Heretics Who Did Not Burn

By Edwin Warner

THE BATTLE STALIN LOST by Vladimir Dedijer. 341 pages. Viking. $8.50.

Yugoslavia was the first East European nation to defy Russia. It was a considerable event. Until Josip Broz Tito rebelled in 1948, Joseph Stalin seemed invincible in the Communist world. The Yugoslavian assertion of independence showed that there could be more than one path for Communists: it also set an example that led to the whole concept of a neutral Third World. Today all that is taken for granted. But at the time the Yugoslav struggle was a very close thing. Just how close is dramatically described by Historian Vladimir Dedijer, who lived through the ordeal as one of Marshal Tito's right-hand men.

Agonized Awakening. Until the revolt occurred, Yugoslavia seemed the Iron Curtain country least likely to give Stalin ideological trouble. Its tightly knit, fiercely dogmatic Communist Party worshiped Stalin as the father of Communism and the leader of the resistance to fascism. At first, after World War II, few Yugoslav Communists could bring themselves to believe that Stalin's aim was simply to take over their nation. Much of Dedijer's book deals with the agonized awakening to the Russian threat. He describes, for example, his own change of heart at a Russian-Yugoslav soccer match in 1946. He noticed that whenever the referee was not looking, the Soviet players kicked the Yugoslavs in the stomach. Even so, he tried to persuade himself that this bit of foul play was somehow part of a grand Marxist scheme that he was not capable of grasping. "The conflict between the new Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union," he recalls, "was fraught with a strange kind of fire, like the disputes between medieval Christian sects."

Eventually, the Russians proved so crudely aggressive that few could ignore their intent. By then, the U.S.S.R. had gained a grip on the country--much more so than is commonly realized. Soviet agents had infiltrated most departments of government. Tito had been goaded into an ill-advised farm collectivization program that caused near-revolt among the peasants. The Russians had talked the Yugoslavs into setting up joint stock companies that clearly favored the Soviets, but persistently withheld the help toward industrialization that Tito expected in return.

Serious Yugoslav resistance came to a head in 1948 over Stalin's proposed federation between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. When the Yugoslavs refused, the Soviet dictator first urged good Communists in Yugoslavia to depose Tito, then set about that task himself. A virtual civil war ensued between Soviet agents and Yugoslav security forces. The latter won out, but only after some 10,000 Soviet agents, sympathizers and suspects had been put in jail. Throughout the period, the Yugoslavs tried to avoid fighting Stalinism with Stalinism. But, as Dedijer concedes, they did not always succeed.

Braced for Invasion. Blocked internally, Stalin launched an international Communist propaganda crusade against the Yugoslavs. Dedijer, then serving as director of the Information Office, was amused by personal attacks on himself, but was appalled when a Soviet book accused his first wife, Olga, of having worked for the Gestapo. She had actually been a partisan surgeon who died in agony after a Nazi attack. Stalin cut off trade between East European countries and Yugoslavia. Railway and postal services were reduced or suspended. Stalin's paranoia was so inflamed that between 1949 and 1952 he put tens of thousands of Communists in Eastern Europe on trial.

The Red Army, which played a role in liberating Belgrade from German occupation, had been quickly withdrawn. Now it began to mass troops along Tito's borders. The Yugoslavs, ill-equipped with obsolete weapons sold them earlier by the Soviets, braced for invasion. The West was slow to provide military aid, and in the beginning, insists Dedijer, its terms were harsh. Stalin wavered, partly in fear of starting World War III. Then, suddenly in 1953, the Soviet dictator died, and it was all over. Yugoslavs received the news as joyful liberation. Milovan Djilas, one of Tito's closest aides, reflected: "I am glad we struck out at Stalin while he was still in good form. I think his last thought before the stroke must have been: 'Ugh, Yugoslavia is not giving in.' "

Unbreakable Bond. It took a sturdy temperament to defy Joseph Stalin, and Vladimir Dedijer, now 57, well exemplifies it. A strapping, jovial Serbian, he is in the U.S. this year, tranquilly teaching a course called "Heresy and Dissent" at Brandeis University. But he lived through years of almost inhuman warfare as a Tito partisan in World War II, and still suffers searing headaches from a near fatal war wound. "When my head hurts," the otherwise generous Dedijer admits, "I hate all Germans, including Marx and Goethe."

After the war, he enjoyed high rank and Tito's confidence until he stood up for his close friend Djilas, who was imprisoned for denouncing the Communist bureaucracy in Yugoslavia. Dedijer did not go to prison, but he was drummed out of the party. Under the pressure of this persecution, his 13-year-old son committed suicide. Since then, Dedijer has spent much of his time abroad, where he has researched and written books, including The Road to Sarajevo, a penetrating study of the events leading up to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. No longer a formal Communist but still calling himself a "utopian Communist," Dedijer remains on friendly terms with Tito; they share the unbreakable bond of having been wounded in the same battle.

Dedijer also remains a dedicated Yugoslav. He was prompted to write The Battle Stalin Lost at the time Russia invaded Czechoslovakia. Among other things, he hoped it would serve as a warning to keep hands off his country. After all, look what happened to Stalin.

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