Gorbachev Praises Yugoslav System as Model for Modernizing Soviet Economy

The Soviet Union today praised the practice of socialist self-management pioneered by Yugoslavia and said it should prove useful in modernizing the Soviet economic system.

In a joint declaration issued as Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev ended a five-day visit to Yugoslavia, the two nations also signaled other Eastern European nations they are free to follow “any paths to socialism” without fear of Soviet intervention.

“No one has a monopoly over the truth,” the document declared, echoing similar pledges Gorbachev made in speeches in Prague a year ago and in Moscow last November. “The two sides declare that they have no pretensions of imposing their concepts of social development on anyone.”

It said the “success of any path to socialism” is tested by practice.

This was the first time that view had been outlined in a formal, written statement of policy.

Under socialist self-management, Yugoslavia has begun decentralizing its economy, giving plants and other enterprises local control.

The unsigned document was exchanged by Gorbachev and Yugoslav President Lazar Mojsov on Tuesday but was withheld until today. It supersedes landmark declarations issued in 1955 and 1956 formally acknowledging Communist Yugoslavia’s independence from the Soviet Bloc.

The late Josip Broz Tito’s determination to pursue a nonaligned foreign policy led to his break with Moscow in 1948 and an economic blockade of Yugoslavia until after the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953.

Gorbachev’s visit was the first by a Soviet leader here since Tito’s death in 1980. It gave him a firsthand look at a decentralized economic system that has been developing for more than 35 years along the lines he is seeking to implement in the Soviet Union.

The declaration constitutes his first formal acknowledgement that the system has applications at home. In its formative years, self-management was denounced by the Kremlin as heresy and proof that Yugoslavia was embarked on a revisionist road.

“The two sides consider the development of socialist self-management, in keeping with the specificities of each country, to be of the highest importance,” the document said. “It ensures the genuine authority of the people and the freedom of the individual.”