The Postwar Period 185
to light on 6 April, when Djilas passed the Soviet Embassy and saw a car driven
by “the Black One’s” bearded driver. He informed Tito immediately, during a
meeting also attended by Kardelj and Ranković, who had met to prepare for
the next session of the CC in two days’ time. At the Central Committee meet-
ing, Žujović accused his comrades of seeing themselves as peers of the Soviet
communists, after which Tito asked him: “And you, Black One? What have
you been doing with the Soviet ambassador?” Žujović answered that he had
gone to see Lavrent’ev in order to discuss his new car, to which Djilas com-
mented scornfully: “A Yugoslav minister who kneels down before the Soviet
ambassador for a car.”^186 The dispute was interrupted when Žujović asked per-
mission to leave because of his obligations at the Federal Assembly. Those
present decided to adjourn the session to the following morning, after accept-
ing Tito’s proposal to put on the agenda “a discussion about the Black One”
and his betrayal. No one slept much that night. The most important members
of the leadership had a series of consultations and decided to put Andrija
Hebrang on the dock, together with Žujović. Hebrang had quarreled with
Tito because of his opposition to the Five-Year Plan, but also because of differ-
ing opinions regarding the border between the Republics of Croatia and Ser-
bia. In March 1948, he had already been brought before a Party Commission,
charged with a “sectarian attitude,” and was under house arrest “because of his
behavior in the [Ustaša] prison.”^187 Now the suspicions about his treason dur-
ing the war, which for a long time had been ignored, were suddenly discovered
and used against him. Tito and his comrades came to the conviction that, if a
purge was necessary, it might as well serve to get rid of both these potentially
dangerous “representatives of the Soviet line.”^188 They were not wrong, con-
sidering the huge esteem Hebrang enjoyed in Moscow. In his dossier in the
Cominform archives, he is valued as a “proven, strong, to the idea, dedicated
communist, great, true friend of our interests. He is ready to do everything pos-
sible for the USSR.”^189
During the session of 13 April, which was quieter than the previous one since
the die had already been cast, Ranković informed the CC about the “Hebrang
affair.” He read a letter the latter had sent him in which he agreed with Stalin’s
accusations. Tito himself analyzed Fatty’s sins, denouncing him as an element
hostile to the party and to its line. Djilas followed suit, declaring that Žujović
and Hebrang were the main supporters of the CPSU in Yugoslavia: an asser-
tion also based on wiretapping intelligence.^190 In the introduction of Tito’s let-
ter to Stalin, subsequently edited by Kardelj, the two were presented differently,
accused of being the principal culprits responsible for the tension between
Moscow and Belgrade, having given faulty and biased information to Soviet
agents in Yugoslavia who, for their part, had incorrectly informed the Kremlin.