YUGOSLAVIA: Tito, in Toto

Two touring U.S. Congressmen stopped off at Belgrade for a chat with chesty Marshal Josip Broz—Tito, Yugoslavia’s Kremlin-backed strong man. Was it true, asked Republicans Karl Mundt and Frances Bolton, that Dr. Ivan Subasich had quit his job? Why yes, said the Marshal, adding that he hoped he could talk the handsome Foreign Minister out of leaving.

Same day, Tito announced Dr. Subasich’s resignation. Subasich had complained in effect that their seven-month-old coalition had turned into a dictatorship, that the Nov. 11 elections would be a farcical Communist coup. Now Tito bluntly accused him of quitting to provide a “motive for foreign intervention.”

Dr. Subasich had in fact lost all but his title a month ago. The Big Five Foreign Ministers had expected him in London to present Yugoslavia’s territorial demands. Black-haired, bespectacled Vice Premier Edvard Kardelj, 35, showed up instead. The Foreign Minister, it was explained, had suffered a stroke and was home abed. He had—a stroke of a kind. And he was at home—under house arrest.

Out with Dr. Subasich last week went Juraj Sutej, Minister without Portfolio. Since 69-year-old Vice Premier Milan Grol had already quit, the regime was now thoroughly dominated by Tito’s men who had swallowed the exile government.

Yugoslavia looked more than ever like a police state. Belgrade street scenes were like cutbacks to old newsreels of the rise of Naziism. Booted feet tramped out their brazen songs. OZNA, the Communist secret police, was supervising the election campaign. Tito’s big army showed no inclination to demobilize.

Yet Tito had a measure of popular support, largely in rural areas and among Yugoslav youth. Unlike an unalloyed police state, the regime not only permitted but deviously encouraged a certain opposition. Milan Grol’s critical new weekly, Demokratija, allotted newsprint despite the paper shortage, was a sellout. Said he: “Now I have both the people I want and those I don’t want. Every malcontent in Yugoslavia is on my side.” The result perhaps explained why Grol was allowed to operate.