Break

The myth of unshakable Communist loyalty got a severe shaking this week in Yugoslavia. Power-hungry Marshal Tito was in serious trouble with Moscow.

The announcement was made by Prague's Communist Rude Pravo, which printed a communique from the Cominform. With Moscow's tough, party purge-master Andrei Zhdanov in charge, the Cominform had recently held a meeting "somewhere in Rumania."

The Cominform communique charged Tito and three of his Communist ministers with the deadly sins of "nationalism" and "Trotzkyism." The offending ministers specifically named were Vice Premier Edvard Kardelj, Minister for Montenegro Milovan Djilas and Interior (police) Minister Alexander Rankovic.

The real trouble seemed to be that Tito & Co. had been guilty of not always following the line from Moscow. Said the communique: "The Cominform finds that the leadership of Yugoslav Communists creates a hateful policy in relation to Soviet Russia and the All-Communist Union of Bolsheviks . . . They identify the policy of Soviet Russia with that of imperialist [Western] powers and they treat Soviet Russia in the same manner as they treat the bourgeois states . . . The Cominform condemns these anti-Soviet conceptions."

And what was even worse, Tito's secret police had been pushing Soviet representatives in Belgrade around.

The Cominform denunciation was timed to precede a congress of Yugoslavia's Communist Party, called for July 21. It was their duty to confront their leaders with Moscow's charges.

Tito might save himself by recanting and promising to be a good boy henceforth. Otherwise Yugoslav Communists had stern Cominform instructions to "change the Communist leaders in Yugoslavia." For Communists of Tito's position, such changes usually meant exile in haste, prison, or a firing squad.

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