Conversations with Stalin Read online

  In the beginning the Soviet representatives insisted that the Brigade’s insignia be identical with those of the Yugoslav Royal Army, but on meeting with resistance from Vlahović, they agreed to introduce the insignia of the People’s Liberation Army. It was hard to agree on these insignia by way of dispatches, but Vlahović nevertheless did what he could, and we found the insignia to be the result of accommodation and compromise. On our insistence this matter too was finally settled.

  There were no other essential problems concerning the Brigade except our dissatisfaction that the same commander had been kept. But the Russians defended his position by saying that he had recanted and that he had influence over his men. My impression was that Mesić was deeply demoralized and that, like many, he had simply turned his coat to save himself from a prisoner-of-war camp. He was himself dissatisfied, inasmuch as his function in the unit was conspicuously nil—purely formal.

  The Brigade was located in a wood near the town of Kolomna. They lived in sod houses and drilled without regard to the cruel Russian winter. At first I was astonished at the harsh discipline that prevailed in the unit. There was a certain discrepancy, a contradiction between the aims that the unit was supposed to serve and the manner in which its men were supposed to be imbued with these aims. In our Partisan units there reigned a comradeship and solidarity, and punishment was strict only for looting and disobedience. Here everything was based on a blind submission which the Prussians of Frederick I might well have envied. However, we were not successful in changing this either, given the unyielding, harsh Soviet instructors on the one hand and, on the other, men who had only yesterday fought on the side of the Germans. We carried out an inspection, delivered a speech, discussed problems superficially, and left everything as it was, ending, to be sure, with the inevitable feast with the officers, who got drunk to a man toasting Tito and Stalin and embracing one another in the name of Slavic brotherhood.

  One of our incidental duties was to have made the first medals of the new Yugoslavia. In this we encountered complete understanding, and if the medals—especially the 1941 commemorative medal—turned out badly, it was less the fault of the Soviet factory than of our modesty and the poor quality of the sketches we had brought from Yugoslavia.

  Supervision of the foreign units was carried out by NKVD General Zhukov. A slender and pale blond, still young and very resourceful, Zhukov was not without humor and a refined cynicism—not rare qualities for the members of a secret service. Concerning the Yugoslav Brigade, he told me, “It’s not bad, considering the material we had to work with.” And that was true. If, later in Yugoslavia, it hardly distinguished itself in engagements with the Germans, this should not be ascribed to the fighting qualities of the men as much as to the unsuitability of its organization and experience as part of an army different from the Soviet and under conditions of warfare different from those on the Eastern Front.

  General Zhukov held a reception in our honor. The Military Attaché of Mexico, in conversation with me, offered aid, but unfortunately we could not figure out how it could reach our troops in Yugoslavia.

  Just before my departure from Moscow, I was a guest at a dinner at General Zhukov’s. He and his wife lived in a small two-room apartment. Everything was comfortable, but modest, though almost luxurious for Moscow, especially in time of war. Zhukov was an excellent civil servant and, on the basis of experience, more impressed with force than ideology as the means of realizing Communism. The relationship between us took on a certain intimacy yet at the same time a reserve, for nothing could set aside the differences in our habits and views. Political friendships are good only when each remains what he is. Before I left his apartment, Zhukov presented me with an officer’s automatic gun—a modest gift, but suitable in time of war.

  On the other hand, I had a quite different meeting with the organs of the Soviet Secret Service. Through Captain Kozovsky I was visited in the TsDKA by a modestly dressed little man who did not hide the fact that he was from the State Security. We arranged for a meeting on the following day, in a manner so conspiratorial that, precisely because I had been an illegal worker for so many years, I regarded it all as excessively complicated, indeed a cliché. A car awaited me in a nearby street, and after an involved ride, we transferred into another, only to be deposited in some street of the huge city from which we then walked to a third street, where someone from the window of an enormous apartment building threw down a little key which enabled us finally to enter a spacious and luxurious apartment on the third floor.

  The owner of the apartment—if she was the owner—was one of those northern blonds with limpid eyes whose buxomness enhanced her beauty and strength. Her radiant beauty played no role, at least in this instance, and it turned out that she was more important than the man who brought me. She did the questioning, and he recorded the answers. They were more interested in the men who were in the councils of the Communist Party than in men of other parties. I had the uncomfortable sensation of a police interrogation, and yet I knew that it was my duty as a Communist to give the required information. Had some member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Party called me, I would not have hesitated. But what did these people want with data about the Communist Party and leading Communists when their job was to wage a struggle against the enemies of the Soviet Union and possible provocateurs within the Communist parties? Nevertheless I answered their questions, avoiding any precise or negative judgments, and especially any references to inner friction. I did this as much out of moral repugnance at saying things about my comrades which they would not know as out of an inner passionate aversion toward those who I felt had no right to intrude into my intimate world, my views, and my Party. My embarrassment no doubt communicated itself to my hosts, for the business part of the meeting lasted hardly an hour and a half; thereupon it turned into a less forced comradely conversation over coffee and cakes.

  My contacts with the Soviet public were both more frequent and direct. At that time the public’s contact with foreigners from Allied countries was not severely restricted in the Soviet Union.

  Because there was a war and we were the representatives of the only Party and people who had raised a revolt against Hitler, we excited every kind of curiosity. Writers came to us for new inspiration, film producers for interesting stories, journalists for articles and information, and young men and girls who wanted our help in getting them flown to Yugoslavia as volunteers.

  Pravda, their most authoritative daily, asked me for an article on the struggle in Yugoslavia, and Novoe Vremia one about Tito. In both cases I encountered difficulties with the editing of these articles. Pravda threw out almost everything that dealt with the character and political consequences of the struggle. The alteration of articles to fit the Party line was a part of our Party procedure. But it was done only when gross deviation or sensitive questions were involved. Pravda, however, threw out everything that had to do with the very essence of our struggle—the new regime and the social changes. It went even so far as to retouch my style, cutting out every figure of speech that was the least bit unusual, shortening sentences, and striking out turns of phrase. The article became gray and uninspired. After tussling with one of their editors, I agreed to the crippling; it was senseless to create antagonism over something like that, and it was better to publish it as it was than not at all.

  The affair with Novoe Vremia led to even more serious trouble. Their castration of my style and my inspirations was somewhat less drastic, but they diluted or ejected practically everything that had to do with affirming the originality and extraordinary significance of Tito’s personality. In my first conference with one of the editors of Novoe Vremia, I agreed to some immaterial changes. It was only at the second conference—when it became clear to me that in the USSR no one can be magnified except Stalin and when the editor openly admitted this in these words: “It is awkward because of Comrade Stalin; that’s the way it is here”—that I agreed to the other changes; all the more so since the arti
cle had preserved its color and essence.

  For me and for other Yugoslav Communists Stalin’s leadership was indisputable. Yet I was nonetheless puzzled why other Communist leaders—in this case, Tito—could not be praised if they deserved it, from the Communist point of view.

  It is worth noting that Tito himself was very flattered by the article and that, to the best of my knowledge, the Soviet press had never published such high praise of any other living person.

  This is to be explained by the fact that Soviet public opinion—that is, the opinion of the Party, since no other kind exists—was enthusiastic about the Yugoslav struggle. But also because in the course of the war the atmosphere of Soviet society had changed.

  As I look back, I can say that the conviction spread spontaneously in the USSR that now, after a war that had demonstrated the devotion of the Soviet people to their homeland and to the basic achievements of the revolution, there would be no further reason for the political restrictions and for the ideological monopolies held by little groups of leaders, and especially by a single leader. The world was changing before the very eyes of the Soviet people. It was obvious that the USSR would not be the only socialist country and that new revolutionary leaders and tribunes were making their appearance.

  Such an atmosphere and such opinions did not hinder the Soviet leaders at the time; on the contrary, these opinions contributed to the war effort. There was no reason for the leaders themselves not to encourage such illusions. After all, Tito, or, rather, the struggle of the Yugoslavs, was bringing about changes in the Balkans and in Central Europe that did not weaken the position of the Soviet Union but actually strengthened it. Thus there was no reason not to popularize and to help the Yugoslavs.

  But there was an even more significant factor in this. Though allied with the Western democracies, the Soviet system, or, rather, the Soviet Communists, felt alone in the struggle. They were fighting for their own survival and exclusively for their way of life. And in view of the absence of a second front, that is, major battles in the West at a time that was decisive for the fate of the Russian people, even the ordinary man and common soldier felt alone. The Yugoslav uprising helped dispel that loneliness on the part of the leaders and the people.

  Both as a Communist and as a Yugoslav I was moved by the love and regard that I encountered everywhere, especially in the Red Army. With a clear conscience I inscribed in the guest book of an exhibition of captured German weapons: “I am proud that there are no weapons here from Yugoslavia!”—for there were weapons there from all over Europe.

  It was proposed that we visit the Southwestern Front—the Second Ukrainian Front—which was under the command of Marshal I. S. Konev. We went by plane to Uman, a little town in the Ukraine—and into a gashed wasteland which the war and a measureless human hatred had left in their wake.

  The local Soviet arranged a supper and a meeting with the public figures of the town. The supper, which was held in a neglected, decrepit building, was hardly a gay affair. The Bishop of Uman and the Party Secretary were unable to conceal their mutual intolerance even though they were in the presence of foreigners, though both, each in his own way, were fighting against the Germans.

  I had previously learned from Soviet officials that as soon as the war broke out, the Russian Patriarch began, without asking the Government, to distribute mimeographed encyclicals against the German invaders, and that they enjoyed a response which went far beyond his subordinate clergy. These appeals were also attractive in form: in the monotony of Soviet propaganda they radiated with the freshness of their ancient and religious patriotism. The Soviet Government quickly adapted itself and began to look to the Church, too, for support, despite the fact that they continued to regard it as a remnant of the old order. In the misfortunes of war, religion was revived and made headway, and the chief of the Soviet Mission in Yugoslavia, General Korneev, told how many people—and very responsible people at that—considered turning to Orthodoxy, in a moment of mortal danger from the Germans, as a more permanent ideological mobilizer. “We would have saved Russia even through Orthodoxy if that were unavoidable!” he explained.

  Today this sounds incredible. But only to those who do not comprehend the weight of the blows that smote the Russian people, to those who do not understand that every human society inevitably adopts and develops those ideas that are, at a given moment, best suited to maintaining and expanding the conditions of its existence. Though a drunkard, General Korneev was not stupid, and he was deeply devoted to the Soviet system and to Communism. To one like myself, who had grown up with the revolutionary movement and who had to fight for survival by insistence on ideological purity, Korneev’s hypotheses seemed absurd. Yet I was not at all amazed—so widespread had Russian patriotism, not to say nationalism, become—when the Bishop of Uman raised a toast to Stalin as the “unifier of the Russian lands.” Stalin understood intuitively that his government and his social system could not withstand the blows of the German Army unless they leaned for support on the age-old aspirations and ethos of the Russian people.

  The Secretary of the Uman Soviet smoldered with bitterness at the Bishop’s skillful and discreet emphasis on the role of the Church, and even more at the passive attitude of the population. The Partisan unit which he commanded was so weak in numbers that he was hardly able to deal with the pro-German Ukrainian gendarmery.

  Indeed, it was not possible to conceal the passive attitude of the Ukrainians toward the war and toward Soviet victories. The population left the impression of a somber reticence, and they paid no attention to us. Although the officers with whom we were in contact covered up or embellished the behavior of the Ukrainians, our Russian chauffeur cursed their mothers because the Ukrainians had not fought better and because now the Russians had to liberate them.

  The next day we set out through the Ukrainian spring mud—in the tracks of the victorious Red Army. The destroyed, twisted German equipment which we encountered so frequently added to the picture of the skill and power of the Red Army, but we marveled most of all at the toughness and self-denial of the Russian soldier, who was capable of enduring days, weeks, buried in mud up to the waist, without bread or sleep, under a hurricane of fire and steel brought by the desperate onslaughts of the Germans.

  If I set aside a biased, dogmatic, and romantic enthusiasm, I would today, even as then, rate highly the qualities of the Red Army, and particularly its Russian core. True, the Soviet commanding cadres, and the soldiers and underofficers in even greater measure, receive a onesided political education, but in every other respect they are developing initiative together with a breadth of culture. The discipline is severe and unquestioning, but not unreasonable; it is consonant with the principal aims and tasks. The Soviet officers are not only technically very proficient, but they also compose the most talented and boldest part of the Soviet intelligentsia. Though relatively well paid, they do not constitute a caste in themselves, and though not too much Marxist doctrine is required of them, they are expected all the more to be brave and not to fall back in battle—for example, the command center of the corps commander at Ia§i was three kilometers from the German lines. Stalin had carried out sweeping purges, especially in the higher commanding echelons, but these had had less effect than is sometimes believed, for he did not hesitate at the same time to elevate younger and talented men; every officer who was faithful to him and to his aims knew that his ambitions would meet with encouragement. The speed and determination with which he carried out the transformation of the top command in the midst of the war confirmed his adaptability and willingness to open careers to men of talent. He acted in two directions simultaneously: he introduced in the army absolute obedience to the Government and to the Party and to him personally, and he spared nothing to achieve military preparedness, a higher standard of living for the army, and quick promotions for the best men.

  It was in the Red Army, from an army commander, that I first heard a thought that was strange to me then, but bold: When Comm
unism triumphs in the whole world, he concluded, wars would then acquire their final bitter character. According to Marxist theories, which the Soviet commanders knew as well as I, wars are exclusively the product of class struggle, and because Communism would abolish classes, the necessity for men to wage war would also vanish. But this general, many Russian soldiers, as well as I in the worst battle in which I ever took part came to realize some further truths in the horrors of war: that human struggles would acquire the aspect of ultimate bitterness only when all men came to be subject to the same social system, for the system would be untenable as such and various sects would undertake the reckless destruction of the human race for the sake of its greater “happiness.” Among these Soviet officers, trained in Marxism, this idea was incidental, tucked away. But I did not forget it, nor did I regard it as being fortuitous then. Even if their consciousness had not been penetrated by the knowledge that not even the society which they were defending was free of profound and antagonistic differences, still they vaguely discerned that though man cannot live outside an ordered society and without ordered ideas, his life is nevertheless also subject to other compelling forces.

  We became inured to all sorts of things in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, as children of the Party and the revolution who acquired faith in themselves and the faith of the people through ascetic purity, we could not help being shocked at the drinking party that was held for us on the eve of our departure from the front, in Marshal Konev’s headquarters, in some village in Bessarabia.

  Girls who were too pretty and too extravagantly made up to be waitresses brought in vast quantities of the choicest victuals—caviar, smoked salmon and trout, fresh cucumbers and pickled young eggplant, boiled smoked hams, cold roast pigs, hot meat pies and piquant cheeses, borsch, sizzling steaks, and finally cakes a foot thick and platters of tropical fruit under which the tables buckled.