288 The Presidential Years
place for a supreme arbiter. At the congress, Kardelj declared: “In the fight for
the unity and collaboration of the workers’ movement, we cannot ignore the
ideological fight against opportunism, reformism, dogmatism, revisionism. In
harmony with this, we will firmly resist every attempt to meddle in our internal
affairs, and the influence of foreign ideologies. Without such a fight, unity
would signify the suppression of revolutionary and socialist perspectives, the
imposition of disorientation, of passivity, of conservatism.”^125
In foreign policy, his program proclaimed that bloc logic was the greatest
danger to peace, and equated the fight for the national freedom of subjected
peoples to the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. It
condemned the division of the world into spheres of influence, and rejected
both Western imperialism and Eastern hegemonic tendencies, even stating
that it was not possible to exclude the possibility of the exploitation of one
socialist state by another and armed clashes between them.^126 It continued: “It
obviously goes without saying that we are sympathetic to all communist parties
in questions regarding the development of socialist progress, the strengthening
of workers’ movements. The LCY has always been faithful to great revolution-
ary ideas of proletarian internationalism. To the other Marxist parties, we are
also bound by the idea of Marxism and Leninism. The LCY ’s program fore-
sees, however, that such collaboration should be based on absolute free will and
equality, recognizing that every party has the exclusive right to judge the ideo-
logical and tactical utility of this or that decision.”^127
Kardelj went even further, stressing not just the party’s autonomy, but also
the fundamental autonomy of every human being. If fact, he reached the con-
clusion that “socialism could not subject anyone’s personal happiness to ‘supe-
rior aims,’ since this was in itself the greater good.” This affirmation seemed so
radical that it was struck twice from the program’s draft. In the end, Kardelj
kept it in but was compelled to balance it with the phrase: “However, no one
has the right to affirm his personal interest to the detriment of the common
interest.”^128 In spite of Tito’s opposition, he was able to crown the LCY ’s pro-
gram with an even more daring assertion, a paraphrase of Marx and Lenin,
according to whom everything in existence could be criticized: “Nothing that
has been created is so sacred that it could not be overthrown.”^129
Khrushchev was not furious just because of such thoughts, but also because
of Tito’s inaugural address, in which he warmly thanked the United States for
its aid, above all grain, barely mentioning the loans promised by the Soviet
Union, which at about $285 million were far from modest.^130 Moreover, the fact
that the Yugoslav leaders reproached the Soviets for their past errors, even
mentioning the prewar pact with Hitler, was so outrageous that the “camp’s”
ambassadors, present as observers at the congress, left the hall in protest (apart