The people of our two countries stand on the same side of the barricade.
—Leonid Brezhnev in Belgrade
To Yugoslavs, that declaration by Soviet Party Leader Brezhnev last week sounded oddly contrived and possibly a bit ominous. For nearly a quarter of a century the Yugoslavs more often than not have stood on the other side of the barricade, anxiously eyeing their big Communist neighbor whose tutelage they have rejected since 1948. Thus last week as Brezhnev arrived in Belgrade for a three-day visit, the Yugoslavs were anxious to get a firsthand impression of his attitude and intentions toward their country. They knew that their nonaligned status and recent flirtations with China were major irritants to the Russians.
For the past several months, reports TIME's David Tinnin from Belgrade, the Yugoslavs have been disturbed that Moscow seemed to be getting away with a double game. In Western Europe the Soviet Union has been establishing better relations by negotiating the Berlin agreement, while in Eastern Europe the Soviets have carried on a war of nerves in some respects similar to the campaign that preceded the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Thaws and Freezes. In addition to putting blatant pressures on Rumania, the Soviets have been demanding from Yugoslavia overflight rights for their warplanes and bunkering privileges for Russian warships at Yugoslavia's Adriatic ports. In an accompanying orchestration of political threats, Soviet officials privately warned that Yugoslavia's regional rivalries and its decentralization program were endangering the primacy of Communism in the country.
That sounded like a pretext for Soviet intervention under the Brezhnev doctrine, which proclaims that the Soviet Union has the right to protect Communism in other countries by whatever means necessary.
Recently, however, the Soviet approach has appeared to undergo a change—in keeping with a history of alternate thaws and freezes in the Kremlin's attitude to Yugoslavia. Brezhnev's visit to Belgrade was suggested by the Russians as a conciliatory gesture.
As soon as Brezhnev stepped from his gleaming Ilyushin Il-62 jetliner at Belgrade airport, he began to make it clear that Russia would gladly relax its pressures on Yugoslavia—for a price. That price: at least a partial return of Yugoslavia to the Soviet camp. While President Josip Broz Tito stood unsmiling at his side at the airport, Brezhnev seemed to brush aside Yugoslavia's nonaligned status by referring to the country as a member of the Communist bloc. Later, at a banquet in the handsome marble federal reception hall, Brezhnev toasted the two countries as being united "through common class interest, through the solidarity of ultimate goals."