108 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
itself as a coalition of different ethnic and political groups—Croat, Serb, and
other national minorities in Croatia—but, like the OF (Osvobodilna fronta
slovenskega naroda; Slovenian Liberation Front), it was merely an instrument
of the Communist Party. The hegemonic role the party claimed for itself, dis-
creetly but firmly, did not, however, mean that it was free of tension resulting
from the personal ambitions of the various leaders or local patriotic allegiances.
It is significant, for instance, that the decision the ZAVNOH took on 20 Sep-
tember 1943, proclaiming the annexation of Istria, Fiume, Zara, and former
Italian islands to the Croatian “fatherland,” disappointed Tito. While he
accepted it, he felt that the Croat communists, led by Andrija Hebrang, had
appropriated for themselves sovereign powers that rightly belonged to Yugo-
slavia as a common state. But such a state did not yet exist, since the Supreme
Staff had little or no influence in the areas controlled by the ZAVNOH or the
O F.^308 In any case, the nationalism of Hebrang, who had about fifty percent of
all the Partisan forces under his command in the summers of 1942 and 1943,
appeared increasingly reprehensible to the majority of the Politburo.^309
Nor were the national aspirations of the Slovenes, which the propaganda
of Yugoslav “brotherhood and unity” barely managed to mask, welcomed by
Tito and his Serb and Montenegrin collaborators. They were cautious, how-
ever, for they were well aware that the Partisan struggle in Slovenia would have
been impossible without its patriotic charge. When celebrating the fall of Italy
and the renewed outbreak of resistance after September 8, organized at a
National Council in Kočevje, the Liberation Front proclaimed the annexation
of part of Venezia Giulia (as the Italians had renamed the former Austrian lit-
toral) to Slovenia. No one protested, so as not to stir up Slovenian reservations
regarding a reunion with Yugoslavia. There is no doubt, however, that in Tito’s
circle Slovene and Croat aspirations for autonomy were viewed with growing
concern. This was clear as early as spring 1943, when Arso Jovanović and Ivo
Lola Ribar returned from Slovenia with alarming information about the local
situation. They even accused the Slovenian comrades of not operating in line
with the strategic and revolutionary plans of the Supreme Staff.^310
After August 1943, Tito had been planning to convoke the Second AVNOJ
as a parliament of all Yugoslav peoples. Since Stalin had dissolved the Comin-
tern on 13 May of that year in order to convince the Western Allies that the
Soviet Union was no longer interested in a world revolution, Tito was free from
past restrictions. He thus decided to implement his old proposal to create a
government, based on popular power, that would create a communist regime
outside of the borders of the Soviet Union.^311 Assemblies similar to those at
Plitvice and Kočevje were also held in other regions: in Istria, Bosnian Krajina,
Montenegro, Sandžak, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and even in Macedonia. Unlike