A liberal regime?
Richard West
It is rash to quarrel in print with Bernard Levin, especially when he defends political Prisoners, but the article in the Times (January 30) on Yugoslavia was so wrongheaded that it requires an answer beyond What it received in the Yugoslav press. The article was titled 'If this is a liberal regime, they can keep it' and concerned the trial of the philosopher Dragoljub Ignjatovic and the forthcoming proceedings against the attorney Srdja Popovic, who had defended Ignjatovic and is now accused of 'spreading false news'.
Bernard Levin also reminds us of the case of Mihajlo Mihajlov 'sentenced a year ago to seven years for criticising the Tito dictatorship and now very weak, kept in Solitary confinement in an underheated cell'. The Yugoslav newspaper Politika has Challenged Mr Levin's specific charges, especially his references to Mr Popovic, Who has been on holiday in Western Europe, and took great exception to Levin's comparison of Tito with Franco, as also his allegation that 'Yugoslavia now has more political prisoners than any East European country other than the Soviet Union itself'.
Notice that Levin specifies 'Eastern Europe' because it would not be helpful to Point out that until last year the United Kingdom had probably as many prisoners Who could be classified as 'political' as
Yugoslavia. I refer of course to Irish people detained without trial at Long Kesh and other centres. But that's Ireland, that's different, one may reply, suggesting that there is nothing in common between repression in western and eastern Europe. In fact there is an interesting analogy between Ireland and Yugoslavia.
The Croats of north-western Yugoslavia were formerly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, are Roman Catholic and tend to dislike the Serbs who have been the rulers in most modern Yugoslav governments— although Tito himself is a Croat. The affairs of Yugoslavia in the 'twenties and 'thirties were largely occupied by the bloody resistance of Croats to rule from Belgrade, by strikes, assassinations and bomb outrages in which the Croat extremists called Ustashi had the support of German and Italian fascists. When Yugoslavia was invaded in 1941, the Germans installed an independent Croatian state under the evil Ante Pavelic, who proceeded to the massacre of some 300,000 Serbs and Jews. Tito and his communists came to power largely because they stood above this sectarian squabble.
After the war and the installation of communism, the Croat problem still festered, particularly since the Western countries financed and armed Ustashi guerrillas. In the early 'sixties, Ustashi gangs based in West Germany had begun a new campaign of assassination and bombing, so that years before anywhere else in the world you had your hand luggage searched on Yugoslav airlines. Before this murder campaign, there were few political prisoners in Yugoslavia. I remember hearing Yugoslav friends com plain that the police were too soft on terrorists, that they used 'kid glove' methods. They were pleased when the
secret police or UDB sent assassination squads to kill off Ustashi leaders in Munich and Frankfurt.
The analogy between Ireland and Yugoslavia has not been lost on the Yugoslays. Indeed the newspaper Politika that last week attacked Bernard Levin was only a few years ago praising the behaviour of the British troops in Ulster. I do not recall what was Bernard Levin's attitude to the internments in Northern Ireland, I certainly do not recall any prolonged protest, but I am sure he sees the justification of
strong measures against political terrorists.
Moreover Yugoslavia is faced with a threat of violence from another source, the Soviet Union, which still persists in trying to regain influence in the Yugoslav communist party. Most of the people sentenced recently to prison had been found guilty of plotting on behalf of another power, Russia, against the Yugoslav state. In the first few years after the 1948 break with the Cominform, Yugoslavia had to resist armed incursion from neighbouring countries and indeed lived in fear of military invasion. This fear was revived in 1968 after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, when the Yugoslav government mobilised its armed forces on the frontiers with Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.
Although I doubt whether the Soviet Union, since Stalin, has seriously contemplated military action against Yugoslavia, there is evidence that the Russian secret service has meddled in Yugoslav politics by supporting people who may be personally ambitious or genuinely dissatisfied with Tito's policies. Most of the `Cominformists' who have been arrested were Serbs and I suspect that some of them were sympathisers with the deposed former Minister of the Interior, Alexander Rankovic, who considered Tito too soft towards the Croat separatists. However it is believed by many Yugoslays that the Russians, in their efforts to make trouble, have not been above helping the Croat extremists as well, even the worst elements of the Ustashi. I am sure that Bernard Levin, would not question the right of the Yugoslav government to guard itself against Russian plotting, particularly when it involves supporting a viciously anti-semitic, right-wing Catholic movement.
But what of men like Mihajlov, Popovic and Ignjatovic, who are neither separatists nor Soviet agents? Bernard Levin is quite right to protest against their persecution just as he would have been right to protest against the persecution of those Irishmen who were locked up without any proof that they supported the violence of the IRA. The analogy is worth repeating not because Ireland and Yugoslavia have the same political problems, but because in both countries there is a climate of politics so violent and dangerous that the governments have been obliged to behave with a harshness they do not want. I have never heard it said, even by Yugoslays who dislike him, that Tito is a cruel man who enjoys having political prisoners, least of all those like Milovan Djilas who once were close personal friends. But in a country like Yugoslavia, torn by historic hatreds and violence, continually menaced by neighbouring states with the threat of actual war, the honest protests by honest men may be dangerous. While Djilas and Mihajlov are sincere men, they have undoubtedly become the heroes of some of the nastiest people in Yugoslav politics.
'If this is a liberal regime, they can keep it,' Bernard Levin states, but it is not a • liberal regime, it is a socialist regime and intends to remain that way, against the machinations of western capitalist governments, the Russians and their respective intelligence services. Having known Yugoslavia for twenty-five years since I was at Belgrade University, I am probably more familiar than Bernard Levin with what are the faults of its socialist government, but nevertheless I support that government and I regret that Bernard Levin has thrown to the enemies of Yugoslavia the same eager support that he once gave Richard Nixon and Nguyen Van Thieu.
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