286 The Presidential Years
Zagreb. The new one would be ratified by the subsequent congress, which was
to convene in Ljubljana in November 1957. However, at the last moment it was
postponed to the following April because of concerns raised in Kardelj’s circle
about the close relationship that seemed to appear between Khrushchev and
Tito. Only when Tito cancelled his trip to Moscow did the tensions settle,
allowing Kardelj to go on with his work. After Stalin’s death he was more than
ever convinced that Yugoslavia could act in a creative way on an international
level thanks to its prestige and influence. “The Soviet leaders have suffered a total
defeat,” he noted. “We showed not only that we are right, but that we are able
to rebel, too.”^117 Soon, however, as a result of the Djilas affair, but also because
of the events in Poland and Hungary, things drew to a standstill. Aleksandar
Ranković took advantage of these dramatic events to strengthen his influence,
which was already strong thanks to the UDBA’s successes in its fight against
Com informists. The consequence was a slowdown of the democratization pro-
cess that had started in the early fifties and a return to centralism. After the
recent quarrel with Khrushchev, Kardelj began once more to hope that the time
for reforms was ripe and therefore poured himself into the preparatory work for
the Sixth Congress.^118 In this, he was assisted by a large group of experts, intel-
lectuals, and party functionaries. Although physically he was not in the best
shape, he elaborated on his ideas for a year while listening to Beethoven, in the
intoxicated conviction that he could create a utopia. “But,” he confided to his col-
laborators, “the peculiarity of a utopia is that it sooner or later becomes reality.”^119
On Tito’s initiative, the program draft was sent to all “fraternal” parties, with
the invitation to comment upon and improve it. It was more a courtesy than a
real willingness to enter into a dialogue, this being obvious in the fundamen-
tal disparity between the text and Soviet doctrine. When Veljko Mićunović
showed it to the CPSU’s ideologue, M. A. Suslov, guardian of orthodoxy and
sworn enemy of Yugoslav revisionists, a lively dispute ignited.^120 Subsequently,
the Moscow Politburo began to suspect that Tito nurtured the ambition to take
on the leading role in international communism, and that he was throwing
down the gauntlet to the CPSU. As a sign of protest, it canceled its delegation’s
participation in the congress while Khrushchev dispatched a personal letter to
the marshal, trying to induce him to strike some of the program’s most radical
points. The Poles turned up, sending two of their representatives to Belgrade.
“Do not create difficulties for us, because the Russians will protest,” they ad-
monished, proposing adjustments that would distort the “heart” of the text.
Tito allowed some formal changes, but not decisive ones, and not designed to
calm the Soviets.^121
During this time Khrushchev strengthened his position, taking on the pres-
idency of the government on 28 March 1958, in addition to the presidency of