Foreign Affairs; The 'Ethnic Trash' of Karl Marx Today

BELGRADE, Aug. 2-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who are highly placed in this country's political pantheon, had scant use for the Southern or Yugo Slavs. "I have damned little sympathy for them,' wrote Engels. And, in a joint essay, the two proto-Communists declared: "The Panslavist South Slavs are nothing more than the waste products of a highly confused development which has gone on for a thousand years.” They dismissed these people as "ethnic trash."

Nevertheless, this "ethnic trash" has shown remarkable vigor. Forty-five years ago, as World War I began, the slippered Serbs in their ridiculous boat-shaped caps met the full force of an Austro-Hungarian army right outside Belgrade. Their country was eventually occupied. But when the conflict ended, the great Habsburg Empire had been destroyed and what was to become South or Yugo Slavia was bigger and more powerful than the remaining rump of Austria.

Later the "ethnic trash" played a significant role in helping to crumble Hitler's empire. Occupied again, the Yugoslavs created World War II's largest guerrilla army and nibbled the Nazis to death on Russia's flank. Now, in a political rather than a military sense, they are again gnawing at the heart of still another empire, the vast ideological bloc extending from the Baltic to the China Sea.

This fascinating process began with the development here of an original and heretical form of communism. Its echoes have spread noisily into the Soviet satellite system, exploding violently in East Germany, Poland and Hungary. Yugoslav communism is denounced more subtly and more tactfully by Khrushchev than it was by Stalin. It is called “revisionist" because it has demonstrated that a Communist state can live in total independence of the U. S. S. R., following its own ideas on relationships with other nations and its own thoughts on how socialism can be modified to suit particular national requirements.

The results are startling to the Kremlin. This country's closest foreign friends are India, a neutralist but anti-Communist land, and Greece, a conservative monarchy and NATO member. Its worst enemies are Communist China and Moscow's most faithful satellites, Bulgaria and Albania. And Belgrade has maintained cordial relations with the United States, from which it has received massive economic and military aid.

Under the label of "communism" there have been curious internal developments. It was the establishment here of workers' councils in state-owned factories that altered previous Marxist ideas of industrial management and profoundly impressed the Poles and Hungarians before their 1956 revolts. While professing doctrinal orthodoxy, Yugoslavia has largely de-collectivized its agriculture. Government tractor stations sold their machinery and prices were allowed to adjust more freely to the law of supply and demand. Compulsory crop deliveries ceased; and three-quarters of the collective farms were allowed to disband; and, with more than 80 per cent of arable land now privately owned, there is less state-held acreage in Yugoslavia today than under the pre-war kingdom. As a consequence of these pragmatic reforms, "industrial production more than doubled during the past seven years and productivity of industrial labor rose over 25 per cent. The tax and investment system of Communist Yugoslavia differs profoundly from that of Communist Russia. Interest rates on savings deposits, range up to 7 per cent. Installment-plan purchasing is commonplace. A surprisingly large number of citizens are allowed to travel abroad each year. An odd innovation now being introduced is home holidays for prisoners in jail.

Things are not all rosy here and repression has not entirely vanished. But the Yugoslavs are certainly benefiting by these departures from the normal Communist mold. And as the news of this gets around the dutiful satellites of Moscow it complicates Khrushchev's efforts to keep his grip on Eastern Europe. It would be too much to say that the repercussions of what passes here for communism will be profound enough to shake the Soviet imperial system. Nevertheless, Marx' "ethnic trash" has already shown, by its own viability, how wrong Marx could be. By its actions it disproved Lenin and helped destroy Stalin's reputation. No wonder Khrushchev, like Engels, has "damned little sympathy" for these people.