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From Revolution to Post-Revolution: How Much Do We Really Know about Yugoslav Politics?

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AdizesIchak and BorgeseElisabeth Mann, eds., Self-Management: New Dimensions to Democracy; Alternatives for a New Society. Santa Barbara, California, and Oxford: ABC-Clio, Inc., 1975, 162 pp., $12.75 cloth; $4.75 paper.
DjilasMilovan, Parts of a Lifetime. Edited by Michael and MilenkovitchDeborah. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, 442 pp., $15.00.
EdelsteinAlex S., The Uses of Communication in Decision-Making: A Comparative Study of Yugoslavia and the United States. New York, Washington, and London: Praeger Publishers (Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Government), 1974, 270 pp., $18.50.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Susan Lampland Woodward
Susan Lampland Woodward
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College
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Abstract

This review of eight recently published works on Yugoslavia suggests that although information about the country is constantly increasing, the conceptual approach of social scientists continues to limit our understanding of its politics. Focusing on a variety of problems of interpretation that arise out of the concept of ideology in each work, the author offers alternative interpretations of Yugoslav politics and assesses the current state of our knowledge.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , October 1977 , pp. 141 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 West, Rebecca, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia, 2 vols. (New York: Viking Press 1964; first published in 1940, 1941)Google Scholar.

2 One might use Zeno's paradox (“A Cretan says all Cretans are liars”), and particularly a modern reformulation of it (“Social scientists say that every man's knowledge of society is the product of that society”) to invalidate this position. Bendix, Reinhard, “The Age of Ideology: Persistent and Changing,” in Apter, David E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press 1964), 325Google Scholar, n.24. On the contrary, I want to argue here that the paradox has been considered an excuse to focus attention on technique and to avoid the kind of rigorous analytical self-consciousness which it suggests is essential.

3 For relevant examples, see Geertz, Clifford, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in Geertz, , The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books 1973), 3–30Google Scholar, and Adam Przeworski, “Production of Social Relations: Comments Prepared for Panel on Comparative Politics,” paper presented to the 1976 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

4 Two exceptions are Denitch, Bogdan, The Legitimation of a Revolution: The Yugoslav Case (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1976)Google Scholar and Rusinow, Dennison, The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1977)Google Scholar.

5 Clifford Geertz, “Ideology As a Cultural System,” in Geertz (fn. 3), 218.

6 Shils, Edward, “The Concept and Function of Ideology,” in Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan and Free Press 1968), VII, 68Google Scholar.

7 The dependence of students of Yugoslav politics on the current doyen of interpreters, Dennison Rusinow, who writes for the American Universities Field Staff, illustrates the significance of this skill.

8 Johnson is also the author of an intelligent study of the ideological origins of Titoism, , The Transformation of Communist Ideology: The Yugoslav Case 1945–1953 (Cambridge: MIT Press 1972)Google Scholar. Readers should be made aware, however, that the monograph contains some surprising misspellings, such as the reference on page 18 to Senja Dapčević-Kular rather than the correct Savka Dabčević-Kučar.

9 Since the nationalist crisis of 1971, however, heightened concern in the West about the role that the army might play in any future Yugoslav crisis, whether over succession to Tito or a renewal of the nationalist threat of secession, has stimulated research. The best recent article is Dean, Robert W., “Civil-Military Relations in Yugoslavia, 1971–75,” Armed Forces and Society, III (Fall 1976), 17–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Habermas, Jürgen, Theory and Practice, trans. by Viertel, John (Boston: Beacon Press 1973), 32–40Google Scholar; quote from 38–39, emphasis in original.

11 Horvat, , “A New Social System in the Making: Historical Origins and Development of Self-governing Socialism,” in Horvat, Branko, Marković, Mihailo, and Supek, Rudi, eds., Self-governing Socialism, 2 vols. (White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences Press 1975), I, 3Google Scholar.

12 The European workers' movement had by then become tied to organizational solutions; further, it was generally considered that the failure of the Kingdom had been its unitary structure, its unwillingness to federalize.

13 See Dennison Rusinow, “A Note On Yugoslavia: 1972,” American Universities Fieldstaff Reports, Southeast Europe Series, XIX:3, on the paralysis of decision making at the center, caused by republican veto politics in the nationalist crisis of 1967–1971. Much has been written lately, particularly in Europe, on issues in multicultural politics which are unbargainable. See, for example, Rose, Richard, Governing Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press 1971)Google Scholar.

14 In fact, the issues precede any Serb-Croat conflict; for a discussion of Croatian grievances against the Hungarians after the establishment of the Dual Monarchy, which parallel those of 1967–1971, see Jászi, Oscar, “Croatia versus Hungary,” in The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1929), 366–375Google Scholar.

15 Rusinow (fn. 13), emphasizes this key role of leaders. See also his four-part article, “Crisis in Croatia,” Ibid., XIX, Nos. 4–7.

16 For example, the growing differences between the socialist and private sectors: the acute urban-rural differences and the split between the socialist and private workers. See Ellen Comisso, Workers' Control between Plan and Market, unpub., chap. 5, “Market Socialism in Yugoslavia: Inequalities and Economic Performance.”

17 Valjevo is located in the Republic of Serbia where the Cyrillic alphabet predominates.

18 Johnson refers to the “campaign against ‘liberalism’” (p. 28); the nine faculty members have since lost their teaching posts; see Johnson, 26–28.

19 Remarkable similarities in Yugoslav and Chinese politics, such as the authoritarian structure, a reliance on technocrats at crucial points, and particularly the popular inclination to petition the ruler personally in times of difficulty, are usually attributed in the individual cases to the persistence of cultural traditions, despite the obvious differences between the two cultures. For China, see Joseph Lelyveld's review of The Wind Will Not Subside by David Milton and Nancy Dall Milton and of Mao Tse-tung by Pye, Lucian, in the New York Times Book Review, May 9, 1976, p. 6Google Scholar.

20 See also the work of industrial sociologists, best represented in this case by Josip Županov, for further attention to the importance of definition; two especially useful examples are Županov, , “Yugoslavia: A Socialist Alternative,” in De Hoghton, Charles, ed., The Company: Law, Structure and Reform in Eleven Countries (London: P.E.P., and Allen and Unwin 1970), 320–36Google Scholar, and “Proizvodjač i riziko” [The Producer and Risk], in Županov, , Samoupravljanje i Društvena Moć [Self-management and Social Power] (Zagreb: Naše Teme 1969), 13–38Google Scholar. See also Adizes, , Industrial Democracy Yugoslav Style: The Effect of Decentralization on Organizational Behavior (New York: Free Press 1971)Google Scholar, and Milenkovitch, Deborah D., Plan and Market in Yugoslav Economic Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1971)Google Scholar.

21 Adizes, , “Economic Change in Yugoslavia,” East Europe, XXI (August 1972), 14Google Scholar.

22 In contrast to Alvin Rubinstein, who attempts to explain the choice of a policy of nonalignment by its fortuitous linking of theory and practice (it “was ideologically congenial and politically feasible”), Nord believes that such an approach leads to description only and fails to relate ends to means (p. 4). See Rubinstein, , Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970), 37Google Scholar; for other studies of Yugoslav nonalignment, see Campbell, John C., Tito's Separate Road (New York: Harper and Row 1967)Google Scholar; Mates, Leo, Nonalignment, Theory and Current Policy (New York: Oceana Publications 1972)Google Scholar; and Dadić, B., ed., Jugoslavija u svetu. Medjunarodni odnosi i spoljna politika fugoslavije 1941–1969 [Yugoslavia in the World. International Relations and Yugoslav Foreign Policy 1941–1969] (Belgrade: Mladost 1970)Google Scholar.

23 Stipe Šuvar, a prominent and politically active Yugoslav sociologist, uncategorically states, “If we were to have something different [than self-managing production relations], then it's all the same to me whether Yugoslavia remains united or falls, which country will establish hegemony over us, and so forth.” Samoupravljanje i druge alternative [Self-management and Other Alternatives] (Zagreb: Naše Teme 1972), 183Google Scholar. Robin Remington argues that “in this maverick socialist state the issues of internal and international security are hopelessly entangled. They cannot be isolated; it is artificial to deal with them separately.” See “Yugoslavia and European Security,” Orbis, XVII (Spring 1973), 98Google Scholar. It is also worth remembering that the problem of counterrevolution, fostered either by emigrés or the Soviet Union, is an issue of foreign rather than domestic policy for Yugoslav leaders.

24 See, for instance, Johnson's discussion of General People's Defense (pp. 43–50), a clear example of the domestic repercussions of one of the cases Nord considers—Czechoslovakia 1968; self-management itself began as a domestic response to foreign politics, as a memorable strategy in the war against the Soviet Union after the Cominform Resolution of 1948.

25 “Dow and Yugoslavs Sign a Record Deal,” New York, Times, March 27, 1976, p. 35.

26 See Zimmerman, William, “National-International Linkages in Yugoslavia: The Political Consequences of Openness,” paper presented to the 1973 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association; Zimmerman maintains that Yugoslavia is a particularly good example of obvious “international-national linkages” (p. 5), and illustrates his argument with the case of foreign workers from Yugoslavia.Google Scholar

27 I do not mean to imply that her assertion is always misplaced, as a glance at Edelstein, Alex S., The Uses of Communication in Decision-Making: A Comparative Study of Yugoslavia and the United States (New York: Praeger 1974)Google Scholar will show. A compilation of 141 tables of percentages of responses to a survey, without sample sizes or any indication of the raw data on which these percentages are calculated, with 23 chapters giving a verbal rendition of the statistics, and no more analysis than an occasional “we found this to be of interest” (p. 69), it also illustrates the consequences of ignoring the Yugoslav context and of applying a foreign framework. Although its title refers to an increasingly crucial problem in the system of self-management, a subject of interest to many, it is actually a study of citizens' use of the mass media.

28 Dunn, William N., in a provocative article, “Ideology and Organization in Socialist Yugoslavia: Modernization and the Obsolescence of Praxis,” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, V (August 1972), 21–56Google Scholar, focuses on the “tension” that “derives from an inherently inconsistent and ineffective combination of sociocultural goals (socialism) and utilitarian modes of compliance (material incentives)” (p. 25n.); Adizes (fn. 21), 14, also currently finds “disenchantment” among Yugoslavs with their system of self-management.

29 The term is David Apter's, in “Introduction: Ideology and Discontent,” in Apter (fn. 2), 15–16, and refers to Polanyi's characterization of the modern mind: “A new destructive scepticism is linked here to a new passionate social conscience; an utter disbelief in the spirit of man is coupled with extravagant moral demands. We see at work here the form of action which has already dealt so many shattering blows to the modern world: the chisel of scepticism driven by the hammer of social passion.”

30 Habermas (fn. 10), 32, writes, “The mediation of theory and praxis can only be clarified if to begin with we distinguish three functions, which are measured in terms of different criteria: the formation and extension of critical theorems, which can stand up to scientific discourse; the organization of processes of enlightenment, in which such theorems are applied and can be tested in a unique manner by the initiation of processes of reflection carried on within certain groups toward which these processes have been directed; and the selection of appropriate strategies, the solution of tactical questions, and the conduct of the political struggle. On the first level, the aim is true statements, on the second, authentic insights, and on the third, prudent decisions. Because in the tradition of the European working-class movement all three tasks at once were assigned to the party organization, the specific differences have become obscured. …”

31 See Singleton, 286–87, example; the reference to scholars here includes what the Yugoslavs call the “humanistic intelligentsia,” rather than the “technical intelligentsia.”

32 Dunn (fn. 28), also sees a decline in the function of mobilization with postrevolutionary, more settled conditions in Yugoslavia. Oddly enough—especially if one takes a Gramscian view of things—he calls this an “obsolescence of praxis.”

33 As Marx reminds us, however, “All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.” Capital, III (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House), 797; cited in Godelier, Maurice, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, trans, by Brian Pearce (London: NLB 1972), 1Google Scholar. Godelier states in his introduction, p. xxvi, that “It is therefore impossible for scientific cognition to be built up from the spontaneous representations formed by individuals of their social relations, and this radically refutes empiricism in all the fields where it operates. There is no fundamental difference between the spontaneous models of their society that individuals make for themselves, ‘the set of ideas’ they have regarding their ‘social structure in practical situations’ (Leach), and the learned models constructed by sociologists and economists who start from the same spontaneous representations and whose models ‘exist only as logical constructions in [their] own mind’ (Leach).”

34 See Pateman, Carole, “A Contribution to the Political Theory of Organizational Democracy,” Administration and Society, VII (May 1975), 5–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the distinction within liberalism.

35 Djilas, , The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York: Praeger 1957)Google Scholar.

36 Shils (fn. 6), 72–73.

37 See Hoffman, George W., “Migration and Social Change,” Problems of Communism, XXII (November-December 1973), 16–31Google Scholar; Fisher, Jack, Yugoslavia—A Multinational State (San Francisco: Chandler 1966)Google Scholar; and Simić, Andrei, The Peasant Urbanites: A Study of Rural-Urban Mobility in Serbia (New York and London: Seminar Press 1973)Google Scholar.

38 Županov, “Yugoslavia …” (fn. 20), 320.

39 Denitch (fn. 4), pp. 105–148.

40 Garson's monograph places Yugoslav self-management in the framework of contemporary efforts to democratize society, as in Western Europe and Israel. The review is so tightly packed that its subtleties may be lost on first reading, while a second and even third reading suggest that readers already conversant with the literature he discusses will find it most useful; further, the comparison with Israel and Europe is implied, but neither justified nor developed.

41 Michael Milenkovitch has also compiled a useful bibliography on Djilas, , Milovan Djilas: An Annotated Bibliography, 1928–1975 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International 1976)Google Scholar.

42 Djilas writes, “The political structure in many ways remains just as it emerged from the revolution” (p. 401). Denitch, writing from a similar perspective as Djilas was originally, observes that “Self-management has launched processes in the base of the society which have not yet produced an appropriate political superstructure. This is, if for no other reason, because the political structure has a history and tradition while the social system is new.” “Notes on the Relevance of Yugoslav Self-management,” Politics and Society, III (Summer 1973), 489Google Scholar; emphasis in original. The statement, however, could easily be misleading in the sense I am discussing.

43 Šuvar (fn. 23), asserts that decentralization to the republican level has only transferred the monolithic concept of power to a different sphere, but has not changed the nature of power exercised in Yugoslavia.

44 An attempt to confront one part of Djilas's thesis with hard data does occur in Parkin, Frank, “Yugoslavia,” in Archer, Margaret Scotford and Giner, Salvador, eds., Contemporary Europe: Class, Status and Power (New York: St. Martin's Press 1971), pp. 312–15Google Scholar.

45 One of the best analyses of Yugoslav society at the moment (though it does not intend to be and is limited to certain aspects), is the discussion of corporatism by Rogowski, Ronald and Wasserspring, Lois, Does Political Development Exist? Corporatism in Old and New Societies, Sage Professional Paper in Comparative Politics, II: 01–024 (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications 1971)Google Scholar. Rogowski, takes the argument further in Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political Support (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974)Google Scholar.

46 This conclusion is not limited to non-Yugoslav social scientists. In Yugoslavia it is associated with Pavle Novosel, who maintains that Yugoslav political culture, especially among the young, should be labelled “alienated”; see his “Politička Kultura u S.R. Hrvatskoj [Political Culture in the S.R. of Croatia],” Politička Misao, 1970Google Scholar, for example. Novosel is trying to explain the decline in political interest among young people, however; his argument should not be taken as a reason for not asking what leads an ordinary individual to forego his political alienation, or for not expecting grass-roots participation at all.

47 Suleiman, Ezra N., Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974)Google Scholar.

48 Adizes (fn. 21), 8; for France, see the argument of Crozier, Michel in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1964)Google Scholar.

49 Although Singleton does give this impression, his book contains much material that would permit a different perspective.

50 See also Milenkovitch (fn. 20), who cites Hoffman, George W. and Neal, Fred W., Yugoslavia and the New Communism (New York: Twentieth Century Fund 1962), 90nGoogle Scholar, to emphasize the “pragmatic quality” of theoretical speculation in Yugoslavia.

51 George Klein does suggest that the nationalist crisis of 1971 must be understood as a growth of grass-roots politics and the appearance of a generation of leadership with strong ties to active constituencies within the republics. “The Role of Ethnic Politics in the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968 and the Yugoslav Crisis of 1971,” paper presented to the 1974 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

52 See Bilandžić, Dušan, Ideje i Prakja Društvenog Razvoja Jugoslavije, 1945–1973 [Ideas and Praxis in the Social Development of Yugoslavia, 1945–1973] (Belgrade: Komunist 1973), 294Google Scholar.

53 On this point, see writings by Milenkovitch (e.g., fn. 20) and Rusinow (fn. 7).

54 See Polanyi, Karl, Arensberg, Conrad, and Pearson, Harry, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press 1957)Google Scholar.

55 Ivan Šiber finds, in a survey of political attitudes and socialization among rural youths, that while they respond appropriately (i.e., positively) to statements containing the self-management ideals, they also respond positively to statements containing attitudes Šiber identifies with bourgeois society—even though these two sets of attitudes should be mutually exclusive or at least contradictory. “Politička socijalizacija seoske omladine” [Political Socialization of Rural Youth], Sociologija Sela XIII (November-December 1975)Google Scholar.