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Tito Lives Again but Like Ex-Nation, Is Bewildered |
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New York Times, April 30, 1994
by Roger Cohen
Belgrade, Yugoslavia - Tito long the absolute ruler of Yugoslavia, strides
forth, resplendent in his marshal's uniform, surrounded by a generally
bedraggled throng, some offering flowers, others spitting in disdain.
A Serbian woman approaches and points a finger. ''I cried when you died and
then I regretted my tears,'' she said. ''But now if you really would return,
I suppose I would vote for you''.
This scene of poignant ambivalence is taken from a movie released here this
month, ''Tito for the Second Time Among the Serbs,'' in which an actor playing
Tito, who died in 1980, strolls the streets of Belgrade.
Part documentary, part ''Candid Camera,'' none of it rehearsed, it captures
the confusion of a fractured nation, unsure of its history, bewildered by its
present, utterly at a loss as to its future..
Tito, born Jozip Broz in the small Croatian village of Kumrovec, is himself
confused in the movie, and with reason. His country, Yugoslavia, has been dismembered
by war; his currency no longer exists; streets and towns named after him have
new names, and the myriad monuments to him have vanished.
But it is the reaction of ordinary people to the apparition that intrigued
the director, Zelimir Zilnik, who has won awards for his documentaries at the
Berlin Film Festival and elsewhere.
''I made the film because of the Bosnian war is a war between Tito's successors,''
he said. ''I wanted to confront people with their past. People in this region
are like geese. They have problems with leaders. They follow them blindly.
It was true of Tito, of the kings before him, and now of Slobodan Milosevic
or Franjo Tudjman.''. He was referring to the Serbian and Croatian Presidents.
''And then, after the leader goes, we malign him,'' Mr. Zilnik continued. ''The
past disappears, is never rationally appraised. It becomes a big black hole,
a taboo, a gap in our identity. And taboos lead to repression and the savagery
in Bosnia.''
What emerges above all from the movie is anger. Not the retrospective anger
of Serbs against a ruler who was born of a Croatian father and a Slovene mother
and is now widely said to have used proclamations about the brotherhood of
the southern Slav peoples to hide discrimination against the Serbs. Not
the anger of people who have been quick to rewrite the history of their
once-adored dictator, the man who found a warm spot in the cold war by perching
Yugoslavia skilfully between East and West. But rather a sharp, practical anger
that Tito left successors who have brought ruin and war.
''In your time, at least there was only one Tito,'' a man tells the Tito character.
''Now there are 55. You stole a little, but you had a class. These people steal
everything.''
Another man tells Tito to take his people with him back up to heaven when he
goes.
''All the people?'' Tito asks.
''No, your successors,'' is the reply. ''And make sure they don't return.''
When Tito died 14 years ago, a rotating presidency was established, on the
theory that the great ruler was irreplaceable. But progressively the system
broke down as Mr. Milosevic in Serbia, followed by Mr. Tudjman in Croatia,
Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia and other leaders of Yugoslavia's constituent republics
began to seize on nationalism as a useful substitute for Communism in a Europe
freed of its East-West divide. The process culminated in the outbreak of war
between Serbian and Croatia in 1991.
In the movie, people ask Tito how he could have let this happen. A Serbian
nationalist accosts Tito and says he should have handed over absolute power
to Mr. Milosevic, and then all the disarray would have been avoided. Another
Serb accuses Tito of having been a Vatican agent who engineered the destruction
of Yugoslavia in favor of his native Croatia.
Mr. Zilnik was no fan of Tito. The director, now 52, was arrested several times
by Tito's police for making movies critical of his rule. But he now views much
of the long Tito era as positive compared with the current devastation.
''Nobody could seize Tito's heritage single-handed, so they grabbed
what they could,'' he said. ''We had the worst elites in the world after his
death, a real lumpen-elite. But exploiting control of the media, they whipped
people into this frenzy. Milosevic is negative, an expression of destruction.
He started with a local quarrel, and now he has a quarrel with the whole world.''
The dead weight of this quarrel hangs over the movie. There is a riveting exchange
as a young man tries to explain to Tito, convincingly played by the actor Dragoljub
Ljubicic, what is going on in Bosnia.
It is all about gaining control of hills, the young man says. Are hills worth
lives? Tito wonders. The commanders who order their boys on beleive so, the
man answers. Tito asks whom the hills belonged to in the first place, Serbs
or Muslims.
''That's the terrible thing,'' the man concludes. ''By the time ownership is
proved, everyone will be dead.''
Later, Tito meets a Bosnian refugee, gets angry and wants to know when the
war will end. ''There's no end to it,'' the refugee says, ''when those
who started it are still in power.''
The movie is not without its moments of dark humor. Looking for Marshal Tito
Street, Tito is informed that it is now called Street of the Serbian Rulers.
''By God, I was a Serbian ruler, too,'' he grunts.
Mr. Zilnik said he emerged from the movie with two particular memories. The
first was of being arrested on the street for making the film and seeing the
policemen cover when Tito strolled into the police station and said: ''Come
on, let my friend go. He's harmless movie maker.''
Mr. Zilnik was released. ''The fawning fear of leaders lives on,'' he said.
The second memory was of a woman's bleak outburst when Tito told her
that he was considering returning again in 15 years' time: ''You
had better come back before then, because if this continues, in 15 years you
might find there's nobody here.'' |
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