Yugoslavia: Limits to Liberalization

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Yugoslavia has come a long way from totalitarianism in recent years.

Most Yugoslavs can travel freely to Western nations; President Tito himself has severely handcuffed the once-dread ed secret-police apparatus; and the re gime is openly encouraging a measure of economic and local political compe tition. But there are still some limits to liberalization, as Writer Mihajlo Mihajlov discovered last week. A Yugo slav court sentenced Mihajlov to ten months in jail for writing uncompli mentary things about the way Tito runs his country.

Mihajlov's offense was to suggest that Yugoslavia needed a two-party system — and to set about promoting an oppo sition party complete with its own mag azine, Slobodni Glas (The Voice of Freedom). As he told the court in his own defense: "I cannot consider social ist a society in which only 6% or 7% have all the rights and the others none."

The state prosecutor was not impressed.

Mihajlov's demand for a multiparty system, he warned the court, was "a Trojan horse for the restoration of capitalism."

In his writing, Mihajlov is far more concerned with human rights than eco nomics. "Yugoslav society is ready for democracy and does not want anyone, in any central committee, in any single party, to decide what people may or may not know about the world, about life and political events," he wrote last July. It is a measure of how far Yugo slavia has moved that Mihajlov's sen tence was so much less severe than the letter of the law against "spreading false information about Yugoslavia" would have allowed — and that the writ er is still free, pending the outcome of an appeal. In an earlier period, Mihajlov might never have been seen again after his trial was over.