A War of Words

Fluttering banners proclaimed: "Tito belongs to us. We belong to Tito." More than 100,000 throats cheered his appearance in Pristina's "Brotherhood and Unity Square" in southern Yugoslavia. But Tito was in anything but a brotherly mood. The country's unity, he warned, was threatened by "a knife in the back." "The whole of Yugoslavia is full of bitterness," he added. "They are striking behind our back unexpectedly."

Latin v. Cyrillic. The target of Tito's wrath was not foreign or domestic enemies but a war of words between Serbs and Croats, who make up the two largest of Yugoslavia's six republics. Their languages are similar except for slight variations in idiom and pronunciation, but Serbian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet (as is Russian) and Croatian in the Latin characters of the West. The Yugoslav constitution recognizes Croatian and Serbian as a single tongue, and in official documents the government is supposed to employ variants of both languages.

The trouble is that Serbian is becoming the more equal language. Belgrade newspapers and most official documents are written in Serbian, 90% of the Yugoslav diplomatic corps is Serbian and the army is dominated by Serbian officers who give orders in their mother tongue. The Croats, on the other hand, have lately become more powerful because of rapid economic development in their northern region, part of a broad industrial step-up in Yugoslavia (see WORLD BUSINESS). Deciding that Croatian deserved more recognition, 17 Croatian organizations, led by the Croatian Writers Union, recently demanded a constitutional amendment making their tongue an official language separate from Serbian.

Whistle Blown. That started the battle. In reprisal, the Serbians drafted a counterdemand that Serbian students in Croatia be taught in their home language. Newspapers in both republics were soon filled with blistering editorials, letters and articles. In Croatia, factories, government agencies and schools began organizing anti-Serbian protests. It may have seemed like just a harmless dispute, but Tito knows how weak are the ties that bind Yugoslavia's six republics and how strong the regional rivalries. Fearing, the political consequences of the squabble, he blew the whistle.

Four times in the course of the week, Tito warned Serbian and Croatian intellectuals that he would tolerate nothing that might lead to a renewal of ancient enmities between the regions. Himself a Croatian, he booted the president of the Croatian Writers Union out of the Communist Party for "lack of vigilance and irresponsibility." Pouring scorn on the intellectuals as people who do not care about labor and productivity, he asked a group of workers: "Do you pay attention only to commas and full stops, or is there something else in which you are interested?" Actually, Tito is about the only Yugoslav who speaks anything approaching a national language. He goes to some length to be understood everywhere, peppers his speech with local idioms and intonations. In whatever language, his blast last week was a clear warning that he will not allow words to interfere with work.

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