198 The Postwar Period
Goli OtokThe title of Borba’s editorial on 21 August 1948, “Let’s Intensify Vigilance to
Reinforce the Party Ranks,” announced a purge that would free the CPY of
careerists and wavering and hostile elements. Words were soon followed by
deeds. Ranković’s repressive machine started to run at full speed, and being
well-oiled because of the struggle with the Chetniks and Ustaša, it worked
extremely well against real or supposed Cominformists. Hundreds of army
officers and administrative officials, mostly old Communists, were imprisoned.
Soon the arrests were so numerous that the courts were unable to cope with
them. To overcome this difficulty, a decree was published in August instituting
so-called “administrative conviction.” It stated that persons dangerous to the
state could be sentenced to two years of “work useful to society” (doubled if
necessary) by a simple decision of the organs of public security. In fact, this
punishment often lasted ten or as many as eighteen years.^251
Tito made the decision to isolate the “Cominformists” without previous con-
sultation with the CC and the Politburo because his Moscow experience had
taught him how to deal with the “internal enemy.” The order for the purge came
suddenly, before the first “concentration camp” was ready to house the intern-
ees. It was announced by the marshal himself at the Second Congress of the
CP of Croatia when he said in an ambiguous but menacing manner: “Com-
rades, there are two ways to convince somebody: the first is with words, then
there is another one.”^252 A suitable place for this other way was found by Ivan
Krajačić (Stevo), who discovered Goli Otok, or Bald Island, in the Gulf of
Quarner while he and the sculptor Antun Augustinčić were looking for high-
quality marble. He mentioned this to Kardelj, who immediately saw the possi-
bility of organizing a concentration camp in that desolate location. Tito agreed.^253
The operation was implemented in utmost secrecy, to the point that it was not
known even to the chief of the General Staff, Koča Popović. Kardelj later tried
to justify himself, saying, “If we had not organized such a camp, Stalin would
have transformed all of Yugoslavia into a terrible gulag.”^254 The regime intro-
duced on Goli Otok, and in other similar places, was utterly brutal, as its aim
was to destroy the personality and dignity of the internees who, according to
their jailers, were to be “reeducated.” They were often deprived of water and
food and subjected to backbreaking work that was completely useless, even
Sisyphean: they had to chip away stones and transport them from one place to
another. According to the ancient Russian custom, the new arrivals had to pass
between two rows of “older” prisoners, who beat them with fists and sticks. This
was only the beginning of the terrible physical and psychological suffering that
awaited them. To quote Vlado Dapčević, who endured the Goli Otok regime