At Batajnica military airfield near Belgrade early one morning last week occurred one of the strangest and least expected departures in recent political history. Like twins, in grey suits, trench coats and snap-brim hats, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito and Russia's Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev stepped smartly into a Russian Il-14. The plane took off without even any warm-up of its two engines. The destination was Yalta, the resort on Russia's Black Sea coast where the Allied leaders held their momentous war conference in 1945.
For four hours the departure was kept secret, then a brief bulletin issued by the Tanjug agency broke the news to a startled Yugoslavia and a wondering world. Eight days earlier Khrushchev had flown just as suddenly into Belgrade, under the thin pretense of taking a vacation (TIME, Oct. 1), and had remained in close conclave with Tito. The flight to Yalta provoked wide and wild speculation in the world's capitals. Western diplomats, normally an "I told you so" lot, frankly confessed bafflement. None offered a better guess as to its cause than that of one Belgrader: "Something serious is about to happen in the Communist world."
A Dual Hint. There were clues, however, as to the nature, if not the substance, of the surprise party in Yalta. In Tito's party was his handsome wife Jovanka and his burly, iron-jawed Police Boss Alexander Rankovic, a dual hint that Tito had full confidence in his personal safety. No member of the Yugoslav government or foreign office went along, a fact which underlined the significance of the fourth member of the party: mild-mannered, tough-cored Djuro Pucar, a Serbian and longtime Communist who was active in Tito's World War II partisan movement, and is now one of the Yugoslav dictator's closest advisers on Communist party and ideological matters.
Meanwhile Radio Moscow reported the presence at Yalta of Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Soviet Security Boss Ivan Serov. Another satellite visitor was Hun garian Communist Erno Gero, the man who recently replaced Tito's archenemy
Matyas Rakosi as boss of the Hungarian party. The cast of characters pointed to an urgent top-level conference on Communist Party affairs, an ideological communion at Yalta. The inclusion of ex-Heretic Tito suggested that he was being treated not as an outsider, but an insider in dealing with serious matters of Communist politics and dogma.