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Success & Failure. What had the Russians achieved on their pilgrimage of penance? They laid before the world, hard on the heels of the Austrian settlement and at no basic expense to themselves, a continuing impression of panting for "peaceful coexistence." Before long they will doubtless be demanding that the West match this with concessions of its own.
But the Russians failed miserably in their biggest objective—the hope of luring the Yugoslav Communists back under Kremlin discipline. The Yugoslavs were insulted to be treated like erring Marxists instead of as a sovereign nation. In the final communiqué, the Russians meekly accepted a clause stating: "Questions of internal organization, or difference in social systems, and of different forms of socialist development, are solely the concern of the individual countries," while the Yugoslavs promised only to "facilitate the exchange of socialist experience."
Tito got a Russian promise to "normalize" trade, repatriate Yugoslav nationals, and to negotiate some settlement for goods not paid for when relations were broken off in 1948. In return, Tito endorsed a U.N. seat for Red China and its "legitimate rights . . . with regard to Formosa"; the "prohibition" of atomic weapons, without mention of controls; a vague endorsement of "a system of collective security in Europe based on a treaty."
But Tito had flatly refused either to make ideological peace with Moscow or to align himself with the Soviet bloc against the West. Instead, he insisted on a clause, a favorite of his ever since his visit to Nehru last winter, deploring the "policy of military blocs" in general. For the Russians, this had the negative value of ensuring that Tito, who a year ago was flirting with the idea of a link with NATO, would at least remain outside the Western defenses.
Two Roads. The Kremlin's admission that there could be two kinds of Communists might be regarded as a simple recognition of a new fact of life: the rise of Communist China has already posed for the Kremlin the problem of a Communist country too strong to be forced into the status of a satellite. But in Communism's hothouse ideology, such simple adjustments can have shattering effects. Concluded Le Figaro's Raymond Aron, the Walter Lippmann of France: "By giving his blessing to the heretical thesis of Titoism—equal rights among Communist nations, plurality of roads toward socialism —perhaps Khrushchev has set in motion the mechanism of a time bomb, which one day will destroy the unity between the Mother Church of Communism and its empire."
For the West, Belgrade had provided the best opportunity yet to gauge the caliber of the men who now run Russia. It was a surprising sight. Only Mikoyan, quiet, confident and competent, looks the part of the doctrinaire Communist intellectual—the kind who might be good at chess. After looking the visiting delegation over, some observers concluded that there really must be a collective leadership in Russia, carefully balanced among men anxious to hang on to a good thing: the top leadership could not be as bad as Khrushchev and Bulganin made it look.