246 The Postwar Period
did not know that Dedijer took his side not so much out of friendship, but to
show him that he was not a coward, which Djido had once accused him of being
during the war, in the presence of Tito.^479 This at least was his later explanation.
Djilas, “the best orator of the Partisan revolution,” was not able to reply to
his accusers properly. He followed Kardelj’s advice to engage in an act of peni-
tence, entangling himself in an incoherent round of self-criticism and partially
repudiating his ideas. As he confessed later, during the plenum he discovered a
kernel of masochism within himself, thinking: “Let’s let things get weird and
see how bad it gets.” In the end, he was completely lost, and “roamed from
room to room, as if he was trying to find help and counsel about what to do.”^480
Although he carried out the “final heroic act of a Communist,” abdicating his
convictions and his honor, following the example of Stalin’s victims, Tito
remained unmoved. Quite the opposite, since the marshal admired the auda-
cious, even if they were his adversaries. With his moral “suicide,” Djilas had
devalued himself in Tito’s eyes. In regard to Djido’s self-criticism, he said: “We
will see how sincere it is,” albeit without hiding his displeasure. Speaking with
foreign journalists he declared that political death was the worst thing that
could happen to a former protégé.^481
Djilas was not accused of “sectarianism,” since Tito was convinced that
“there is nothing organized” afoot.^482 For this reason, he was not expelled from
the LCY, although he was banned from the CC and punished with the “final
admonition” which, in the Communist world, gave the culprit a chance to
mend fences as a simple member of the party. After all, Tito did not want to
appear to Western public opinion as one who executed repressive measures,
similar to the Soviets. After the experience of Andrija Hebrang and the Com-
informists, as Djilas wrote later, Tito understood that it was not necessary to
physically eliminate his enemies but only politically, according to the slogan:
“Don’t knock the head off, just knock them on the head.”^483 A ferocious press
campaign followed, orchestrated from on high, which did not cool down even
after Djilas’s confession of his errors and his declaration that he felt “as if his
soul was liberated from the devil.”^484 A commission led by Vladimir Bakarić
stripped him of all his public offices on 20 January 1954, whereupon he stepped
down as president of the Federal Assembly. The following day, voters from
Pančevo asked Dedijer to renounce his parliamentary seat, too. Even Dedijer’s
doctor was not willing to see him, despite his having had an epileptic attack,
the consequence of a head injury during the war. When Tito was informed, he
sent him his own physician. But this was the only act of mercy on the part of
the two men.^485
The presidency of the Federal Assembly went to Djila’s adversary, Moša
Pijade, while in the Executive Committee his place was co-opted by the Slovene,