Tito Returns

Wishing to check this impression and determine what exactly was taking place with regard to Tito's personae, the B92 TV team (without a channel for the time being) led by film director Zelimir Zilnik shot the film in Belgrade, in the streets, and gave it the working title of ``Marshal Tito Among the Serbs the Second Time Around.'' Micko Ljubicic, a brilliant actor who works on radio and is a member of the ``Index Radio Theater'' group, donned the Marshal's uniform and headed for the city center to talk with the people. The material which has been shot and which will be made into a 45minutelong film, has surprised its authors. They have managed to create an exceptionally interesting, witty and in some places very touching document of the present and the past, about Tito, and perhaps mostly about his successors.

Most of those who would stand still in homage when they heard factory sirens on May 4 marking Tito's death, and later when things started falling apart wished to demolish his grave with stakes, calling him a ``a servant of the VaticanMasonic conspiracy,'' stood still on meeting him again. They were angry at first, and then remembered past days, complained of the present, or were just furious because of all that he had messed up before he died. Even those who considered the whole thing a good joke, wished to tell Tito and the camera something. At the railway station some people started dancing the kolo (a national dance) with Tito (the police intervened because of traffic). A musician played ``Comrade Slobo, we swear by you'' by Tito's ear, after which Tito magnanimously stuck a dinar note in the harmonica, with the words: ``Good God, we have the same currency as the Germans.''

``We visualized this as a happening, but it turned out to be a lot more,'' said director Zilnik talking to VREME. ``For those of us who worked on the film, the greatest surprise is the fact that 90% of the people started the conversations with Tito. In spite of the fact that Micko Ljubicic adlibbed marvelously and imitated Tito beautifully, encouraging the people to talk, asking questions and commenting, we never expected such a readiness to talk. Obviously, there are many people who feel a strong urge to compare the present and Tito's days. In this case they probably weren't concerned with Tito so much as with their past, one which many look on with great sentimentality. The period under Tito was characterized by propaganda boredom, mystifications and a continual fight against enemies, now all at once it looks like a creative period compared to the recent years in which political biographies and actions are marked by bloodshed. It seems that passions are abating. That is characteristic of the initial postwar period when the first diplomatic offices are being set up.''

Regret for the past is what characterizes most of the film. One of those addressing ``Comrade Tito'' says: ``Comrade Tito, you're a Croat, I'm a Serb, but I had the greatest respect for you.'' A woman who admits that she cried when he died (``I cried too,'' says Tito consoling her), and regretted it later, claims that she would vote for him if he were to raise from the dead. The next shot shows a man who says: ``I built a big house during Tito's time, I couldn't manage a hovel now.''

One of the passersby in Knez Mihajlova St. tells Tito with a lot of irony that now all have their flags, coats of arms and states... ``Now one hill in Yugoslavia is worth more than the whole of Trieste,'' he tells Tito, adding: ``For two hills, 200300 youths die.''

``Are two hills worth all those lives?,'' asks Tito.

``Probably, they say these are our hills and that they have papers to prove it. All three sides shout `forward' and 200 youths are lost.''

``Whose hills were they in the first place,'' asks Tito again.

``That's the evil of it. By the time that is proved, all the boys will be dead.''

``It's wrong for all those youths to die,'' says Tito concerned, while the crowd around him listens carefully.

``It probably isn't right, Comrade Tito, it wasn't that way during your rule. We didn't give what was ours, and we didn't want what didn't belong to us. Today it's don't give what's yours, but grab what isn't, if you can,'' said the man in conclusion.

In Knez Mihajlova St. street vendors selling Serbs flags, cockades, fur caps and other war souvenirs, offer him an old Serb army cap, the kind worn today by officers of the Serb Republic in BosniaHerzegovina army. Then they offer him a Chetnik fur hat. ``Ah, I remember this from the war,'' said Tito immediately. ``I get goose pimples when I see something like this. We cooperated for a while and then we didn't, after the war we chased each other around. But we caught them.''

On being teased that he no longer has a main street in Belgrade, and that it has been renamed Street of the Serbian Rulers, Tito said: ``By God, I too was a Serbian ruler,'' causing an eruption of laughter among those present.

During his stroll through Belgrade, Tito stops at Kalemegdan park, at the place where monuments to his fellowfighters Mosa Pijade, Ivo Lola Ribar, Djura Djakovic and Ivan Milutinovic once stood. The monuments have been pulled down, and an old man is crouching there picking herbs. Tito says out loud that his fellowfighters and friends used to lie there, and wonders who they could have offended. ``Those who do not like order, don't respect the past and are irresponsible,'' says the man looking through the grass. Later during the conversation it turns out that he is a refugee from Bosnia. ``What made you leave?,'' asks Tito. ``The war in Bosnia,'' is the short answer. The Marshal is curious and asks when the war will end. ``There's no end to it, friend. Who is going to make things better when all those who've brought this about are just going on with it.''

At Kalemegdan Tito experienced his most ``unpleasant'' encounters. Several pensioners repeat, wordperfect, propaganda and slogans heard on the Radio Television Serbia news hour, and tell him heatedly that he is to blame for everything, that he is part of the world conspiracy against Serbs and Socialism, and that he received great sums of money from the Americans to defend them from the Russians, and that ``he had agreed with the Pope to be buried as a Mason in the Vatican,'' and that was the reason there was no fivepointed star on his grave. One of the pensioners told him that he was an ordinary bandit and solely responsible for all the evil in the former Yugoslavia; another claims that the evil is the work of the traitors who surrounded him.

Zilnik underscores a general idea in the filma widespread belief that Tito's worst pupils in the former Yugoslavia, are in power today. Some sort of lumpendictators, says Zilnik. The people's reactions show that they consider his successors negative heroes who, because of their inferiority, could attract the attention of the world only by war. ``This contrast, in which Tito is seen as a past master at walking the tightrope and in communicating, while his successors are masters of hatred, is repeated in several places,'' said Zilnik.

Many criticize Tito, claiming that his biggest mistake was leaving behind such incompetent successors ``operetta heroes in Ljubljana, Pristina, Zagreb and Belgrade.'' A man asks him if he plans to return to Heaven, and if so, to take all those he has left behind.''

``Who,'' asks Tito, ``the people?''

``Oh, nooo,'' replies the wit, ``your successors, but make sure they don't return.''

``We'll see,'' says Tito.

A little later a man with a moustache says: there was only one Tito once, there are 55 now. ``One was alright. A small thief, but a good one. Now there are many more.'' Tito quips back: ``I liked to live well, but if I remember rightly, you all lived well. And now war. Why war?''

The man with the moustache tells Tito to return, get some 50 billion dollars' credit and help us get through the next 3040 years. ``We'll all drown in the end anyway,'' he ends.

In the film there are some who think differently. They criticize Tito for not naming Milosevic his only successor. ``Tito, you should have named Milosevic head of state, and Yugoslavia would not have disintegrated.'' ``He named himself. I didn't do anything. He did it himself,'' said Tito.

The longer and final version of the film is full of more extreme praise and criticism of Josip Broz Tito's name and opus. Zilnik hasn't cut a take in which a man tells Tito very seriously not to return to Belgrade. ``If you came back, it would be worse here, than in Sarajevo. Those who love you and those who hate you would fall out.If they were to see you in your Marshal's uniform, half of those who slandered you yesterday would run out of fear.''

``Marshal Tito Among the Serbs, the Second Time Around'' will be finished these days. B92 editor-in-chief Veran Matic can't say precisely when the film will be screened. B92 were not given approval for their own TV frequency, so that the movie will be shown as part of the pirate production and will probably be available on video tapes, via video clubs and at special showings in city streets.

The first viewing of the film, which is certain to attract a lot of attention, has shown up two faults. The first concerns the title``Marshal Tito Among the Serbs the Second Time Around.'' It is hard to believe that he is coming back, when he never left these areas. Even after so many of his monuments have been desecrated, the names of streets and cities changed, and pictures removed from walls, Tito is still standing firm. Political showdowns in Serbia started in the defence of his name. Most of the opposition leaders and those in authority now entered the political arena by spitting on his name; ``Trepca'' miners carried his pictures when they were on strike and protesting against Belgrade; he was the man who managed to unite Izetbegovic and Karadzic two years ago when they realized that demonstrators carrying Tito's photographs might manage to glue Bosnia together before the shooting started. Tito's shadow is a long one, and battles are still being waged over borders he drew up. This will not be resolved by digging him up and moving his grave.

I personally think that one take is missing. It should have been shot somewhere in Bosnia, on the front line. It would be interesting to see former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officers, who wear the old Serb army cap today, in Tito's presence. Would they kick their heels together and turn their caps the other way, hoping to find an odd five-pointed star in their pockets?

Successors

In her book ``The American Fictionary,'' Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic claims that Tito's image has been resurrected in that of the new Croatian President. ``The Croatian President wears white jackets like Tito (in the belief that he wears them with a European panache); he gives children baskets of apricots from his garden (Tito used to send baskets of tangerines to children throughout Yugoslavia); he will kiss, pinch its cheeks and lift in the air (in front of TV cameras, of course) any child that comes his way (Tito too, liked to kiss children). The Croatian President is much more active than Tito was in the new, redesigned state spectacles. Tito preferred to sit comfortably, and let the people perform their skills before him. The new President takes an active part. Surrounded by girls in Croatian national costumes during Independence Day celebrations, the President took part in a pantomimehe pathetically dropped a coin into an empty peasant cradle (a symbol of the newlyborn state).

Ms Ugresic is just as caustic when describing Tito's successor in Belgrade. ``Out of the ruins of what was once a joint house, the Serbian side has salvaged the grey suit of Communism and put its President into it. In this nightmare, where crimes are committed in the name of (the Orthodox) God, and others are butchered in the name of a struggle against Fascism, and where concentration camps sprout in the name of fear of extermination, the Serbian President is turned into a monstrous icon which brings to mind Hitler's look and Saddaam's oily brow...''