358 The Presidential Years
while at the same time ignoring the incompatibility between the ideals pro-
claimed and the actual presence of a political-state authoritarian apparatus led
by them.^514
As a counterweight to the decentralization of the LCY and its separation
from the state and economy (the communists claimed to control the economy
only ideologically, without meddling in day-to-day affairs), a new supreme
body was created, tasked with directing the whole political structure.^515 In the
days leading up to the congress Tito fought a dramatic battle when some of
his comrades, in particular Kardelj, tried to depose him from one of his most
important offices and install Mijalko Todorović as secretary general of the
party. In order to block this maneuver, he chose a drastic and daring move: he
decided tout court to abolish this function, and substitute it with an Executive
Bureau with fourteen members—two for every republic and one for each prov-
ince—which would operate as a collective body, since every member would
preside over it for two months. “The delegates,” Bilandžić related, “jumped for
joy when Tito presented his decision.”^516 They believed that with this he was
saving Yugoslavia and the LCY from fragmentation, and intended to collect
“the best and the brightest” from every republic and province in Belgrade to
create a strong power core. Exactly the opposite was true: as with Versailles at
the time of Louis XIV, the Yugoslav grandees were concentrated in the capital,
the better to control them. With this decision, said Latinka Perović, Tito “bur-
ied” not just Todorović, but all the preeminent party personalities in an amor-
phous agency that he remained outside of.^517
The Motorway AffairThe summer of 1969 was dramatic. Ustaša émigrés planted two bombs in Bel-
grade, although they failed in a parallel attempt to kill the chief of the Yugoslav
mission in Berlin. Fear spread over the country, which overshadowed the re-
newal of its diplomatic relations with West Germany without causing them to
break off, as the Croat extremists most likely wanted.^518
Normalization between the two countries was possible thanks to the rise to
power of a center-left government in Bonn, where the social-democrat Willy
Brandt was called to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of the first
moves of his Ostpolitik was the resumption of diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia,
after ten years of tensions due to Tito’s recognition of East Germany. West
German diplomacy was forced to abandon the “Hallstein doctrine,”^519 as it was
evident that overcoming the dispute with Yugoslavia was a prerequisite for
dialogue with other socialist countries, which in turn had regular diplomatic
relations with Pankow (the Berlin suburb where the East German government
had its seat).^520 Since economic relations were never interrupted but in fact had