網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

THE SITUATION IN YUGOSLAVIA

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1962

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

in

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 4:10 p.m., room F-53, U.S. Capitol Building, Hon. J. William Fulbright (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Chairman Fulbright and Senators Sparkman, Humphrey, Symington, Wiley, Aiken, Capehart, and Carlson.

Also present: Mr. Henderson, Mr. Newhouse, and Mr. Kuhl, of the committee staff.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ambassador, we are very pleased to have you. I hope some of our colleagues will be here, especially those who need a little information on Yugoslavia, but in any case we will make a good record, and the floor is yours. We are delighted to have you back. All reports I have had, including Time Magazine, have been most favorable and complimentary to your regime.

Senator WILEY. You have not been reading what I read, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I read Time Magazine. [Laughter.]

Senator WILEY. A fellow with his standing is expected to get smeared and get perfumed, and he gets both. Look, he hasn't lost any of his hair since I saw him last. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. He looks extremely well. The only mystery to me is that he regarded this as a vacation from the academic world. This has puzzled me very greatly.

The next thing for you to do is to run for public office and submit yourself to the electorate.

Mr. KENNAN. Then the rest of it would go.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead, Mr. Ambassador. We would like very much to have you give us a fill-in of your experience and about the situation in Yugoslavia.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE F. KENNAN, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO YUGOSLAVIA

Mr. KENNAN. May I ask, Senator Fulbright, whether we are on the record or off?

The CHAIRMAN. This is an executive session. It is on the record unless you find something that you think is especially sensitive and ask that it not be taken down. But the record is not to be published or given to the press.

Mr. KENNAN. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. It is available, however, to other members of the committee who are not here. They often like very much to have an opportunity to read what your report has been. So I would only suggest that you request that you go entirely off the record if it is something of a very personal nature.

Senator CAPEHART. When they read it they do not take it out of the committee room.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right. It is available for the other members of the committee only here in the committee room.

Mr. KENNAN. Thank you.

A UNIQUE COUNTRY

Well, sir, I have been out there now for about 8 months. It has been a very stimulating and a challenging job.

I do not know a single country in the world for which the problems of our policy are more baffling and puzzling and complex then they are for Yugoslavia. This country has a very peculiar position between the two worlds. It is unique, in fact. It stands between East and West, and in certain ways it also stands between its own past and its own future, so it is hard to know at any one point very often what you are dealing with.

It has not been an easy time in Yugoslavia, and I will try to tell you what some of the difficulties have been. I would like to say, though, that I have at all times been treated with great personal consideration and courtesy by everyone there, including those Yugoslav leaders with whom I have disagreed most violently and most frequently.

I have no complaint on that score whatsoever. I must say that the Yugoslav Government has been punctilious in observing all the proprieties in its dealings with our Government. I have no complaint of any rudeness, discourtesy toward myself or toward the United States.

NATURE OF DISAGREEMENTS

Senator WILEY. You mean your disagreement was with the big shots in the government?

Mr. KENNAN. I have disagreed with their policies and with their statements.

Senator WILEY. That is what I mean.

Mr. KENNAN. And I have told them so very frankly.

Senator WILEY. Then they are pro-Russian?

Mr. KENNAN. Their statements have been ones that I could not agree with. In many cases they have leaned toward the Soviet view. Sometimes they have been disagreeable to me for other reasons, too, and I think to people in this country. That is, it is not just a case of statements that seemed to lean toward the Soviet side.

Sometimes there have been statements about colonial problems, about relations between big countries and small countries which I have found ones that I had to take exceptions to. I have done this wherever I had what I thought was a favorable opportunity to do

Senator WILEY. You are talking about the officials of Yugoslavia. What about the people?

Mr. KENNAN. The people, so far as I could see, could not be more friendly toward Americans or more hospitable or more kind. I have never met with greater kindness and courtesy from any people in any country I have ever lived in. The people are touchingly wellinclined toward us.

PRO-SOVIET LEANINGS

Senator CAPEHART. In case we got into a war with Russia, whose side would they be on?

Mr. KENNAN. They would try to keep out of it if they could.
Senator CAPEHART. Could they?

Mr. KENNAN. They would be more afraid of the Russians than they would be of us, and for this reason they would try to cover that flank as well as they could, and they would do everything possible to try to keep the Russians from coming into their country, even at the cost of a very considerable appeasement.

I think that the answer generally to your question is, if it comes to a war, I would expect them to try to keep out of it, but to lean to the other side if they have to lean.

TITO'S STATEMENTS

Senator WILEY. What about Tito? 1

Mr. KENNAN. Tito is more of a problem to us, perhaps, than the government as a whole, because he is an older man whose youth was spent in the Communist movement. It seems to me that he feels a need for proving to the people in the Communist orbit that his independence is not disadvantageous to them.

He hates to have it said about him that he has become the tool of the imperialists. He leans over backwards to make statements which are agreeable to the eastern side in order to try to prove that just because he is independent, this does not mean that they have a grievance against him. This is one of my great problems. His statements have been more extreme than the views, I think, of the government as a whole. I think many other people have had their doubts about the wisdom of the things he said.

One of the complexities of my situation is that I have to deal with both things. I have to deal with his statements as head of state, and yet I have to remember that there are younger people coming along in this regime who do not see things entirely identical.

THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM

Senator CAPEHART. Mr. Chairman, is it all right to ask some questions?

The CHAIRMAN. Sure, go ahead.

Senator CAPEHART. Are the people fairly prosperous there? Are they 100 percent communistic in their economy?

1 Marshal Tito (Josip Broz), President of Yugoslavia.

Mr. KENNAN. No. They have introduced during the last 4 or 5 years very considerable measures of liberalization of the economy, especially including the element of competition between economic enterprises.

Senator CAPEHART. What industries are not communized?

Mr. KENNAN. None of them are communized today in the sense of being under government ownership. They are theoretically and legally under the ownership of the people who work in them, that is, the entire staff, executive and workers, and not just the work

ers.

Senator CAPEHART. That hold the individual businesses?

Mr. KENNAN. Businesses are owned individually up to a point where they employ five people or less. If they get to employ more than five people, they cannot be individually owned. They have to be owned by the collective body of the people who work in them. Senator CAPEHART. In other words, if there are 100 people working in that business, the 100 people would own it?

Mr. KENNAN. The 100 people would own it.

WORKERS COUNCILS

Senator CAPEHART. How do they arrive at who should be the head man over there?

Mr. KENNAN. They have what is called a workers council, a form of representation.

Senator CAPEHART. A workers council within each unit?

Mr. KENNAN. Yes.

Senator CAPEHART. In other words, take these 100, for example

Mr. KENNAN. That is right.

Senator CAPEHART [continuing]. They would elect their own head man?

Mr. KENNAN. They would elect their workers council, and this workers council would have power to dispose today of over 55 percent of the revenues, the net proceeds of the enterprise. They can decide whether to pay higher wages in certain instances or whether to put this money back into the enterprise, what they would want to do with it.

This, of course, is relative. I say these are the powers they have. These are the powers they have on paper. This is a country which is still run by a party. The party, which began as a Communist Party, still calls itself that.

LIMITS OF COUNCILS' POWERS

Senator CAPEHART. Do you mean run by a party rather than a government?

Mr. KENNAN. The party infiltrates everything, and the party members in one of these workers councils have a very powerful, influential position. Nevertheless, the councils are not completely frauds, and sometimes they develop pretty hot arguments and tests of power within these workers councils despite the part. The CHAIRMAN. Do they divide the profits if they want to? Mr. KENNAN. They can by raising wages.

The CHAIRMAN. I see.

Mr. KENNAN. They can compete for managerial personnel, and do. That is, if a man is known to be a good factory director, he will get bids from a lot of workers councils around the country.

Senator SYMINGTON. But he cannot divide up any profits on the basis of the ownership of any stock.

Mr. KENNAN. No. They can only do it through wages, and there they have to adjust to certain general standards, labor union standards, throughout the country. I think there are limits.

LIBERAL PARTY DICTATORSHIP

Senator CAPEHART. Where do they get their capital to operate this unit of 100 workers?

Mr. KENNAN. They get it from the state investment bank, and that is the main string of control that the central government has over these enterprises. They provide the source of funds.

Senator CAPEHART. Is this state bank 100 percent communistic? Mr. KENNAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. They pay interest on this?

Mr. KENNAN. Yes. They are a government show, and they are run by the party. The whole thing is really run-it is still a party dictatorship. But there is not terrorism anywhere near the degree that there is in Czechoslovakia or in Eastern Germany.

In fact, we find very little difficulty today in meeting Yugoslav people, in having them come to our homes, and we come to their homes. They have very little difficulty in traveling. Their regime is relatively liberal about letting them out.

TRANSFER OF F-86 AIRCRAFT

Senator SYMINGTON. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question here. The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator SYMINGTON. Mr. Ambassador, it is always a great pleasure to see you.

When I was in the Middle East, in a country that is considered a very good friend of ours, the European edition of the New York Times had a story that we were selling, I forget how many, 125 or 175 F-86's to the Yugoslavs at less than 1 percent of the original cost. I figured that out myself, based on overall price.

These people said, "This is the plane you are giving them; we admit it is not much good, but you are giving it to them and they, in effect, are your enemies." I believe this was after the Belgrade statement.

"What is the point? Who are you for? Are you for building us up as a bulwark of the free world or are you for building up the Communists?"

What would be your answer to that?

I might say I was asked the same question and I did not have any more information about that than I did about the Congo when I went home in November. I wish what Mr. Rusk had told this committee-he said he would let the members of this committee know so that while we were home we would have had some an

swers.

But in any case, what would be your answer to a question of that character from people who think that they have been on our side

« 上一頁繼續 »