Tito and His Comrades

178 The Postwar Period

no major disagreements between the two governments. He spoke against the
federation with Bulgaria but reserved most of his anger for the economic and
military pressure Stalin obviously exerted on Yugoslavia. “It’s not clear whether
the USSR wants us to be a strong, armed state. The armament is a terrible
weight [because of the huge expenses]. We have to count on our own forces
first of all, correct the Five-Year Plan and develop the military sector....
Our Soviet comrades fan irrelevant problems and draw the wrong conclusions
from them. We must follow our own path to strengthen the role of Yugoslavia
in the world. This, in the end, is also in the interests of the USSR.”^158
This independence in the face of Stalin’s policy was also stressed by Yugo-
slav leaders two days later, in a meeting between Tito, Kardelj, Djilas and
Greek party functionaries, led by General Secretary Nikos Zachariadis. The
Yugoslavs informed them that during the Kremlin discussions on 10 February,
Stalin had voiced doubts about whether their revolt would be successful, but
reassured the Greeks that they could count on Yugoslavia’s ongoing support
in the struggle for liberation. These were not mere words: On 10 March, the
minister of foreign affairs, Stanoje Simić, informed Lavrent’ev that the Yugo-
slav Air Force was on standby for any “provocations by Monarcho-Fascist
Greeks.” Tito and his comrades also put pressure on the Albanians, asking
them to convince the Boss that the intervention of Yugoslav troops in their
country and its union with Yugoslavia was necessary. The dispatch sent by the
Soviet ambassador to Moscow on 26 July 1947 seemed more accurate than ever:
“It’s probable that Tito is now considering an armed response to Greek mili-
tary provocation.”^159

The Showdown with Hebrang and Žujović

The postponement of talks on the renewal of economic agtreements decided
by Moscow was an enormous blow for the Yugoslav leaders, considering the
first Five-Year Plan was based on the assumption of close collaboration between
the Soviet Union and other bloc countries. Thus, on 1 March 1948, an expanded
Politburo was convened in Tito’s Belgrade villa, where Kardelj and Djilas again
reported on their discussions with Stalin.^160 Everyone present was aghast, and
Tito even proposed that he should resign as prime minister (according to
Djilas, more to test their loyalty than anything else). Tito acknowledged that
Yugoslav-Soviet relations had reached a dead end, as shown by Russia’s attempts
to subjugate Yugoslavia economically and compel it to unite with Bulgaria,
which would strengthen the influence of the NKVD in the Balkans. He
expressed the view that there had been an ideological shift within the CPSU
that had introduced shades of “Great Russian chauvinism.” Kardelj, Djilas, and
other members of the Politburo agreed: “We are not pawns on a chess board.”^161