186 The Postwar Period
Hence, the anti-party activity of a few isolated individuals lay at the origins of
the “dispute,” which could easily have been solved if the CPSU had only agreed
to send one or two members of its CC to Yugoslavia to discuss the unresolved
questions on the spot.^191 This suggestion, which implicitly recognized Moscow’s
supremacy, along with the designation of Hebrang and Žujović as scapegoats,
was the only revision to the draft that Tito prepared. His argument about the
right of every country to its own path to socialism was further weakened to
coincide with the feelings of the majority of the CC, according to whom Stalin,
in spite of his despotism and iniquity, embodied an entire ideology. Conse-
quently, the discussion led by the most important party members on 12 and 13
April, and the letter sent to Moscow, spoke a different language. This incon-
gruence was not perceived by most, who were happy to be able to offer two
sacrificial victims in a Stalinist rite. They believed that getting rid of a few
individuals would suffice to recover the lost harmony of a relationship that had
been fatally compromised. As a symbolic gesture of their attachment to the
Soviet Union, Jakov Blažević, one of the junior members of the CC, was sent
to place a wreath on the tomb of the Russian soldiers who had fallen during the
battle for Belgrade.^192
At the session of 12 April, Tito declared: “Our revolution is just, our revolu-
tion does not devour its children.”^193 But he then immediately began to violate
this assertion. When, at the beginning of May, it was clear that all the bridges
with Stalin had been burnt, the marshal decided to get rid of Hebrang and
Žujović to further warn off other possible traitors. Although he had already
been unmasked as a spy, after 13 April the “Black One” continued to stay in
touch with Ambassador Lavrent’ev, to whom he had delivered all his notes in
anticipation of his arrest. In fact, he was convinced that the Soviet Communist
Party was the only real interpreter of Marxism-Leninism and that Stalin was
its “guide and master.”^194 Hebrang, who was of the same opinion, had not given
the Soviets any information, as Stalin admitted in a letter of 4 May 1948, but he
was more dangerous than Žujović because of his managerial skills and because
of his popularity in Croatia. It was not difficult to imagine that he would
replace Tito in case of a putsch, as was apparently planned.^195 In the abovemen-
tioned letter Hebrang sent the Politburo at the end of April, he included a
detailed criticism of the CPY in line with Stalin’s writing. Kardelj commented
in his memoirs: “It was a sort of dissertation of a future chief.”^196
On 6 May 1948, Tito denounced Hebrang and Žujović in the Federal Assem-
bly as elements harmful to the party and hostile to unity and to socialism.
Consequently, they were removed from their ministerial posts. The following
day, this news appeared in the press without further comment. On 9 May, the
Zagreb newspaper Vjesnik announced that two new ministers for finance and