Tito and His Comrades

190 The Postwar Period

He was a member of the CC CPSU and the NKVD and for years had been in
charge of Yugoslav affairs. If he had any hopes of convincing Tito when he
came, he departed under the unpleasant impression that the game was over.
The marshal’s words played a part, as did a curious coincidence: in his study,
Tito had two portraits, one of Lenin and one of Stalin. A few minutes before
Moshetov entered the room, Stalin’s photo had fallen from the wall and was
momentarily set on the floor. The Soviet emissary certainly would not have
ignored this sacrilege and its hidden significance.^220

Exclusion from the Cominform

On 19 June 1948, a dispatch came from Moscow, this time signed by Mikhail A.
Suslov, the director of the Office of Foreign Policy at the CC CPSU, with the
announcement that the Comintern would meet in Bucharest. If the Yugoslavs
accepted the invitation, they were to send their delegates to the Romanian
capital by June 21. There they were to contact Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the
secretary general of the CPR, for information about where the meeting was
to take place. The dispatch concluded: “We are expecting an immediate answer
to Filipov (Stalin).”^221 The answer, already written, was sent the next day. It
was a carefully crafted document in which the Yugoslav leaders sought to
explain, once again to their comrades and judges, why they refused to take part
in their assembly. They were prepared to collaborate with the Cominform, but
noted that the problem on the agenda exclusively regarded a dispute between
the CPY and the CPSU, a dispute that should be resolved on a bilateral level.^222
According to Djilas, Tito sent this communication directly, without submitting
it to the CC for a final examination. Obviously, the marshal wanted to resolve
the issue once and for all and had no intention of leaving any leeway for those
who were uncertain and doubtful. He had other things to think about, as he
was weighing the possibility of a Soviet invasion and seeing himself in the
woods again, this time fighting the Red Army. During a walk with Djilas near
the pond at Brdo Castle, he spoke about that possibility with an almost Greek
sense of fate: “To fall in one’s own country. At least the memory remains!”^223
Meanwhile, in Bucharest, or rather in the royal castle nearby, the Cominform
met to judge Tito and his comrades in absentia, according to Stalin’s directives.
The Yugoslavs were accused of revisionism and of imposing a “Turkish-type ter-
ror” on their country. In the resolution, drawn up by Palmiro Togliatti, “our best
jurist,” to quote Zhdanov, the “Yugoslav Communists worthy of the name” were
invited to overthrow the leadership of the CPY and to replace it with a new one
faithful to the ideals of the international proletariat.^224 Zhdanov even went so
far as to declare: “We have information that Tito is an imperialist spy.”^225 Aside
from these absurd accusations, it must be noted, however, that the resolution