206 The Postwar Period
But mostly he was preoccupied because of the economic situation of the coun-
try: the entire Five-year Plan was in jeopardy. It seemed that the Yugoslavs
could count only on their irremovable determination. Whatever assistance the
British could offer in such an emergency would be of vital importance.^290
If Bebler had known that Guy Burgess, one of the Soviet “moles” in the
Foreign Office, was McNeill’s assistant, and that many documents relating to
Yugoslavia ended up on Stalin’s desk, he would probably have been less sin-
cere and would consequently have impressed the British diplomats much less.
When McNeill’s report began circulating in the Foreign Office, confirmation
came from Belgrade that Tito himself shared Bebler’s opinion. During this
period, he also had dinner with Eric Johnston, a representative of the American
Motion Picture Corporation, who had come to Yugoslavia to sell Hollywood
films. The marshal, who loved cinema, not only agreed to open Yugoslav soci-
ety to Western mass culture, but also gave the American a frank interview.
Johnston informed him from the start that he would share the discussion with
the leader of the Republican Party, Thomas Dewey, and the marshal, knowing
he was speaking to a vast audience, decided to lay his cards on the table. He
stressed the fact that he had lived and would die a Communist, but he wanted
to be master in his own house and Moscow had tried to deny him this right.
In the present difficult situation, he urgently needed better trade relations with
the West, which should not however ask him for political concessions, since
that might alarm his followers. When Johnston asked him what his attitude
would be in the case of war between the Soviet Union and the United States,
Tito initially answered evasively but later, disavowing what he had always said
about his unshakable loyalty to Moscow, replied that it would depend on who
started the war.^291
These two conversations made waves in diplomatic and government circles
in Washington and London. The British foreign minister, Ernest Bevin, after
reading McNeill’s dispatch, noted on it that he would like to “talk policy”
with his colleagues in charge of the Balkan sector. They concluded that it was
important to assist Tito in his efforts to remain independent from Moscow.
Bevin expressed this idea with a laconic but authoritative directive that later
almost became a rallying cry, not just for the British but for the West in gen-
eral: “Keep him afloat!”^292
Stalin knew all this, informed not by Burgess alone but by another “mole,”
Donald Maclean, counselor to the British Embassy in Washington. The fre-
quent reminders in the British and American documents that they should be
considered top secret, therefore, had the opposite effect. As Anatoly S. Anikeev
says, this may have prompted Stalin to take a more radical attitude toward Tito
than initially envisaged.^293 One of the most significant and painful measures he