Belgrade Manifesto

Abstract

Following the trial of the six intellectuals, one of Yugoslavia's best-known writers announced the formation of a committee to defend free thought On 10 November 1984, five days after the trial of the ‘Belgrade Six’ began, the well-known Yugoslav novelist Dobrica Ćosić announced the setting up of the Committee for the Freedom of Thought and Expression. The Ćosić Committee manifesto was signed by 19 most eminent Serbian men of letters, art and science, including 12 members of the prestigious Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. What is most striking about the signatories is that they cover the whole spectrum of opinion of the Belgrade intelligentsia, from pre-war party veterans (Gojko Nikoliš, Tanasije Mladenović), Marxist philosophers of the Praxis group (Mihailo Marković, Ljubomir Tadić), advocates of pluralistic socialist democracy (Kosta Čavoški), and the so-called ‘nationalists’ (Matija Bećković, Mića Popović) to public figures who simply want an affirmation of the rule of law in a country which has had more than its fair share of lawlessness, both under the present and previous regimes, not to mention the terrible wartime period when Yugoslavs, possessed by the demon of self-destruction, engaged in a bloody and tragic civil war. Dobrica Ćosić sent the manifesto with a covering letter to the official news agency Tanjug, the radio and television services of the eight Yugoslav republics and provinces, and 30 dailies, weeklies and periodicals. The media responded with a vitriolic campaign against Ćosić and his committee. A Belgrade Radio commentary said the manifesto was ‘inspired by a desire to portray the social system in Yugoslavia as a reign of ideological terror, bureaucratic arbitrariness, police persecution — in a word, Stalinism'. Belgrade's Politika Ekspres implied that Ćosić had joined Tito's partisans (he was the political commissar of a partisan unit in Serbia) only because he wanted to be on the winning side. Zagreb's Vjesnik liked this so much that it decided to reprint it, adding its own subheadings (one of them read: ‘A Dirty Business’), but Belgrade's Književne Novine deplored this attempt to cast a slur on Ćosić's wartime record. While Književne Novine was the only paper to spring to Ćosić's defence, the hardline Croatian youth weekly Polet was the only one to carry the committee's manifesto and Ćosić's covering letter, though only to attack both Ćosić and Western critics of the current wave of repression in Yugoslavia. Vjesnik took Ćosić to task for visiting Zagreb in order to canvass support for his initiative, publishing its attack under the heading Gedža u Zagrebu (‘ The [Serbian] Yokel in Zagreb’). Zagreb's Večernji List said: ‘The political prompters and ideological fathers of the Belgrade petitioners have now at long last appeared on the stage and presented themselves to the public…. They obviously feel morally obliged to come to the aid of their puppets now standing trial for hostile activity.’ NIN wondered whether Yugoslav opposition elements were appealing for an intervention from abroad. We are grateful to the London-based South Slav Journal for the English translation.