The Soviet Union's policy has definitely changed, declared Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito last week, and as a result, he said, international tension has eased. "If anyone is competent to recognize a trap, it is we," said Communism's No. 11 heretic, who is, of course, still a Communist. "Because of our experience, we can distinguish between what is a maneuver and what is a positive step," he added. To Tito, the Russian change is more than a maneuver.
No one else last week was prepared to go so far. But there were plenty of others who accepted the appearance of change, and were eager to test its reality. "I have cherished the hope that there is a new outlook in Russia," Sir Winston Churchill told the Tory conference only last month, "a new hope of peaceful coexistence with the Russian nation, and it is our duty, patiently and daringly, to make sure whether there is such a change or not."
Rightly suspicious of any Communist change of heart, Americans have perhaps been too quick to dismiss the Communist change of face. In minimizing each conciliatory Communist gesture, the U.S. runs the risk of having underestimated their cumulative effect. Put together, the Communist deeds and promises make quite a list.
Footwear & Philosophers. At home Russia's new masters have made specific and grandiose promises of more consumer goods, including TV sets and "elegant footwear." The Stalin auto works, which once produced nothing but the huge limousines that Stalin favored, has been converted to the manufacture of plebian bicycles. The Kremlin itself, which Stalin had made a symbol of dark terror, has been flung open to tourists and its rooms made over for children's celebrations and public meetings. The members of the junta have taken to bounding around the country like so many politicians running for office: Malenkov may suddenly appear in a disaster-stricken town, Khrushchev may show up in Siberia.
Soviet "cultural" ambassadors, once cloistered at home, are now sent abroad in clusters. In recent months Russia has sent cancer specialists to Brazil, orientalists to Britain, horticulturists and oceanographers to Paris, demographers and geophysicists to Rome, mathematicians and chemists to Amsterdam, philosophers to Switzerland, ophthalmologists to Canada, philatelists to India. Last week two Soviet scientists suddenly appeared in Manhattan for the closing days of Columbia University's Bicentennial.
Soviet chess teams have competed in Amsterdam and Argentina, Soviet basketball teams in Egypt and Syria, Soviet crews in The Hague and on the Thames. Soviet trackmen and robust Soviet women athletes performed before packed stands at London's White City Stadium and overwhelmed Britain's best.