378 The Presidential Years
that had hosted Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Adenauer, Nehru, and
Sukarno. “The people mentioned were at the helm of States bigger than Yugo-
slavia... but nobody met, as a Head of State and government, as many world
leaders as the President Tito. It means that he who is fortunate enough to
engage in discussion with him discusses with somebody who is better informed
about the entire world than any world leader.”^624 Tito was received in grand
style, as reported by the Evening Star, but also with exceptional security mea-
sures. The Washington Post defined him as “a legendary leader” who enjoyed the
open admiration of President Nixon, and was in tune with a changing world
and its new political constellations. The Baltimore Sun stressed that he had
managed to overcome domestic and international conflicts with his “concilia-
tory” ability, and that he was the spokesman for a policy aimed at reducing
international tensions, a man whose advice and help were sought by many.^625
To this positive, although overly optimistic assessment, it should be added
that Tito’s journeys in the West were also economically fruitful: Yugoslavia
received nearly a billion dollars in soft loans in support of his stabilization
program.^626
The Calm before the StormIn October 1971, the Yugoslav army and territorial defense, more than sixty
thousand men in all, carried out impressive military maneuvers at the Plitvice
Lakes in Croatia referred to as “Freedom ’71,” and were held concurrently with
Soviet-Hungarian military maneuvers. The purpose was to demonstrate to
what extent the armed forces were ready to defend the country and its social
system.^627 Although in conversations with Croat leaders Tito continued to
accuse some of his collaborators as well as high party and state personalities of
being “agents of the foreign secret services,” the domestic situation was rela-
tively quiet by Yugoslav standards.^628 Frane Barbieri, editor of the influential
Belgrade magazine NIN (an acronym for weekly information review) affirmed
in mid-November that the constitutional reform had made it possible to resolve
the Serb-Croat quarrel. Thus a thorn in the side of internal political develop-
ment appeared to have been removed, since the “reform has taken the material
basis of its power to the federal bureaucracy, leaving just as much as is possessed
by the republics and the autonomous provinces, as voluntarily delegated to the
central power.”^629
In reality, it was just the calm before the storm, which erupted in Zagreb a
week before the Yugoslav national holiday (which fell on 29 November). The
unrest followed a student strike in support of Croat economic and political
demands. The protesters joyfully welcomed “the changes of the socioeconomic
order and the promotion of the republic to a sovereign national state of the