World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 113
As in Bihać during the First AVNOJ, in Jajce, too, the communist leadership
did everything required to bend the assembly to its will. Every decision was taken
unanimously, with applause, and without discussion.^327 The Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia therefore took shape—although with different char acteristics—
in a manner similar to the way the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was
created. Although the Second AVNOJ proclaimed itself “the highest represen-
tative of the people’s sovereignty and of the united State of Yugoslavia,” it was
once more the expression of the will and the interests of a small group who
were militarily powerful and therefore able to form the new state as it wished,
without heeding its Muscovite patron. “The new power,” wrote Djilas in his
memoirs, “was characterized by its break with the old power and its infidelity
toward our spiritual fathers.”^328 In his inaugural speech, Tito forcefully denied
that the national liberation struggle was “a communist thing, aimed at the Bol-
shevik transformation of the state.” According to him, this was propaganda
worthy of Joseph Goebbels, spread by the occupiers and the traitorous Quis-
lings.^329 In line with this assertion, the Second AVNOJ did not make any deci-
sions related to the future social and political order, although the fact that it
presented itself as an “instrument of the revolution and of power,” to quote
Kardelj, showed in what direction Yugoslavia would go.^330 No delegates from
Macedonia or Serbia were present in Jajce. The Slovenes and the Croats dom-
inated, as shown by the election of Tito as president of the National Liberation
Committee, which had the prerogatives of a government, and Ivan Ribar as
president of the AVNOJ. In addition to Tito, two Slovenes played key roles in
the session: Edvard Kardelj and Boris Kidrič, a failed university student but
a gifted politician. As Bilandžić notes, the role played by Tito, Ribar, Kardelj,
and Kidrič at the Second AVNOJ supported the Serb belief that a plot had
been hatched against them thanks to the dictates of the Croats and Slovenes,
their ideological and political enemies.^331 “The fact that the provisional Parti-
san government in Bosnia—Ribar, Tito—is recognized and in the good graces
of all the Allied forces,” reads a report sent at the end of December from the
special police in Belgrade to Premier Nedić and his ministers, “and that it is a
focus of interest of the whole world, has aroused confusion and preoccupation
in Serb public opinion. It [the Serb people] has been abandoned by all, and its
fate is in the hands of those—non-Serbs—who, until now, have caused so
much suffering. After the war, it will be very difficult for the Serbs to get rid of
the communist contamination and it is generally thought that there will even
be an armed conflict before we free ourselves from these communist thugs.”^332
It is interesting to note that, after the Second AVNOJ, the Serb communists
also feared that Serbia could lose its central role in the new Yugoslavia. At the
same time, the Croats and the Slovenes doubted whether they would really be