When Marshal Tito flew into the Crimea to take a brief "vacation" at Russia's First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's sunny Yalta villa, he did not expect to meet so many old comrades. The emphasis of the eight-day talk in Nikita's parlor and in Yalta's woods and hills was on "comradeship" among the European Communist Parties. A thoughtful Tito, as he flew back to Belgrade one day last week, must have been brooding deeply about how comradely an independent Yugoslav Communist could afford to be. It was not difficult to understand why.
Black Pedro. With the beaming Khrushchev at his elbow, Tito had met the black-browed Pedro, whom Khrushchev introduced, and of course the prestigious Serov. Tito certainly remembered them. They had all been working for Stalin during the Spanish civil war 20 years before. That was when Tito was a Comintern agent traveling under the name of Walter, and Pedro and Serov were top Russian secret police operators. In that office, Serov, Pedro and Walter (and other Communist notables, including France's Andre Marty and Italy's Palmiro Togliatti) shared a common assignment: the liquidation of all left elements in the Spanish Republican forces that were not completely subservient to Stalin.
In World War II, after the spectacular failure in Spain, Serov, Pedro, Walter & Co. had remained faithful Stalinists, though their ways parted. Tito in Yugoslavia organized a Communist-controlled partisan army; Serov back in Russia rounded out his NKVD career as the liquidator of minority nationalities, numbering some millions of people who saw the war as a chance to throw off the Soviet yoke; Pedro became a big wheel in Moscow's Free Germany Committee, and later, under the name of Erno Gero, Stalin's agent in Hungary. When Tito, protected by his 33-division Yugoslav army, broke with Stalin in 1948, it was Erno Gero, Ivan Serov and a whole raft of equally ruthless, scheming and experienced Communist operators who organized the Cominform campaign of vilification and intrigue aimed at destroying him.
Meeting these comrade antagonists again last week, matching their friendly handshakes, Tito had reason to guess that their comradely smiles were inspired by the fact that, after a temporary setback, the old Stalin faithfuls of Soviet Communism were again wielding influence.