April Thesis

This is a story about the god of the former Yugoslav society and state. He was elegant, he wore tailor-made suits from the world’s best fashion designers, he had a big gold ring on his hand, he smoked expensive tompuses, and when the sun shone in April, he always wore branded sun glasses and hats that suited him perfectly well.

Perhaps, Josip Broz Tito, the leader and creator of Yugoslav socialism with a human face, created a cult of personality from himself. Perhaps others have created it. We’ll never know. But one thing is certain, he was a cult figure. And above all, a person.

As soon as he arrived to his state duties, dressed up in white from head to toe, we all knew that month of April just started, that spring had begun. By his side proudly stood his wife and life companion, young Jovanka, a former partisan, timelessly beautiful and charismatic.

Every April 15th, on the Day of the Yugoslav Railwaymen, in front of the alluring old Mediterranean city of Dubrovnik, a warship of the American Sixth Fleet would anchor.

On the same day and at the same time, 45 kilometers south, in one of the seven most charming bays in the world, the Bay of Kotor (the old area of ​​the Venetian Republic known by its name: Bocche di Cattaro), a Black Sea Fleet warship sailed under the command of the Soviet Union.

The two greatest geopolitical powers at the time, Soviet Russia and the United States, had an agreement with Tito’s Yugoslavia to use the ports of the Adriatic Sea for “overhaul”. That “overhaul” of the warships of the two powers, in reality, never happened. Both the Soviets and the Americans came every April to “mark the zone of interest,” to demonstrate their presence, as Winston Churchill had predicted on October 9, 1944, during his “surprise” visit to Stalin in Moscow: on plain paper, “percentages of future influence” of major powers against small and unprotected states.

Thus, Tito’s balancing acts during the Cold War era, brought Yugoslavia, an already developed tourist country, a new type of “geostrategic tourism”.

In practice, it looked like this: American sailors would disembark from their military ship in the port of Dubrovnik (Gruž), and then occupy all the bars, hotels, cafes, shops and every square meter of the old city-monument. In those few days, everyone made money: souvenir sellers, regular tourist workers but also taxi drivers, smugglers of alcohol and other “illicit” substances, and the courtesans who would come to Dubrovnik en masse from two other Adriatic ports, Rijeka and Split.

During the American frolics in Dubrovnik, 45 kilometers south, in the small, peaceful port of Zelenika, in the Bay of Boka, a Soviet military destroyer was anchored (international agreement with Yugoslavia provided that both ships of the two great world powers would be without their national flags and without weapons).

In the evening, Soviet sailors would set up a large movie screen in the center of the port and long benches for spectators-locals. They regularly projecte, year after year, films by the famous Russian director Sergey Mikhaylovich Eizenshteyn (1898-1948), the best of his artistic opus: “Strike”, “Armored Potemkin”, “October”, “Old and New”, “Sentimental Romance” (recorded in France), “Alexander Nevsky”, “Ivan the Terrible”, “Long Live Mexico”…

During the morning, Soviet sailors would hand out badges to children with symbols of great victories in the Second World War, and in the afternoon, local citizens could enter the ship and walk through its deck and parts of the interior.

Two weeks before these superpower festivities, Tito’s ship Galeb sailed the Adriatic Sea. Galeb was an elegant ship of perfect lines, with a wooden deck and wicker deck chairs, where this artist of hedonism enjoyed the sun and sea air. He would occasionally sail into one of the already mentioned ports, wave to enthusiastic people and continue “on the path of peace and stability”, spreading the theory and practice of the “third way”, the so-called non-alignment, which can be considered the best, most progressive geopolitical movement of the 20th century.

Of course, the idea of Yugoslav self-governing socialism as such, together with a humane project based on an excellent school system, respect for workers’ and human rights and exceptionally great freedoms, was causing resentment and jealousy accross the eastern camp. On the other side, various Western philosophers sincerely admired The “third way” (Jean Paul Sartre, for example) which was neither cruel Bolshevism nor brutal capitalism.

In the high school curriculum (subject: Sociology) for the then Yugoslav youth, Lenin’s “April Theses” were mentioned. But only a few casuall sentences about the Bolsheviks’ plans to take power in the already fallen Russian Empire.

By the end of April, on the island of Vanga (Brijuni, northeast of the Adriatic Sea), on the huge estate where Tito’s “hacienda” was located, famous Hollywood actors such as Sofia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Barton, Kirk Douglas, Carl Malden, but also many world-famous directors and producers would gather. Tito was in love with the film, and Hollywood was in love with Tito and his hollywood-like appearance.

It was hard for the communist satraps from the East, especially the Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, who would become depressed and unbearable for the social milieu each time after meting Tito’s “glamor”.

Josip Broz Tito died in April 1980, but his “official death” was declared on May 4th of that year. He did not like hot summers or too cold winters. He sailed with the Galeb along the Nile, was proclaimed “Honorary Rector of Rangoon University” of the Myanmar, was an Austro-Hungarian soldier, fled to Russia, became a communist, was the first to say “NO” to Stalin, was a pre-war illicit, and leader of the Yugoslav partisans. He loved both the West and the East in his own original way. He kept the Yugoslav ship on the course of the “third way”. 

Without Tito and Yugoslavia, the world became a poorer place to live, less tailored for the dignified human life, and lost for dreams without which there is no hope.