208 The Postwar Period
territorial claims in southern Carinthia and recognizing the border between
the two states as final. Because of this “sell-out,” a heated debate developed
between Belgrade and Moscow that, according to the Western press, seemed to
announce with its rancor the interruption of diplomatic relations.^300
The note delivered by a Soviet Embassy official on 20 August 1949 at 4:15 a.m.
to a janitor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade seemed to be of a
particularly menacing nature. This was the custom in case of a declaration of
war. The Moscow government lodged a complaint against the arrest of Soviet
citizens residing in Yugoslavia, the so-called “White Russians” who, after the
October Revolution, found shelter in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slo-
venes. During the Second World War, some of these refugees had been recruited
by the Germans, while at the end of the war those who had neither escaped nor
been shot had to accept Soviet citizenship, which was granted by Moscow
without bothering to ask for Belgrade’s consent. This generosity had a quid pro
quo: in return the “White Russians” were to become Stalin’s “fifth column”
in Yugoslavia. When the split openly erupted, Tito was not inclined to ignore
the activity of these “counterrevolutionary” elements. They became victims of
Ranković’s police, who began to arrest them in 1948. Moscow reacted promptly.
The note of 20 August was the last and the most threatening in a series of
diplomatic protests: it denied Yugoslavia the right to prosecute Soviet citizens,
even if guilty, declaring that the Soviet government would defend them, adopt-
ing if needed “more efficient measures” than mere words.^301
Kardelj and Bebler panicked. Not long before, the Soviet Union had recalled
its ambassador, the young and plump Lavrent’ev, from Belgrade, without nam-
ing a successor, while news of troop movements in Hungary and Romania
toward the Yugoslav border were more and more alarming, especially in view of
rumors about the existence in neighboring countries of “international brigades”
ready to march on Belgrade. Could “more efficient measures” be interpreted as
the threat of an imminent armed attack? Kardelj immediately rang the French,
British, and American ambassadors, inviting them to come to the ministry for
consultations that evening. When Bebler reached Tito by phone at Brioni,
where he was on vacation, the appointment was cancelled. The marshal ordered
the two of them to keep calm and thus not play into the hands of the Soviets.
He decided to prolong his sojourn on the Adriatic for a few more days and
to return to Belgrade via Zagreb, as he had promised the Croats. In reality, he
too was extremely worried, for it was clear that the 20 August note had been
written by Stalin himself.^302
Since he did not want to repeat the situation of April 1941, when the aggres-
sors had been able to cut off the Belgrade government from the outside world,
even before starting hostilities, Tito ordered the highest political and military