SOUTHEAST SERIES Vol. XIX No. 6 ()

CRISIS IN Part III: The Road to Karadjordjevo by Dennison I. Rusinow

September 1972

In November 1971, only a few weeks before the circulation of over 100,000 only six months after fateful meeting at Karadjordjevo, an old friend starting publication, but my friend was not (to my from accosted me in a hotel. knowledge) a man. He was always, however, well informed. Divisions within the Croatian "You live here," he said, "so tell me: What in leadership were apparently reaching a point of cli- God's name do these stupid Serbs really think is max at which someone, sooner or later, would have going on in Croatia?" to go. On all the evidence then available, it seemed certain that this would mean those to whom the I replied with cautious understatement that there damning label "unitarist" could be made to stick. was a widespread feeling that the Croatian Party, in its pursuit of democracy and mass support on a na- Hrvatski Tjednik and the Zagreb student press tional platform, had encouraged a national eupho- had in recent months begun naming names, in- ria and tolerated nationalist activities and "ex- cluding some members of the Croatian Party's cesses" that many non-, conscious of recent Executive Committee, the President of the Cro- history and the hypersensitivity of the national atian Parliament (Jakov Blaevid), andsome- question in Yugoslavia, found alarming. what more cautiouslyBakarid himself. The definition of a "unitarist" had also undergone "Are they really so badly informed?" my friend some refinement" it connoted even more clearly a asked desperately. "Don't they realize that Croatia traitor to the Croatian national cause and denoted, is still ruled by our Croatian unitarists, not even by inter alia, anyone identified by the Tripalo-Savka- nationally conscious much less nationalist Croats?" Pirker triumvirate or the Matica as deviating from "the line of the League of Communists of Croatia Did he mean, I asked, to call Miko Tripalo a as defined by the Tenth Session." "unitarist"? No, not Tripalo. Kraljica Savka, then? (Mme Dabevid-Kuar had come to be known The split in the Croatian leadership and its ex- popularly as "Queen Savka"for the Croats an ploitation by political forces outside the League of affectionate and for the Serbs a sarcastic nick- Communists had, we learned later, played a crucial name.) No, not really, although one could not quite role in the evolution of the Croatian crisis since the be sure. Vladimir Bakarid? Yes, certainly, and spring of 1971. So, too, had the consequences of a most of the rest, and theynot Tripalo and stubborn determination on the part of both fac- Savkawere still the principal holders of power in tions to hide their differencesthe basic reason the Party. Not understanding this and its implica- why even normally well-informed observers were tions was one source of Belgrade's complete mis- only vaguely aware until late in the game that they interpretation of events in Croatia. existedand the ambivalent public attitude of the ultimate arbiter, President Tito. The Croatian This, I knew, was the view of Hrvatski Tjednik, drama was being played out, with increasing com- the new "cultural" weekly of the aggressively plexity, at three closely interrelated political levels: nationalist that now claimed a within the Croatian Party leadership, between the Copyright (C) 1972, American Universities Field Staff, Inc. [DIR-6-'72] DIR-6-'72 -2-

parts of that leadership and other political forces process, and isolated "extreme" nationalists and (both Party and non-Party)in Croatia as a whole, separatists, rendering them harmless.2 and at the all-Yugoslav level as a dialogue between Croatian spokesmen and Tito. Another group in the leadership, including as time went on seven of the nine members of the Ex- Action at the first and last levels took place ecutive Committee, argued that the "escalation" of largely behind closed doors, and it is only since nationalism which had taken place since the Tenth Karadjordjevo that the general public and even Session (and which, ironically, had been foreseen at Party leaders and members not privy to such the Tenth Session) indicated the urgent advisability councils have been given selected but extensive of a thorough review of the Party's tactics in this information about what was really going on. How- field. If statements made by members of this group ever incomplete and one-sided, the volume and since Karadjordjevo are complete and accurate, quality of what has been released is in itself also their initial dissent was based on two observations. highly significant. Seldom if ever in the annals of The first was that the Croatian Party's toleration of Communist movements has there been such an nationalist "excesses," whether or not these were instant replay of intimate details of a decisive really marginal phenomena, was causing alarm in moment in Party life or one in which the losing fac- the rest of the country and among non-Croats (es- tion has been treated with such relative fair play pecially Serbs) in Croatia. It was thus tending to that the retention of some traditional epithets of isolate the Croatian leadership, thereby weakening Marxist-Leninist abuse seems oddly out of place their bargaining position, and to provoke the and demands for criminal prosecution of the losers "greater danger" of Serbian nationalism. The appear singularly ill-founded. second touched the basic but rarely articulated principle on which the League of Communists' It is on this kind of information that the follow- continuing monopoly of ultimate political power in ing tentative and partial political chronology of an increasingly pluralistic Yugoslav polity is Croatia in 1971 is based. Such a chronology is one founded: that dissent and even opposition can be essential prerequisite for passing judgment on the tolerated and can even make a positive contribu- judgments passed at Karadjordjevo and after. 1 tion as long as they are not organized. It was an in- fringement of this principle that these members of Doubts in the Spring: Are They Ours? the Croatian Party leadership were sensing when they noted that in some recent incidents connected Seriously contrasting evaluations of Croatian with the "national euphoria" individuals who were nationalism and its implications for Party strategy "not ours" were presenting themselves and being apparently first became evident in closed meetings accepted by Party as well as populace as legitimate of the Republican leadership in February 1971. spokesmen and intermediaries. If they were "not One group, headed by the Party President (Savka ours," whose were they? 3 The suspicion that they Dabdevid-Kuear), the Secretary of the Executive represented organized political forces outside the Committee (Pero Pirker), and the Party's most control of and in competition with the League of active and visible politician (Miko Tripalo), con- Communists and its network of "pre-emptive" tinued to maintain that nationalist "excesses" were subsidiary institutions was to grow with the months marginal phenomena of little significance and that and an accumulation of evidence that it might be the "national euphoria" was socialist and therefore so. For the Communist mind, even in its open and positive in essence and direction and supportive of protestant Yugoslav variant, the mere existence of the Party's program and goals. The strategy set at such forces raises a priori suspicions of the Tenth Session a year earlier and as interpreted antisocialism and images of conspiracy and by them should be continued, including a cautious counterrevolution. Empathy with such predisposi- alliance with "moderate" nationalists that tions is essential if the nature and seriousness of the simultaneously strengthened the Croatian bar- accusations made at Karadjordjevo and after are to gaining position, facilitated the Party's opening to be understood. the masses, contributed to "democratization" by permitting more non-Communist but essentially The story of the coming months was to be fur- prosocialist elements to participate in the political ther complicated by the fact that the two-faction -3- DIR-6-'72

division suggested in these pages is a misleading part of an otherwise largely abortive effort to re- simplification. The Savka-Tripalo-Pirker group, form higher education after the Yugoslav-wide for convenience referred to in this Report as the "student revolt" of June 1968. The "official" can- "triumvirate" and their followers, was by no means didate of the Party-sponsored student organization as monolithic as the label implies. For example, was unexpectedly defeated by a "spontaneous" mutual personal jealousy and sometimes important candidate, Ivan Zvonimir (i6ak, a non-Communist differences of opinion always divided Savka and and sometime seminarian who told the assembled Tripalo, who had partly distinct followings. On the students in a speech accepting the nomination that other side there was an even broader spectrum of they probably should not vote for him because he political judgment and philosophy, ranging from was non-Party, a Croatian patriot, and a practicing mild dissent on an occasional question of tactics to Catholic. 5 disagreement on fundamental ideological premises. The clearer bipolarization that existed by It could be argued and was that (i6ak's candi- November was the product of a year of slowly dacy and election had been genuinely spontaneous, evolving political struggle and was never quite com- a protest by students against the "irrelevance" of plete. Party-dominated student organizations whose leaders, because they were not genuinely respon- Events at Zagreb University and the activities of sible to their ostensible electors, moved in an unreal the Matica Hrvatska before and immediately after world of political theory and practice divorced from the debate on the Party's attitude toward Croatian the realities of student life and problems. The then nationalism began again in February 1971 and leaders of the Student Federation later candidly provided the primary focus of initial disagreements admitted in conversations with friends that such within the leadership. At its annual assembly in criticism was justified, that they had indeed lived November 1970 the Matica Hrvatska had launched and operated in a "dream world" of systems anal- a membership drive and a new program, in which it ysis and other exciting intellectual and political was declared to be the right and duty of the Matica games, dedicated with youthful enthusiasm to to interest itself in economic and political ques- schemes for making democratic Yugoslav socialism tions. Publishing activities were also expanded, and a progressive reality, ignoring more mundane tasks in March 1971 the Matica launched a new weekly, and their constituency or practicing juvenile ver- Hrvatski Tjednik, subtitled "a newspaper for sions of the "modern" Yugoslav Communist strat- cultural and social questions;" from the first issue egy of political manipulation to maintain Party it was clearly a primarily political journal ex- control of a heterogeneous polity. "We deserved to pressing opinions that in a multiparty society would be overthrown," they said ruefully. unambiguously label it as the organ of a National- Liberal party.4 It was joined a few weeks later by And they were, at the end of a complex the Hrvatski Gospodarski Glasnik (Croatian Eco- three-month political struggle and in circum- nomic Tribune), which articulated the Matica's stances that deserved more attention than they views on economic problems and theory. In subse- received at the time. quent months the Hrvatski Tjednik's circulation climbed dramatically to over 100,000 while the April Coup at the University membership drive raised the Matica's enrollment from 2,323 members in 30 branches in November In retrospect it seems clear that the most impor- 1970 to 41,000 in 55 branches. The expanding tant factor in determining the outcome of the po- organization was provided with its vertical hier- litical in-fighting at Zagreb University during the archy by 16 "commissions" (povjereniJtva), 33 "in- first months of 1971 was the confusion, itiating committees" (Iniijativni odbori), and uncertainty, disunity, and in many individual cases Zagreb headquarters (sjediJniJtvo). the growing self-doubt of Party organs and their faculty and student instruments. A revealing irony is involved. The history of university student The first shock at the University had come on movements, in prerevolutionary Yugoslavia and December 21, 1970, when elections were held for elsewhere, offers numerous examples of a small Zagreb's first student pro-Rector, a post created as Communist minority dominating student politics DIR-6-'72 -4-

because only the Communists were armed with and ineffective, the repeatedly postponed assembly clearcut goals and strategies backed by faith, was finally convened for April 4 and events moved discipline, and hierarchy. In Zagreb these qualities rapidly to a climax. were now the monopoly of another group, and it was the Party that was in disarray, divided into nu- On March 27, in anticipation of the annual merous currents" traditional (in the Yugoslav assembly, a mass meeting was convoked by an ad sense), "new-leftist," nationalist, social-demo- hoc group of students from several faculties (law, cratic, and a vacillating and eclectic mixtul:e of all philosophy, economics, civil engineering, and of these. medicine), some student dormitories, and the "hometown clubs" of students from , Communists at the University were also receiving Djakovo, Herzegovina, and . The geo- contradictory instructions and no clear ideological graphical groupingthe first and third are not in guidance from different members of the equally Croatiais particularly noteworthy. Zagreb divided municipal and Republican Party leader- University students from Kosovo, an Autonomous ships. In January one member of the normally Province within the Republic of with a non- authoritative Croatian Executive Committee, Ema Slavic Albanian majority, are all Albanians, lately Derossi-Bjelajac, had stated categorically to a stu- being wooed as allies by the Croatian leadership dent meeting that "the League of Communists of and with even better historic reasons for disliking Croatia stands behind the programmatic and po- Serbian hegemony than the Croats. The Croatian litical orientation of the student leadership in minority in Herzegovina, part of the ethnically Zagreb and Croatia, and that leadership cannot be mixed Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Muslim put under some question mark." In March, how- Yugoslavs, Serbs, Croats), has always been a ever, the head of the Party organization at the Uni- traditional recruiting ground for Croatian versity warned that "heretofore it has been nationalist parties and was a Ustasa stronghold. insufficiently clearly said that the League of Com- Djakovo (in ) and Imotski (in the munists does not stand and cannot stand behind Dalmatian hinterland) are also regions of mixed any politically unconsidered and politically harm- Croatian and Serbian population and were to ful conduct of the leadership of the Student become outstanding centers of the "national move- Federation." 6 Did this represent a change in strat- ment" as the year progressed. 0iak himself is from egy by higher Party organs and an official Herzegovina, and most of the new Student abandonment of the existing leaders, or merely Federation leadership after the April coup were to disunity? With both decision-making and disunity be Herzegovinians or from the Dalmatian hidden behind closed doors, no one could be sure. hinterland.

About 1,000 students attended the March 27 Meanwhile, the regular annual assembly of the rally. The principal speaker was Dr. Marko Zagreb University Student Federation, which Veselica, a member of the Federal Parliament and should have taken place in January 1971, was re- many other important official bodies, a Party peatedly postponed by a nervous official leadership member and professor of economics, and generally whose president, (a medical stu- considered the outstanding intellect and ideologist dent and son of one of Yugoslavia's best-known of the "national movement." He was already a bte economists), had resigned in February in protest noire for the non-Croatian press (and Tito against such postponement. A campaign of personally) and was to be ousted from the Party in vilification was under way in which the official July and arrested in January 1972. leadership was accused not only of "unitarism," philosophical "new-leftism," and political "neo- "Since 1965," Veselica told the gathering, "a Stalinism," but also of being run by a "Jewish process of devaluating self-management has set in, troika"this last a surprising as well as partic- and this has happened because unitaristic forces ularly ominous accusation, since even extremist have had predominant power in the Federal Par- South Slav nationalisms have rarely included liament and federal administration and because serious anti-Semitic currents. In such an atmos- they have had enough cunning and money to buy a phere and with the official leadership discredited part of the Croatian bureaucracy In analyzing -S- DIR-6-'72

In following the story the reader may find helpful a partial list of the personae dramatis, and their places in a condensed diagram of appropriate Yugoslav and Croatian Party institutions, with their normal abbrevia- tions'*

League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY)

(1) by statute responsible to (2)

Executive Bureau Presidium

15 members, 52 members, of whom of whom

2 Croatian members" 7 Croatian members"

Vladimir Bakarid Vladimir Bakarid Miko Tripalo Sreko Bijelic (President of Zagreb City LC) Jakov Blazevid (President of ) Pavle Gazi Zvonko Liker Miko Tripalo Savka DabeviC:-Kuar (ex-officio as President of the LCC)

League of Communists of Croatia (LCC)

(1) by statute responsible to (2)

Executive Committee (EC-CC-LCC) Central Committee (CC LCC) 9 members (elected from and by the CC): President, Savka Dab(3evid-Kuar

Pero Pirker, Secretary Ema Derossi-Bjelajac Jure Bilid Dusan Dragosavac Ante Josipovid Marko Koprtla Jelica Radojevid

*Status as of November 1971. For the election and statutory responsibility of the LCY Executive Bureau and Presidium, see footnote 1 to Part I of this series of Reports. The Croatian Executive Committee is responsible to the Central Committee, which is elected by the quinquennial Congress of the LCC. DIR-6-'72 -6-

our past we do not have to blame other nationalities unitarist forces to a reckoning on the ideological- for our fate. We must above all accuse our own political plane, and let no one be deluded, they politicians, a part of our political representatives, [unitarist forces] are not few and what is worse, they who betrayed the interests of the Croatian nation are hard to uncover." One must reconsider the and the nationalities who live in Croatia and were concept of Croatian chauvinism, Veselica said, and not their true representatives." what is in the minds of those people who have built careers on throwing that label around; such people The meeting elected a "working presidency" to must be punished, whether they act consciously or carry its views before Party forums and the forth- unconsciously. He noted as a "shame which must coming assembly and adopted a series of be ended" the fact that only 48 per cent of Party resolutions and statements of principle. Typical of members at the University were Croats and that 50 these was one which noted: "Despite massive per cent of such Communists declare themselves acceptance of the Tenth Session of the CC LCC, to be "Yugoslavs." (Quoting this statement, a Bel- there are still those who do not accept its decisions, grade weekly added that the official statistics in who even openly oppose [them] from Stalinistic and fact show that 20 per cent of Zagreb University unitaristic positions, abundantly exploiting earlier Communists are registered as "Yugoslavs" by achieved bureaucratic positions in the framework nationality, not 50 per cent.) of the University Students of Zagreb Univer- sity are not a little astonished at their betrayal by The Party conference continued the following their highest leadership, that is by the Presidency of day and listened to the secretary of the Croatian the Student Federation." They therefore demand, Executive Committee, Pero Pirker. According to inter alia, the dismissal of these leaders, the exclu- the Belgrade press, Pirker was particularly sion from University faculties of those "compro- applauded for his positive evaluation of "the politi- mised in past events," the admission to the Party of cization of students" and when, noting widespread new members on a mass basis, and the dismissal of support for the Tenth Session, he called for an the editors of the student newspaper. opening of Party doors to all those who "accept the course of the Tenth Session." The fall of the official On April 3, the day before the assembly was to leadership of the Student Federation, news of convene, the University Conference of the League which had just reached the meeting, he considered of Communists met and heard a report by its "a major turning point in Croatian politics; no President, Dr. Milan Android. "Feeling themselves compromise is possible, some people must go." to be heirs of all positive national traditions," Android told the gathering, "youth has found it "There is no division into left and right. There is hard to take the suppression of national feeling only a division into those who are for the Tenth [that occurred] in the era of powerful unitaristic Session and the League of Communistsand tendencies. They could not agree with the view of others," he concluded. individuals who saw only the working class and its social problems and did not simultaneously see as a The 25th Annual Assembly of the Student class the hegemony of one concrete nation We Federation of Zagreb University had meanwhile as Communists fight for the interests of the Cro- begun, that Sunday morning, attended by about atian nation, for the equality of Serbs and all 1,000 of the University's 30,000 students. Damjan nationalities in Croatia. We cannot permit anyone Lapaine, acting president since Lang's resignation, to deny the historic existence of our or any other opened the meeting by introducing distinguished nation in the name of some abstract class interest. guests. The list is again retrospectively significant: Equally we cannot accept a distinction between Drago Bozid, lresident of the Croatian Socialist national and class interests." Alliance; Ivan Sibl, president of the Croatian Vet- erans' Association; Sime Djodan, secretary of the He was followed on the platform by Veselica, Matica Hrvatska; Djuro Despot, member of the who said that "the meeting of March 27 was the presidency of the Zagreb Party organization; and most important political gathering I have attended Ante Josipovid, member of the Croatian Party since the war." The University, he continued, had Executive Committee. Except for Josipovid, who become the nucleus of "those forces who will bring did not speak and who ten months later, ironically, -7- DIR-6-'72

was to chair the Party Commission that gressive idealism and enthusiasm reminded him of investigated the alleged "counterrevolution," all wartime comradeship and the struggle for social- were or would emerge as principal protagonists of ism they had waged at that time. the "national movement" condemned at Karad- jordjevo. Djodan, with Veselica, was to be expelled Veselica also spoke, repeating what he had said from the Party in July 1971, would continue to play at the two previous meetings with some additions. a major role thereafter, and was arrested in January According to the Belgrade but not the Zagreb 1972; the rest lost their jobs and later their Party press, he asked the students to accept his view that memberships after Karadjordjevo. university professors who "waver in the new political atmosphere cannot be professors in a Cro- The next item on the agenda was the election of a atian university, and certainly not in the social "working presidency" to preside over the assembly, sciences. He said specifically that such professors, normally in Yugoslav congresses a ritualistic ap- no matter how good they are in their specialties, proval of an officially proposed list. This time, must be removed from the University." He also however, two students came from the floor, took discussed the "so-called 'authentic left'," the label the podium, and demanded that the committee applied to the old student leadership and its appointed at the mass meeting of March 27 and not followers in recent months. According to the Lapaine's list should form the "working presi- Belgrade daily Politika: "He said that these leftists dency" because any list proposed by a discredited never stood up against deformations in society, for leadership was unacceptable. Lapaine attempted to example those pointed out at the Fourth Brioni rule them out of order and when they refused to plenum [the fall of Rankovid], and that this same leave the platform he summoned the student left never even protested against Genex and Inex marshals of the meeting to remove them. The mar- [the wealthy Belgrade-based export-import firms shals instead removed Lapaine and escorted him that had become a particular target of Croatian out of the room by force. The rest of the old leader- criticism, as noted in Part II of this Report.] In his ship and their supporters54 persons according to opinion such organizations are bunkers of class Zagreb newspaper reportsfollowed as a token of and national discrimination, bastions of demon- protest, while the March 27 committee took the strations against a self-managing community. He platform. Their first act was to point out that in also accused those 'leftists' of selling the Croatian decorating the hall the late leadership had failed to coast over the past several years, considering it put the flag of the League of Communists alongside ideal for the creation of Yugo-combinations [sic]." state and university flags on the platform; this was hastily done, symbolically claiming the seal of Party legitimacy for the coup. The one discordant note was sounded, oddly enough, by 0i6ak. The Student Pro-Rector seems to have taken the platform twice, once to protest Before approving the program of the March 27 that the March 27 committee was behaving even meeting and electing a new leadership, the more "dictatorially" than the old leadership and assemblynow minus the old executive committee that the eviction of Lapaine and company was and its remaining followers, who met in another improper and the second time, at the end of the room, protested the illegality of their removal by meeting, to protest that he had been seeking the force, and declared their rump meeting to be the floor for some time and was ignored until the hall legitimate assemblylistened to a series of was half empty. This was a hint, for observers who speakers from among the distinguished guests, were prepared to notice it, that 12iak was not really each of whom in one way or another declared that the man of the new movement that he was thought this was the legitimate meeting. The most to be, that the new leaders now coming forward important legitimation came from University were prepared to use him but also found his Rector Ivan Supek, hastily summoned by Student independence of them and his avowed theism an Pro-Rector t2iak. Ivan gibl, noting that he could occasional embarrassment. The political composi- not speak "officially" for his Veterans' Association, tion of the Zagreb student movement continued to said that personally he was delighted to find be more complex than most descriptions have himself "among likeminded people" whose pro- suggested. DIR-6-'72 -8-

The new president of the Zagreb Student Fede- a new front, within their own ranks, the Croatian ration was Draen Budiga, a handsome and articu- triumvirate would in coming months be forced into late philosophy student from Drnis, a Croatian ever closer embrace with and dependence on their town in an ethnically mixed and most barren part "moderate" nationalist allies and on the "national of the Dalmatian hinterland that was to appear in euphoria" that was becoming ever more extreme in the developing crisis as often as Budiga himself. expression. Conspicuous at his side was Ante Paradik, like 0iak a Herzegovinian and soon to become Friends in Zagreb who are by no means without president of the Croatian Student Federation as the Croatian national if not nationalist sentiments, who Zagreb coup was consolidated at the Republican were enthusiastic about the triumvirate and their level. These two were to be the leaders of the policies until late in 1971, but who had become student strike of November 1971 that was the alienated and alarmed some weeks or months immediate occasion for Karadjordjevo and were to before the end came in December, now retrospec- be arrested on the day that the Croatian Central tively see the Party leadership's reaction to the Committee met to accept the resignations of the April coup as their first serious miscalculation and Tripalo-Savka-Pirker triumvirate as the post-Ka- fatal mistake, after which it was downhill all the radjordjevo purge begun. way to Karadjordjevo. Such a judgment is or can be made normatively neutral in terms of the motiva- The April coup at the University is important to tions, intentions, and political goals of the various the story of the Croatian crisis in two respects. The protagonists, both in the Party leadership and Zagreb student organization was the first citadel of among its competitors. It merely registers the the Yugoslav Communist establishment in Croatia empirically verifiable hypothesis that after April to be taken over by an organized political move- 1971 the triumvirate and their friends, having ment whose primary focus of loyalty lay outside the accepted the conquest of one of the Party's key framework of that establishment, in competition pre-emptive institutions by an autonomous politi- with it ideologically and for political domination. cal organization that was not subject to Party dis- The takeover was accepted and ultimately if at first cipline, were no longer in full control of the cautiously approved by the most authoritative situation, that such a state of affairs is per se spokesman of the Party, who argued (in closed incompatible with the Yugoslav Communist Party meetings) that comrades on the Party system, and that its consequences would sooner or Executive Committee and elsewhere who worried later become intolerable to the guardians of that about the new student leaders because "someone system, especially President Tito. When it came to else has put them forward, not we," were reflecting that point, the Croatian leadership would have no outdated concepts of authoritarian Party control choice except unconditional surrender, either to the and conservative, antidemocratic fears of mass guardians of the system or to their own erstwhile participation. Such fears, it was further argued, (nationalist) allies. To choose the latter would be to were unjustified because the new student leader- raise the specter of civil war. ship and the politicized students and Croatian nation behind them were fundamentally "socialist" To Brioni: Tito's First Warning in orientation and therefore really "ours" in a modern, progressive sense of that possessive noun. 7 One reason why the events at Zagreb University in March and April 1971 received relatively modest The argument was essentially between those who attention at the time was the competition provided were confident that under their leadership social- by other dramas on other stages, all on the same ism could harness nationalismto the greater basic theme. On April 7 two young Croatian emi- glory of both socialism and themselvesmand those grant workers walked into the Yugoslav Embassy who feared that it would prove to be the other way in Stockholm and shot down the Ambassador, a around. The differences between them on this Montenegrin Communist Party member since issue, increasingly a question of strategy and prin- 1936, Partisan political commissar and former ciple, rather than mere tactics, ironically contrib- Deputy Minister of Interior. The assassins were led uted to transforming the fears expressed by the away singing Croatian nationalist songs. Three latter group into accurate prophecy. Embattled on days later, as the Ambassador lay dying, the -9- DIR-6-'72

RADOVI

-Ja sam stru6nJak samo etvu!

Kakoi/od ntll)llimo tako on tJe'a mla#ice!

A CROATIAN COMMENTARY: Oto Reisinger, Yugoslavia's best caricaturist, drew this montage of cartoons, entitled "Springtime Chores," for Croatia's leading daily newspaper, (April 18, 1971). The grim figures sowing seed from a bag labeled "Defamations and Attacks on the Political Leadership of S.R. Croatia" (upper right) are an Ustaa, a Cominformist, a Serbian nationalist Chetnik, and "unitarism" dressed like a petty bureaucrat. While a barefooted peasant woman labeled "the economy" laboriously cultivates young crops (left center), a fat character named "Re-export" (a reference to the Belgrade-based foreign trade conglomerates Genex and Inex) excuses his relaxed posture by saying, "I am a specialist only for harvesting." The blackbirds (associated with the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and thus possibly here a symbol for Serbs) at lower left are devouring seedgrain in a field "sown with seed for the new foreign currency and foreign trade system." The woodsmen at lower right, cutting down the dead tree of "unitarism," complain: "Whatever way we saw, it goes on sprouting new shoots." DIR-6-'72 -10-

leading Croatian Ustage 6migr6 organization in The rest is speculation. One story circulating Western Europe, headed by that Branko Jeli6 of after the event, with an obvious appeal to readers of West who had recently claimed to have the spy thrillers, held that the military intelligence backing of the , held a provocative organization attached to the Yugoslav military meeting in Munich to celebrate the thirtieth anni- mission in West Berlin (itself an often-forgotten versary of the creation under German sponsorship relic of the Allied occupation regime after 1945) in 1941 of the fascist "Independent State of had infiltrated an agent into Jeli's organization Croatia." The same week, in Zagreb, the Croatian there. What the Yugoslavs did not know was that Party's Central Committee issued an unprece- Jeli6 lnew and had skillfully planted faked infor- dented statement accusing "certain Federal mation on the agent suggesting the links that agencies" (by clear implication UDBa, the Serb- understandably angered the Zagreb leaders. The dominated security ) of a "conspiracy" to unsuspecting military mission dutifully reported to discredit the Croatian Party leadership by Belgrade. Thus, according to this version, a federal concocting evidence of links between them and the agency was in fact involved, but was not UDBa, Ustaf,e 6migr6s. and its crime was not an anti-Croatian conspiracy but an embarrassing failure to know that its agent's The "conspiracy" against the Croatian leader- cover had been blown and that he was being used ship remains to date the most mysterious chapter by the enemy. 9 Se non e vero, e ben trovato. of the 1971 drama. We know now, from post- Karadjordjevo revelations, that the Croats' allega- These specific events took place in an atmos- tions had been discussed at the Federal Party level phere already charged with a generalized nervous in February or March and that it was agreed then tension in which ethnic nationalisms of all kinds that no public announcement should be made until were playing a primary role as cause, indicator, and a special Party commission had investigated and effect. The Federal government under a Slovene reported. It is also known that the Croatian Central Prime Minister, Mitja Ribii, had all but ceased to Committee decided after an unusual closed-door function, the result of an already long-standing meeting (its Nineteenth Session) and for still ob- inter-Republican stalemate on key issues, aggra- scure reasons to violate this agreement and make vated now by an extended debate on the package of the accusation public. 8 Once that had happened, constitutional amendments, described above, the nature of the chargeinvolving government which was to strip the Federal center of much of its agenciesmade it necessary to appoint a commis- remaining power. The unprecedentedly genuine sion of the Federal government to conduct its own and open public discussion of the draft amend- investigation, parallel to that already undertaken ments itself added to tensions by providing a forum by the Party. for free expression of ever more extreme national sentiments and mutual recriminations. The results of the government commission's report were also released under unusual circum- These country-wide developments, the related stances: not from Belgrade, but from Tito's private atmosphere, and Tito's angry reaction to them in retreat on the Brioni islands, and during a tense April and May 1971 have been described in an meeting there of the full Presidium of the League of earlier Fieldstaff Report.10 The President's Communists of Yugoslavia at the end of April. The reactions included the first of a series of threats to report itself only deepened the mystery. It firmly invoke "administrative measures" (a Marxist absolved the accused Federal agency (still only euphemism for arbitrary dismissal, purge, or implicitly UDBa) of any improper behavior, either arrest) if more "democratic procedures" did not collective or individual. But it also agreed and de- "produce order in the League of Communists" and plored that there had been a conspiratorial effort an end to alarming expressions of nationalist senti- abroadsource and agents unspecifiedto dis- ments. Although Tito thundered against an credit the Croatian leadership by alleging links unspecified "Western journalist" who wrote that with the Ustage that did not exist. Ignoring the slap such threats had been heard before and had always in the face they had been given by the first part of proved to be an "empty gun""but now," he told the communiqu6, Croatian leaders claimed a vic- a congress of managers and workers on May 8, tory in the second part. "this will not be an empty gun--we have plenty of -11- DIR-6-'72

ammunition"--neither friends nor foes took him as united as he had thought. "Some members talked seriously as later events suggested they should have. differently," for example in defending the new Zagreb student leadership as "positive, revolu- More specifically, Tito also summoned the tionary, saying that we must have full confidence in Yugoslav Party Presidium and other leaders to a them."12 meeting of which he said in advance: "We will not go our ways until we come to an agreement." Even Also of significance have been the protests of now, however, little is known about what went on at many Croatian Party leaders, including members that gathering, officially the Seventeenth Session of of the Executive Committee, that even they never the Presidium, beyond what I reported at the time: knew who had said what at Brioni. 13 Similar com- plaints were made about other important meetings At the end of April the threatened in subsequent months, including the Villa Vajs meeting was duly convened. It met at discussions in June and Tito's Zagreb visit on July Tito's Adriatic retreat on the Brioni 4 (see below), about which Gai and Zvonko Liker, islands, lasted three days, and issued a the other "non-professional" Croat on the Yugo- communiqu6 of startling blandness. slav Presidium, claim they were uninformed. Speeches made at the meeting were not published. This is unusual in recent Yu- While many such complaints can probably be goslav Party practice, but was afterwards discounted as a convenient excuse, after December, justified by Tito on the ground that there for earlier passivity or continued support of the had been sharp disagreements at the Croatian triumvirate, the general picture that beginning of the session and that emerges of the nature of communications (and non- publishing what was said would only communication) within the wider Party elite has a aggravate tensions. What was important, considerable credibility and helps to explain some he said in a May Day speech, was that otherwise puzzling aspects of the crisis, including complete agreement had been reached the speed and ease with which the "movement" before they adjourned The commu- collapsed when the triumvirate were removed. The niqu6.., included an announcement that accusation, made since Karadjordjevo, that one the constitutional amendments should be secret of their power was their "monopoly" control adopted and implemented quickly, that of intra-Party communications (in the hands of nationalism and divided leaderships are Savka, Pirker, and Koprtla, by virtue of their Party bad things, and that the participants had functions) and of the principal mass media agreed that all matters of disagreement (Vjesnik, VUS, and Zagreb radio-television)seems were negotiable.ll largely fair.

Since Karadjordjevo we have been told what one A monopoly or quasi-monopoly of communica- guessed at the time, that the Croatian leadership tions was important, moreover, in both directions was specifically on the carpet at Brioni. Several within the Party hierarchy. It has been consistently partiqipants have now said that Tito's remarks then argued in official documents and statements since included everything that he was to say again at Karadjordjevo that Tito's failure to act on any of Karadjordjevo. One Croatian member of the Yu- his repeated threats between April and goslav Presidium, Parle Ga.i (perhaps significantly Decembera key factor inhibiting the worried not a professional top Party leader but an enter- antitriumvirate majority on the Croatian Executive prise director brought into the leadership as part of Committee from acting on their own initia- its "de-professionalization" in 1969), has put it this tivewas that the Croatian leadership on each way" Brioni was "much tougher" than Karadjord- occasion convincingly assured him that they had jevo because by Karadjordjevo "we knew who stood learned their lesson, would repair the damage where. But at Brioni we did know that most of his themselves, and had achieved or shortly would [Tito's] very sharp criticism of blindness to na- achieve internal unanimity to this end. Those who tionalism was directed toward us Croats." Gai told him this were the triumvirate and their friends. also sensed, allegedly for the first time, that his If others in Croatia, like Ga.i and the majority of colleagues in the Croatian leadership were not as the Executive Committee, were really shocked and DIR-6-'72 -12-

worried by the way these spokesmen "talked is [now] a state," Tripalo told the Central Com- differently" in meetings with Tito, as they later mittee on May 14, "so it is necessary to behave like claimed, they consistently kept silent. As their own statesmen." positions within the Croatian apparatus became increasingly precarious they had, with one At the same time, however, the triumvirate outstanding exception, good reasons for such quickly demonstrated that it was not retreating on caution. any fundamental principles. Within a fortnight of Brioni Miko Tripalo had again raised, unblem- The exception was Vladimir Bakarid, unassail- ished, the flag of the Croatian demand for a radical able until near the end and with privileged access to revision of the Yugoslav foreign currency system. the throne. Although one of the accusations leveled That this now became the cardinal Croat demand, at Bakarid as early as July by Croatian nationalists from which the leadership would not budge and on and their allies in the Party was that he was which their alliance with the Matica and other ele- poisoning Tito's mind with false reports about the ments of the "national mass movement" was most situation in Croatia, there is so far no independent firmly founded, was in some ways curious and was evidence that he had moved before late November certainlyfor legitimate Croatian interestsun- and he himself has said, in self-criticism, that he fortunate. If their grievance was real, the solution had not. His own explanation is that he had they proposed was singularly unrealistic. withdrawn from active participation in Croatian politics until concerned comrades on the Executive As noted before, Croatian tourism, emigrant re- Committee brought him back late in the year. Only mittances, and exports account for nearly 40 per in November, during preparations for the 22nd cent of all Yugoslav hard currency earnings. Under Session of the Croatian Central Committee, did he existing regulations most of these earnings (minus a discover what was really going on and decide to go variable "retention quota," averaging about 7 per to Tito as soon as the latter returned from his state 14 cent, which the exporter or tourist enterprise kept visit to the and Canada. in foreign currency) had to be sold to the National Bank in Belgrade for dinars. Since these foreign The Phony Peace currencies were then resold by the National Bank to importers and other claimants all over Yugoslavia, The Croatian leadership chose to interpret their with the demand always exceeding the supply, the return from Brioni publicly unscathed and the Croats could argue that "their" foreign currency decision to proceed with constitutional amend- earnings were being "expropriated" by others, in ments that would dramatically strengthen the violation of the principles of self-management, powers of the Republics as personal victories and which hold that the workers in each enterprise (and an endorsement of their basic strategy. In return thus in each Republic)should freely dispose of the they knew that they were expected to contribute to "value" created by their labor. a calmer atmosphere and to rendering the central government again capable of action in its residual spheres of competence, and that these obligations It was an old argument. At one time the Zagreb would require them to show a willingness to com- Chamber of Commerce had joined those of other promise on some disputed issues and to take a major exporting centers, including Ljubljana, stronger stand against . Belgrade, and , in a joint dOmarche to the Federal government, demanding an upward For a time, therefore, the atmosphere did revision of retention quotas. Now, however, the improve, and for some weeks optimists were able to Croatian leadership was seeking, in effect, separate conclude that the worst of the crisis was over. Republican foreign currency regimes: each should Agreement was reached on several, sometimes keep what was earned or remitted on its territory, minor, federal issues that had long been blocked by buying and selling as needed on a free all-Yugoslav inter-Republican disagreements. Croatian leaders (in fact inter-Republican) currency market. The spoke of the necessity, now that they had won the principal objection to this proposal was that it system and Republican "sovereignty" they had de- made nonsense of a unified Yugoslav market in manded, to prove that it would work. "S.R. Croatia goods and services and could not be implemented -13- DIR-6-'72

without giving rise to equally reasonable supple- in coming weeks be used to distinguish "good" mentary demands that would create a dual-cur- Croatian patriots from "bad" Croatian unitarists rency system, impossibly cumbersome and more on the Central Committee. Some emanded an inequitable than the present one. If it were all-out political offensive against "nationalist ele- accepted, what, for example, would stop a Bosnian ments" of all kinds. Others wished to make careful or Serbian firm that sold meat or vegetables to a distinctions between "separatists" and "chauvin- Dalmatian hotel from demanding payment in the ists" on the one hand and those whose "national foreign currency the hotel was "earning" by serving euphoria" was being or could be channeled into food to foreign tourists? Or a steel mill in another mass support for "self-management socialism" and Republic from demanding payment in foreign "the line of the League of Communists." Several currency for steel delivered to a Croatian shipyard discussed the mass enrollment of new members in for a tanker sold to the Japanese? Where would the Party that many were urging as a natural such a process stop? Was it not better to make corollary of what was now being called "the minor adjustments in the existing system to meet in national mass movement." For some this was some degree the legitimate grievances of principal dangerous without careful "ideological-political exporting regions, freely admitting that the system preparation" and screening of candidates; for would remain imperfect and iniquitous and con- others such caution was itself a sign of centrating on financial and developmental policies old-fashioned, conservative thinking appropriate to that would make the dinar fully as an earlier revolutionary period but not to the pres- quickly as possible, thus eliminating the whole ent. Some accused Croatian nationalists of not problem.15 seeing how much the Party was doing for Croatian interests; others were worried that the Party, in The Croatian leadership never found a reply, and taking this line, was emphasizing national over the argument soon became symbolic and emotional class interests to a dangerous degree. Tripalo rather than practical. 16 replied with what became the basic thesis of the "mass movement": national and class interests are The Twentieth Session the same because nation and class have become identical. 17 On May 13 and 14 the Croatian Central Com- mittee met, its Twentieth Session, to discuss im- Quoted in the Belgrade press but not in Zagreb's plementation of the conclusions of the Brioni Vjesnik were interestingly strong statements by two meeting. One after another the members rose to men who were to emerge in December as the most condemn Croatian nationalism as well as Serbian important of the new, post-Karadjordjevo Croatian nationalism, unitarism, 6tatism in any size or leaders, Jure Bili and Josip Vrhovec, both package, and other official vices. The tenor was members of the Executive Committee majority that such that the session was soon thereafter con- had found itself in growing disagreement with demned by Hrvatski Tjednik and others, including Tripalo, Savka, and Pirker since February 1971. Party leaders in some districts, as a victory for According to the Belgrade weekly NIN, (May 16): "conservative forces" in the Central Committee. Spokesmen and publications of the Matica On the behavior of Croatian national- Hrvatska began, in this context, to suggest that it ists toward the LCC leadership, Josip would prove necessary to convene an Extraordinary Vrhovec said: "They 'call the role' of us Congress of the Croatian League of Communists to on many issues, saying: now what will you purge these conservatives and fill the Central do? And if we simply will not work to Committee with "true representatives" of Croatian their instructions then they put us under sentimenta threat that was later to be taken up a question mark. They are a petit-bour- by some Party leaders. geois, nationalistic and chauvinistic cur- rent whose final goal, concretely here in There were, indeed, significant differences of Croatia, is the separation of Croatia from emphasis among speakers at the Twentieth Session Yugoslavia." Vrhovec added that it was (andas usualin the reporting of them in the precisely this group that was demanding Zagreb and Belgrade press), differences that would that the LC should permit the coexistence DIR-6-'72 -14-

of various ideologies, including those that "I think we do not need to be alarmed are unacceptable to Communists, in the by this undoubted national euphoria. name of an alleged necessity for the There were some comrades yesterday and League of Communists to show that it is a today who were against the national national party. Every compromise in this euphoria. As far as I am concerned, I am sense is very dangerous and unacceptable in fact in favor of the national euphoria, if for the League of Communists, Vrhovec the League of Communists is in charge of said. it." Even more detailed was the analysis offered by Jure Bilid... Speaking of With rare exceptionsmVjesnik did print the out- Croatian chauvinism, Bilid noted that spokenly critical remarks of one Croatian Serb they had their periodicals, new or old with member of the Central Committee, Rade Bulat, new editorial boards, but that some indi- and the attacks on him that they invoked, including viduals were very noisy also in verbal in- one by a fellow Serb on the Executive Committee, terventions contrary to the policy of the Dugan Dragosavacthe Croatian press was still League of Communists. It is a question of careful to portray the entire leadership as united chauvinistic interventions which encour- behind the triumvirate. If the Belgrade press age the creation of dislike, even hatred, of attempted to paint a rather different picture, most other nationalities. Croatian Commu- Croats knew what to think of that. nists, Bilid emphasized, must draw a firm line between themselves and these people, The Villa Vajs Discussions since otherwise they may create the im- pression that they are moving toward a The battle lines within the Croatian Party had kind of "national ." now been drawn, although few outside the inner circle and a "I do not accept such a line, and the consistently well-informed Matica whole League of Communists of Croatia Hrvatska executive yet knew it and there was still does not accept it, because that would be time and room for change. The political struggle in national anticommunism The point Croatia during the next months was focused on is that with their line individuals and cer- three interrelated fronts: tain forces are drawing the past into our present relations, drawing in separatism. (1) The struggle of the triumvirate and their These 'guardians of conscience' talk of friends, in competition with the Matica and its net- the LCC and S.R. Croatia as 'the most work, to maintain Party control of the "national progressive nucleus in the country.' They mass movement," preventing "excesses" wherever even name individual names, and of the possible. rest they say that UDBa put them in their jobs and functions One current (2) Efforts by all members of the Party leader- among these forces preaches the thesis of ship to find a definition and interpretation of the a type of clerical socialism, a kind of co- "mass movement" and a corresponding program of existence of socialism and clericalism action on which they could all agree and operate, directed especially toward youth. In thus avoiding a definitive split in their ranks and a essence this is an effort to create an struggle for power at the Party summit. antithesis of the League of Communists, and the League of Communists and our (3) The struggle by all concerned to resolve all society must not and will not permit issues within the boundaries of Croatia, without this influence or intervention from outside that might compromise their newly won "sovereignty" and the It is instructive to compare the Vjesnik report of principles of confederationi.e., a struggle to these same speeches, which contain none of the avoid a "Yugoslavization" of the Croatian crisis. sentences quoted here. The most significant state- ment attributed to Bili6 by Vjesnik (not mentioned By November, developments on all three fronts in NIN): had entered a new phase: -IS- DIR-6-'72

The Twentieth Session, May 1971. In the front row, from left to right, Ema Derossi-Bjelajac, Miko Tripalo, Milka Planinc, and Josip Vrhovec: the triumvir sits among his principal opponents on the Executive Committee, now submissive but within seven months to be his judges.

(1) The leadership of the "mass movement" was evolved into a struggle for enough power to impose in effect a triumvirate-Matica condominium in one tactical orientation or the other, and that such which the triumvirate were struggling to preserve a political struggle necessarily involves polariza- their autonomy but were increasingly cast in the tion, was introducing a new, dynamic factor into an role of junior partners. unstable equation. Within the leadership, the group around the triumvirate became increasingly (2) The search for unity within the Party leader- deaf to warnings they might otherwise have listened ship had been abandoned and some or all of the to because they were really hearing things they triumvirate's group were prepared for open conflict themselves had also said and felt. Their opponents, and a decisive, once-and-for-all, political battle to attention focused on one subject and the political remove the "factionalist" majority on the Executive battle associated with it, increasingly saw only what Committee and their friends. was (from their point of view) negative and dan- gerous in the "mass movement" and failed to give (3) Knowing this and aware of their weakness, serious thought to the implications of the fact that the antitriumvirate faction was now prepared to in- nationalism was a more powerful mobilizing force voke outside help by appealing to Tito. than the official ideology and practice of "self- management socialism." The appropriateness of the word "struggle" is of central importance. The bare fact that an inability On the second and third fronts, the story is one to resolve an initially minor disagreement about of an unending series of indecisive meetings and of political tactics in one vitally important sector had declarations and "action programs" that were, DIR-6-'72 -16-

with one important exception, too vague and foreign policy. In vain, by then, the official Party general to commit anyone to specific action. The leadership and its press warned that such "radi- battle on the first front (and during the second calism" was performing a poor service because it phase on the second front as well) was fought only alarmed the rest of the country and throughout the Republic, but most intensively in strengthened the "unitarists" by appearing to and Slavonia and in Zagreb itself. It in- substantiate their arguments that the Croatian volved the founding of new Matica branches with movement was edging toward separatism. In vain, pomp and processions, demonstrative celebrations dissenters like Bakarid asked what had happened of anniversaries of events in Croatian history or the to Marxist concepts of the class basis of the state. birth or death of historic heroes, struggles for con- The audience had heard too much of that kind of trol of individual Party organizations and town Communist ideological sloganeering in the past 30 halls, and "incidents" concerning employment in years to respond, while the analogous slogans of or control of individual economic enterprises. It nationalism had been censored so long that they was also characterized by an ever increasing ten- seemed excitingly new, with the added spice of for- sion between Croats and Serbs in ethnically mixed bidden fruit. districts, where both communities were known to be arming themselves in anticipation of a physical Articles analyzing the ethnic composition of show-down. 18 employment in the police, in government bureaus, in the Party, in enterprise managements, and even- Now that the debate on the draft amendments to tually among workers in certain enterprises became the Federal Constitution had been ended, the numerous, and always the Croats were found to be drafting of corresponding amendments to the Cro- inadequately represented in their own country. The atian Constitution provided a platform on which criterion of the "ethnic key," accepted in principle the Matica press and spokesmen could build for political leaderships and government employ- further demands and a program representing an ment, was applied everywhere, leading to nervous- increasingly coherent ideological position, simulta- ness and "crises" in economic sectors and enter- neously national and socialist. Endless articles on prises in which, usually for historic or demographic the definition of the "state sovereignty" of Croatia reasons, Serbs were more numerous than their 15 appeared in Vjesnik and VUS as well as in the per cent participation in the total population Matica's periodicals. Almost all--with Bakarid as warranted. Examples of such sectors, equivalent the outstanding dissentertook as a self-evident to a catalogue of many notorious "slugajevi" premise the basic ideological position of nineteenth ("incidents") of the long, hot summer of 1971, century national liberalism: that man is naturally include the Zagreb Railway enterprise (Serbs of divided into nations, that the nation is the only some Lika and Dalmatian hinterland villages had legitimate basis of a state, and that each nation had their first chance of employment outside agri- consequently has an inalienable right to a culture when the Zagreb-Split line was built nation-state of its own. In this context the Socialist through their region under the Serb-dominated Republic of Croatia must be considered as the Royal Yugoslav government, establishing a tradi- nation-state of the Croatian nation, the state that tion of Serbs from these districts working on the the Croats had sought for a thousand years in vain, railroad), the oil refinery and steelworks in that had been promised them by the Communist (the latter resisted), several companies in the Party of Yugoslavia during the Second World War, area (where nearly everybody, Serb or Croat, is a and that only now was becoming a reality under the newcomer, the original Italian population having inspired national leadership of Tripalo and Savka. disappeared after 1945), and many more. In the Baranja district a genuine economic and jurisdic- Corollaries included a discussion of the status of tional conflict between the Belje agricultural- non-Croats in the Croatian state, especially Serbs, industrial combine and the Jelen forestry and and of their languages. By the autumn additional hunting enterprise, which between them totally corollaries were being considered by the Zagreb dominate the economy of that district, and between student leaders and the Matica press: a Belje and local government officials characteristi- nation-state must also have an army of its own, cally became a primarily ethnic conflict because membership in the , and its own Belje is managed largely by Croats, Jelen is Serb -17- DIR-6-'72

and Belgrade-based, and the old guard of local to the Croatian Central Committee in May 1972, politicians were predominantly Serb former the participants talked: Partisans. -about the dangerousness of the infiltration of To such documented realities must be added nationalist points of view into the League of Com- what is often technically hearsay but as important munists of Croatia, which could obscure the clarity to the total atmosphere when untrue as when true: of [the Party's] orientation on the basic direction of undoubtedly exaggerated tales of vandalism meted the struggle for the further development of social- out to Serbian property in Croatia (including cars ism and self-management; with Serbian license plates circulating there) and stories that are difficult to verify but often seem to about the danger of a one-sided orientation of the have been true of individual Serbs and Serbian vil- Croatian LC against unitarism, leading to a ne- lages physically threatened by Croat neighbors. As glecting of action against nationalism and a result, relations between the ethnic communities chauvinism; in districts reached a many level that my own older about the appearance of two Croatian friends, both and lines and two direc- Croats Serbs, have told tives in LC organizations in the me was "worse than before or even during the country; war." of (Many these friends, it is worth noting, are about a confusion of basically ideas in the League of Com- apolitical intellectuals or "ordinary folk," munists, especially in the kind of who had some LC leaderships, and people supposedly been about tendencies to seek alliances "politicized" by the "national euphoria" to form with the carriers of nationalist ideas in the struggle against uni- the "mass movement" backing the triumvirate. tarism; Their own political evolution in the course of 1971, as I saw them from time to time, is therefore about the dangerousness of designating as a uni- possibly significant. With few exceptions, they were tarist anyone who points out instances of Croatian indeed caught up in the "national euphoria" and nationalism and about the use of this criterion to had been enthusiastic supporters of the label and exert pressure even on members of the triumvirate. With equally few exceptions, they had Executive and Central committees, with the inten- become alienated and worried by the autumn of tion of discrediting and immobilizing them and 1971, and the first reason they usually offered was thus destroying the unity of the LCC leadership; the escalation of interethnic hatred and the terrifying memories this aroused in people over the about the consequences of contrasting evaluations age of 35.) The "reign of intellectual and emotional of events in the Student Federation; terror" in which Croatian Serbs and "unitarists" found themselves by late 1971 is not the invention about the fact that the most outstanding protag- of those who invented the phrase after the event. onists of nationalism were expanding their activity, while in the inner leadership of the CC LCC and in some Party leaderships in the country there existed In such an atmosphere the Party leadership met, diametrically opposed evaluations of the activity of debated, and continued to disagree. The most these people, along with a tendency in many important such gathering began on June 22, 1971 environments to accept and present individuals of at the Villa Vajs, a Party retreat in Zagreb used for nationalistic orientation as the most consistent top-level conferences. It was attended by the Exec- fighters for the policy of the CC LCC and especially utive Committee, the Croatian representatives on for the principles of the Tenth Session; the all-Yugoslav Executive Bureau (Bakarid and Tripalo), and leading personalities from the Croa- about the tendency to de-emphasize the risk from tian Parliament, government, and other "socio- the unfriendly activities of nationalist forces in political organizations." The Villa Vajs meeting comparison with [the risk from] the activities of was apparently the first full and frank discussion of unitaristic, neo-Cominformist, and other bureau- differences among the top leadership to take place cratic forces, although the activity of nationalists before a somewhat wider audience. According to was assuming at that time an ever more organized the Report of the Josipovid Commission, presented and aggressive form; DIR-6-'72 -18-

-about the danger that a policy isolating Croatia emissaries from Party headquarters chose to tell within Yugoslavia would make more difficult the them. Since these presented sharply contrasting solving of vital Croatian and Yugoslav questions, versions, they only added to the disorientation and which could be solved on the basis of now accepted confusion that characterized the Party in the coun- constitutional amendments only through a process tryside in the months to come. of agreement and mutual compromise; Finally, in May 1972, a text of Tito's remarks at about the insufficiency of organized and system- the meeting of July 4, 1971, was published. It atic ideo-political action in the face of these occur- appeared to be a transcript but is in fact a recon- rences, the lack of a clear and firm party line in the struction from memory and notes by some who mass media, and especially about the widespread were present--members, needless to say, of the and ever stronger influence on the masses of those antitriumvirate groupsince it seems that no ver- periodicals which took an oppositional, national- batim record was kept. If the published version is istic line toward the policy of the Croatian LC, nevertheless assumed to be a reasonable approxi- etc. 19 mation of the words actually spoken, it is a re- markable document. 21 The minutes of the meeting were classified and have never been released, but the argument was "This time," Tito allegedly began, "I am going reportedly a bitter one and so inconclusive that a to speak first. You see that I am very angry. That is second session was held on June 26, after which the why I have summoned you and the meeting won't series was suspended in anticipation of a visit by last long." Tito to Zagreb at the beginning of July. The report of the Josipovid Commission adds only that, The situation in Croatia, he said, was not good. Nationalism had run wild. The only countermeas- the discussion was carried on in a ures taken were useless verbal condemnations, tense atmosphere in which there emerged while "under the cover of 'national interest' all hell a confrontation between two contradic- collects even to counterrevolution." Relations tory lines and interpretations of the policy between Serbs and Croats were bad, and "in some of the LCC on vital questions and on the villages because of nervousness the Serbs are role of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in drilling and arming themselves... Do we want to S.F.R. Yugoslavia. Those comrades who have 1941 again? That would be a catastrophe." showed themselves to be critical of the aforementioned occurrences and who saw Three times in his remarks Tito referred to the them as part of an organized system of international context: "Others are watching. Are enemy activity were pointed out, you aware that others would immediately be pres- especially by the most responsible ent if there were disorder? But I'll sooner make functionaries of the LC [i.e., Tripalo, order with our Army than allow others to do it. Pirker, Dabevid-Kuar], and suffered as protagonists of ideas and a line contrary And later: "With all this we've tarnished to the Tenth Session and the policy of the ourselves enough abroad. We've lost prestige and it CC LCC. 2o will be hard to get it back. They are speculating that 'when Tito goes, the whole thing will collapse,' Tito's July Visit: The Second Warning and some are seriously waiting for that The internal enemy has plenty of support from outside. A week later an unusually angry Tito descended The great powers will use any devil who'll work for on the Croatian capital and summoned the Execu- them, whether he's a Communist or not." tive Committee and some other Party leaders to a meeting. Typical of the style of the Croatian crisis, Still later, warning that he was considering an there was at the time no mention in the press of this appeal to the country ("and I know I'll have the meeting or what transpired there, so that the gen- workers on my side"), he abruptly reverted to the eral public depended on rumors while Croatian theme of rumors that were circulating: "All kinds Party organizations learned only what individual of things are being said. Now, among you, it is -19- DIR-6-'72

being said that I invented my conversation with The basic problem, Tito said, was that "the Brezhnev in order to frighten you and force you League of Communists is not ideologically united. into unity." It must be cleansed of all that is not on this ideo- logical line. The Socialist Alliance is there as a (This highly interesting remark would appear to mass organization and let these various [people?] confirm earlier and otherwise scarcely credible conduct their struggle of ideas and discussions rumors that Tito had told the Croats at the Brioni there. Democratic centralism doesn't have to be the meeting at the end of April that Brezhnev had rule there, but Communists in that organization phoned to offer Soviet "fraternal assistance" if he must act unitedly and act politically In the should need it in dealing with the situation.) League of Communists democratic centralism must be firmly respected. We have the strength and must Tito specifically criticized, inter alia, ethnic use it in the struggle against the class enemy." head-counting of Serbs and Croats in factories ("we will not allow that, and I shall say so publicly.") He "So I want to hear what you think of doing," noted that "you have allowed the Matica to Tito concluded. "It would be blindness and poor transform itself into a political organization, to politics to think that it will be easy and that you can such a degree that now you'll have difficulty in solve it all by some conversations with them. A controlling that [situation]. It has become stronger surgeon's scalpel will be necessary, and I won't than you, you're in no condition to curb it." He hesitate to use it, believe me I won't." found curious and ominous the new fashion of glorifying as "revolutionaries" historical figures At the end of the meeting, Tito spoke again. He like Jalai, who in 1848-49 "extinguished the apologized for being so sharp in his criticism and Hungarian revolt, which was progressive,... [and] said he was pleased to hear that they accepted it the Viennese students and workers." and would undertake unified action along the lines he demanded. "The main thing now is for you to be "I am for prohibiting the political activity of the united, and that also in practice. You'll very Matica and the '' [a corresponding quickly be able to show the class enemy that this is "cultural organization" of the Croatian Serbs]. In a no joking matter. This will be a great help to me as socialist society socialist organizations must well, so that I can deal more sharply in the develop culture and not those who are against all-Yugoslav framework and in other Republics, socialism. Have we forgotten what it means to be and with the outside world as well, for I view these Communists and what the struggle for socialism matters in terms of the international situation." means?" "...Now I seek firm action What have you Faced with "these deep contradictions among done against those of whom the sparrows on the us" he had thought to make a public and open roof are already singing and who preach and say all statement of his views. Now, however, he would not kinds of things [Veselica and Djodan, but not only do that. The outside world expected after Brioni them, there are lots more], against those who are that "the process of the disintegration of already singing a song" 'Comrade Tito, I kiss your Yugoslavia" would be brought to a halt, and if he forehead, now come put on the Ustae uniform.' were able to speak now it would be said that Yugo- Those aren't only drunkards. It worries me that you slavia had become nonviable. don't see this." "Two Lines and Two Directives" Of the political situation at the University, he said:"I would dissolve the [Party] organization at Once again, it seems, the rest of the Croatian the philosophy faculty. The majority of the students Party leadership had let the triumvirate speak for is good, but some individual enemies are very active them in a meeting with Tito, who may or may not there and can draw the students into dangerous have been informed of the substance of the Villa things. You made a mistake when you supported Vajs conversations and the sharp disagreements these students. Not all students are dishonest, but that had surfaced there. The struggle to maintain those who lead them do not have honest inten- the unity of the leadership continued, and those tions." who were later openly to oppose the triumvirate DIR-6-'72 -20-

claim that they kept silent on July 4 because they organization toward the realization of could still convince themselves that this unity Croatian statehood as a union in equality would now be achieved, on their terms, with the of Croats, because here is a unique help of Tito's sharp words. "We really believed chance for Croatia, for the Croatian thenapparently we were too nai'vethat this was people to create their state which they possible," Ema Derossi-Bjelajac was to say later. 92 have sought throughout history, and if they do not get it now it seems to me that The first omens were mixed. On July 12, a week the Croatian people will never again even after Tito's visit, the Fourth Conference of the be for a Communist movement.% League of Communists of Croatia (the annual "-congress" introduced into Yugoslav Party On the other hand, the Zagreb Party Presidium, organization in 1969) met in Zagreb. It was agreed under pressure from the Executive Committee, met by the leadership that the delegates should be on July 23 and voted to deprive the two Matica informed, in a closed session at the end of the ieaders specifically named by Tito on July 4, Sime Conference, of Tito's criticism. Instead, however, Djodan and , of Party membership. the Secretary of the Executive Committee, Pero It was done more in sorrow than in anger and not Pirker, confined himself to a brief summary without resistance. Zagreb Party boss Sreeko described by the Josipovid Commission as 'so gen- Bijelid and Djuro Despot, both among the eral, superficial, and inadequate that others who triumvirate's most loyal lieutenants, attempted in were there reacted publicly." their speeches at the Presidium meeting to minimize the "errors" of Djodan and Veselica and The Conference also heard some speeches and to suggest that erring comrades could always hope interventions the "nationalist content" of which to regain Party membership if they mended their provoked Bakarid to insist during a coffee break ways. From the Zagreb University student leader- that Savka, as President of the Conference, must ship came angry threats of a student strike in publicly censure such views. This Savka refused to support of the ousted men when the fall semester do, arguing that it was inopportune to embark on began in October. an open confrontation at such a level and on such issues. Both Veselica and Djodan continued after losing Other speakers reflected the acceptance by some their Party memberships to hold all their other, senior Party spokesmen of constitutional principles non-Party offices (Veselica, for example, was still a and formulations originating in Matica publica- Croatian deputy to the Federal Parliament's tions. Djuro Despot, a senior figure in the Zagreb Socio-Political Chamber in December) and to be Party organization, noted, for example, that, active politically, curiously even attending and speaking at Party meetings. And, as the Belgrade when the Croatian state is expressed in press never failed to note, official leaders like terms of sovereignty, then what is under Tripalo condemned them formally but never discussion is the national state of the objected to sharing the platform with them at Croatian nation. The basis of this lies in public meetings in various parts of Croatia. the unambiguous political and constitu- tional-legal fact, which is universally Meanwhile, according to the Josipovid Commis- accepted, that sovereignty is one, unified, sion, developments were taking place in regional and indivisible, and in this sense Croatian and local Party organizations, especially in Dal- sovereignty cannot be divided. Divided matia, that the Executive Committee did not know sovereignty is in content the same as about until the Commission began its investigation limited sovereignty. after Karadjordjevo"

Another speaker, the then President of the Thus, for example, on July 20, 1971, Socialist Alliance in Croatia Ivica Vrkid, agreed: the Presidium of the Inter-Communal Conference for Dalmatia met in a secret So, let everyone know that we are session during which Dragovid [the fighting for and will direct our political President] in his introductory remarks -21- DIR-6-'72

and Kriste [the Vice-President] in his At "about this same time," the Report intervention suggested that some mem- continues, the Party committee in Zadar wrote to bers of the Executive Committee of the Savka and to other Party organizations in Dal- CC LCC at the Fourth Conference of the matiabut not to the Republican Executive LCC had given a false evaluation of the Committeedemanding that the Croatian trade situation in Dalmatia, that in the field union chief (Milutin Baltid) and four members of they are incorrectly interpreting and the Party Executive Committee (Bilid, Dragosavac, distorting some closed meetings of the Derossi-Bjelajac, and Radoj6evid) be disciplined or Republican political leadership, for ex- removed from office for "destructive interventions" ample the conversation of President Tito in Dalmatian politics. 24 with the Executive Committee and polit- ical functionaries of Croatia, that there The "Action Program" of August 2 are in the leadership of the LCC some in- dividuals who do not agree with "our These developments in Dalmatia and elsewhere political course and its principal protago- in fact represented the reactions of the then Party nists"... There are those who even talk leaders and their allies to the activities of the Exec- "about some centers of counterrevolu- utive Committee majority after Tito's visit. tion." In this connection it was proposed Whether or not the majority "nffively" thought that at this meeting that it would be necessary a chastened triumvirate were now ready to work "quietly to prepare an open confrontation with them, as they claim, they themselves were within the LC as well, because the forces acting on the basis of Tito's criticism, issuing in- of counterrevolution which are found in structions and visiting local Party organizations to the League of Communists are more dan- demand discipline and an offensive against "na- gerous than nationalists," that it was tionalist forces"the burst of activity that the necessary to hasten the process of differ- pro-Matica Party organization in Zadar had called entiation within the CC LCC, and further" "destructive interventions." "that we in Croatia will fail to exploit the chance to constitute ourselves either as a The majority group in the Executive Committee state or as a self-managing unity if we do also drafted a 30-point "Action Program" which not clean out of the leadership in Croatia was presented to and formally approved by a individuals who adopt positions contrary meeting of the Croatian "Aktiv" (The Executive to our course"; that it would be necessary Committee plus presidents of regional and "to choose true representatives of the communal Party organizations and other selected Croatian nation who will speak with leaders) on August 2. Designed to implement what Comrade Tito because he is misin- Tito had demanded, this document was to have a formed" about the situation in Croatia, curious history. etc., and that to this encl "it will be neces- sary to move toward holding an extraor- The August Action Program was the strongest dinary congress of the LCC" or attack on Croatian nationalism in general and the "immediately to convene the Conference Matica Hrvatska in particular by a leading body of of the LCC." the Croatian Party since the Tenth Session. Al- though other "antisocialist" forces and group- Mentioned in the context of this dis- ingsSerb nationalism, unitarism, neo-Comin- cussion as persons working against the formism, and the restare also discussed, it is policy of the LCC were Dragosavac, Bilid, clearly stated that Croatian nationalism is enemy Radojevid, [all members of the Executive number one "at the present moment" and ten of Committee], Baltic, and especially the Program's 30 points are dedicated to this sub- Vladimir Bakarid, who, according to ject. This line is portrayed as consistent with and statements at this meeting, is Comrade not a revision of the Tenth Session: "... along with Tito's most important informant in the its condemnation of and reckoning with unitarism, sense of opposing the policy of the Cro- the Central Committee of the LCC at its Tenth Ses- atian leadership sion and on numerous occasions thereafter also DIR-6-'72 -22-

clearly defined the protagonists of nationalist League of Communists must resolutely tendencies and condemned nationalist forces resist, preventing the extension of Croatian and Serbas equally antisocialist, branches [of the Matica] in factories. The antiself-management, and antinational." founding of branches of the Matiea, whose purpose is not cultural and educa- The Action Program accepts Tito's thesis that tional activities, like the campaign to nationalism is a disguise for the "class enemy." expand the Matica as a kind of Alleging that the present economic, political and pan-political and total national move- cultural position of the Croatian nation in Yugo- ment cannot be supported, it must adhere slavia is untenable, nationalists to the principles set forth in [its] stat- ute.25 seek political solutions which, referring formally to the Croatian nation, would bring onto the stage class interests which At the meeting at which the Action Program was are neither the interests of the working adopted, Savka Dabevid-Kudar again defined, as class nor of the Croatian nation... Not she had done before, the fundamental difference believing in the working class and under- between nationally-conscious Croatian Commu- valuing the class element in the constitu- nists and nationalists: "The difference," she said, tion of the Croatian state, these forces in- "is that we see full national affirmation and sist on a 'unified national movement' and strengthening of equality only on a platform of a 'general reconciliation of Croats,' which self-management socialism and in the context of means reconciliation with Ustae migrds, the development of national equality, now of extremist nationalist and chauvinist Republican and national statehood, in the context forces which have been defeated in the of socialist Yugoslavia. They are outside of that. course of and after the revolution. That is the line of demarcation."26 These forces "advocate and organize their polit- Once again she was ignoring the vital point that ical centers and attempt to create strongpoints in the first part of this "line of demarcation"for or the countrysideoutside and against the policy of against "self-management socialism" might have the League of Communists." Their ultimate goal is one meaning and relevance for a minority of Party said to be "the seizure of power and of dominant true-believers and another meaning, or no positions in the LCC, in order to force on it [the relevance, for the soldiers of the "mass movement." League of Communists of Croatia] a program She ignored or feigned to ignore that the latter which is contrary to the Tenth Session and to the might be cynical about socialist slogans they had interests of S.R. Croatia as a self-managing, sover- heard for years but excited by nationalist slogans eign, and equal Republic in the framework of that seemed fresh because long forbidden and S.F.R. Yugoslavia." whose promises paradoxically seemed more tangible because they were vague, founded on The principal vehicle of such forces is identified emotion, and rooted in Croatian political history as the Matica Hrvatska: and traditional aspirations.

In the Matica Hrvatska a small number Those who drafted the Action Program appar- of people act as a nucleus whose concep- ently supposed that, after acceptance by the tions and goals are contrary to our social- "Aktiv," it would be circulated to all Party basic ist development and to the purposes of organizations as a binding instruction with imple- the Matica itself. They pull the strings mentation enforceable under the rules of "demo- and seek to transform the Matica cratic centralism." That this did not occur was be- Hrvatska into a stronghold for the activity cause such communications are the responsibility of the opposition, into a second political of the Secretary of the Executive Committee, the party, and objectively they constitute a triumvir Pero Pirker, who invoked the technical conspiratorial group against the LCC argument that the Program must first be approved and LCY, [against] the socialist develop- by a plenary session of the Central Committee, ment of Croatia and Yugoslavia. The which did not meet again until November. Until -23- DIR-6-'72

then the Action Program could only be treated as but grounds for extreme nervousness. If they chose an advisory document and a semiconfidential one the wrong side in the struggle that seemed at that. In this guise it circulated among Party imminent at the center, they were undone. To most members in some districts but was allegedly sup- it must have looked as though the position of the pressed in others, like Dalmatia, where the regional triumvirate, backed by the "mass movement," Party organization was in the hands of those loyal Koprtla's control of Party appointments, and the to the triumvirate. growing organizational strength of the "second party" based on the Matica, was unassailable. Such procedures were later cited, after Karadjordjevo, as evidence for the thesis about "two lines and two directives" in the Croatian They chose accordingly, reinforcing the Party, with many key functionaries considering impression that the triumvirate commanded the themselves answerable only to Pirker and Koprtla loyalty of almost the whole of the Croatian Party and not to other members or to the Executive except for "conservative" die-hards like Bakarifi Committee as a whole. For local Party chieftains and the majority of the Executive Committee. That whose primary concern was political self-protec- loyalty on such a basis is a fragile thing was to be tion, such a state of affairs was not only unusual proved in the ten days after Karadjordjevo. DIR-6-'72 -24-

NOTES

1. Speeches and articles since Karadjordjevo, supple- what had happened at the University was that "there were mented by a review of an extensive file accumulated during two centers: one ours, Communist, which had one plan of 1971 (primarily from Vjesmk and Politika among the dailies, action, and on the other side a nationalist center which had VUS, NIN, and Hrvatsk Tjedmk among the weeklies), pro- another plan, which had in its plan simply seizing the stu- vide the principal sources. As this Fieldstaff Report was dent organization and later infiltrating the Party at the Uni- being completed, the 400-page report of a Croatian Party in- versity." The Executive Committee, she added, knew this vestigating commission headed by Ante Josipovid was pre- and had "police material on it," but were unsuccessful in sented to the Croatian Central Committee (at its 28th Ses- preventing the coup in part because the nationalists were sion on May 8, 1972). Extensive extracts are being published "very often assisted by the action of members of the Party," in the press and have been utilized as they appear, but no among whom Djodan and Veselica were the most conspicu- date has been set for the release of the entire Commission ous (speech at on December 10, in Vjesnik, December report. A most valuable additional source would be the sten- 12, 1971). ographic records of the Karadjordjevo meetings, especially the 20 hours of confrontation between Tito and the Croat 8. The 19th Session also remains a mystery, our interest in leadership during the night of November 30-December 1. it stimulated by occasional references like that of Rade This material was circulated to all Party organizations a few Pavlovi at the post-Karadjordjevo 23rd Session, discussing days after the Presidium meeting, but not to the non-Party the "collective guilt" of the whole Central Committee for the public. Unfortunately, the Yugoslav press has not yet crisis: "But we must also, comrades, remember the 19th produced a Jack Anderson. (References to V2esmk in later Session, about which no one speaks." footnotes are usually but not always to the early edition available in Belgrade, which carries many articles that first 9. The most one can say about this fascinating version is appeared in later editions of the preceding day.) that foreign correspondents who attempted to check it out could not get the Yugoslav officials they spoke to to deny it. 2. See Part II to this series of Reports (DIR-5 '72), p. 14 Readers interested in concocting even better spy thrillers and excerpts from the Report of the Josipovi Commission should see and speculate on Tito's alleged July reference to a published in V2esmk, May 9, 1972, and elsewhere. "conversation with Brezhnev" at this time (see p.19 below). 3. See footnote 7 below. 10. Dennison I. Rusinow, The Pmce of Pluralism [DIR-I-'71], Fieldstaff Reports, Southeast Europe Series, Vol. XVIII, 4. That party label is mine, not theirs or anybody else's in No. 1, 1971. Yugoslavia, and is deliberately chosen to invoke the memory of parties and movements of that name in nineteenth cen- 11. Ibid., p. 11. tury Central Europe. find the program and aims of the Matica group much closer to those of this traditional Na- 12. Ga'i's remarks at the 23rd Session of the CC LCC, De- tional-Liberalism (which everywhere became more national cember 12, 1971 (as reported in Vjesnitc, December 14). than liberal) than to the other historic political currents with which the Yugoslav Communist establishment has at- 13. For example, Ema Derossi-Bjelajac, a member of the tempted to associate them: clericalism, peasant populism (as EC, in a speech at Rijeka on December 10, 1971 (Vjesnik, represented by the interwar Croat Peasant Party), or the December 12). Ustage. These elements also came to be present, as the Matica became an assembly point for all non-Communist 14. See Part IV of this series, final portion of the section "opposition" elements in Croatian society, but the national- headed, "The Stakes Are Raised and Tito Calls." liberal current, so defined, continued in my opinion to be clearly dominant. 15. This solution has in fact now been adopted--precisely 15 days after the resignations of the Croatian leadership sus- 5. This detail is from Zagreb students present at the elec- pended the Croatian veto. "Retention quotas" have been tion assembly. raised from +- 7 per cent to 20 per cent in the economy generally and to 40-50 per cent in tourism. The latter, iron- 6. This and other quotations in this section are from con- ically, is probably better than the pre-Karadjordjevo Cro- temporary and often contradictory reports of the events in atian leaders could ever have wrung from their partners in the Yugoslav press, especially NIN (Belgrade), April 11; the Federation and presumably represents a sop VUS (Zagreb), April 14, and the dailies V2esnik (Zagreb) and desperately thrown to wounded and resentful Croatian pub- Pohtika (Belgrade) during the week of the coup. lie opinion.

7. Representative of the attitudes of those whom the 16. For a perceptive description of how the foreign currency triumvirate considered "conservative" if not "unitarist" are problem was "transformed" from the economic to the na- the interpretations of Bakari and Ema Derossi-Bjelajac. tional plane, see "Kontrarevolucija bez krinke," in VUS Bakarid thought that the existence of an organized (Zagreb), February 2, 1972. opposition to the LC was first "proved when in the student leadership there appeared people created not by the League 17. Long excerpts from all speeches, sometimes signifi- of Communists but by someone else" (speech at , in cantly cut or paraphrased (as noted below), can be found in Vjesnik, Dec. 9, 1971). Cf. Derossi-Bjelajac's opinion that Vjesnik, May 14-16, 1971. -2S- DIR-6-'72

18. Tito himself, a reasonably reliable source, has confirmed 23. Both as quoted in the Josipovi( Commission's Report, reports to this effect (in his July 4, 1971 talk with the loc. cit. Croatian leaders, as carried in all Yugoslav newspapers, May 9, 1972). 24. /b/d. "Discoveries" of this sort during the Commission's investigation probably explain the hardening in the attitude 19. From the condensed version published in Vjesnik, May of men like Bili( and Vrhovec toward the triumvirate that 9, 1972. took place about a month after Karadjordjevo. Bilid told this writer in January 1972 that such a hardening was not a 20. /b/d. Interestingly, almost the same words had already "tactical political move" on their part but reflected "new appeared in a long and useful recapitulation of the Croatian knowledge that we did not have then about the activities of crisis in NIN, December 12, 1971. Cf. also the comments on the former leadership." Since Bili was and still remains the Villa Vajs meetings of Milka Planin( and Ema Derossi- adamantly opposed to political trials for the triumvirate's Bjelajac in their December speeches to the Croatian Reserve group, this explanation of his January bitterness toward the Officers Association and at Rijeka (Vjesnik, December 12, comrades from whom he had parted company more in 1971}, and the speeches of Antun Biber and others at the sorrow than in anger a month before seems to me 23rd Session of the CC LCC {Vjesnik, December 14). convincing. 21. The text was printed in most Yugoslav newspapers on May 9, 1972, ironically the 27th anniversary of the liberation 25. From the extracts published in Politika (Belgrade), of Zagreb from German occupation and the first anniversary October 2, 1971. of Savka's speech at the mass meeting in Zagrb which many consider the birth of the triumvirate-sponsored "national 26. As quoted in NIN (Belgrade), October 17, 1971. Cf. mass movement." Tripalo's similar definition of "our conception of statehood" below, see Part IV of this series, final portion of the section 22. In the Rijeka speech of December 10, loc. cir. headed "The Triumvirate's Position."