152 The Postwar Period
out any provocations.”^9 And during a speech in Pula in 1956, he confessed: “We
have won the revolution with blood, thanks to the help of the liberation army.
We have radically cleansed our home.”^10 Together with those who perpetrated
it, he claimed that the massacre was morally justified, saying that the “death
sentence” had been pronounced “by the people.”^11 When Djilas asked what was
happening, Tito—without denying the terrible bloodshed—requested that he
not mention the topic again; and, finally, he brought the killing to a close (“We
have to stop the massacres. Nobody fears the death penalty anymore”).^12 On
3 August an amnesty was proclaimed, putting an end to the great butchery, but
certainly not to the pursuit of those—Croats and Serbs especially—who were
still in the woods in armed opposition to the regime.^13
This merciless vendetta against the “counterrevolutionaries,” which cost the
lives of an unknown number of people (estimates vary between seventy thou-
sand and one hundred thousand) was a taboo subject in Yugoslavia for years,
nor was it spoken of in the West, since no one among the victors could be
said to be free of acts of vengeance against the defeated enemies. It did receive
praise from Stalin, which made the Yugoslav leaders proud. At a meeting with
a Polish delegation, Stalin criticized the Warsaw authorities for their lenience
toward the opposition and cited Marshal Tito as an example: “Tito is a smart
kid. He has murdered all his opponents.”^14
The Division of PowerAt the beginning of March 1945, the provisional government constituted by
Tito had twenty-seven members. They included former political émigrés, the
vice-president and minister of foreign affairs, Ivan Šubašić, and others, includ-
ing Milan Grol, Juraj Šutej, and Sava Kosanović. In this way, he made it look as
if the agreement between Churchill and Stalin about the division of power in
the Balkans had been adhered to: an agreement to which Tito was bound, since
international recognition of the new Yugoslavia depended on it. Naturally,
though, the real power was in the hands of the CPY, or rather, of its Politburo,
composed of ten members with an even more exclusive Secretariat (Tito,
Kardelj, Ranković, and Djilas). Tellingly, Tito did not participate in government
meetings, aside from special occasions or when he wanted to report on his trips
abroad. The sessions, convened at infrequent, sometimes monthly intervals,
were chaired by Kardelj or another vice-president, while Leo Mates, Tito’s old
collaborator, kept him informed as to what was said. Within the party, too, there
were no fixed schedules: Tito gathered his most important comrades informally.
His clear focus was on governing, not dealing with minutiae or formalities.^15
Tito governed thanks to the support of the army, which was controlled by
the party and was unswervingly loyal. The party (100,000 of whose 141,000