Dear Comrade

One breezy afternoon last week, a green-and-cream diesel train rolled into Mos cow's cavernous Kiev station with a man described in the official press, only a few years back, as "traitor, Judas, fascist, saboteur, imperialist agent, renegade," and a hundred other names in the extensive vocabulary of Communist invective. Wearing a powder-blue military blouse loaded with gold braid and ribbons, and red-striped trousers, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito stepped out of his luxury coach to the sound of Muscovite cheers and triumphal military music.

To greet him were Russia's top leaders, President Voroshilov, Premier Bulganin and First Party Secretary Khrushchev, and Tito's ancient enemy, ex-Foreign Minister Molotov (see above). Grinning broadly, Tito shook them all by the hand. "Dear Comrade President," said President Voroshilov. "Dear Comrades, leaders of the Soviet Union, dear citizens," said Tito. A score of little Russian boys and girls dressed in red kerchiefs and white blouses presented Tito's handsome wife Jovanka with masses of tulips.

Tito made a trainside speech about "our fates being inseparable," despite the fact of "something unheard of and tragic" having taken place in the recent past. He expressed the profound conviction that "nothing of the kind will ever happen again between the two countries marching along the path of Marx, Engels and Lenin." No one mentioned the name of Stalin. Afterwards, to the sound of loud speakers blaring Yugoslav folk songs and the cheers of tens of thousands of Russian onlookers, ex-Traitor Tito drove through Moscow to the Kremlin and then to Spiridonovka Palace, official residence of the new Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov. Observers, practiced in reading the temperature of Moscow's organized welcomes, judged this one to be only a degree or two less than that accorded India's Prime Minister Nehru last year.

Pigs at the Table. But Tito could reflect on how things have changed since his last visit to Moscow ten years ago. What happened then has since been described by Tito's Vice President Edvard Kardelj (who accompanied Tito to Moscow last week). Ten years ago Dictator Stalin threw a Kremlin banquet for Tito, then just recently emerged from Comintern obscurity to the eminence of a partisan hero and boss of Yugoslavia. Tito was clapped on the back by Stalin, who said to him: "What a pity, my dear Walter [Tito's Comintern name]. You are now living and working in Belgrade instead of at my side here in Moscow. I would so much prefer to have a man like you here instead of these pigs here at my table, these weak spineless idiots I have around me all the time."

Then Stalin went on to tongue-lash his top aides, there present at the table. "For instance, my so-called Foreign Minister Molotov, whose brains are just as sal-loused as his face. He can't even find foreign countries on the map, let alone deal with them." Molotov's face went white. "And that pig Malenkov who's always sticking his fat snout into my affairs, who thinks he knows everything, but really knows nothing." Malenkov's face quivered like jelly. Of Khrushchev: "Scheming careerist who's already climbed far beyond his brains and ability." And of Bulganin: "That ridiculous toy soldier who tries to be marshal of the Red army, but is only a fop in uniform."

None dared answer Stalin at that moment. Back of the banqueting hall stood Stalin's pretorian guard of young Georgians, recruited in the mountains and obedient to his slightest wish. "How can men let themselves be treated like dogs?" Tito asked Kardelj afterward.

Back in Yugoslavia, Tito resolved to resist the infiltration of Stalin's goons into his partisan army, a decision that led to his break two years later with the Soviet Union. Having survived the break, Tito began to see himself a giant beside Stalin's "spineless" lieutenants.

Getting Right. Now Tito was back in Moscow to find out for himself how deep destalinization had gone in Russia and what kind of job Stalin's old aides are making of the succession. A year ago, when Bulganin and Khrushchev called at Belgrade to repair the broken friendship, Tito received them on a governmental basis only. Now he was ready to talk Communist politics. To brief himself on the Communist situation outside Yugoslavia, Tito before leaving Belgrade had called in Italian Communist Leader Palmiro Togliatti, his onetime friend and teacher at the Comintern school in Mos cow, with whom he had been at odds since 1948. Togliatti, who signed the Cominform denunciation of Tito and was now anxious to get right, came flying to Tito's side.

If there was one lesson Tito had learned as a result of all the troubles in the last ten years, it was that a small country, even a Communist country, succeeds best when it is independent and, in Tito's case, in a position to play both sides of the street (see box). Tita's delegation, while ready to renew fraternal relationships with the Soviet Union, and to support the Soviet coexistence and popular fronts, was firmly set last week against being merged into an Eastern bloc of Communist na tions. Only by refusing to yield Yugoslavia's unique separateness could Tito continue to regard himself as Europe's senior Communist, Marxism's prodigal son.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.