The Postwar Period 191
blamed the Yugoslav leaders for a number of theoretical and practical sins, with-
out touching on the international policy issues that were the origin of the Tito-
Stalin split: the Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation, Belgrade’s policy in Albania, and
the Greek question. The text of the resolution was published in Prague by the
newspaper Rudé Právo on June 28, Saint Vitus’s Day, a fateful day in Serb history
ever since their defeat on the Kosovo plain by the Turks in 1389. Tito received the
text immediately thanks to the teleprinter, the new technological marvel recently
installed at Brdo. It is said that while reading the long and verbose document
he pounded the table with his fists while cursing Stalin. The following night,
to calm himself, he took a gun, went to the garden, and began shooting the
frogs to silence them. Shortly afterwards he suffered his first pancreatic attack.^226
As Nikita S. Khrushchev said later, Stalin boasted at the time that all he
had to do to get rid of Tito was to lift his little finger: he believed his agents,
especially the Soviet representative at the Cominform, the philosopher Pavel J.
Judin, who told him that his authority in Yugoslavia was undisputed and could
not be opposed, especially not by “Marxist illiterates” such as Tito and his com-
rades.^227 It was a blunder that induced the Boss to make one of the worst mis-
takes of his life. He was convinced that he could destroy Tito in two months at
the most, but his calculations were off because he failed to realize that Tito had
at his disposal an army and police force that were loyal to him and not to Mos-
cow. According to Stalin, the “leaders of the CPY were afraid to confess their
treacherous and hypocritical attitude toward the CPSU to the Yugoslav people,
who nourished a profound love and liking for the Soviet Union.”^228 Actually,
it was just the other way round: the leaders of the CPY published the Bucha-
rest resolution and their answer to it, written by Djilas, in full. In it, they did
not restrict themselves to confuting Stalin’s accusations, but counterattacked,
stressing the soundness of Tito’s policy. The worst of injustices had been done
to the party, to the working class and to the peoples of Yugoslavia, Djilas wrote,
offering forces hostile to the socialist camp a formidable propaganda tool. The
CC CPY denied any responsibility for the consequences that would follow,
since it was the accusers who would have to bear the brunt.^229
If Stalin deluded himself that he would find enough “healthy elements”
among the Yugoslav Communists to be able to overthrow Belgrade’s “political
acrobats” and align Yugoslavia with the other satellites, he had made a fatal
error, not realizing that the majority of the population would support Tito
precisely to rid themselves of the Soviet influence. From 29 June on, it was clear
that the marshal was the master of the situation. He was supported by all the
government bodies and controlled the press and other media. In the capital,
and in the rest of the country, life went on normally. The men in power dis-
played a supreme calm. On 30 June, Tito, who had been absent for a long time,