◆ SpookStack

7. eens Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6 " ~* O5X1A CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY 1A -3- More than 50 percent of all the officers: have been recruited from command elements of the revolutionary war which took place during World War II. The majority of them consist of men of high personal courage who are capable of accomplishing’ individual actions and of leading small autonomous guerrilla units, but it is certain that none of them is blessed with general culture and that they particularly lack a professional military culture. In order to eliminate this handicap, measures have been taken to send them obligatorily to high school courses and other strictly military courses requesting all of them to undertake studies in the political school of the Party which has been established in the Yugoslav Army.. This is particularly so because of the fact that during the war period a large number of non- Communist combatants received officers grades for acts of individual valor but who, from the ideological point of view, were not bound to the Party. Another group of officers have come out of ‘the military schools of the new Yugoslav Republic and from the courses taken in the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1948. The enrollment in military academies has primarily been restricted to the sons and relatives of Party officials and military commanders. Another group of officers has been recruited from the enlisted ranks, It has been requested that the sons of proletarian farmers be picked first and. then those of workers. As soon as he has started: his service in one of the regular army cadres, a recruit, if he shows sharpness of mind in learning military problems or in displaying an ability to make decision, will be: flagged to a higher command and will then be sent to a military academy or to Officers! Candidate School, following which, if he should display a certain capability, he will be sent to specialization courses. Particular attention is being paid to the instilling of Communist ideologies in the sons of peasants. The supreme command adheres to the wishes of the young officers favoring them in their studies and in their cultural and professional education. Currently about three thousand officers on active service are enrolled in universities as students. The Cominform rift was a severe blow to Tito with respect to professional military training of his officers since there: is now no possibility of sending them East and the Yugoslav Government does not wish to send them West. Abroad, they could follow the technical progress of modern armies. Many of the young officers are full of energy and reformist ideas, Thus, they have established various groups and organizations against which the Political Commissariat of the Army has twice arisen. Thus, for example, - the existence of a secret league of majors is known, The objective of this league was to perfect a political combination which. was supposed to ‘represent the synthesis of Titoist and Nationalist conceptions and which in its first phase would have assumed the task of directing the army as a popular non-political organization. Some of the promoters of this idea have been arrested but the number of members in this league is very high. The corps of lower ranking officers is not, in general, politically intransigent, but for the greater part it is not even Commmist. The population which, to a great extent, is opposed to the present regime views such officers in the most tolerant manner. Recently, the supreme command has shown itself to be most severe in investigating the political views of all girls who wish to become wives of officers. The percentage of Cominformists among the lower ranking officers is con- siderably less than that among the generals. ‘There are a few officers with pro-Soviet feelings in view of the fact that the greater part of these officers, excluding the generals, are still bound to national traditions and thus far rather tend to embrace the Western way of life than the Soviet way of life. A great part of these officers favor Tito, considering him as a national representative rather than a Commmist.. A short while ago Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6