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dark-haired, with a clipped mustache. He spoke with a lisp, almost gently and—what astonished me at the time—without much energy. He was also this way in other things—considerate, affable to the point of joviality, and obviously worldly in culture.
    In describing the development of the uprising in Yugoslavia, I pointed out that there was being formed in a new way a government which was in essence identical with the Soviet. I made a special point of stressing the new revolutionary role of the peasantry; I practically reduced the uprising in Yugoslavia to a tie between a peasant rebellion and the Communist avant-garde. Yet though neither he nor Aleksandrov opposed what I was saying, neither did they indicate in any way that they approved of my views. Even if I regarded it natural that Stalin’s role was decisive in everything, still I expected from Manuilsky a greater independence and initiative in word and deed. I went away from my meeting with him impressed by the vitality of his personality and moved by his enthusiasm for the struggle in Yugoslavia, but also convinced that Manuilsky played no real role in the determination of Moscow’s policies, not even concerning Yugoslavia.
    When speaking of Stalin he attempted to camouflage extreme flattery in “scientific” and “Marxist” formulas. This manner of expression about Stalin went approximately like this: “You know, it is simply incomprehensible that a single person could have played such a decisive role in a crucial moment of the war. And that so many talents should be combined in one person—statesman, thinker, and soldier!”
    My observations regarding Manuilsky’s insignificance were later cruelly confirmed. He was made Foreign Minister of the Ukraine (he was a Ukrainian Jew by birth), which meant his final isolation from all substantial political activity. True, as Secretary of the Comintern he was Stalin’s obedient tool, all the more because his past had not been completely Bolshevik; he had belonged to a group of so-called
mezhraiontsy
, led by Trotsky, which had joined the Bolsheviks only on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. I saw him in 1949 at the United Nations. There he came out in the name of the Ukraine against the “imperialists” and “Tito’s fascist clique.” Of his oratory there remained only turbulence, and of his penetrating thought only phrase-making. He was already a lost, senile little old man of whom almost every trace was lost as he slid down the steep ladder of the Soviet hierarchy.
    This was not the case with Dimitrov. I met him three times during my stay—twice in the hospital of the Soviet Government, and the third time in his villa near Moscow. Each time he struck me as being a sick man. His breathing was asthmatic, the color of his skin an unhealthy red and pale, and spots around his ears were dried up as if from eczema. His hair was so sparse that it left exposed his withered yellow scalp. But his thoughts were quick and fresh, quite in contrast to his slow and tired movements. This prematurely old, almost crushed man still radiated a powerful conscious energy and vigor. His features bespoke this too, especially the strained look of his bulging bluish eyes and the convulsive protrusion of his nose and jaw. Though he did not voice his every thought, his conversation was frank and firm. It could not be said that he did not understand the situation in Yugoslavia, though he, too, regarded as premature—in view of relations between the USSR and the West—the affirmation of its factually Communist character. Of course I, too, felt that our primary propaganda effort should stress the struggle against the invader, and accordingly this meant not to accentuate the Communist character of that struggle. But it was of the utmost importance to me that the Soviet leaders, and Dimitrov too, realize—at least regarding Yugoslavia—the senselessness of insisting on