Tito, Rankovic and All That

For some years now it has been assumed that when the Peoples’ Democracies of Eastern Europe are compared, “they order things better in Yugoslavia.” One begins to doubt it.

Since the beginning of 1966 a number of extraordinary sessions of the Central Committee of the League of Communists have been the scene of violent discussions between “reformers” and more doctrinaire Communists. These discussions have not only involved the new economic program, intended gradually to move the country from a command to a market economy; they have also brought to the fore deep-seated national antagonisms among the various peoples of Yugoslavia which Tito had supposedly overcome. Croatia and Slovenia, the richest and most developed regions of the country, seem no longer willing to let their resources be drained in order to help the poorer republics of Serbia and Macedonia. The Croats and Slovenes argue that if they could invest their profits within their own regions these could be utilized more productively.

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