YUGOSLAVIA: Child of the Revolution

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With all the strength, intelligence and zeal he possesses—and he is well supplied with all—Vladimir ("Vlado") Dedijer, a strapping (6 ft. 3 in.) Serb, has devoted most of his life to Yugoslavia's particular brand of Communism and to its rugged messiah, Marshal Tito.

In the struggling prewar days, Tito frequently found sanctuary from the King's police in Dedijer's house. In the terrible wartime days as a partisan fighter against the Nazis, Dedijer watched his first wife die in combat at his side, and was so shot up himself that a large part of his skull is surgical silver. After the war he edited the official party newspaper, Borba, sat in the Yugoslav delegation in the U.N., and generally proved himself one of the most promising of the brash and brave young revolutionaries. He eloquently supported Tito's break with Stalin in 1948. His official biography of Tito so closely reflects Tito's thoughts that it reads more like the dictator's autobiography. "I love my country," said Dedijer, "and I love Tito." Vacant Home. Last week, still an eager Communist, Vladimir Dedijer found himself suddenly a pariah. His old friends cut him. His official car was taken away. His house—one of the hard-to-get good ones in Branka Djonovica Street—was without heat, and word went around Belgrade that it soon would be vacant. Summoned back from a sanitarium where he goes frequently for treatment of his old war wounds, Dedijer learned that he was being purged from government and party for the sin of "diversionism." In Communist eyes, Dedijer's waywardness began a year ago. When the regime's No. 3 Communist, Milovan Djilas, was put on trial for publishing articles which publicly criticized both the loose morals and the political rigidity of the party's top leaders, only two Yugoslavs spoke up in his defense. One was Djilas' exwife, Mitra Mitrovic. The other was Vlado Dedijer, who dared to take issue with Edvard Kardelj, next to Tito the most powerful figure in the government. "To speak quite frankly," said Dedijer to Kardelj, "I am not a robot and cannot automatically accept a view simply because of the authority of the man expounding it." Dedijer taunted the Communist Party for fearing new ideas: "Let us be conscious of the fact that our revolution has become immortal because she has not eaten her own children, and because the children of this revolution are honest."

The words were audacious, even courageous, but they were unwise. In his eagerness to democratize the regime, Vladimir

Dedijer failed to appreciate what his hero, Marshal Tito, and the harder Communist heads understood instinctively, that a totalitarian regime can relax only in limited and selective ways, or invite its own downfall.