For nearly 40 years the creator of modern Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, exerted his powerful authority. At the head of an army of partisans he had liberated his country from occupation by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and turned a conglomerate of traditionally quarrelsome nations into a unified state; communist, but independent of Moscow. When he died, exactly two years ago, Tito did not bequeath his role to a single successor but left the country in the hands of a collective leadership. These men are now confronted with the demands of a new era and a new generation against the background of an ailing economy and stirrings of nationalism. How are they coping? On the eve of the 12th Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party, the first since Tito's death, Erik de Mauny has revisited the country to talk to its people and some of its leaders.