"Pay Enormous Attention"

Tito was cuddling up to capitalism. Last week Belgrade's Borba, mouthpiece of Tito's Communist Party, tut-tutted portentously over the past five years of Soviet-type planning and production. "There were, for instance," reported the paper, "ladies' overcoats manufactured by the Naprijed factory that have no pockets, men's coats in several shades, blue sport shirts with black sleeves, hats with spots that could not be removed . . . Thousands of padlocks put on the market by a factory in Pola can be opened with the same key. Forks produced by the Vjeceslav Holjevac factory in Karlovac were too sharp, but the knives were too blunt . . . The Uzor toy factory in Zagreb manufactured dolls dressed completely in black, while dolls made by the Jadran factory had crooked legs and their arms were of different lengths."

Bureaucratic control, implied Borba, had much to do with Yugoslavia's industrial paralysis and its failure to raise the standard of living. Boris Kidric, Tito's No. 1 economist, declared: "Soviet theory sometimes seems to be very funny . . . [We] ought to pay enormous attention to the development of capitalist economy . . . We must get rid of narrowness, that basic provincial habit . . ."

Tito's discovery of the glories of capitalism seemed to be prompted not only by sad experience but by great expectations. Belgrade last week let it be known that only one obstacle remained before the World Bank would grant a loan of $200 million for Yugoslav industrial construction: someone would have to underwrite the country's 1951-54 trade deficits. Tito, it was disclosed, had appealed to the U.S. and Britain to be the underwriters.*

* Total credits advanced to Tito during the past two years: from Britain, $61 million; from the U.S., $150 million.

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