This Way, Comrade Fly

Russia's proconsuls in the Balkans were doing a lot of serious commuting. Rumania's furiously fellow-traveling Premier Petru Groza, after stopovers in Belgrade and Budapest, went to Sofia, where Bulgarian Communist Premier Georgi Dimitrov received him with an old Stalinesque gesture (see cut) and a new-found sartorial nattiness. This week, Dimitrov himself journeyed to Belgrade, where he conferred with Communist Premier-Marshal Tito. Said Dimitrov on his arrival: Bulgaria and Yugoslavia are linked in brotherhood. A pact of "friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance" between the two countries was "contemplated in the near future."

These talks and travels were part of an obvious pattern in which Russia spun a web of trade and friendship treaties about her satellites, while the satellites spun a web of treaties among themselves. The purpose: quick consolidation of an Eastern bloc to counterbalance the West's slow-starting "Marshall approach."

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