284 The Presidential Years
their relative well-being.^107 Dobrica Ćosić, a member of the Serb League of
Communists and Ranković’s favorite, often wrote about this, stressing that the
Croatian and Slovenian “comrades” were sabotaging the development of the
Serb regions. In 1954, he noted in his diary: “Everything is very expensive. Life
is increasingly difficult. Belgrade is nearly without electricity. The power breaks
down too often. From ministers to the retired, all are complaining about the
bad crops. Everyone is unsatisfied. Everyone hates the Slovenes.”^108
Slovenia was obliged to yield 10 percent of its GNP to the federal govern-
ment and the growing dissatisfaction manifested itself on 13 January 1958 when
the first big strike since the war broke out in the mining center of Trbovlje,
which had traditionally been a “red” district. Like their fathers who had pro-
tested violently against Belgrade in 1924, four thousand miners “crossed arms,”
refusing to work and asking for better salaries. They took the authorities by
surprise, compelling them to confront an unforeseen question: How was it pos-
sible to strike in a state where the proletariat was in power? Even more embar-
rassing was the observation that the communists were totally isolated among
the workers, since no party member was elected to the Agitation Committee
organized by the strikers. Miha Marinko, one of the most prominent men in
the Slovenian League of Communists, born in Trbovlje, tried to calm the
waters, but his arrival in a Mercedes irritated the miners so much that he barely
saved his own skin. It seemed that the strike would also spread to other indus-
trial centers of the republic, since couriers had been arrested with messages
from the Agitation Committee that invited the worker collectives to join the
protest.^109 The Slovenian leadership considered the situation very serious.
Edvard Kardelj, who at first tried to hide what was going on from Tito, saw the
strike as a personal defeat. At the Ljubljana plenum on 24 January 1958, he
compared the events in Trbovlje with those in Hungary, stressing that “only by
chance was it not necessary to intervene with arms.” Unlike the Hungarians,
the miners had not allowed themselves to be influenced by “openly counter-
revolutionary slogans,” although that might yet happen. If the strike did degen-
erate into a protest against the regime, the authorities should use force. “I have
to say,” Kardelj went on, “that we were ready to use it, and without hesitation,
if somebody had dared to raise his hand against the achievements of our work-
ing people.”^110 Matija Maček, chief of the Slovenian UDBA, was more drastic,
brutally affirming that there was “no need to use the troops. Give them wine
and then into the cave with them!” The writer Bojan Štih, outraged by these
words, which were a reminder of the fate of postwar massacre victims, pro-
tested by buying a helmet and a pickaxe and parading around with them in the
center of Ljubljana. He ended up in jail.^111
However, good sense prevailed among the politicians. They sent their dele-
gates to Trbovlje, headed by Ljubljana’s vice-president of the Executive Council,