Serbia’s Milosevic Tries on Old Hat: Communism

Waves of applause filled the assembly hall as almost 2,000 delegates rose to their feet, hailing the recent reelection of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic as chief of the ruling Socialists.

The vote came as no surprise--there were no other candidates.

With his celluloid image looming large in the background, Milosevic addressed the congress of the Socialist Party--a group renamed from its Communist past--and optimistically offered his latest view for this nation’s future, a program dubbed “Serbia 2000--a Step Into the New Century.”

Indeed, while the event may ostensibly have been about what lies ahead for his nation, this congress, analysts say, was as much called to consolidate Milosevic’s shift from aggressive nationalism to born-again communism, with a view to preserving total control over Serbia.

Milosevic, who, to increase his power, transformed himself from a gray Communist Party apparatchik to a thundering nationalist leader, had come full circle.

Brassy Serbian patriotic songs no longer rang out; instead, he stood before his flock as the solemn chorus of the Socialist “Internationale” was played.

For Serbia and the Serbs, there can be no looking back on the trail of broken promises and lives ruined over the past four years of isolation, economic hardship and war in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

Dismissing what he termed past “nationalist excesses,” Milosevic appeared to forget that he had championed the idea of a Greater Serbia and that, under his stewardship, his party had propelled the nationalist frenzy in Serbia, unleashing the contagion in the Balkans.

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At the congress, held last weekend, a confident Milosevic changed two-thirds of the Socialist leadership, naming candidates who would readily use Communist rhetoric and sacking those who had made their careers while Milosevic advocated war.

This was part of his continuing, astounding shift, analysts note.

When Milosevic in 1993 understood that a continuation of the war in Bosnia would threaten his power, he abruptly switched tack, abandoning his political proxies in Bosnia and Croatia, and last November endorsed the Dayton, Ohio, peace agreement.

He, instead, saw his salvation in a return to communism, a shift reflecting the influence of Mirjana Markovic, his wife and political partner, analysts say.

Markovic also is leader of the Yugoslav United Left, a strange blend of Communist managers, sanctions busters and fellow Marxist professors.

An indication of its power: The group does not hold a single seat in the Serbian parliament but claims more than half the ministers in the government. After Milosevic’s party congress, Markovic’s party was even more powerful.

Once seen as the chief instigator of the bloody Balkan fighting, Milosevic is now praised by the West as a key peacemaker.

But he has two faces. He is the confident charmer to the outside world, in particular the United States. At home in Belgrade, he is the Communist strongman with Serbia in his iron grasp.

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Here, any hope has been dashed that Milosevic would introduce reforms once the war was over. He has not loosened his hold over the economy, and tentative moves toward privatization have been reversed.

Government institutions, meanwhile, are irrelevant.

Although opposition parties hold almost half of the 250 seats in parliament, they have been sent to the margins by the regime’s control over the media and finance.

As for the media, it is rigidly controlled, so much so that it has engaged in a curious campaign to make China the most popular foreign country for coverage.

The banner headline in the main Serbian paper Politika on Wednesday, for example, read, “Reforms are progressing in China.”

So enthusiastic is Milosevic about China that he has decided to build a Chinatown in Belgrade.

Why Beijing? Serbia’s official praise for China, analysts say, represents an effort to prove that communism is economically viable.

In the Chinese, Milosevic also might find past models for his current repression of his people.

Peace in Bosnia has given him more time to settle scores with the opposition--real and imagined--in classic Communist style.

He has cracked down on the small, independent media.

Last month the regime even nationalized Studio B, the only television outlet in Belgrade not run by the state and long considered no threat to the regime.

A Serbian court also has revoked the registration of the Soros Foundation, which had donated millions of dollars for independent media, educational exchanges and medical supplies.

Diplomats believe the regime clamped down because officials thought they had failed to assert sufficient control over the foundation, part of a network established throughout the region by Hungarian-born American financier George Soros.

Meantime, while international economic sanctions against Belgrade were suspended in November as a reward for Milosevic’s help in getting the parties to agree to the Dayton accord, the initial relief has evaporated: 54% of Serbs believe that there has been no change at all, while 33% say the situation has deteriorated, according to a poll published in the independent Belgrade news weekly NIN.

The results were in stark contrast to November, when 74% of those polled believed that their nation’s situation was improving.

But even as industrial production has plummeted to 1968 levels, half the work force here is unemployed, prices are soaring and the average monthly salary is only about $80, at the party congress there was no serious debate about Belgrade’s mounting problems, said a former Socialist politician, one of several who was cast off by Milosevic in an effort to shift the blame for the war.

“No one dares to say anything for fear of losing his job,” the politician said.

As the chorus sang the Communist anthem, even a journalist employed by state television groaned and observed: “There is no hope for my children. Who knows if we’ll even survive to the next century. They’re Communists again.”