The disunity of Communism
Richard West
Zagreb Most of the cinemas here are showing disaster movies, like Airport Two, or hard-core pornography, so I was glad to discover a queue for a local Yugoslav film Visoki Napor, or Big Effort. The stills suggested that this was a film about politics, and afterwards I discovered that Big Effort had caused a bit of a stir in Yugoslavia.
The film begins in the summer of 1947, when Yugoslavia was still in the Russian bloc. A primitive steam train is bringing volunteers to work on the BrotherhoodUnity road between Belgrade and Zagreb. In that period, thousands of young people from Western Europe came to join in the task of building the 'new democracies', as they were called by the Daily Worker — and came away heartened by memories of the camp-fire songs, slivovitz, sun and maybe a mild Slavonic flirtation — in honour of Stalin, and Tito, his favourite son. In fact most of the work was done by Yugoslays who were not volunteers as we understand it, and worked twice as long hours as the foreigners.
In Big Effort, the volunteers come from the Rade Koncar factory in Zagreb which made and still makes electrical generators. The heroine is going to work on the road for her summer holidays, and she is met there by her earnest and handsome lover, the hero. Then back to a works meeting at Rade
One hundred years ago
The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race was run, as usual, on Friday, in the presence of a large crowd, though the hour was 8.35, and the east wind cut the spectators to the bone. The race, though rather slow, owing to the state of the tide, was well contested; but Oxford, which had previously been decided by the betting men to have the stronger crew, won by four lengths. There was, perhaps, a slight falling-off in the interest taken in the race, but the evening papers still find it profitable to send out early editions, which are rapidly sold. According to the experts, however, the rowing does not improve, the crews not coming up to some past, but perfect ideal. Koncar. We are shown some of the engineers and managers; the former 'bourgeois' owner, who later defects to Austria; a spectacled draughtsman, a comical loonie scientist; and a plain, insuffer able girl communist prig who gets the factory to adopt her ghastly slogan: 'We build generators! The generators build us!'
At this point Big Effort veers towards farce. At a works outing, up in the mountains, the hero and every available man are chased around by the girl prigcommunist and a single-mindedly randy older woman. Every bush is shown to conceal bare-backsided couples. The heroine is denounced by the girl prigcommunist who in turn is told to shut up by the party official. The farce continues back at the Rade Koncar works where a fat soprano and baritone bawl out Verdi as part of the workers' cultural enlightenment. The audience in the cinema laughed, having themselves endured this kind of thing. I settled down to enjoy a version of 'Carry on Communism'.
Then came a change in the mood. We saw old newsreel film of a May Day parade, with Rade Koncar workers bearing the giant portraits of Stalin and Tito, but this only served to show that the year was 1948, and the Yugoslays were about to break with the Russians. The Rade Koncar workers hear the news with bewilderment, until the heroine makes an impromptu speech: 'We don't have to believe that Stalin is right in every respect . . . We don't have to go to church to pray to the God Stalin.' A portrait of Stalin comes down from the wall and the glass is broken. The hero, the girl-prig communist and a clutch of party enthusiasts come out for Stalin and international communism. 'What do they want? That tomorrow we pull our guns on the Russians?'. The conspirators rise to their feet in a small back room and sing the Internationale; it is a strangely moving incident in the film.
Old comrades quarrel over a game of billiards. The hero visits the heroine's village and reproaches her with the antiStalinist speech reported in Vjesnik — with which he slaps her across the head. The Cominformists (those who have taken the side of the Communist Information Spectator 11 April 191 Bureau) are raided at dead of night by OZNa, the name then used by the secret police; the hero escapes to the border of one of the Cominform states but is shot dead by' frontier guards. The heroine swallows her grief and gets back to work. The Cominformists disappear from the Rade Koneat works, no doubt to the Naked Island concentration camp. Big Effort is baffling in many respects, quite apart from the implausibility of a 5.e,% farce based on the Cominform dispute. lvtY first thought was why should they lonkrei such a fuss about something that hapnene', 33 years ago, and then I recalled that What Yugoslavia managed to do then — break away from the Soviet Union — has eluded the efforts of Hungary (1956); Czecholovakia (1968) and Poland (1*.i sim). How did Yugoslavia get away with It so long ago? Was it that Russia in those days did not possess nuclear weapons and there; fore did not dare risk a war with the West' Or did Stalin believe his own boast of tnf, time: 'I shall snap my fingers and there wl" be no more Tito'? Certainly, as Big Effe'rit admits, Stalin commanded the loyalty 0' some of the fine idealists of the Yugoslav Communist Party, who were prepared side with the Cominform at the risk of hie and liberty. It still requires a stretch of imagination ti.e grasp the magnitude of the breach wi,t1; Russia caused by the Yugoslav Common's Party. Until 1948, the friends and still 1n°11,e the foes of the party saw it as internatiol and indivisible. After the horror of WcIrl., War I, the communists found that thel' greatest appeal was the claim to unite the working people throughout the world. Wed are told that Philby, Burgess, Maclean all Blunt joined the Communist Party, Cambridge because they saw in Russia ; hope for eternal peace. Apart from few pesky Trotskyites, the common,islss presented a solid front; even their talked of 'international communism', At Now we know that communism is 11' only disunited but one of the major ettse: of war. In Europe, Albania, Bulga",,,i Rumania; Hungary, Czechoslovakia a"ct East Germany all go separate ways an most of them hate their communist neig,"r bours. Russia and China have b°rue disputes and are close to fighting each other . with nuclear weapons. Communist Vier, nam has fought a war withcom— „ tosi China and conquered communist Carnyv t dia. In the Horn of Africa, three differetlr. communist armies are fighting each othe,,d Now we accept all this, but in 1948 it see'nt to most of us inconceivable. only the arch-Tory Evelyn Waugh greeted gloom the news of Tito's defection, WM; that peace was more secure with one athei..i tyranny (Russia) rather than seve14 mutually loathing atheist states. Waugh was probably right. We tnig-h,ti,apiri live longer if Russia had never relax e° H-0 rule of all East Europe. But at least we a , brotherhood of the keliwe oorfthrs.e internation al
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