Grave Stories

In the mid-seventies I travelled twice on the Road of Brotherhood and Unity. Otherwise known as the Autoput, this was the inland route across Yugoslavia, stretching 734 miles along the backbone of the country from the Austrian border at Jesenice in Slovenia to the Greek border at Gevgelija in North Macedonia. Construction of the road, much of it carried out by volunteer youth brigades, had been initiated by Tito in 1947 to connect the republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and North Macedonia not just physically but also culturally, as a symbol of the unity of the different ethnic groups.

Despite being heavily used, the road remained a two-lane highway with no central reservation and was in poor condition. Much of the traffic was in a similar state. Alongside the lorries, ramshackle coaches and ancient cars carried young travellers on limited budgets from northern and western Europe to Greece and Turkey, and in the opposite direction ferried Turkish, Greek and Yugoslavian Gastarbeiter to West Germany.

The journey was long, and there were few facilities along the way. In summer it was hot, vehicles lacked air conditioning and mosquitoes feasted on exposed flesh. Unroadworthy vehicles broke down and blocked the highway. Eager to put the Autoput behind them drivers went without sleep or breaks for dangerously prolonged periods, and accidents were common. Carcasses of wrecked and burnt-out cars lay in the fields. Those cars which had decent acceleration raced past the others, overtaking using the opposite lane whenever an opportunity arose on the crowded road.

My first experience of the highway was in one of those recklessly accelerating cars, the second time I was on the Magic Bus, travelling from London to Athens. Like every passenger who made that journey I remember two drivers who performed an elaborately choreographed manoeuvre as they periodically changed places while the bus was still moving. The trip was meant to take three days, carrying our food with us and sleeping on the coach, but strikes and a fuel distribution issue left us stranded at a petrol station somewhere in Yugoslavia, sitting by the roadside for an additional half day. For the rest of the journey the drivers tried to make up the lost time.

Yet despite the sweat, the dirt and the discomfort, what I remember most is the camaraderie on the bus and the romance of the road as we journeyed through what still seemed a rather exotic country, the land where the Partisans defied fascism with their ideals of brotherhood and unity.

That road is easier to travel today: in 2019 a four-lane national motorway was completed. But it is no longer called the Road of Brotherhood and Unity, and it no longer crosses one united country. Instead, it is called the A2 in Slovenia, the A3 in Croatia, the A3 and the A1 in Serbia and the A1 in North Macedonia. Even more prosaically it goes by its European designations forming parts of the E62, E70 and E75, respectively. For Yugoslavia fell apart, collapsing into inter-ethnic wars in the 1990s.

Yugoslavia, the Kingdom of South Slavs, had emerged following the collapse of Austria-Hungary in World War I. The highly centralised state came under the control of the Serbian monarchy which enjoyed considerable leverage having supported the Allies in the war and on account of its military strength. The non-Serbian nations suffered two decades of marginalisation and discrimination.

When the Nazi Germany, assisted by Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria invaded and occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, the king and government fled. The Axis powers exploited warped nationalism to establish puppet governments, the fascist Ustase in Croatia and Bosnia and the royalist para-fascist Chetniks in Serbia.

But in that occupied, divide land something remarkable occurred. The Yugoslav Communist Party which had been outlawed since 1920, able only to operate an underground network, emerged from obscurity. A party with only 12,000 members in 1941 created the most formidable anti-fascist force in Europe: the Partisans. Committed to the liberation of Yugoslavia and the establishment of a communist state which treated all ethnic groups equally, the Partisans liberated their country virtually unaided by the Allies or Russia.

In marked contrast to the collaborators, they adopted the slogan Brotherhood and Unity. The partisan brigades included Serbs, Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians, Bosnians, and Kosovan Albanians; there were Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians, Muslims, Jews and Atheists; there were men and women, for the partisan ideals also included women’s rights and gender equality. From their strategic heartlands in the mountainous regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, spreading to Croatia and Slovenia, the multi-ethnic partisans fought the invaders and collaborators. The most effective resistance movement in occupied Europe, they forced a German retreat and took back power in Yugoslavia.

The same idealism informed the post war organisation of the country. Elections led to the victory of the Communist Party, the king was deposed, and a federal republic established. Brotherhood and Unity remained the guiding principle: poor nations were to have the same rights as middle-income ones; everyone was free to express their own culture but expected to be tolerant of others. A country previously susceptible to ultra nationalism was to be united around a common Yugoslav goal.

Moreover, Yugoslavia pursued a successful policy of Non-Alignment, exploiting east west antagonism to her own advantage. Economic reforms introduced a unique, decentralised form of market socialism, with worker self-management.

There was economic growth; the spread of literacy and education; health care improved. Women were encouraged to work; abortion and contraception were legal.

Yugoslav citizens could travel and work abroad. Foreigners could travel freely within the country, and from the 1960s they were not just passing through Yugoslavia on the Autoput but holidaying on the Adriatic coast and islands.

Yet in the last decade of the twentieth century Yugoslavia fractured and collapsed into violent and brutal wars.

Economic crises drove the breakup: inflation, unemployment and foreign debt pushed Yugoslavia into recession in the late 1980s. Strikes, and the uncovering of corruption followed. Resentment grew in the wealthier republics of Croatia and Slovenia whose populations felt they were paying too much into the federal budget to support the poorer territories.

The fall of Communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union meant that western powers no longer had a motive to help Yugoslavia with its debts. The IMF imposed austerity measures. And without support from the Communist bloc the power of the Yugoslav Communist Party to hold the federation together was weakened.

Against this background atavistic national, cultural and religious divisions re-emerged.

The reformed 1974 Constitution had given the republics more autonomy, reducing the power of central government where Serbia had continued to hold a dominant position. It was a dominance which some Serbs did not wish to surrender. When the constituent republics went further and sought to secede inter-ethnic wars resulted.

Slovenia voted for complete independence in 1990, followed by Croatia a year later. The Serb controlled Yugoslav People’s Army moved against them, supported in Croatia by the Serb minority there who had a legitimate fear of Tudjman’s openly anti-Serb nationalist government. The Croatians had an equally reasonable suspicion that desire for a Greater Serbia rather than a federal Yugoslavia dominated Milosevic’s thinking. The war lasted four years during which Serbs shelled civilian areas of Split and Dubrovnik, and their paramilitaries were responsible for the Vukovar hospital massacre.

In 1992 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence. The Serb response was to declare a separate Republic of Serb people, the Republica Srpska, within Bosnia-Herzegovina. From this base between 1992-95 Serbs under Radovan Karadzic conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing, massacring and raping Muslim Bosniaks. They laid siege to Sarajevo, bombarding it for four years. At Srebrenica they murdered 8,000 men and boys, an act declared genocide by the International Court.

The Kosovan Albanians, who made up 77% of the population of Kosovo, had since the 1980s been demanding that the Serbian province of Kosovo should be a full constituent republic. As these demands increased in the 1990s, Milosevic responded with an aggressive Serbian nationalist agenda: there were growing restrictions on use of the Albanian language; Albanian media were silenced and schools were closed; and Albanians were dismissed from public office. When the newly formed Kosovan Liberation Army conducted acts of sabotage against the Serbian security forces retribution was brutal. Two thousand civilian and KLM combatants were killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced between1998-99. A United Nations Supreme Court found that there had been a systematic campaign of terror including murder and rape conducted against the Albanian population.

Economic factors, the fall of Communism and the rise of nationalism ripped Yugoslavia apart and the subsequent wars left 140,000 dead, 130,000 casualties, 2.4 million refugees and an ugly record of war crimes, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. A long way from the Brotherhood and Unity ideals of the partisans, a long way from the carefree days when the Magic Bus bumped and trundled along the Brotherhood and Unity Highway.

And perhaps there was one more factor contributing to the collapse of Yugoslavia. For without subscribing to the great men theory of history, it is impossible to deny that Josip Broz Tito was a major unifying force in Yugoslavia and that ethnic tensions started to grow after his death in 1980.

Tito was born in 1892 in present day Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a young man he was active in the Metal Workers Union. In 1913 he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army for compulsory military service. Captured by the Russians during World War I, he became a prisoner of war but escaped and after the October Revolution joined a Red Guard unit in Omsk. In 1920 he returned home and joined the Communist Party in the newly formed Yugoslavia.

After the CPY was declared illegal in 1921, he continued to work for the party, was arrested and lost his job. He became a professional revolutionary, writing and organising strikes, and as a result was imprisoned. In 1934 he was elected to the Politburo and became a full time official of the Comintern while continuing to organise strikes in the shipyards. After recruiting volunteers for the International Brigades in Spain in 1936, he became General Secretary of the CPY.

When the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia, it was Tito who called on people to unite against the occupation. As Commander in Chief of the Yugoslav Partisans, he organised and directed them, and personally commanded brigades in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia.

After the war Tito served as Prime Minister (1943-63) and President of Yugoslavia (1953-1980). Despite Yugoslavia being a founder member of the Cominform Tito became the only leader during Stalin’s lifetime to defy Soviet hegemony leading to the Tito-Stalin split and Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the organisation in 1948. Assassination attempts organised by Stalin,

I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito,

all failed. Tito wrote to the Soviet leader,

Stalin. Stop sending assassins to murder me. We have already caught five, one with a bomb, another with a rifle… if this does not stop, I will send one man to Moscow and there will be no need to send another.

Tito was a founding member, and the first Secretary General in 1961, of the Non-Aligned Movement.In addition to establishing useful ties with developing countries, his policy enabled Yugoslavia to receive aid from America and, after Stalin’s death, from the Comecon as well.

Justifiably, the political, economic, and foreign policies of post war Yugoslavia– independence from Moscow, workers self-management, market socialism, foreign policy neutrality, federalism and unity – were collectively known as Titoism, and his death removed a powerful influence for overcoming divisions and holding the republics of Yugoslavia together.

Although the wars have ended, the revival of nationalism has rendered Tito a polarising figure across the countries which once made up Yugoslavia. The complex where he was buried was closed to the public during the wars. It has since reopened but it no longer has a twenty-four-hour guard of honour.

Tito was buried, as he wished, in the House of Flowers: a winter garden which he had built near his home in Belgrade, and where he had an office looking out over the city.

The river boat down the Danube docks in Belgrade, and while my fellow tourists headed for the fortress, Saint Sava, and the Tesla museum, I visited Tito.

It was a sad visit, for it was not just Tito’s grave, but that of Yugoslavia and of all the fine hopes of the brave Partisans.