Negative Phenomena

Until last winter the Communist press of Yugoslavia behaved and read like the Communist press anywhere. Then last spring, long after Marshal Tito's wrenching break with Moscow, a subtle change began to come over Belgrade's editorial rooms: Yugoslav newsmen swung like weathervanes from their Soviet-style polemics, began spinning reasonably honest stories for their startled readers. Recently U.N. and North Korean war communiques have run side by side in the capital's Communist papers. Strangest of all, criticism of Communist officials appeared in public print.

Boldest critic was a tall, husky, 35-year-old wartime partisan fighter named Branko Copic, a philosophy student turned writer. Copic, in a series of shattering satires that began last August in the Communist literary organ Knjizevne No-vine (Literary Gazette), scored direct hits on the most unpopular people of Yugoslavia--the Communist bureaucrats and their wives who lived off what fat there was in the hungry land. Copic's articles were reinforced by the cartoons of a popular artist who calls himself "Dzumhur" (Jester).

A few weeks ago Tito was proud of this press freedom. He told New York Compass Writer I. F. Stone that "anybody . could say whatever he wanted to in Yugoslavia . . . nobody was punished for saying what he pleased . . ." and that "it could be seen in Yugoslavia that [the government] tried to encourage criticism of all negative phenomena . . ."

Tito even took the implied advice of Copic and Dzumhur. By decree, he stripped the luxurious commissars of such negative phenomena as their PX cards, gas rations, special food and clothing allowances, villas and other amenities (TIME, Oct. 23).

But in a Communist state, success can be dangerous. Last week Writer Copic and Artist Dzumhur had plummeted from official favor. First to turn against Copic and Dzumhur was Knjizevne Novine, which had published their stuff. In a remarkable piece of hypocrisy, Novine charged Copic with "disgusting petty bourgeois criticism" and Dzumhur with "insulting falsifications."

Next the newspaper Borba (Struggle) --voice of the Communist Party--said that Copic's satires reflected "his line, his small bourgeois and anarchistic attitude --in essence, his reactionary and hostile attitude toward the present regime."

It seemed that in criticizing the negative phenomena of Yugoslavia, Copic and Dzumhur had become negative phenomena themselves.

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