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Bulgaria's Nikola Petkoff was barely buried when the Communists in neighboring Yugoslavia prepared to bury another democratic leader--brilliant, popular chief of the Serbian Peasant Party, Dragoljub Yovanovich, 52. He was the Communists' biggest game since the late General Draja Mihailovich. In Belgrade's Supreme Court, presided over by the same judge who sent Mihailovich to the firing squad, Yovanovich last week went on trial for "treason . . . defamatory propaganda in the foreign reactionary press . . . conspiracy. . . ."

A thin, square-faced Serb peasant, Yovanovich has been a lifelong socialist. He advocated a form of democratic, agrarian federation for the Balkans. He had a Gandhi-like distaste for violence. When Tito triumphed in Yugoslavia, he took Yovanovich into his first Government (the peasants' good will would be useful while the regime was young), later dropped him. Yovanovich made himself highly unpopular with the Marshal by suggesting things like submitting Yugoslavia's new constitution to the people for approval. Then misfortunes began to overtake Yovanovich.

He lost his job as professor of economics at Belgrade University. A "spontaneous" petition demanded his recall from the Serbian National Assembly. He was badly beaten up in a "spontaneous" youth demonstration. Uncowed, he charged the Tito regime with "burdening and overburdening its main supporters--the working class." So Yovanovich was arrested. In a newspaper article Mosha Pijade, a member of Yugoslavia's Executive Committee, explained some of the reasons:

During lectures before peasant audiences, Yovanovich had been observed putting his hands in his pockets and producing two ears of maize--one weak and withered (the product of Communist farming methods) and another big and strong (the product of small independent farming). A second accusation: Yovanovich had made certain jokes about the Hammer & Sickle. Peasants were caught by the neck with the sickle, he had allegedly remarked once, and then hit on the head with the hammer.

Said Yovanovich in court last week: "The first time I heard the charges against me was when I heard the indictment read.... I have never done anything against my people or my country."

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