(2 of 2)
That gift of choice villa sites on the Adriatic to a handful of movie stars also raised some orthodox eyebrows. "Is it possible that deputies in a commune donate land free to a certain diva when peasants must pay for their water and electricity?" asked Ekonomska Politika. "When the town of Budva gives Sophia Loren a piece of land," it replied, "Loren will shed on Budva part of her world fame, which has an astronomical price. Hotels around her villa will overnight rocket in value, as will the whole town."
Such hardheaded business-before-dogma characterizes Tito's attitude toward nearly all the problems of the Yugoslav economy. Alone among Red peoples, Yugoslavs may freely travel to the West. Many do, and stay to work, but they send $60 million back home each year. Nearly 87% of the land in Yugoslavia is still privately farmed. "We exported grain last year," shrugs a Belgrade official. "How many other socialist countries export grain?" The government is in the process of handing over more and more independence to local factory management. "Within five years," says a Belgrade economist, "our factory managers will control, without state interference, the spending of 75% of their gross."
Party & a Half. There are a good many old-line Marxists who resent Yugoslavia's freewheeling new look and try to sabotage it whenever they can. Not long ago, Tito called a plenum and delivered a blistering rebuke to those "who have worked in a way contrary to the implementation of reform." The old-liners are under pressure from a different direction: Tito is encouraging the 8,000,000-member Socialist Alliance, once a rubber-stamp popular front, to stand in local elections against his ruling League of Yugoslav Communists Party. Though still under the League's wing, the Alliance will force League candidates to "openly debate issues," make it more difficult for the old-liners to hide in the woodwork of the bureaucracy. Tito's move has led some Belgrade wags to suggest that Yugoslavia is now a one-and-a-half party state.
Even in the realm of religion, the Yugoslavs are breaking fresh Communist ground. Hard on the heels of the conviction and sentencing of Poet Vladimir Gajsek for "provoking religious intolerance," Belgrade and the Vatican announced that this month they will sign an agreement according new freedom to the Yugoslav Roman Catholic Church, particularly to teach the catechism and open seminaries.