THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1948. "DEAR ENEMY"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26917, 1 November 1948, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1948. "DEAR ENEMY"

Publication in the English press of the correspondence between the Soviet Government and Marshal Tito, which preceded the Cominform’s expulsion and denunciation of the Yugoslav leader, is somewhat dilatory. The text of these edifying epistles has been available for some months —ever since, in fact, Mr Vyshinsky attended the Danube conference in August and printed copies of letters from Moscow to Tito were widely distributed in Belgrade, and Tito responded by making public his side of the correspondence. It remains desirable that the letters, even if they are no longer freshly written, should have the widest circulation, especially perhaps among Communists and fellow travellers in the free countries. Anti-Communists — those who have formulated reasons for their repugnance to the Moscow doctrine—will not find the correspondence surprising, for they will not need to be informed that Moscow recognises only one true brand of Communism for the world, and that is an extending system of Kremlin-controlled NKVD-policed satellites of Russia thi'oughout the world. But for those who hold to the naive belief • that the Kremlin would welcome, or even tolerate, sister dictatorships on the Stalinist model, operated by the victors in national revolutions, these letters should be illuminating indeed. For the crime of Marshal Tito in the eyes of the men of Moscow is that he believes Yugoslavia should be an internally-governed Communist dictatorship—that, in short, the system which, with So.viet assistance, he has imposed on Yugoslavia should be a nationalist system. These curious letters illustrate, through their earnest, tortuous terms, why Tito has been disowned. It is seen, for example, that Tito was tired of “ military advisers ” and “ experts ” irork Moscow, who had to be, paid, as he complains plaintively, “three times higher than the wages of our Cabinet Ministers,” and from whom he was withholding information and authority. He was also establishing his Government as superior to the Party. “ The Party cadres,” a letter from the Central Committee, AllUnion Communist Party (which in this correspondence is the voice of Stalin), charges, “ are under the control of the Minister of State Security. According to the . theory of Marxism, the Party should control all State organs while “the Yugoslav Communist Party is being put to sleep by rotten opportunistic theories of peaceful absorption of capitalist elements.” From the letters the salient facts emerge, almost stealthily, with Tito,, secure enough in his bailiwick, sustained by his own secret police, asserting his fealty to his erstwhile masters in the Kremlin—“ Love towards the U.S.S.R. did not come of itself. It was stubbornly induced into the masses ... by

the present leaders of the New Yugoslavia ” —while at the same time admitting the terrible truth which makes him a traitor to Communism: “Even though we love the U.S.S.R. we cannot love our own country less. . . .” This is the core of the matter. Tito has made his dictatorship in Yugoslavia a national dictatorship, not one dominated and controlled by the Stalin dictatorship, The schism is not essentially Hue to his refusal to, introduce collectivisation of the land, nor is his the only Balkan State to refuse to do ,so; but he has resolutely and ruthlessly gathered the power of the State into his own individual grasp. He has become, in fact, his own little Stalin, and the big Stalin over the border cannot tolerate it. For this reason the Cominform has exhorted the Party in Yugoslavia to “ raise from below a new internationalist leadership for this reason the Cominform leader in Trieste, Vidali, has declared that the fight against Tito “will be continued to the end.” Yugoslavia represents a horrible flaw in the pattern of Communism that is spread across half Europe,, for Yugoslavia has placed nationalism above Moscow, has dared to put country first. The lesson is one for would-be Communists everywhere to contemplate. It means that there is, for Communists, one god only, and his name is Stalin; one world State, and- that the Soviet State. They delude themselves if they think that they can adapt the policies of the Cominform to suit national characteristics. Any who think that some Communist cloudcuckooland State could be set up anywhere—for instance, in New Zealand—with Stalin’s blessing, are sadly deluded. In the world that the Kremlin envisages there can be only one law and one dictator. The Stalin-Tito break has, as its most useful purpose, this forcible demonstration of what Communism means. It illustrates, too, where Communism must fail, since no country contains a majority of traitors.