Tito and His Comrades

The Postwar Period 199

for years: “In no concentration camp were there similar torments. Not in the
German nor Soviet camps, nor in the American ones in Korea, nor in the
French ones in Algeria.... Nowhere.”^255
More than thirty thousand people, some of whom were guilty only of hav-
ing expressed a critical remark about Tito and his comrades, others who were
completely innocent, experienced the hell of Goli Otok and similar institu-
tions. At the same time, there was no lack of fanatical Stalinists among the
internees who could have been very dangerous to the regime in case of a Soviet
military attack. Both found themselves in a desperate situation, without any
judicial redress, completely cut off from their families and from the outside
world, where they could return—or so they were promised—if they would
denounce prison mates who persisted in their error, which frequently hap-
pened. It seems that the Yugoslav leadership, ready to see enemies everywhere,
had no doubts about the regime installed on Goli Otok. Only later were there
any relative afterthoughts, as shown by Tito’s attempts to save some of his gen-
erals. Yet he was also quite aware of the existence in the army of “dissident
elements.” According to the chief political commissar, General Otmar Kreačić,
30 percent of officers in combat units were pro-Cominform.^256 There would
have been even more if so many of the prewar Communists, schooled in
Moscow and therefore loyal to Stalin, had not fallen during the liberation
struggle. Tito confessed this to John F. Kennedy, then a young member of
the United States House of Representatives, during his visit to Yugoslavia in
January 1951.^257

Collectivization of Agriculture

While it was possible to isolate the Cominformist “fifth column,” it was not so
easy to master the peasants, whom Tito and his comrades tried to coerce onto
collective farms in an attempt to demonstrate to Stalin how wrong he was in
accusing them of being followers of Bukharin and of being too lenient toward
the kulaks. After the war, the new leaders followed a rather prudent policy in
the countryside; for example, in 1946 by the “law on cooperatives” that stated
that these were “voluntary economic enterprises of the working people.”^258 In
October 1947, Tito affirmed: “With regards to the rumors about the expropria-
tion of land, tell the peasants that it is an outright lie. Nobody will take the land
from them, because, for God’s sake, to whom should we give it?”^259 In this he
agreed with Stalin, who counseled the Yugoslavs to be prudent with the col-
lectivization of agriculture, for it was “a difficult and perilous task.”^260
At the start of the following year, Tito was indignant because of some
“excessive” measures taken in the countryside by the local authorities. To Jakov
Blažević, newly nominated as minister of commerce, he recommended caution