Don't Shake Our Trees

When the world's No. 1 Communist says that a document is "a fabrication of the enemies of the people and agents of imperialism who entered the ranks of our party by deceitful means," a Communist who had a hand in preparing that document might be expected to stay quiet. Not so Vittorio Vidali, Communist boss of Trieste. No sooner had Vidali read Comrade Khrushchev's fulsome apology to ex-Comrade Tito last week than he was ready with a counterblast that denied it all. "Our surprise at that statement," wrote Vidali, "has been enormous. Our party has been shaken ... in the same way that the bora [a cold wind from Yugoslavia] shakes our trees."

What shook Vidali was to hear "Beria, Abakumov and others" named as being responsible for a job he had done himself. Tough Vidali, who lost his right thumb in the Spanish Civil War, was a longtime hatchet man for Stalin's secret police. In Mexico in 1940 he had a hand in the organizational work behind the assassination of Leon Trotsky, and, later, in the New York shooting of exiled Italian anti-Communist Carlo Tresca.

Trieste-born Vittorio Vidali was proud when he got the assignment to bring Tito down. "This means," said one of his aides, "that anyone among us, if he has the chance, should remove Tito." It hurt Vidali's professional pride to hear described as fake the careful documentation he and Palmiro Togliatti had built up against Tito, which was read out at the 1948 meeting of the Cominform, when Tito was expelled.

"We cannot express agreement with Comrade Khrushchev's declaration," said Vidali. "We are profoundly grieved." Following the Kremlin's twisting line around every turn was getting to be too much for a simple-minded fellow like Vidali. First it had been his job to deliver Trieste to Yugoslavia; then, after Tito's schism, the party line called for keeping Trieste independent; finally, last year, he was supposed to cooperate in turning Trieste over to the Italians, though a goodly portion of his Trieste Communists are Slovenes. He was also pressed to give up his autonomy and submit to Togliatti (TIME, May 30), and he did not like that, either.

Last week he sent his blast at Khrushchev to Milan's Communist L'Unit`a. and seemed hurt when L'Unit`a refused to publish it. Finally, he put it in his own Trieste Il Lavoratore. The reaction in the ranks of Italian Communists was sensational, but the reproof that followed was sensationally mild. Italy's No. 2 Red, Luigi Longo, scolded Vidali for having expressed "the wrong attitude, probably due to hurried and superficial evaluation." Longo probably dared go no further because 1) a good many Italian Communists were as horrified as Vidali at Khrushchev's cringing mea culpa to Tito, 2) Longo himself was apparently not clear whether Khrushchev had gone too far and would have to take it back some day.

All in all, it made things very difficult for the comrades. Now that Tito is a not-to-be-abused friend, how is Titoism to be combatted? Once deviationism is blessed, where does it all end? An old-line hatchet man, no brighter than he should be, could only cry: "Don't shake our trees!"

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