Dimitrov was a person who enjoyed Stalin's rare regard, and, what was perhaps less important, he was the undisputed leader of the Bulgarian Communist movement. Two later meetings with Dimitrov confirmed this. At the first I described conditions in Yugoslavia to the members of the Bulgarian Central Committee, and at the second there was talk of eventual Bulgarian-Yugoslav cooperation and of the struggle in Bulgaria.

Dimitrov, like all such true-believing Communists, was fainthearted and at a loss when facing Stalin, who, through purges and a personality cult, had come to be the movement incarnate. Yet, since Dimitrov was no careerist, no apparatchik, but a self-made man who had risen through turmoil and pain, his vacillation now must have had deeper roots. He belonged to that class of Bulgarians - the best of their race - in whom rebellion and self-confidence fuse in an indestructible essence. He must at least have suspected that the Soviet attack on Yugoslavia would entail the subjugation of Bulgaria, and that the realization of his youthful dream of unification with Serbia would be projected into the misty future, thereby reopening the yawning gulf of Balkan conflicts, and unleashing a tumultuous flood of Balkan claims. Today, after so many years, I still think that even though Dimitrov was ailing and diabetic, he did not die a natural death in the Borvilo clinic outside Moscow. Stalin was wary of self-confident personalities, especially if they were revolutionaries, and he was far more interested in Balkan hatreds than in Balkan reconciliations.