The Death of Titoism
FISCHER, LOUIS
Eastern Europe Stalinism, Titoism, Djilasism, Gomulkaism, revisionism, humanism—these are some of the political currents that have been swirling through the East European states that U.S. diplomacy...
...Their socialism is a travesty to them, and "socialist encirclement" means being boxed in by Russia...
...His first loyalty is to Yugoslavia and power...
...I asked a large number of Communist and non-Communist Poles in the summer of 1957...
...Nor was it a secret to Tito or Khrushchev...
...East Europe in 1958 is as different from 1952 as it is from 1946...
...In his first utterance, Tito raised the issue of the Oder-Neisse line...
...Now he favors neither a united Germany nor freedom for the satellites...
...reaffirmed their agreement on the basic problems of the present international situation...
...Associates of Gomulka made no secret of this wish when I talked with them in August 1957...
...The Poles did so because they, too, aspired to greater national independence via an increase in their rights...
...The economic structure of Yugoslavia contrasts sharply with Russia's...
...And since Tito believes in dictatorship, he abhors any such development...
...But in effect it asked West Germany to make the same move...
...I inquired about German rearmament...
...the West has no such pressure handles...
...But as long as the Red bear refrains from aggressiveness in the Balkans, Tito harbors neither hate nor love of Russia...
...Aren't you afraid of a rearmed Germany...
...Both shortened the distance between Belgrade and Moscow...
...This posture provokes numerous wrong guesses about Tito's allegiance...
...Tito will paddle his own canoe, but in the turbulent Balkan stream, where it is an achievement even to keep the craft upright, he is likely to swerve with increasing frequency to the Russian bank...
...it is naturally something Poland wants...
...Not much is left of Communist ideology except dictatorship...
...an official communiqu...
...He said: "No...
...Shortly after I left Warsaw, I talked with West German Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano...
...Moreover, neutralism has great attractions for a strong, colorful individual like Tito...
...Hungary—and Poland—however, could achieve the same end only by a popular revolt which, if powerful enough to liberate their country from Russian imperialism, would also achieve personal liberty...
...This fulcrum position on the international see-saw has given Tito an influence and popularity in India, Burma, the Middle East and the UN that feeds personal as well as national vanities...
...Would you want to see a united Germany...
...On the key question and chief irritant, the former German territories beyond the OderNeisse line which have become part of Poland, Brentano declared that, while Germany could not now recognize their alienation, she had no intention or will to do anything about it by force or by negotiation...
...This was the sentimental aspect of a practical national interest...
...You cannot compel a country to be unprotected for any length of time...
...The Hungarian Revolution must remain a recurrent nightmare to Moscow and Tito...
...He said he favored it but not for militaristic purposes...
...How do you feel about German reunification...
...Its immediate result was the reshaping of Europe's eternal triangle: Russia, Germany and Poland...
...His course would deviate westward only if democratic Europe were more integrated economically, politically and militarily— within itself and with North America —or in the event of powerful pressure for personal liberty inside Yugoslavia...
...diplomacy had long written off as monolithic "satellites...
...The Soviet satellites are so lacking in the support of their people that any diminution of Kremlin domination must result in more personal freedom and, similarly, any yielding of the satellite to the obvious mass desire for expanded civil rights would be tantamount to an equivalent loosening of the links with Russia...
...Followed as it shortly was by Tito's establishment of diplomatic relations with East Germany, which offended Bonn and led to the severance of diplomatic ties between Bonn and Belgrade, the Tito maneuver torpedoed the rapprochement between East Germany and Poland so devoutly desired by both...
...In Moscow they are making a mistake...
...he is not its slave...
...Situated between Germany and Russia before the Second World War, Poland's geographic position was uneviable enough...
...Would not the restoration of a united Germany," I asked, "result in Russia's loss of her satellites...
...Tito's renunciation of national Communism has wrought far-reaching changes in world politics...
...Germany is their grim past...
...My guest, a noted Polish Communist writer, advised me to address the waiter in German if I wanted better service...
...A little later, he arrested Milovan Djilas, former Politburo member—not so much for writing an article in The New Leader (November 18, 1956) which no peasant or worker and only a handful of Yugoslav intellectuals would read, but rather as a warning to the nation that opposition would be crushed...
...A cynical saying circulates in Poland...
...But so is Russia...
...In less than five years since Joseph Stalin died1, the area has witnessed major uprisings in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, strikes and student demonstrations in Czechoslovakia and Rumania, and intellectual controversy in every major city from East Berlin to Moscow...
...at the end of the conversations, Tito officially recognized the line as Poland's legitimate frontier and both leaders proposed a similar step to other governments...
...Across their northern border, a tough Stalinist oligarchy gave way to Imre Nagy's national Communist regime, and it, after a life of four days, yielded to a multi-party system...
...I was in Yugoslavia during most of the thirteen days in October-November 1956 when the Hungarian Revolution shook the Communist world...
...The Adenauer Government shared Poland's urge for improved relations...
...Many Yugoslavs sympathized with the freedom fighters...
...I would want to see a united Germany," he replied...
...Tito merely performed a great service to the Kremlin...
...2) Hungary...
...Hungary, therefore, has altered Tito's attitude to Titoism...
...Furthermore, not only have such Russian "comrades in arms" of Stalin as Molotov, Beria and Malenkov been removed...
...I persisted...
...Among his many books are Men and Politics, Gandhi and Stalin, The Soviets in World Affairs and Russia Revisited...
...Gomulka was in no position to refuse this Tito gift...
...The next day...
...The first fruit of the Rumanian agreement appeared in September when Yugoslavia recognized the East German puppet regime...
...It is a victory that has reinforced him in the struggle for domestic supremacy...
...The Death of Titoism Hungary convinced Belgrade that national Communism' breeds anti-Communism Yugoslavia, a poor country of 18 million non-Communists ruled by several thousand Communists, stands with one foot planted in the Soviet camp, the other dipped in Western waters, and her hands outstretched in opposite directions ready to receive Communist and capitalist gifts...
...The Poles take the position which Tito look in 1952 when I interviewed him : that a united Germany would improve their chances of achieving national independence, and therefore further the cause of their democracy...
...On foreign aid, his motto, despite substantial economic progress, has been "Take...
...On the question of East German recognition, he declared: "There are two Germanies and unification is not a reality...
...In effect, he has abandoned it...
...In any case, whatever the emotion, politically-minded Poles realize that their best leverage against Soviet Russia would be given them by Germany...
...The matter would just not be mentioned...
...In August 1957, however, a top Yugoslav Foreign Office official said to me in Belgrade: "We are no longer thinking in terms of the liberation of the satellites...
...Therefore, he wanted a united Germany as a means of rolling back Russian imperialism...
...Accustomed to the limelight in solitary splendor, he did not relish the prospect of sharing it with brighter luminaries at Moscow like Mao Tse-tung...
...A nation cannot normally hate two enemies...
...but many postwar East European satraps (Bierut and Ber-man in Poland, Gottwald and Zapotocky in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi and Gero in Hungary, Zaisser and Herrnstadt in East Germany) have, in one manner or another, passed from the scene...
...Early in September, however, the austere Gomulka, who lives with his wife in two rooms in Warsaw, journeyed to Belgrade to meet the luxury-loving Tito...
...Politically the two are identical, for if Yugoslavia did not enjoy national independence he would be a Kremlin puppet and his dictatorship would be a fiction...
...Hence the universal desire in official Warsaw circles for a rapprochement with the Government of West Germany...
...Also, friendship with the Kremlin safeguards Tito against the kind of expensive, nerve-wracking military tensions which Stalin deliberately created after June 1948 along the frontiers between the satellites and Yugoslavia...
...Tito knows too well the nature of Soviet imperialism to restore its grip, voluntarily, on Yugoslavia...
...In the final analysis, yes," Tito declared...
...Their national interests diverge, too...
...It is also a matter of pride and policy for Tito to discourage any East European country under Communist rule from attaining greater individual freedom than the Yugoslavs have...
...Two circumstances have molded this new Tito policy: (1) Khrushchev's courtship of Tito with flowery apologies that fed Tito's vanity and with aid that fed Yugoslavia's economic and military needs...
...For just as the Polish and Hungarian revolutions in October-November 1956 weakened him and contributed to his defeat at the December 1956 session of the Soviet Party Central Committee and to his near-ousting in June 1957, so his August conference with Tito in Rumania, the consequent scotching of the Bonn-Warsaw rapprochement, and the resultant heightened, partly successful pressure on Gomulka to obey Moscow have strengthened Khrushchev's position at home...
...Since the Polish Foreign Office took the same view, there was no obstacle to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Bonn and Warsaw, which Brentano envisaged soon after the German elections on September 15...
...whether the giver is East, West or the United Nations...
...But the two are twin...
...Democracy reared its head in Hungary in the fall of 1956...
...That month, I asked a high-level Yugoslav spokesman in Belgrade whether the same identity of views might emerge from a Tito conference with American or British representatives...
...I was ordering lunch in Russian in the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw...
...But if, as Hungary showed, national Communism outside of Yugoslavia may be a slippery slope down to the Gehenna of democracy, it is not fit for export...
...As a preliminary to his policy shift, Tito met Khrushchev in Rumania on August 1 and 2, 1957...
...Nor was Tito enamored of the idea of a resurrected Cominform, as envisaged by Khrushchev, that would have authority over its members, Yugoslavia included...
...Only when democracy threat-Louis Fischer has been reporting on Eastern Europe for 35 years...
...His ideal would be an equidistant stance between Russia and the United States...
...But surrounded as she is now by Soviet power, it is worse still...
...and, in the joint communiqu...
...To prove this, he absented himself from the elaborate Moscow celebration of the Soviet Revolution's 40th anniversary and ordered his two representatives there, Edvard Kardelj and Alexander Rankovich, not to sign the Communist manifesto adopted on that occasion by the rulers of all other Communist states...
...alignment only with Russia would make Yugoslavia too dependent...
...First, he does not want to be critized for being laggard—as he has been by comparison with Poland —in granting fewer liberties than a nearby Communist state...
...top Titoists were alarmed...
...Yugoslavia extricated herself from Russia's embrace in June 1948 by an act of her government...
...The move highlighted a drastic reversal of Tito's attitude not only toward the German problem but also toward the future of Russia's East European satellites...
...We are a socialist country in a socialist encirclement," Poles assert with a bitter laugh...
...A new Cominform, by whatever name and in whatever shape, awakens bitter memories of the 1947-48 quarrel between him and Stalin...
...Poles still fear the Germans...
...Gomulka's Poland contributed blood and money to the Hungarian rebels...
...The Soviets, moreover, are the unpleasant present and, unfortunately, the dark, predictable future...
...When I switched, the service did in fact improve...
...Khrushchev must have gloated...
...He does not, of course, intend to re-submit his neck to the Muscovite yoke...
...Poland has moved in an opposite direction from Tito...
...By Louis Fischer ens does he nestle close to the mother of modern dictatorships...
...The three articles which follow explore different aspects of today's scene...
...it is better to have a neutral neighbor than an unreliable satellite.'' The Soviet Union, he added, cannot keep the satellites forever...
...He originally conceived of it as freedom from Moscow but not freedom for individuals...
...There were two Germanies in 1952, but at that time Tito, the national Communist, was concerned with national independence for Russia's satellites...
...Secondly, the advance of freedom in one Communist nation serves as an attractive model and disturbing incentive to the citizens of another...
...Alignment solely with the West would encourage Djilasism or social democracy in Yugoslavia...
...They would not like it to happen again...
...Both sides court him, both pay, neither gets him...
...Frightened by this quick transformation of Titoism into democracy, Tito gave public approval to the suppression of the Hungarian uprising...
...I asked Tito in Belgrade in June 1952, in the course of a tape-recorded interview, the Russian transcript of which his secretariat later delivered to me...
...This realization, in the light of Hungary, brought a rethinking by Tito of the virtues of Titoism...
...But Tito, already free of Russian fetters and unwilling to substitute freedom for his dictatorship, contributed only hostility to the Hungarian Revolution...
...The aversion to Russia, synonymous with foreign domination and imposed Communism, is so great in Poland as to eclipse the traditional animosity toward Germany...
...Invariably they replied that Poland, partitioned four times in her history, sympathized with a country which yearned to be whole...
...The road to Polish freedom lies through a united Germany and a strong West...
...Speaking of Poland's economic plight, he said: "We want to help...
...Fear or no fear," Tito stated, "logically it is so and has to be so...
...Hungary demonstrated that Yugoslavia's position vis-?-vis Russia differs radically from that of the satellites...
...Tito's foreign policy motivations are a complicated skein...
...When, in addition to these valuable advantages, the Soviet Union became in 1956 a source of voluminous economic and military aid to its friends, the pull from Moscow on Tito grew...
...On the other hand, Tito can, by collaborating with Moscow, check the trends toward anti-totalitarian freedom in the Soviet satellites and thereby in Yugoslavia...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 6
