RUSSIA SCORES ONE ON COMRADE TITO

THE friendly hug of the Russian bear almost squeezed the breath of independence out of Yugoslav President Tito last week.

At Moscow's Dynamo Stadium, First Party Secretary Khrushchev, straw hat perched precariously on his egg-bald pate, volubly told a crowd of 75,000 that Western friendship for Yugoslavia had been based only on 1) the Soviet Union's conflict with Yugoslavia and 2) the hope that Yugoslavia would return to capitalism. Khrushchev's speech, underlining hostility to the West and stressing the unity of the "Socialist" camp, gave a sharper edge to Tito's prepared address. What Tito had to say, read in faltering Russian, tamely supported Soviet policy on the two Germanys (though Belgrade has not hitherto recognized the East German government), endorsed Soviet disarmament proposals (without guaranty for inspection) and approved Communist China's claims on Formosa.

PART OF THE FAMILY

At a lavish reception at the Sovetskaya Hotel, Tito took Western diplomats aside and justified his attitude by saying he was now "convinced that great changes have taken place in Russia." But when he complained that he had been misquoted in the U.S. press as saying that he and the Russians were going "arm in arm," U.S. Ambassador Charles Bohlen pointed out that that was exactly how he had been reported in Pravda. Tito looked a little taken aback. He had only wanted to say. he insisted, that he and the Russians had marched arm in arm in World War II.

Subtly but surely, the Russians were boxing him in. Bulganin had begun the boxing process early in the trip, when he said in Leningrad: "I'm sure our friendship will endure. Nothing and nobody can disturb these relations, and in the Soviet people and in the Yugoslav people there's sufficient force to chop off the hand of anyone who dares to try."

With toasts and banter, with groaning supper tables, the Russians had laid on the hospitality. In the streets the crowds had been generally curious to see Tito, and paid more attention to him than to Khrushchev at his side (after all, had not Tito, alone of all those present, successfully defied Stalin?). Tito, for his part, assured the crowds at Kiev: "We have abandoned all that was bad between us," and at the Black Sea resort of Sochi he cried: "I feel at home in the Soviet Union, because we are part of the same family, the family of Socialism." And in Moscow he said, "We never betrayed the cause for which we struggled under our Communist Party." Tito was doing his best to show, at one and the same time, his devotion to Communism and his independence. But the Russians were out to compromise him, and they did it in ways and at times when he could not easily respond. It was Marshal Georgy Zhukov who capped the Kremlin's efforts. In the marble St. Catherine Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace, Tito, in his marshal's powder-blue uniform, sat down with Bulganin and Khrushchev to sign the joint communiques.

After the round of handshaking and back-slapping that followed, Tito presented Marshal Zhukov with the Yugoslav Order of Freedom--the first non-Yugoslav ever so honored.

That gave Soldier Zhukov the chance to make a little set speech. Quick as a wink, but obviously not spontaneously, Zhukov said: "If a war is imposed on us we will together, shoulder to shoulder as in the last war, fight for the happiness of mankind." Zhukov caught Tito flatfooted: in Russian eyes, and, Russia hoped, in the eyes of the world, Yugoslavia was now being declared a Soviet military ally.

A Yugoslav press conference called immediately afterwards could not repair the damage. An hour later, boarding their cream-and-green diesel train, overwhelmed with Russian gifts (including a twin-engine Ilyushin plane, two race horses, a 65-machine tractor station .and the equipment for a 5,000-seat movie house), Yugoslav leaders could be heard muttering: "Unbelievable! . . . Very upsetting."

DIMINISHED INDEPENDENCE

At week's end it was clear that the Russians had got the best of Tito. They had flattered his ideological vanity by agreeing that "the roads and conditions of Socialist development are different in different countries," and had said how abhorrent was the idea of either side's "imposing one's own views" on the other. In short, unable to make Tito a satellite, they acknowledged his independence and put it to use. But they could not resist the opportunity of subtly diminishing his status as an independent, the better to embarrass his relations with the West.

Tito was obviously determined not to be lured back into a new Cominform like the one that expelled him in 1948, calling him Fascist, jackal and traitor. Future cooperation between Russian and Yugoslav parties, he said, would take place "not in the framework of a general organization but on the basis of bilateral cooperation." But in Article VII of the joint party communique, this cooperation was referred to as a "component part of all contacts with other Communist and workers' parties as well as with Socialist and other progressive movements in the world." It remains only for the Russians to get Poland and other satellites to join in endorsing this statement of aims, for the Russians to have set in motion a new kind of informal Socialist International, with Tito as the bellwether. The next play may well be an outbreak of phony Titoism in the satellites and in the two major Communist Parties on the outside (France and Italy).

NEW IDEA: "POLYCENTRISM"

Every time the Communists make a lurch in their line, they create a polysyllabic name for it, to make confusion seem a scientific transition. The latest word is "polycentrism," meaning that there can be several headquarters of Communist thought and leadership. The new polycentric line could best be seen at work in Italy. There a fortnight ago Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti, lamely trying to explain away the Khrushchev revelations to his disillusioned followers, cried that throughout the world Communist movement there is now "the necessity and desire for a steadily growing autonomy of judgment." That was Act I of the opera bouffe, and there were some who cheered. Last weekend, Act II was played. Stalin Peace Prizewinner Pietro Nenni, who heads the party-lining Red Socialists (75 seats in the Chamber of Deputies), seized upon Togliatti's desire for "growing autonomy" as a "new fact . . . which may give rise to important developments, if it is not dictated by temporary tactical considerations. It is clear that a Communism detached from Moscow, or a Communism without a Communist International, would no longer be the Communism which caused the split in the traditional Socialist movement 36 years ago."

THE COMMUNIST JEST

The new Communist approach ("a general rapprochement between Socialist and other progressive movements in the world," as the Soviet-Yugoslav communique called it) has clearly emerged. Polycentrism has a certain slick, seductive air that might fool a few people. But it is also a desperate response to a situation forced upon Moscow: the Kremlin would not lightly surrender its claims to be the one truth, the sole authority.

And what of Tito's role in the new direction? Before going to Moscow, he was the one Communist who could genuinely claim an independent status. Now that he had proclaimed himself "part of the same family, the family of Socialism," he was no longer the center of opposition but one of several permitted aberrations. He would now be confronted with the grinning faces of the Togliattis and Nennis saying in effect: "Yes, Brother Tito, you are independent. But so are we! So are we!" It was a characteristic Communist jest: clever, mirthless and devastating.

In the current issue of the U.S. quarterly Foreign Affairs, in an article prepared before he took the road to Moscow with Tito, Yugoslav Vice President Edvard Kardelj writes: "Friendship with the U.S. is an essential element of Yugoslavia's foreign policy . . . to strengthen peace, but also in the interest of safeguarding our independence and equality . . . regardless of whether [we] receive American aid or not." The willingness to forgo a handout was a new note from a land which had successfully played off both sides so long. The other fact was that Tito still looks to the U.S. to protect his "independence and equality." But now that Tito has proclaimed himself at home in the Soviet Union, it is up to him to prove to the U.S. that his independence is real and his friendship worth while.

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