Hard-Liners vs. Reformers : Yugoslavia at a Crossroads: Could Profound Change Be on the Horizon?

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Yugoslavs are at a crossroads, and the way they turn could mean profound changes in the route that Josip Broz Tito mapped out for them when he founded a communist state after World War II.

The road Yugoslavia takes is likely to depend on the outcome of a fierce public struggle between Communist Party hard-liners and reformers demanding changes, including market-oriented economic policies, pluralistic politics and greater links with Western Europe.

But right now, political disarray is paralyzing decision-making at a time of deep economic crisis, the worst ever in postwar Yugoslavia.

The nation is grappling with an inflation rate of 170%, Europe’s highest, and a $20-billion foreign debt.

15% Unemployment

Living standards for a people once well off by East European standards have declined by a third since 1980. About 1.1 million people, 15% of the work force, are looking for jobs.

The outcome of the clash between hard-liners and reformers could have deep meaning not only for 23.2 million Yugoslavs but also for other East European nations. Some of those face similar, but less pressing, decisions in the era of reform laid down by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Yugoslavia is officially a nonaligned nation that functions independently of Moscow’s East Bloc and has closer links to the West than the Soviet allies.

Hard-liners here are contending that reformers’ demands would mean a restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia, although the reformers say they remain socialists.

‘Gravely Ill Patient’

Dobrica Cosic, a reformer and former prominent Communist who is now Yugoslavia’s best-selling author, has described the country as “a gravely ill Balkan patient with an uncertain future.”

“The fate of Yugoslavia will be decided in a struggle between repressive and conservative authorities . . . who will use all available means to defend the existing regime” and forces “that strive for an enlightened, civilized, pluralistic socialism--for a modern society and democratic Yugoslavia,” Cosic was quoted by the official news agency Tanjug as telling a group of Serbian writers.

Cosic did not specify what he meant by “all available means.” But many Yugoslavs took him to mean the use of police or even military repression to keep public criticism and dissent from spreading.

Cosic, a World War II partisan who was purged from the Communist Party’s Central Committee in the late 1960s, spoke at a Serbian writers meeting during which proposals were made for amending the constitution adopted in 1974 while Tito was alive and the nation’s sole leader.

Wide Autonomy Granted

The constitution granted wide autonomy to the country’s six often fractious republics and two provinces.

The document is generally blamed for the today’s problems. It created a virtual confederation in which each constituent region has power to veto important decisions. The result is endless arguments and deadlocks on key issues. Even the nation’s presidency is rotated among the regions.

According to Tanjug, Cosic maintained that the existing system is “only a semblance of a socialist society. In reality it is a state of organized chaos, which has antagonized our peoples and republics . . . and which has caused our economy to slide into total unprofitability.”

A joint statement by unions of Serbian writers, philosophers and sociologists, adopted at the meeting, called for an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly in Yugoslavia, a one-party state like other East European countries.

Call for Pluralism

Recently, a number of leading intellectuals in Serbia, the largest republic, and Slovenia, the most economically developed region, called on the Communist Party to permit some degree of political pluralism as one way of overcoming economic and political problems.

It was the first time that official groups had issued any written statement of that kind.

The state-run press and Communist Party officials assailed the intellectuals’ statement and Cosic’s speech, charging that they represent an attempt to subvert the government.

The authorities reacted even more sharply to criticism in Slovenia’s media of the army and the state security service.

A number of articles published in the Slovenian press, particularly in the liberal youth periodical Mladina, had denounced the army as an undemocratic, pro-Soviet institution prepared to stage a military coup.

Response to Criticism

Defense Minister Branko Mamula and several high-ranking military officials had previously voiced concern about what they saw as a deterioration in the economic and political situations.

The Communist leadership responded to the attacks on the army and security forces with sharp warnings against such criticism and called for legal action against it.

The official reaction culminated in early April when a parliamentary commission responsible for state security denounced the critical articles as part of an international conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Jelena Lovric, a prominent political columnist for Danas, widely considered the most liberal state-run periodical, rejected that official claim.

‘Sowing Fear’

She said the real danger for the government stemmed from the domestically triggered economic crisis and that the claim of foreign-backed conspiracies “is creating chaos and sowing fear among the already frightened populace.”

“Are such panicky assertions about anti-socialist conspiracies not in fact aimed at creating the conditions for use of all available measures?” she wrote in a commentary, apparently alluding to Cosic’s remarks.

At a recent meeting Milan Kucan, leader of the more liberal Slovenian Communist Party, contended that Yugoslavia’s “unvanquished crisis” is jeopardizing the country’s communist system.

“Changes, radical ones, are more than necessary,” Tanjug quoted Kucan as saying.

Communists in Slovenia have been the most outspoken in offering unorthodox proposals for the country’s problems, including a more market-oriented economy and closer ties with Western Europe.

Unprecedented Action

In April, Slovenia’s Parliament began a procedure to force Premier Branko Mikulic’s federal government out of office on grounds that its economic policies were ineffective. The action was the first of its kind in postwar Yugoslavia.

Communist Party officials in other Yugoslav republics maintained that the Slovenian legislative action would mean a return of capitalism.

Responding in an interview to that contention, Slovenia’s president-elect, Janez Stanovnik, said: “Those who follow events in Slovenia from the outside see enemies and counterrevolutionaries everywhere, while we here are feeling . . . the enthusiasm of a democratic reform.”