Evening star., 1949-10-10

Feud Paved Way for
Hungarian Trials
By George Weller
Foreign Correspondent Of The Star end
the Chicago Dolly News
ROME, Italy, Oct. 10.-At Hun
gary's Titoist treason" trials
whether those already held or
others yet to come-one name is
whispered but never spoken. 1t is
that of a dead Russian soldier,
Col. Gen. Andrei A. Zhdanov.
Zhdanov's name is dynamite be-
cause September's Budapest trials
were actually the last act of a
Soviet household battle between
two top-level Russian leaders for
control of the Cominform in the
Balkans.
The loser is Zhdanov. the 81
year-old defender of Leningrad
and would-be successor to Stain.
Zhdanov founded the Cominform
as a decentralized Office of East
ern European affairs-not a new
Comintern" as some naive OBJ
servers called tin October 1947.
The winner is George M. Malen-
kov. secretary of the Supreme AS
sembly and successor to Zhdanov
as No. 2 man in Russia. Malenkov
took over the cominform after
zhdanov had nurtured it for II
months. He moved Its headquar-
ters from Questionable" Yugo-
slavia to "safe" Romania, where
it is now.
Handsome 40-year-old Laszlo
Rajk, former Hungarian ministers
of interior and foreign affairs,
who has been sentenced to death,
was Zhdanov man. But Zhda-
nov is dead-suddenly and mys-
teriously, behind the facade of
formal sorrow that never quite
convinces-and Rajk and his
seven co-defenders were helpless,
as their trial ended last week
showed.
Zhdanov's name cannot even be
spoken at these trials because, If
it were, the schism that is mis-
named "Titoism"-but actually Is
deeper than that-might burn its
way back from Budapest along
the powder trail that leads
straight to the Kremlin and the
keg of the old Malenkov-Z -Zhdanov
feud.
In the Budapest courtroom took
place struggle between two Rus
sian policies, a schiSm sister to
the old Stain VS.. Trotsky feud.
Unless that struggle can be con-
fined to Budapest, Russia itself
is threatened.
Malenkov and Zhdanov were old
enemies, having squared off at the
18th party congress in 1889. But
the question which split the
Cominform was essentially the old
one Of all organizations: shall the
center or the extremities have
control?
Old Organization Ripped Up.
Zhdanov died-very suddenly
after building up network of
friendships on the model that
made Josef Stain omnipotent. But
zhdanov's were Balkan wide. Now
Malenkov, with the able aid of
Soviet Gems. w. P. Sviridov, de-
tached in Austria to watch Hun
gary. and N. A. Bulganin, detached
in Bulgaria to watch Romania,
is ripping up the old Zhdanov
organization as one would debone
a founder.
Zhdanov built his network
among the middle-aged genera
ton of Spanish War Communists
like Traitcho Kostov in Bulgaria
and Rajk. Both were his guests
in Moscow two months after the
Cominform was born. But Zhda-
nov was cool to the elder Stalinist
generation like Rakosi and Josef
Revai in Hungary and VassiI
Kolarov in Bulgaria.
Zhdanov believed in letting
these younger Communists build
their collectivist states nationally.
As master of purges with Vishin-
sky in the Soviet Union in 1885
he knew how such cleanups, how
ever necessary, could weaken
states. He was in favor of linking
Balkan states with each other by
the maximum number Of treaties
and in this way keeping rivalries
like that between Tito and Di-
mitrov from breaking out.
Cleanup Extended to Russia.
This policy broke down when it
became clear that Tito was asking
more authority than Moscow
would yield. Zhdanov was left
out on a limb. But his Comm
form of nationalists was totally
unsuitable to the new policy Of
rigid control by Moscow.
While Malenkov is ripping out
the skeleton of Zhdandov's appa-
ratus, Tito is ripping out Malen-
kov's from Yugoslavia.
Malenkov's cleanup has al
ready extended to Russia. where
Juri Zhdanov, the fallen generals
son, has been arrested. together