Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Central and Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume IV

123 Allen, George V.

The Ambassador in Yugoslavia (Allen) to the Secretary of State ¹

secret official informal
personal

Belgrade, April 17, 1950.

Dear Dean: We fill the pouch every week with formal despatches, in mimeograph form, institutionalized, and without flavor. It seems to me that a less formal summary of the situation, as seen after three months’ residence, may be useful to you.

The challenge of the job here grows steadily, and I believe we are making progress. Certainly we could not ask for more friendly relations with the officials, from Tito down, and the Yugoslavs who oppose the regime look on us as potential saviors. It is difficult to make intimate friends but we already have many good ones. What a contrast from the life our people in Moscow and other curtain countries lead!

The most disagreeable feature is to see people deprived of their liberties under a police state. The lack of consumer goods is no less tragic.

The question is sometimes asked whether Yugoslavia should still be regarded as behind the Iron Curtain. The answer, of course, is that while it is no longer behind the big curtain, it has one of its own, the heaviest part of which cuts it off from the East, but a good deal still blinds the Yugoslavs from the West. While the Yugoslav press has begun to carry much more straight news of events in the West than it formerly did, the news is as carefully selected by the authorities as ever. Yugoslavs now can and do associate with Westerners with relative freedom, and it is somewhat easier for them to travel in and out of the country—towards the West. Yugoslavs read our information bulletin with increasing freedom, visit our reading rooms and listen to the Voice of America without fear. But woe to the Yugoslav who is caught going to a Cominform legation or who listens to Radio Moscow. The trend our way is steadily growing, and we are doing our best to encourage it.

In a talk I had with the Soviet Chargé recently,² he accused the United States of trying to dominate Yugoslavia through our economic assistance. I said that whenever Yugoslavia felt it could enjoy more independence by being friendly with the USSR than with the United States, I thought Yugoslavia would rejoin the Cominform, but not before. (It is basically for this reason that I do not believe there is any serious danger of Yugoslavia’s patching up its quarrel with Moscow. Tito has tasted independence and likes it.)

But there are other considerations we must still watch. Yugoslavia is extremely poor—fairly near the “disease and unrest” formula. Since the break with the Cominform, all trade between Yugoslavia toward the East has ceased. We must take up the slack. If we refuse to buy their produce or to supply their minimum requirements, the Yugoslavs may find themselves, against their wish, forced to turn toward the East again.

None of the present leaders could possibly return to the East, but the danger is that the regime might be weakened to the point that a Cominform coup might become a possibility. An additional factor is that if Titoism is to be fully effective against the Soviet Union, the standard of living here must rise above the subsistence level.

Therefore, an essential part of our policy, as I believe Averell Harriman well realizes, must be to integrate Yugoslav economy to the West. I’ve been working hard to encourage American tobacco buyers, purchasing agents from Macy’s, United States minerals importers, etc., and we are trying to do whatever possible to improve Yugoslav economic relations with Greece, Italy, and especially Germany.

One of the chief considerations which keeps the present Yugoslav regime from trusting us very far is its fear that we are merely using Yugoslavia temporarily, as a convenient pawn in our fight against the USSR, but that we will turn against Tito and all his works as soon as Yugoslavia is no longer of immediate use to us. This is a basic consideration which we must face frankly if we are to establish any really useful relationship here. The Yugoslavs see through any sham on this point. I’ve discussed the subject at length with Mose Pijade,³ their extremely clever theoretician.

While we are worrying about whether the Yugoslavs will return or be forced back into the Soviet fold, they are worried lest we might make a deal with the USSR, at their expense. Our most effective answer to date has been your speech at Berkeley.⁴ I have pointed out to Tito that secret deals between great powers, at the expense of small ones, are made only by imperialists, and have suggested to him quite candidly that if he really believes that the United States is imperialistic, he ought to be lying awake nights worrying about such a deal. I have argued, with all the energy I have, that the United States is not imperialistic, and have pointed out that the United States has led the world, and is leading it, in behalf of freedom for small peoples and in opposition to aggression, as we are doing in Yugoslavia today. I don’t think Tito really thinks we will make a deal with Russia at his expense, but he is watchful.⁵

The Yugoslavs have great confidence in you and in President Truman, and often ask about the coming elections. They are anti-McCarthy to the hilt.

Joe Alsop⁶ became very impatient with me while here recently, as he may have shown in his subsequent columns, which I have not seen since our American papers are between a week and ten days late. Joe went overboard for Tito in a tremendous way, and complained that I was not sending in red-hot telegrams every day demanding that you and the President force through Congress a program immediately, calling for $150,000,000 a year for the Marshal for four years. I let him know that I considered such a policy not only unrealistic but also unwise. Aside from the fact that you and the President have your hands full already in getting Marshall Aid and MAP appropriations through this Congress, a significant point is that Tito has not asked us for additional aid. Alsop brushes this aside. I do not. Even if the United States had unlimited resources, I do not believe we should cram our assistance down anyone’s throat. Tito not only says he does not want to become an American puppet—he believes it. He thinks that a country that becomes too dependent on American aid inevitably comes under our domination, even though there may be the best possible good will on both sides.

Furthermore, while I heartily favor strengthening Tito and we here are doing everything we possibly can to do so, the best way to do it, in my view, is not to try to buy his good will with appropriations, but to convince him that we will respect his independence. I am convinced that Yugoslavia offers the United States the best opportunity in the world today to give the lie to Soviet propaganda, which pictures the United States as a blood-thirsty, war-mongering imperialist, determined to force our domination on everybody else in the world. If we can convince the present Yugoslav authorities, through our daily relations with them in every matter which arises, that we are willing to maintain friendly relations with them as long as they show their determination to defend their independence against Soviet aggression and as long as they themselves do not menace anyone, we will do more to show our sincerity to the many doubting Thomases throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, than by any other method. I pointed out to Tito at our first meeting that Americans do not concur in his police-state methods or Communist economy. (This was scarcely news to the Marshal, but it seemed to me worth saying to him, for the record.) I emphasized, however, that we were glad to do business with him and give him our support as long as he showed willingness to live and let live and to defend his independence.

I said the same thing to Alsop. He not only resented my having told Tito that we did not like police-state methods, but jumped to the ridiculous conclusion that I was trying to force Tito to become a Jeffersonian Democrat. The exact opposite is the truth. Our job is to prove that the United States is willing to maintain normal friendly relations with any government, as long as it is not aggressive or aiding aggression, and the Embassy has pressed energetically for economic assistance for Yugoslavia, as George Perkins knows perhaps only too well. At the same time, I do not believe we should pass over the police-state methods of Tito, Franco, or anyone else as if we approved them, or go to ridiculous lengths to build up their economy. We can see now that during the last war, we tended to overlook the inherent dangers of the police state in the USSR, in the intensity of our fight against Hitler. I hope we will not make the same mistake in the next one if, God forbid, it comes. We can oppose aggression and at the same time retain our democratic principles. We are not interested in hastening World War III merely to lay the groundwork for World War IV. While battles may be won by tactics, peace will finally come through the triumph of principle, not expediency.

Spring has brought good invasion weather to the Balkans, but the tension which might have been expected has not materialized. We go about our daily lives remarkably pleasantly, with Badminton and Ping-pong in the garden, tea under the apple blossoms, and trips into the country on weekends. The picture of Nero and his fiddle is certainly not apt, but it would be equally incorrect to imagine the scene here as one of grimness and despair.

Respectfully,

George V. Allen

1. On May 9, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Llewelyn E. Thompson prepared a brief draft reply from the Secretary of State to Ambassador Allen, which was not sent, the major paragraph of which reads as follows:

   “I was glad to have your letter of April 17 and to learn of your interest in your new job. You are, of course, aware of the great importance we attached to your mission. I am pleased to note from your letter that our thinking on this problem is in line. We were somewhat disturbed at the repercussions from your trip to Athens [March 19–22] and your conversations with Greek politicians there. I know that the violent reaction in the Italian press to your proposed holiday in Italy [in early April] will have demonstrated how delicate the situation is in your part of the world and how careful you must be. My word of caution, however, relates to the pace of the development of our policies in Yugoslavia. I think we must proceed very slowly and use care not to force the pace in our efforts to tie Tito to the West.” (123 Allen, George V.)

   This draft reply was sent to the Secretary of State under cover of the following memorandum from Assistant Secretary of State Perkins:

   “We have felt for sometime that Ambassador Allen has been pushing matters with Tito a little too fast, and we have been particularly concerned at his activities outside his own bailiwick. His letter to you of April 17 affords an opportunity to cool him off a bit” (123 Allen, George V.)

   The Secretary of State’s actual reply to Ambassador Allen, dated June 12 and apparently drafted in the Executive Secretariat, reads as follows:

   “I was glad to hear from you and to know that you are enjoying the challenge of your job in Yugoslavia. I hope you will excuse the tardiness of my reply to your letter of April 17 in view of the London meetings [meetings of the Western Foreign Ministers, May 9–18] and the press of matters which met me on my return.

   “From your further comments it seems that you are getting into the problems of the country with zest. There must be a marked contrast in American relationships with Yugoslav officials and the experiences of our people in the Soviet-Dominated countries.” (123 Allen, George V.)

2. Perhaps the reference here is to Ambassador Allen’s conversation with Soviet Chargé Snyukov on February 25; see the Ambassador’s memorandum, p. 1376.
3. Member of the Politburo of the Yugoslav Communist Party and Vice Chairman of the Yugoslav People’s Assembly.
4. The reference here is to Secretary of State Acheson’s address entitled “Tensions Between the United States and the Soviet Union,” made at the University of California at Berkeley, March 16, 1950; for the text, see Department of State Bulletin, March 27, 1950, pp. 473–478.
5. See telegram 351, March 16, from Belgrade, p. 1391.
6. Joseph Alsop, syndicated American news columnist. Marshal Tito granted Alsop an interview on April 7.