Tito and His Comrades

160 The Postwar Period

Serbia, and Macedonia. “But that was impossible,” Tito continued. “The Serbs
just wouldn’t tolerate it.”^53
Before the constitution, but even more so after it, the country was hit with
an avalanche of economic and social reforms. Tito was aware of how risky this
was: upon offering Vlatko Velebit a prestigious post in the “Yellow House,” as
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was called, Velebit claimed that he was entirely
inexperienced for the task. Tito smiled: “None of us creating this State is aware
of how challenging this is. We have to learn on the job.”^54 But he was full of
confidence in himself and his comrades, as shown by a message he sent proudly
to Moscow in January 1946, claiming that during the last months after the war
Yugoslavia had reached the same stage Russia had in the years 1917–21, during
its own bloody civil war—a time of daring and radical social experiments.^55

Church and State

Ideologically, alongside the doctrine of “War Communism,” which was in many
ways similar to the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia
during its civil war, the authorities began to introduce “Socialist Realism,” the
official art form as expounded by Andrei Zhdanov in the Soviet Union. In
Yugoslavia, it was put into action by Milovan Djilas, minister of agitprop (agi-
tation and propaganda). He did it with such enthusiasm, said Kardelj, that “we
were compelled to mitigate the consequences of his dogmatic radicalism....
He was a wild sectarian.”^56 But in spite of this fanaticism, the leaders of the
CPY continued their policy, implemented during the liberation struggle, of
hiding the party from the masses, as if it were still underground. At the First
Congress of the Communist Party of Serbia in the spring of 1945, delegates
were warned not to speak about Tito’s attendance or about his speech, in order
not to harm his standing as a statesman. At the First Congress of Yugoslav
Writers in November 1946, Tito failed to mention the Communist Party and
its mission to reeducate intellectuals regarding the advantages of Marxism-
Leninism. Even in the CPY ’s leading newspaper, Borba, and in its magazine,
Komunist, it was difficult to find an article on the topic.^57 In spite of this, the
comrades in power, though obsessed by “conspiracy,” openly imitated Stalin’s
hardline approach to social transformation. Edvard Kocbek, a prominent Slo-
venian writer and leader of the Christian Socialists who had been on the exec-
utive team of the Liberation Front from the very beginning, lamented in his
diary on 11 June 1946 that “the party has forgotten that we’re in Europe; that it
should respect the pluralism of life and spirit more than Russia does; that our
revolution was different; that it behaves immorally. It forgets the aid of the
Allies, sinks into worse and worse brutality and sterility, and provokes outrage
(hate, violence, excesses) in the countryside.”^58