388 The Presidential Years
Certainly, Tito was not a good orator. According to the Serb writer Ivan
Ivanji, who assisted him when he had guests from Germany, he was “the best
bad speaker in the world.”^686 He liked to improvise and therefore his argu-
ments often lacked logic. He loved platitudes, empty words, popular sayings.
The editors of his speeches had their hands full trying to make them publish-
able by purging them of syntax errors and colorful metaphors.^687 When things
became serious, however, as in the middle of a political fight, he was able to
organize his thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence. His speech against
the Serb liberals, says Djilas, was supremely coherent and rhetorically accom-
plished.^688 After the weekend the session was resumed, he presented himself as
the champion of Yugoslavia, which was threatened by the wrongheaded policy
of the Serb liberals: “The moment has come when we have to get rid of what
troubles our people, our working people.”^689 He was especially hard on the
financial oligarchy, together with the politicians who favored it, reproaching
them for not having set “the banks, export, foreign and wholesale trade” on
their feet. This had long been the principal criticism of other republics with
regard to Serbia, which Tito endorsed, since in his opinion this could have
negative consequences for the entire country in the long run. The “gang of vil-
lains,” to quote Draža Marković, was branded as “anarcho-liberal,” elitist, and
technocratic: it favored the concentration of capital in Belgrade and neglected
the class struggle, as well as tolerating attacks against Tito himself, especially
from the universities.^690 Swamped by these accusations, Marko Nikezić and
Latinka Perović resigned all their state and party offices on 21 October.^691 Their
fall signified the defeat of the “European” school of thought (as opposed to the
traditional, based on myths and nationalism), which had been present over the
previous two centuries in the political and intellectual life of Serbia, although
it had generally not been strong enough to assert itself. The consequences for
Serbia and Yugoslavia were serious, even more than those caused by the elimi-
nation of their Croat fellow sufferers. “Yugoslav liberalism,” lamented the Econ-
omist, “has been thrown out of the window.”^692 In fact, the defeat of the “most
educated part of Serb society” opened the floodgates to the “Levantine” school
of thought, xenophobic and closed in its myths, unable to pull the nation from
its economic and civil backwardness, the consequence of five centuries of Otto-
man rule.
The purge carried out in the name of “strengthening unity” was neither short
nor easy. It was applied ruthlessly, regardless of who was involved, although
Tito knew that he was sacrificing capable people. On 12 November, Koča
Popović, in protest against this “palace coup,” surrendered his office as a mem-
ber of the collective presidency of the federation. In the following months more
than five thousand (some say as many as twelve) personalities from political,