Tito and His Comrades

450 Tito’s Death and His Political Legacy, 1980

Tito’s report for the Eleventh Congress. Based on his directions, the text was
written by a team of experts who worked through the night so the next morn-
ing the marshal could read and edit it. So he did, meeting the experts again in
the late afternoon and giving them notes. At the end of the discussion, in a
relaxed mood, they all went to dinner and one of them took the liberty of sug-
gesting that the draft, or at least the part of it that dealt with international
relations, should be sent to the foreign secretary. Tito drummed his fingers,
paused a moment, then said: “Yes, of course, we could also send it.” Then he
grimaced, beat his fist on the table and hissed furiously: “But we will not send
it. I know these things better than anyone else in Yugoslavia.”^97

Everything Passes. Yugoslavia, Too

In autumn 1979, at the end of his hundred and seventeenth trip abroad, to
Romania, which of all Eastern countries was closest to him, Tito’s health wors-
ened rapidly. The main culprit was diabetes and, consequently, circulatory dif-
ficulties in his left foot that could not be overcome even with intensive therapy.
During the war Tito and his comrades faced death every day, accepting it as
the price of victory. When in power their attitude toward death changed, since
it was not the rule anymore, but a bitter exception. The 1953 loss of Boris Kidrič,
who had coauthored the reforms after the split with Stalin, was extremely pain-
ful for them, since he was the first member of their inner circle to die. Tito went
to Ljubljana for the funeral and returned to Belgrade on the “blue train,” inher-
ited after the war from King Aleksandar but refurbished with the help of
Soviet experts, since it had not been sufficiently luxurious or safe enough. Dur-
ing the journey, a discussion developed on life’s transiency, with Djilas affirm-
ing that humans were just matter and life after death was an illusion. Tito
reproached him with a smile: “Do not speak about this now. Who knows, who
may know?”^98
Tito was conscious of leaving a void behind him and it seems this may have
been his intention.^99 When, at the tenth anniversary of the Second AVNOJ in
November 1953, Djilas proposed minting a special “marshal” deco ration that
would pass to his successor after his death, he opposed the idea, saying: “Yes,
certainly, so that any coward will wear it.”^100 In the last years of his life, Yugo-
slavia experienced a rapid economic and political decline and the 1974 constitu-
tion remained largely unimplemented, as it was not possible to transform the
state into a confederation nor was it possible to go from a one-party system to
democratic pluralism. The shift of power in favor of the republics seriously
hindered the central government’s ability to formulate an efficient economic
strategy and prevented the LCY from controlling the local political centers.