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Just what was exercising the Communists? Without answering this question, Belgrade officials appeared certain of one thing: whatever happened at Yalta, Tito went expecting to come out of it looking better, tougher and more powerful than ever—otherwise he would not have gone. They also seemed sure that Tito was not going to toss away blithely the position he had won for himself as a neutral, a broker and/or profiteer between East and West. Awaiting President Eisenhower's approval this month is an offer of U.S. aid which will give Yugoslavia much-needed surplus U.S. wheat and military supplies, including scores of jet planes. If Tito expected this deal to go through after the spectacle of his urgent flight into the innermost councils of Communism, he certainly had to expect the trip to produce something that would not jeopardize his position with the U.S. Interestingly enough, Belgrade Communists talked as if this would indeed be the outcome and the U.S. President would feel inclined to go through with the aid.
Something to Swallow. In a cryptic aside to one of his top aides a few weeks ago Tito said: "The Russians are getting difficult again. This time we've got to swallow it." Western observers, to whom the remark leaked, guessed what Tito was talking about: a few carping lines in Moscow's Pravda drawing attention to the fact that trials are still being held for repatriated pro-Stalin Yugoslavs, hundreds of whom Tito is said to have jailed. A later report that cropped up in Warsaw—that the Soviet Central Committee was circulating a letter describing Tito as no Marxist-Leninist, but one of those hated leftist Social Democrats*—seemed to confirm a growing rift between Yugoslav and Soviet Communists.
It was not difficult for observers to trace the anti-Yugoslav cracks to their source: a group of old-line Stalinists, including ex-Foreign Minister Molotov and ex-Premier Malenkov (both pushed out of power by Khrushchev) and powerful, steely-eyed Presidium Member Mikhail Suslov; these three apparently control one or more of the many secretariats or collegia of the Central Committee, and are in a position to plug their own line.
This line is that Stalin was fundamentally right in keeping the satellite and foreign parties completely subservient to Moscow's will, and that any relaxation of this attitude, as happened in Poland, means big trouble and may mean final disintegration of the Soviet empire. In opposition to this view stands First Party Secretary Khrushchev, backed by Presidium Member Mikoyan and other top anti-Stalinists, who believe that a certain autonomy must be given the satellite and foreign parties—and have been giving it. .Khrushchev's spectacular destalinization program launched last February gave him a dramatic lead over the old-line Stalin ists, but since then the Poznan riots (see box) and Soviet army leaders' nervousness about losing grip in the satellites are reckoned to have set him back.