Postmodern Cover for Gitlin's 'Yes'

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>'the recolonization of yugoslavia': as though YU were a solid,
>homogeneous, and abiding entity that merely and passively was sub-
>ject to the wills and wiles of great powers. 'yugoslavia' is the
>name for what seems to have been the very transient period during
>which the great powers exerted less direct influence over the re-
>gion; but it was formulated through the very aggressive suppres-
>sion of its component cultures--basically, *tito* colonized it.
>as you may have noticed, he died, but the mechanisms and balances
>he established lived on--and are, in large part, responsible for
>the fiascos of the last decade.
>
>t

To add to Christian's comments on the above, I found it rather interesting
that despite opposite opinions on the NATO bombings, both the anticommunist
members of the anti-NATO Serbian-American protesters and the Western media
seemed to agree with t on the above point.  Yugoslavia certainly had its
internal problems (firstly politico-economic problems), but to blame the
current state of affairs on 'Tito's suppression of its component cultures'
is to suppress the truth of history (by letting imperialism off the hook,
among other things).  Also, if anything, Yugoslavia may have erred on the
side of promoting the 'unity in diversity' idea in the cultural sphere as a
_substitute_ for a solution to the politico-economic problem that it
couldn't find:

*****   A major reform of the economic system proclaimed in 1965 was
supposed to introduce a genuine (socialist) market economy and enhance the
power of "self-managed" enterprises -- and hence, in theory, that of the
working class -- through a withering away of the state's role in the
economy, then commonly called "de-etatization" (_de-etatizacija_), at all
levels.  The reforms eliminated almost all central planning and control
over investment funds, which were turned over to banks and enterprises, and
virtually completed the liquidation of federal economic powers...[except
powers of partial funding of development in underdeveloped regions and the
foreign currency regime].  It is now recognized, however, that
_de-etatizacija_ stopped with the destruction of the federal citadel,
leaving other "etatisms" intact and correspondingly strengthened.  With
most enterprises and banks limiting their activities to the territory of a
single federal or smaller unit and most enterprises too inefficient and
financially weak to forswear turning to the state and party for help,
tendencies to regional autarky persisted and "politicization" of the
economy was in fact enhanced at the regional and local level. (136)


>From Dennison Rusinow, "Nationalities Policy and the 'National Question',"
_Yugoslavia in the 1980s_, ed. Pedro Ramet (Boulder and London: Westview
Press, 1985).   *****

Yoshie