236 The Postwar Period
the fact that the weakening of the Soviet Union would also weaken “our posi-
tions,” as Tito said. “True,” Kardelj replied, “we should not allow anyone to
resolve the crisis in the Soviet Union, and in Eastern Countries, with anti-
socialist methods.”^431
While they stressed the importance of their rebellion against Stalin as a
precondition of the crisis in the Soviet bloc, the Yugoslav leaders had to cope
with domestic crises caused by the metamorphosis of their own party after its
exclusion from the Cominform. Even before Stalin’s death, Tito called his com-
rades’ attention to its weak cohesion and the lack of “democratic centralism”
in its ranks.^432 He was right, since before the Sixth Congress (and even more
so after it) the party had been radically transformed due to the abolition of
social or any other criteria in recruiting new members. In 1948, the party num-
bered only seventy thousand individuals with higher education, whereas in 1954
it boasted 319,000, since all posts of responsibility were reserved for its mem-
bers. During the same time, it experienced a large “purge,” considering that,
between 1950 and 1955, 123,000 members suffered disciplinary measures or were
expelled.^433 This turbulent dynamic caused a lot of apprehension among the
cadres, who saw their privileges at risk and hence reacted to the reforms with
passive resistance or resigned pessimism. Consequently, at the end of 1952, the
LCY lost about eighty thousand members. Even the party’s daily newspaper,
Borba, commented on the moodiness in the party in June 1953, while the Zagreb
newspaper, Napred, complained: “The Communists are passive, the people are
lazy. In some mass organizations [a network of trade unions, women, students,
peasants, cultural organizations, necessary to mobilize popular support] less than
half of the League’s members are active.... Many Communists are apathetic.”^434
In reaction to this, Tito called a meeting of the CC on 16 and 17 June 1953
at Brioni, where he stressed the need to close ranks and free the LCY of any
superfluous ballast. He criticized those who had betrayed party discipline by
spreading “petit-bourgeois ideas about freedom and democracy” and at the
same time failing to resist “foreign and anti-socialist influences.” He sent a let-
ter to all party organizations, in which he described the need to overcome every
manifestation of apathy and expel “old members affected with bureaucratic
tendencies, to develop an ideological and educational activity, and to silence all
enemies.”^435 It was clear that he rediscovered his penchant for discipline, one of
his favorite words, and considered enemies not just those Communists who
were still weary of the recent reforms, but also those who were lured by decadent
Western culture. They all should be reeducated or rendered harmless. Accord-
ing to Djilas, this meant that Tito began distancing himself from opposition to
the Soviet brand of Communism, and tried to block the democratization pro-
cess and to bring the party back to the old secure path of Leninism-Stalinism.