Surprise Ending

A small band of Yugoslavs splashed grimly through the slush of Masaryk Street one morning last week to Belgrade's old Circuit Court Building. A waiting crowd of about 100 students set up a derisive howl: "Traitors! Bandits!" The two men in the lead, one a slight, wiry figure, the other a burly, tousled man, pretended not to hear. But at the doorway the small man turned to the taunters. "Kush!" cried Milovan Djilas, using the word Yugoslavs generally do to quiet howling dogs. Then Djilas, the deposed Vice President of Yugoslavia, and his companion, Vladimir Dedijer, friend and biographer of Marshal Tito, went inside to stand trial for daring to criticize Tito's Communist regime.

With unaccustomed haste in such a case, the regime had decided to dispose of the embarrassing family scandal before Marshal Tito got back from his grand tour of Asia. The trial was said to be public, but the 100 seats in the dingy old courtroom were parceled out to hand-picked Communists, to the defendants' wives, and the lawyers. The court would not admit Djilas' aged mother, on the ground that the trial might prove too much of a strain for her. Nor would the court admit any of the 14 Western correspondents stationed in Belgrade; it was the publication of interviews with Djilas and Dedijer (in the Times of London, the New York Times and TIME) that all the fuss was about (TIME, Jan. 3). For 15 hours five judges listened while the prosecutor argued that Djilas and Dedijer, by flouting party discipline and giving interviews critical of the party and its leaders to foreign newsmen, had helped "certain foreign circles...damage the reputation of our country...and render difficult her international position."

Shortly after midnight the trial ended. Out strode Milovan Djilas and Vladimir Dedijer wearing big smiles. They had been found guilty of "a criminal act of hostile propaganda," and Djilas had been sentenced to 18 months in jail, Dedijer to six. But both sentences were suspended and the heretics were simply on probation.

Even Communists in Belgrade appeared stupefied by the mildness of the punishment, and soon the rumor was all over town that Tito himself had sent word to go easy on his old comrades--perhaps out of his own personal affection for associates of his guerrilla days, more likely because it fitted into the Marshal's desire to have the West think of him as a warmhearted chap beneath all those medals and all that bluster.

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