442 Tito’s Death and His Political Legacy, 1980
delegations had carefully prepared for during the preceding eighteen months.
Tito’s attendance was uncertain up to the last moment, given that in spite of
“long and frank negotiations,” the Yugoslavs were not able to find a common
language with the Soviets.^61 In the end, he decided to go to the East German
capital, surprising everyone since it was the first time he had participated in
such a gathering as a party and state president. For Brezhnev, his presence was
very important, as can be inferred by the attention reserved for him. They met
before the opening day and at the inaugural session of the congress he greeted
him at the entrance to the hall, installing him at the banquet in a place of honor
between himself and Erich Honecker, the host. Aleksandar Grličkov, who led
the Yugoslav delegation at the preparatory meetings, affirmed that Tito came
to the congress “on a white horse,” since on that occasion a declaration on the
right of every party to follow its own road to socialism was adopted—some-
thing for which he had fought for over thirty years.^62 He commented to his
closest collaborators: “We have settled accounts for 1948.”^63
At the end of his life, Tito was as concerned about the domestic situation
as he was about international matters, doubling his efforts to make improve-
ments. On the internal front he lamented the slowdown in industrial growth
but feared nationalism most, as it could undermine the relations between the
republics and the provinces. In threatening tones he declared that in the event
of trouble the army—a force that he considered the best in Europe—would be
required to step in; only it could guarantee state unity. The military was ready
to pander to him, asking for and receiving stronger security laws, described as
“social self-defense,” which were meant to ensure the regime’s stability.^64 Tito
was worried by the spread of fundamentalism among the four million Sunni
Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but most of all by the situation in Kosovo,
where he forecast an Albanian “national revolt” if the authorities were not able
to prevent it in time. “The first explosion will happen there,” he predicted in
1976 to the journalist Dara Janeković. He was convinced that the Tirana gov-
ernment was sending its agents throughout the province, and that with the
support of local politicians they were smuggling gold, drugs, and weapons to
the Albanian émigrés and foreign secret services.^65
Tito also feared the “Shiptars” (Albanians) because, in league with the Ustaša,
they had planned the most recent of many attempts against his life—some-
where between the twenty-first or twenty-fifth.^66 The assassination attempt
was to have taken place in Zagreb in 1975, where Tito was set to confer the title
of “People’s Hero” on some Croatian leaders at the International Trade Fair.
The Yugoslavs were alerted to the conspiracy by Soviet agents and the schedule
was changed at the last minute. The bombs placed at the square where he
would have stopped did explode, but only blew out the windows of the nearby