Communists: A Fan of Henry Ford's

From his own Crimean estate with its now-famed badminton court and glass-enclosed swimming pool, Nikita Khrushchev last week traveled to Marshal Tito's wonderland in Yugoslavia. From a state dinner at Belgrade's White Pal ace, Khrushchev went on an Adriatic cruise aboard Tito's yacht Caleb (Seagull), spent three days at Tito's island retreat of Brioni, then to Tito's 400-year-old castle in the Dinaric Alps, next to Tito's summer residence at Brda and, finally, to Tito's Croatian hunting lodge at Belje. To the Chinese, who have long complained that Khrushchev has gone over to the enemy camp both ideologically and in his personal tastes, all this must have seemed infuriating — particularly since Host Tito is their ideological archenemy, the "revisionist" who first broke with Stalin and established a more or less independent brand of Marxism.

At the height of his quarrel with Peking, and with a certain unrest among the Soviet satellites, Khrushchev was clearly drawing closer to Tito, even hinted that Yugoslavia might be allowed to participate in Comecon, the creaky Eastern common market. Tito in turn seemed determined to suggest that, even if Moscow accepts him wholeheartedly as a comrade, he retain his independence; in doing so he presumably had an eye on Washington, where Congress this week considers whether to restore the previously canceled most-favored-nation rating for Yugoslav exports to the U.S. Cracked a Yugoslav official: "We didn't sign a treaty with Khrushchev as you Americans did. We didn't even play badminton with him."

Mama's Children. The two leaders did just about everything else, as they ranged the country from quake-shattered Skoplje to wild Montenegro, where after a picnic the mountainfolk broke into the kolo, a fiery, foot-stamping circle dance. Khrushchev and his stolid wife Nina, and Tito and his statuesque spouse Jovanka, broke into the ring, swirling around with the pretty girls and peasants.

The most instructive part of the visit came at the Rakovica auto plant out side Belgrade. In a discussion with the workers, Khrushchev seemed fascinated by the Yugoslav factory system of decentralized, locally administered socialism through workers' councils elected by the employees and empowered to fire or reverse the decisions of the plant manager. The system has long been denounced by Red Chinese ideologues, and by Russia since Yugoslavia was kicked out of the Comintern in 1948.

Even Khrushchev once sneered, "The workers' councils are very good when they are propped up by American grain and meat." Reversing himself, Khrushchev called the councils a "progressive development" and said Russia was facing the question of "whether or not conditions are ripe for the democratization of management. Unless there is a force of public opinion our managers tend to become autocrats. Of course, your system may not be totally in line with the Leninist principle of unified leadership.