118 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
the collaboration was between Tito and Stalin.^356 Churchill, however, contin-
ued to believe that he would still have some degree of influence in Yugoslavia,
thanks to his tactical skills. At the beginning of 1944 he wrote: “Our policy
should be based on two factors: the Partisans will govern Yugoslavia. They are
so important from the military point of view that we must offer them all aid,
subjecting our political to our military preoccupations. It is questionable, there-
fore, whether we can still consider the monarchy as a connecting factor in
Yugoslavia.”^357 In mid-February, his government decided finally to halt formal
relations with the Chetniks and ordered the British military personnel with
Mihailović or his units to leave. On 22 February, Churchill gave a speech in
the House of Commons in which he explained this change of policy, praising
Tito as “an exceptional leader, glorious in the fight for liberty.” He stressed that
Great Britain had no intention of imposing the monarchy on the Yugoslav
people, however, while abandoning Mihailović, it would not dissociate itself
from King Petar.^358 In other words, Churchill promised military aid to Tito
without recognizing him as the political representative of Yugoslavia, in hopes
of creating a modus vivendi between the sovereign and the marshal. To justify
his attachment to the king, he argued that the Serb peasants were hostile to
Marxist doctrine and that they did not support the national liberation struggle.
Only if Tito succeeded in reaching a compromise with Petar II could he unite
all those who were hostile to the foreign occu piers.^359 Tito was clearly elated by
Churchill’s speech, although he did not agree with his last assertion. On the
contrary, he affirmed that the Serb peasants were not at all in favor of the king.
“You will see,” he said, “when our forces reach Serbia.”^360
On 5 February 1944, the Soviet news agency TASS announced officially that
the Soviet government had rejected the proposal by the Yugoslav government
in exile regarding the agreement on postwar collaboration. This meant that it
was openly casting its lot with the new Yugoslavia led by Tito.^361 Moscow did
even more: it decided to establish relations with him, not just on a “clandestine”
level, as had been the case until then, but to openly send a military mission to
his headquarters in Bosnia. This decision was also made because the pro-Ger-
man camp in Yugoslavia spread a rumor that the absence of a mission testified
to the Soviet Union’s disinterest in the Balkans. The mission came to Drvar
on 23 February 1944 and was welcomed by the Partisans with enthusiasm,
although it cannot be said that they were proud of the way in which the Rus-
sians arrived. They were not parachuted in like the British, but used gliders,
with the excuse that their chief, General-Major Nikolai Vasilievich Korneev,
was elderly and invalid (his left leg had been injured at Stalingrad). They were
comforted, however, by the consideration that he had the highest rank among
the other mission chiefs and was not accredited at the Supreme Staff, as the