No Illusions

The people of our two countries stand on the same side of the barricade.

--Leonid Brezhnev in Belgrade

To Yugoslavs, that declaration by Soviet Party Leader Brezhnev last week sounded oddly contrived and possibly a bit ominous. For nearly a quarter of a century the Yugoslavs more often than not have stood on the other side of the barricade, anxiously eyeing their big Communist neighbor whose tutelage they have rejected since 1948. Thus last week as Brezhnev arrived in Belgrade for a three-day visit, the Yugoslavs were anxious to get a firsthand impression of his attitude and intentions toward their country. They knew that their nonaligned status and recent flirtations with China were major irritants to the Russians.

For the past several months, reports TIME's David Tinnin from Belgrade, the Yugoslavs have been disturbed that Moscow seemed to be getting away with a double game. In Western Europe the Soviet Union has been establishing better relations by negotiating the Berlin agreement, while in Eastern Europe the Soviets have carried on a war of nerves in some respects similar to the campaign that preceded the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Thaws and Freezes. In addition to putting blatant pressures on Rumania, the Soviets have been demanding from Yugoslavia overflight rights for their warplanes and bunkering privileges for Russian warships at Yugoslavia's Adriatic ports. In an accompanying orchestration of political threats, Soviet officials privately warned that Yugoslavia's regional rivalries and its decentralization program were endangering the primacy of Communism in the country.

That sounded like a pretext for Soviet intervention under the Brezhnev doctrine, which proclaims that the Soviet Union has the right to protect Communism in other countries by whatever means necessary.

Recently, however, the Soviet approach has appeared to undergo a change--in keeping with a history of alternate thaws and freezes in the Kremlin's attitude to Yugoslavia. Brezhnev's visit to Belgrade was suggested by the Russians as a conciliatory gesture.

As soon as Brezhnev stepped from his gleaming Ilyushin Il-62 jetliner at Belgrade airport, he began to make it clear that Russia would gladly relax its pressures on Yugoslavia--for a price. That price: at least a partial return of Yugoslavia to the Soviet camp. While President Josip Broz Tito stood unsmiling at his side at the airport, Brezhnev seemed to brush aside Yugoslavia's nonaligned status by referring to the country as a member of the Communist bloc. Later, at a banquet in the handsome marble federal reception hall, Brezhnev toasted the two countries as being united "through common class interest, through the solidarity of ultimate goals."

The Yugoslavs pressed the Soviet leader for a clear-cut renunciation of the Brezhnev doctrine and reaffirmation of the Belgrade and Moscow declarations of the mid-'50s. These had ended the Stalinist campaigns against Yugoslavia by proclaiming the right of all Communist countries to find their own path to Marxism. Brezhnev gave his hosts some satisfaction by seeming to dismiss "the doctrine of limited sovereignty" as a "fabrication" by the West and pledging his own support of the old declarations. However, Brezhnev's assurances were semantically slippery. He said that the Belgrade and Moscow declarations had to be understood in the context of "contemporary conditions"--which could mean anything.

In a speech to 2,000 workers in an electronics plant outside Belgrade, Brezhnev lauded the right of each country to build its own form of Communism. Then he turned around and implied that the Soviets reject the Yugoslav system of self-management, which grants considerable local initiative and democracy in contrast to the rigid, centrally controlled Soviet setup.

Breathing Space. In his private talks with Tito and the five-man Yugoslav delegation, Brezhnev irritated the Yugoslavs by praising at length the attitude of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. While welcoming any easing of East-West tensions, the Yugoslavs are apprehensive that Brandt's Ostpolitik might be interpreted as an acceptance of Soviet overlordship in Eastern Europe--an idea the Yugoslavs strongly reject.

Even so, the Yugoslavs and Soviets were able to agree that some forms of economic cooperation and a general lessening of tension would serve their mutual purposes. Besides the fact that the Soviets want to build up defenses in the Balkans against Chinese diplomatic inroads, they also know that a calmer atmosphere there will speed their efforts in Western Europe to convene a conference on European security. For their part the Yugoslavs want a breathing space in which to carry out their political reform and get their badly inflated economy under control.

After Brezhnev flew back home via Budapest and Sofia at week's end, the two sides issued a reassuring communique about mutual respect and cooperation based on the principle of noninterference. The communique also disclosed that Tito has accepted a return invitation from Brezhnev to visit Moscow, but almost certainly not before he comes to the U.S. in late October. While neither side had made any binding promises or dramatic shifts in posture, and while the Yugoslavs clearly had no illusions about the present Soviet leadership's regard for diplomatic niceties, the political atmosphere in Belgrade reflected a cautious relief that Moscow now wants to promote the appearance of better relations.

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