346 The Presidential Years
international security guaranteed by the troops of the great powers and by the
UN. To this end, he sent ambassadors to Washington, Moscow, London, and
Paris and went personally with Kardelj to Cairo to try to convince Nasser to
recognize Israel, although without success.^450 If nothing else, he received the
support of Pope Paul VI and much credit from the patriarch of Constantino-
ple, Athenagoras: “I have read your peace plan for the Middle East and I con-
served it in my archive as an important testimony.... I would like to tell you
that you are a real fighter for world peace. One day, the good seed planted in
the hearts and souls of the people will bear fruit.”^451
The 1968 Student RevoltIn the middle of January 1968, the Serb liberals succeeded in a purge of their
League of Communists. The Control Commission expelled about four hun-
dred members, not just because of late payment of fees or absence from party
meetings or similar transgressions, as they had been told, but because of their
opposition to reforms.^452 This showed how much Serb society was divided,
and how many different trends were present in it, from chauvinists to the radi-
cal left. The tensions that smoldered under the surface gave rise in 1968 to a
student revolt, which was provoked by a brawl between students and young
workers over admission to a musical performance. The police intervened in
a brutal manner, sparking further disorder. It was an explosion of youth anger
due in part to the difficulties of finding jobs, a situation worsened by the eco-
nomic reform.^453
In May, under the influence of the French, students in Belgrade rebelled with
leftist slogans, renaming their alma mater “Red University Karl Marx.” Many
of them were under the influence of the philosophical magazine Praxis, which
had been edited by a group of university professors from Belgrade and Zagreb
since 1964. The magazine also enjoyed high prestige abroad, thanks to its sum-
mer school on the island of Korčula. It proved to be a vitriolic critic of the
Yugoslav system, expanding on Marxian thought about the alienation of man,
who is divided between the reality of the situation and his creative possibilities.
In this context, it asserted that self-management could not be fully established
until it became entwined with the authoritarian and hierarchical structures of
the party and state, and this would require radical change to the regime.
Although the magazine was temporarily suspended in April 1968 because of
this “petit bourgeois” idea criticized by Tito himself, two months later the
extension of its influence appeared obvious. The Belgrade students rebelled
against the status quo, proclaiming their adherence to “true socialism,” symbol-
ized by an enormous picture of the marshal during the Partisan war, which was
hung on the façade of their university. “Tito the hero” was in this way opposed