How the Bulgars Came to Lunch

The Tito Reds and the Regular Reds are quarreling because they are so much alike, not because of their "differences."

Last week most Western observers seemed to be muffing that essential point. If the anti-Communist world failed to understand the Tito crisis, it would pass up a Kremlin-sent opportunity for a victory in the Cold War--a war which, for the West, consists of one-third military preparedness, one-third economic recovery, and one-third political action that has to begin with a knowledge of what the Communist parties are all about.

How to Be Popular. The dreary ideological arguments in the Tito controversy have no bearing on the real nature of the rift. Tito's failure to collectivize the peasants, for instance, is matched by the Polish, Czech and Rumanian Communist parties, none of which have collectivization programs. Yet these parties seem to be in good odor with Zhdanov and his Cominform.

The charge of nationalism against Tito is a different matter. That one is true, and it is precisely the point where Tito's party is much more closely akin to the Russian party than the Czech, Hungarian, French, British or U.S. Communist parties.

A Communist boss, like any other politician, knows that he can often increase his power by promising people what they want for themselves or their nation. If he can identify himself and his party with the patriotic feelings which nearly all men have, so much the better. In doing so, however, a non-Russian Communist often finds that he has to play down the Soviet Union (which is not popular in other countries). Many Communist bosses, including Togliatti in Italy and Thorez in France, have partly succumbed to the "nationalist" temptation because it makes easier their road to power.

When the Kremlin thinks the "nationalists" have gone too far, it cracks down on them, as it did last week on Maurice Thorez (see below). Tito, however, runs much less risk of Moscow-inspired revolt in his party against his nationalist line. He can enforce his will in his own backyard exactly the way Stalin can enforce his will in the Russian party.

How this works was demonstrated last week by the case of Mosa Pijade, vice president of the Yugoslavia National Assembly, who was looked upon in some quarters as a possible leader of the anti-Tito faction in Belgrade. Pijade disappointed the hopeful by publishing a slavish defense of Tito in the party organ, Borba. The Cominform charges, said Pijade, were "violent and unscrupulous . . . full of inaccuracies and calumny."

How to Be Powerful. What if Pijade had not wanted to write that? Over his shoulder looks Alexander Rankovic, head of Tito's OZNA, considered by many as the most efficient secret police force in the world. The OZNA was created Jan. 11, 1946. Rankovic spent January, February and March of that year in Moscow learning his business from Lavrenty Beria, head of the Soviet secret police, on which the OZNA is modeled.

One of the few Yugoslavs to escape Rankovic's net in the present crisis was Lajos Dudas, a young Communist deputy who fled last week across the Hungarian border at Subotica, He said: "I was on the point of being arrested because I refused to repudiate the [anti-Tito] resolution of the Cominform."

In other words, the "ideological" argument, the charges and countercharges of heresy boil down to a police spy's gun.

Years ago, perhaps even at the birth of the revolution, this struggle for power became the real meaning of Communism. The Communists tried desperately to conceal the nakedness of the struggle behind slogans which became more & more meaningless and contradictory. For example, the agenda for the Yugoslav party meeting next week is headed: "National independence in all circumstances is the essential condition of the triumph of Communist doctrine."

Communism is not--and has not been for years--a social doctrine, or any other kind of doctrine. It is a technique for getting, holding and extending state power. Those who did not understand this when there was only one secure and complete Communist state may see it now that there are two, struggling with each other at the essential level--Beria v. Rankovic.

How to Get Ulcers. What this means to the little. Communists, the fellow travelers, was neatly illustrated last week by the dilemma of a Bulgarian delegation to Belgrade.

The Bulgars had come to sign with Tito a cultural pact, already negotiated. The Yugoslav government invited them to lunch. The Bulgars refused. The party mouthpiece Borba bared its teeth in a wolfish smile. It wrote: "Just imagine, a cultural cooperation between two countries, yet one cannot even invite the other to lunch . . . Nothing illustrates better the absurd and ridiculous position of the Bulgarian comrades . . . [But we] insisted. They must have lunch."

It turned out that the Bulgars did not want to go to lunch because they might have to drink a toast to Tito. If they complied, what would happen to them when they returned to the realms of Zhdanov and Beria? The Yugoslavs agreed that there would be no toasts, and the Bulgars came to lunch.

This is known as proletarian solidarity.

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