Two-Faced Tito

The face that Yugoslavia's Communist Boss Tito turned toward his erstwhile big brothers in the Kremlin was beaming more amiably. For a month or more, Yugoslav relations with the Soviet bloc had apparently been growing warmer--warmer than at any time since Tito broke with the Cominform nearly five years ago. The Yugoslav charge d'affaires in Moscow had been personally received by Foreign Minister Molotov, an unheard-of courtesy. Moscow was sending an envoy with the rank of minister to Belgrade, and an exchange of ambassadors was rumored. Criticism of Yugoslavia in the Russian press had almost disappeared. The Belgrade spokesmen, in turn, had been saying that they wanted to "regularize" relations with the Soviet Union.

In a speech last week (on the eleventh anniversary of the Yugoslav air force), Marshal Tito repeated that better relations with Moscow were desirable. Then, as if to reassure the Western powers that he was not going to collapse in Moscow's arms, he heaped praise on the U.S., Britain and even France for help to his country during the war, and angrily denied that any love fest with the Cominform Communists was in sight. "On the frontier still," he said, "their rifles are shooting our guards. Their press is slandering us. If the U.S.S.R. has softened its propaganda, that is not enough for our country to change its attitude . . . Any changes must be demonstrated by deeds, not words." And what were Tito's own reassurances to the West? Also words.

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