CAUGHT BETWEEN THE BLOCS

EUROPE once again is built of blocs. They had never, of course, tumbled down quite so completely as many of the West's optimistic exponents of detente had supposed. Last week, as the U.S. and Soviet Foreign Ministers addressed the United Nations' General Assembly, each enjoined the other not to intrude on his country's sphere of influence. Secretary of State Dean Rusk stressed the U.S. resolve to protect West Germany and West Berlin from aggression. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko emphasized the Soviet Union's determination to retain its hold on Eastern Europe and warned that Russia would not allow any outsider "to snatch even one link" from the Socialist community of nations.

Even though it unmistakably evoked the old, unpleasant atmosphere of the cold war, such frank talk perhaps helped to clarify the new political realities in Europe. Certainly the edgy West Germans were measurably relieved by Rusk's reassurances. The situation in Central Europe cooled enough for the Austrians, who had been troubled by the Soviet troop build-up in neighboring Czechoslovakia, to go ahead with plans to demobilize 11,000 Austrian army draftees whose training period had been extended as a result of the Soviet-made crisis.

Shouting Match. The revival of the bloc system brought scant comfort to one country that is perilously caught both geographically and ideologically between the two blocs. It is Yugoslavia, whose President, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, not only was the first Eastern European ruler to achieve his independence from the Soviet overlordship but also served as an inspiration to Czechoslovak Party First Secretary Alexander Dubcek in his ill-starred search to find a measure of freedom within Communism. The recent Soviet press campaign against Tito ("lover of counter-revolution") and his country is almost as bitter as the one against West Germany. At a meeting last summer on his resort isle of Bnoni in the Adriatic, Tito got into a shouting match with Soviet Ambassador Ivan Benediktov. "Lies! Lies!" cried Tito, as the Soviet diplomat read a note from Moscow giving the Soviet version of events in Czechoslovakia. "You cannot talk that way," the Russian remonstrated. "Don't interrupt me!" shouted Tito.

A Soviet invasion is still considered unlikely by Western observers. Nonetheless, the Yugoslavs are preparing for the worst. Tito, fearing a Soviet-inspired attempt on his life, has taken special security precautions. Throughout the country, bomb shelters are being built. As an added touch of realism, Yugoslav airplanes drop smoke bombs on some cities during air-raid drills. Emulating the tactics of the Czechoslovak broadcasters, Yugoslav radio stations are setting up alternative facilities outside the cities so that they can keep the people informed in the event that the urban areas fall to invaders. The 300,000-man Yugoslav army, which is equipped with a mixture of U.S. and Soviet weaponry, is on full alert. Troops, who have orders to shoot if fired upon, are digging into defense positions all along the 800-mile border that the Yugoslavs share with Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.

The Yugoslav battle plan calls for the army simply to slow down an enemy advance for six or seven days. After that, the Yugoslavs will fall back on what they call "our own tradition" for dealing with the invaders. It is, of course, guerrilla warfare, an art in which Tito has few peers. During World War II, Tito's partisans tied down as many as 25 German divisions, succeeded in taking control of large parts of the country even before the advancing Red army marched in.

Ever since the Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia, Tito's old guerrilla system has been unobtrusively infused with new life. Groups of young men disappear from their villages for a few days into the mountains, where old partisans and army experts show them the location of arms caches, teach them how to use the weapons and instruct them in the use of radio transmitters. In addition, thousands of workers are being organized into irregular militia at their plants. All told, the Yugoslavs could probably put about one million men into their rugged, forbidding hills to harass any invader with guerrilla tactics.

Germinal Heresy. The Yugoslavs take pride in the fact that they survived Soviet pressures before. In 1948, after Tito resisted Russian designs to dictate his country's political and economic policies, the Soviets kicked Tito out of the world Communist movement. In an effort to discredit him at home, the Soviets unleashed vitriolic propaganda attacks against him. They sought to intimidate the Yugoslavs by instigating some 1,500 incidents along the country's eastern border. Stalin sent Tito a letter containing a threat that he has not forgotten. "We think Trotsky's political career is sufficiently instructive as a reminder," it read. The allusion, of course, was to the 1940 assassination of Stalin's old rival in Mexico by Soviet agents.

Despite the Soviet harassment, Tito and his people did not cave in. What is more, Tito refused to denounce his brand of Marxism. Instead, he boldly proclaimed the germinal heresy that plagues the Soviet Union to this day. It is that each country has the right to find its own way to socialism--a heresy that the Czechoslovaks took further in terms of granting personal and press freedom than Tito did. As a result, the Soviet leaders, though they came to a sort of modus Vivendi with Tito 13 years ago, rightfully point to him as the originator of the ideological troubles that have undermined their position as the sole interpreter of Communist truth and orthodoxy.

Already Hurt. There was some suspicion that Tito was overdramatizing the present Soviet threat for purely domestic reasons. A common enemy is about the only thing that will get Yugoslavia's five ethnic groups to stop their bickering, and for once, they are uncharacteristically quiet. Also, Tito used the emergency to put into uniform some of the student leaders who had been agitating for liberal reforms of Yugoslav society. Still, in the view of the Yugoslav officials, a certain amount of anxiety is justified.

As Belgrade diplomats see it, the Soviet leadership has embarked on a policy of subjugation of the independent-minded parties in Eastern Europe to Moscow's will--a sort of one-empire, one-creed idea. Rumania is the touch stone of Yugoslav fears. In the event that the Soviets succeed in holding maneuvers this fall in Rumania and permanently garrisoning troops there, the Yugoslavs worry that the Soviet leaders might then be tempted to strike at the home of heresy. Belgrade diplomats also feel that the Soviets covet Yugoslavia's Adriatic ports as places to repair and supply their growing Mediterranean fleet.

Whatever the outcome, Yugoslavia has already been hurt. For years, the country's economy, which is a successful mix of capitalism and Communism, has been growing at a 5% rate, bringing to Yugoslavs a wave of autos, TV sets and foreign luxury goods that are far more readily obtainable than in any other Communist nation. Tourism largely provided the funds for this upward surge. This year looked especially promising, as the inflow of foreign visitors to Yugoslavia rose 15% above 1967. But now, unnerved by Soviet threats, foreign tourists are cutting short their vacations. Others are staying away. A prolonged crisis atmosphere would seriously impair Yugoslavia's economic wellbeing. That was probably a byproduct of which the Soviets were happily aware.

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