The Presidential Years 313
According to them, he had been saved by a miracle: it happened in one in ten
thousand cases. “Ranković’s bullet” remained in Kardelj’s skull, and was removed
only during the autopsy after his death, seventeen years later.^252
Someone who was not troubled by Kardelj’s flight was Ranković, who evi-
dently wanted him completely isolated. For instance, he refused to allow him to
participate some months later in the solemn celebrations of the twentieth anni-
versary of the “Užice Republic.” Ranković turned down his request to be in-
vited, suggesting dryly to him that he should “rest.” (In that period the UDBA
suspected that he and his wife were collaborating with the CIA). Bakarić was
among those who could not resign themselves to Kardelj’s retirement, as he
was well aware that he would lose a precious ally. He did all he could to con-
vince him to return home and to remain politically active.^253 The rumors that
circulated abroad and in Yugoslavia about the hunting accident disturbed Tito,
who staged a photo opportunity in order to quiet them. At the end of August,
after his return, Kardelj was obliged to go hunting chamois in the Julian Alps
with Veselinov and Ranković. The picture of the three “comrades” appeared
the next day on the front page of Delo, the main Ljubljana newspaper.^254 But
Kardelj’s troubles continued: in that period a large part of his archive disap-
peared, transported in four trucks to a place never revealed, apparently by the
UDBA.^255 By contrast, the Slovenian leadership answered to the disgrace of
its point man by closing ranks and organizing a mass demonstration in his
favor in the main square of Ljubljana. The event planners were told by the
leading representatives of the Slovene League of Communists that the “cen-
tralist forces” had tried to liquidate Kardelj as the principal exponent of self-
management: “Therefore we have to support him as much as possible.” The
demonstration was an enormous success: the crowd filled not just the square
but also the adjacent streets.^256
The March 1962 PlenumThe Third Plenum, on 27 November 1961, ended with the affirmation that too
much democracy was an obstacle to the building of socialism, therefore the
control of investments, industrial planning, wages, and trade was reinstated
to “stabilize” the situation and restore the guiding role of the party. Kardelj’s
proposal to strengthen the Socialist Alliance of Working People, a parallel
organization to the party that had been established in 1952 with the aim of
enrolling non-party members and thereby allowing the masses to participate in
political life, was rejected. The ideas of the 1952 Sixth Congress were also criti-
cized, particularly those regarding the progressive disappearance of the state
and the party. The most prominent supporters of the reforms, many Slovenes
among them, were removed from the federal administration, and Tito began to