Defying Goliath

In the ancient Slovenian capital of Ljubljana one morning last week, a bronzed, imperious figure strode to the lectern of the city's fair pavilion and energetically joined in the applause for himself. Then, as the 1,806 delegates to the Seventh Congress of the Yugoslav League of Communists began to chant his name. Marshal Josip Broz Tito picked up the gauge which had been thrown at his feet by Nikita Khrushchev (TIME, April 28).

"Certain comrades." said Tito, had cast suspicion on the Socialist character of Yugoslavia. "There is talk that a tactical attitude should be taken toward Yugoslavia, that she should be re-educated and again brought into camp ... It would be very useful if these comrades would finally abandon such absurd tendencies."

Next day Yugoslavia's burly Vice Premier Aleksander Rankovic took up where Tito had left off. Said he: "We are again hearing voices to the effect that we Yugoslavs are 'sitting on two seats,' that we are bowing and scraping before the imperialists in order to get some of their 'tainted goods.' How absurd that is! If we had such flexible spines, they would have bent in 1948 under the powerful pressure of the great propaganda machine turned on them by several countries." In an access of enthusiasm, the congress delegates broke into a song that rates high on the Belgrade Hit Parade. "The more lies, the more slanders," they sang, "the dearer Tito is to us."

A few minutes later, halfway through his 90-minute speech. Aleksander Rankovic called for a recess. Dourly, the Soviet-bloc observers at the congress strode out of the pavilion in order of rank--first the Russians, then the Chinese Reds, then the Eastern Europeans, with Rumania bringing up the rear (they always leave or arrive in that order). When the recess ended, the two front rows of seats reserved for foreign Communist observers were empty --save for Poland's Ambassador to Belgrade, rotund little Henryk Grochulski.

A Question of Heresy. The walkout at Ljubljana marked the worst crisis in relations between Russia and Yugoslavia since Khrushchev's crow-eating visit to Belgrade in 1955 to apologize for Stalin's 1948 expulsion of Yugoslavia from "the camp of Socialism." This time Khrushchev himself was wroth, because the draft program which Tito and his colleagues prepared for their party congress blamed

Russia as well as the U.S. for world tensions, even implied that Russia was guilty of "exploiting" her Communist allies. Even after Tito humbly changed his tune to something close to the Soviet line that all the world's troubles are caused by Western "imperialists," Khrushchev responded with what in the Communist world is a crushing insult--he refused to send a Russian delegation, only an observer, to the Yugoslav congress. Every other Soviet-bloc nation did likewise.

A day after their walkout, the observers all returned to their seats, having read in advance the speech to be delivered by scholarly Edvard Kardelj, Tito's chief theoretician. To their dismay, Kardelj added some savage ad libs: "We cannot recognize anybody's right to decide what in our program is in the spirit of Marxism and what is not . . . We do not need any certificates on our Marxism-Leninism." Only the Pole joined in the applause. And Yugoslav trade union boss General Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo minced no words when asked who was interfering in Yugoslav affairs. "Who?" demanded General Vukmanovic-Tempo. "Khrushchev--Nikita Sergeevich--that's who."

Out of Camp. For all the defiant oratory, the spectacle of the Yugoslav David facing down the Soviet Goliath no longer stirred the West as it had in 1948. This time Western observers were less likely to overlook the fact that in his last speech to the congress, Tito was careful to hold out an olive branch to Moscow: "We shall in future continue to try not to give any cause to anybody to reproach us with reason that we are weakening the international workers' movement."

By its in-again, out-again flirtation with

Russia since 1955. Yugoslavia had all but forfeited the grudging admiration it had once enjoyed in the West, and Yugoslav Foreign Minister Koca Popovic was stating simple truth when he declared last week: "We have no place in either of the existing international camps." The question was, was he bragging or complaining?

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