Report On Yugoslavia: A Search for Laughter

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Minister, is a 40-year-old former schoolteacher from Ljubljana, in Slovenia. He joined the party in 1928, went to Russia in 1933 and taught the history of the Comintern at Sverdlovsk University. When he talks, his face is completely deadpan. It is hard to believe that he could regard a normal human emotion as anything but a degrading weakness. With his scholarly eyeglasses, small stature and sober, meticulous clothes, Kardelj is a patent imitation of Molotov, the iron functionary. Kardelj had his toes broken in prison by the police of the late King Alexander, and he still walks awkwardly.

Aleksandar ("Marko") Rankovic, Minister of the Interior, is of a different (and repulsive) type. Born in the Posavina 41 years ago of Serb peasant stock, he started life as a tailor. He became a Communist when still in his teens. He looks a perfect police chief—burly and iron-jawed, with eyes as cold and muddy as the Danube River in winter. In 1939 he was in Moscow, taking lessons in police administration from Lavrenty Beria. Rankovic is the most intensely hated man in Yugoslavia.

Milovan Djilas, Minister Without Portfolio, is 38, a Montenegrin from Kolasin. His wife, Mitra-Mitrovic, is a Communist intellectual and a minister in the cabinet of the Serbian Republic. Djilas, a graduate from Belgrade University's faculty of law, is co-editor of the Communist daily, Borba. Today one of his functions is to direct "agitprop," the psychological warfare branch of the Yugoslav government. A forceful, brilliant writer and speaker, Djilas, with his shock of black hair and lively eyes, is a more attractive personality than the other two members of the triumvirate.

This trio would probably succeed Tito in a joint capacity if the marshal were to die or be assassinated. Probably no one of them has the personality to succeed Tito alone—Kardelj is too colorless, Djilas too impetuous, and Rankovic too well hated.

Splitting the Atom

It is a year and a half since Tito & Co. broke with the Kremlin. Behind the shrill vilification and foggy dialectics of party doctrinaires loomed a basic power question: Could there be equality between Communist states, or must a Communist state outside Russia be a Soviet satellite? Tito said it need not, and he has proved it — so far.

This has led a lot of people to assume that Tito has invented some new and nicer kind of Communism — Nationalist Communism. But Tito's nationalism is not new to Communism. The nationalism which led him to refuse Soviet domination is the same thing as the nationalism which led Russia to seek that domination.

Tito's line is that he differs radically from Stalin because he believes in the equality of Communist states, whereas Stalin believes that a Communist state can be genuine only if dominated by Russia. The truth is that Tito would probably not hesitate to make satellites of Albania and Bulgaria, if he could apply superior power against them. What Tito has done is split the political atom — he has separated Communism and Soviet imperialism. But that does not mean that Soviet imperialists are not also Communists, nor that Yugoslav Communists are not also imperialists.

Tito could gain great popularity in his own country and approval from the oppressed peoples of other Communist states by saying: "I broke with the Russians because