146 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
rigid rules: each member of the nomenklatura knew exactly when and what
he or she could shoot, according to their importance. Only Tito could hunt as
he pleased.^498
Tito was a passionate hunter, proud of every kill. At the end of 1953, when the
tension surrounding the international situation of Yugoslavia was at its peak
because of the Trieste crisis, and Djilas had started to rebel, Tito was at Brdo
Castle, suffering from rheumatism, but nonetheless obsessed by an enormous
ibex in the Julian Alps. When informed that the beast had been spotted, he set
out immediately to shoot it. Later, one of his guards wrote, “All through his stay
in Slovenia, Tito waited for snow and for this news. He waited at least four years
for that kill.”^499 Toward the end of his life, in April 1974, he shot a bear whose skin
was awarded First Prize by an international commission, which left Tito thrilled.
When, on another occasion during a hunting party in the Carpathian Moun-
tains, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu shot a bigger bear than the one
Tito had shot, he was furious, muttering, “I would never do that to a guest!”^500
Over time, more and more estates were requisitioned from prewar grandees.
Since, unlike Lenin and Stalin, Tito had no authority in the area of Marxist
doctrine, much of his aura as a leader was created by these shows of power
and by the luxury of his lifestyle. Tito simply had an innate weakness for trin-
kets and possessions, and he could not hide it. In this amassing of goods and
property, he was ably assisted by Ivan Krajačić, a.k.a. Stevo, a former NKVD
agent who had similar tastes. Stevo’s letters to Tito after the victory are reveal-
ing: “Dear Old One, I send you three belts and a golden snuffbox, but also
two necklaces. You will be able to bring them as gifts when you go ‘up there’
[to Moscow]. The experts say this grey cloth is excellent, and I send three
meters of it for a trench coat.” And: “I send you also two golden cigarette boxes:
one for a table, the other pocket-sized. The bigger one, in my opinion, would
look handsome on your nightstand.”^501 Tito “inherited” an armored Mercedes
from either Ante Pavelić or General Löhr, was given cars by Stalin and Nikita
Khrushchev, as well as by the Republic of Slovenia, which presented him with
a Rolls-Royce, to mention just some of the vehicles in his possession. He had a
plane, offered by the Soviets, a yacht called the Galeb (seagull), King Aleksan-
dar’s sailing boat, and an enormous collection of paintings, statues, carpets, and
other artworks. The opulence of his life, like that of a Habsburg archduke,
also changed Tito’s appearance. During the war he looked like a bird of prey
with his bony face and lean body. In the postwar period he quickly gained
weight and came to resemble an avuncular godfather. “From a distance,” wrote
the Croat diplomat Bogdan Radica, who defected to the West, “he looks a good
deal like [prewar Yugoslav premier Milan] Stojadinović. In Belgrade they call
him Göring; in Zagreb, Titler.”^502