Jugoslavia Under Pressure

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26262, 6 November 1950, Page 6

Jugoslavia Under Pressure

Marshal Tito’s warning to the Cominform countries that continued frontier violations will compel Jugoslavia to protest to the United Nations is a reminder that the former Russian satellite is desperately hard-pressed both from without and from within. The frontier violations of which Marshal Tito has complained have been persistent and frequent for many months now; and foreign observers who have recently visited the country say the Jugoslavs are convinced it is only a matter of time before their country is attacked. Hungary, Rumania. Bulgaria, and Albania are all building up their military strength, a considerable part of which is deployed along the frontiers with Jugoslavia. The border country has been described as “ a dangerous no-man’s land ”, In which exchanges of shots are an almost every-day occurrence. Saboteurs and spies trained in the Cominform “ schools ” are constantly being pushed across the frontiers. The Jugoslavs are bombarded incessantly with propaganda from Radio Moscow, Radio Budapest, and Radio Sofia which “surpasses com- “ prehension by the Western mind ”, as one correspondent put it. The same writer (M. S. Handler, of the “New York Times”) said that except for purely formal diplomatic relations, the Soviet Government and its satellites “ have com- “ pletely isolated and quarantined “Jugoslavia ”, This external pressure and intimidation have not shaken the loyalty of the Jugoslav! to the Tito

rsfcime, which, for all its differences with its former Communist allies, is still the Government of a one-party police State. Marshal Tito may, indeed, have good grounds for saying that his country would already have been attacked by its neighbours, incited by Moscow, but for the fact that they could not be sure of the internal support necessary for the usual kind of Communist coup. But a very much graver danger threatens Jugoslavia from within. The country is now in the grip of the worst economic crisis since the war. The autumn drought of the last few months has been largely blamed; but the truth is that the Jugoslav economy was heading for collapse long before the drought came. The country has been completely cut off from its traditional trading area in eastern Europe; and little progress has been made in the attempts to open up commercial relations with the West. Jugoslavia’s staple industries—agriculture, non-ferrous minerals, and timber—are all running into serious difficulties, partly because of inefficient management, and partly because of inability to obtain capital equipment and replacement machinery. Even before the drought, food prices had doubled since 1949; and the recent decline in the standard of living must have been nothing less than disastrous. Even with the . severe rationing which the Government imposed recently to conserve food supplies, it is estimated that the country will face starvation in February—unless it can obtain outside help on a very large scale indeed. The United States, it now appears, has undertaken this new and heavy commitment—as the Secretary of State, Mr Acheson, suggested recently that it would. Marshal Tito is reported to have said that America will supply wheat, fats, tinned food, and other •foodstuffs; and Jugoslavia will obtain sufficient credits to buy “ everything necessary to relieve “ her needs, especially in those dis- “ tricts which had suffered heavily “ from drought." It will be a big task to bring relief to a nation of 14,000,060 people. It is one that the Western nations might well have attempted on humanitarian grounds alone; but these reasons are heavily reinforced by political and international considerations.

The mere survival of Tito’s regime (wrote Stewart Alsop recently in the New York "Herald Tribune”] is not enough. It is in the vital American interest not only that Tito should survive, but that he should succeed, St least by comparison with the Soviet satellite States, and that he should be strong. An independent Communist regime, hostile to the Kremlin, working with the West, which was strong, and which gave its people a higher standard of living than the Spviet satellites, could have a shattering effect on the whole structure of Soviet power, in Asia as well as in Europe.

It will not be easy to help Tito to survive, let alone to succeed. Since the break with the Coininform, he has had 85,000,000 dollars in loans from the United States; and these loans have done little more than slow down the progressive deterioration of the Jugoslav economy. And unless the decline can be halted and reversed, the enemies of Jugoslavia may soon secure from a depressed and disillusioned population that measure of internal support which they are seeking. It is indispensable to the Communist technique of indirect aggression.