YUGOSLAVIA
emerged. Petitions for the abolition of
"clauses affecting freedom of conthe science" in the Yugoslav criminal code, which make it possible to prosecute people just for things they say, or against
What is at stake in the trial of Belgrad six the death penalty have not only gained hundreds of signatures but also been openly discussed in the media. The Slovenian youth paper Mladina is conducting a full-fledged campaign against the death penalty.
What Poland was spared by the recent amnesty faces Yugoslavia this fall - a political show trial against a whole group of critical intellectuals.
On the basis of their participation in the Free Universities movement in the Yugoslav capital, the following have been charged with "forming a group for the purpose of conducting hostile activity" (Article 139, Section 1 of the Criminal Code), as well as with "constituting a counterrevolutionary danger to the social order" (Article 114, Section 1 of the
Criminal Code):
Vlaimir Mijanovic, age 38, the best known spokesperson of the 1968 translator Pavlusko Imsirovic, age 35;
Belgrade student movement; the the sociologist Milan Nikolic, age 37, the journalist Dragomir Olujic, 35;
the student Gordan Jovanovic, 24; and Midrag Milic, 55.
in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, an eight-year prison sentence was handed down against the left sociology professor Vojislav
Seslj on the basis of things he wrote in an unpublished manuscript.
authorities clearly wanted to make an example of him. Following this the Belgrade Six are threatened with prison terms of between five and fifteen years.
were arrested a few weeks after the police broke up a session of the
Free University on April 20 at
Milovan Djilas introduced a discussion on the nationalities problem in Yugoslavia.
Three of them then went on hunger strike, and two - Vladimir Mijanovic and
Pavlusko Imsirovic remained on it for
42 days up until they were released on bail at the beginning of July.
The release of the six on bail was an unusual occurrence for Yugoslavia and can no doubt be attributed to the campaign on their behalf internationally and, particularly, in Yugoslavia to the thousand citizens who signed petitions to country's highest state bodies.
dictment handed down against them on
August 6 indicates, however, that those in the party leadership who advocate tougher repression have for the time being prevailed.
In Belgrade intellectual circles, people the complete abitrariness with which the authorities proceeded. Thus, the film maker Lazar Stojanovie said:
"For seven years between twenty and fifty people bother from the police.
I can't understand how they can pick out a few people without arresting all those who were
I was there from the beginning, and, if necessary, I'll say that in court."
of philosophers who were around the journal Praxis, which was shut down ten years ago, publicly took responsibility for the Free Universities.
them, Ljubomir Tadic, said:
expulsion from the University of Belgrade, we tried to continue our intellectual
The regime knows that very
Statements by participants indicate that a wide range of themes were discussed that are taken up too little or not
Bahro and the theory of ideas as reflecpsychoanalysis and the Polish
No wonder that a lot of Yugoslav intellectuals see the criminalizing of such discussions as a severe blow to the growing liberalization of the intellectual climate in the country in recent years. A communique from the Croatian Philosophy Association issued in early June said: "Since we believe that theoretical discussions cannot be characterized as hostile activity nor public meetings as illegal assemblies, we are totally convinced that these prosecutions must be stopped and those arrested released."
The fact that an indictment was handed down despite many protests of this sort shows that, against the backdrop of a continuing severe economic crisis, a general rollback of the liberalization in the ideological sphere is planned. In fact, in recent years, especially in the Slovenian and Serbian republics, certain areas of intellectual and democratic freedoms that are astonishing under a Back to thought control
In Yugoslav bookstores, you can buy the books of Rudolf Bahro as well as those of Solzhenitsyn, those of Ernest Mandel as well as those of George Orwell. Last year the magazine of the Serbian
Writers Union, Knjizena Rec, published startling articles on the complicity of the Tito leadership in the "persecution of the Trotskyists" aimed 99% against non-Trotskyists) in the 1930s and during the liberation war.
On the basis of the right granted by the Yugoslav constitution to collectively petition the state bodies, a weak but not negligible democratic public opinion has
In recent years, the Free Universities have of course no longer played the same role that they did at the time when all these possibilities did not yet exist. In Belgrade, however, the Free University sessions were an important underpinning for those working in the official media. In particular, for the "New Left" coming out of the student movement (this is the term used in the Yugoslav media), they served as a framework for an ongoing ex change of opinions, although the most various tendencies were represented in
"In past years, we have concerned ourselves mainly with the economy, but now the Party has to resume the leading role ment of government press spokesperso Ante Gavranovic, Zagreb Privredi
In fact, in the past year, there must have been a constellation of power in the party oligarchy that forced the so-called liberal wing on the defensive. Sections of the Serbian and Slovenian party leaderships are considered "liberal." other hand, the Bosnian party leadership under Branko Mikulic, the organizer of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, is considered to support tougher repression, along with the Croatian leadership and heads in the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo.
Since this summer a man who is certainly well used to repression has stood at the head of the federal party organiza-
He is the Kosovo Albanian Ali In recent years 800 Albanian nationalists have been sentenced to shockingly long prison sentences. wave of trials in this area, moreover, continued unabated this summer.
Since the move against critical intellectuals is bound up with a power struggle in the bureaucracy, in which the present Serbian leadership under Ivan Stambolic could lose its skin, there have also been some other important parallel operations. In early May, the Central Committee of the Croatian party, under the chairpersonship of the well-known hardliner Stipe Suvar, held an ideological conference in which the intellectual tendencies in Serbia in particular were stigmatized as the expression of a creeping counter-
There were strong protests in the Serbian press and ments in the Central Committee of the
By the way of documentation for the conference, Suvar ordered tion of a 237-page white paper, which included a sort of index of all the expres
International Viewpoint 1 October 1984
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sions by artists and journalists in recent years that he regarded This "Flowers of Evil" as the Belgrade press mockingly referred to the tom.3, was outright in Belgrade by court Power struggle in bureaucracy
After a brief respite, this conflict escalated again in early August. Croatian politician Jure Bilie called for reprimanding a party leadership that had failed to keep sufficiently under control. knew that he was referring to the Serbs.
Ljobomir Tadic summed up: now have different currents in the leadership - a very weak liberal current and an unfortunately strong neo-Stalinist groupis indicated by the suppression of the Free Universities in Belgrade, which was obviously imposed against the will of the Serbain authorities by the Federal authorities and in particular by the State Presid-
Moreover, before the trial of Vojislav Seselj, the Slovene Mitija Ribicic spoke out in the Belgrade magazine Nin in opposition to taking administrative measures against intellectuals: "The way to fight books is with other books." advice was not followed, as the condemnation of Seselj showed.
Since it is to be feared that the Sarajevo trial will be taken as a model for the Belgrade case, it is worth taking a more careful look at the judgment of the court. The essential target of the indictment was a manuscript that Seselj sent last fall to the editor of the party journal Komunist, Dusan Bogavac, in Belgrade. It bore a title with historical resonance, To Be Done?" Bogavac testified that he never got this manuscript. Obviously the state security police took it.
In fact, during the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo the manuscript was seized during a search of Seselj's home, along with 1,700 pages of other unpublished manuscripts. Excerpts from this article, which besides the author only the police had seen, were shortly afterward revealed by leading politicians. Mitija Ribicic did so on April 12 and the then minister of the interior and present member of the State Presidium Stane Dolanc did so in a TV interview May 8. It was not they, however, who were arrested for counterrevolutionary propaganda, but Seselj who was jailed on May 15.
Although the prosecution was unable to produce one witness to say that Seselj had put the manuscript into his or her hand, the court upheld the charge that the author had engaged in revolutionary propaganda for the purpose of carrying out common action
There are some other interesting After Seselj's arrest, some people in Sarajevo got anonymous letters, along with photocopies of the supposedly inInternational Viewpoint 1 October 1984 criminating article. It is an interesting question who sent them.
The second kind of evidence cited in the indictment were reports of disparag. ing remarks that Seselj supposedly made to individuals about Yugoslavia's political
One of these "witnesses" had never seen Seselj in his life before testifying in court. Others are considered to be agents provocateurs at the University such laughable evidence, the imposed the sentence of the judge, Milorad Potpalic amounted to clemency because Seselj's activity had represented "the strongest of the new Yugoslavia" since Tito's break with Stalin.
In fact, as far as can be judged from Seselj's previously published works and the quotes from "What Is To Be Done?" given in the Yugoslav press, they were intended to be a socialist critique of the political relationships in the country. Seselj criticized the chaos of the unplanned and bureaucratic model of self-management in Yugoslavia, pointed to the undemocratic traditions of the League of Yugoslav Communists, and demanded an investigation into the responsibility of the late President Tito for the present crisis of the country. A decisive test of strength
During the trial itself, witnesses report, despite his 42-day-long hunger strike, he expressed himself with no less vigor and courage. Even colleagues of Seselj in Zagreb and Belgrade who did not agree with his views or actions rejected the disgusting campaign of slander against him in the Yugoslav media, which has sought to present him as venal and a political madman.
The main attack by the media against Seselj was focused on a short passage in his manuscript "What Is To Be Done?,"
dissidents in Yugoslavia would regard in fact as a serious error. In it, Seselj proposed the abolition of the republics of Bosnia and Montenegro and up their territory Serbia and Croatia, as well as the nonrecognition of the "Muslims" as a nation-
Either step would undoubtedly dangerously excite national passions in Yugoslavia and, in particular, lead to a grave crisis in Bosnia, which is inhabited by Serbs and Croats, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims. On this, Ljubomir Tadic
"These views can be criticized, but all this relates to the questions under discussion - the way our federation is organized, our nationalities policy."
The moral of this farce is quite clear.
dissident intellectual now knows that he or she can be put on trial any time the authorities feel like it, even if the police cannot produce a shred of evidence of any illegal activity. Already this summer the critical intellectuals in Belgrade got a foretaste of this new procedure. The interrogation of some ninety people, four house searches and numerous confiscations of letters and manuscripts created a climate of constant anxiety and insecurity.
The indictment against the Belgrade Six drawn up by the state prosecutor, Danilo Nanovic, concentrates on counting up the number of time each of the accused is supposed to have been present at Free University sessions since 1977. Vladimir Mijanovic is accused of being "responsible" for the organizational aspects of the sessions.
Miodrag Milic is supposed to have spoken critically about the personality cult around Josif Broz Tito, and Dragomir Olujie is supposed to have stressed the importance of a strong trade-union movement in Yugoslavia. Quotations from the manuscripts of the accused as well as verbal statements attributed to them are supposed to prove the "counterrevolutionary character" of the sessions.
Thus, Srdja Popovic, one of Vladimir Mijanovie's lawyers, said in response to the indictment: "The prosecutor's office suspects the accused of having done something that has always and everywhere been allowed - visiting people, receiving people and engaging in discussions. It calls all this illegal because it attributes 'counterrevolutionary" views to the accused. There is no proof of this accusation. By this method anyone could be charged or any sort of everyday activity if certain views were attributed to
As the Seselj case has shown, the ver diet depends little on the strength of the proofs offered by the prosecution or the counterproofs of the defense. Behind it there will be a political decision. It was no accident that days before the official indictment was made, State Chairman Veselin Djuranovic announced at Central Committee plenum of the Montenegrian party that the trial was going to be held in the near future.
On August 6, Vladimir Mijanovic re plied as follows in an "Open Letter":
"Just keep on sowing anxiety, so that you won't have to face any disagreeable questions about your historical, personal and collective responsibility for the econpolitical and moral impasse in which the country finds itself! Just keep on demanding that "The Central Committee get off the defensive' by sending me and others to prison. I tell you: I'm not goint to let you get away with waging the 'special war' you have dreamed up at my expense. I'm not going to let you get away with making an example out of me to intimidate others! Is there a way? There is one possibility, a general political amnesty now!"
Agence France Press has reported that all six have declared that they will go on unlimited hunger strike if they are
This trial is shaping up as a test of strength both between the critical between the different factions within the bureaucracy that will set the course for the future evolution of Yugoslavia.
against those demonstrating for the congress this backlash was reflected
BRAZL only in a rather weak abstention vote. The other left wing, the Stalinists of the PCB, PC do B, and the MR-8, capitulated just as totally, chanting at the congress, "Hey, Hey, Tancredo and Sarney!"
It goes without saying that the electoral program of this alliance is vague and