The Presidential Years 347
to “Tito the bourgeois,” whose dismissal they dared to demand.^454 The protest
movement also spread to other Yugoslav universities, but its epicenter remained
in the capital where, in addition leftist views, it was possible to hear the per-
spectives of centralists, Yugoslavs, and pan-Serbians (the terminus technicus to
describe the idea that all Serbs throughout the Balkans should live in the same
state).^455 Before Ranković’s fall, the SFRY had been dominated by the Serb
bureaucracy, but afterward they began losing power. The future bureaucrats
could not ignore this, trying at the same time to acquire the support of the
working masses to give weight to their protest.
The revolt of fifty thousand students unleashed a wave of panic at the top
of the party. On 9 June 1968, the presidency and the executive committee of
the CC were convened in Belgrade, where Tito did not hesitate to criticize
the young, stressing the damage the protests were causing to the international
prestige of the country. Kardelj supported him and even suggested using the
army against the protesters.^456 This was not necessary, however, thanks to Tito’s
charisma: that same day he gave a televised speech and with conciliatory words,
he recognized the value of the “positive dissatisfaction” of the students, promis-
ing that he would personally try to solve their problems. “If I am not capable of
doing this,” he said, “in that event, I should no longer be where I am.”^457 At the
end of his broadcast he made a very different comment off the record according
to the Belgrade television director: “This is what happens, comrades, when
some monkeys are not arrested in time.”^458
His tactical move had a cathartic effect: the students calmed down immedi-
ately, convinced that they had obtained what they had asked for. This was an
illusion, because Tito not only did not keep his promises, but began harboring
ill-will toward the “petit bourgeois” and liberal groups that found sanctuary at
the universities.^459 The principal victim of the June events was the reform pro-
cess, since the old guard began to fear the excessive liberty it had unleashed.
When, in June 1969, they realized that they had been deceived, the students of
the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade tried to renew their protest against the
regime, but they remained isolated. The party magazine, Komunist, attacked the
“radical opposition” at the university with hostility, comparing the editors of
their paper, Student, to the Ustaše and the Chetniks.^460 “There is no hope,”
commented Dobrica Ćosić bitterly. “Everything will collapse in chaos, blood,
tyranny, disintegration.”^461
Relations with the Soviet Union and the SatellitesBetween 1964 and 1965, Tito received or visited every East European socialist
leader with the exception of Enver Hoxha and Bulgarian premier Todor Zhiv-
kov, thus further normalizing his relations with the Soviet bloc. In mid-October