"We Are All Policemen"
Titograd, Yugoslavia
July 7, 1984
Dear Folks,
One of the longest continuing debates in discussions on international politics is whether this nation of 24 million is communist or not. To listen to its leaders and media, one would say that it is, or at least a sort of fervent socialism. Yet, to listen to the men and women on the streets, the government is no such thing. Indeed, the average Yugoslavian can't seem to come to any firm consensus as to what their form of government is--other than it's not worth their breath to ever praise it.
"Communism is brute!" spat one old Slovenian farmer, while sharing with me the customary large white tin cup of homemade wine. "We are not the damned Russians. We are socialist...I think."
"Socialism? Hah! Only on the front page of the newspaper each morning," scoffed a village merchant. His wife, who, like her husband, had worked most of her adult life outside of the country, nodded firmly.
When I'd met the merchant and his wife, it had been late in the evening. After a long hard day of working in their store, they had been on their way to till their small farm plots, to work in them until it was too dark. It was something they had to do, they'd told me, if they expected to eat and still have enough money left for a decent standard of life.
"In Yugoslavia the people work only to pay taxes, social security, and hopefully have enough left over to get drunk," the merchant had joked with a touch of seriousness.
Their combined take-home wages each month totaled around $400. That actually wasn't bad, compared to the lawyer who told me his state-controlled wage was $200 a month. Or, how about the 53-year-old doctor who revealed to me that his yearly salary was $5,000?
"It's a mafioso which controls everything," a senior construction engineer said sadly, as we walked back to his small inner-city apartment after a cold swim in the Adriatic Sea near the city of Split. "The best of everything goes to a few families that run each of the region's governments. What is left--which is very little in such a poor country--goes first to their friends, and then to the people."
An example of the above, he said, was in the availability of apartments. Those who knew the right people could get one within a couple years; Others, such as himself, had to bide their time on lengthy waiting lists. In his case he'd had his firm search for a place for himself and his wife and three daughters. After 10 years he finally got one, and he had little choice but to take it, even though it was in a neighborhood that resembled something from the Bronx.
The facts are that Yugoslavia's Communist Party has been the dominant political party since the 1940s. However, its control over the diverse nationalities of the Yugoslavian Federation has never been allowed to become as stoic as that found in Russia.
Here there are a few state or collective farms, but for the most part agriculture is done mostly by small private holdings. Individuals may own businesses but can't employ more than five persons. While most businesses are managed by councils elected by the workers, those same workers have been known to go on strike. And, too, the country's borders are open to the citizens; They can come and go as they please.
"After all," observed one Yugoslavian waiting on spare boat parts being smuggled in from Italy, "encouraging the people to work abroad eliminates what would certainly be much unemployment here."
So, is this nation communist or not? Perhaps the best way to tell is to let its leaders speak for themselves. Following are quotes taken from a tape recording I secretly made from a three-hour-long interrogation I underwent as a result of talking to two army privates in Benovac, in central Croatia. In my opinion, my interrogators' message and political slant are too clear. The words are those of the young military translator who particpated in the interrogation of me. He would tell me in English what the other army officers were saying to me, as they questioned me on the army base I was taken to in an unmarked car.
"Why are you walking in this area? No tourists come through here. You cannot walk in this party of the country--there are things you are not to see. You must tell us the names and addresses of everyone you have spoken to since you entered Yugoslavia..."
At one point a part of the team interrogating me tried to take my log book from me. In it (unbeknownst to them) are the names and addresses of everyone I've befriended while walking. A shouting match quickly ensued, and I grabbed the book and refused to hand it over. I saw no reason to have them questioning (and frightening) innocent people who had done nothing but help me. Also, one of the Yugoslavians llisted in the book was a former pilot for the CIA during the Vietnam War. When we'd met, he was in Yugoslavia to visit his sick mother, and I'd accompanied him to his mother's home on Pag Island in the Adriatic Sea just off Yugoslavia's coast. He had let me know the Yugloslavian officials knew his background as a CIA employee. Rightly or wrongly, I was worried that my interrogators would be quite upset to learn I'd been staying with an American spy agency employee in a remote part of the country that was within eyesight of where the country's political prisoners were kept (on Bear Island).
In a move that has continued to mystify me, the interrogating officers gave up on trying to take the log book from me and never brought it up again. Towards the end of the interrogation, I was told I was going to be released and taken to a hotel in town. I was instructed firmly to stay at the hotel until someone came the next morning to pick me up and bring me back to the base for more questioning.
At one point, as one of his superiors was writing something into a notebook, the young translator leaned to me and, in a near whisper, warned me, "In Yugoslavia, everyone is a policeman."
His words struck me as something I might have read in Alexander Solzhenitsen's Gulag Archipelago. I asked him to repeat what he'd said, certain I had misheard him.
"In Yugoslavia we are all policemen," he said. "You can not talk about anything you want with everyone you meet. It will be best for you to remember that--believe me."
I believed him...and all the more so, as I snuck out of the hotel before dawn and walked further into this nation.
Steven