David A. Andelman

The grand old man of Balkan politics, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, no longer rules. At this writing, the founder of nonalignment, the originator of the first new brand of socialism since Lenin, the friend, or at least the colleague, of world leaders from Stalin and Roosevelt through Khrushchev and De Gaulle to Hua and Carter, lies mortally ill. At home he attempted, at the very least, to forge a united nation from a host of competing, often antagonistic ethnic groups, each with its own aspirations in terms of economic and cultural development, religion, language and political awareness. Here, too, his success has been tempered by a gnawing realization that perhaps this very success has contained less than meets the eye, that perhaps it was merely Tito's own personal charisma and personal loyalty to an ideal that produced a progressive, prosperous and united Yugoslavia.