114 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
equal in the future federation. Tito sought to calm their anxieties, meeting
separately with both delegations, and promising more than he was later able to
carry out. Asked by General Jaka Avšič, a royal officer who joined the Partisans,
whether the Slovenian Army would be allowed to use its native language as the
language of command in its own territory, Tito promptly answered: “It is clear,
completely clear, you are a Slovenian Army and therefore you should have your
own language.”^333 This promise was forgotten by 1945.
In spite of the exaltation that permeated it, there was a tragic overture to
the Second AVNOJ. On the eve of its opening, news arrived that Ivo Lola
Ribar had lost his life on 27 November 1943, in an air attack on the field of
Glamoč, where he had been scheduled to leave for Cairo as head of a military
mission to the Allied Command for the Mediterranean. This mission was of
great importance for Tito, who wanted to emphasize his parity with the West-
ern powers. As he said, “They a mission to us—we a mission to them.”^334 When
informed of Lola’s death, he placed both hands on the table and said: “They
have destroyed my pillar.” He then had to manage one of the most difficult
tasks of his life: to inform Ribar’s father, old Ivan Ribar, whose wife had already
been slaughtered by the Ustaše, that he has lost not only Lola, but also his older
son, Ivica, who had recently fallen in battle. Ribar stood silent, then embraced
him: “It is hard, this fight of ours.”^335
Rumors were circulating that Ivo Lola Ribar’s death had been the result of
betrayal. Vladimir Velebit, who was near him during the fatal attack, firmly
denied this, stressing that it was a tragic accident. Tito, who as an old conspira-
tor did not trust anyone, was of a different opinion.^336
Tito and Kardelj only informed Moscow about the decisions of the Second
AVNOJ when it was over. Their dispatch went unanswered. “Generally they
reacted promptly,” wrote the latter in a memoir, “but now they did not. They did
not dare make a hurried decision, because they did not know how the whole
affair would end.”^337 Stalin, tormented during the war by fear of a separate
peace between Germany and Great Britain, did not want to give the impres-
sion that he had revolutionary ambitions in the Balkans. He angrily com-
mented on the Second AVNOJ, saying that it was a knife in the back of the
Soviet Union. This was immediately conveyed to Veljko Vlahović, the represen-
tative of the CPY in Moscow. The “Boss,” as Stalin was called by his collabora-
tors, was disturbed not only because of the monarchy, since he tried to prevent
any suspicions in the West for his support to such revolutionary decisions,
but also because of the possible impression that Serb hegemony in Yugoslavia
had been replaced by a Croat one. “Take into consideration,” wrote Dimitrov
to Tito, “that, in various British and American circles, people are speculating