratization. ’’1 They were hailed as paladins of"liberal" communism and a pluralistic concept ofsocialist society. They were regarded, correctly, as thepupils, creatures, and heirs of Vladimir Bakari6, theman who had played the key role in bringing aboutthe overthrow in 1966 of Aleksandar Rankovi6 andhis security police, the symbols and guarantors of"neo-Stalinist centralism, bureaucratism, andgreater-Serbian hegemonism" and the men whosepolitical destruction had opened the gates to therealization of that "socialist democracy" whichfound its most articulate political spokesmen inBakari6 and his pupils. They were young, bornbetween 1923 and 1929, and therefore also symbolsof the new generation of educated, "modern" Com-munists who were supposed to be consistent fightersagainst the authoritarian dogmatism of those whosepolitical formation had taken place under Stalinism.They were dynamic and attractive, so that the chiefamong them had been called "the Yugoslav Ken-nedy" by his admirers.

They came to power in the late 1960s, and inDecember 1971 they fell from power. In their fall,they were accused by Bakari6 and others ofpandering or conversion to nationalism and chau-vinism, of using dictatorial or "neo-Stalinist" meth-ods against opponents and colleagues, and of seekingto establish a quasi-fascist state in which the dicta-torial rule of a political clique of (ex?) Communistsand nationalists in alliance with a new middle class ofindustrial managers and "technocrats" would bedisguised by socialist rhetoric and by a nonparticipa-tory pseudomobilization of the masses, deluded bynationalism and by lies projecting the blame for alltheir ills onto another nation.Copyright (C) 1972, American Universities Field Staff, Inc.

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If both descriptions are true, this is the stuff ofwhich Greek tragedy (also a Balkan invention?) ismade. It is the purpose of this series of Reports toargue that both are in fact true, at least in grossomodo, and to trace the path that leads from the firstto the second.

Miko Tripalo was born in 1926 in Sinj, a smalltown in the barren Dalmatian hinterland. He joinedthe Communist-led Partisan resistance movementwhen it began in 1941, at age 15, and he entered theParty in 1943, when he was 17. Politics have been hiscareer ever since: a Communist youth leader after thewar and President of the Federation of Yugoslav stu-dents from 1953 to 1955: a member of the CentralCommittee of the all-Yugoslav Party in 1958; amember of the Executive Committee of the CroatianParty from 1962 and its Secretary from 1966 to 1969.In 1969 he became one of Croatia’s two representa-tives on the new and supreme Executive Bureau ofthe Presidium of the League of Communists ofYugoslavia, and in 1971 he became one of Croatia’sthree representatives on the 23-member state Presi-dency created that year as an "after-Tito" collectivehead of state.

Dr. Savka taocevc-rucar, a professor ofeconomics at Zagreb University and Europe’s firstwoman prime minister when she became head of theCroatian government in 1967, was born in 1923 onthe Dalmatian island of Korula. She joined theParty and the Resistance in 1943. She became amember of the Croatian Central Committee in 1959and of the Executive Committee in 1963. In 1969 shemoved from the Premiership of the Croatian govern-ment to the Presidency of the Croatian Party.

Pero Pirker was born in 1927 in Varadin, a majorprovincial city in the Croatian heartland northeast of

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Zagreb. He joined the Party in 1945, served as ayouth and later Party leader in Zagreb, was the city’sMayor from 1963 to 1967, and replaced Tripalo asSecretary of the Executive Committee of the CroatianParty in 1969.

Marko Koprtla was born in 1929 in a village nearupanja, a dusty market town on the Sava River inethnically mixed Slavonia. He joined the Party in1947 and has been a "professional political worker"since 1955. A member of the Croatian CentralCommittee since 1964, he joined the Executive Com-mittee in 1969 with special responsibility for "cadre"(personnel).

In 196S, when I lived in Zagreb, all of these laterprotagonists in the great drama (except Koprtla,whom I do not remember hearing about then) wererising young stars in the Croatian and Yugoslavpolitical firmament, widely praised and admired asBakari6’s "whiz kids." They were then playing anenergetic and central role in the struggle to imple-ment a major package of liberalizing economicmeasures adopted in July 196S, known to Yugoslavsas the Reform, and to parry the sabotaging thrustsof Rankovi6 and his friends who were still trying byall means to discredit the Reform and overthrow thereformers. All of them, with Bakarie, were present ata Zagreb diplomatic cocktail party that happened totake place on the evening of July 1, 1966, the dayRankovi6 fell. A friend who was there told me after-ward: "I didn’t think anyone could be more de-lighted with today’s news than I was, but their gleewas downright indecent!" It was impossible and atthe time unimportant to determine to what extenttheir joy was that of Croats, who had just seen theincubus of an impending and already partly real Ser-bian dictatorship lifted from them, and to whatextent it was that of socialist democrats welcomingthe destruction of one of the principal barriers to themodernization and democratization of Yugoslavcommunism.

Around this group were other bright, well-edu-cated, active young people full of new enthusiasm,working feverishly in an excited atmosphere thatvacillated from optimism (when the Reform wasadopted) to grim pessimism (when, because of Ran-kovi6, "nothing happened" through the winter of196S-66). Typical of these was Krego Deba, then theeconomic correspondent of the Zagreb morningnewspaper, Vjesnik, whose excellent serialized

analysis of the Reform and personal counsel wereimportant to Fieldstaff descriptions of the changingYugoslav economic system. Five years later Debawas a member of the Croatian Central Committeeand editor-in-chief of VUS (Vjesnik u Srijedu), amagazine whose liveliness and combativeness hadrightly made it the largest circulation weekly in thecountry. There he suffered the fate of the erstwhilepolitical whiz kids: a euphoric VUS became, week byweek, more outspoken and intransigent in itsinterpretation and defense of Croatian nationalinterests; Tito and others, as we now know, includedVUS and its editor in their closed-session warnings tothe Croatian leadership through the spring and sum-mer of 1971; and when nothing happened, Tito atKaradjordjevo publicly accused the magazine ofprinting chauvinist articles. Three weeks later, per-ceiving the battle to be lost, Deba (along with thedirector and the editor-in-chief of Vjesnik) resigned.In February 1972 he was thrown out of the Party. 2

After Rankovi

The fall of Rankovi6, the humbling of the securitypolice, and subsequent organizational reformsaffecting both Party and state institutions openedthe doors to a redistributive decentralization of pri-mary decision-making power in which a stable andeffectual new constellation of forces stubbornly failedto appear. In the ensuing political confusion only twothings were clear. The first was that the principalagents in Rankovi6’s fall had been Republicanbarons like BakariE and his peers in other non-Serbregions, backed by the increasingly autonomousRepublican Party machines which they controlledand which Rankovi6 had been unable to penetrate.With their power augmented by prestige born of thisrole and by identification with the cause ofdecentralization, democratization, and "self-man-agement," the ideological winning side in the strug-gle with Rankovi6, these Republican centers and notthe constitutional organs of "self-management" werenow the penultimate arbiters, under Tito, ofYugoslav politics. Yugoslavia was on the way to be-coming a confederation in which the center would bepowerless without the unanimous consent of theregions.

Secondly, it was also clear that the Serbs, collec-tively identified with Belgrade as a symbol of "anti-self-management" centralism, 6tatism, and authori-tarianisma dangerous oversimplification--were

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BAKARI AND HIS PROTEGEES: (Top) Miko Tripalo and Vladimir Bakari in happier days, atthe VI Congress of the League of Communists of Croatia, 1968. Near the End of the Road: {Bottom)Bakari( and Savka Dabevi6-KuSar during the "Freedom 71" military maneuvers, near Karlovac inCroatia, October 1971.

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considered by others and often tended to considerthemselves the "losing side"in the battle thatRankovid had lost.

In this context it was immediately obvious to atleast some of us that four dangers might threaten thevictory of the reformers. They could fail to producepromised (largely economic) results, either throughlack of ability and poor planning, because of themagnitude and complexity of the problem, orbecause too many instruments necessary to imple-ment their program remained in other hands.Secondly, there could be a Serbian nationalist back-lash, which might unite all Serbs--40 per cent of thecountry’s populationon a "conservative" platformunderstood or disguised as the defense of Serbiannational interests and as revenge for a Serbian na-tional humiliation. Thirdly, there was the danger thatsome of the other nationalities, intoxicated by whatwas widely interpreted as their national triumph andled by either incompetent or irresponsible leaders,would indulge in excesses of national euphoria thatwould also bring about a "conservative" backlash byraising the specters of chauvinism and thedisintegration of the state. Finally, there was a dan-ger that the "liberal coalition" of 1965-66 mightbreak up into its component parts when the processof redistributing the former power of their commoncentralist enemy exposed important differences intheir own interests and objectives.

All four of these dangers in fact materialized,although sometimes in unanticipated ways, and eachhad its specific impact on the shifting focus of Cro-atian politics.

The Reform had been hastily concocted bypoliticians who had only half listened to theireconomic advisers and in their haste had put asideuntil later hotly disputed but vitally important mat-ters like the distribution of former Federal funds andobligations. To the resulting conceptual defects wereadded faulty and partial implementation, theinability of many enterprises to adapt to changedrules and market conditions, and bad luck in theform of unhelpful developments in the world marketbeyond Yugoslavia’s borders. The result was anexaggeration and prolongation of difficulties antici-pated in the transition to the new system. Yugoslaviasuffered rising unemployment, high inflation rates,taxes that took more of industry’s net revenue ratherthan less, increasing emigration, general economic

stagnation, and a negative balance of payments savedfrom the disaster level only by tourism and emigrantremittances.

For a variety of reasons Croatia was among the re-gions hardest hit by most of these phenomena. It wasalso the principal earner of foreign currency fromtourism and from remittances, because the Dalma-tion coast is Croatian and 37 per cent of Yugoslavsworking abroad are from Croatia. Meanwhile, manyfiscal powers, most foreign currency earnings, and alarge share of the total Yugoslav investment fund re-mained concentrated in Belgrade, the Federal andSerbian capital. This had happened, despite the in-tention of the Reform, partly because of continuingdeadlock over those changes in the system on whichthere had been no agreement in 1965 and partlyeither because of Serbian wiles (according tonon-Serbian nationalists) or because expensivecommitments to slow-maturing major investments ininfrastructure (mainly in Serbia and the South),made on the eve of the Reform and on theassumption of continuing high growth rates, had tobe honored in a period of recession and nongrowth.

Such a situation offered powerful ammunition toCroatian politicians continuing the struggle againstthe remains of central redistributive power and alsoto Croatian nationalists seeking a new platform foranti-Yugoslavism and anticommunism, both identi-fied with anti-Serbianism.

A Serbian nationalist backlash did appear in themonths after the fall of Rankovi6. As described inseveral earlier Fieldstaff Reports, it took the form ofwhat is popularly called the Serbian "politicalunderground," defined as an unholy alliance ofRankovi’s followers (Rankovi6 himself, ever loyal toTito, has made no known political move since his fall)with former Stalinists and Cominformists, "new left"students and intellectuals, and even former RoyalistChetniks. For a time it appeared that a "Serbianquestion" was replacing the "Croatian question" asYugoslavia’s most urgent perennial problem. Thereasons why this danger never fully materialized arenot only important in themselves but also provide aninstructive counterpoint to parallel developments inCroatia. It was Serbian nationalism and no other thatwas disgraced along with and because it wasidentified with Rankovi, "integral Yugoslavism,"conservative communism, and centralism. Individu-als rightly or wrongly suspected of overt or covert

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Serbian nationalism were removed from leading po-sitions and by 1968 a new leadership had taken overthe Serbian Party. As young and "liberal" as theircounterparts in Croatia, they happened fortuitouslyto be abler politicians and, of special importance,they were by process of selection untainted with Ser-bian nationalism in its traditional form, which isalways "hegemonistic" and thus centralist andauthoritarian. 4 The skill and unique comprehensionwith which they used the arsenal of politicalmanipulation and ideological "open polemics" thatis supposed to be a modern Yugoslav Communist’sonly legitimate weaponry in dealing with opponentsis a separate and fascinating study, but the result wasto leave frustrated Serbian nationalists at least tem-porarily disaggregated and ineffective.

The situation in Croatia was quite different. Cro-ation national sentiment and legitimate Croatiangrievances had been powerful motive forces in the re-sistance to and overthrow of centralist "unitarism"and were in no way discredited by recent events. Foranyone who was in Zagreb in the summer of 1966,experiencing the euphoria provoked by the fall ofRankovi6 and the almost universal tendency tointerpret it as primarily a victory for Croatianinterests, it was obvious that it would take a team ofextraordinarily level-headed and able leaders tochannel enthusiasm in the desired direction ofmobilization for further reforms while forestalling adisplay of nationalism that could get out of hand orat least strengthen the "conservative" opposition byappearing to endanger civic peace and the stability ofthe multinational community.

The first crisis came within nine months. In March1967 a group of 130 prominent Croatianintellectuals, 80 of them Communists, signed adeclaration calling for a complete official distinctionbetween the Croatian and Serbian languages,heretofore legally treated as variants of one language(Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian), and an end toalleged discrimination against the Croatian variant. 5A political uproar and an almost hysterical campaignagainst nationalism followed. The signatories of theDeclaration (and with them the 45 Serbian writers,half of them also Communists, who drafted aresponsive demand for legal recognition of "Serbian"and the Cyrillic alphabet for the Serb minority thatcomprises 15 per cent of the population of Croatia)were anathematized and some of the Communistslost their Party memberships.

In October the Croatian Central Committeepurged one of its most distinguished members,Ve6eslav Holjevac, a respected former Mayor of Za-greb and member of the Croatian government. Hewas accused of "nationalistic deviations" in hisleadership of the Center for Croatian Emigrants, aquasi-governmental institution then considered anationalist hotbed. For outsiders who knew Holjevacand his career, this was even interpreted as an excessof zeal.

For a time it seemed that the Croatian leadershipwould prove willing and able to maintain in practiceas well as declaratively a struggle on twofrontsagainst what it chose to consider Croatiannationalism at home and against "the relics ofbureaucratic centralism" in Belgrade. In 1968 thespotlight on nationalism shifted to the KosovoAutonomous Province in southern Serbia, where eth-nic Albanians, locally a majority, were celebratingtheir own recent emancipation from total and brutalSerbian hegemony with violent demands for more ofthe same and a Republic of their own.

Meanwhile, and as predicted, another kind offalling out over the spoils of former central power wastaking place among erstwhile allies, this time func-tionally rather than ethnically defined. The essentialissue was and is the proper future distribution of ef-fective decision-making power, especially in theeconomy, among four kinds of centers: Republicanand Provincial Party-state apparatuses, communes(the 500 basic territorial-political units), enterprisemanagers and other "technocrats," and what Yugo-slav theory calls "self-managers" or (in this context)"the working class." In effect this last means thoseemployed in the socialist sector of the economy, akind of broad-based proletarian elite whose interestsare aggregated and demands transmitted throughspecialized representative and professional organiza-tions, including workers’ councils and trade unions.A fifth candidate, a residuary legatee who might beleft with more than anyone else had intended, is theFederation. 6

For the Croatian political situation the function ofthis dimension of the conflict was twofold: it creatednew possibilities for new alliances, but it also made itdifficult for both actors and observers to understandwhat was happening and to choose sides accordingly.The latter confusion derived in part from the rules ofthe gameall players are obliged to "stand on the

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platform of the League of Communists" andtherefore must use the same ideological labels andepithets to describe themselves and their opponents,obscuring real differencesand in part from the factthat the "functional dimension" of the dispute de-scribed above represents analytical categories morethan it does roles and intentions as perceived by theactors. It is only since Karadjordjevo that one can siftfrom often tedious but sometimes insightful"Marxist analyses" of the sources of the crisis an atleast tentatively convincing picture of the socialstrata and interests involved in these shifting alli-ances and their effect on the then Croatian leader-ship. This is an essential part of the story thatfollows.

The Croatian StrategyBy 1968 the prevailing atmosphere in Yugoslavia

was one of insecurity, drift, and a rising tide of dis-sent. The real legitimacy of the regime in the eyes ofthe people rested on its heretofore proven ability infour fields: defense of the precarious independence ofa small state on the East-West frontier and of theequally precarious "brotherhood and unity" of itsquarrelsome ethnic groups, and the promotion ofrapid economic development and of at least somevisible advance toward a stable economic and politi-cal democracy. On all four fronts it was manifestlyfaltering. The post-Reform recession had becomeacute. In the aftermath of the Six Day War andthe Greek military coup to the south, the occupationof Czechoslovakia to the north, and evidence of re-newed Soviet fishing in troubled Balkan waters thesecurity and independence of Yugoslavia seemedmore precarious than at any time since Stalin’sdeath. Both the Federal government and the centralParty apparatus were paralyzed by the inability ofregional leaderships to agree on key issues, there wasan associated escalation of distrust and mutual re-criminations among the ethnic communities, andmany were coming to feel that a quarreling Commu-nist elite that had lost its sense of purpose and abilityto act decisively might be worse than one that hadnot. The universities provided a seismograph of dis-sent: "new leftist" in Slovene Ljubljana, nationalistin Croatian Zagreb, and a bit of everything in Bel-grade.

As perceived by the Croatian Party leadership, theprincipal barrier to the solution of all these problemswas to be found in the continued resistance to mod-ernization and pluralism offered by the remaining

bastions of "bureaucratic centralism," a label whichfocused attention on the Federal administration andthe Federal Party apparatus. These bastions wereheld by "conservatives" and "unitarists," men whofeared the mobilization and participation of themasses that was the declared goal of Party policyeither because they feared democracy or because theywere at heart Serbian nationalists resisting a loss ofSerbian hegemony through such a process. Theirstrength lay in the economic instruments theycontinued to control, redistributive instrumentswhose use was particularly harmful to the interests ofricher and more developed regions like Croatia andSlovenia. 7

The political strategy of the Croatian leadershipconsequently concentrated on two targets.

They urged further decentralization and also fur-ther "democratization" of Party and polity. Theseshould be achieved through relaxation of the rules of"democratic centralism," permitting minority voicesto be heard, through an increased voice for ordinarycitizens in direct, competitive elections and in distri-bution of enterprise earnings that would be largerbecause federal taxes and fiscal powers would besmaller after consistent reforms, and through a purgeof older Communists unwilling or unable to play bythe new rules. Part of their reasoning was certainlybased on perceptions of political advantage:weakening "democratic centralism" would weakenthe remaining power of the Federal Party center overthe Croatian Party, while an opening to the masseswas expected to strengthen the position of young,"modern" Communist leaders like themselves, whoknew how to speak the language of the people andhow to manage a more open political system. It wasalso a strategy which enabled them to label"unitarist" political opponents as old-fashioned,conservative, unprogressive, skeptical of socialistdemocracy and "self-management," and unjustifi-ably fearful of the ability of "socialist ideas" to tri-umph in an "open, democratic political dialogue andconfrontation." There is no reason to think they wereinsincere in such labeling. When they spoke ofpurging such Communists they were thinking asmuch of their own Croatian "old guard" as they wereof "centralists" in Belgrade. 8

At the same time they specifically attacked con-tinuing Federal control of most foreign currency (ahot issue in Croatia, which earns about 40 per cent of

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all Yugoslav foreign currency), former Federal bankswith seats in the capital and former Federal funds intheir safes (one of the key issues not settled in the1965 Reform), and certain wealthy foreign tradeenterprises that had been founded, financed, andstaffed by Serbian-dominated Federal institutionsand capital before the reform and that were nowexercising what the Croats regarded as an alarmingand exploitive country-wide power based on theseill-gotten riches. The slogans were "federalization offormer Federal capital" and "clear accounts" (6istira6uni), which would allow each Republic to see whatit was contributing to and getting from theFederation and to make appropriate decisions aboutfuture contributions.

In advancing these arguments the Zagreb leader-ship could claim With credibility that they were notonly defending the interests of Croatian entrepre-neurs and workers, and thus the Croatian nation.Theirs was also a defense of the interests of"producers" throughout Yugoslavia, who inYugoslav Communist theory should have control overthe "surplus value" of their labor that was being"expropriated" by Belgrade bureaucracy, Belgradebanks, and the grasping tentacles of thoseBelgrade-based foreign trade enterprises.

As yet unspoken but implicitly underlying this lineof attack there was, however, another level ofperceptions, this time ethnic but also not withoutpartial historic justification. The metaphor for allthat was outdated, centralist, and authoritarian was"Belgrade." Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Serbia,whose notorious "Serbian bourgeoisie" had ruledand ruthlessly exploited richer, more sophisticatedCroatia in prewar Yugoslavia, and who now, withRankovi6 and a Serbian-dominated Party and policebureaucracy, had recently attempted a repeatperformance. Serbian politicians, primitive byeducation, hard-fisted by training and necessity,pro-Soviet by pan-Slav instincts, centralist by interestand tradition, and therefore "neo-Stalinist" or atleast "dogmatic Communist" by definition. Serbianhegemony, exploitive and authoritarian, theprimaryperhaps the only reason why Croatia wasnot already as rich and democratic as...Denmark?The Croatian strategy had, from its birth, two faces:one national, one socialist. As early as 1967, beforeand after the language crisis, the new leadership hadbecome sensitive to the charge that in their openingto the masses in the name of decentralization theywere playing with Croatian nationalism.

Meanwhile, however, the program of the League ofCommunists of Yugoslavia and the national interestsof the Croatian nation both called for "decentraliza-tion, de-tatization, depoliticization, and democ-ratization." There w as no contradiction, no conflicthere, and the enthusiastic support of the Croatianmasseshich, as in any society, meant the politi-cized minority that had found means to articulate itsfeelingswas further proof, if any were needed, thattheir course was correct. So, too, were their numerousallies in other Republics and regions; the Slovenes,whose anticentralist economic interests were thesame; the Macedonians, whose defensive new na-tionalism and consequent fear of Serbian hegemonyhad come to weigh more heavily than the financialbenefits they gained as an underdeveloped regionfrom centralized redistribution of national income;and others, even in the new Serbian leadership,whose interests or ideological convictions made themalso anticentralist. With such strength at home andelsewhere in the Federation and with growing self-confidence, Bakari’s disciples pressed their caseuncompromisingly and vigorously.

The "Historic" Tenth Session

The stalemate at the Federal level neverthelesscontinued, preventing any effective, country-wideaction to deal with increasingly acute economic andsocial problems. At the Ninth Party Congress inMarch 1969 Tito himself intervened with anotherattempted solution: a 15-member Executive Bureausuperimposed on top of the entire Party andcomposed of the senior barons of each regionalPartyBakari6 and Tripalo became Croatia’srepresentatives. They would all live in Belgrade,above the strife and away from their bases of power.Unfettered by direct responsibility to their respectiveParties and with institutional roles that made all ofYugoslavia their collective concern, they would beable to reach agreement, and because they were therecognized leading spokesmen of their respectiveregions the regional Parties would have to obey them.

It did not work. Problems persisted and grew inmagnitude, and their persistence and the apparentincapacity of the system to produce decisions oraction multiplied the ranks of the discontented, whotended to polarize around two extremes: exclusivistand paranoid nationalism or neocentralism. Caughtbetween these two fires, the Croatian leadership took

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a decision sometime around the middle of 1969 toconcentrate on the one they considered moredangerous.

Bakari6 himself explained the rationale of thechoice and the pattern of future action in a speech toRepublican Party leaders on December 13, 1969, andeven more clearly in his remarks during the TenthSession of the Croatian Central Committee a monthlater. These two events mark the public opening of anew phase in Croatian politics.9

He wished, Bakari6 told the Tenth Session, to dis-cuss both "Croatian unitarism" and "Croatian na-tionalism" as threats to the line of the Party. Thehistoric roots of contemporary Croatian unitarismwere to be sought in the fact that all founders of theCroatian Communist Party, except Tito himself, hadbeen "Yugoslav nationalists" in their youth and hadkept that "ballast" when they became Communists.Their unitarism was later reinforced by three succes-sive events: the atrocities of the Croatian fascistUstage during the Second World War, the Comin-form attack on Yugoslavia from 1948 to 1953, andthe centralist system of Communist rule which wasimposed after the war and which for many years en-joyed remarkable success in providing economic de-velopment and political stability. Unitarists thereforerepresented a strong, ,permanent current in Croatiancommunism, with many unitarists in or close to topParty and government bodies, capable of settingpolicy. Do they have a chance, Bakari6 asked, offinding domestic (Croatian) allies and taking power?No, their time is past, unless they have external help"their strength lies in "bureaucratic centralism andCominformism." Such a government and movementcould therefore exist for a certain time, with suchhelp, but the first crisis"domestic or interna-tional"would bring a repetition of the collapse andcivil war of 1941-1945. "This possibility," he said,"still exists."

Croatian nationalism, on the other hand, never ex-isted as an "enduring tendency" in the CroatianCommunist Party, although individual nationalistsoften penetrated the Party, occasionally with someeffect, as in 1937, 1944, and "in that CentralCommittee of which I was president." But they werenever a serious current. Could nationalists thereforeever form a government? No, they are too divided,too confused as to goals, and too discredited by theUstae variant and its atrocities. Without direct

prospects, therefore, traditional Croatian national-ism seeks a role inside the League of Communists, ona platform of criticism of Yugoslavia and its develop-ment. This, however, is entirely negative. On thisbasis they are capable only of "sabotage," butbecause they have no positive "real ideology orprogram," they are otherwise not dangerous. Thatthey had admittedly become more "aggressive" inrecent months was really only a sign that they were onthe defensive and in retreat.

The occasion for both the December meeting andthe Tenth Session of the Central Committee, whichmet from January 15 to 17, 1970, was a series ofnewspaper articles about Croatian nationalismwritten by a prominent Croatian politician and pub-lished in Borba, a "Federal" newspaper consideredby the Croatian leadership to be centralist andanti-Croatian. The articles presented a detailed anddocumented analysis of the increasing activities ofCroatian nationalists and suggested that the Partyleadership had failed to take more than verbal actionagainst the rising nationalist tide. Particularlyincriminated in the series were the publications andother activities of the Matica Hrvatska, 130-year-oldCroatian cultural organization that had played a dis-tinguished and aggressive role in developing and de-fending Croatian national consciousness during the"Slav awakening" of the nineteenth century and inthe bitter internationality struggles that marked thelast decades of the Hapsburg monarchy. The Borbaseries portrayed the Matica as having fallen into thehands of nationalists and clericalists who were turn-ing it again into a political organization in competi-tion with the League of Communists.

The author of the articles was Milo Zanko, born1915, a member of the Croatian Central Committeeand the Conference of the all-Yugoslav Party, a VicePresident of the Federal Parliament, a Communistand Partisan in 1941, and an impassioned "Yugo-slav" patriot for whose personal integrity and lack ofpolitical ambition there are convincing testimonials.The immediate purpose of the Tenth Session was hispublic condemnation and political liquidation "forviews and actions.., contrary to the policy andcourse of the League of Communists." His articleswere interpreted as a malicious effort to discredit theCroatian Party leadership by labeling it soft onnationalism; their only purpose must therefore be toseek the overthrow of that leadership; since the pres-ent leaders enjoyed the full confidence of Croatian

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Communists and the Croatian public, they could onlybe overthrown through outside intervention. ankomust therefore be the witting or unwitting agent ofsuch interventionists. Bakari6 had already indicated,in his December 16 speech,, where they were to befound" in the "Serbian arsija" (a Turkish word formarketplace, used as a derogatory term for Belgradegossip), but not in the Serbian League of Commu-nists, and "in a part of the Federal administration"which was attempting to maintain its power and tothis end was "withholding from the public informa-tion about the nature of the difficulties facing thecountry."

The Tenth Session was later to become the totemof Croatian communism and the touchstone of"progressive" views which qualified both Commu-nists and non-Communists for participation in Cro-atian politics. The principles of the Tenth Session, asinterpreted by Tripalo, Savka, and Pirker in particu-lar, began with a declaration of all-out struggleagainst "unitarism" and its advocates, consideredthe principal threats to democratic socialism andCroatian national interests. Croatian nationalismand nationalists, clearly defined and located, werealso classified as alien and dangerous, but wereconsidered a lesser threat at the present time. In thename of democracy the struggle against them couldemploy only "ideological-political" and indirectweapons" argument and positive action to solve theeconomic problems and end the "bureaucratic-cen-tralist" exploitation of Croatia on which nationalismfed. To accomplish the latter purpose allies would beneeded and should be sought (without, of course, anycompromise of the principles of "self-managementsocialism") in mobilization of the masses, includingnon-Communists and even sometime nationalistswon ov..er by such a program, and in other Republics.The "Zanko case" had exposed the face of the prin-cipal enemy and that he was to be found inside Cro-atia as well as outside. Amo_ng first priorities musttherefore be the forging of a monolithic Croatianfront, requiring a domestic political house-cleaningin the name of self-management and Croatian na-tional interests; the "homogenization of Croatia"soon became a favorite political phrase.

These were, indeed, the main themes of the TenthSession. A careful rereading of the speeches madethere also reveals, however, some subthemes,elaborations, and nuances worth noting in the lightof subsequent events.

Several Central Committee members who werelater to part company with the Tripalo-Savka-Pirkertriumvirate significantly confined their remarks atthe Tenth Session to attacks on anko’s egotism inconsidering himself the only fighter against national-ism and his impropriety in publishing attacks on theleadership in Borba rather than voicing them at aParty meeting. 10

Other speakers, elaborating on the twin subjects ofCroatian nationalism and Yugoslav unitarism, re-vealed attitudes and details of evaluation that were toset the style of Croatian politics and determine thetactics of the Croatian Party in the months to come.Themes of greatest retrospective significanceincluded"

If Croatian Communists are not sensitive to Cro-atian national interests, others will be and will profit.Croatian nationalism flourishes on unsolved prob-lems, and by solving problems and by educationCommunists can dry up the sources of nationalism.Nationalists say that Croatia is exploited, thatCroatia fares worse than other Republics, thatunproductive investments are found only outside ofCroatia and are built with Croatian money, etc., andthat this all happens at least partly because theLeague of Communists of Croatia and its CentralCommittee are a-national and therefore unable toprotect Croatia and its interests.

With the retreat under fire of "greater 6tatism(the hegemony of one nation)," Republican national-ism steps forward as a new base for 6tatist elements,who seek thereby to turn their defeat at the centerinto a victory at the regional level. This Republicannationalism has recently become "noisier" becauseof a stagnation in the development of self-manage-ment as an alternative to any form of tatism and be-cause democratization tolerates such noise. Theanswer is not less democracy but more answeringarguments and renewed progress toward self-man-agement.

-The organizations and periodicals named byanko have indeed been guilty of indulging inunacceptable expressions of nationalism and ofattempting to engage in unacceptable politicalactivities. But there is nothing new in any of thesepurported "revelations;" the Central Committee isnot only aware of these things but has taken firm po-litical action to deal with them. Some organizations

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and periodicalsfor example, the Center forCroatian Emigrants (Holjevac), the RepublicanInstitute for the Study of the Workers’ Movement(Franjo Tudjman), and the shortlived periodical ofthe Writers’ Association (Hrvatski KnjievniList)--have been cleansed or forced to stoppublication, but always by "correct" political meth-ods and never by "outdated" police methods. In thelight of the success of this strategy, to continue to talkof the need to "pass from words to deeds," as ankodoes, can only mean advocating a return to Stalinist"administrative" (police)methods, totally unaccept-able and contrary to the Party line.

As for the Matica Hrvatska, which Zankoconsidered most dangerous of all, some articles andindividuals should be criticized, and the ExecutiveCommittee has done this, but one should notgeneralize. There are enough disciplined Commu-nists and other sound "self-management socialists"in the Matica to prevent its abuse and to frustratethose "who tried to turn the Matica Hrvatska from acultural institution into a self-styled political repre-sentative of the interests of the Croatian nation."

Croatia unfortunately has the largest and"worst" political emigration of any part of Yugo-slavia. The organizations of these migrs arebecoming more aggressive and dangerous for anumber of reasons. These include a more subtlestrategy that pretends to accept many aspects of thesocialist order in Yugoslavia, a recently revivedinterest on the part of their "foreign sponsors andforeign intelligence agencies" in the possibility thatYugoslavia might break up, and the opportunity forrecruitment of a new generation inside Croatia pre-sented by the rapidly growing number of Croatsgoing to temporary work in Western Europe. Theactivities of these ernigr organizations must beclosely watched, and institutions like the MaticaHrvatska must be warned to beware of what mayseem innocent cultural contacts with them.

Unitarism is more dangerous than nationalism inpart because it still has a "material base" in remain-ing instruments of central economic power, includingthe foreign currency system, continued concentrationin one place (Belgrade) of capital and economicpower inherited from the old economic system ("e.g.,certain foreign trade enterprises"), and the invest-ment and banking systems. Therefore, the strugglefor the Reform is the same as the struggle against

unitarism and as the struggle for truefreedom and development.

national

The Croatian Party has long understood the uni-tarist threat, but so far has fought against it at theplace of its principal power and economic and socialroots, at the Federal center. In the future the Partymust pay more attention to "unitarist conceptions"in its own midst. Unitarists can be recognized, interalia, by their distrust of all national feeling, theirtendency to treat even words like "Croat" and "Cro-atia" as suspect, reeking of the past and a threat toothers, especially Serbs in Croatia. They also seek to"transform the view of those who declare themselves’Yugoslavs,’ in order to emphasize their citizenshipof a socialist self-managing community, into anunacceptable concept of a Yugoslavism which signi-fies a superior, supranational concept that does notcontain equality of nationalities and free expressionof national sentiments."

One of anko’s crimes is that his kind of broad-side attack on anything he thinks smells of national-ism does not contribute to the Croatian Party’s basiceffort to mobilize a wider stratum of the masses andbroaden the base of support for its policies, a processwhich involves "not disqualifying people who do notalways talk quite as we think they ought to." TheTenth Session, on the other hand, will prove very im-portant and positive partly because "it mobilizes andthrough it we can mobilize both Communists andnon-Communists, building bridges and openingdialogues without a single compromise with anyone."The old system is broken; a new generation comes.The Tenth Session opens the door to youth and themasses by its clear declaration that "01d analyses byold hands are not valid, but new measuring rods fornew relationships are necessary." In this context evenmanifestations of nationalism may not have their oldsignificance, for in a complex modern situation"there are also people who go from black to white,and vice versa, sometimes nationalist and sometimesconstructivist."

Meanwhile, as if to demonstrate in yet anotherway the contrast between modern, open, tolerant andhumane Croatian communism and the dogmatic va-riety found farther east, a number of speakers tookpains to emphasize that they were condemningZanko’s political activities and their effects, not im-pugning his intentions or his person. It was MikoTripalo himself who pronounced an epitaph on

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Zanko’s political career that he may have had occa-sion to recall 23 months later:

"I still believe Comrade Zanko will see that he haslabored in error, that he may have been supported inthis action by parties who evidently have more dis-honorable goals than Comrade Zanko even imagines.But naivetein politics is not a virtue but a vice. ’’11

Bakarid Proposes...

Although it is difficult to find proof in availabledocumentation, there is no informed observer of theYugoslav and Croatian scene who is not convincedthat the Tenth Session was staged on the initiative ofVladimir Bakari, and that it was meant to be part ofa new master strategic plan concocted in the fertilebut impenetrable mind of the grand old man ofCroatian politics. Bakari has always been anenigma, even to his closest friends from the days ofprewar clandestine Party activity. 12 A quasi-invalidwho frequently retires in illness or for contemplationto his retreat on the island of Hvar, a man who knowshow to conserve his limited energy, he was the undis-puted master of Croatia from the end of the war until1969, when he became a member of the all-YugoslavParty’s new Executive Bureau and was even less fre-quently seen in a Zagreb he seemed willing to leave tohis disciples. What really goes on in his mind may behard to say, but he is undoubtedly the ablest politi-cian, except Tito himself, that Croatia has producedin this century, and at every crucial moment in thehistory of postwar Yugoslavia his considerable weighthas been thrown on the scales on the side of pragma-tism and liberalization.

In this case, Bakari6’s plan seems to have been tomake an end run around the deadlock at the Partyand state center and the consequent "stagnation" inthe economy and self-management that were fuelingdissent in both its nationalist and neocentralistforms. The center was inactive because of an inter-Republican stalemate on basic issues that had provedunbreakable. A Republican Party and governmentwere not so hampered but needed adequate economicinstruments (or "material means") with which to act,a legitimating constituency, and firm unity of cadreand conviction. Croatia, so armed and under theprogressive leadership that Bakari6 had trained,could set an example for the rest of the Federation ofa successful, modern, democratic socialism. To thisend the instruments must be acquired, support

mobilized, and the leadership unitedall at theRepublican level. What was new in this strategy wasthat the effort to reform the system at the Federallevel was temporarily given up; modern socialismcould be built in one Republic.

If this was its purpose, there were four weaknessesin the strategy:

1. By its nature it would in the Croatian historicalcontext attract offers of assistance from Croatiannationalists, dangerous allies from the Communistpoint of view. Bakaric recognized this, butdiscounted the danger (as we have seen) by arguingthat the nationalists were disunited, unorganized,and had no positive program. Events were to provehim wrong.

2. Because national sentiment and a quasi-para-noid conviction that Croatia has been exploited bysubordinate status in someone else’s state for a thou-sand years are always very near the surface of mostCroats’ perceptions, it would prove temptingly easierto mobilize politically conscious Croats on a nationalplatform than on any other. Because years of seem-ingly empty rhetoric about self-management have leftfew Yugoslavs (except, oddly enough, in top echelonsof the political elite)with a passionate belief in itsfeasibility, it would prove correspondingly difficult tomobilize them on the alternative basis of "class" or"self-management."

3. By increasing the power and prestige of Repub-lican apparatuses, and by casting Republican leadersin the role of indispensable mediators in the defenseof class and national interests, the strategy wasfundamentally "antiself-management" in tendency ifnot in conception. This may not have worriedBakarid; it is almost always impossible to say whetheror not an individual Yugoslav Communist leader iscynical in his obligatory confessions of faith in thefeasibility of universal self-management without po-litical intermediaries. However, the existence andsignificance of this aspect of the strategy would notbe unnoticed by one important social grouping, inaddition to tbe Republican Party leaders, who stoodto benefit from it. Managers and other members ofthe new Croatian "middle class" (an unfortunateterm, because of its emotive connotations, used herefaute de mieux and purely as a sociological labelwithout normative implications)have no love for Bel-grade centralism and all it implies but equally little

DIR-5-’72 -12-

desire to live with a literal implementation of thetheory of self-management without intermediaries.Everything in their experience and in the logic oftheir own roles cries out to them that such a systemwould be inefficient if not absurdly unworkable.Instinct and historic experience also suggest to themthat a strong leadership that respects and supportstheir roles but also enjoys mass legitimacybetteryet, enthusiasmas a national leadership would bethe best defense against both horns of this dilemma.

4. To avoid compromising alliances with national-ists, to resist the temptation to take the easy road tomass support, and to escape becoming the instru-ments and guarantors of the rule of a middle class"technocracy" would require a high order of politicalskill, intellect, level-headedness, and ideological con-viction and consistency on the part of a Party leader-ship, especially one distracted by and in need ofallies in its struggle to push Croatian views about thepower and competence of the Federation and furthereconomic reforms in the face of determined opposi-tion in Belgrade and elsewhere. The triumvirate andtheir friends were convinced that they possessed thesequalities in more than sufficient measure,13 but thecoming months were to prove that they did not.

But the Triumvirate Disposes

By early 1971, 12 months after the Tenth Session,Tripalo, Dab6evid-Kudar, and their team had experi-enced a mixture of success and failure the qualityand distribution of which convinced them they wereon the right track and had defined their enemies andfriends with accuracy.

Croatia was in the throes of a "national euphoria"(the phrase became a favorite of the leadership) with-out precedent since the founding of Yugoslavia. TheParty leadership in general and Savka and Miko inparticular enjoyed a mass popularity that can legiti-mately be compared to the popularity of AlexanderDubek during the Czechoslovak spring of 1968.Like Dubek, they reacted to [he heady wine of suchpopularity with increased self-confidence andintransigence and soon became, in part at least, theprisoners of the aroused emotions of their mass audi-ence.

The reorganization of Federal institutions and thereduction of the competences of the Federation hadcontinued in the direction urged by Zagreb. Three

months after the Tenth Session, in April 1970, theYugoslav Party Presidium adopted a resolution rec-ognizing the "sovereignty" of the Republics andprovinces and defining Yugoslavia as "an in-stitutionalized agreement and cooperation amongthe Republics." The competence of the Federationshould be limited to foreign affairs, defense, and in-struments necessary to guarantee a single marketand economic system and ethnic equality. The Fed-eral administration and the army should more con-sistently implement the principle of the "ethnic key"(strict proportional representation of all nations andnationalities) in personal policy. Commissions towatch over the implementation of the resolution wereappointed. 14

In September President Tito himself chose the oc-casion of a meeting with Croatian Party leaders inZagreb to propose the creation of a collective statepresidency, on which each Republic would be equallyrepresented, to replace him. The need for a constitu-tional amendment to implement this proposalopened the doors to other institutional changes and ageneral reconsideration of the nature and structureof the Federation. Lengthy and heated argumentsfollowed among Republican leaderships and mem-bers of a Constitutional Commission appointed tothis endthe latter reaching agreement only afterbeing "locked up" for a month in early 1971 on theBrioni islands, Tito’s favorite retreatbut the resultswere close to the Croats’ maximum demands. The 21draft amendments to the Federal Constitution sub-mitted to public discussion in March called for a verysubstantial additional transfer of power from theFederation to the Republics and provinces. Unanim-ity of all the Federal units was required for decisionsin many remaining areas of Federal competence. Al-though the "unity of the market" and the safe-guarding of the economic system would continue tobe Federal concerns, most tax powers and revenueswere to accrue to the Republics and provinces, whichwould thereby take over primary responsibility foreconomic planning and its implementationacentral Croatian demand. Republican and provincialparity or the "ethnic key" would provide the basis forconstituting not only the new collective state Presi-dency but also most other important Federal organsand institutions, including the Federal ExecutiveCouncil (the cabinet), the most powerful chamber inParliament (the Chamber of Nationalities, already soconstituted), and the personnel of the ministries.Territorial militia under Republican control, created

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by a new defense law in 1969, received Constitutionalsanction. The "sovereign" character of the Republicswas confirmed, and it was left to them to define thebasis of that sovereignty in detail in their own consti-tutions. 15

Many outside observers saw in these changes thede facto conversion of Yugoslavia into a confedera-tion. Croatian leaders like Tripalo and SavkaDab6evi-Ku6ar openly hinted in public speechesthat they deserved the lion’s share of credit for it alland that they had been forced to make very few com-promises. 16

In the economic sphere, on the other hand, theCroatian leaders had so far failed to impose theirviews about what they considered vital issues,including reform of the banking and foreign currencysystems and those wealthy Belgrade export-importfirms, redistribution of former Federal assets andobligations, and the future of the residual Federalincentive subsidies represented by a peculiarpost-Reform device called "extra-budgetary bal-ances." Here they now made what in retrospectappears to have been a serious tactical error, whichwas to have ramified and consistently grave conse-quences. They pressed their case on each of theseissues with an uncompromising intransigence thatsuggested that all their demands were fundamentallynonnegotiable.

There are several certain or probable reasons forsuch a stance. These issues involved the essentialeconomic instruments without which the goal of full,effective Croatian political and economic autonomywould be unachievable. Without them the transfer tothe Republics of responsibility for economic planningand control, sanctioned by the constitutional amend-ments, would remain empty of meaning. There wouldthus be no adequate guarantees that the developednorth, including Croatia, would not continue to be"exploited" by the numerically preponderant,underdeveloped south even in a genuine parliamen-tary democracy after Tito’s departure.

In addition, it is reasonable to assume that intoxi-cation with a series of consistent victories in recentbattles contributed to the intransigence of theleadership. Finally and more subtly, but of particularimportance, they were on these issues for the firsttime specifically and tangibly the prisoners of theirsuccess in mobilizing mass enthusiasm on a national

platform and in tolerating support, including theright to exert pressure and to criticize, by nationalistforces outside the disciplinary control of the Party’s"pre-emptive" network of organizations. The morethey insisted that their position on each issue repre-sented vital Croatian interests, the more they foundor felt it to be politically impossible to compromiseon precisely these issues.

One important consequence was the loss of theirallies outside Croatia. Slovene and Macedonian sup-port, in particular, had been important in every fightwith Belgrade since the Reform of 1965 and the fallof Rankovi6. For a time, in fact, the Slovenes hadseemed the most intransigent of the decentralizersand in 1969 had caused a major scandal and minorcrisis by publicly and vehemently protesting a Fed-eral decision about the distribution of a WorldBank loan for the construction of Yugoslavia’s firstsuperhighways. Afterward, however, the Sloveneshad pulled in their horns, alarmed by the implica-tions of a tendency toward Republican economic au-tarchy for an industrialized region heavily dependenton unfettered access to markets and raw materials inless developed areas and by the nationalistfellow-travelers being attracted by radical decentra-lization, whose growing strength might lead eithertoward separatism or a centralist reaction. Slovenesand with them the Macedonians, small nations onthe outside edges of Yugoslavia and conscious of theneed to form part of a larger state for economic via-bility and protection against jealous neighbors withpast or present irredentist claims on their land, haveusually valued a political and economic Yugoslavunion more highly than the Croats, whose largerpopulation and territory and particular history oftenencourage the feeling that they could go it alone ifthey chose. Now, relatively satisfied with achievedlevels of decentralization and further alarmed by theimplications of developments in Croatia, the Sloveneand Macedonian leaders were increasingly ready tobargain and compromise in order to reach agree-ments that would get a sufficiently emasculated Fed-eral mechanism moving again. With growing fre-quency the Croatian delegation found itself a minor-ity of one in inter-Republican negotiations.

This isolation affected the Croatian leadership andtheir strategy in at least three ways. It confirmedthem in their feeling that they must have firm insti-tutional guarantees, including a veto right, to protect

DIR-S-’72 -14-

each Republic against being outvoted in the Federa-tion, a point of view that was pressed with growingemphasis in Croatia during the public debate on the1971 amendments. Secondly, it increased the relativeimportance to them of the mass support they enjoyedinside Croatia and made them more dependent on itsmaintenance and unanimity; the "homogenization ofCroatia," implying both the mobilization of non-Communists and the conversion or silencing ofdoubters and dissenters within the Croatian Party,assumed an even higher priority than before. Thirdly,the "internal logic" of both isolation and pretensionsto mass support by all Croatians emphasized theirrole as primarily national and only secondarily Com-munist or "class" leaders, further affecting theirpolitical style and also, it seems reasonable toassume, their self-image.

A final consequence materialized only aftermid-1971 and the adoption of the 21 amendments tothe Federal Constitution. The amendments, as wehave seen, created instruments and procedures forthe negotiated resolution of inter-Republican dis-putes. The isolation of the Croats on this particularset of disputed issues meant that it was extremelyunlikely that Croatian views would prevail in suchnegotiations without the compromises that theZagreb leadership’s domestic strategy had made itincreasingly difficult for them to accept. In anticipa-tion of continuing deadlock and the political inex-pediency of compromise, they would be tempted toencourage or at least condone extraconstitutionalpressures inside Croatia in support of their positions.

The "clear line of demarcation" drawn by Savkaand others at the Tenth Session between progressive,nationally-conscious Croatian communism and Cro-atian nationalism began to evaporate. Theirplatforms had become increasingly hard to distin-guish, in practice if not in ideology. Basing theiropening to the masses on the claim that they wereeffectively defending Croatian national interests(equated, of course, with all-Yugoslav working-classinterests, a less convincing claim since they had losttheir allies in other Republics), the Croatian Partyleaders had left themselves vulnerable to nationalistheckling, to the charge that they were insufficientlyvigilant or successful in defining or defending theseinterests. Responding to such heckling in rhetoricand in deed, they placed themselves in a curious po-sition. They had in effect if unintentionally legiti-mized Croatian nationalism as a political competitor

for the allegiance of the "national movement" whichthey had themselves invoked, which was now essen-tial to their own legitimacy and bargaining strength,and which they could hold only by outbidding thenationalists on the latter’s own ground.

The Croatian "national euphoria," feeding maso-chistically on isolation and gaining strength fromboth the victories and the defeats of a leadership per-ceived as defending national interests, continued togrow in exuberance, visibility, and expectations. Thenational question, always at least the second subjectin any conversation with most urban, politicizedCroats, was now invariably the first and obsessivesubject, whether in terms of historic or present injus-tice or of future hope and the accomplishments orfailure of the present leadership. The change was at-mospheric and difficult to describe: an exponentialrise in intensity, in the magnitude of the catalog ofreal or rumored wrongs and in the occasions onwhich the catalog was volunteered, in sudden de-tailed knowledge about kinds and values of exploi-tation or about the number of Serbs who are di-rectors of Croatian enterprises, commanders ofCroatian regiments, or to be found in Croatian fac-tories, on Croatian railroads, or on the Zagreb policeforce.

"Nationalist excesses" occurred with growing fre-quency. They ranged from the midnight destructionof an advertising sign in the Cyrillic (Serbian)alphabet by a gang of youths wearing armbands in-scribed with the Croatian national emblema redand white checkerboardto demonstrations inwhich the Croatian flag and coat of arms appearedwithout the obligatory red star, a political struggle tooust an enterprise director because he was a Serb, aserious riot after a football victory over a Serbianteam, or a village street brawl in an ethnically mixedarea. Most were trivial incidents, but they wereenough to fire the emotions of peoples only 30 yearsfrom civil war and attempted mutual genocide.

The reaction of the Croatian government andParty leadership was also instructive: such"excesses" were verbally condemned, but with fewexceptions no action was taken and in a number ofcases local and sometimes Republican officials ex-pressed sympathy with the motives and intentions ofthe perpetrators. The top leadership, consistent withthe views they had expressed at the Tenth Session,said that incidents of this sort were regrettable but

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understandable "marginal" phenomena accompa-nying a difficult politica.1 and social transition. Theirimportance should not be exaggerated or used as anexcuse to distract attention from the struggle for theamendments, the Reform, and Croatia’s justified de-mands for changes in the banking and foreign cur-rency systems, etc., nor should they provide an excusefor a return to dictatorial "firm hand" methods ofdealing with problems. Like the national euphoriaitself, after all, even "excesses" were further evidenceof mass support, a little misfocused in this case, for

the "correct line of the Party, based on the TenthSession." They were also useful, in negotiations withBelgrade, as reminders that Croatian nationalismmight indeed get out of hand and constitute a threatif the demands of the Croatian Party leadership werenot met, enabling them to keep control bydemonstrating that Croatian Communists were wellable to defend legitimate national interests.

At this point and on this issue the Croatian leader-ship split.

NOTES

1. The "four D’s" description of the program of the Reformof 1965 was coined by one of Croatia’s most distinguishedeconomists, the late Rudolph Bidanid {"Economics of Social-ism in a Developed Country," in Foreign Affairs [July 1966 ],p. 643).

2. While this Report was in process of publication, Debawas accused by his former comrades in the Croatian Journa-lists’ Association of more serious misbehavior: misuse of hisposition as President of the Association to insure itsdomination by journalists from the Vjesnik house andZagreb Radio-Television, with them to "manipulate"Croatian journalism, and in this way to create a monopolisticposition for biased reporting in support of the nationalistplatform of the then Party leaders and in violation of journa-listic ethics. He is also charged with seeking to take the Cro-atian Association out of the Yugoslav Journalists’ Federa-tion {Politika, June 13, 1972, reporting a Special Assembly ofthe Association).

3. Dennison I. Rusinow, "Understanding the YugoslavReforms," in The World Today, February 1967.

4. There is another current in Serbian nationalism, whichmight be described as "little Serbianism," potentially asseparatist as Croatian forms must always tend to be, but ithas never in Yugoslav history formed a significant politicalforce. There are arguments for anticipating that it may do sonow, but these lie outside the scope of this Report.

5. The enormous sensitivity of the language issue for Croats(as well as many other European ethnic groups) may puzzlenon-Europeans. Its historical roots lie, inter alia, in wideacceptance of nineteenth-century European definitionswhich made a separate language the most important charac-teristic of a "nation," without which one’s separate national

identity could be challenged. It is worth recalling that somenineteenth-century American scholars, including NoahWebster himself, were reflecting the same sensitivity intheir efforts to claim and develop a separate identity for the"American language." Like the Croats who feel they musthave a recognizably distinct language to avoid the risk ofbeing confounded with or assimilated by the Serbs (or theSerbs who entertain the same feelings in reverse), theseAmericans really felt that without a distinct American lan-guage their separate nationhood and right to separatestatehood could be doubted, that they might be consideredpart of the "English nation." Americans are seldom troubledby this particular self-doubt any more, but English-speaking(or American-speaking?!) Canadians are sometimes not im-mune. Although written with different alphabets, Serbianand Croatian differ approximately as much as English andAmerican, with the issue further confused by the fact thatthe spoken language of many Serbs and Montenegrins (whoalso theoretically speak "Serbian") is closer to the Croatianliterary language than to the Serbian one.

6. A more detailed discussion of this aspect of the largercrisis is in Dennison I. Rusinow, The Price of Pluralism[DIR-l-’72], Fieldstaff Reports, Southeast Europe Series,Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1971.

7. See in particular the 1967-1969 speeches and interviews ofMiko Tripalo and Savka Dabevi-Kuar, a rereading ofwhich is instructive in the light of later events. (Some haveconveniently been collected in book form, e.g., Miko Tripalo,Spoprista [sic] [Zagreb: Centar za aktualni politiki studij,1971].)

8. See, for example, a Tripalo speech in early 1968 to ameeting of Communists in Rijeka {published in Vjesnik,January 25, 1968): "We do not have to conceal the fact thatour ranks include a number of comrades who feel that we arefacing practically unbridgeable difficulties, that we have

DIR-5-’72 -16-

landed in a situation of questioning all the basic socialistideals for which we used to fight. This is an expression oflack of understanding for the present moment, because it is aquestion here of an ideological and political regrouping, nec-essary precisely because of what we have achieved to date,precisely because of the need to be able to consolidate theseresults by making further progress. In addition,democratization of social and political life since the IVPlenum [the fall of Rankovi] has made it possible for allsorts of views and ideas to appear on the surface of our po-litical life. Such views existed before, but they were con-cealed because of a number of circumstances; today we cansee them clearly for what they are and even hostile elementsand antisocialist concepts are today more clearly expressed.Is this a good or a bad thing? It is good only insofar as theLeague of Communists proves capable of winning both ideo-logical and political victory over these alien views and con-cepts on a public political stage, in a public politicalstruggle However, the question arises of whether the LC,as it is today and with its present composition, is capable ofsuch an action. We may be certain that a large number ofmembers are indeed capable of such action. But it is also truethat in our ranks we are also dragging along a ballast whichhas nothing to do with us, which weakens the ability of theLC for political action and which imposes the need to con-sider in what way we can free ourselves of this ballast andwhere we shall find the source from which to refresh the LCand make it fit for future tasks." (Later in the speech Tripalomakes clear that he is thinking here of some old Partisansfrom the war years, "who do not agree that anything is beingdone right now... [who] are completely demoralized, andthere is no reason for them to stay in the LC.") Many otherviews ascribed by this Report to the Croatian leadership inthis period also find a place in this speech, which repeatedanother then favorite Tripalo thesis that "rosy expectations"aroused by Rankovi6’s fall had not been realized because"various elements," some of them "bureaucratic" in outlookas Rankovi, had participated in the coalition that broughthim down. It was these other bureaucratic forces who werenow blocking progress. "Regardless of the fact that there isprobably no one personality around which this bureaucratic-conservative opposition could gather, because [among otherthings] we are a multi-national country, we should not ne-glect the fact, Comrades, that in all our Republics, includingCroatia, there is an ideo-political platform for these forces,for the forces who feel that self-management leads to thecollapse of a socialist society, who feel that one should returnto the old administrative-bureaucratic and centralist sys-tem." (Cf. almost the same wording in Tripalo to MacedonianCommunist leaders in Skopje in November 1967, publishedby Vjesnik, December 1-2, 1967, and a Tripalo article in aBelgrade daily, Politika, January 7, 1968.)

9. An edited version of all speeches at the Tenth Session,with Bakari(?s December 13 speech as an appendix, waspublished by Vjesnik, as X Sjednica Centralnog KomitetaSaveza Komunista Hrvatska (110 pp.), on January 24, 1970.

10. Those taking such a line included Josip Vrhovec, aformer Vjesnik journalist and only subsequently a memberof the Executive Committee, where he played a key role inthe opposition to the triumvirate in 1971 and took over asSecretary after Karadjordjevo, and Ante Josipovi, later an-other Executive Committee opponent of Savka and herteam. Reading significance into what someone did not say ona particular occasion is, however, an obviously risky busi-ness. The brief intervention of Jure Bili6, now regarded bymany as the postpurge Party "strong-man" in Zagreb,showed no identifiable sign of future dissent. Jakov Blaevic,the stolid and earthy relic of older, prewar communism (born1912, a Party member since 1928) and a Croatian politicalperennial who is President of the Republican Parliament andwho was to attack the triumvirate with particular violenceafter Karadjordjevo, had similar words for ianko at theTenth Session--both times, consistently, in the name ofParty discipline and hierarchy.

11. Op. cit., footnote 9. Most of the "subthemes" summarizedhere appeared or were alluded to in Savka DabSevi6-Kuar’scharacteristically long introductory speech. See also theinterventions of Marko Bozid, Bakari!, Tripalo, Pirker, andSre(ko Bijeli6--all except Bakari5 among those purged afterKaradjordjevo.

12. One of them told me recently that there were two mem-bers of the Party old guard whom he had known intimatelysince early youth, but would never really know: Bakarid andKoSa Popovid. Both of them, like my informant, are theCommunist sons of wealthy or influential prewar bourgeoisfamilies--Popovi’s father a Belgrade millionaire andBakari’s a Croatian judge with mildly leftwing proclivities.

13. Their speeches and behavior at the Tenth Session andthroughout the following eighteen months display aself-confidence, an optimism, and a certainty that is tooconvincing for an observer to doubt that they really felt thisway.

14. See Slobodan StankoviS, "Analysis of the Yugoslav PartyPresidium Meeting," RFE Research Communist Area, April27, 1970.

15. See the Fieldstaff Report cited in footnote 6, above; "TheLatest Changes (1971) in the Constitution of the_Socialist

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Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," in Yugoslav Survey, Vol.XII, No. 4 {November 1971); and R.V. Burks, The NationalProblem and the Future of Yugoslavia {The Rand Corpora-tion, P-4761, October 1971}, pp. 32-38. In some Federal insti-tutions the ethnic key had long been applied in practice. The

Amendments provided a constitutional guarantee that thiswould continue and be extended to other organs.

16. See, e.g., Tripalo’s important speech in Dubrovnik onFebruary 26, 1971.