278 The Presidential Years
to the development of socialism. If it persists in this behavior, it can even
become a reactionary force. To think that a party will guarantee the progressive
and democratic role of its power only by declaring itself communist is a gross
error of the anti-Marxist type.”^77
The Soviets did not overlook the affinity between Kardelj’s and Djilas’s ways
of thinking, which is why, on 19 December, they wrote in Pravda that the lat-
ter’s three-year prison sentence surely did not testify in favor of “mister” Kardelj,
but rather showed how fragile the ground was on which his “revisionist” theo-
ries stood. They did not say, however, that the difference between Djilas and
Kardelj was substantial: whereas in an article published in America the former
had proclaimed the Hungarian revolt as the “beginning of the end of commu-
nism generally,” the latter remained faithful to communism—albeit a Yugoslav
style—as he was trying to implement it.^78 Khrushchev was particularly hurt by
the speech of the Slovene “self-proclaimed ideologue of communist heresy,” as
Pravda labeled him, finding in it a scornful allusion to himself. When some days
later he received Ambassador Veljko Mićunović, the latter observed a corncob
on his desk, beside Kardelj’s speech. “You think that I do not understand whom
Kardelj had in mind, when he spoke about communist leaders capable of think-
ing only about corn,” he cried, banging his fist on the table.^79
The Hungarian events left the Yugoslavs totally isolated in the socialist camp,
where Titoism, seen as the root of all evil, lost every attraction. Belgrade’s rela-
tion with the West was likewise unfriendly. Tito’s firm condemnation of the
French and British adventure in Egypt—more critical than his attitude toward
the Soviet intervention in Hungary—confirmed doubts in London, Paris, and
Washington about his equidistance between the two blocs. On their end, the
Yugoslavs tried to keep the polemics with Moscow on an ideological level,
in harmony with the New Year’s interview that Tito gave to Borba stating the
need to distinguish relations between parties and states.^80 But they were not
fortunate in this endeavor. Convinced that Yugoslav “national communism”
undermined the unity of the Eastern bloc, in February 1957 the Soviets moved
from words to deeds, freezing a loan of nearly $100 million that they, together
with the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany), had promised
to Belgrade. In April, with the assistance of Budapest, Tirana, and Sofia, they
reopened the delicate question of national minorities in Yugoslavia, which in-
creased the threat of new border tensions with the neighboring states, whose
minorities (and they were many) lived under Tito’s rule. János Kádár even com-
pared “national communism,” meaning the Yugoslavs, of course, to Fascism,
while the Albanians renewed their verbal offensive of the years 1949–52 by hint-
ing at irredentist claims on Kosovo.^81 In Yugoslavia, the fear of a possible Soviet
invasion flared again, activating the idea of popular defense. In addition to the