[Marxism] Yugoslavia then

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I remember reading a lament from an Albanian miner about Trepca.  (It
must be in my newspaper files from before 1998, that's as far as I've
searched so far.)  He recalled working the mines together with Serbs and
others.  They labored and lunched like comrades, shoulder to shoulder,
sharing cigarettes and slivovitz.  But that fell apart when Yugoslavia
fell apart, prodded by imperialism, of course, and those comrades have
been cast as irreconcilable enemies now, their enmity intrinsic to their
ethnicity.  I remember feeling sad that people were led to believe
nationalist/religious/ethnic hatred was the legacy of marxism, when
really Yugoslavian marxism liberated its people from just such
nationalist/religious/ethnic hatred.  The old miner mourned the loss of
that freedom.  He knew it would never be the same again.  Imperialist
intrusion and provocation kindled the flames of racist hatred to raze a
socialist state.

{The excitation of ethnic violence as a means to overwhelm class
solidarity across cultural and language lines, is a slippery slope once
slid that can only plummet into worse gyres of retaliation while
concurrently alienating and enclosing erstwhile class comrades in their
respective ethnic communities wherein outsider "enemies" become
codified, generalized and "otherized"--a successful tactic of
nationalistic rebourgeoisification  in areas of high native
multicultural variation.}

A further distortion falls between opinion and actuality when reporters
subscribe to the "great man theory of history" as in the following piece
from 1998.  The scenes of idolization presented by the Western
journalist eclipsed the underlying realities of actually existing
socialism (of that time), but they may be glimpsed if shorn of the
shadow:


Not Forgotten, Tito Mourned Now for Good Times He Fostered

 By ALISON SMALE
 Associated Press Writer
01/29/1998 17:17 EST

 BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Once, up to 20,000 people a day followed
the arrows and footpaths leading to the most hallowed shrine of
communist Yugoslavia, the marble tomb of founder Josip Broz Tito.  The
arrows and paths are still there.  But after the wars and disintegration
of the country he forged, a good day sees 20 pilgrims.  Some days, no
one comes.  The cavernous museum adjacent to the tomb is empty and
desolate.

 More than 17 years after he died, many Yugoslavs now recognize that
Tito had a hand in creating the mess they have lived through -- and many
died in.  Still, almost all his people, divided now into five countries
and scattered across the globe by war, have some nostalgia for the good
times he brought.  They could travel the world then, and were welcomed
as workers, shoppers  and tourists -- not shunned as refugees.  The
world, in turn, traveled to Yugoslavia on holiday.  Albeit harshly
enforced as "brotherhood and unity," there was peace and stability at
home.

 Tito's legacy is grounds for passionate debate anywhere his name is
mentioned -- a parlor in Slovenia, a bar in Bosnia or a street in
Serbia.  Sizable portions of the former Yugoslav states believe Tito's
times were better times.  Few would go as far as old communists like
Gen. Stevan Mirkovic, Tito's chief of staff, who recently referred to
the late dictator as the  "Jesus Christ of the 20th century."  Tito did
have the nerve to break with Stalin in 1948, enhancing his stature as a
leader of the world's non-aligned countries.

At home, he built an economic system that lived on Western loans rather
than on its own means, and married it to a complex and unworkable
political system that tried to balance the competing demands of
Yugoslavia's six republics.  As the wars of the 1990s proved, that was
something only his authority could do.

On a street in Belgrade, bookseller Zoran Stojanovic sneered that the
inflation, debt crisis and wars and poverty that followed Tito "are a
result of what he did."  His companion, Goran Pantovic retorted that
Tito was "a miracle man, a big stud, one of the biggest of this
century."

In Slovenia, the only former Yugoslav republic now prospering and likely
to join the European Union and NATO, two young Slovenes barely old
enough to have started school when Tito died in 1980 were shocked at the
response they got when they created a Tito home page on the Internet.
Tito was not a hero to Martin Srebotnjak and Matija Marolt.  But they
considered him a good subject for a Web page.  There were lots of
photos, anthems and memorabilia to test their skills in creating a home
page.  They were astonished when their invitation to Web site visitors
to express their opinion about Tito drew thousands of responses.

 "Please, you were awful, but do come back!" wrote Mlados Mladenovic.
His family opened a champagne bottle to cheer Tito's passing, he said.
"Now, I am sorry.  You were a fine leader, great politician and wise
man."

 That feeling is especially strong in Bosnia, which suffered the most of
any Yugoslav republic from the breakdown of Tito's ruthless suppression
of ethnic nationalism.  Portraits of Tito still hang on the walls of
many Bosnian offices, as they had to in communist times.  His name is
indelibly emblazoned on the rock face of several Bosnian mountainsides.

 Tito may not have been perfect, but he was much better than the
"amateurs and lunatics" who followed, said Mirsad Curovic, a technician
in Sarajevo.

 In Croatia, where nostalgia for the old Yugoslavia is taboo, few people
make the pilgrimage to the northern village of Kumrovec, Tito's
birthplace.  There, as at Tito's Belgrade tomb, vast parking lots stand
empty.  But many residents pine for the peaceful days when western
Europeans -- as well as wealthy Serbs who can no longer visit -- flocked
to the resorts dotting the Adriatic coast.

 For workers and pensioners, too, Tito's times were more stable and
prosperous than the rough and corrupt capitalism that has followed.
{<-- NOTA BENE!}

 When Tito died, his funeral was the greatest gathering of world leaders
to that point.  It also marked the beginning of the end of his country.

 Tito was "some kind of a nomad," ceaselessly traveling and beholden
neither to East nor West, offered Radisa Filipovic, who lives in a
village east of Belgrade.  When he died, "he left Yugoslavia in the
lurch.  He didn't bequeath it to anyone."

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