COMMUNISTS: The Last Straw?

Said the democratic Paris paper L’Aube last week: “If this Cominform meeting had been held two years ago it would have been attended by men like Tito, Rostov, Gomulka, Rajk and Markos, men who have now been shot, imprisoned, threatened or called ‘dissident.’ ”

These men—and the possibility that others would join their ranks—were among the reasons why a new meeting of the Cominform was held, “somewhere in Hungary,” in the latter part of November. (French diplomatic sources spotted it at the resort of Galyateto, in the Matra mountains.) “Titoism” was spreading. One of the most exciting rumors current in Europe was that there might soon be a major addition to the list of dissidents: Rumania’s Amazonian Ana Pauker, announced the Rome radio, was not at the meeting and was reported to be in difficulties with Moscow.

It was the Cominform’s third meeting. The first, in September 1947, exhorted world Communism to fight the Marshall Plan; the second, in June 1948, disclosed that Tito was a Titoist. From 1949’s meeting emerged a call for the “active fight of the revolutionary elements inside of the Yugoslav Communist Party as well as outside.” This was taken to mean a campaign to break Tito by all means short of formal war. Mikhail Suslov, the highest Soviet official to attend (he is a member of the Orgburo, next echelon below the Politburo), was reported by returning Cominform delegates to have stated that the Red army itself would never attack Yugoslavia.

The Cominform sent out another new message: all Communists should help set up forthwith a sweeping united front for “peace,” cooperating with nearly all elements of the people, “regardless of politics.”* A significant overtone gave a clue to what most worried the Cominform in the West: “Special attention should be given to the masses of Catholic workers and their organizations, bearing in mind that religious convictions do not constitute a bar to the unity of workers, especially when such unity is required to save peace.”

The Cominform issued its statement on the sixth anniversary of the founding of Tito’s regime. In Belgrade that day, Tito and his lieutenants celebrated gaily and the last straw of Soviet-Yugoslav friendship snapped: Joseph Stalin’s portraits, which had been publicly displayed throughout Yugoslavia even after the break with Moscow, disappeared.

*The word was spread thoroughly. In Manhattan this week members of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, meeting in a “peace rally,” were advised to join “Parents-Teachers associations, the Elks, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and church groups” to “work for peace.”