Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

so much that we cannot describe.” 12 “Dear Tito: we are proud to be Yugoslavs
and have you as our leader.” Nada Mitevska and the family, Skopje,
Macedonia. 13 “Dear Tito, two young people in love wish you a quick recovery
from illness,” Svetlana and Bata, Belgrade. 14
Yugoslavia’s Swan Song,
1980–1984
On Sunday, 4 May 1980, in Split, the national league’s soccer game between
archrivals the Croatian Hajduk and the Serbian Crvena Zvezda was interrupted
early in the second half. When loudspeakers announced the news of
Tito’s death, the players, referees, stadium crew, policemen, and 50,000 spectators
burst into tears. The crowd chanted: “Comrade Tito, we pledge to you
that we will never stray from your path.” Only a year earlier, Tito had been
there, at the opening of the Eighth Mediterranean Sport Games. Official
commemoration and funeral ceremonies were held at Belgrade on 5–8 May
1980. Belgrade welcomed 209 delegations from 127 countries. The delegations
included 38 heads of states, 10 premiers, 7 vice-presidents, 6 presidents
of parliaments, 12 foreign ministers, 2 kings, and 5 princes. 15 A hundred
and sixty reporters and 58 television networks from 42 countries provided
the news coverage of the funeral ceremonies. 16 From 4–8 May 7,768 prominent
citizens and state officials held vigils by Tito’s bier in the antechamber
of the Federal Assembly at Belgrade, and five hundred thousand people made
pilgrimages to the capital city. 17
Yugoslav newspapers published statements by and interviews with foreign
leaders, politicians, diplomats, and delegates of liberation movements
who portrayed Tito as one of the greatest statesmen of the twentieth century.
Tito’s nonaligned friends, such as the prime minister of India, Indira
Gandhi, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and other Third World leaders
were favored by the domestic media, as if to suggest that a country with
so many friends had little to worry about. The regime launched a slogan:
“And after Tito, there will be Tito!” A discourse of eternity and continuity
was echoed in the media. Poet Velimir Milosˇević echoed the “mood of eternity”
in the following verses:
If Heaven exists, he flew up there to bring us stars
If eternity exists, then he met with it, on his way to the sun.
The people, down here, await the eternal wanderer who
went to the future to see what is going to happen with his people. 18
Tito’s burial place and mausoleum, officially called the 25 May Memorial
Complex, was labeled in the press the “eternal house of flowers.” There,
according to Tito’s last wish, “people will come to rest and children will
play.” 19 Tito was laid to rest on 8 May (i.e., on V-E Day and the thirty-fifth
united we stand, divided we fall 91