The Postwar Period 161
Against such a background, attacks against religion, especially the Catholic
Church, were inevitable. These attacks were shaped by Tito’s conviction that
Yugoslavia’s prewar frailty, its lack of national robustness, was caused by ethnic
and religious conflict.^59 Alojzije Stepinac, the archbishop of Zagreb, who had
been imprisoned after Tito’s victory, was released on 2 June 1945, the same day
that Tito met with representatives of the Croat clergy. In his discussions with
them he bemoaned the clergy’s behavior during the war, hoping that in future
the church would be more independent of the Vatican—which was openly pro-
Italian—while stressing that he too was a “Catholic.”^60 This did not induce
Stepinac to become more compliant, despite his meeting with the marshal a
few days later, on 4 June. He remained defiant in the face of Tito’s request for a
Church more autonomous from the Pope, saying, “No Catholic can ignore the
supreme authority of the Holy See—even if it costs him his life—or he isn’t a
Catholic at all.”^61 A later decision by the bishops to openly protest against land
reform, which affected their own vast holdings, led to a further worsening in
relations, which the appointment of the new papal nuncio in Belgrade, the
American bishop Joseph P. Hurley, did nothing to assuage. “Who is Tito?”
Hurley wrote in his diary, venting his hostility toward socialist Yugoslavia and
its leader: “A Ukrainian Jew?”^62 This escalating conflict with the Roman Cath-
olic Church, the only organization capable of resisting the new regime, reached
its climax with the trial of Stepinac, held in a blaze of publicity in the autumn
of 1946, on charges related to his involvement with the Ustaša.^63 This was just
one of many great show trials staged by the new regime against real enemies
(such as Draža Mihailović), potential enemies (such as the leader of the Serb
peasants, Dragoljub Jovanović), and, later, even against prominent members of
the party. All the trials were carried out in pure Stalinist style.^64
As in the Soviet Union of the thirties, so in Yugoslavia was there an obsessive
hunt for all possible internal enemies. An omnipotent and oppressive bureau-
cracy took hold, spreading into every part of civic life. Koča Popović summed
up the postwar years: “The party is rapidly becoming ‘everything’—ideology
again has absolute preeminence. When I say ‘ideology,’ I mean a doctrinaire
attitude that prohibits every disagreement.”^65 Yugoslavia still differed from the
Soviet Union in its choice not to abolish the private property of small enter-
prises, especially within the agricultural sector, but what emerged was a chaotic
economy that fell short of the leaders’ ambitions to drive communism forward
in Europe and to succeed Moscow as the vanguard of the revolution.^66
According to Djilas, relationships within this vanguard, so solid during the
Partisan period, began to deteriorate around two years after the war, not least
because Tito started to behave increasingly as the charismatic overlord who