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In the years since, recognizing a major power split in the Communist front, the U.S. has poured into Yugoslavia about $500 million worth of economic aid, nearly $1 billion worth of military aid — from Sherman tanks to F-84 Thunderjets; several hundred Yugoslav officers have been trained in the U.S. and on U.S. bases in Europe. The result is that Yugoslavia's army of some 250,000 well-trained men is the biggest in Europe outside the Iron Curtain. In 1953 Tito drew even closer to the West by signing a regional pact of mutual assistance with NATO partners Greece and Turkey, but he has carefully shied away from NATO.
Caught up in one domestic crisis after another in a nation historically hobbled by poverty, Tito tempered his doctrinaire Marxism with pragmatism. Explained one official: "If it works, it's socialism, if it doesn't, we throw it out." "What they have in Russia is not Communism at all," pontificated Tito. "The great Lenin would turn in his grave ..." Result: the Yugoslav standard of living, though lower than that of any other country in Europe outside the Iron Curtain, is higher than that of any country inside it. His Communism and his cops are not popular, but his defiance of Russia is.
Tito and his party still run a monolithic state; he is clearly the ruthless boss. The same men sit as the Federal Council and as the party's Central Committee. In fact, confessed one, the only noticeable difference is that when they sit as a party committee, they call Tito "Old One," and are served coffee and candies; when they sit as the government, they call Tito "Mr. President," and get coffee but no candy.
The Gay Divorce. After the first painful moments of separation, Tito began to enjoy his state of Kremlin outlawry and his gay life as the world's most eligible political bachelor. He has been courted by the West, wooed by the East, consulted by the neutralists. The peasant's son has been wined by queens, dined by prime ministers, taken tiger-hunting by a maharaja. His uniforms have grown gaudier and bigger over the paunch, his laugh more easy. Anthony Eden, Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson have called on him. He has called on Queen Elizabeth, presented a keg of slivovitz to Winston Churchill. He has exchanged toasts with the Queen of Greece, been feted at the Dolmabaghche palace in Ankara, which he had last visited as an agent of international Communism traveling with a forged passport. He has traveled to India to see Nehru, to Burma to confer with U Nu; he has talked with Egypt's Nasser aboard a yacht.
When, after Stalin's death, even Moscow began to make friendly grunts in his direction, Tito complacently answered: "Russia smiled on us, but they will not blind us with the smiles. I personally can never believe 100% in the Soviet Union." As the Russians slacked off their invective and talked of resuming relations, Tito told Western newsmen: "We want normal relations but, naturally, there need not be friendly relations."