The Later Years 433
his wife, who insisted on the exclusion of the masseuse Darijana, the aide
Tihomir Vilović, and Stane Dolanc from his suite. Tito refused these terms.^232
On the eve of his departure, a new furious quarrel burst out between the spouses,
during which Jovanka accused her husband of being crazy and depraved, while
he proclaimed her a paranoid liar.^233 On returning from China, where he had
experienced a real triumph and succeeded in reestablishing both state and party
relations with Chairman Hua Guofeng,^234 Jovanka disappeared from public
life. To Lazar Koliševski, president of yet another commission tasked with her
“affair,” Tito said: “A revolutionary should never marry.”^235 The split was, how-
ever, very painful for him. When the most influential people in his entourage
lobbied him to divorce, he remained silent for so long that it embarrassed those
present, and then he replied that he could not follow their advice: “I’ve been
living with Jovanka for more than thirty years. I loved her very much and still
have a strong affection for her. We will live separately, but will not divorce.”^236
The news of the first lady’s fall from grace came like a bolt from the blue. No
one expected it, as evidenced by the good wishes sent for New Year’s 1978 to
both Tito and Jovanka, signed by their most intimate colleagues, comrades, and
friends.^237 Inevitably rumors sprang up that Jovanka’s disgrace had a political
basis and that Tito had discovered that she was a Soviet spy.^238 According to
the diaries of Dobrica Ćosić, who as president of Yugoslavia (or what re-
mained of it) in 1993 was able to see the records related to “the Jovanka affair,”
the highest authorities discussed her case in fifty-nine meetings between 1974
and 1988—hence long after Tito’s death. He wrote: “For two decades, Jovanka
really shook Yugoslavia.”^239 Considering the notes of those commissions, one
gets the impression that Tito was more distressed by his marital troubles than by
the political, moral, and economic agony of his country. He continued to send
bouquets of red roses to his wife, but Jovanka never forgave him for abandon-
ing her. When he invited her to his penultimate New Year’s party, she refused,
saying that her human dignity had been insulted.^240
When he began to court her, Tito said: “I feel that with you I could finally
find tranquility and happiness.” He had commited an enormous error. “Tito,”
said Dobrica Ćosić, “was a communist Napoleon, whose Waterloo was his
double bed.”^241