Tito and His Comrades

158 The Postwar Period

them a better life.^43 As reflected in Tito’s own words at the First Congress of
the Communist Party of Serbia in May 1945, the leaders themselves were
unsure how to move from the struggle for liberation to the next phase of the
revolution—fostering socialism. Just one thing was clear: the need to ruthlessly
eliminate those political groups and bourgeois figures who, while ready to col-
laborate with the communists, still hoped to preserve some autonomy, since
Tito and his comrades were not disposed to tolerate any ideological dissent.^44
At the Potsdam Conference, convened by the three Great Powers at the end of
July 1945, Churchill worried aloud that “Tito’s administration has created a
rigid regime, propped up by the political police, where the press is just as closely
controlled as it is in Fascist states.”^45 Stalin, though he too was worried by the
marshal’s radicalism, disagreed—mostly so as not to endorse Churchill’s view.
During a private dinner, Churchill reminded him of the Moscow agreement
on Yugoslavia, stressing that the influence of the two superpowers was now
no longer fifty-fifty, but more like ninety-ten; and not in Great Britain’s favor.
Stalin was of the opposite opinion, arguing that “the Soviet government often
has no idea what Tito’s government is up to,” which confirmed his terse words
at Yalta: “If you offer Tito advice, he sometimes replies with a kick.”^46

The Popular Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Although bourgeois Serb and Croat politicians had in recent months been use-
ful to show the Western allies that Yugoslavia was not wholly in the hands of
Communists, Tito and his comrades now moved to get rid of them as their
presence was no longer necessary. They isolated Grol, Šubašić, and other repre-
sentatives of the prewar parties via their gradual expulsion from public life, and
internal or external exile.^47 Tito’s view was that “in such a country as this, bur-
dened with the immense ballast of the past, with national hate at the highest
pitch, we would have achieved nothing had we allowed different parties. What
would be the meaning of forming them? The parties would be formed in Cro-
atia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and
all these parties would fight on the line of nationality; a state with such parties
would not be able to exist.”^48
When the 1945 electoral law was passed, the communists included in it a series
of articles banning the opposition from participating effectively in elections
and denying civil rights to all those who could be accused of having collabo-
rated with the occupiers and other upstart regimes. “Collaboration,” however,
was open to interpretation. Although Tito and his followers felt they could
count on 60 to 70 percent of the vote, they were taking no chances. They
formed the Popular Front, a vast political movement dominated by the CPY,