Conversations with Stalin Read Free

Supreme Command and of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
    Most important of all, it had to sound out the Soviet Government on the possibility of their recognizing the National Committee as the provisional legal government and of having the Soviets influence the Western Allies in this direction. The Mission was to maintain communications with the Supreme Command through the Soviet Mission, and it could also make use of the old channel of the Comintern.
    Besides these tasks of the Mission, Tito charged me at our leave-taking to find out from Dimitrov, or from Stalin if I could get to him, whether there was any dissatisfaction with the work of our Party. This command of Tito’s was purely formal—to call attention to our disciplined relations with Moscow—for he was utterly convinced that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had brilliantly passed the test, and uniquely so. There was also some discussion about the Yugoslav Party émigrés (Communists who had gone to Russia before the war). Tito’s attitude was that we were not to become involved in mutual recriminations with these émigrés, especially if they had anything to do with Soviet agencies and officials. At the same time Tito emphasized that I ought to beware of secretaries, for there were all kinds, which I understood to mean that we were not only to guard an already traditional Party morality, but that we were to avoid anything that might endanger the reputation and distinction of the Yugoslav Party and of Yugoslav Communists.
    My entire being quivered from the joyous anticipation of an imminent encounter with the Soviet Union, the land that was the first in history—I believed, with a belief more adamant than stone—to give meaning to the dream of visionaries, the resolve of warriors, and the suffering of martyrs, for I too had languished and suffered torture in prisons, I too had hated, I too had shed human blood, not sparing even that of my own brothers.
    But there was also sorrow—at leaving my comrades in the midst of the battle and my country in a death struggle, one vast battlefield and smoldering ruin.
    My parting with the Soviet Mission was more cordial than my encounters with it usually were. I embraced my comrades, who were as moved as I was, and set out for the improvised airfield near Bosanski Petrovac. We spent the whole day there inspecting the airfield and conversing with its staff, which already had the air and habits of a regular and established service, and with the peasants, who had already grown accustomed to the new regime and to the inevitability of its victory.
    Recently British planes had been landing here regularly at night, but not in great numbers—at most, two or three in the course of a single night. They transported the wounded and occasional travelers and brought supplies, most frequently medicines. One plane had even brought a jeep not long before—a gift from the British Command to Tito. It was at this same airfield, a month earlier, at high noon, that the Soviet Military Mission had landed in a plane on skis. In view of the terrain and other circumstances, this was a real feat. It was also quite an unusual parade, in view of the rather sizable escort of British fighter planes.
    I regarded the descent and subsequent take-off of my plane too as quite a feat: the plane had to fly low over jagged rocks in order to come in for a landing on the narrow and uneven ice and, then, take off again.
    How sorrowful and sunken in darkness was my land! The mountains were pale with snow and gashed with black crevices, while the valleys were devoured by the gloom, not a glimmer of light to the very sea and across. Below there was war, more terrible than any before, and on a soil that was used to the tread and breath of war and rebellion. A people was at grips with the invader, while brothers slaughtered one another in even more bitter warfare. When would the lamps light up the villages and towns of