302 The Presidential Years
Montenegro, and Macedonia, began firing workers in the name of efficiency.^194
The trade deficit with the West and the East, but especially with the Soviet
Union, increased. Yugoslavia was obliged to import half a million tons of wheat
from the United States once again, since it was not able to feed the population
because of alternating droughts and flooding.^195
It was whispered that there were two opposing groups in the top ranks of
government. The conservative group, headed by Ranković, did not favor the re-
form or the development of self-management, asserting that due to said reform,
the LCY isolated itself from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.
The other, which had formed around Kardelj and Vukmanović (Tempo), was
determined in its commitment to pursue reforms to improve democracy and
strengthen relations with the West. In addition, the conflict between Kardelj
and Ranković over Tito’s succession, which had begun with the elimina tion of
Djilas as a contender, if not before, became more and more explicit. As early
as the beginning of the fifties, when Kardelj was minister of foreign affairs,
Ranković tried to obstruct him by systematically refusing his candidates for
ambassadorial posts on the pretext that they were unreliable: in 1952, he accepted
only five of 150 names proposed by Kardelj, thus humiliating him.^196 Since Kar-
delj was the main proponent of the reforms, whereas Ranković opposed them,
it was inevitable that groups of progressive “technocrats” and conservative
“apparatchiks,” or devotees to party bureaucracy, coalesced around them. These
factions had, perforce, ethnic connotations: since the reformists wished for
growing decentralization, whereas the dogmatists defended centralism, the for-
mer were supported by the developed republics of Slovenia and Croatia, while
the others were backed by Serbia, Montenegro, and partially, Macedonia. Of
course, in this game it was not without significance that Kardelj was a Slovene
and Ranković a Serb.^197 Tito was extremely worried about this conflict, well
aware that he was “unable to find a common language with my closest aides.”^198
Nevertheless, he took advantage of their discord to reinforce his own power.^199
The Trip to AfricaAfter the Seventh Congress, Tito invested a great deal of energy nurturing rela-
tionships with African and Asian countries, convinced that it would be possible
to coordinate the development of the Yugoslav economy with that of the Third
World. To this end, the Belgrade government set up a wide-ranging aid pro-
gram for “developing countries” (in all, more than $11 billion would be invested),
based on the exchange of its products for raw materials. Yugoslav experts collabo-
rated on the construction of harbors, industrial plants, and geological research in
these countries, developing a foothold in their economic life. Cultural relations