World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 149
early seventies—“from a modest property to their present form, bringing to
mind the country estate of a Roman Emperor.”^514 On seven hundred hectares,
where about two hundred deer roamed, he built a luxurious hotel and a series
of bungalows for prominent Yugoslav leaders and foreign guests. Royalty and
film stars were among these guests, including Orson Welles, Sophia Loren,
Gina Lollobrigida, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Yul Brynner. Tito
had the beaches groomed, and even organized a private zoo for the exotic ani-
mals he received as gifts from Asian and African state presidents. On the islet
of Vanga he built a personal cottage, where he liked to develop photos and
produce wine, but where he mostly tinkered with carpentry or mechanics
(he remained proud of his grasp of machines and engines). Of course he had
a well-stocked cellar, where he liked to entertain his guests and—on occasion,
for the most important visitors—find a bottle of wine from their birth year.^515
According to a British ambassador, Brioni was thus transformed into an
amalgam of Arcadia and the London Zoo.^516 During the years of Tito’s rule,
thousands of people worked for him, or protected him, in this artificial para-
dise. As one of his private doctors wrote, no contemporary monarch lived so
lavishly. Some of the construction at Brioni was even carried out by prisoners
of war; a fact that did not disturb Tito in the least: “Throughout history, all
great things have been made by slaves.”^517
The “revolutionaries” of Tito’s entourage did not oppose his extravagance,
partly because they themselves quickly adjusted to the trappings of power, and
partly out of fear of offending him. They too seized villas and riches formerly
belonging to “enemies of the people,” enjoying the good life as if they were
making up for lost time. Later, they built more luxurious residences with the
excuse that they were needed by Tito and had the army maintain them; in
truth, they were for their own use. “They had all been voluntary servants of the
party and its ideology,” wrote Djilas, “and they were all alienated and power-
less outside that clique: outside the power, the Utopia.”^518 The population at
large was mostly unaware of the opulence in which the leaders lived. But on
one occasion, at the end of the sixties, when a film was shown on Tito’s every-
day life at Brioni, including his zoo, the general comment was that there “the
animals are better cared for than this country’s workers.”^519