Conversations with Stalin Page 11

  This double-dealing was also going on in the depths of Yugoslav-Soviet relations: on the surface, complete political and, especially, ideological agreement, but in reality divergent practices and judgments.

  When a rather broad delegation of the top Yugoslav leaders—Tito, Ranković, Kidrič, Nešković—sojourned in Moscow in the spring of 1946, relations between the two leading groups assumed a more than cordial appearance. Stalin embraced Tito, referred to his European-wide role, and flagrantly belittled the Bulgars and Dimitrov. But soon after there came the tension and discord over joint-stock companies.

  The subterranean friction went on constantly. Invisible to the non-Communist world, it broke out in closed Party councils, over recruiting for the Soviet Intelligence Service; which was particularly inconsiderate with respect to the state and Party apparatus. It broke out also in the sphere of ideology especially because of Soviet disparagement of the Yugoslav revolution. The Soviet representatives swallowed with obvious distaste the Yugoslavs’ ranking of Tito next to Stalin, and they were particularly sensitive about Yugoslavia’s independent association with the other East European countries and the growth of her prestige among them.

  The friction soon carried over into economic relations, especially when it became obvious to the Yugoslavs that, apart from their ordinary commercial ties, they could not count on Soviet aid in carrying out their five-year plan. Detecting resistance, Stalin stressed that the use of joint-stock companies was not good among friendly and allied countries and promised to furnish all possible aid, but at the same time his traders exploited the economic advantage they gained as a result of exacerbated Yugoslav-Western relations and as a result of the illusory Yugoslav view of the USSR as an unselfish and unhegemonistic state.

  Except for Albania, Yugoslavia had been the only East European country to free itself from the Nazi invasion and at the same time carry out a domestic revolution without the decisive help of the Red Army. It had gone the farthest in effecting a social transformation, and yet it was also situated in what was in days to come the most exposed salient in the Soviet bloc. In Greece a civil war was being fought. Yugoslavia had been charged in the United Nations with giving it material aid and inspiring it; while Yugoslav relations with the West, and especially with the United States, were strained to the breaking point.

  When I think back, it seems to me that the Soviet Government not only looked with satisfaction at this sharpening of Yugoslav-Western relations but even incited it, taking care, of course, not to go beyond the limits of its own interests and possibilities. Molotov almost embraced Kardelj in Paris after the shooting down of two American planes in Yugoslavia, though he also cautioned him against shooting down a third. The Soviet Government took no direct action with respect to the uprising in Greece, practically leaving Yugoslavia to face the music alone in the United Nations, nor did it undertake anything decisive to bring about an armistice—not until Stalin found it to his interest.

  So, too, the designation of Belgrade as the seat of the Cominform was, on the surface, recognition for the Yugoslav revolution. Behind it lay the secret Soviet intention to lull to sleep the Yugoslav leaders with revolutionary self-satisfaction and to subordinate Yugoslavia to some supposed international Communist solidarity—in fact, to the hegemony of the Soviet state, or, rather, to the insatiable demands of the Soviet political bureaucracy.

  It is time something was said about Stalin’s attitude toward revolutions, and thus toward the Yugoslav revolution. Because Moscow abstained, always in decisive moments, from supporting the Chinese, Spanish, and in many ways even the Yugoslav revolutions, the view prevailed, not without reason, that Stalin was generally against revolutions. This is, however, not entirely correct. He was opposed only conditionally, that is, to the degree to which the revolution went beyond interests of the Soviet state. He felt instinctively that the creation of revolutionary centers outside of Moscow could endanger its supremacy in world Communism, and of course that is what actually happened. That is why he helped revolutions only up to a certain point—up to where he could control them—but he was always ready to leave them in the lurch whenever they slipped out of his grasp. I maintain that not even today is there any essential change in this respect in the policy of the Soviet Government.

  A man who had subjected all activities in his own country to his views and to his personality, Stalin could not behave differently outside. Having identified domestic progress and freedom with the interests and privileges of a political party, he could not act in foreign affairs other than as a hegemonist. As with everyone, handsome is as handsome does. He became himself the slave of the despotism, the bureaucracy, the narrowness, and the servility that he imposed on his country.

  It is indeed true that no one can take freedom from another without losing his own.

  2

  The occasion for my departure to Moscow was the divergence between the policy of Yugoslavia and that of the USSR toward Albania. In late December of 1947 there came from Moscow a dispatch in which Stalin demanded that someone of the Yugoslav Central Committee—he spoke of me only by name—come in order to bring into harmony the policies of the two Governments vis-à-vis Albania.

  The disharmony made itself felt in various ways, most visibly after the suicide of Naku Spiru, a member of the Albanian Central Committee.

  A linkage between Yugoslavia and Albania had been developing in all fields. Yugoslavia was sending to Albania experts of all kinds in ever increasing numbers. Food was shipped to Albania, though Yugoslavia itself suffered a shortage. The creation of joint-stock companies had begun. Both Governments agreed in principle that Albania ought to unite with Yugoslavia, which would have solved the question of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia.

  The conditions that the Yugoslav Government presented the Albanian were far more favorable and just for the Albanians than those, by comparison, that the Soviet Government offered to the Yugoslavs. Apparently, however, the problem lay not in the degree of justice but in the very nature of these relations. A part of the Albanian leadership was intimately and secretly against the Yugoslav approach.

  Naku Spiru—slight, frail, very sensitive, with a fine intellect-directed the economic affairs of the Albanian Government at the time and was the first to rebel against Yugoslavia, demanding that Albania develop independently. His stand provoked a sharp reaction not only in Yugoslavia but in the Albanian Central Committee as well. He was especially opposed by Koči Xoxe, Albanian Minister of the Interior, who was later shot on the charge that he was pro-Yugoslav. A worker from southern Albania and a veteran revolutionary, Xoxe enjoyed the reputation of being the most stable Party man despite the fact that Enver Hoxha—an undoubtedly better-educated and far more agile personality—was Secretary General of the Party and Premier of the Government. Hoxha, too, joined in the criticism against Spiru, even though his actual position remained unclear. Poor Spiru, finding himself isolated and charged with chauvinism and probably on the brink of being expelled from the Party, killed himself. With his death he started something he never would have imagined—the worsening of Yugoslav-Albanian relations.

  To be sure, the affair was hushed up before the public. Later, after the open break with Yugoslavia in 1948, Enver Hoxha placed Spiru on a pedestal as a national hero. But in the summits of both countries the affair left a bad impression which could not be dispelled by assertions concerning Spiru’s cowardice, petty bourgeois spirit, and the like, which always abound in the Communist arsenal of clichés.

  The Soviet Government was excellently informed both about the real causes of Spiru’s death and about all of Yugoslavia’s activities in Albania. Her Mission in Tirana grew more and more numerous. Besides, relations among the three Governments—the Soviet, Albanian, and Yugoslav—were such that the last two did not particularly conceal their relations from the first, though it should also be said that the Yugoslav Government did not consult the Soviet with respect to the details of its policy.

  Soviet representatives m
ade ever more frequent complaints about certain Yugoslav measures in Albania, while an ever greater closeness was observed between the group around Hoxha and the Soviet Mission. Every once in a while a complaint by this or that Soviet representative came to the surface: Why were the Yugoslavs forming joint-stock companies with the Albanians when they refused to form the same in their own country with the USSR? Why were they sending their instructors to the Albanian Army when they had Soviet instructors in their own? How could Yugoslavs provide experts for the development of Albania when they themselves were seeking experts from abroad? How was it that all of a sudden Yugoslavia, itself poor and underdeveloped, intended to develop Albania?

  Along with these divergencies between the Soviet and the Yugoslav Governments, Moscow’s tendency to replace Yugoslavia’s position in Albania became all the more evident, which seemed extremely unjust to the Yugoslavs in view of the fact that it was not the USSR that proposed to unite with Albania, nor was the USSR even a bordering neighbor of Albania’s. The turning of the Albanian leaders to the Soviet Union became increasingly evident and found ever more lively expression in their propaganda.

  The Soviet Government’s invitation to remove disagreement over Albania was accepted with both hands in Belgrade, though it has remained unclear to this day why Stalin emphasized that he wanted precisely me to come to Moscow.

  It seems to me that he was led by two reasons. I probably must have given him the impression of being a forthright and candid man. I expect that I was considered such among the Yugoslav Communists too. As such I was suitable for a straightforward discussion over a complicated and very sensitive question. However, I also believe that he had the intention of winning me over in order to split and to subordinate the Yugoslav Central Committee. He already had Hebrang and Zujović on his side. But Hebrang had been thrown out of the Central Committee and placed under secret investigation because of his unexplained behavior while in prison during the war. Zujović was a prominent figure, but even as a member of the Central Committee he did not belong to the inner circle that had formed around Tito in the course of the struggle for the unity of the Party and during the revolution itself.

  During Tito’s stay in Moscow in 1946, when he told Stalin that I suffered from headaches, Stalin had invited me to visit him in the Crimea for a rest cure. But I did not go, largely because Stalin’s invitation had not been made again through the Embassy, and so I took it to be a polite gesture, made simply because the conversation had turned to me.

  Thus I set out for Moscow—on January 8, if I remember correctly, and certainly not far from that date—with ambiguous feelings: I was flattered that Stalin had invited me specifically, but I also had vague, unutterable suspicions that this was neither by chance nor with pure intentions with regard to Tito and the Yugoslav Central Committee.

  I received no special orders or instructions in Belgrade, nor were any instructions necessary, inasmuch as I was a member of the inner circle of leaders and au courant on Albanian-Yugoslav relations. The stand had already been formulated that Soviet representatives should not hinder the already announced policy of Yugoslav-Albanian unification by their tactless actions or by taking a different line.

  Representatives of the Yugoslav Army took advantage of a good opportunity to send with me their own delegation, which was to present requests for munitions and for the development of our war industry. This delegation included the then Chief of the General Staff, Koča Popović, and the head of the Yugoslav war industry, Mijalko Todorović Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, then director of political administration in the army, also traveled with us, in order to acquaint himself with the experience of the Red Army in that area.

  We set out by train for Moscow, in good spirits and in even better faith. And also with the set view that Yugoslavia should solve its problems in its own way and largely through its own resources.

  3

  This view was aired even before it should have been, at a dinner in the Yugoslav Embassy in Bucharest which was attended by Anna Pauker, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, and several Rumanian officials.

  All the Yugoslavs, except Ambassador Golubović, who later emigrated as an adherent of Moscow, more or less openly brought out that the Soviet Union could not be an absolute model in “the building of socialism,” for the situation had changed and conditions and circumstances differed in the individual countries of Eastern Europe. I noticed that Anna Pauker was carefully silent, or else agreed with something reluctantly, and tried to avoid talking about such sensitive questions. One of the Rumanians—I believe it was Bodnaraš—opposed our views, and another—his name I have unfortunately forgotten—cordially agreed with us. I regarded a conversation of this sort awkward, for I was convinced that every word would reach the ears of the Russians and they would be unable to understand them as being anything but “anti-Soviet”—synonym of all the evils of this earth. At the same time, however, I could not retract my stand. Thus I sought to tone down these views, stressing the merits of the USSR and the theoretical significance of the Soviet experience. But all this was of hardly any use, for I myself had stressed that everyone ought to blaze his own path according to his own concrete circumstances. Nor could the awkwardness be dispelled. I had a premonition; I knew that the Soviet leaders had no feeling for nuances and compromises, especially not within their own Communist ranks.

  Though we were only passing through Rumania, we found reason for our criticism everywhere. First, as to the relations between the Soviet Union and the other East European countries; these countries were still being held under actual occupation, and their wealth was being extracted in various ways, most frequently through joint-stock companies in which the Russians barely invested anything except German capital, which they had simply declared a prize of war. Trade with these countries was not conducted as elsewhere in the world, but on the basis of special arrangements according to which the Soviet Government bought at lower and sold at higher than world prices. Only Yugoslavia was an exception. We knew all that. And the spectacle of misery as well as the consciousness of impotence and subservience among the Rumanian authorities could only heighten our indignation.

  We were most taken aback by the arrogant attitude of the Soviet representatives. I remember how horrified we were at the words of the Soviet Commander in Iaşi: “Oh, this dirty Rumanian Iaşi! And these Rumanian corn-pone eaters (mamalizhniki)!” He also repeated Ehrenburg’s and Vishinsky’s bon mot, which was aimed at the corruption and stealing in Rumania: “They are not a nation, but a profession!”

  Especially in that mild winter, Iaşi was truly a sprawling backwater of a Balkan town whose beauties—its hills, gardens, and terraces—could be detected only by the experienced eye. Yet we knew that Soviet towns looked hardly better, if not indeed worse. It was this attitude of a “superior race” and the conceit of a great power that angered us the most. The obliging and deeply respectful Russian attitude toward us not only accentuated the abasement of the Rumanians all the more, but it inflated our pride in our own independence and in our freedom to reason.

  We had already accepted it as a fact of life that such relations and attitudes as existed toward the Rumanians were “possible even in socialism” because “Russians are like that”—backward, long isolated from the rest of the world, and dead to their revolutionary traditions.

  We bored ourselves in Iaşi a few hours, until the Soviet train with the Soviet Government’s car arrived for us, accompanied, to be sure, by the inevitable Captain Kozovsky, for whom the Yugoslavs continued to be his specialty in the Soviet State Security. This time he was less unreserved and sunny than before, probably only because he was now faced by ministers and generals. An intangible, undefinable, cold officialism intruded itself in the relations between ourselves and our Soviet “comrades.”

  Our sarcastic comments did not spare even the railroad car in which we traveled, and which deserved no better despite its comfortable accommodations, the excellent food, and the good service. We regarded as comi
cal the huge brass handles, the old-fashioned fussiness of the décor, and a toilet so lofty that one’s legs dangled in mid-air. Was all this necessary? Does a great state and a sovereign power have to show off? And what was most grotesque of all in that car, with its pomp of tsarist days, was the fact that the conductor kept, in a cage in his compartment, a chicken which laid eggs. Poorly paid and miserably clothed, he apologized: “What is one to do, Comrades? A workingman must make out as best he can. I have a big family—and life is hard.”

  Though the Yugoslav railroad system could hardly boast of accuracy either, here no one got excited over a tardiness of several hours. “We’ll get there,” one of the conductors would simply reply. Russia seemed to confirm the unchangeability of its human and national soul; all its essential qualities militated against the pace of industrialization and the omnipotence of management.

  The Ukraine and Russia, buried in snow up to the eaves, still bore the marks of the devastation and horrors of war—burned-down stations, barracks, and the sight of women, on the subsistence of hot water (kipiatok) and a piece of rye bread, wrapped in shawls, clearing tracks.