Family Reunion

Shortly after 10 o'clock one morning last week, a frail man in a light grey suit stepped out of a Soviet-built IL-14 transport onto the tarmac of Belgrade's Zemun Airport. Dutifully, the visitor surrendered himself to a welcoming bearhug from his stocky, sun-bronzed host, accepted bouquets from four dewy-eyed young Pioneers, and acknowledged the salute of a snappy, blue-uniformed honor guard. Then Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka and Yugoslavia's Marshal Josip Broz Tito headed off across the Yugoslav capital in a motorcade whose first three cars were a Rolls-Royce, a ZIS and a Cadillac.

Tito and Gomulka had not seen each other since March, 1946. A year later, the satraps of the Soviet empire held a secret Cominform organization meeting in a sanatorium near Wroclaw, Poland. At that meeting, Tito and his aides vigorously berated Gomulka for talking too much about a separate "Polish road to socialism." Barely a year later, Tito was the archrenegade of the Communist world. And before long, Gomulka, accused of Titoist tendencies, was stripped of his power as secretary-general of the Polish Communist Party and put under house arrest.

Dress Optional. As befitted an encounter between the only Eastern European leaders who have defied Moscow and lived to tell the tale, last week's meeting sometimes seemed less a diplomatic conference than a family reunion. From the crowds that cheered Gomulka through Belgrade came shouts of "Welcome to Poland's Tito!" Catering to the simple tastes of his guest, pomp-loving Marshal Tito even abated somewhat the imperial splendor of his parties. ("Comrades who do not have a dinner jacket will be welcome in a dark suit.") They adjourned to the Adriatic island of Brioni, where Tito lives it up in one of Mussolini's old playgrounds.

With a nervous eye on Moscow (whose press gave the meeting minimal coverage), the two "nationalist Communists" said nothing aloud to offend the Russians. Gomulka was careful to pay thanks to "the heroic Soviet army" for Poland's liberation from the Nazis, and to make regular reference to "the solidarity of international socialist forces." Yet the fact of their meeting was evidence of more cracks in the once monolithic unity of Kremlin Communism.

To get off on the right foot, Tito characteristically hit on a diplomatic device that cost him nothing at all. At a luncheon for Gomulka, Tito blandly wound up a lengthy toast with the statement that he considered "the present Polish-German frontier on the Oder and the Neisse the only lasting solution."

Diplomatic Opportunity. In West Germany, where recovery of the "eastern territories" is supposedly still a hot emotional issue, Tito's statement could not be ignored in the last week of an election campaign. Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano blustered darkly of taking action against Yugoslavia (nature undisclosed). The point of Tito's toast is that West Germany has never abandoned its claims to the provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, which were given to Poland at the end of World War II to compensate Poland for the slice of its eastern lands (68,667 sq. mi.) grabbed by Russia. Whenever Russia wants to curry favor with Poland, it rakes up memories of Poland's hard occupation by the Germans and reminds the Poles that Germany still hopes to get its old lands back.

In this dusty quarrel lies one of the West's few chances to make an imaginative advance in Eastern Europe. The 4,422,000 Germans who migrated from the eastern territories were once a combative, vengeful lump in West Germany; now they have been absorbed in the general prosperity and are no longer a hindrance to Germany's diplomatic maneuvering. High-placed German Christian Democrats, once the election is past, hope to take the diplomatic and economic offensive in Eastern Europe. Their best bet is to establish friendly ties with Poland, and their best means is to abandon some of the German claims to what is now Polish territory. Should this ever come to pass, the Kremlin would be put on the spot--asked to answer why Russia was still hanging onto former Polish soil.

Tito's toast to Gomulka would then be something that the Russians, instead of the Germans, might find hard to swallow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.